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  1. radiofloyd

    Oxenfree

    Oxenfree was released way back in January which I guess makes it a retro title by today's standards. I don't know about the PS4 or Xbox One but it's currently heavily discounted on Steam so now is as good a time to pick it up as any. As it turns out, I already own it. It looks like this. http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/388880/ss_aae01eea5fc489c7fbb20c2e92440c1cf92f4e83.600x338.jpg?t=1465496144 http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/388880/ss_75af452f6e7f6c5dc1ada4f001abcccac6c57db7.600x338.jpg?t=1465496144 I just played it for sixteen minutes so I can give you sixteen minutes worth of impressions. So far it's been a pleasant side-scrolling walk and talk simulator. Not a million miles from Life is Strange if Life is Strange was side-scrolling. The conversations so far have been kind of typical preppy American teenage stuff. At the beginning of the game the characters are heading to some kind of after dark party on an island. The main point I'd like to make is that the game has a really good electronic soundtrack. The art style has a bit of Kentucky Route Zero.
  2. Hendo

    Celeste

    Super hard indie platformer? Count me in and watch as I never complete it. This is made by the people who made Towerfall and although it is 2D and retro styled, it’s a completely different thing as it’s a single player game, more like Super Meat Boy. There’s optional collectibles (strawberries) but the thing I find concerning is part of it is gated by other collectibles. Featured in this video by Dunkey: I’m on the third chapter and it hasn’t been too difficult so far but I can see where it’s headed.
  3. Is this an indie? I think it could be so it gets an 'indie' sticker. But the game! It's pretty good! I say pretty good but what I mean is it's text book good. It doesn't do anything wrong and it uses the 'Metroidvania' template pretty well and has some interesting uses of its mechanics (I'm getting sick of using that word but I don't want to get specific as they get kinda surprising). What I will say is that there is a flip dimensions ability that mixes things up, but only in the same way as Outland does. Remember that game? Guacamelee! is a lot like Outland in some ways so if you liked that you'll like this. But I suppose the combat is better in this. You're a Mexican Wrestler so flinging folks about is important and you do have a big repertoire of combos and moves to do that are fun to pull off and hurt things a lot. You also have a bunch of fun internet jokes to laugh at about cats and stuff in the game, you know, all that referential stuff we enjoy. Like you climb a big mountain and near the top you find the the dead body of the thing from Journey and you go 'hahaha! I know that reference! Choozo Staues! hahaha!' It's so funny, it's like those guys who make the Scary Movie films and stuff made it. In summery: a pretty well made game that is fun but with with shite, incestuous nerd comedy. Play Outland instead.
  4. Played and finished this over the weekend, absolutely loved it. I don't want to give too much away about it so I'll just say it's a Text Adventure game with some twists and turns along the way, it sometimes feels like one of those educational games too as it gets you to input Morse code and do some algebra at some points. It's Published by the Hotline Miami folks (Devolver Digital) too. It's split up into 4 short-stories, each around 30-45 minutes in length, no tutorials at all, all very much gets you to learn on the job and provides the materials in-game to keep you immersed in the scenario presented. Got a cool Stranger Things/80s vibe going on too. £3.50 on Steam at the moment and I cannot recommend it enough for that price, it really is a fantastic little game. Pics:
  5. Quoting the kickstarter - "Darkest Dungeon is a challenging gothic roguelike RPG about the psychological stresses of adventuring. Descend at your peril!" Anyway, it was funded for over $300,000 in March 2014, spent a year on Early Access and eventually released in January this year. It's due out on PS4 later in the summer. It got good reviews and and has a "very positive" Steam user rating with around 15,000 votes. I've played it for an hour so far, it's cool. The game is structured like Sunless Sea in that you have a base, a safe haven, where you can buy provisions, recruit new members, take on quests etc etc. You can only set out with a party of four each time, but you can have way more than four people hired. One of the things you can do in the base camp or "hamlet" is assign people to certain activities which will reduce stress (like dread in Sunless Sea). If someone is assigned to an activity, you can't take them with you on your next trip. I'm not going to drone on about the mechanics in the game, but it is pretty similar to Sunless Sea really. Combat is turn based. Your party stands in formation and different characters have a preferred position...it's not what it sounds like. Both yours and the enemies position will affect the range of your attacks. That's all I can say about it so far. I did the introductory quest.
