The under-the-radar game review/impressions thread

[Defiant]

I tried out Virginia. It's rated highly, and has been nominated for a whole host of awards. But, well, it's a very weird game.

I'm not sure it's even a game. It's called a walking simulator, but I'm not sure that's even a fair description, because while it doesn't have puzzles, it doesn't have any freedom either. You might be able to move a little bit around (though frequently you can't), you really just have to hunt for the spot where you can interact with, press your mouse and the story continues (and there's never really multiple places you can interact at the same time). This is as on rail as a game can get. Also, the whole thing is a little over 2 hours long.

OK, so the gameplay is non-existent. What are we left with? Well, the music is very, very good, I'll give it that. The graphics are fine (they don't look bad, but they don't look great, either), though the wobbling as you move is a little motion-sickness inducing. There are effects that are designed to make it interesting and more cinematic, I guess. For example there are time cuts, where you might be walking in a corridor one second and the next you're walking down the stairs and then a few seconds later it jumps to you at a computer. And there are a number of flashbacks and dream sequences, etc. It makes me think the director was a little overzealous in the effects department (it especially seems weird if you decide to start walking backwards and a jump happens... ), but it does give it a cinematic feel of say, something like the X-files (there are certainly some things that remind me of the X-Files, like..

Spoiler:

like a kind of disgraced FBI partner with their office in the basement

And then there's the story. You're a brand new FBI agent, with a more experienced partner, investigating a disappearance. And, interestingly, there's no dialogue. At all. There are a few times when you're given some papers to read (although half the time, you can't even read the whole stuff before it's gone - I thought this might be a bug or something, but I dunno). For a story heavy game without any dialogue, it does a reasonable job of telling you the story for part of the game, although it becomes less true as the game continues. Between the dream sequences, the blatant symbolism, the flashbacks, etc, the game gets more confusing. And while I was able to get a gist of some of the storyline (and some scenes and sequences were well done), there were definitely parts I felt were missing, and lots of parts that just confused me entirely.

Also, there was one glitch. I was walking into a room, and then suddenly (as if I had fallen), I was inside a closed bathroom (in which I couldn't interact with anything). Replaying the scene made the glitch go away.


If you like The X-files (or Twin Peaks - I haven't seen watched that, but from what I know of it, it would be another comparable one) and you see this on sale for a few bucks, I'd recommend it with the reservation that 1. it's not really a game and 2. unless you're better at understanding symbolism than I am, there will probably be a bunch of stuff that will go over your head.

[Defiant]

21 Days Syrian refugee simulation game. You play a refugee that's arrived in Western Europe and you're trying to both survive and help your wife and son who are trying to escape the conflict and join you. You have to work to earn money (from the limited available jobs). You are required to send money to your family as they need it, but you also use money for transportation, to buy food, and to take courses to learn the language. In addition, you have to keep your status up, both in terms of hunger and mental status. Hunger is easy to deal with if you have the money, but mental status is more difficult (Sleep, going to mosque and eating in certain places helps a little, but it's pretty hard to keep this status up in my experience). Eat too little and you move much slower. Mental status going down makes you more likely to do a poor job while working, as does not understanding the language sufficiently. Also, you can interact with a few people in different places, some of whom are nice, while a few will insult you.

For $2, it's a nice game, I think, but it's very hard to make progress, between having to send money to your family and trying to keep up my status.

[Defiant]

Snail Trek is a very short adventure game in the style of the earlier Sierra adventure games. You're a snail crew member on a scout ship that's verifying the viability of a new home world for your snail species. It's about 20 minutes long to play if you know your way around adventure games, with a number of logical puzzles. There are a total of four "rooms", most of the game taking place in one of those rooms. If you like those sierra games, you'll enjoy the gameplay, visuals, etc. Also, there's no permanent deaths (death scenes are preceded by autosaves, so you can just undo if you do die). There's plenty of humor in the writing. The short length means you can easily play it in one sitting (if maybe not get all the achievements), and at $1, it's pretty cheap. If you like sierra games, I highly recommend this game.

