February 11, 2024 - Day 407 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 443

Game: There Is No Light: Enhanced Edition

Platform: Steam
Released: Sep 20, 2022
Installed: Feb 11, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 21m

Rating: 1 - Nope

Game number 5 is the February Humble Bundle is There Is No Light: Enhanced Edition. It is a top-down, pixel-art hack-and-slash action-RPG (ARPG).

It's set in a brutal, seemingly post-apocalyptic world, and opens with your wife being stolen away during childbirth, so that your newborn child can be sacrificed for the sake of the community.

This threw me off from the get-go, and it didn't improve from here on in.

Here's the thing: I'm on call this week. It's Wednesday morning. I'm three reviews down (have played, though) - four, if I pre-emptive count today's review. I'm running on three hours sleep, and today is going to be another long day.

The reviews this week are going to be perfunctory, but I've remembered the point of this whole thing: whether or not I enjoy a game, and want to play it again.

The answer to that question in regards to There Is No Light: Enhanced Edition is:

1: Nope

January 29, 2024 - Day 394 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 430

Game: The Wild Eight

Platform: Steam
Released: Oct 4, 2019
Installed: Jan 29, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 19m

Rating: 3 - OK

The Wild Eight is a top-down/isometric tree-puncher survival game set in the Alaskan wilderness after a plane crash.

I don't have a lot to add. The inventory management is a little bit frustrating, but if you've played one survival game, you've played most of them.

The Wild Eight is barely:

3: OK

January 23, 2024 - Day 388 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 424

Game: Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition

Platform: Steam
Released: Feb 1, 2019
Installed: Jan 23, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 24m

Rating: 3 - OK

Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition is a 2D top-down "Gothic Horror" RPG, that's part visual novel and part "what the hell did I just play?"

You start the game as the first mate of a space-faring Victorian steam locomotive that sails through the aether unmoored from such frailties as railway tracks.

It only gets weirder from there.

I genuinely don't know how to review this game, or quite honestly, how I feel about it.

There's something here that I can't quite put my finger on; Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition is:

3: OK...?

January 22, 2024 - Day 387 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 423

Game: Raiden V: Director's Cut

Platform: Steam
Released: Oct 11, 2017
Installed: Jan 22, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 16m

Rating: 1 - Nope

Raiden V is a top-down forward-scrolling shoot-em-up, and the Director's Cut is a 25th anniversary re-release.

I don't do these kinds of games. They drive me spare; I find no fun in them at all, and found Raiden V particularly grating with the voiceover.

I came, I played, I uninstalled; Raiden V: Director's Cut is a:

1: Nope

January 9, 2024 - Day 374 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 410

Game: Baba Is You

Platform: Steam
Released: Mar 14, 2019
Installed: Dec 14, 2023
Unplayed: 26d
Playtime: 26m

Rating: 5 - Excellent

Baba Is You is a top-down pixel-art puzzle game. It's like Sokoban on acid.

Each puzzle has a goal. The rules for each puzzle are in each puzzle, as blocks you can move.

For example, there are three blocks "Baba", "Is", and "You".

When these three blocks are lined up, they're active as a statement. You can move one of the blocks, which will break the statement, but also fail the level.

The same level might have "Walls", "Are", and "Stop". However, if you move the "Stop" block, it will break the statement, and now you can pass through walls.

Each level also has a win statement, which is usually (but not always) "Flag Is Win". Your goal is to reach the flag.

Wonder what would happen if you pushed the "Wall" block into the place of "Flag".

Now you have an active rule of "Wall Is Win", and... now you just have to walk over a wall piece, and you win the level.

I really needed a simple game to try and knock over tonight, and this hooked me (and my 11yo, who solved one of the puzzles for me, and now wants the game himself!).

Baba Is You is a wonderful example of a pixel-art game whose gameplay overcomes my resistance to pixel-art, and so it's:

5: Excellent

January 5, 2024 - Day 370 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 405

Game: OTXO

Platform: Steam
Released: Apr 17, 2023
Installed: Jan 5, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 15m

Rating: 1 - Nope

OTXO is a noir-themed pixel-art top-down shooter with roguelite gameplay, and is the fourth game in the January Humble Choice bundle.

The game opened with low-res top-down pixel-art of a train carriage, and as someone gets off the train, they drop a mask that you pick up and are immediately compelled to put on; at which point everything fades to black, and you wake up on a beach like Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception.

