Tag Archives: Strategy Games

Third World Future, Be a Hero

Posted on by thre3zekiel

TWF-logo

 

How many times have you seen someone you know spend hours, cumulatively speaking, playing one of those irritating in-app purchase games?  My wife plays a few of them and I always find new charges I wasn’t expecting.  It drives me up a wall that these purchases are so small and easy to make because you just make them on an impulse.  These games truly are the kings of capitalism in the game world.  But what if that kind of energy could be harnessed and channeled into something better, something worth getting behind.  What if you could use one of those games to help children in Africa get food, clothing, shelter and maybe even a uniform so they can get to school?  If this indiegogo campaign is successful, you can do just that, all while spending your time playing games.

Third world future has an ambitious goal: to make the first game that directly benefits charity organizations.  Just as other game designers are trying to use games as a tool to educate children, TWF’s dream is to use gaming to help people in third world countries.  Do you like Clash of Clans?  How about Farmville? Third World Future will feature a number of elements similar to these games whereby you manage your own African village.  This strategy game will leave players with the ability to make In-App purchases.  60% of the proceeds from their game will be contributed randomly to charitable organizations.  This is just casual gaming, too.  There is a speech on TED Talks where Jane McGonigal talks about how we can use games and encourage gamers to solve real-world problems.  That video brought a few tears to my eyes.  I feel like this is a chance to accomplish the next step for gaming.

Their method for deciding who to fund comes from the people that provided the money in the first place: the players.  Every quarter for 2 weeks, a vote will open up to the game’s discussion board.  Every quarter five non-profit organizations will be selected from the region receiving the benefit.  Players can then choose which of the five organizations they want the funds to go to.  Whichever of the benefits wins will receive the lion’s share of the funding and in-game advertisement with the rest of them receiving smaller amounts and some in-game advertisement.  So, if you have a few extra bucks in your pocket that you can throw at a good cause, visit the Indie Go Go campaign site for Third World Future as soon as it launches on July 14th and give what you can.  Every little bit helps, dammit, 1$ in America  and we’re trying to save the fucking world!

twf_concept

Please note that I will be updating this article and reposting it as more information becomes available.

Viscera Clean-Up, Engagingly OCD

Posted on by thre3zekiel

vcdlogo

 

So this is what it’s come down to.  Viscera Clean-Up detail is a glorified janitor simulator in early access, but don’t close the screen yet.  You’re not exactly wiping some kid’s puke up off a tile floor or mopping up piss.  You are the guy that cleans up after the events of other video games and tragic events, but this seems to be made by a people who are disenfranchised with the world in general and are used to monotonous, soul-crush jobs.  Like the British.

Ultimately, this game is just like building a puzzle.  You are given a big mess to organize, and piece by piece you work the mess down to an easily manageable pile and then finish up.  Now, starting this game is a bit of a chore.  You begin and blood and guts litter the floor, are painted on the walls and the entire scene is a very “modern art in rouge.”  You have several very fucking important machines that help you get your job done.  First, there is the Slosh-o-Matic, dispenser of buckets full of water.  Then there is the furnace, it is the disposal method of choice for viscera both human and alien.  Then there is the What-a-Load container machine, which disposes containers marked with the “biological hazard” symbol.  And finally, the vending machine, which provides access to all manner of useful objects.

This game provides the all-too-realistic experience of being a janitor fitted with the cheapest mechanism for cleaning available in futuristic times.  By all accounts, you should have access to a fucking auto-cleaning zapper mechanism!  But the most high-tech device you have is the Muck-Guyver, which provides a radar “ping” that beeps faster and in a higher pitch the closer you are to a “mess.”  Way too many times have I finished cleaning up a section of a room littered with the remains of a scientist, used the Muck-Guyver and the region still came up hot.  I look on the ceiling and curse the gods, realizing that the some of a victim didn’t fucking reach the floor.  At which point you have to stack a bunch of boxes, or whatever environmental detritus you have available, and scrub the goddamned ceiling!

Your main “weapon” is a mop, so the Slosh-o-Matic isn’t just a funny little feature.  It is your main support element.  And don’t even think for five fucking seconds that this shit is all user-fucking-friendly!  Every time you hit the dispense button, there is a shot you will get a bloody body part instead of a bucket of clean.  This means it will drop out and splatter fresh blood all over the ground and the machine.  I like to imagine that this is because the machine is really a teleporter, and a careless technician just lost an arm or something.  A slosh-o-matic is necessary, though, as your mop gets dirty through usage.  You can only mop a heavily-soiled section of the floor for five mouse-clicks before you start just spreading the muck around, so you have to get a fresh mop bucket and rinse the mop.  One dunk only, though!  Your mop buckets will get soiled, too!  Dunk your mop in that and you will just be smearing a fine paste over surfaces leaving a trail like a snail on its period.  And watch your goddamned step!  Knock over a bucket containing ANY level of grime, and you will have just poured out a mess all over the floor again.  Prepare for agony.  My wife came in worried about me only to find I knocked over another fucking mop bucket!

vcdspill

Dirty mop? Spilled bucket? This might end with suicide.

 

If your buckets get dirty, too, how the fuck are you supposed to clean for a protracted period of time?  In this space-age setting your company has resorted to the most sensible and fiscally responsible means of disposing of things: setting them on fire.  Apparently the Joker was right, everything does burn!  Even steel buckets full of fucking water!  Now, this is a little silly, but once you have mopped up enough blood and such to get to the bullet cartridges and organs lying in the open, how can you get them to the furnace reliably?  Why, you simply put someone’s assorted remains into a yellow bio-hazard bin and burn them, of course!  Bins are pretty sizable, too, and seating most of two people comfortably.  But be fucking mindful of your goddamned surroundings!  Have a bloody stub sticking out of the bin?  You will smear blood on anything it might touch.  Considering the fact that doors in this don’t open wide, you will end up scrubbing walls and doors a lot, too.  And don’t be that manly man that has to cram eight people, a thousand bullet cartridges, five soiled knives and a take-out box into one fucking disposal bin.  That shit will cost you!  Things inside the bin will get heavy for you and you will drop that shit.  Even if the bin isn’t that fucking full and you are hitting shift to go slowly!  Run with organs and you might as well paint everything red.

