Retronator

YES, I finally got my hands on a game with @kirokazepixel’s art in it!

For The Warp (@forthewarp) is a spin-off from another project Kirokaze is doing art for, Massive Galaxy (@massgalaxy). The core crew is in fact the same: Gerardo Quiroz on pixels, Martyn Stonehouse on audio, and Gonçalo Monteiro as the main coder/designer/mastermind behind both ideas. During development of Massive Galaxy (a space exploration/trading point-and-click adventure, still in development), the space combat mechanic grew into a life of its own and broke off as a standalone roguelike deck-building game. Gonçalo sent me a copy of the alpha last week when it released into Early Access and boy did I have some fun with it! Granted, I haven’t built any decks since my middle-school years of Magic the Gathering fandom, but my deprivation for card mechanics was equally matched by the coziness of the colorful-yet-dangerous universe that keeps pulling you back in for more dueling.

The goal in the current alpha is to make your way across 5 levels full of fighting encounters (and other less lethal ones). Unless you pick up some hull-repairing drones on the way, the runs generally end up very fast and you’ll be replaying the game often (with pleasure, that is). After 3 hours in the game I explored barely half of the possibilities and the play style did feel quite different based on the cards that I had. The variability still has some rough edges though—once I lucked into some very rare cards, I was able to defeat all stages in one go. But that’s why it’s in Early Access, so things can get balanced as more cards and ships make it into the game. It’s a perfect title to start playing in alpha as it’ll be exciting to see how things change with each update.

If you’re into cards, strategy, space, pixel art, weird sci-fi tech … head over to Steam or Itch to get your spacefaring runs started ($15, Windows only).

Stories in games are more often than not excuses to kill enemies as you make your way from point A to B. Long Gone Days (@lgdays) promises the opposite: war gives rise to its story. OK, don’t be too excited, it’s still a battle-based JRPG (with some sniping sequences to break the mold), but there are no random encounters, so each fight pushes the story forward. The gameplay is focused on communication and quite literally so, as you have to employ interpreters to talk to characters of different nationalities. I dare say the whole focus on characters + dystopian military vibe even remind me of Final Fantasy VII.

The artist and creator Camila Gormaz came up with the concept already back in 2003, and it’s been her goal to make it happen ever since. Development really took off in 2015, with a demo and IndieGogo campaign following in 2016.

The art is a mix of pixel art and beautiful classical illustrations (for portraits and battle sequences), all done in obvious manga/JRPG style. As you can imagine, Camila’s art skills increased quite a bit since the game’s conception.

The game launched in Early Access today with positive reception on Steam ($15, Windows only), so why don’t just jump right into it.

Wow, am I happy to see Foxtail again. The game was on Kickstarter in August 2015 at the same time as mine for Pixel Art Academy, but unfortunately didn’t make its goal. How that was possible I do not know, especially since its art is 10x better than mine. However, the game’s artist and creator Artem Vodorez didn’t give up and together with coder Sergey Belov they quietly kept working on the game. As one of the original backers, I was so delighted to hear that the project didn’t die and would instead start its way in Early Access this March. It’s now out and even though we only get 1 out of 8 chapters, it already entertained me for 3 hours, well worth the early $7 price. 

I often say some games are so atmospheric I could play them simply to walk around their world and Foxtail definitely makes that category. You are for all purposes immersed into an animal fairy tale, thanks to its lush environments, lively sounds, and peaceful music.

Gameplay-wise, be prepared for an old school adventure. Like, hard puzzles focused purely on combining items (and not always in obvious ways). If I was able to claim to have solved Thimbleweed Park on my own, I had to get a date or two with YouTube on this one. It’s really worth remembering though, that the game is in Early Access and the puzzles will be improved based on feedback. Well funded Kickstarters—such as Tim Shaffer’s Broken Age, and Ron Gilbert’s previously mentioned Maniac Mansion successor—are able to arrange frequent playtesting sessions to smooth rough corners out before release. Foxtail’s early release serves both as a way to fund production as well as an alpha test to polish the gameplay. The devs are right there in the forums listening to players.

Foxtail really warmed my heart, albeit sometimes also my temper. If you like wonderful pixel art and don’t mind difficult (and occasionally clueless) puzzles, help the game get off the ground on Steam and GOG. Once you buy it, you’ll get all further chapters as they become available.

Here’re a few more images of what’s in store for us in the future.

Here are my first impressions of RIOT — Civil Unrest, which released in Early Access on Steam today. 

First some intro, if you don’t know the game. RIOT is the brainchild of
Leonard Menchiari, an Italian director/animator who ran an Indigogo campaign for the game back in 2013. He raised quite some dust, since the game approaches a politically charged topic of protests and police brutality. The story even got covered by The New York Times. 

