Video Games as Told By Someone Who Doesn't Know Butts about Video Games

[Sal]

I've played maybe a few games and I'd like to talk about those.  That’s not a very long list, and I’m not very quick about getting through new ones I’ve started, so this will probably be a sparsely-attended thread.  However, I think the types of games I like tend to be pretty different from what most on this forum like, so hey, maybe you’ll see something cool!

Most of the games I play are old - old as balls - so chances are you’ve A.) decided a long time ago that the game about which I’m writing is not the kind of game for you and you’d never play it anyway, or B.) you’ve already played it.  If you’ve already played it, bring on the discussion!  If you're not into it, okay! (I don't have anything else to add; I'm not into rooty-tooty-point 'n shooty wartime games, or sports sims, so I probably would just respond to a thread about those with "Okay!", as I assume several of you will probably do with what I put here.  It's all good.)

There will probably be spoilers, albeit probably minor ones that won’t affect your enjoyment of your own playthrough.  I won’t tag spoilers like that specifically, so just assume that every time I write about a game, there will be at least one minor spoiler.  If I have to write about something critical which might actually ruin a game for someone (i.e. giving away an ending or a major plot point) I will be sure to add in spoiler alerts or whatever needs to happen.

Note: I am bad at writing reviews and critiques, so these will be more summaries than judgments, although there will be elements of both.

For every game, I’ll at least try to mention:

Title.  I mean, obviously.
Official Site.  If available. Else Steam, because that’s where I get pretty much everything.
Developer.  Which typically means little to me, because I haven’t played enough games to associate certain developers with really great games, or anything (there are a few exceptions), but I know it may mean more to more avid players.
Initial Release Date.  Self explanatory.
Genre. You’ll have to forgive me if I use the wrong word.  Video game genres are to me like genres of rock; there are dozens and sometimes the differences between two are minor and somewhat subjective.
Price. The normal price.  If it happens to be on sale when I make the post, maybe the sale price.
My Overall Rating.  Out of 10, compared to all other games I’ve played, plus pros and cons that led me to that rating.  Completely subjective.  Saljective.  Trademark it.

[Sal]

Botanicula

To start off, a cute, casual game about tiny things in the forest.



Title:  Botanicula
Official Site: http://botanicula.net/
Developer:  Amanita Design
Initial Release Date:  April 2012
Genre: point-and-click adventure with puzzle elements
Price: $9.99 regular, pick it up on the Steam Summer Sale for $4.99

I’m starting off with Botanicula because it is a great example of the kinds of games I typically like to play: visually interesting art style, relaxing atmospheric soundtrack, with casual puzzly, problem-solving elements.  

To understand Botanicula, put on your make believe cap and peer into your microscope.  You see a spore. Err, maybe a seed?  A leaf?  A twig, or… a mushroom?  Well, you see something small, and plantlike.  Rather, somethings; those are our heroes!  In Botanicula, you play as a group of miniscule creatures who have taken it upon themselves to ensure that light prevails over darkness.  

Our main protagonist, Mr. Lantern, receives a divine vision after being bonked on the head by the lone seed of the tree of light, now destroyed by a creature of dark and evil. Mr. Lantern (despite never actually having any dialogue in the game aside from some babbling noises) relays this vision to his friends, dubbed Mr. Poppyhead, Mrs. Mushroom, Mr. Twig, and Mr. Feather (who, coincidentally, also never have any dialogue), who agree immediately to help him fulfill his quest of planting this seed and start down from their homes in the high branches of their own tree.


Mr. Lantern has a vision.

Only to immediately encounter their first obstacle, and the first puzzle of the game.

There are few instructions given in the game, but there are obvious hints about puzzle solving and what to do next, which makes it optimal for players of pretty much all levels of experience.  You’ll learn as you play that each of our heroes has their own unique capabilities that must be strategically utilized for certain situations (one of the characters can walk on the underside of branches when the top side is blocked, one can fly over obstacles, etc.)


Our heroes reach an early impasse.  Based on the other creatures flying around in the background, we know that the one blocking our path is downed because he’s missing his back feathers.  We need to get him out of our way, so let’s get those feathers!