One thing that this game encapsulates entirely too fucking well is frustratingly tedious tasks.  So you have disposal bins, eh?  Here is a floor littered with a bazillion mother-fucking bullet cartridges.  Pick them up one at a time.  Scientists in this ripped apart by a blood-thirty alien?  Intestines will be scattered around like someone spilled oodles of noodles and you have to pick it up one greasy meat-tube at a time.  Then there are the distances they go to make this a challenge.  Aside from organs pouring out of the bin or bucket dispensers, should you step in a pool of blood, you will track blood everywhere across mom’s new carpet.  There is nothing more frustrating than realizing you just tracked somone’s DNA across your freshly-mopped floors.  And then there is the detail!  Yea, sure, anybody can scrub a few tiles and punch out, but if you just run through and opt-out of spot-checking your work with the Muck-Guyver, you’ll miss something.  One element I discovered was that sometimes blood will run into the fucking grout in the tiles!  And you’ll have to scrub that separately from the rest of the pool!  I am just grateful they don’t force you to go in there with a brush and scrub it out by hand.  Holy fuck!

At the top of the bin, Chad was really getting a-head!

Spacious enough to fit the extremities of several researchers comfortably!

Cleaning up the organs or dead researchers is only the fun part of the job, though.  You’ll find yourself cleaning up crumpled papers, soda cans and other office debris.  There are also other menial tasks to achieve, such as refilling wall-mounted medkits.  I mean, what research facility is complete without the easily-accessible medkit designed for dressing alien claw-wounds?  To this end, the vending machine is a must.  Of course, not all facilities are outfitted in anticipation of epic fight-scenes.  Some places are just dimly-lit and have naturally dingy textures.  In such situations, the vending machine will provide lanterns!  Of course, knock these fuckers over too many times and they explode leaving scorch marks all over the floor.  Vending machines will also offer any number of useless shit, such as pizza slicers and “wet floor” signs.  Granted, I think you get docked points if you don’t put down the signs, so yea.

This game isn’t without its flaws.  Sometimes you’ll have an arm that will get jostled so bad in a disposal bin that it clips through the bin, painting anything it touches.  The bins are the source of a number of issues, as over-stocking the bins causes things to jump around in there like a bunch of nitrogen atoms under pressure.  I also found these strange “phantom pegs” that appear on the electrical cords for your appliances.  At first you might not see them, but if you splatter blood on them, they show up, sometimes only partially.

I guess this is more respectful than just dumping it all in the garbage somewhere.

I guess this is more respectful than just dumping it all in the garbage somewhere.

Aside from being the type of game a serial killer would jack off to, the most irritating thing about it is.. uh.. well I’ll tell you after I spend another 3 hours scrubbing out the toilets and transferring the wasted toilet paper left on the floor to a disposal bin.  Yea, it really is that much fun.  What kind of psychopath has fun in this, do you ask?  Anyone who gets satisfaction out of gradually turning a hopeless situation into an operational facility ready for the next batch of squishy and ethically-irresponsible researchers.

Smallworld, Better Than Pit-Fighting Midgets!

Posted on by thre3zekiel

sw2logo

 

Originally a board game, Smallworld 2 is really just a board game on your computer.  If you have played the board game, just imagine playing that game on your computer.  That is this game.  Go ahead.  Just exit the webpage.  Yup….  Ok, is he gone? Good.  Now that it is just those of you who have never played the board game, let me tell you about this weid ass board game I found!

Essentially, it is 8 turns of mayhem during which you have to use several races to get you as much money as possible.  Apparently all the creatures and peoples of this mythical land worship the same god: The God of Gold.  I mean, you control numerous people across the ages and collect coins at the end of each turn.  The winner has the most coins by the end.  So, yes, ultimately it is a game about collecting more coins than two italian plumbers before the timer runs out.

First turn you pick a race, and each race comes with a little prefix.  These can be things like hill, mountain, seafaring, imperial, diplomatic, etc. And each of these prefixes adds a special feature to the race to which it is affixed.  Each race naturally has a special ability, so adding the two together can either seriously enhance or considerably weaken the clout of each race combo.  This is honestly the biggest source of laughs and chuckles this game has to offer.  When you get combos like beserk leprechauns or dragon-riding pygmies, you know there is something wrong with the world in that demented hilarity kind of way.  Like sucking someone’s brains out with a swirly straw.

My first race combo was Spirit Humans.  Humans just get you one extra gold for each farmland they end the turn holding.  The spirit prefix makes it so that they add one race to the number you have in decline.  What is decline?  Well, I am glad you asked!  You know how every absurdly arrogant prick you know has the same book about the rise and fall of the roman empire on his bookshelf?  Well, this is the only game that gives that guy a semi-reasonable segue to bring up that book.  As an empire rises, so, too, must it fall.  When your empire goes into decline, the army tokens flip over and extras are removed from the board.  Going into decline is useful and necessary.  In an average session of Smallworld 2 you will have 3 – 4 empires.  You will still receive 1 coin for each region held by a race in decline and you can have only 1 race in decline at a time.  Unless you had a spirit race.  Then you can have 2.  That makes it a pretty useful little prefix to keep an eye out for.

Damned imperial pixies with their Death Star! There is no way to beat that shit!

Damned imperial pixies with their Death Star! There is no way to beat that shit!

You may have noticed that each prefix and race has a number on it.  Totaled together, those numbers indicate how many armies your race will start with at the beginning of its turn.  Each turn your race will start from an edge and battle its way inland until it is no longer an effective way of doing business.  At the beginning of each turn, generally speaking, you will get additional forces in the number of regions you possess with a given race.  So, right off the bat, playing a race for more than 2 turns is a bad idea, unless it really isn’t.