The campaign subsequently went twice over its goal of $15,000; still, now being 5 years later, nobody can sustain development for that long on that budget. Not that it was ever imagined it would take so long. The game went through a redesign and code rewrite, and dropped into radio silence for years at a time. Somewhere along the way in 2015 it got picked up by the publisher Merge Games and, after another year of delays, they realized they better not give any new dates out, just a Duke Nukem style “when it’s done”. After yet another year of sparse communication, that day has finally come: we can now play RIOT!

Merge Games sent me a review copy and while I haven’t played a lot yet, some things are pretty clear. The good news is, RIOT is as special as imagined. Leonard brings on a great, minimal storytelling style and the presentation alone sends you shivers down your spine. The atmosphere is at the same time cinematic and very real—you can feel shit’s about to go down. If you’ve ever been in a real-life protest, you know it has a certain electricity in the air. Maybe it only works if you’ve felt it in real life, but the game certainly brought it back for me.

That being said, I understand why they released the game in Early Access—it still has many technical issues. I should say I did play a beta build on macOS though, which doesn’t seem to be publicly supported on the game’s store page yet, so the situation on Windows might be better. 

I’m running into constant problems with screen resolution and the graphics engine. Sometimes the game draws things too big so that the text gets out of bounds, sometimes too small, making letters practically illegible. The camera zoom is hard to control and gets stuck too close or too far away. I’ve had the graphics get completely corrupt, after which the game crashed on me. That kind of stuff—exactly why you’d be in EA. Once fixed, these problems will have zero negative impact on the game.

You’ll also need a decent gaming rig. I’m guessing the game is executing some kind of fluid simulation to represent the push-pull between the rioters and the police, which doesn’t seem to be the most computationally trivial thing. I do like the idea of it, as it shows they put some real thought into how to simulate the complex dynamics of such situations. It could also be the graphics’ fault. In any case, they have some optimizing left to do.

Gameplay experience is one of Early Access as well. The learning curve is not as crazy as early Minecraft/Dwarf Fortress, although you are indeed supposed to learn the details through the built-in wiki. Onboarding could profit much from a tutorial with certain actions explained through gameplay. If you just experiment without reading about all the options, you’re often left scratching your head why something worked or didn’t. On the other hand, I like that it doesn’t feel like exact science—group behavior seems exactly as unpredictable as you’d imagine it being in a real riot, while still giving you meaningful control of the situation.

My recommendation for most players is to wait a bit with purchasing the game. If you’re a backer, by all means go explore it, assuming you can keep your expectations contained and not give the team a hard time for releasing alpha-level of polish after 5 years. When the technical issues are resolved after the backers and enthusiasts give it a go, it should be a better time to jump in for everyone.

I am optimistic that once the rough edges are smoothed out, the game’s powerful emotional impact will find its way to permeate to the surface untained. If you want to support the game in advance, by all means go buy it on Steam right now. It promises that rare breeze of fresh air that expands what kind of stories games can tell.

The big day has come for Don’t Sink! OK, not the big day, it’s not released released yet, but it did start its way in Early Access on Steam.

Don’t Sink is a great example of how good art changes your perception of a game. It’s hard to believe just a month ago the game was full of what we lovingly call ‘programer art’ (a disservice, really, to all the coders that also take the time to become amazing artists).

The coder/designer Sebastian Nigro tried their luck on Kickstarter back in September—unsuccessfully, and I’d dare say visuals play a big role in crowdfunding endeavors. 

Luckily teamwork is just as great solution as learning to draw to get your eye candy in place and Sebastian joined forces with Daniel ‘Thirteen’ Marques to complete the team, together with Chris Anselmo on the audio side. I love the art direction Daniel took (a bit of Ridiculous Fishing vibe) and the game looks absolutely inviting, helping to make its gameplay shine.

Don’t Sink is an RPG/town management game so I’d put it right at the side of Regions of Ruin that I had a lot of fun with last month. Instead of Dwarf Fortress and Kingdom-inspired fantasy setting, we roam the ocean alike Sea Dogs and Sid Meier’s Pirates! ARRRR! In the process we defend our ship, claim an island, and build up a town and its population—at least after first impressions. As its early access status suggests, Don’t Sink’s potential will develop over time.

If you want to be part of the journey, the game’s available for Windows on Steam for $9 (10% off).

Every once in a while I play video games. In college it was Dwarf Fortress, the past two years it was Kingdom. Hmmm, where is this going …

Regions of Ruin is like Kingdom with dwarves that are building a fortress, so yeah, I’m happy with the premise. The team from Vox Games sent me a copy to try their newly released early access version and I had some fun slashing my sword, throwing axes, cleaning up goblins and kobolds, exploring the many locations around the region, and upgrading my settlement into a cozy little village. 

It’s early days, as its categorization in Steam suggests, so there’s a lot of stuff being worked on, but the core loop is there and players are already raking in 40+ hours of gameplay, leaving positive reviews across the board. 

If you’re looking to return to a Kingdom-like fantasy world, but wield your own sword through it in RPG style, head over to the game’s Steam page (macOS and Windows) or Itch.io (also Linux) and give it a try for $17.