I’ve got a review on a game called Athenian Rhapsody that I’ve been working on for a while. It will hopefully be up in a week or two. It’s quite a bit longer than most things I write, and I’ve also rewritten and restarted it several times. Athenian Rhapsody is a tricky game to talk about.
While writing that review, I spent a non-zero amount of time looking up two terms—post-modernism and subversion—and learning that they don’t quite mean what I thought.
For post-modernism, I don’t know if I get it at all, especially in the context of games. As an adult, I don’t really engage in the activity of detailed criticism and dissection of works of art outside of this blog. If you want someone to talk about industry best practices, minimal lovable products, and strategic app development, I am your man.
But I’m not a professional critic.
I do think, though, that I can talk about subversion.
In a literal sense, subversion is the attempt overthrow the government, i.e., to go out and pull a Jan 6th. In games, it usually gets used when a game does a “big twist” on some sort of mechanic, or element.
This brings me to the sort of “weird thing” about subversion in art.
First up, for something to be subvert-able, there must be something to be subverted.
For Doki-Doki Literature Club to work (for the player to experience the intended sense of wrongness) the player has to have an expectation about how visual novels should work, and what they’re allowed to do. For Spec Ops: The Line to question the morality and mechanics of the grey/brown setpiece cover shooter, there has to be a pile of jingoistic, “patriotic” games for it to subvert. Otherwise, it’s not much of a “reveal” when it turns out that the player, instead of doing a fun special moment with mortars, has actually gone and committed a war crime.
That second bit is something I spend a lot of time thinking about, mostly when it comes to indie games that want to break the fourth wall. Mostly because of Undertale. I’m sure that there were games that did this before Undertale. I know that the Mother/Earthbound series does it, at least a little bit.
But my experience of Undertale was less one of “breaking” the fourth wall, and more one of removing it: of removing the distinction between the “game” and the “real world.”
Like any magic trick, it’s not real. Undertale is just a computer program, a story. But like any good magic trick, there’s a brief moment where you believe it, even if you know logically it can’t be real.
So why am I talking about any of this?
Well, mostly because games keep trying to do this fourth wall break or meta thing, and often, they do it while following the trappings of Undertale. The problem is, when a game looks and feels like Undertale, it puts me on alert. It lets me know that the magic trick, the fourth wall break, whatever it might be, is coming.
And it just doesn’t work as well. Like a thriller where you know the twist, or a murder mystery where you know the killer—if you know what’s coming, it doesn’t carry the same weight.
So because of that, I feel like with some of these “Weird RPGS” (as I’ve mentally grouped them) I don’t quite get the same punch, or the same experience, and maybe I’m harsher on them than they deserve.
Okay, there’s also another reason
You can’t really double subvert something. Undertale worked because it was subversive, but then it sold three million copies. So if you try and mimic its whole “Murder an Entire Cutesy RPG World” thing, even if your fights are better, even if you have more characters, and better art, what you’re doing is not shocking or subversive, because Undertale already did that!
Playing Undertale changed my expectations, because it changed what I considered possible in games.
I wish more of these sorts of games were trying to surpass Undertale, instead of trying to mimic it.
Updated 7/7/2024 – This write up has been updated to include the dev’s response.
Pre-Script: It occurs to me after writing all of this that it will make absolutely no sense if you haven’t actually played the game I’m talking about. Whoops, and sorry. Actual reviews on a game to come later this week.
I’ll do a review of Million Monster Militia at some point, but it won’t be this week. To make a long story short, I think my time would probably be better spent trying to give some constructive feedback then bashing.
First, some context: 1. Million Monster Militia is a bag builder/slot builder heavily in the vein of Luck Be A Landlord. You draft units, units are randomly placed onto a 5×5 grid, and you try to score enough total points each round to pass a threshold. It has somewhat different framing then Luck Be A Landlord, but that is how it works. 2. I’ve played 16 hours of it. I don’t think this makes me an expert, but I do think it gives me space to have some thoughts. 3. Right now, I don’t recommend the game for a lot of reasons, many of which are fixable/are already being fixed, and a few more which might not be.
Hello developers!
Hopefully this doesn’t come across as rude. Most of the time when I write things for this blog, I aim for a tone of being a perpetually snarky dipshit. Obviously this isn’t quite the correct tone for sincere feedback.