The rest of the game is spent trying to get to the ground while your inconsiderate tree neighbors make that a much more difficult task than it probably should be!

Overall, the tone of the game is light, occasionally humorous, although many of the creatures tend to have a rather unsettling, sometimes grotesque appearance.  Some of them freaked me out.  There are dark, tense moments because, after all, it’s a game of good versus evil, but I wouldn’t say that it would likely scare my 90 year old grandma, so I think everyone on this board is safe.


Just don’t fall into its cavernous mouth full of razor-sharp teeth and you’re good to go!

In all, I put about six hours into the game, which includes some going back after finishing the main objective to discover some of the hidden creatures, for which Steam gives you achievements and - if I recall correctly - for which you get in-game collectible cards.  I don’t know that I would ever replay the entire game, but I would certainly play a sequel or extension to the first game, and I have been considering playing some other games from Amanita Designs, including the Samorost series which looks very similar.  

Pros:  It’s a very pretty game.  It’s nice to look at while you play with soft colors in a woodsy/floral palette and a tilt-shift and bokeh effect.  The characters are cute and interesting, and the background sound effects of natural forest sounds sets a great aural landscape.  It’s good if you’re looking for something casual to unwind with.  The puzzles are fun.  I didn’t find many of them to be particularly difficult, but there were a few that made me take a couple passes before getting the solution.

Cons:  There’s not a ton of replay value, and it’s a fairly short game for the cost (full disclosure: I’m pretty sure I picked this up for about $4 a few Summer Sales ago, and that price is, to me, more reasonable).  You’re paying primarily for the art when you get this, so keep that in mind.  I had some issues with not getting achievements on Steam when I should have, which is a minor complaint for me.

My Overall Saljective™ Rating:  7/10.  The game is lacking in length and isn’t quite challenging enough for me, but it is good for what it is intended to be: an aesthetically appealing game designed for relaxation and casual gameplay.  When on sale, the value of the product you get for what you pay is decent.

[Sal]

Kentucky Route Zero

Title:  Kentucky Route Zero
Official Site: http://kentuckyroutezero.com/
Developer:  Cardboard Computer
Initial Release Date:  February 2013
Genre: point-and-click adventure, text heavy
Price: $24.99 regular; I bought it on sale during Christmas of 2016 for half price.

Kentucky Route Zero (which I’ll abbreviate henceforth as KR0 because I’m lazy) is a story-rich, text-based, point-and-click adventure game about a surreal system of underground roadways in Kentucky and interpersonal relationships on the open road.  I don’t want to say that this game is one of those “choose your own adventure” sorts of games, because the choices with which you’re presented don’t really seem to decide fates or outcomes, but rather you get to choose the characters’ motivations and emotions behind the actions that they perform.  Your character may end up in exactly the same predicament regardless of what dialogue you choose, but your role is to decide for them how they got to that point, and how they’re prepared to respond to certain things which happen to them.

The game is split up into five Acts (of which I - IV have currently been released, V pending).  We start off with the story of Conway, an aging, grizzled sort of man who works as a delivery man for an antique shop.  As our story starts, Conway’s is ending; the owner of the antique store has decided to close up shop, and we’ve joined him for his last delivery run.  We learn early on that our destination, Dogwood Drive, can only be accessed via Route Zero, a mysterious road that we get repeatedly warned not to take.


We will ignore that warning, of course.

To find and traverse this road which does not seem to fully exist within our own plane of existence, we end up encountering a number of people, several of whom join our party and travel with us.  Among these are a woman who repairs TVs and who has lost something dear to her, a young boy who lives in a museum with his older brother, and a pair of musicians who aren’t quite sure if they’d like to be a trio (or maybe just get a pet). KR0’s gameplay system will actually allow us to take control of these characters, and others, instead of Conway from time to time in order to complete certain scenes.  And, of course, we have our ol’ hound dog with us.