You start walking and find a mansion, where a groundskeeper explains to that your loved one who was next to you on the train is now trapped at the heart of the mansion and all you have to do is kill everyone inside.

A tutorial walks you through the gameplay, but the keyboard and mouse controls left a lot to be desired, and I just couldn't get it right with a controller, and I wasn't enjoying myself anyway.

15 minutes and I was done.

OTXO is a:

1: Nope

December 29, 2023 - Day 363 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 393

Game: Mindustry

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 27, 2019
Installation Date: Nov 6, 2021
Unplayed: 783d (2y1m23d)
Playtime: 1h12m

Mindustry is a top-down automation strategy game mashed up with an RTS.

I've always had a thing for automation games, which I suspect is a largely #autistic thing. Most games of this type are about systemisation, finding efficiencies, then building (and rebuilding) automation pipelines to produce a particular outcome.

These are games that I avoid because they suck me in to the point that I've lost entire days inside them, with Shapez & Production Line being just two examples. I've seen at least one person whose *entire* Steam 2023 review was one game played, no new games. All Factorio, all the time.

A game in this space has to bring something different to the table; for Mindustry that's planetary domination, leaning into the RTS side.

Build factories, research technology, build tanks, and defenses, seek and destroy.

Unfortunately, this is where Mindustry leaves me a bit cold. It's not that I don't like RTS games: I cut my teeth on Dune II. I went on to Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, then finally StarCraft.

Unfortunately, Mindustry feels it doesn't quite pull off either type of game that well. The gameplay elements are not explained clearly, and the UI is *really* clunky, making it difficult to find critical information, and not always making it clear what the next step is.

Unfortunately, the RTS side of things feels like (at least in the early stage of the game) like the only real strategy is Zerg rushing.

I finally quit out of the game, entirely unsure whether I'd completed that stage of the game, or needed to do something else.

There are a bunch of nice ideas in the game, and I think it's the work of a single dev, as far as I can tell. I just feel like it needs a lot of polish.

Mindustry is:

3: OK

December 29, 2023 - Day 363 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 392

Game: Mini Motorways

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jul 21, 2021
Installation Date: July 27, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 34m

Mini Motorways is a minimalistic cozy top-down traffic puzzle strategy game from New Zealand developers Dinosaur Polo Club. It's a follow-up to their previous railway puzzle strategy game Mini Metro.

Following on from the design aesthetic in Mini Metro, Mini Motorways presents you with a grid, initially containing one stylised house, and one stylised destination, in the same colour, and provides (n) road pieces to join the two.

Cars in that colour will then travel back and forth between the two locations. The destination building will tick, adding an icon for which a matching car is required, with each building having a certain capacity. If the building reaches capacity without enough matching cars reaching it, it's Game Over, man. Game Over.

Each level is presented as a specific major world city, and achieving certain goals in one city will unlock one (or more) cities to play in further levels.

Levels are played on a "weekly" basis using an in-game clock; as the in-game week passes, new destination buildings are added, often in a different colour, with a matching house in the same colour.

These houses can be on the other side of a river, or the other side of the map, or both, and you must use the roads to enable enough vehicles to reach each destination before the building "fills up".

At the end of each week you are given one of two options to choose from for extra pieces for the following week. One option may be 30 road pieces, with the other being a roundabout, with 20 road pieces, or a bridge crossing, with 20 road pieces, or one of several other options including the titular motorway, allowing you to connect distant areas of the map in a single hit.

I broke my guideline of mentioning the developers because in spite of them having only released these two games, I love both of them. Mini Motorways is:

5: Excellent

December 27, 2023 - Day 361 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 390

Game: Ultimate Zombie Defense

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Dec 9, 2020
Installation Date: Dec 19, 2023
Unplayed: 8d
Playtime: 36m

Ultimate Zombie Defense is a top-down co-op wave defense shooter.

It was free last week on Fanatical, and I grabbed it because it was free, of course.

Although I'd already done zombies today, why not a few more?

You're in a fixed area, and you're armed with a gun, and a little bit of cash. Kill zombies under the wave is over, spend cash on fortification & weapons upgrades, rinse and repeat.

I got to the fifth level solo, and learned the hard way that in spite of the previous four levels with the zombies only coming from the North, they can also come from the south.

Where I had no fortifications, and no chance of survival.