This whole thing is grouped into three parts. The first ones are things I think you NEED to do. When possible, I’ll try to give examples, and say why I think you need to do them.
The second part will be a bunch of general thoughts and feedback, and while you could ignore any suggestions I make here, I suggest you read them at least to hear the thoughts.
The third part is just insane ramblings. I think they’re relevant, but they also could just be wrong.
Okay. Here we go.
Part 1. Please Make These Changes
Fix The Wording Of Unit Abilities There are a lot of units in your game. Many of them do not actually do what they say they do. I know you’ve already fixed some of these, but you haven’t fixed all of them. I’m going to give one example, but I had about 10 earlier.
The Time Bomb says that it gives a multiplier of 0X to all units. That’s not true. It doesn’t give a multiplier of 0X to itself. Maybe this was missed because it has base zero damage.
Plenty of your units do things like this. I am begging you to fix them.
Dev Response:
Thanks for pointing this out. I'll put the example of the time bomb into our bug tracker. It's really easy for descriptions and abilities to get out of sync. If you have more examples of this please let us know so we can fix them!
2. Add An Options Menu Yes, there already is an options menu. No, these are not enough options.
This is what your game looks like on my screen. There are two critical problems here. First up, there is no resolution, secondly, I cannot actually move the game window.
Maybe everything was coded so that the game can’t be rescaled. Fine. Just add an actual top bar or something so I can drag it around then.
Dev Response:
You should be able to move the game window with the arrow keys, and resize it by dragging on the corners.
3. Keywords/Codex/Readability A bunch of folks on your Discord have already suggested this one, and even better, they suggested good keywords, so I’m not going to dig too much into this one. But yeah. Better readability on units, keywords/key text being called out, and things like the codex having filters or searches would all be nice.
Dev Response:
Agreed that these would be nice to have! It would be quite an undertaking currently as it'd require rewording all the units, and some things work almost the same, which means we'd have to probably change how some things work to line up under these keywords. I agree this would be nice an ideal world, but we'll have to weigh the benefits against the time it would take to implement.
4. Have Units That Create Additional Units Show Those Units For any unit that creates an additional unit/item/etc, make it so that I can see what that unit is. Here’s how Luck Be A Landlord does it. You mouse over a unit, and a pop-up of information shows up above that.
I don’t need you to make it pop-up. For all I care, it can open a link to a Wiki page if it has to. But I need it to show me what the extra units it generates does.
Note: I’m aware that there’s something to be said for the wonder of discovery and experimentation, but I think at a fundamental level you’re making a bag builder, and that means I should be allowed to know what’s going into my bag.
Dev Response:
Another thing that would be very nice to have, but quite difficult to implement! We do already have this on our radar if we find the time to do it.
5. Let Me Skip The Campaign Cut-scene, Let Me Fast Forward Damage So now we’re veering into really nitpicky, but demonstrable territory. I don’t want to have to skip past the opening cutscene each time I open the game, it’s just kinda frustrating. Also, having timed it, I think that a full round (deploy/activate/return) takes about 10 seconds, which is just about (give or take a bit) twice as much as Luck Be A Landlord. Yes, it’s minor, but it adds up, and I think it does contribute to why I feel so burnt out after a game of MMM. It would be nice if there was a way for it to go faster.
Dev Response: The cutscene playing multiple times is a bug. Fast Forward damage is a little tricky but enough people requested it, that it should be on the list...
Part 2. General Rambling
You read the first whole bit. Awesome. This next bit is just a bunch of rambling, but I’ll try to keep it concise.
1. Going to War With the Army You Have I’ve seen other people say this as well, but I really feel like I have to force builds to win. Synergy doesn’t feel like enough to clear anything past the tutorial. Maybe I’m not very good. But also,I’ve played for more than 10 hours. Usually I have a good handle on a game after that much gameplay. I’m not sure how I stayed bad in this one specific game.
2. Some of These Units Just Feel Bad Time Bomb and Focus Shrine I am looking at you. I get that technically there is a use case for Time Bomb where you pick it up to stall rounds out while digging for more units? I guess? But it’s rare, so I’ve never actually done that?
And Focus Shrine. Okay, I do not understand this one. In exchange for doubling the damage of SOME of my units, I take double damage? Why? Is it because I’m supposed to draft multiple copies of it? Is there something obvious I’m missing?