We will travel through a number of different scenes in our sputtering truck (and sometimes by air, and sometimes by water!) to complete our delivery while regularly taking on new tasks - which seems to be alright; time passes differently on the Zero and I’m not sure it’s possible for our delivery to actually arrive late.


Horses, bluegrass and bourbon featured in a game about Kentucky?  Go figure!

We don’t know much about Conway from the get-go, so as we’re learning about all the other characters and their stories, we’re learning about our main hero, too.  Through a series of dream-like sequences and flashbacks, plus our dialogue with our companions on our trip, we learn that there are painful memories that he doesn’t want to talk about, and things that may become inevitable.


One of the brightest scenes in the entire game.

I have put just about 6 hours into this game and have completed the first four acts.  When Act V comes out, I will, of course, be playing that one, too.  One of the interesting things I noticed about the game as I was playing it, given the slow development schedule of each subsequent act, has been seeing how much the developers improved from act to act, essentially moving from a flat side-scroller game into something much more cinematographic and dynamic.  I am hopeful that Act V will be the best yet.

Pros:  As with Botanicula, one of the most enthusiastic nods I’m giving to this game is that the atmosphere, visual and aural, are fantastic.  The graphics are rendered in a low poly style with soft gradients, and generally muted or dark tones, which I find gives enough detail for scenes to be easily perceived while carrying the sense of supernatural and grittiness the game is supposed to convey - especially with regards to the visual distinction between “exploring” scenes and the “travelling” sequences.  The soundscape and original music for this game are also great, and really contribute to the lonely feeling that one would have driving late at night or wandering through abandoned places where souls can’t rest.  There’s no spoken audio aside from some occasional muffled radio chatter and a couple musical acts for which you play audience, so you’re never removed from that atmosphere.  But probably most critical to forming my opinion of the game is KR0’s decision making style in comparison to other games that offer choose-your-own-adventure features.  It’s a hard distinction to describe in writing, but essentially boils down to you getting to decide the mood of the story rather than any particular result. With KR0, the action you’re performing is going to be outwardly innocuous, say, talking to your dog, but you get to decide whether you’re talking to the dog because you’re character is nervous or wary, or if they’re excited about this road that exists on a different dimension.  As with most games based on decision making, there’s a decent amount of replay value since you can get a fairly different experience each time.


Cons:  There are certain points in the game which blatantly force quirkiness for no other reason than quirkiness’ sake.  It’s not symbolism, it’s not an interesting character trait, it’s just the developer screaming “wow, gosh, look how cerebral and subtextual and indie I was with this scene!” (conclusion: the first two aren’t always true, the third one always is.)  I don’t mind when the developers weren’t taking themselves seriously with their bountiful kookiness (spoiler:

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“Third Floor: Bears” and Julian being an actual eagle

), but the scenes where it wasn’t just a silly joke were some of the most boring ones to sit through (also spoiler:

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the entire scene of using Xanadu after repairing it to hire interns and give them menial tasks was really dull. Like.  Really dull.

)  And of course, you’re buying an unfinished product, and given the length of time it took for Cardboard Computer to complete and release the previous chapters, it’s hard to know for exactly how long KR0 will remain as such.  For context, Act III was released in May 2014 and Act IV in July 2016.

My Overall Saljective™ Rating: 7.5/10*

Kentucky Route Zero is a great game, and I am looking forward to the fifth and final leg of this journey.  Even if for nothing else, the mystery of what things lie hidden along Route Zero and the need to see all the pieces fall into place will keep me coming back.  With some scenes, you get a little whiff of pretentiousness from the developers, which can be offputting and may make you want to speed through that scene without digesting what’s happening, but the well-crafted atmosphere of solitude and the interesting characters and their plots generally outweigh the flaws.  The price is steep when not on sale for a game that’s only about 5 - 6 hours not including the last piece (which will probably add an hour or so more play time).

In all truthfulness, I wanted to like this game more than a 7.5 - admittedly, I hyped it up for myself after having it on my wishlist for ages and reading so many strong reviews - but after having played it and considering the price, the pros, and the cons, a 7.5 feels right.