  6. Into the Breach is a game that came from the FTL; Faster than Light guys. Instead of being a grid based real time strategy you can pause and plan out your course of attack, here we're in 3D isometric land where everything is turn based. Also I don't think this is a rogue like, or from what little I've experienced it's not show that hand yet, if it does happen to have some randomness to it. The game plays a little bit like the old turn based war games, if you've played Advance Wars or Fire Emblem you'll feel right at home here. However there are a few differences that sort of make this game unique. The first one is that you only get 3 units. You get a big walking tank that can punch things. You get a standard tank that can fire on anything as long as it has line of sight on the target and you get an artillery that can do indirect fire, helping it arc shots over terrain, but also making it so that it can't attack things directly next to it. So far, so vanilla. The biggest difference is that the way these pieces move and interact with the bad guys that pop up on the map. For instance all the units you have at your disposal can push back enemies a square. This comes in very useful, because if something happens to be in the tile where they would be knocked into, that tiles occupant takes damage as well. Remember this. Another difference is that after each turn the enemies show you directly what they're going to attack. This is where the pushing mobs about the tile set comes important. Sure you could use a tank shell to hit that big enemy up the arse, but that's going to push him right onto the city and give him what he wants anyway. The idea is you read what attack are coming and use this pushing system to save objectives and your own armour. Placing your guys in positions that leads the enemies into grouping up so that you can push them into each other and mountains to hurt them or even get them to attack each other is part of the strategy here. You can also instakill any ground based enemies by pushing them into the water. The final big difference is that the fight you are taking place in only lasts a set number of turns, usually enemies burst from the ground each turn, you are thoroughly outnumbered and the general gist of the game is to survive. You have limited resources and it looks like you're just meant to cling onto the objective before moving onto the next mission. There are sub objectives, some of which say you can kill all of the enemies, but for the most it looks like you'll be keeping the wolves from the door before being whisked off to deal with the next insect eruption. Because of the nature of the skirmishes taking a few minutes before you're moved on it makes an ideal game to play when you've not got much time, I can imagine this being a really good phone game for that reason. Not to say it's without depth because of that, there's going to be plenty of head scratching trying to work out how to smash the fuck out of the attackers without them destroying your buildings and setting everything on fire. It's going to be one of those games that's deceptively simple to grasp but really difficult to master. It's left a good first impressions, maybe not quite as captivating as FTL was when that originally hit, but I think most people will really enjoy it if they're into turn based strategy.
  7. Duck

    Slay The Spire

    As i kinda explained in the new purchases thread this is rogue-like RPG dungeon crawl/deck builder mash up that is currently in early access. (it's about 12 quid) When start the game you choose from 1 of 3 characters all of which have different perks and attributes, then another perk/gift much like in rogue-likes/Dark Souls/Hearthstone etc. Your aim is to get to the end of the game without dying as it's perma-death. Game over. I think there currently 3 Acts at the moment and in each map you're given a map and have to chose one of 4 starting points at the bottom, with the boss at the top finishing the act. Once you've chosen you get to pick the next step to move along that path... like this.. - Unknown is Unknown . It's a story event. I could end well (with a new passive perk or something) or badly. - Merchant is a shop where you can buy new cards or items. He usually has some sales too. - Treasure is a treasure chest - Rest you have the option to gain some of your heal back or upgrade a card. - Enemy is a enemy. - Elite is like a mini boss. You see this map even before you set off so you can plan a bit. Do i go after that treasure or have a rest on the other path?.. etc Risk/reward, it's cool. Ok, now the turn-based combat. It's all card/item based. Looks like this.. Like Hearthstone/most card based board games, at the start of each turn the player has a certain about points that they can spend to lay cards. This can be modified with other cards/relics as you progress tho. And like Dominion/rogue likes you start off with very basic cards but after every fight you get to choose 1 of 3 cards to add to your 'deck'. So as you are progress and building your deck, your character is getting better. Enemies/bosses drop loot like money which can be spend at the shop or relics which give you a passive ability. Once you've spent you're points, you end the turn and the remaining cards are put into the discard pile. When your draw pile is empty, the discard pile is shuffled and you start again. That's it basically. It's simple but fuck, it's reeeally good. It merges the deck building with the rogue like stuff really nicely. I wish every turn-based RPG had the same combat/deck building loop this has. It's much more approachable and pick up and play than any card-based video game i've played too. Even more so than Hearthstone. But it still does a lot of the things i like about deck builders. So, yeah if you've ever thought of giving a card game a go but were scared off how impenetrable they can be. Then this maybe the gateway drug. Very addictive. Great game, still in early access too so it should only get better.