On the topic of beserk leprechauns, that was my second race.  They cut a bloody swath through the territories of the battle dwarfs and skirted around my former spirit humans.  Leprechauns also have the added benefit of getting a pot ‘o’ gold on each region they own and, upon entering decline, each pot ‘o’ gold counts as 1 coin.  Unless some asshole cuts a fucking path through your territory with his stupid ass hill vampires.  Lame as fuck.  He got 1 coin for each pot ‘o’ gold he captured.  Same with the underground amazons.  Bitches…

Flying Dwarfs. Isn't the idea the same if you exchange 'dwarves' for 'lead'? Nevermind. Lead is less stinky.

Flying Dwarfs. Isn’t the idea the same if you exchange ‘dwarves’ for ‘lead’? Nevermind. Lead is less stinky, less hairy and less alcoholic.

Fun to kill some time.  And BOY do you have options on that note.  I mean, you can watch the bots take their turns.  I did once or twice.  Then I found the ‘FUCK IT I HAVE A LIFE’ skip button.  Then again, if you find yourself on your computer playing a board game by yourself you have the special kind of issues.  Of course, this game has DLC’s which do exactly what an expansion pack for a board game would do: add more pieces to a game with way too fucking many pieces already.  Luckily this is a virtual board game, which leads me to speculate this was the reason for making it a video game.  You can find this title on Steam for 14.99$, the DLC’s total up at 10.97$ altogether.  My special thanks to The Dead Sparticus for cluing me in!  I guess I get so steamed up that I occasionally forget to mention where to get the fucking game!

Among the things that fucking anger me the most in this game nothing.. NOTHING angers me more than the fact that they have to put MOUNTAIN TILES on the MOUNTAIN REGIONS!  They did this in the fucking board game too!  Seriously!  Like, it is a picture of mountains with a mountain tile made specially to display it is a mountain.  And does this mean that no one can traverse this ever so superfluous terrain additive? NO! It just takes MORE FUCKING PEOPLE to take that shit!  It is almost like those assholes over at Days of Wonder are trying to make trees a thing of the past or laminated cardboard into a new currency standard. GAH! I’m just going to leave this here..

dawg

 

 

Double-Up Discussion: AoM, Machinations

Posted on by thre3zekiel

AoMlogoToday’s post is about two mobile games: AoM and Machinations.  Not as a comparison, but because there are a lot of these types of games piling up and both are free.  Both have strong points and appeal to certain audiences, and both are vastly different from one another in genre and concept.

AoM first.  I understand that a lot of work goes into every game, and with that in mind I will try to be gentle.  AoM, in my mind, must stand for Arena of Migraines because I cannot see anyone deriving pleasure from this experience.  I also have no idea what the title stands for as I don’t remember that being explained in the game.  In AoM you play a robin hood-esque character clad in green with a bow.  You proceed through the level, often against your own will, by dragging your finger left and right across the screen while the green archer jumps up and down like Mario with fire ants in his overalls.  You then have to avoid enemies and collect coins.  I played the first level about 20 times before declaring loudly to the gods that I would be deleting the game from my phone.  Although my exact words were more along the lines of  “AaAaAURGH! Fuck this shit! I QUIT!”. AoM makes you feel a little better about games that make you unable to jump by making it impossible to stop.

On top of that, the game makes what should be a fun little adventure into a frantic race to the top using my least favorite of all game mechanics: the timer.  This is a game where you compare your frantic jumping scores with everyone else’s frantic jumping scores to see who can navigate the levels fastest with the most points from collecting coins and killing monsters.  How do you kill monsters when you can’t stop moving during a jump-expressed epileptic fit?  With the single most frustrating weapon to use mid-motion.  A goddamn BOW and fucking ARROWS!  Yes!  You just have to tap and the looney leaping pscyho ranger rather slowly launches a poorly aimed arrow.  Granted, if I was forced to jump constantly, I would also be taking a sec to get the shot right.  But look at that little bastard in the logo!  That is him!  No, not the one with the axes.  The cross-eyed bastard pointing his bow at the sky while a giant goblin with companion boar charges him down.  He looks like he can’t even comprehend the concept of steady aim on stable ground.  This makes me think his whole strategy is actually intricately designed by him to get his aim perfect.  Whatever.  I still fucking missed like it was my job.

I was fucking stuck here for ONE WHOLE FOREVER!

I was fucking stuck here for ONE WHOLE FOREVER!

But perhaps I am just not this game’s audience.  I could see a society of people out there somewhere who enjoy games with mechanics design to be as infuriating as popping pimples on your own back with much the same satisfaction.  When it is over, you can lay back down and relax with only the slight pain of having finished and knowing how much time it took to achieve this goal.  Yes, asia, that means you.  Honestly, the only people I could see enjoying this game are asians.  Not because I’m racist or anything, but because I have played a few asian games and I just didn’t ‘get it’.  I have to imagine that AoM comes from the same place.  On the bright side, this leaping journey through platformed levels can be yours on google marketplace for fucking free, so yea.  It’s a free game.  And the art is also pretty good.  Take it for what it is worth: hours of pointless and mindless amusement.  It’s worth it to play once.  I mean it’s free.  You can get it on the Google Play Store or if iOS is your thing, it’s on the iTunes App Store too.