*Note: Rating is subject to change pending the release of Act V and the completion of the game.  If it has a good ending, I don’t see myself bumping this up much past 8, maybe 8.5 at the most.  A weak ending that doesn’t clear up a lot of big, gaping questions for me would maybe make me give this more of a 6.

[Sal]

For this most recent review, I was going to do a quickie for a mini game I just finished, but since there are two mini games I've completed fairly recently in the grand scheme of the space-time fabric of the universe, I figured I might as well mush them together and tackle them both in one fell swoop!

Anyway, two reviews, short 'n sweet.

First up...

Mandagon

Title:  Mandagon
Official Site: http://store.steampowered.com/app/461560/MANDAGON/
Developer:  Blind Sky Studios
Initial Release Date: August 2016
Genre: platformer
Price: free



One of the newer games I've played (but still not new, I know; new games tend to cost additional US dollars, though), Mandagon is a pixel platformer about Tibetan temples.

Your character in Mandagon is a little totem who navigates the many levels of a dreamlike Himalayan temple, moving through mountain tunnels, fast-flowing streams, and airy stairways.  Along the way, you visit shrines whose spirits share their wisdoms with you.  The longer you spend on your prayer walk, the more is revealed about the difficult choice you're preparing yourself for.

I put something like 55 minutes into this.  It's a really short game; once you play through once, you can probably complete the thing in 30 minutes or less.  There is only one ending, and the actual challenge "game" part of the game is just finding blocks that fit into various shrines.



Pros: The day I don't list aesthetic appeal in the Pros section of a review is the day that I have been replaced by a doppelganger who doesn't buy games just based on their appearance.  But really, it is pretty, and I think the scenery in this game, in conjunction with the decision to make this game a platformer, serves a purpose to tell your wordless character's story; you walk back and forth, back and forth along rows of prayer wheels, just like anyone with an impossible choice to make would. It's nice imagery. Being a free game is always a pro.

Cons: It's hard for me - or impossible, honestly - in dealing with free games to come up with cons and to really feel secure in pointing out the flaws in something that added zero financial burden to me.  It's really one of those "well, no harm done; I'll just uninstall the game and assume I wasn't going to do anything productive with that 45 minutes, anyhow!" situations.  So I'm going to pretend I paid a small amount for this.  I think $2.99 seems like a pretty average price for a mini indie pixel platformer like this.  Had I paid $2.99 for this, my biggest complaint would be the length.  It is a very short game, even in comparison to some similar freebies I've picked up.  Finding the missing shrine pieces and putting them into place is simple and doesn't really take any effort at all; adding some component of the game that makes you work for them would have been nice.  My other biggest complaint would be that the entire thing takes place in one stage of platforms, and some additional variance in color gradients or something would been good for the visual appeal.

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I guess you can argue that there is a second stage to the game once you open the door just before the end, but the play you get out of that second stage totals less than 60 seconds.

 A minor issue for me is related to the studio's description of this game as being a tour of Tibetan philosophy, but I feel like they didn't do much to teach me anything about Tibetan philosophy that I didn't already know (which is one atom's width away from absolutely nothing.)

My Overall Saljective™ Rating: 5/10. It was alright, and hey, it was free!  Serene, easy play.  I wouldn't play it again, probably, but if you need something to do during a flight layover or between your morning and afternoon class, it's the perfect length.


--

Missing Translation

Title:  Missing Translation
Official Site: http://store.steampowered.com/app/395520...anslation/
Developer:  AlPixel Games
Initial Release Date: September 2015
Genre: puzzle game
Price: free


GPOY.

Full disclosure, it's been a while since I played this game myself. I recently watched a playthrough of the entire thing, though, so I remember it well enough.

I'm going with the Steam description for this one, because it sums it up best:

"Lost in a weird city in the middle of the desert and surrounded by strange creatures that keep staring at you. This is a game about exploring the unknown and solving puzzles... lots of them!"

That's the gist of the game.  You get slurped into an interdimensional wormhole one sleepless night and to find your way home, you try [and mostly fail] to talk to cowbow aliens and you solve lots of puzzles.


