Author: MrBlueSky

PAX Online 2020 – GAME DEMOS – PART 2 of 6

Part 2 of what is starting to look like a substantial haul of demos. I was trying to come up with something interesting to say like “Grab your pickaxe as we go into the game mines,” but honestly, this is the easiest convention experience ever in terms of reviewing stuff. This is more “Click install on Steam and just play stuff.” So here we go.

Format is as follows:

GameName of the game
Demo LengthHow long it took me to finish the demo
GenreType of game, based on my impressions
Quick Thoughts3-4 sentences based on what I thought of the game
Play It HereLink to the Demo
GameOperation Tango
Demo Length20 Minutes
GenreAsymmetric Real Time Co-op Puzzler
Quick ThoughtsMy standout game of the show so far. A really cool puzzler, with one person playing the Hacker, and one playing the Agent. Neat puzzles, really nice art style. You will need a friend to play with, so find that person, and keep an eye on this one.
Play It HereLink to the Demo
GameBlack Skylands
Demo Length1 Hour (including some messing about)
GenreTop Down Run and Gun/Town Builder
Quick ThoughtsLots of potential here. Developers describe the demo as a “Vertical Slice” which in my experience means “Held together with tape and prayers”, so it will be interesting to see how this ends up maturing. I generally enjoyed playing it, and I’ll keep an eye on it.
Play It HereLink to the Demo
GameMayhem In Single Valley: Confessions
Demo Length1 Hour
GenrePuzzle?
Quick ThoughtsI did not have fun with this demo. Outside of some nice art and music, I have no praise for it. The demo was buggy, inconsistent, and exceedingly confusing and janky. Disagree with me? Go play it yourself. I can’t tell if it’s just not for me, or what, but this didn’t sell me on the game at all.
Play It HereLink to the Demo

PAX Online 2020 – GAME DEMOS – PART 1 of 6

Overloop, Hell Architect, and Nongunz. What do these games have in common? Well, mostly the fact that we finished downloading them first.

The misery that is 2020 continues, and one of the casualties has been in-person events, and actual conventions. However, PAX Online is here, and with a whole bunch of Steam demos. This article consists of the first part of Gametrodon’s ongoing coverage of PAX Online.

Format is as follows:

GameName of the game
Demo LengthHow long it took me to finish the demo
GenreType of game, based on my impressions
Quick Thoughts3-4 sentences based on what I thought of the game
Play It HereLink to the demo
GameOverloop
Demo Length16 Minutes
GenrePuzzle Platformer
Quick ThoughtsYou have a gun to make copies of yourself. Solve puzzles with it. There’s a story, but the tone is… eh. Nothing special, but seems competently made. Pixel graphics.
Play It HereLink to the Demo
GameHell Architect
Demo Length31 Minutes
GenreSimulation/Management
Quick ThoughtsSeems like a grimier version of Oxygen Not Included. A bit neat. Not really the sort of thing I’d usually play, but it held my interest long enough for me to finish out the demo.
Play It HereLink to the Demo
GameNongunz : Doppelganger Edition
Demo Length??? – (I quit after a few deaths.)
Genre??? – I think it’s a roguelite
Quick ThoughtsReally neat unique art style. Gameplay feels bad, but I’m not sure if that’s because I’m really struggling with the controls, or what. I’m gonna give this one another go with a controller. No actual in-game explanations given without text on how things actually work.
Play It HereLink to the Demo

Dead By Daylight

I’ve played a shit ton of Dead by Daylight over the last few weeks, and I really like it. If you’re familiar with the game, but haven’t really given it a chance because of the horror theme, I’d encourage you to check it out.

So what is Dead by Daylight? Well, it’s a 4v1 asymmetric hunt. If you don’t know the genre, that’s fine, because I can’t come up with one either. Maybe I’ll come up with a better descriptor by the time I finish writing this article. Maybe not. The point is, it’s one of very few games I’ve chosen to play instead of Dota 2. It’s sorta perpetually competitive, and also a game I’d like to get better at.

Before we dive into the game itself, I do wanna get my two main gripes with it out of the way. First of all, the game has a shit ton of DLC. Buying the base game at $20 gives you five out of the twenty one playable killer characters, and six or so of the twenty-three survivors. I’m mostly just going to look at killers for the sake of simplicity here, but of the remaining sixteen killers currently in the game, seven are permanently pay walled, as they are licensed characters from other horror franchises. The others can theoretically be unlocked by grinding. At about 90 hours played, I think I’ve earned enough currency to unlock… 2 other killers. So yeah. The time to unlock ratio ain’t great. Also, on their own, killers and survivors are $5 each, and you can buy packs of specific ones for $7.

Editors Note: I’m pretty sure I counted right for the killers here, but I may have miscounted the survivors. Point is, there’s a lot of DLC if you actually want to play all the characters.