main_menu

  Machinations is a pretty good play.  You are the commander of an empire of space robots whose only means of attack is to suicidally slam into their enemies’ bases until the enemy feels bad and concedes control of their bases.  Yes, I think at some point you can actually attach weapons.. maybe?  But as far as I got, there was some discussion about using lasers instead, which your main advisor/robot general just kind of ignored comically.  At the start of each level you control a node, which generates ships.  These ships can be launched to attack enemy and neutral nodes.  Some nodes level up to house shipyards (which generate ships quickly) or lasers (which zap anyone that gets close). In the story (loosely defined as generalized motivations) you had some kind of space empire, which has collapsed.  You are tasked with reestablishing your empire.  Now, that is irritating.  Now I feel like an intergalactic janitor/asshole going along killing the rebels and subjugating their people.  I guess it is a consolation that everyone is a fucking robot and it really doesn’t matter all that much.  But that brings the game down to the level of depressing as fuck, since it doesn’t really matter anyway.  Ultimately, nothing in this game matters though, so you can just put it down whenever you feel like.  Which ultimately, in a Nietszche kinda way, since the meaningless of it all is liberating in an absurd way. Machinations is a strategy game that plays similarly to Eufloria, but less trippy and bizarre.  Both still fun, but I would pay for Eufloria.  Machinations?  Well, glad it’s free.  I stopped playing when this game incorporated the most annoying of all challenge features of a game: the fucking time limit.  If you want to try the game out for yourself on Google Play, I would fully support the notion.  Want to see gameplay footage in action before you play it?  I guess everyone has their demands.  It’s certainly a game worthy of more time, I just get frustrated by timers easily.

Here, it seems, kamikaze is less a last ditch effort and more a first choice.

Here, it seems, kamikaze is less a last ditch effort and more a first choice strategy.

What pisses me off, then?  If you can’t fucking guess by now, I hate you.  I fucking hate TIME LIMITS, TIMERS and any other time-based game elements.  I hate racing games for this, and before you say that there is no time limit, yes there is.  The speeds of the other cars are the hardware by which the timing of the matches are determined, and you have to beat their times to get first place.  Any game that uses a time LIMIT in the game is basically adding a challenge and LIMITING the way in which you play games by timing you.  Some games do this well, and I don’t mind it when it is done well (see also Majora’s Mask).  But in a stupid little mobile game?  Jesus.  Feels more like the time limit was thrown in because they just couldn’t think of how to make it more challenging or even more worthwhile to play.  Either way, both games are free.  So cut your fucking whining.

Craft the World, Dwarven Shenanigans

Posted on by thre3zekiel

ctwlogo

Dwarfs have always been the fantasy race I love the most.  Long friends, strong hearts and a love of drink and mead!  And this title is full of all the best parts.  Battle bad guys, collect gold, dig mines and build to your heart’s content.  This cartoony game will keep you crafting to the last!  Another title in early access, yes, but it is a good time!

I’ve already placed time into previous plays in this game, but with its recent updates I feel it’s nearing a completed state and deserving of discussion.  The first couple times I played it, I was quickly diced to ribbons, so I recommend restarting until you have a little bit of an elevated platform above your surroundings.  Trust me, when night falls you will be glad you did!  Upon start up, you have one dwarf that warps in through a portal, proving they are descendants of an alien race.  You cannot move your stockpile nor your portal, hence the restart need to relocate your spawn.  Once you have a suitable location, you just follow prompts and missions.  These missions give you exp points, which help you to work toward levels.  At each level, your holdfast gets another citizen, but be careful to keep them alive.

Your dwarfs do everything from mining and building to fighting and fishing.  They gather resources, too, but you have to deliver all their orders yourself, making this a fairly active title.  As you gather resources, you’ll get missions to start crafting things, and making new items is always a good idea.  That’s how you’ll get armor and weapons!  You also level up to get a smithy for advanced projects, furniture and building pieces.  With these you can make some nifty living quarters for your dwarfs.  One of your early missions also grants you with this bearded totem-face.  That is what tells you how good their standard of living is, which is bullshit since the bastards are demanding as fuck!  They need all stone walls and secured doors, hand-carven beds and the finest food cooked in the finest kitchen.  But they build it all themselves (albeit under your strict direction), so I guess they deserve the satisfaction.

Creepy wall face watches you sleep.

Creepy wall face watches you sleep.

As you can see, you won’t be starting off with five-star accommodations, but you work up to it.  This fancy hole-in-the-ground establishment took a good hour in real life, a couple days in game, to create.  But you really don’t get much time to wallow in the luxury of mud-lain floors.  Soo enough you get to deal with all kinds of assholes.  Actually, every night a parade of skeletons and zombies come walking toward you, since dwarf is apparently a pungent and delicious dish, and bust your door down!  Not to mention ghosts start swarming all over your stockpile, and if you leave the stuff out too long, it get stolen by goblins.  Yup!  Little green shits, too!  At some point after the third or fourth day, you’ll have a tribe of goblins spring up nearby, and where the skeletons use their shields to boost each other over terrain, goblins build ugly little stick platforms.  So, it is in your best interest to build weapons and armor as quickly as you can.

In order to get all the materials necessary to move away from beating your enemies with logs while wearing lumber-plated chest armor, you need metal.  Sure, you might have to buy some materials from the Ogre Store to grease the wheels at the start, but coin is not easy to come by, so it’s not the best long-term strategy.  Dig deep and you’ll find nice-sized deposits of iron, gold, silver and even mithril!  If that gives you a bearded little chubby, then you’re playing the right game.  This one is all about getting materials and making shit with ’em.  Of course, it’s not all gold, gems and berry sprinkles.  Leave a mineshaft abandoned without lighting, you’ll find it over grown with snapping plant-life.  Or maybe you’ll unwittingly spawn on top of a colony of psychotic fire-ants with a taste for leathery dwarf-flesh!

problemsbelow

No, seriously, that shit happened to me!

You may also have noticed the skeleton timer up there, too.  When that timer runs out after a good 45 minutes, all hell breaks loose.  Alongside whatever other nocturnal terrors you cope with regularly, hell sends a warming party to drag you down into the pits of fire with them.  Often a boss will come through, too.  And walling off that side of your home won’t do shit, either.  They’ll knock down doors, tear apart your ground-hatch; shit, they’ll dig through a stone wall to get at your sweet sweet dwarf meat.  So the only recourse is to forge your way to victory.  The above images, by the way.  Those are from the first world in the campaign mode, and it’s on an easy difficulty.  I have yet to get past it, but I am sure the next realm isn’t exactly a picnic in happy-land.