  8. Continuing my Indie binge with Hollow Knight. Heard lots of good things about this game earlier this year and saw a Let's Play from Easy Allies of the first two-ish hours of it, has been on my Steam wishlist ever since. For those that don't know, it's an Indie Metroidvania game set in an eerie melancholic bug-world. I've enjoyed it quite a lot, being new to the Metroidvania genre I didn't really know what to expect, I've seen an awful lot of great indie Metroidvania games and kind of got turned off them in the past as there's just so many, I'm glad I gave this a go though because it's now a genre I'd like to explore more. For starters it doesn't hold your hand at all, you get a very brief control tutorial and are then left to explore the world. It doesn't explain anything at all, and if I hadn't of watched the EZA Let's Play I would've been a bit lost on where to go and what to do, luckily that gave me a brief idea. It was still a bit disconcerting exploring areas and not knowing where the fuck you are in the slightest, no map, no idea where the next Rest point is, no idea where the entrance to the next area is or anything though. Luckily you realise how the map system works pretty early on and then discover a vendor to add new areas to it, mark your location on the map etc. All incredibly useful. The gameplay loop is pretty similar to Souls I guess, if you die you loose all your 'Geo', you get Geo by killing enemies. The most innovative mechanic is that when you kill enemies you get souls that you then use to replenish your health, which adds to the whole risk/reward system of the game as it makes you want to attack more in combat in order to get more Souls to heal in the heat of a battle, it is a balance at times as your Soul supply can be used for other things too. You use a small sword for the combat (called a 'nail') which enabled you to hit enemies in any 360 degree direction, there's a lot of enemy variety on offer, when you go into a new area you have to learn their mannerisms all over again, there's a few areas with traps for you to fall into (similar to Souls) too, it always feels fresh and involving. It has that Souls feeling about it to about worrying where the next save point is, knowing you've got 1000+ Geo on you and whether to venture into the next area where a boss may be waiting or head back to a previous area and save. I won't give too much away but new mechanics are introduced as you go along that unlock new locales, one changes the platforming significantly and one changes the combat to a significant degree as well, the game never points you to these so presumably you could go the entire game without discovering them. There's also a system similar to the rings in Souls where you can get slightly more Souls when you defeat an enemy, a bit more health etc. but the slots are incredibly limited at this time meaning you have to choose very wisely which you want to equip. The game looks absolutely stunning, it has a really unique art-design about it, it's cartoonish but the backgrounds and levels managed to look realistic and give a very lived-in, ancient kind of vibe. By far and away the best thing about the game is the music though, it is just absolutely incredible and makes the each area feel special and meaningful, when you go to your first town and a certain song plays it's just so melancholic and haunting at the same time, it really is very special. The noises the characters you meet along the way make are fantastic too, they put so much personality in them just from gibberish and grunts. A few pics:
  9. I've been waiting for this to drop in price for a while. Normal price on Steam is 20 quid which is quite a lot but there does seem to be a lot to it. Also this is "early access" so it's not meant to be finished yet but seems largely there for me, unless they plan on changing a lot about their art style or menus, which mostly seem fine to me. So, it's a Sim City style game but you make a prison. You have to build it from scratch, from the outer walls to the yard, canteen, holding cells, etc. You employ staff from the Warden down to building crew. The game starts out with a tutorial that has a prison all built bar an execution cell which it teaches you how to build that and you get the grim story of the inmate that you're blasting with electricity. It also uses this time to tell you that you're not here to judge on the inmates, just to do your job in holding them and keeping them from wrecking the joint. Pretty much anything you can think of you have to build. If you have toilets they need to be connected to the water system, if you have buildings they must have doors, electrical items like lights need power cables running from the building to a power capacitor that needs to be maintained and not over-loaded. I got an interest in it from the Giant Bomb quick look and it's also proven a useful tool for me to get myself started too.