Alien school is basically like every other school, I guess. Just a
giant tapir screaming sideways Es at the kiddos.

Pros:  I liked getting tossed into the A Clockwork Orange-esque situation of having no clue what anyone in the alien world is saying, but being able to use contextual clues to eventually decipher things.  That was probably the most unique part of the game. The few puzzles that did present a challenge were actually pretty fun, and there was definitely a need to redo it until I could get it right.  Zero moneys were spent on this. Alternate dimension cats! (Please note that immediately after saying I never play games where I don't rate highly just for looks alone, I am doing that; the game looked fine, but it was nothing special aside from the greyscale scheme maybe.)  

Cons: I will also be looking at this one through the lens of it costing $2.99, because judging free stuff still just feels kinda... ehhh.  The puzzles were v e r y repetitive.  There are only a handful of puzzle types (three or four), and you do about 25 repetitions of each type.  Supposedly, each repetition is supposed to be a more difficult variant than the previous, but I did not find that to be the case the majority of the time.  I just found it redundant.  I would have greatly preferred lots of different puzzles.  Again, this one was short, and would have been shorter if not for so many repetitious tasks.  No replay value unless you want to switch from a male avatar to a female avatar and redo the entire thing for some reason.

My Overall Saljective™ Rating: 5.5/10.  It was a cute time killer.  The puzzles were too easy and you had to do the same ones over and over, but deciphering the alien language was kinda neat.  And it's FREE!

---

That's it!  Two mini reviews done!

By the way, if you guys have ever played any of these games and want to discuss how you would have rated them differently, let me know!

[Sal]

It’s ya girl back at it again with the reviews of the games that are definitely not new or trendy! I hadn’t been in the mood to play much recently, but then I remembered this next one hanging out in my purchases and it was great. So great that I’m writing a “...Don’t Know Butts About...” for it. Let’s go!



Title: Why Am I Dead At Sea?
Official Site: http://www.whyamideadatsea.com
Developer: Peltast Software
Initial Release Date: May 2015
Genre: horror/murder mystery, adventure
Price: $4.99



Why Am I Dead At Sea? is a game where you play the ghost of someone trying to deduce just that. More specifically, you are the late first-time captain of a small passenger boat, and you have just gained consciousness in your ghostly, incorporeal form. Out of your skeletal crew and a handful of passengers you’ve only just met, you don’t know who among them would even know you, let alone want to kill you.



In order to discover your murderer, you learn that you can possess the bodies of the crew and passengers. Each person you possess comes with a unique ability - one person can read other peoples’ tones when they talk to know whether they’re lying or telling the truth; another is kind of a kleptomaniac and will peek into peoples’ pockets to see what they might be carrying; and someone else can jump really high!

As you dig through thoughts and memories, you uncover that something more nefarious than you first suspected is at play on your vessel, and as the boat moves further and further from your body’s watery resting place and into the eye of a brewing storm, you’re running out of time to solve the titular question. There are multiple endings, so whether and how you answer this question depends on how good a sleuth you are.



Pros: I liked the aspect of possessing different people to gain access to different dialogue options, knowledge, and abilities. I don’t recall having ever played another game with this mechanic - not to say one doesn’t exist, just that I personally have never played one. This game was more emotional than I suspected; I found myself caring about the characters’ motivations and I actually cried a couple times.

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Quella and Darryl’s relationship progression really got me deep in my soft spot. Especially the good/relatively good ends when they’re bidding their farewells. Ugh. Nope.

The constant wavering between “this is a horror story” and “this is a depressing story” keeps you on your emotional toes and, for me, made the endings harder to unravel - was any of this real? Is it just the machinations of a crazy person? Is this boat some kind of Limbo? The music for this game was really nice, and contributed a lot to the atmosphere of unease. You get a different theme for each person you possess, and I felt that all of the music did a really great job at matching that person’s characterization: the anxious person gets manic, strobing EDM, the paranoid person gets quiet, eerie tones, and so on.

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And I gave this game at least one point just for Sunshine’s thoughts. Meow.