Honorable mention for Biologist here. It increases the damage of plants. There are a total of 2 plants, and one of them eats humans.
Which Biologist is.
3. Some of These Units Are Always Good Hello, Med Kit, Extra-Health, and Extra Life. Each one of these units should just have the text “Take an additional turn” on them. They are always good. There is no cost to taking them other then opportunity cost of the other items that they are compared to. They fit into every single build I’ve ever done.
It just seems weird to have a subset of items that work in every single build.
4. Do I have to Play Through The Entire Campaign To Unlock Custom Mode? This one is like… just a question. Do I? Because a custom mode to place units and test stuff would be more useful to me while trying to beat the campaign, than after I beat it.
Part 3. It is entirely possible I am wrong about everything I express in this part.
Okay, so now we’re in the third part. Again, congrats on releasing your game, and reading through everything I’ve written so far. I’m not sure the approx $7 I gave you really requires you listening to all of this, but I’m either putting it here, or in the final review of the game, so I’m putting it here for now.
I think that some of what might be hurting my experience with the game is that while you’ve used a sort of base structure from Luck Be A Landlord, you’ve pushed certain parts of the system in directions that aren’t actually more fun.
Here’s a few big ones: 1. LBAL allows the player to continue drafting and playing through a full cycle even if the engine they’ve constructed clears the current target quickly, but MMM forces the player to advance when they beat a target. In LBAL, I’m rewarded for overly successful builds with more room to maneuver and pivot into the late game, in MMM I’m punished for them. 2. LBAL has systems that open possible builds without punishing me, specifically items and essences. These give me freedom find build-arounds and perma multipliers. But every thing in MMM is a unit, which means even if a unit can open a path to victory, it can just as easily end up being dead weight if the right support doesn’t show up.
Okay, and finally:
I think the fundamental math of adjacency is a bit broken in MMM.
To be clear, I am open to being dead wrong on this. I am not good at math. But I think the fact that you’re using a 5×5 grid compared to LBAL’s 4×5 means that you’ve pushed the odds of any two items being next to each from just about 30% down to 19%, or from just under 1/3 to 1/5.
Ed Note: Okay, I know the math here is actually wrong, because at best, I solved for the comparative odds of placing a object, then placing a second object and the object being adjacent, but those odds DO serve as upper bound. So assuming math is right, MMM is less likely to have favorable adjacency for any two things then LBAL is.
There are a lot of units that care about what they’re next to in MMM, but I think the odds are much lower, and this might be part of WHY it feels much harder to create synergistic builds that run across multiple archetypes (Monster Hunter + Hydra + something else, because it’s just much less likely you hit the favorable locations).
Conclusion
Congrats on releasing your game. I’m glad that you’re working to fix some of the stuff in the Beta branch. You have a interesting mechanical base to work with here, I hope you continue to work to improve the game, and if you read this entire thing I am sorry.
Also sorry for all the comparisons to Luck Be A Landlord.
I have mixed experiences with Carl Chudyk games. I quite liked Glory to Rome. My opinion on Aegean Sea was brief, concise, and not positive. (Aegean Seas remains to this day, the only board game I have ever ragequit.) So it’s good that Mottainai swings back in the other direction.
I’ve heard Mottainai described as Glory to Rome lite. I agree with some parts of that, and disagree others. For starters, Mottainai uses the same general structure of Glory to Rome. Every thing is card, and each card is everything. For example, a card is an action, crafting material, crafted item, and helper, but not at the same time.
While I won’t go into the full structure of the game, the general gist of Mottainai is as follows: you’re trying to get the most victory points, and you get victory points by crafting items and selling materials. On your turn, you play a card from your hand to take an action, and then copy other players’ actions. These actions can get you more cards, let you craft items for their abilities, or perhaps get helpers, or sell various things.
While this might look completely unparsable at first, after just a game or two, it’s easy to see that I have two clay in craft, a Clerk helper, a completed Fan, and I’m about to take a Monk action. Also there are some resources in the middle of the table.
I’m not sure there’s much value in trying to summarize Mottainai mechanically. It’s not quite an action selection game, but there is some action selection and follow-the-leader sorts of elements. It’s not entirely a tableau builder, but the items you build are both your main source of victory points, while offering additional capabilities.
In that sense, it’s like Glory to Rome. Let’s talk about the ways in which it isn’t.