  10. I don't think anyone has started a thread about Doki Doki Literature Club, but I've a feeling that's not quite how it's spelt and the search can be a bit shit @spatular put me on to this but apparently its doing the rounds on some of the bigger forums. It's a visual novel with a slight dating element to it. Basically once you join the club you all start sharing your poems with each other, you get to pick 20 words the night before to impress whichever of the girls you like (there's 3 very distinct girls you can impress) So far that's probably enough for you to judge the people playing this, especially Spatular, but without going in to things and spoiling what the game is, it's very much not that It's free on Steam, seems to have taken everyone else on my friends list 4 hours, I went out and left it running so it's going to take me about 10. Its an interesting thing so far though
  11. Maryokutai

    Carto

    I doubt this will be a popular topic but this game is excellent and I think more people should play it. You're playing as a little girl who got separated from her grandmother and have to find your way back to the airship they use to fly across the world. The girl (Carto) is a cartographer and can rearrange the world as she traverses it, which is the game's central mechanic and the key instrument for every puzzle you're going to encounter. At a button press the view switches to a map of your current area in which you can move and rotate different pieces of the map as you want. There's only one rule and that is that the borders of a piece must be compatible to the border of an adjacent piece (grass to grass, water to water, rock to rock and so on) but other than that you're free to do as you please and you can even move and turn the specific map piece you're currently standing on. It starts off slow but quickly adds some extra layers to the mix. When an NPC asks you to find a "dense forest" early on but the only pieces you have are grasslands with some trees on one border, you can arrange those four pieces in a way to leave the middle of it blank while having the tree-borders pointing towards it, which then in turn spawns the requested forest piece in the middle. It sounds convoluted when typed out but completely makes sense in the game's logic when you play it. And that's only the tip of the iceberg. At 7 hours or so it has the perfect length to make as much as possible out of this idea without overstaying its welcome. The way it is focused on this singular mechanic and pushing it to its limits feels a bit similar to the equally tightly focused Portal. The overall presentation is almost unbearably cute, with tons of adorable little NPCs and animals asking for Carto's aid on her travels. I put it on my top list for 2020 and I stand by it, the reason I've only managed to finish the last three chapters now have nothing to do with its quality, but rather a bunch of real-life nonsense coming in the way. PC players can try a demo on Steam btw.
  12. Started playing this today, put in about 3 hours. Not really sure what to make of it at the moment, the game looks bloody gorgeous (You can see where Coldwood spent that EA money!), the soundtrack is great, but at its heart it just feels like an average platformer really. If I had to compare it I'd say it feels most like LittleBigPlanet, that kind of floatiness to the controls (if that makes sense) happens in Unravel too, it definitely isn't a tight platformer like Ori and the Blind Forest or Donkey Kong Country, and I don't think it was ever trying to be like those games in its design, but the controls could've been tighter and snappier in my view, from what I've played anyway. What I didn't realise going in was how incredibly infuriating and frustrating a game it is, it just gets me so fucking riled up it's unreal, I've got stuck twice already and had to look up what I need to do online, was just pottering about for 15 minutes trying to get past a certain section and of course I find what I need to do, feel like an idiot and I'm on my way. Some of the problems can be put down to the timing-based platforming sections I've encountered I guess (where the controls don't help), coupled with the harsh check-pointing employed. You can figure out what you need to do in order to progress, almost complete an entire section, accidently drop into some water and suddenly have to start all the way back at the previous checkpoint, just seems needless really. Despite the issues the game has and its mediocrity (in platforming terms) I am still vaguely enjoying it, it's pleasant enough, the environs are amazing and Yarny is charming enough to keep me playing, but I can already tell its going to be a bit of a slog if it goes on for any longer than the 5-6 hours I'm assuming it lasts.