[Rumpy]

Figured this would be a good time to revive the thread what with the new gifting season in full play

So, Turmoil. This is a game about being an oil-baron, with the object of the game to make moolah! It plays like a board game, in the sense that you have 3 other competitors and things are played out in rounds. Gameplay is pretty simple, with a surprising amount of depth (no pun intended here). Each round has you going to land auction to pick out your plot of land. This is where things start to get interesting as your competitors can outbid you. Currently only seeing one grid of plots available, but I'm assuming this opens up as the game goes along. After you've bought your plot of land, you go digging. First you place a dowser to find yourself a spot, then place an oil rig on top of that, then a silo and then horses to carry your oil to either be stored or sent to be sold off. See, there's a real-time factor here, where the price of oil will fluctuate. In fact, if there's one downside to how the game was designed is that things tend to fluctuate too widely, even in places where they kind of shouldn't, like in tutorials, as what you make in the tutorial carries out into the main campaign. No biggie, but it's something I've noticed as I was caught with a low amount of money due to bad luck in the tutorial. Other than that, the game is fun!

Money is spent on upgrades and there are a ton of them to increase your efficiency. Some are not always a good idea unless you're ready for them, for instance wider pipes on your rigs might sound like a good idea, until you realize it's going to make things flow quicker, leading to spillage and fines...

One thing I've noticed is the horse AI. Currently not very good. For instance, If I have a silo full of oil waiting to be sold off instantly, sometimes the horses will ignore the silo and just get oil from the rig and will only get oil from the silo if the well is dry. This is annoying particularly near the end of the round when you just want to go-go-go.

All in all though, I recommend it.

[jztemple2]

So, Turmoil.

I got this over a year ago but only put in a few hours. It's not a bad game at all, quite fun, but it did get repetitive for me. Also I'm not a fan of games with timers.

[Rumpy]

Heh, maybe it was your writeup that made me put it on my wishlist to begin with. I find the game has enough charm to make me disregard the timer troubles. But It would be even better if it were a multiplayer game.

[Paingod]

Strain Tactics is a nice little top-down real-time squad control game with some interesting elements, but a frustrating control scheme. I picked it up for $6 during the holiday sale and don't regret it. It's designed for a touch-screen. If you're using that, it's probably more intuitive. For keyboard & mouse, I find myself frequently annoyed, even after a few hours of play and trying to adjust to the controls. It's a lot of click & drag, which is counter-intuitive for someone with decades of RTS experience that is used to click & right-click.

The interesting mechanics revolve around utilizing a heli-base to hit targets across a map. You might deploy your soldiers in one spot, then lift off - while marching them across the map, you're hovering overhead and proving air support... or maybe you land and pick up a wounded/infected soldier and deal with them. Even how and where you land is a tactical choice. You might drop soldiers behind a wall and in safety, or deploy them through a hole in the roof of a building instead of out in the street.

Soldiers come in different classes, and each class has different subsets that determine their carrying capacity and other stats. Each soldier has 4 inventory slots, ranging in size from Small to XL. A Medic might only be allowed to equip a Small weapon but carry XL gear, while an Engineer might get an XL weapon and only be able to carry a couple Small items aside from that. When a soldier dies, if you survive, you can collect their body in a bag and bring it back to home base to be revived. The "cryo" system is how you acquire soldiers, too. You might find a bodybag and revive it to see who it was, or warm up a frozen soldier-cicle to add to your group and replace a less effective member. Soldiers gain experience through utilizing skills, carrying gear, and surviving.

There's a lot of little details and things to find if you're a hunter, too. You might bump a plant to knock loose some bananas - which can be eaten to restore health, or stored on your base for later use. You might bump into a trashcan to discover something neat, or vandalize a vending machine to grab some free meds. There's a lot of "hidden" terrain that only opens up for viewing when you have a soldier enter it. From your helicopter, you might see a roof, a tent, or a tree canopy. Under that, though, your soldier might find useful tools or an infected swarm as you have them move in.

The whole game is based on fighting infected, mutated creatures. If your soldiers are infected, they can be turned. There are ways to heal them, though, and prevent it. Some otherwise soldier classes will go berserk and gun down anyone even showing a hint of infection, so you've got to be careful with them.