Cons: In the way that Kentucky Route 0 tried too hard to be indie for the sake of being indie, I felt this game tried too hard in some cases to be edgy for the sake of edge. Perhaps the fact that the subject matter is so dark makes this inevitable, but I found it hard to suspend my disbelief enough to accept that every single one of the characters had such a checkered past/sob story to the extent they all did except, maybe, for

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Alton and Sunshine.

For those characters whose pasts you reveal later in the game, some of the impact you might have felt otherwise is weakened by the rapid succession of gut-punches you as the player are dealt in learning about all the characters that come before. I think it would have even been interesting to have characters who are truly not involved in the endgame at all - red herrings, essentially, who know nothing about anything surrounding your murder.

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Arguably, Darryl can fill this role as he only gets involved because of Quella, but nonetheless, he does get involved.

Aside from this, there were a few technical glitches with the game; entering a door while someone is trying to exit, for instance, launches you into the black space outside of the playable area, and the only way to get out is to exit the game and start from your last save point. Pretty annoying. I kind of wished that the dialogue options you choose would have more impact in how the game ends, but it doesn’t seem to matter too much other than

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some endings not being unlockable if you choose not to go with the most intuitive options.

My Overall Saljective™ Rating: 8/10. It was a really nice game with parts that actually made me really care about the characters and their motivations, and at points in the game I can truly say there were a few “I didn’t see that coming” moments. It was a longer game than I anticipated, which made it well worth the full price to me. I’d play through it again.

[Sal]

It has recently come to my attention that I have yet to not know butts about the game I’ve been playing most as of late. Of course, as everyone can probably guess, that game is

Armello.

I’ve actually been debating doing one of these for Armello for a while, but I was pretty lost on how I’d review it given that it’s just such a different game from everything else that I play — essentially, I’m comparing a [digital] board game to a video game. I wasn’t sure if I could use the same set of metrics or even the same rating system. My fear was (and honestly, after going back and reading through what I’ve written here, still is) producing more of a how-to guide than an actual review. Eventually, with some gentle coaxing from Seperallis, I decided a game is a game, and I would go ahead and attempt to review it. Before we jump into this one, I guess there are a couple things to note about how I reviewed/rated this one compared to how I’ve done my past games:

1. I ended up using the same Overall Saljective™ Rating System for this as I did for all the other games I’ve reviewed thus far, but

2. Much more weight was placed on game mechanics, functionality, and graphics because, literally, that’s all there is. It’s a board game. There’s no story (outside of some DLC/seasonal collectible thingies, but those have no bearing on my review), so I can’t consider what doesn’t exist.

So when you look at my final rating, just keep those things in mind.

Now leggo!


Title: Armello
Official Site: https://armello.com
Developer: League of Geeks
Initial Release Date: September 2015
Genre: Board game, RPG
Price: $19.99 (base game only)



The king of Armello has been corrupted by a powerful and insidious evil, and now he is dying. It’s your turn to prove yourself worthy to take the throne and become the next ruler! But be careful — there are those who seek the throne for themselves, and they won’t allow anything or anyone to stand in their way.

Armello is a turn-based game for up to four players that combines a number of mechanics including dice rolls and card draws. There are several ways to win the game — using brute strength to slaughter everyone, avoiding death and accumulating enough prestige to win a war of attrition, gathering enough magic to banish the evil from the palace, becoming even more evil than the most evilest evil, etc. You’ll use your character’s combination of stats, equip items, cast spells and perils (traps), and complete quests to make your way to victory.



The board itself is a combination of tile types - settlements to claim and generate revenue, dungeons to explore which may yield treasure or traps, swamps that sap your health, mountains that sap your energy, and forests to hide in when night comes. The palace sits at the center of it all and is heavily guarded by traps and soldiers.

There are nine days and nine nights - eighteen rounds - to the game. During the day, the king’s guards go on their rounds looking for criminals to apprehend. At night, monsters called banes rise from the dungeons and wreak havoc on Armello’s settlements. At the dawn of the tenth day, the king will die. You have that much time to win.