Just like Aegean Sea, every card is unique. Unlike Aegean Sea, I’m actually happy to see all the unique cards. Here’s a small smattering.
Probably the biggest difference is that Mottainai takes 20-30 minutes to play, instead of the slog that Glory to Rome can turn into. It’s a much faster game, and while it uses similar structures, it can have a very different mindset to it. Glory to Rome has always felt like building an engine, whereas Mottainai feels much more like looking for lethal in a game of Magic.
Another thing that I find interesting about Mottainai is that as I’ve played more and more with the same few folks, the game has distinctly shifted. Early on, we played like it was necessary to take every action, but as we’ve played more, the pace of the game has slowed down.
Not enough to slow down play, of course. We’ve now played enough that we can resolve turns and actions quickly. But the tempo has shifted down as we’ve recognized that it’s not necessarily to always be firing on full cylinders. Especially because if you take a strong action, your opponents get to take it to… but if you choose to skip an action and just draw a card, your opponents get nothing.
If you liked (or wanted to like Glory To Rome) I highly recommend Mottainai. Or if you’re just curious. It has a bit of grit to it, but once you learn, it’s a fantastic quick game.
I don’t actually play a lot of mobile games any more. There are various reasons for this, but the primary one is that regardless of the mechanics or aesthetics, pretty much 90% of mobile games are covered in metaphorical parasites.
Yes, I am including FGO, Wuthering Waves, and Star Rail in this. Yes, I did add this line just to hurt you.
These are games that might as well be using game design’s dark patterns as a checklist. They are horse armor’s final form. If this was a JRPG, they’d be called something like Greed Beyond Measure, a cosmic incarnation of avarice, entreating the player to just spend that first 99 cents.
Of course, we don’t live in that world. Horse armor never became a villain that we could defeat with the power of friendship, and spamming healing items. It turned into Squad Busters.
Gameplay
Squad Busters is a multiplayer top-down arena sort of thing, in a genre I haven’t actually seen done before outside of some mobile game ads. It’s a fascinating little thing, with crisp, clean rounds, and interesting amount of depth.
Which is why it’s kinda a bummer that it’s also the jaws of Mammon given digital form. Sometimes it’s debatable on whether a F2P game is truly pay to win. Squad Busters, however, has a button where you buy the in-game currency directly next to the button to purchase the one-time use super units.
Thank you, Squad Busters, for alleviating any possible internal doubt I had.
Squad Busters rounds are played over about 5 minutes, and work as follows. You’re given a choice of 1 of 3 units to start with in your squad. You move your squad with pretty standard touch controls, and whenever you’re not moving, your units attack, or cut down trees, or harvest carrots, or whatever else their specialty is. You do these things to get gold and gems.
Gold can be spent on spawning treasure chests to add extra units to your squad. The larger the squad, the more gold chests cost. However, if you collect 3 of a unit, they fuse into a more powerful version, bringing the net size down, and making chests cheaper again.
The end result is a fun bit of tension, scampering around the map, trying to look for areas to farm, and chests to crack for more units, all while building up the best squad you can. The structure of the game is such that over the duration of the game, the edge of the map does the battle royale thing, and closes in slowly, eventually forcing players into confrontation in the more dangerous center. Directly in said center sits the gem mine, a final objective to be pursued.
Outside of this of course, sits the rest of the “game.” I’m not going to dignify it with a description. It doesn’t deserve one. Instead, let’s talk about gambling.
If You Or A Loved One
I have never been to Las Vegas, but there is tiny little casino surprisingly close to where I live. I’ve stopped by a few times to people watch. It is a fascinatingly alien space. Across four rows of slot machines, older men and women sit in mostly stoic silence, save for some small electronic sounds.
From what I understand, each spin costs about half a dollar, and takes about 5-10 seconds to resolve, meaning sitting at this unhallowed ground could run you between $200 – $400 dollars an hour.
Ed Note: I was going to make a point about how it’s statistically less than that, given that RTP (return to player) numbers are generally around 70-80%, but I can’t actually find those numbers for New Hampshire, even after calling up the state gambling commission. Now I’m looking to try to find out if I need to file a Freedom of Information Act request, and to make a long story short, I got real side tracked.