  13. Way back in January 2013 this game raised £1.5 million on kickstarter, was released in 2015, followed by a Horizons "season pass" which looks like it is receiving its final major update this year. I bought the base game at some stage during the last two years and have finally gotten around to playing it. I've played it for over four hours so far. The game has a number of tutorial missions (and videos) which explain some of the fundamentals of the game, piloting and landing your ship, combat, travelling between planets. There's certainly a learning curve but I think I have the basic piloting, landing and navigation parts down now. I can't really speak for combat, I completed the basic combat tutorial but I haven't yet encountered any combat in the main "open" game, which I've played around 90 minutes of. You start off with a ship, 1000 credits and a mission to deliver data to another port. I completed that mission and you are then told which places to visit if you wish to learn about various aspects of the game. Each port has a mission board where you can take on a variety of missions, but you can't take on missions of a higher rank than your current rank. I'm still at the starting rank "Penniless". So far I've completed one extra mission, to supply copper. I haven't even scratched the surface of the surface of the game but just playing this most basic part of the game has been fun so far. I've been playing on PC, with a controller. Aesthetically, the game looks and sounds beautiful. The hyper space jumps or whatever they are called are amazingly eerie.
  14. Anyone else pick this up when it was cheap last week? I want to love it but I can't control the damn thing for shit. Which I guess is the point but it's really fucking ridiculously hard. This makes it look easy: This is what you'll actually do:
  15. Picked this up last week after reading lots of glowing impressions and very positive reviews. It definitely hasn’t disappointed that’s for sure, I’ve had an absolute blast with it for sure and it’s definitely one of the best platformers I’ve played in recent years. The game takes on two dimensions. The 2D side-scrolling platforming takes up the majority of your time with it and I think the easiest way to describe how it looks, feels and plays is heavily inspired by Retro’s DKC series and Rare’s original DKC series, seeing the game at a glance in motion you’d be mistaken for thinking it’s one of Retro’s games. From the roll Yooka-Laylee do to the hidden coins dotted around the map, the similar way Laylee takes a hit through a level, the hidden doors into puzzle rooms, even the iconic barrels that rocket you around certain platforms. There is an awful lot of crossover here. Some may worry it’s a poor imitation or an uninspired clone but I assure you, to play, it’s every bit as good as it’s DKC counterparts. Worth noting there’s no rocket or mine-cart levels yet though. The second dimension to it and the biggest difference is the world map. With this the World Map is incredibly interactive and inviting, almost a game unto itself. It features a rather large Zelda-esque map filled with charmingly different locales, Pagie challenges, little puzzles to find tonics and new areas, little caves and mysterious little nooks and crannies. By changing the landscape in some way by doing the Pagie challenges you often reshape the landscape to unlock new areas to explore and alter the makeup of a previously unlocked level. A level variation is then created whereby a level can become frozen, overgrown, invaded by new enemies etc. Essentially creating an almost entirely new level to explore based on the outside environment of the world map and where the level marker is placed. The way it feels to play is incredibly reminiscent of the DKC games during the 2D levels, it just feels so incredibly tight to play and definitely has that same difficulty curve. But I think the Interactive World Map is almost just as compelling, you can completely lose yourself in the map just wandering around trying to figure where things fit together and where certain paths will take you. These two dimensions create an incredibly cohesive whole. If you’re getting bored of doing the levels then you can just wander off and explore to your hearts content, if you’re bored of exploring you can enter a level of platforming bliss in seconds. My only real criticism with it would be the level design really. The actual platforming is sublime but some of the level designs themselves are a little generic and nowhere near as joyful, varied, distinct and charming as the likes of DKC. I highly recommend it though, to anyone that’s into tough 2D platformer’s this is nirvana.