I then jumped into one of 5 (!) available 4-person multiplayer servers, and played with that team until we were all dead.

At which point I quit; I would have quit earlier, but I didn't want to abandon the bunch of randoms after someone had already done so.

Ultimate Zombie Defence is ultimately boring, so:

1: Nope

December 25, 2023 - Day 359 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 381

Game: American Fugitive

Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 21, 2019
Installation Date: Dec 18, 2023
Unplayed: 7d
Playtime: 20m

American Fugitive is a top-down 3D open-world action-adventure game.

Feeling a lot like early GTA games, you play as a petty thief who's been framed for the murder of his father. After breaking out of prison you set out to clear your name.

By committing other crimes.

After escaping from prison, you need to avoid the police until you escape from the general area of the prison. Apparently, they're looking for a red-haired bearded man in a yellow prison jumpsuit, and not a red-headed bearded man in a white shirt and blue jeans (that I just stole off someone's clothesline).

Graphically, it's well executed, although I found the steering of vehicles to be incredibly twitchy.

One of weird little things that became clear to me this year is that I really don't enjoy games where I'm playing as a criminal.

A game that expects me to commit crimes against NPCs portrayed as innocent bystanders, is something that just rubs me the wrong way, and as potentially interesting as the setup for this game is, I just felt kind of icky afterwards.

Also, playing as a male character still continues to make me feel disconnected from what's happening in the game.

Unfortunately for American Fugitive, that just leaves me feeling pretty:

2: Meh

December 11, 2023 - Day 345 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 365

Game: Nobody Saves The World

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jan 19, 2022
Installation Date: Dec 11, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 41m

Nobody Saves The World is a cartoonish top-down fantasy RPG dungeon crawler, number 4 in this month's Humble Choice bundle.

It's weird as hell. Waking with amnesia, and no pants, you set out on an adventure to find out who you are, and what's happened to the world's greatest wizard, Nostramagus.

Armed only with Nostramagus' wand (which you obtain early on from the crime scene), Nostramagus' protege sends you tumbling into a dungeon cell.

From there, you start a series of quests, leading to the ability to shape-shift, first into a rat, then into other forms, and developing skills for each form, as you level them up. This leads to further quests, etc etc etc.

It's just a mad lot of fun, and given that the RRP for Nobody Saves The World is AUD$35.95, and a month of Humble Choice is AUD$16.95 it makes this month's bundle almost worth the price, even moreso if one of the earlier games is something you want.

However, for my money, Nobody Saves The World is:

4: Good

November 23, 2023 - Day 327 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 346

Game: Soundfall

Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 12, 2022
Installation Date: Nov 11, 2023
Unplayed: 12d
Playtime: 16m

Soundfall is part rhythm-based top-down dungeon-crawler, part looter-shooter.

So far, one level in, this musical odyssey feels like a dungeon-crawler in name only. So far the dungeons are brightly-coloured floating islands, adorned with equalizer level bars rising and falling in time with the ear-wormish pop soundtrack.

Existing in a third space between Hi-Fi Rush and Metal Hellsinger, this is an interesting take on a rhythm game, and the only reason I'm writing a review instead of continuing to play is that it's been a tough day, and I can barely keep my eyes open.

The only issue I have with the game is that in spite of having previously needed to calibrate my video and audio latency for other rhythm games, the calibration tool in Soundfall insists my calibration requirements for both are 0ms.

I think it's this that left me feeling like I was constantly slightly off-beat, just enough that it didn't feel quite right.

Even so, Soundfall is already fun, and I'll happily say it's:

4: Good

October 15, 2023 - Day 288 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 307

Game: 7 Billion Humans

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 24, 2018
Installation Date: Sep 11, 2022
Unplayed: 399d (1y1m4d)
Playtime: 24m

7 Billion Humans is a top-down puzzle programming game.

Really not sure which order to stick those adjectives, because the fundamental gameplay loop is solving puzzles by using simple programming logic.

In playing it, I thought it felt a lot like World of Goo, (both stylistically and audibly) and it turns out that the reason it feels a lot like World of Goo is that one of the three devs who make up Tomorrow Corporation, is the dev who created World of Goo.

As far as programming/puzzle games go, this one is pretty good, but I realised that I run into the same problem I run into with every programming/puzzle game:

I'm not a very good programmer. I'm not quite sure why. I feel like I should be good at it. I first started trying to learn to program over 40 years ago. I've written programs in multiple varieties of BASIC, C, COBOL, and TurboPascal, as well as doing years of HTML & PHP work.