In that sense, then, perhaps Squad Busters is an improvement. It offers no delusions of fortune, or dreams of financial freedom. It’s just as mercenary as the one armed bandit, but it does so with the directness of a pirate rather then a privateer. Still, I cannot imagine the choice of flag would do much for my experience of walking the plank.
Ed Note: This review is based on playing the game on a multiplayer server, with increased resources, bonus EXP gain for skills, and decreased hunger/thirst depletion rates. Screenshots are from the press kit, and were not taken during gameplay.
Genre-wise, Abiotic Factor is not the most innovative thing. It’s a multiplayer survival crafting game, with some light RPG and FPS elements.
The game has a new header image now, but frankly it’s a bit too heroic for my tastes. This one feels more accurate.
Where it sets itself apart is the setting. Instead of a tropical island filled with monsters, or an infinite world of cubes, you and your friends will find yourself stuck in a combination of Black Mesa and an SCP Containment Facility.
It also looks like Half-Life.
Gameplay
If you’ve played a survival-crafter before, you’ve seen this loop. Set up a base, venture out to gather resources, craft equipment, and then venture out to explore. Rinse and repeat.
The main difference comes from the setting and enemies. I don’t think it’s unfair to call the enemies in this game pretty much just lifted from Half-Life. You have the Not-Head-Crabs, you have the Not-Vortagaunts, and you have the generic military dudes.
There are more enemies, but if you’ve played Half-Life and Halo, you’ve seen 90% of what this game has to offer. And if you’ve played Lethal Company, you can crank that up to 100%. There’s a single spectacle section where you’re forced to sneak past a series of large spooky enemies, but then they never show up again.
One thing that is new are the mini-games. You can turn some of these off, but not all of them. Frankly, I didn’t enjoy having to play these each time I had to sleep, or use the bathroom. Because not using a bathroom will eventually kill you.
Lot less scary once you realize you just have to outrun him, then give him a whack.
Combat is tricky, but it’s a bit of a mixed bag. While some of the later game snipers are difficult, often enemies are hard to deal with because they just out-gear you when you run into them, not because they’re crazy smart or tricky. There was an early game robot that we dealt with by walking up, smacking it, and then running away. Rinse repeat 25 times.
I probably sound a bit more down on Abiotic Factor than I’d like to be. The game is fun, and the setting is pretty novel for this genre. It’s just that a lot of what the game offers is captured more in its atmosphere and lore than it is in the gameplay mechanics.
Incredible atmosphere, gameplay that’s purely a set-piece stealth section.
Building up a base, crafting progressive upgrades, setting up farms, and exploring out for new materials. These are all fun things to do, and Abiotic Factor does them well.
But I’ve also already done them in Minecraft. And Raft. And Satisfactory, VRising, Valheim, Terraria, Starbound, The Planet Crafter, and Don’t Starve Together.
If I was to give any real praise, I want to call out its quality of life features and unlock. You can develop auto-sorting. You can get the ability to pull resources from nearby boxes for use in crafting and repairing. Thank you Abiotic Factor for not making me play inventory Tetris each time I want to craft a single clip of ammo.
The Problem
The real problem though is that Abiotic Factor is currently Early Access. It feels like you can only play about 30-40% of the game. By the time you reach the end, you’ve been introduced to the world, and its factions and monsters… and just as things are getting exciting, there’s invisible wall that says “Future Content Here.”
And then there isn’t really an end game. While the base building can be fun, unlike Valheim or Minecraft, it doesn’t have enough freedom to turn into the focus of game. We built about 2-3 bases on our playthrough, and that was “good enough.” Sure, we could have built them better, or improved them, but we never felt any need to do so.
The same is true of other factors. There are no raids, rare mobs, weapons, or really anything to do. And that’s fine, Abiotic Factor doesn’t need these things. It can be a survival-crafter with a complete story and arc like Raft… but it doesn’t that story yet.
And as a result, I can’t really recommend playing it until it’s actually finished.
Conclusion
Abiotic Factor has a lot of promise, and there are all sorts of hint and nods lore-wise toward interesting things that might happen. For example, there’s a large red chair that appears to just teleport you into a backrooms style area where you have to solve a puzzle while avoiding invisible monsters to get out.
It’s fresh, and hits a certain itch when played with friends. It’s new and unique enough to be a good time. But it’s hard to view as a long term game, especially with no real end-game or purpose currently available, and with its story incomplete.