  16. HandsomeDead

    Axiom Verge

    I might as well say something about this since I'm stuck. So on the surface this is basically a classic Metroid game under another name, and I'd even say it's classic Metroid a little under the surface, too. It's hard to get away from the comparisons. But it does have it's own stuff. Gameplay-wise it is less predictable than it initially looks. You can see that there are ares you can't traverse but it doesn't quite use the same kind of abilities as you'd expect from a game so inspired by Metroid and Axiom Verge certainly does a pretty good job of surprising you. I kind of don't want to talk about them, but I will say the drone is pretty inspired. It plays a pretty good shooter. The enemies are really fiendish which really do cause a problem not long into the game and the weapons you get are weird and unexpected, too. They maybe a bit too situational so you will use the default a lot but there is some satisfaction in figuring out the best way of using the weirder ones. It feels quite Turbo-Grafix-y more than Metroid-y in terms of action, actually. I don't think I quite understand the story, though. There is a bit too much jargon that comes across really stupid, sometimes, but the atmosphere is spot on. The environments do pull off the surreal, dreamy, alien sci-fi thing really well. The soundtrack helps a lot; it's mostly really good. I know this has past a lot of people by, it hasn't had much attention for some reason but I would say it stands alongside Shovel Knight as a good modern take on an older style of game. I kinda hate it now because being stuck really blows chunks, especially on games like this.
  17. Steamworld Heist is a game that’s out on everything. It was initially released on 3DS in 2015, and I’ve played it for a couple of hours on Switch. It’s a fun turn-based space faring rpg with an eye-catching visual style. Battles take place inside ships and the ship layouts are randomised. Missions are selected from a node-based map. I’ve been playing on the default “Experienced” difficulty and it seems like a reasonable challenge. I’ve had a couple of characters die during missions. When a character dies they don’t receive experience for that mission but they are resurrected when the mission is over. The game has all the features that you would expect from the genre - special abilities, equipment, loot, new characters to recruit - but it’s the visual style and the ricocheting of bullets (as you can see in the picture) that makes it unique and fun.
  18. Had a bit of a play on Torchlight II. It's really nice, although playing with a mouse feels well oldskool. Reminds me of the Diablo days where I'd wear mice out by clicking them over and over picking up the lewts. I went with the punchy guy, although I might just start toons with all the characters and play the game through. It depends how long the legs are on the game, I got fed up after about 100 floors down in the random generated floors of the original on 360.
  19. I'm just going to keep creating threads for games instead of actually playing them. Nah this will be the last new thread I create in a while, I swear... I have to admit the opening hours of this and Broken Age have been among the most impressive of any games I've played in a long while. The kind of stuff to re-ignite your passion for games. The Banner Saga is a turned based rpg set in a Norse setting, developed by Stoic, an indie company started by ex-Bioware devs. It's the first in a planned series. My first impressions are: holy fuck, this game is beautiful. The opening scene where your band of adventures walks across the bridge to the city is just stunning. And in the dialogue scenes, the art work is even more impressive with a beautiful hand drawn style. I've only played the tutorial fight so far but it seemed cool, an enjoyable spin on the formula anyway. Time will tell how difficult or tactical the fights really get. All in all it seems like The Banner Saga is going to be a great, and very distinctive rpg, unless something goes badly wrong. I'm all for bite-sized indie games but if kickstarter leads to more "AA" games of this quality...