Along the bottom of your screen is the hotbar.  You’ll be placing furniture, door, torches etc. out of this tray.  Equip is how you get your dwarfs to wear their armor (as if the marching onslaught of demons wasn’t all too inspiring) and craft is where you craft.  The crafting menu is pretty minecraft-esque, and you drop materials into various coordinations to assemble pickaxes, maces and everything else you can’t dig out of the ground.  Of course, you just have to click on items in your stockpile to learn how to make them.  Of course, blueprints of new items will appear in there depending on how far through the crafting tree you progress.  Technological advances are separated into various types, typically designated by the primary material used to make the items.  Moving up through the tree lets you go from sleeping on a bed of leaves to lodgings fit for a king.  Not to mention increasing dwarf inventory size with back packs, making better foods to keep them fueled longer and healing them faster when they go to sleep.  Aside from just the inventory size, each dwarf can learn different skills related to dwarf tasks.  cooking, logging, climbing, swimming, hunting; you name it, there is probably a book about it.  If there were female dwarfs, I might be scared what other books might get dropped.  Good thing each dwarf is cloned by our alien gods.

Of course this is a developer manor, but I don't have all the time in the world to dig stone. That shit is heavy!

Of course this is a developer manor, but I don’t have all the time in the world to dig stone. That shit is heavy!

Good for a return game after you get bored with a title you’ve been waiting to play for a year and a half, this one is always a good time.  It gets a little frustrating at times, but the message is always the same: this is all about a good time and freedom.  And after you build as far as you can?  Just move on to the next world.  Face greater challenges, fry bigger fish, make bigger castles.  Whatever your cup ‘o’ tea, just make sure you defend the little dwarfs, cause as stinky as I imagine they are (you sure as fuck can’t build a bathtub) listening to their shrieks and watching their ghosts drift away is a little heart-breaking.  Especially after you spend all that time and randomly-dropped occupation books to customize each dwarf.  And for only 15$ on Steam, you can have your very own dwarf colony.

Many things bring forth my ire, and in this the little shit gets annoying.  The dwarfs are like the ones from Lord of the Rings with a touch of Snow White’s infamous seven.  These guys can make some bitchin’ armor and weapons, but as cool as they look, they sound like adorable, dirty, stinky teddy bears.  Seriously.  They say ‘ow’ when they fall down from climbing trees.  They grumble and bumble and talk in Sims-style chat bubbles.  But that’s ok.  Just wait until it’s night and they’re asleep.  They’ll learn why Maxis won’t let me play the Sims anymore.  Just wall off the exits and put tapestries over the firepits and voila!  Instant dwarf roast!  Of course, even if fire mechanics in this game were advanced enough to do that, they would be the ones placing all the tapestries and walling themselves in like kool-aide sipping cultists complicit with the totem-god in their own mass suicide.  O, well.  You can’t torture all helpless little creatures under your command.

Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville, Post-Apocalypse Mayorship

Posted on by thre3zekiel

RebuildlogoEver wondered what it would be like to take the place of Rick Grimes or the Governor?  How would you run things differently? What policies would your band of survivors have to get accustomed to?  Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville is a series that allows you to decide just that.  Lead your rag-tag band of survivors to take back the city from the dead.  Fight the ravenous hordes, train your people in various skills and work to bring back the world of the living amidst the hordes of undead.

Developed across two previous titles by Northway Games, Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville is a title that I have been following for a couple years now.  This latest incarnation is by far the cleanest version of the game, but because it is an early-access title, it is not without its issues. So don’t say you weren’t warned.  Where previous games, available in browser or on iOS platforms, drove for a more serious tone with a soundtrack out of a horror movie, Gangs feels more like a video game.  Rather than the realistic portrayals of survivors featured in Rebuild and Rebuild 2, Gangs uses vector graphics to portray its heroes.  Personally, this makes it a lot easier to detach myself from them.  If Rico Simms goes out for food and comes back holding his intestines, I will be more likely to just bury a hatchet in his head.  No worries.  That guy was annoying anyway.  Though the characters are now a little more toony, this has allowed the developers to make the town itself look altogether better.  Where before you had some simple doodles, now you have a more detailed and gritty map.  Granted, sometimes the map feels more like a page out of “Where’s Waldo?” but that makes it fun and slightly nostalgic to pan the view and looks at your surroundings.  One more major add-in for the city itself in Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville were rivers and coastlines.  This way you can reimagine that famous trailer for another run-of-the-mill zombie-smashing RPG at E3 2014.  Did you like this map? Good.  Save the seed and you can regenerate it every time you play or take a random seed for endlessly replayable apocalypse action.

From dismal winter to decrepit post-apocalypse, the styles really inspire the creeping depression of being the last people on Earth.

From dismal winter to decrepit post-apocalypse, the styles really inspire the creeping depression of being the last people on Earth.

Gangs of Deadsville also features other players.  In Rebuild 2 you had the possibility of running into a gang called The Last Judgement Gang.  They would frequently harass the colony, attack, steal food and generally provide villains for the player.  As your colony grows, it eventually becomes evident that you have to deal with them, and this culminates in a final showdown of epic proportions.  In Gangs, you get to deal with other factions.  As of yet, the only interaction I’ve had was with this russian guy named Gustav.  He always comes by and tries to get my people to gamble away precious resources, buy hookers and accept food loans.  That guy is more of an annoyance, really, but if you piss them off enough, their faction comes crashing in guns-blazing.  This isn’t the only other faction, but it is the only one I have met so far.  You can also run into enemy NPC colonies that basically end up battling you for dominance.  Instead of having a typical cut-and-dried enemy, now you have a real us vs. them feeling with a battle for survival with a group of people you might have been best buddies with in another life.