Oh, and you’re an animal. Because duh.

Without the DLC, you have four clans: Wolf clan, Rat clan, Bear clan, and Rabbit clan. Each clan has its own gameplay style, and if you were to relate each one to your standard role play class, you would — respectively — get Fighter, Rogue, Magic-User, and kinda-sorta-Rangers (I find Rabbits harder to classify, but think exploration-based equipment-dependent types.) The Bandit Clan DLC adds a fifth clan which is... well, the Bandit Clan. But it’s more of a hodge-podge of characters than one cohesive group like the others. Within each clan, each character has its own unique play style and set of stats. For instance, all Wolf clan members are Fighter-type, meaning they’ll naturally have higher strength stats and lower wits, but you have your swordsman, your shield maiden, and your archer to choose from who all offer different abilities. Usurpers and Rivals DLC both add one additional character to the original four clans.


Me as Hargrave, corrupted and thus unable to enter the tile which holds my quest, which has a king’s guard on it anyway, surrounded by banes, with a bounty on my head and heck-all in my hand. The only royal status I won in this game was becoming royally screwed.

Pros: There is a good selection of characters to fit every play style, and even if a class tends not to be your thing (I, personally, am not a good Magic-User), there is probably at least one character from each clan that is workable for you, especially with the DLC. Although my craptop is too lappy— wait, I mean my laptop is too crappy to render anything high quality, I’ve seen the game played at maximum graphics settings, and it is gorgeous. Especially with the Seasons DLC which is purely aesthetic and which adds seasonal flair to the game board tiles - snowy winter, flowery springtime, etc. The combination of mechanics is nice and I like the randomization of the board tiles with each new game. Minor things: I actually quite like the Steam achievements for this game; they essentially just add personal challenges for you as you go about your usual king-killing business. Some of them are character-based while others are more task-based. There are collectible dice, so that’s pretty fun. Some of them are really pretty, and a lot of them make unique sounds (ceramic, wood, bone, etc.) when you roll them.

Cons: There are definitely some glitches, and new ones seem to pop up after each update. Really major ones, like things that would have been noticed after the most basic of UATs, which makes me wonder if any UAT did happen. There was an issue, for example, of cards being played out-of-turn freezing before going into effect, so essentially you wouldn’t be able to put them to use, but also they would still be taking up a space in your hand — which can be critical if you are using a low-wits character; one card may account for 25% of your hand. Some of the equipment and characters have undergone stats or abilities changes after past updates, and I haven’t been a huge fan of all of them, although in general I concede that they have made the game more balanced overall. I’ve found that some of the vanilla characters are useless (cough Amber cough) and, if facing a DLC character, they hardly ever stand a chance without getting hella-lucky in the equipment card draw department. That’s not surprising to me considering that paying real world money to get something better that’s a more surefire win is a pretty commonplace business strategy in the video game industry. It gets kind of pricey when you start investing in DLC, but looking at the cost of traditional hard-copy board games like Catan and others, Armello is pretty typical. Minor things: I found the tutorial a bit weak and think there are ways it could be improved. Some of the inter-gameplay bits around the turn of dusk to dawn/dawn to dusk are really annoying with how they force the camera to pan around and prevent you from playing out of turn until that’s over.



My Overall Saljective™ Rating: 8/10. It should be no surprise that I really like this game based on how often you probably see my little Steam dialogue pop up on your screen saying “pipartuuli is now playing Armello” and whatnot. It’s a nice meshing of RPG and board game style play and it’s something you can sink some time into without realizing.

[Sal]

Title: Night In The Woods
Official Site: http://www.nightinthewoods.com/
Developer: Infinite Fall, Finji
Initial Release Date:
Genre: horror, indie, platformer, story-rich
Price: $19.99



Per the official site:

"College dropout Mae Borowski returns home to the crumbling former mining town of Possum Springs seeking to resume her aimless former life and reconnect with the friends she left behind. But things aren't the same. Home seems different now and her friends have grown and changed. Leaves are falling and the wind is growing colder. Strange things are happening as the light fades.