Second main gripe would be this: The game can be buggy as all hell. When I mentioned bugs in my last review for OddRealm, I mentioned them because while they were rare, they were game breaking. In Dead By Daylight, the reverse is kinda true. I’ve seen only one bug that actually ruins games (a piece of level geometry that you can clip into, and get stuck in). With that said, 7/10 times, your pre-made animations will clip the camera into a wall. You will hook survivors onto empty air. Mostly stuff like this.

So now that those two things are out of the way, lets talk about the actual gameplay. Like I mentioned, it’s a 4v1 hunt. One player plays the killer, and four players play survivors. (You do get to pick which role you want to queue for before starting a game.)

The games take place in semi-randomly generated maps, with each side having a different set of goals. Survivors have to repair five generators, and then open an escape door in order to get out. They do this by interacting with the generators, and completing quick time events to continue the repairs. Killers need to (surprise, surprise) kill the survivors, which they do by inflicting damage until the survivors are downed, and then hanging the survivors on giant meat hooks so a spider god can try to eat them. Survivors can still save their friends from hooks, but it’s always possible the killer is nearby.

While this sounds simple, it’s made markedly more complex by the variety of game mechanics, perks, items and other factors in play, as well as the fact that regardless of which role you choose to play, you will be facing off against other humans. If you trick someone, it’s because you outsmarted them, not because the game let you.

Here’s just one example of a mechanic in the game that’s quite interesting, and it’s also why I wouldn’t consider the game to be a horror game: The Terror Radius. You know how in horror movies, the tense music plays as the murderer gets closer to our unsuspecting victim? Well, Dead By Daylight has something similar. You can actually hear the killer approaching, which means while they mostly can’t sneak up on you. Of course, they do have perks and options to lessen, or even temporarily hide their radius, so you’ll still have to pay attention.

And there are a bunch of mechanics like this. Killers have a first person point of view, but survivors have third person, and can use it to see around corners and over walls. At the same time, Killers move faster then Survivors, so without careful play, Killers will always win chases.

I could go on, and just list out mechanics, but I’m not sure it would sell anyone on the game, or it would help explain why the game is so compelling. What I will say is that Dead By Daylight has one of the best ratios of money/time spent in game of anything I’ve played this year.




Odd Realm

Odd Realm has promise, but just isn’t finished yet.

I really like Odd Realm. I’ve played a bunch of it prior to writing this review, most likely 10-15 hours and I want to be able to recommend it… Right now, I have two big reasons I can’t, and a few small ones. If you already own the game from the itch.io racial justice bundle, or some other event, you should play it. But if you don’t own it yet, you may want to wait until a full release.

Odd Realm is a colony builder, and has the most in common with Dwarf Fortress. You pick a starting race, pick a place to start, and then proceed to try to keep your settlers alive. Doing so requires making sure they have water and food if you picked humans. Or they might require chambers in which keep their animate bodies forever functional, if you picked the immortal skeleton race. Y’know. Normal stuff.

I mentioned two big reasons I can’t recommend Odd Realm just yet, and they are the following: First, the game is buggy. And second, it feels fairly content-lite compared to its obvious inspiration of Dwarf Fortress.

Let’s talk about the bugs first. 95% of the time, the game runs smoothly. I’ve had no crashes, or straight failures, even if I have had points where stuff gets a bit laggy for a moment.

5% of the time, something weird will happen and the game will just die. I’ve listed a few examples below.

  1. Settlers decide that the most fascinating thing to do is to all simultaneously move back and forth onto a resource deposit zone, instead of doing anything else you might want them to do.
  2. Settlers get stuck in the move action, and refuse to actually move.
  3. Settlers move jerkily and refuse to take any additional actions.
  4. Settlers don’t move resources to appropriate resource deposit zones.
  5. Production queue of items, and information just absolutely dies.
  6. If you make the mistake of digging underwater, prepare to watch as your game slows to an absolute crawl.

The problem isn’t that these bugs are common. They really aren’t. The problem is that they absolutely destroy the game when they occur. I was having a hard time writing this review, so I fired up the game to try to figure out what I wanted to say about it, only to spend more time trying to figure out why I could no longer manufacture glass panes, and spend an hour or so trying to fix the issue.

To the developers’ credit, they seem to be aware of this issue, and fairly active on their Discord in requesting sessions and save states to try to patch the problems, but right now, having your entire fortress just blow up because of of a stupid bug feels real bad.

The second big issue is that the game feels very content-lite at the moment. There are only 4-5 types of ore, and they all function more or less the same, but with better stats. The same thing feels true of most of the plants you can grow. There are only a few pieces of gear, a few spell books, etc. Some types of stone can be used for making roofs, but not for anything else. Right now, once you have rooms set up, there just isn’t a lot to do.