When I started Gangs of Deadsville, I was given the standard options: make a character, pick a profession set town parameters.  As I clicked through the random name generator, I noticed a few fun monikers I might take on.  Among them were Johnny Dangerously, Arma Geddon and James Tyberius  Kirk.  Clearly the character I was concocting was a man of honor.  As if that didn’t make it obvious enough, the selection of former occupations is spectacular: politician, Police Officer and Doctor are fairly well coveted in the real world, but more realistically, you can choose to play as a Retiree or a Shop Clerk.  Each occupation starts your leader off with an item and a bonus quality, which makes them unique.  Being clever and dashing, I chose the Shop Clerk occupation, which made scavenging easier and got me better deals when bartering and trading.  And of course, started me off with the tool most favored by shop clerks worldwide: a crowbar.  I would have pick a backpack or a flashlight, but shop clerk comes with a crowbar.  I mean, I am not disputing the realism of a game where you spend your time fighting zombies, but every self-respecting gamer knows that the crowbar is default weapon of the scientist.  Jeez.

Reminds me of where my in-laws live minus the mindless, brain-eating hordes.. but then again, they do live in Jersey...

Reminds me of where my in-laws live minus the mindless, brain-eating hordes.. but then again, they do live in Jersey…

Each survivor has their own story involving things ranging from baking and homelessness to gardening and shoulder-lizards.  As your people level you will choose news perks for them, skill enhancements, equipment etc.  Equipment becomes important, too.  While your main source of food should start off angled toward farming, you will still need to avidly scavenge for weapons, tools, ammo, fuel, building materials and an array of other goods that are hard to come by and expensive to purchase.  And with other factions and colonies searching for the same goods, you need to move fast.

But dedicating your people to one set of tasks constantly will leave other areas of your colony neglected.  There are 5 classifications that survivors fall into: defender (red), leader(blue), builder(green), scavenger(yellow) and engineers (purple).  Each of them play an integral role in the sustenance, expansion and strength of your colony.  Sure, everyone likes to kill zombies, but not all your survivors are good at it.  Send a builder out with a hammer to kill zombies, and he can get small groups, but as the numbers of walking dead rise, they will only be able to support the real fighters.  Likewise, an engineer might be able to lend a hand with manpower when expanding the colony into new sectors of the environs, but he is much better suited in a laboratory.  This is where the leader of the town comes in handy.  Sure, you might be a shop clerk, but you are a special shop clerk.  You are able to use your leader for any task and level him up in all skills, while your other survivors only level in their specific skills.  Of course, that makes it so that you are the only non-drone in a colony of ants, but as long as you address them with titles and call them specialists, they shouldn’t rise up in revolt.  I mean, doesn’t “Rage Specialist” sound so much better than “instrument of my own vengeance and violent will”?  Yea, I know, has a sort of ‘I respect your autonomy and special snowflake-ness despite the fact I control your every action’ feel to it.  Just what you need in a leader of men and women.

Cause you also need to keep those fuckers in high spirits, too.  Now the aforementioned hiring of hookers is a good way but costs food and the dignity of many people involved.  A better option is to renovate a nearby bar or church and let your people spend time there.  They can also do ‘time off’ missions in their quarters, but hanging out in a run-down apartment complex is only fun to a point.  There is more to life than seeing how many birds you can hit with your spit from above. Trust me.  Another neat feature of this game are the random events.  People show up at your gates, animals might attack, someone might find a fucking raccoon in the goddamn shed.  Whatever, the odd-ball and.. uh.. RANDOM fucking nature of these events adds a tangential factor to the game, making it feel like it takes place in a real and changing world.

Now, there are zombies in this game.  Did I mention that? Ok, good. Pay the fuck attention.  Now, when the game starts you have a few straggling zed-heads, which are easily dispatched by your survivors, builders, scientists, defenders alike.  But as you progress, your people, who presumably haven’t showered since the fall of modern civilization and can be smelled in the next state over, attract zombies like North Koreans to a bulgogi buffet.  Thus, the zombies start to shamble toward you in ever-growing numbers like the rotting parade of stank-sniffing gut-munchers they are.  This means you need to seriously amp up your game if you don’t want to end up as fertilizer.  Zombies aren’t the only way to die, though.  Go ahead, rely on scavenging as your main food source.  Your people will die THE DAY AFTER YOUR FOOD RUNS OUT!  And your people might die on a mission, get caught up in a random event or just catch a mother fucking fever.  Still more neat mechanics exist, like the ability to switch between real-time and turn-based strategy.  Seriously, the problem is choice!  So reach out, expand your reach and get that technology research moving!  Did I miss that too?

So as you expand you will encounter labs and drive-in movie theatres and other neat shit.  Now, you could ignore the messages and subtle hints, but as you move your game along, you can even get technology up and going again.  Like, refrigeration, movies, PORN!  Christ’s sake PORN man!  Is there a more noble cause to reach back into the annals of knowledge left by the ancients?!  O, yea, there is also the ability farm more efficiently, build better walls, kill zombies more effectively, but shit, man, who doesn’t like to watch other people fuck on film?  It’s purely for research.. and morale.. and stress relief.. or something..

All-in-all, this game allows you to live the fantasy of leading people to salvation through a gurgling masses of horrifying flesh-suckers, and Sarah, the developer, has done everything to make this a title worth your time and money.  The best part is that the game is still coming out with more content.  I mean, that is good news to me!  It means that if the game’s state bothers you, come back to it in a few weeks and there should be another update to explore.

"You, there! Peasant! Throw yourself in front of those zedheads so I can escape." You'll miss the days of just 'tripping the fat guy'

It says “kill 5.651153016444607 massed zombies”.  Documentation of the last fucking time I ever let the engineering team go on defensive maneuvers.