"And there's something in the woods."

I loved all 11-ish hours I put into this game, and it's probably the most popular game I've reviewed thus far, so anyone who reads this is probably going to already have at least some idea of what it's about.  But I'm going to do it, anyway, so strap in.



Although it's officially classified as a "horror game", and though I'd certainly agree that there are some terrifying moments and creepy atmospheric aspects to the game, I wouldn't say that "horror" should be the primary designation that NITW receives.  Much, much more than just a horror game, NITW is an introspective dive into the minds of the citizenry of a crumbling Mid-Appalachian town - most of you Americans will know the type: Opioid epidemic, decent-paying jobs shutting down operations or leaving for bigger cities and being replaced by quickie marts (if they're replaced at all), gentrification of working-class neighborhoods, a lack of enough good wholesome fun opportunities for the kiddoes opening the gate for them to dabble in drugs and crimes.  That sort of town.  And that exploration is horrifying, but in a way that's much more tangible, much more real than zombies and vampires.

As the official game description implies, we follow young Mae Borowski after an unknown Bad Thing happens to her at college. Hoping to regain some sense of normalcy in her life, she returns home to live with her mom and dad and to reconnect with her high school friends.  But her dad has had to take on a new underpaying job where he gets no respect from management.  Her friends are working overtime just to be able to afford rent and food and barely have the time to hang out with her.  One of her friends has even gone missing, and his parents have posted flyers around the town in hopes of finding him.  Small businesses are shutting down every day.  The town's religious folk (which is basically everyone) are grumbling about hard times ahead.

Not having found the stability that she was hoping by returning home, things slowly begin to turn sour for Mae, and for me, that was the most insidious and creepy part of the game.  

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We eventually learn that Mae is mentally ill in a way that causes her to dissociate and to not be able to recognize the things and people around her as familiar, but rather just shapes, so much to the point that she once bludgeoned a boy back in school because she couldn't recognize him as a real person.

 And when she begins seeing ghosts in the woods and talking to God in her dreams, it's difficult to know whether it's all real or all in her head.


God is a cat, of course.

Pros:  NITW is what I want out of a game: psychological horror with deep exploration of well-rounded characters that are multifaceted enough to remind me of people I really know in a setting that hits a little too close to home. Mae's naivete and downright childishness after having come home from college where she was able to put off growing up (while her parents paid for it all) is grating initially when in contrast to her friends who have had to mature quickly due to life circumstances, but as you learn more about Mae and her issues and motivations, as well as those of her friends, it all makes sense and is really well done.  I loved NITW's graphics.  Just everything about them from the color palettes to the use of darkness and light to the texture that everything kind of has. Ugh, so good.  The sound track was also great.

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I thought that the reason for Mae keeping the journal - the kind many video games have where you can track the progress on the development of the storyline - was interesting, and it was nice that it was justified as "she keeps it because it's part of her therapy" rather than just "the player needs to be able to keep track of events as they happen."

 As always, with games with dialogue choices that influence the outcome of the storyline, this one definitely has replay value. I am aware that there are some parts of this game that can only be unlocked on multiple play-throughs.

Cons: I don't have a ton of complaints about this one because, again, NITW is what I want out of a game.  There were a few little "side-quest" type things that didn't have really any pay-off other than Steam Achievements.

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Like feeding the rats inside Mallard.  That was... meh, a waste of time.

 Again, as with Kentucky Route 0, there were some issues of "indie for the sake of being indie", but it definitely was not as bad as KR0, and I feel a lot of it in the case of NITW could be excused by the fact that the main characters in the story were a bunch of young Millennial who were actually kind of just indie kids.  The loading screens were kind of long, I guess?  I mean, I just don't play a lot of games with loading screens, so maybe I have no clue what a standard length is.



My Overall Saljective™ Rating: 9/10.  I think it's already been stated five ways that I love this game, so I'm not going to bang on about it anymore. I absolutely do not want a sequel to this game because NITW is perfectly self-contained.  However, if IF and Finji made another game in a similar style to this one, I would be all over it.