Cozy and Critical
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If you let this game in, you will lose whole weeks to its engrossing depth and complex interactions. It’s a beautiful expanse of a game that stretches outward from the vertical slice seen during NextFest, and it demands you invite it in.
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I wish this game was better.
There’s a power fantasy everyone’s had at some point in their lives of just destroying things. Stomping over buildings, squishing people you don’t like, roaring at the top of your lungs, and just straight-up destroying whole cities. It’s an excellent fantasy, a perfect way to release tension and get your feelings out on some tiny pixelated villagers. That’s what this game promises— a large, cathartic brawl through a medieval fantasy world as a huge, lumbering giant. You stomping your way through a cast of horrid villains and destroying siege machinery. While the promise of such a game is in there, Giants Uprising fails to deliver on a meaningful level. Not just with its laundry list of bugs, but with some fundamental issues that might not be solved. And that is possibly the most disappointing part.
Read MoreSo first, a disclaimer. Because of the episodic nature of the game, and because this is The Last Door: Season 2, I strongly suggest you go to either the website or Kongregate and play The Last Door: Season 1. It's not the most necessary thing in the world, but it'll fill in the blanks as to Devitt, the weird eye motif, the Four Witnesses, and the secret society known as The Playwright. While the prologue chapter can answer one or two of the questions, a lot of them will be answered by just playing season 1.
But with that out of the way, if you're looking for a surreal horror game with a ton of atmosphere and a lo-fi aesthetic that manages to play perfectly with the player's imagination and delivers old-school adventure without all the pointless death, you need look no further
Read MoreI will give the twisted minds behind the Warhammer 40,000 universe credit, they at least know what they're doing with atmosphere. The series, a reductio ad absurdam of pretty much all science fiction and a little fantasy, is known for its rich atmosphere and utterly insane character designs. (Well, and codex creep, but that's for another article) It's a huge, bombastic setting of spaceships the size of former Soviet republics and ten foot tall warriors with six lungs and specially made ribs.
Regicide, by comparison, is a tactical strategy game taking some of the elements of Chess and mixing them with XCOM and Warhammer 40,000. It's not nearly as expansive or as utterly batshit as the source material it takes from, but in its own weird, restrained way, it does manage to be a lot of fun.
More, as always, below.
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The Red Solstice is a tactical 8 player co-op survival game set in the distant future on Mars. I can see how, in the heat of the moment, with all cylinders firing and everyone trying to figure out a tactical position against the alien hordes, it could be pretty cool. I'm sure there are guilds out there who would do great, shouting orders to one another and locking down a position, mowing down shrieking monsters as they run straight at you. But then there's a part of me that thinks it really missed the boat. A big part of me, actually. And it has to do with independence.
Read MoreI don't like having to pontificate on things like this. I get that it's my job, but it's kind of annoying when I can see the game for what it is, see where it could possibly be, and then be forced to lament that it wound up like this.
Galactic Inheritors is a game that seems like its ambitions exceeded its grasp. It might just be the way the game presents itself, or it may be that it seems like a very intelligent 4X game with some definite perks to it. That those perks are weighted down with a variety of bugs, strange design choices, and just in general failure to seem like an interesting game is more of a tragedy than a delight.
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This game has broken me
I've tried every possible angle of attack, from sarcastically framing it as the perfect game for the "offended set" to long pontifications on exactly why this game was made and managed to be released through Steam when it's clearly a quarter of a game. But in the end, I keep coming back to the person whose words have impacted my life far more than anyone's should have, especially his: Roger Ebert.
Read MoreSo disclosure time: I loved Sid Meier's Pirates.
I bring this up because Windward is similar in a lot of respects to Pirates. Both are games where you and your crew sail around a large chain of islands and mainlands representing your chosen faction, attacking other ships, trading goods, fighting in wars, and gaining standing and reputation.
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0rbitalis is the most obtuse game I've ever played, and I love it.
Perhaps I should explain: 0rbitalis is an abstract gravity-puzzle game. The object is to keep your tiny red dot orbiting on screen as long as possible, arcing it around planets and stars (represented by larger and smaller abstract shapes) as it swirls and whirls around the screen. While you only have to do so for a very short set amount of time, there are online leaderboards that encourage players to keep their orbits going for as long as possible, with some frankly unbelievable times in places.
Read MoreThere are rare times in art when everything works exactly the way it's supposed to. Where everything clicks so perfectly into place that it's almost elegant the way everything is so finely-tuned. And that's what playing Crypt of the NecroDancer from Brace Yourself Games feels like. Elegant. Refined. Like a well-oiled machine. In its unpolished state it was fun and interesting but heavily flawed, but now that it has reached its final polish, it is a beautiful thing to behold.
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