Above you will see an excessively accurate detail of how many massed zombies those guys were fighting.  Evidence of the only thing that truly angers me about this game.  Bugs.  Of course, this is a PRE-RELEASE title available on Steam through the combined auspices of Steam Greenlight and Kickstarter.  But that does not make it any less fucking frustrating when you have a memory error appear on your screen after about an hour and a half of non-stop gameplay.  I mean I can’t even fucking binge-playon my favorite goddamn game!  If I want to waste HOURS of my fucking time murdering zombies and micro-managing my people’s lives, I want it to be uninterrupted by binge-halting errors.  The base game is $14.99, but fuck that.  Don’t do that to yourself.  You WILL love this title.  Just spring for the extra 10$ and get the deluxe edition.  You can even download that AFTER you decide whether you like the base game or not as it is listed as DLC!  This DLC will bring you some neat art and such later, but will also grant purchasers 5 extra professions, each with their own unique item.  So, you’ll be cursed with more fucking choices!  And if you’re into that whole ‘instant-gratification’ thing, the DLC ‘deluxe’ version will also give you Rebuild 1 and Rebuild 2 in all their formerly browser-embedded glory.  That way you can formulate your strategies on the earlier (but by no means easier) games.  So go on Steam, and throw 24.99$ at getting this title moving.  Its end state will be a title to make Sid Meier jealous.  I mean, seriously, that guy is probably like making a title called Sid Meier’s Zombies! Too late, ya bastard! Too fucking late!

You can find more from Northway Games here, follow the development of the Rebuild Series here and check out another title by this development family here.

Hoard, Blazing Fun

Posted on by thre3zekiel

hoardlogoHoard is a game that features fire, gold and glory!  With an original concept and fun, fast-paced gameplay, this title makes me want to replay for hours and hours.  It would also be excellent for LAN parties, if you’re into that sort of thing.

In Hoard you play none other than a real fire-breathing bastard (no not Bill O’Reilly): a dragon.  You are a force of nature, indiscriminate destruction and robbery are your forte.  When I started I made it a simple 1v1.  You always play against a competitor, which gives Hoard a sort of real-time board game feel.  The game is really simple, too.  Destroy everything and everyone you see and take their money. </end article>.. ok maybe it’s not that simple, but still, that is how it plays.

You start of with a distinct advantage, however.  You always start in the center of the map.  That makes it all the easier to venture to other regions and bring your booty back as fast as can be expected.  Once the game starts up, there isn’t much going on.  You have to burn some windmills and crop fields to get a start, but you build up fast.  You cannot be everywhere at once, though, even if there are 4 dragons in play, and a society quickly builds up around you.  Once a windmill has a few fields around it, carts start to wheel toward the cities, which can be burned and robbed.  The carts won’t fill your inventory up and a dragon has a golden lust of immeasurable breadth, so a few carts and maybe a mill will fill you up.  Get that booty back to your lair, too!  Other Dragons are just as hungry for treasure, and will attack you for yours.  Which is a good way to slow them.

Snow? Fuck that! My internal temperature melts titanium, mother fucker!

Snow? Fuck that! My internal temperature melts titanium, mother fucker!

You are an UNSTOPPABLE MENACE! At least until someone stops you.  And fuck me do they try.  At first it’s like, “awwww, so cute, they think they can win!”  Then it’s “O, fuck me, they are winning!”  Once you are defeated (usually by another fucking dragon) you have to fly back to your hoard to recharge.  This is an unfortunate necessity, but use it to your advantage.  Attack your enemies and send them back to their hoard, you can usually get a full trip done before they recharge fully.  Once you get the gold back to your lair, you drop it off, a little slower than I image you should, too.  I was left wondering if the dragon ate the loot and regurgitated it back up in his hoard.  Or maybe he just sits on the loot chest and picks it up with his sphincter muscles.  Heh heh, I heard a hundred people groan at that one!  Either way, the more gold you get the higher your level.  Yup, you level up, and you use those levels for one of four stats. Speed, Carry, Armor and Firebreath.  All pretty self-explanatory.  There is no perfect formula, there is just what matches your technique.  Like fights? Get armor and firebreath. A little extra speed to help with those close escapes, too.  Want to loot everything in the kingdom? Get more Carry, you’ll carry everything you can hold in your.. uh.. kangaroo pouch ; ).   But that isn’t everything! Shit man!

So, as you loot and pillage and burn, the timer, which I forgot to mention, is ticking down.  The further along things get, the more loot carriers level up.  First they are wagons, then full on carts then there are the royal carriages!  Now this is where things really start getting good.  You burn the carriages, they give you loot AND your very own little princess to take back to your lair to terrorize.  Yet, it gets better!  They send knights after you to capture the princess back!  Every single one drops a respectable sum, too, and when her timer runs out, she is ransomed off!  I swear these people must shit gold.

Gives new meaning to a butt-load of loot! Ha ha!

Gives new meaning to a butt-load of loot! Ha ha!

Level up, grab as much gold as you can and when the timer runs out, the scores are tallied to see who was the biggest fire-breathing badass in all the land.  Does it matter that you can burn trees down with your fire? NO! FUCK no!  But as a dragon, isn’t burning trees going to be your first go-to on list of things to test out?  I know it was mine!  Psh, burn that leafy little bitch.  Now, you see in the right side of the picture just up there that little Stonehenge-looking thing?  Yea, that is your new best friend and worst enemy in this game.  Every so often it belches out little powerups that spin in the air like little, sexy pinwheels.  Grab that and you might move faster, spit fireballs, breathe ice or some other cool shit!  But if your enemy gets it? FUCK!  Get that shit, don’t let that miserly prick get it. Just don’t.

What did I miss? Castles, villages, windmills, crops, knights, archers: in this the Joker was right. EVERYTHING burns. O! DLC.  You don’t think all this is enough? Dynamite Roll! was the first DLC featuring bomb carts, which you light and they explode to kill things nearby.  That includes you so, mind the gap.  Sometimes cash crops will appear that give extra cash. And bell-towers in towns provide heal power-ups, and that is useful as fuuuck!  More achievements and more maps in this baby, too.  Then there is the Flame-Broiled SANDwich DLC which takes things to a whole new level, or rather, landscape.  In this one the game flies over to the mystical sands of a desert continent.  Everything looks all cool and middle-eastern, and generally speaking, it looks fucking awesome.  Buildings, castles, enemies.  Fuck, I need to buy this DLC as soon as I get some cash. And with the total package of everything being $11.49 on Steam, you best believe it is worth the dough!