  20. Put a good chunk of time into this today. For a 400mb download you might think it would run on anything but it seems to be one of the most demanding indie games I've played. It was unplayable using a laptop with only integrated graphics. I managed to get my own laptop going which also chugged at the game's default resolution but at lower resolutions it ran fine - except when your character has any weird traits like colour-blindness which slow the game down again. But that's not really a problem as you can mostly avoid those. Performance issues aside, it's a cool game. The graphics and music are fine, nothing much to say. Basically you pick a hero, go into a Castlevania style dungeon, inevitably die, spend the coins you earned on stat and equipment upgrades, then go in again as a new hero. Dungeons are randomised but there is an NPC called the Architect who will "lock" a dungeon's design if you like. It's unforgiving but not in an overly unfair way, so it does have that Dark Souls fun/addiction factor. Initially you'll be dying after a few rooms but once you understand how the game's combat and movement works (and how the enemies behave) you'll start surviving for longer and reaching new areas. Basically it feels like a natural enough evolution of traditional roguelikes.
  21. radiofloyd

    GRIS

    Was the thread for this deleted? I feel like there was one... Anyway I played a good chunk of this before I went home last Christmas. I booted it up today and continued where I left off, which led to me restoring the colour yellow to the world. And then I played on a bit more after that. According to my Switch profile I’ve played it for “more than three hours” so I’m probably near the end. The selling point of the game is the beautiful art and music but I’d forgotten how enjoyable the game’s gentle puzzles are to solve. You could describe the game as being style over substance, which it probably is, but I feel like the gameplay foundations of the game are pretty solid.
  22. Gato Roboto is a kind of miniature monochrome Metroidvania where you play as a cat who can hop in and out of a robot (and other machines). The cat itself is powerless and defenseless but can get to places where the robot can’t. Movement is very fast and compared to other games of the genre you’ll explore large areas of the map very quickly. I’m at 15% completion after one hour. So far it’s exactly what it looks like, plays very well and seems like excellent value for money.
  23. Played 90 minutes or so myself and I've enjoyed it so far, already I can tell this is a really well made game that has had a lot of love and attention gone into it. The puzzles are pretty basic in nature, essentially a 2016 Snake-Light puzzle but with different elements that make them harder and harder such as having to pick up little squares on your way to the goal and having to control two snakes at the same time. They have grown quite challenging already and I've got stuck a couple of times already but persevered and eventually found a solution. The island itself, the atmosphere and the art style is where the game really shines, there's absolutely no tutorials, no hand-holding whatsoever and you're left to explore wherever you like and solve whatever puzzles you like. The game looks truly beautiful, like a 3D painting come to life. The Island feels purposefully bewildering, haunting, eery and mysterious and just ripe to explore, it definitely has that Skyrim sense of wonder to it, seeing something in the distance and thinking to yourself 'Ooh, I wonder what's up there' and then sauntering up to see what you find. Found a couple of the voice recordings too and they were both high brow philosophical quotes from famous scholars, scientists, philosophers from a bygone age. My only worry so far is the repetitious nature of the puzzles, but I've read they go more in depth the further you get into it so its not a major worry. Going to put another 90 minutes into it later tonight.
  24. That's a very old trailer but I don't think the game has really changed much. It's basically a turn-based strategy like XCom, Advance Wars, Final Fantasy Tactics - except it's faster-paced and does away with a grid to move on. You have a circle showing where your character can move to in that move and that's it. There's a few different mechanics going on so far where I'm up to. Unfortunately, I've got to the point in the story where they introduce a medic class but my opponent has one and I don't so I'm getting my ass handed to me. Along with the campaign and usual online matches, it also does asynchronous matches like Frozen Synapse which is a great idea. Art style is great, some funny lines in there too (a quote straight out of Anchorman comes pretty quick into it) and I'm enjoying it when I'm not dying a lot.