Overall, an awesome game for $6. I just wish I wasn't fighting the controls as much as I was fighting the infected.

[Paingod]

Zombie Night Terror is a fun update on the Lemmings recipe.

You're a zombie overlord, using basic tools and puzzle-solving skills to direct your undead minions across a side-scrolling map. Each map has a bonus goal or objective. Puzzle elements include using barriers, redirection, strategic infections, and explosives to overcome obstacles. As your minions come across living humans, they turn them to create new zombies to field your apocalyptic march to victory. Maybe your zombies keep getting gunned down by a police line, so you use an explosion to hurl zombies into the middle of the police force, or maybe you need to get past a rabid melee guy with a bat - so you simply infect him with one of your limited freebie infections.

It's good fun if you ever liked Lemmings. If you hated Lemmings, you'd probably hate this.

[tgb]

Strain Tactics is a nice little top-down real-time squad control game with some interesting elements

Does it involve fiber?

[Rumpy]

So, Turmoil.

I got this over a year ago but only put in a few hours. It's not a bad game at all, quite fun, but it did get repetitive for me. Also I'm not a fan of games with timers.

Having just finished an entire campaign, I'd have to agree with you. Quite repetitive, and I really feel like this would work much better as a board game. There's one aspect of the game that gets introduced later on when you get to one of the later lands that doesn't quite work well, and that's the Stock options. Eventually, you get to buy town shares, and the one with the most shares takes over as Mayor. And then I guess the whole cycle repeats itself? But what happens to the one with the lowest amount of shares? I Game over for them. Even though I technically had more money than any of them. It just ends. And then one of the characters says "Well, at least you made friends..." Hah what? I kind of didn't pay attention to the stocks thinking it wasn't that important, until I learned later in the game that the one with the most shares would go on to become Mayor while the one with the lowest would get kicked out. You have to read the hints to find that out. Overall, not a very satisfying experience. A bit more acknowledgment of my hard-earned cash would have been nice.

[Isgrimnur]

Since quitting from town resets the town, one can buy all of the mayor's tips, exit the game, and come back in and never have bought them.

[Isgrimnur]

Pathfinder Adventures dropped yesterday. Single-player RPG played out as a deck-builder.

You lead a party of up to 6 through different locations. Each character and each location has it's own deck of cards. Very luck-driven since everything is determined by the roll of one or more dice (d4 up to d12), but the dice you roll are determined by the cards you play.

Most playable cards provide several new options so there seems to be a good deal of depth. I'm just coming to terms with some of the rules after playing the tutorials and losing my first campaign (ran out of time).

I played through the physical game of the first campaign with Remus West and Redrun. About half way through the formula left me not really caring about the game at all and mostly playing was an excuse to get out of the house and pretend that I am social being. I love the idea of solo games but that this really failed for me. With no social aspect it really quickly becomes a complex version of solitaire used to minimize dice luck.

I finished the tutorials. I've played the first mission probably six times, with only two of them getting anywhere near a win condition.

[LordMortis]

Pathfinder Adventures dropped yesterday. Single-player RPG played out as a deck-builder.

You lead a party of up to 6 through different locations. Each character and each location has it's own deck of cards. Very luck-driven since everything is determined by the roll of one or more dice (d4 up to d12), but the dice you roll are determined by the cards you play.

Most playable cards provide several new options so there seems to be a good deal of depth. I'm just coming to terms with some of the rules after playing the tutorials and losing my first campaign (ran out of time).

I played through the physical game of the first campaign with Remus West and Redrun. About half way through the formula left me not really caring about the game at all and mostly playing was an excuse to get out of the house and pretend that I am social being. I love the idea of solo games but that this really failed for me. With no social aspect it really quickly becomes a complex version of solitaire used to minimize dice luck.

I finished the tutorials. I've played the first mission probably six times, with only two of them getting anywhere near a win condition.

I don't remember so much anymore, so I have no advice. I do remember you really want to find your synergies and exploit them like rules lawyer.