But while I can look at someone else's code and kind-of work out what's going on (at least to a middling degree), I don't seem to be able to get past a point with my own attempts at coding where everything just kind of goes blank. It's like there's too many things to keep track of, and that part of my brain shuts off.

Anyway, that's where I got to with 7 Billion Humans. It's:

3: OK

October 7, 2023 - Day 280 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 299

Game: Morbid: The Seven Acolytes

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Dec 4, 2020
Installation Date: Aug 4, 2022
Unplayed: 429d (1y2m3d)
Playtime: 15m

Morbid: The Seven Acolytes is a top-down pixel-art Soulslike.

The gameplay didn't get me past the pixel-art.

Morbid: The Seven Acolytes is:

2: Meh

September 14, 2023 - Day 257 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 278

Game: Patch Quest

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Mar 3, 2023
Library Date: Sep 14, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 24m

Patch Quest is a top-down 2D twin stick roguelike-metroidvania-monster catching bullet-hell mashup.

This is the fifth game in this month's Humble Choice bundle.

With cutesy cartoonish graphics, you run around a "patchwork land" armed with a lasso and a gun-that-is-not-a-gun-but-really-it-is-a-gun, to capture monsters and ride them while you shoot others with the not-gun that makes them "fall asleep" and disappear.

Unlike last night's game, it's not that I'm too tired too understand it, it's just that it just all feels kind of bland.

There's a basic story to try and provide a reason to want to care about this odd maze full of monsters and give me a reason to catch or not-kill them, but I was kind of glad when I was done.

Patch Quest is just kind of:

2: Meh

September 2, 2023 - Day 245 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 265

Game: Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Apr 25, 2013
Library Date: Feb 20, 2014
Unplayed: 3481d (9y6m13d)
Playtime: 21m

Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine is a top-down pixel-art-styled stealth heist game.

I'm not sure what I found more surprising: that this game is over 10 years old, or that it's been in my library unplayed for 9.5 of those years.

In this game, you break out of prison, and assemble a team of thieves, with the goal of pulling off a heist.

It apparently has co-op mode as well, although I only played in single player.

When I started this project, I was openly hostile to pixel-art games. What I've learned over the past 8 months is that while pixel-art based games can be the product of lazy devs, or devs who are hopped up on caffeine and nostalgia, a good game can overcome my feelings about pixel-art (and lazy devs can be just as lazy using vectors, voxels, Unity, or Unreal).

On that basis, I think I'm done commenting on pixel-art, other than to mention if it's the art-style of the game.

With that said, Monaco isn't a true pixel-art game. Even though the environments and characters are pixel-art, the lighting and UI elements are not.

Monaco is a lot of fun. Even though each of the characters you embody is only a small blob of pixels, each has their own skillset, and even in the early stages of the game, can see how they'll fit together for "the heist".

As a stealth game, the lighting is used to great effect throughout, and and having your area of vision lighting up a room and suddenly spotting a guard is nerve-wracking.

Making it through the level undetected and making a clean getaway give a great buzz.

Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine is:

4: Good

August 22, 2023 - Day 234 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 254

Game: Desktop Dungeons Enhanced Edition

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Apr 19, 2023
Library Date: Apr 18, 2023
Unplayed: 126d (4m4d)
Playtime: 32m

Desktop Dungeons Enhanced Edition is an updated version of Desktop Dungeons (Nov 7, 2013). I'm not exactly sure what makes it "Enhanced", but it was given away free earlier in the year, and if you owned this, you got the sequel "Desktop Dungeons: Rewind" for free, which seemed like a deal that was too good to be true.

Desktop Dungeons is a top-down bitmap pixel-art roguelike dungeon crawler puzzle game.

It's also a great example of a game where the gameplay overcomes my dislike of pixel-art games.

In one sense, it's a pretty standard dungeon crawler. Explore the dungeon, attack mobs.

However, each square you uncover goes towards refilling your health and mana. You need to explore the fog of war to find mobs, but if you clear the fog of war and then try and kill the mobs, you're gonna have a bad time.

It took me a few goes to get through the first level, but by the time I did, I was hooked.

Between dungeons there's some resource management and basic city-building going on, but the game is designed to be played in short chunks.

Desktop Dungeons Enhanced Edition is:

4: Good