There are a bunch of other little things that I find annoying, like not being able to tell settlers things like “Stay in here, don’t go outside” and the number of random events being exceedingly limited. But these are all minor.

This is why I think if you don’t already own the game, but find it interesting, you should wait until release. Many of the bugs and glitches will hopefully be ironed out. And hopefully they’ll also be a lot more to do. But right now, Odd Realm is a bit buggy, a bit frustrating, and still unfinished.

P.S. If you do have Odd Realm, play the Ancients race instead of humans. They are way more fun.

Didn’t Make the Cut #2

Another week or two, another set of games that just didn’t hold my interest long enough for me to give them their own full article.

Welcome to Didn’t Make the Cut #2, where we continue our way through all the games in the itch.io Racial Justice Bundle that just didn’t want to make me play them. The ordering here doesn’t reflect anything other than how interesting I thought they were. These are all the things that just didn’t keep my interest long enough to warrant a full article.

Extreme Meatpunks Forever

I can’t write an entire article about Extreme Meatpunks Forever because I didn’t play the game for longer than like 20 minutes. I feel like this was a fair shake, but I really wasn’t feeling it.

Like, here is the summary of the game from its itch.io page.

A visual novel/mech brawler about gay disasters beating up neonazis in giant robots made of meat.

Heather

Which is. I dunno. I think you can probably read that and decide if the game is for you or not.

My one sentence review of the game would be this: the game feels like a playable Zine. The game feels very cobbled together. The backgrounds are ASCII, the characters are single images, and the writing wobbles between really neat sci-fi and dialogue that doesn’t include things like capitalization and punctuation.

This one just wasn’t for me.

Music was fucking banging though.

Walden

I can’t find my notes for Walden, but more or less, it feels like a very light survival simulator.

There’s a type of game that exists which is biblical or religious, and they tend to exist in order to try to get you interested whatever religion or such they’re selling. The problem is, they tend to be made by people who are religious first, and game designers second. The intended result is usually to use the game like the lure on the end of those deep sea fish, where the fish’s jaws metaphorically represent joining whatever cult made the thing in the first place.

Usually they’re not very successful, because the other fish (game companies) have far more exciting lures, and those fish jaws only represent things like microtransactions and loot boxes. And I guess the risk of becoming a pathological gambler is better than becoming a member of the Mason family?

Regardless, Walden feels like a game made by that sort of person. Except instead of trying to convince you to give them your life savings and move to a commune in Pripyat to be one with the Everglow the Light Mother, the designers of Walden seem to want you to read the book that inspired them to make the game. If this was their goal, I think they kinda succeeded.

I’m actually fairly curious about reading Walden (the book) now. Maybe avoid it if you’re afraid of “transcendentalist philosophy.” (Apparently that’s what the book’s about. I just stole this from Wikipedia, so I hope it’s right.) Still not gonna play any more of the game though.

If you’re still interested in Walden, you can find it here.

Art Sqool

In Art Sqool, you walk around a weird world and draw things, given instructions and graded by what I assume is Microsoft’s mascot Clippy’s brother who got into hard drugs instead of software development. You can pick up more brushes and colors in this world, but that’s it. It’s not really a platformer in any typical sense. It’s mostly just exploration across the “Campus,” which gives the impression of what a wasting illness called “Clipart” would look like on skin.

Whenever I’m playing through these games, I like to take some brief notes that I can review later in order to give thoughtful, detailed opinions. For example, this is what I wrote about Extreme Meatpunks Forever.

-At least it’s a game
-Not a very interesting one
-Seems like it’s mostly visual novel
-I do not care about these characters
-Some aspects of the worldbuilding seem cool
-Rad Music

My Dumb Review Notes for Meatpunks

“Now wait”, you think. Isn’t this bit supposed to be about Art Sqool? Well yes, dear reader, it is. But I present those notes as an example. Let’s now look at the notes for Art Sqool.

-This ain’t a game
-Why does this exist
-Remember kids, when making games, don’t forget to include gameplay
-I hate this

My Dumb Review Notes for Art Sqool

Now, given that all interactive visual media can be more or less considered a game, and after discussion with someone else, I’d like to present the following quote.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a definition for art that wasn’t stupid. Generally speaking, when a person constructs a thought-machine of this kind, what they’re actually trying to do is determine what isn’t art.

Jerry Holkins

And to be fair the same is true of games. Saying that something is or isn’t a game is arbitrary, and as such, I’m willing to concede that the first line of my notes is wrong.

In a secondary non-concession to the fact that this is still my article to write, I’m not linking the game here. I think it’s stupid, bad, and I loathe it. Fuck Art Sqool.

That’s all I got for today. Until next time.