  25. Sly Reflex

    Moonlighter

    Moonlighter is a game about running a shop by day, and adventuring at night. That is the most basic way of explaining it without getting too complicated. You want to know more about it than that, so here goes, Moonlighter is viewed top down and is split into a few parts. There's a bit where you manage a shop and a bit where you go out adventuring to stock the shop with items to sell.. Lets get the fighting bit out the way first. There are 4 (maybe 5) dungeons in the game that work off tile sets and are randomly generated each time you enter them. You know the deal. The fighting is not complicated, there's a few weapons that you can equip, 2 at a time, and then go hit or shoot stuff. You can heal yourself if you have potions, as well as use and evasive roll which has a very large invincibility period. Killing enemies or opening chests in the dungeon has loot in them, or artefacts as the game calls them. It's these artefacts you sell in your shop. Except it's not as easy as that, because of course it never is. Item inventory plays a big part in this. Remember all those times you spent moving stuff about in Resi 4 trying to get everything packed in? Well, it's the same here, except it's got a different spin. Items from chests sometimes have requirements on them. They either have to be kept in the left or right of your bag, or the top or bottom. Now this doesn't sound too bad, but there's other items with arrows on them. You have to read the banner on these items, because it all comes into how you pack your bag. Some of them immediately destroy items if the arrow is facing towards and item, some items break an item they're pointing to when you teleport back to town, other can break if you take too many hits, there's an item that changes whatever is pointed at to the item it is so you can transmog a bit of junk into something nice and finally one where the arrowed item sends something home to your box back in the shop. Dungeons are split into 4 floors, with a boss on the fourth floor. They gradually get harder as you plunge the depths. You have a pendant that can teleport you back to the shop, however the deeper you go the more gold it costs to send you home. If you are caught short on gold you can also sell items to a mirror which you find when you go down a floor. You get a percentage of whatever the item you put ins worth. There's also another item called the catalyst which allows you to put a gate down and return to the point you're at for 2000 gold each time, although I'm sure this will go up as you get further into the game. This is a one use only, you have to pay each time, but I can imagine once you're rolling in it plopping it outside the boss door will be the smart thing to do. I think the biggest pain in the arse here is selling stuff to the mirror, instead of assigning it a button so you can send shit right to the mirror you have to directly drop the item in and it sort of feels like it was done with a mouse in mind and not a controller. It's easily patchable, whether they'll do that is another question entirely. If you do not survive the dungeon and your HP reaches zero, it spits you out. Any items in your bag are lost for good. However, items on the top line of the inventory are kept, so if there's something really important you need you can bring it out with you no matter what. When you're in town you have a shop where you can put the items on a table and open the doors. People come in and depending on how you've priced stuff will take of leave it. Occasionally you'll get a rich person come in that will buy inflated prices. More likely you'll get shoplifters who you have to apprehend once they've picked something up and tried to do a runner. If they get out the door your items are lost. What to do with the gold you earn from all this? There's a blacksmith, a enchanter, a trader, a decorator and a banker you can spend gold on to bring into your town. These all use gold and items found in the dungeons to craft and upgrade weapons and armour, as well as enchanting them. The trader can get you items at an inflated price if you can't find them yourself, and the decorator allows you to put RPG like buffs on your shop, such and making people move faster or tip more. The shop itself is also upgradable. You start off with a chest and a table with a bed to sleep in. As you progress you get more storage, bargain bins as well as more places to put decorative items that later the way your customers act. The bed gives you a set amount of HP above your standard health, I think it's bugged because it specifically says you get the buff after sleeping in the bed but you get it whenever you return from a dive. There's also cash registers that add tips to the base cost of an item which help mark up those items you cannot sell for a lot. There's other stuff in here as well, stuff like supply and demand also rear their heads, if you flood the market with a certain item people will refuse to buy it at a regular price. I think that's about it. In a way it reminds me of Rogue Legacy or The Swindle in that although you can die and lose your stuff, there's a part of the game where everything is still set in stone and is safe as long as you've banked it. Although I've not actually seen the boss of the first world I'm not that far off it, depending on how hard it is I'll have probably beaten it the next time I play. I'm wearing the thickest armour I can, I'm wielding the toughest weapons I can craft, it's just a case of getting to the fourth floor and giving it a hiding so I can get to the next dungeon and repeat until the end. This game isn't for everyone, but there's a select few here that would be all over it. It's also the type of game I reckon would play well on Switch.
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