With all the flying and burning, there has to be something about this game that burns my biscuits.  Well, there fucking is!  Each playthrough takes only ten minutes, so naturally, this is a game you could play once before work to get a game fix in, right? DO NOT UNDER ANY FUCKING CIRCUMSTANCES PLAY THIS SHIT BEFORE GOING SOMEWHERE IMPORTANT!  You will play through hours in this game before you realize just how much life you missed! Seriously! Don’t believe me? Play it!  Each match is just such an exhilarating whirl that you will play another, and another, then you’re 35 and still in your parents basement! Agh! Luckily, I only got to 27, so I still have some good years left, but FUCK that was close! Also, those pricks on the Meta-Critic gave this a fucking 65. A SIXTY FUCKING FIVE! This is fun, graphics are respectable and it does its job.  It’s like they focused on the one thing that this game lacks, which would be any fucking story.  But you’re a goddamned dragon! What story do you need?!  Fuck those assholes. They deserve to fester in a dragon’s asshole for a bit! Give them an idea of what shit really looks like!

 

Endless Legend, Strategic Addiction

Posted on by thre3zekiel

header I am currently in the midst of playing a game that is in Pre-release status on Steam.  It is called Endless Legend and is like  Civilization plus Lord of the Rings on LSD.  What do I mean? Well, my favorite race to play as is not the human race, called Vaulters in this series, but this race of Twi’lek/elf hybrids they are calling the Wildwalkers.  That is not what is bothering me, though.  I like this game so far.  It reminds me of Warlock : Master of the Arcane, but serious and sad in a way.  The visuals are bizarre, though, and lovers of traditional fantasy might quirk an eyebrow.  Resources to be found range from simple titanium to massive beak-shaped fungal grows that hum with music, spew steam and make a fabulous loaf of bread.  No, I’m fucking serious. Click for full size so you can read the description on the left.   mycordia

I guess stinky Cthulu bread would’ve been a weird name for a resource, but I’d be surprised if that stuff doesn’t give you explosive diarrhea that shrieks to the tune of Night on Bald Mountain.  Also populating this world are various minor races that have original names… but end up being.. o, I dunno, fucking Dwarfs wearing skull masks, mortally obese combinations of orcs and trolls, centaurs with weird-ass armor etc.  Now, non of this is really an issue.  Many games either create played-out experiences in “fresh, new” environments that end up feeling like something Gandalf was working on in his free time between helping dwarfs slay dragons and setting up the downfall of the Dark Lord.  But this takes some known fantasy conventions, warps them through a parallel dimension and places in your hands.  Granted, there are only four races as compared to Endless Space, a scifi game by the same people, which has 12 races… O, fuck me!  So.. the Vaulters exist in Endless Space, too.  Just so happens that they are originally from Auriga, the world in which you vie for dominance in Endless Legend. Fun.  Anyway, fun game, but my biggest problem.  I started the game and had 3 minor faction towns near mine.  That was ok.  I subjugated the fuckers and made them into my flying bitches.  Not to mention these Haunts, as they are called, are scary as fuck! So, I imagine my enemies screaming their guts out in a combination of horrific fear and profound pain as my haunts literally rip their guts out. Morbid, I know.

Aside from actually stunning visuals, this game has an AWESOME GUI.  Did I just type that? Whatever.  I am in love with the UI.  It is easy to pick up on and learn.. which is good since the game has no tutorial as of yet.  And besides that has intriguing story wisps, which is what I would call it.  There is no real solid story, aside from the brief description of your empire and the weird sermon of the world-generation screen.  The music is fantastic.  It is a lilting fluorescent play and sometimes I find myself just staring at the screen, listening.  Sometimes sad, often that fantasy fanfare badass-ness tears through.  Sometimes both.  It inspires a sort of nationalist fervor for my totally fictional fantasy empire.

My biggest issue is this problem I have with all games like this where I get to pick where I can start.  That is all the game comes to be about for me.  I deleted my first game cause I couldn’t restart and felt that one of my cities could have been better placed… three hexes over.  I have since restarted.. um.. forty-some-odd fucking times and counting.  I remember a time when I didn’t care where my towns were and resources didn’t matter.  I think that was in Civilization 4.  Another reason I adore games like Medieval Total War where the cities are where they are and do NOT fucking move!  But give me the choice to pick where I want the city I start from and it gets to a point eventually where I have to resign and abandon what original excitement I had for the game.  fml.  Eventually I give myself parameters.  “If I have three minor faction towns in my region this start, I can just play, I don’t fucking care if they are giant spider ladies or stupid hydras” and I have only had three in my starting region once.  When I first started this game.  I also tried “if I can research my first technology, which will inevitably be search party, in a relatively quick time, 3-4 turns, this start, then I will roll on with the game.”  But that shit is an even more slippery slope and I get to where I am micro-managing my resource starts every time.  Like I cannot place a city unless it has good science, food AND cash.  But usually if you get a good science start, your food will suffer, if you get a good financial start, your science or production might suffer.  I am convinced that majestic and beautiful as this game is, I might not be allowed to play it simply because I get WAY too focused on the “shit that shouldn’t matter so much” category.  The best part is that the game has a procedurally generated world. That is, every time it’s fucking different! Worst part is, I go to walk away from the game, right?  Play some New Vegas, maybe Hard Reset? NO!  My brain looks at those titles, recalls the awesome moments in each of those games and says “Yea, but can you mold your own empire of weird-ass fantasy people from the dirt up?” Fuck you brain, that is not the point.  So I begrudgingly click play on the same game again and fiddle with some starting elements to hopefully “recapture that first-time feel” and get a good start again.  Which doesn’t happen.  The only hope thereafter is to try to distract myself long enough from the starting elements with a sort of story about the beginning of our empire long enough to get me on track and building enough of an army to kill a buncha guys.  O, well, I mostly wrote this because it is a fun fucking game and I needed something to do to get me away from the game again before it eats up the rest of my night.