Niche

A genetics survival game.

Overview

Niche is a turn based strategy game where your animals have a relatively short life span but can reproduce.  Traits are varied, some are better than others depending on the local biome. To win, you must explore islands until you eventually come across your "home" island.

Genetics

There is a good variety of traits that can be passed down. Some traits are simply better than others, but most depend on the other traits the creature has and the biome it is in. For example, "can hold breath" and "can swim fast" are good to have together, but pointless if you don't have both, and terrible if there is no water.

Creatures have a dominant and recessive gene, either of which can be passed. In addition, you can assign "mutations" to really speed the breeding process.

Survival

On each map you must find food and nesting materials which keeping warm and safe from predators. There are many ways to accomplish this -- you could have mighty creatures that hunt, or poisonous creatures that forage. The trick is to maintain variety in your herd with individual creatures able to successfully fill a role. For example, it's good to have a hunter, a forager, and a swimmer but if you mate two of those you will end up with offspring that is good at nothing.

The Fun

This is an interesting take on a genetics game. Because of mutations, you can change the composition of your tribe relatively quickly. 

Every island has interesting tactical challenges.

The Boring

Progressing through islands is somewhat of a maze, although there are spoilers online. I ended up in "newbie land" for a very long time and eventually got bored. 

There is a lot of micromanagement, and I am unsure how important it is. Breeding might require carefully finding the best match in the tribe, or maybe you can just generically call some of the animals "good for breeding". There are "immunity factors" which are passed down, and you are forced to pay attention. 

When moving around the map, I want more of the information readily available. When I select an animal and consider gathering food, I often have to switch screens to see how good he is at gathering. That should be quickly available. When considering mating, I have to look at the DNA screen and then switch over to the mutation screen to get the full picture. Those two screens should have been combined.

When an animal is sick, you don't want other animals near it. However, you can only see if an animal is sick when you click on him. This means I often have to double check which animals are sick. This should be clear on the main screen.

There are three overlays for the different senses. Having to switch around is a pain. They could all be combined, or if that is too busy, let the use choose which filters are on. I always wanted "sight" and "hearing" and I never wanted "smell". 

When moving, sometimes available hexes showed as unavailable until I changed the camera angle. That's a bug as far as I'm concerned.

Should You Buy It?

My recommendation is no. The tactical level is the majority of the game, and it's tedious. It seems that optimal play would be to stay in the newbie islands for a long time to collect a ridiculous amount of food, and then evolve your tribe in a way that doesn't collect food well. The mutation system is good --breeding in this game would be unplayable without it -- but it takes away from the breeding feel.

Note that this review is based on one incomplete playthrough. It's possible I took a bad turn and missed out on the fun of the game. If you do give the game a try, I would recommend reading travel tips. The rest of the game is okay to play with or without spoilers depending on your preference.

Deep Rock Galactic

A 4-person coop exploration shooter.

Rock and Stone

In Deep Rock Galactic you play a future dwarf mining for a soulless mega corporation. It's best with four players but can be played with fewer and is plenty of fun solo. You have to accomplish the mission goal while being swarmed with alien bugs. There are moments of fun exploration and moments of the terror of being overrun. 

The Good

Combat is fun. Exploring is fun. Mining is fun. If you prefer one of those aspects, you can play a class that excels at it.

The atmosphere is great -- the uncaring corporate executives, the casual racism against elves, the love of mining.

The level system is pretty good. You gain levels and unlock things. It gives you a goal to focus on, if mining ore and killing bugs isn't enough on it's own.

The community is great. If your friends are lame you can get on Discord to find groups. Mostly, they are too good for my tastes -- they blaze through missions and are all high level. But they are friendly and don't mind helping out noobs.

The Bad

There is nothing bad, you pointy-eared leaf lover.

Should You Buy It?

Yes. If you liked Vermintide and Left for Dead and have three friends, Deep Rock Galactic is a no-brainer. I wouldn't get it for single-player, but playing with one or two friends is plenty of fun. 

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup - Tournament Edition

 Dungeon Crawl

Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (DCSS) is the best roguelike game out there. Once or twice a year they hold a tournament to coincide with a major version release.

Tournament Play

I'm still playing a lot of dcss. You can read more about it in my previous review of dcss. Recently I tried out one of the tournaments. You join a team and play for about two weeks. Your team gets points based on what it achieves during that time. 

The whole concept is a bit silly. An experienced team might be able to cover all of the achievements and try to figure out how to optimize score, but an intermediate team probably just wants to get as many wins as they can. 

Some of the points categories are wildly disparate. Like, "fastest real-time game" vs. "fewest turns taken". Those are quite different because to minimize turns taken requires more thought, while a fast game will be very inefficient. Other categories require exploration, getting runes, or arbitrary challenges, all of which conflict with being fast or efficient. 

Furthermore, DCSS is about the most solitary game I can think of. Most of the game is made of quick almost-obvious decisions where a different choice is only marginally better or worse. When you make 1000 decisions in six hours, there isn't much room for collaboration. 

Why Play Tournament?

Despite the silly and contradictory nature of the tournaments, they are great fun. The different achievements encourage new types of play, but since winning is important you don't want to flex too far from your comfort zone. Teams might seem silly, but they give some community and make it easier to ask for help in rough spots.

So, overall, the tournament was great and I plan to play more in the future.

Opus Magnum

A flexible puzzle game of automating machinery.

Overview

Since this was a well-reviewed game, it was a no-brainer for me to pick up. I typically like this sort of game where you build machines. This one has a story and crisp graphics and controls.

Unfortunately, while Opus Magnum seems to have potential, I didn't find it to be fun. 

Puzzles

Each puzzle consists of building a machine to turn raw materials into a finished product. You are given a wide sandbox to accomplish this. While this seems like a good thing, it means that all puzzles are pretty easy to solve in a brute-force kind of way. Once the puzzle is finished, you can see how well you did compared to the rest of the world. That's a great feature, but there are three metrics -- cost (how many pieces did you use), speed (how many turns does the machine require to finish), and efficiency (how many tiles did you cover). 

Having different metrics is great for the sandbox feel. You can choose to optimize for one metric or sort of balance efficiency among them all. However, the game never rises beyond the sandbox. It is possible to set arbitrary goals, but that's not how I want to play puzzle games.

Modes of Play

Three of my Steam friends had already played the game. When you complete a puzzle, it compares it to your Steam friends. That helped engage my competitive spirit.

Some puzzles weren't interesting and I would brute-force a solution. Others engaged my desire for elegance. I tried to "always optimize speed" but my designs were similar and repetitive.

Should You Buy It?

While Opus Magnum isn't for me, I think a lot of people can find value from it. I've done a lot of programming, and playing Opus Magnum is very much like refactoring code. Someone who find programming fun and isn't burned out by it might really love Opus Magnum. Also, someone who generally enjoys machine puzzles but isn't hardcore might find these puzzles challenging. 

Oculus VR

 Oculus Quest

VR gaming is pretty much there.

History

The first halfway decent 3D game I saw was Magic Carpet. It used stereogram dots, where you uncross your eyes to see 3D. It wasn't totally satisfying, but it showed what could be done. I am surprised that it has taken 25 years for good 3D games to be available.

Quest 2

The Oculus Quest 2 is a standalone wireless headset with two wireless controllers. It can run independently of any other device, or it can be used as a dumb headset to play PC games in 3D. There are a lot of mediocre games available, but there are some really amazing experiences out there. 

Games

I'm still pretty new to it, but here are the good games I've played.

Beatsaber: This is at least half of the reason I wanted an Oculus. It's a simple rhythm game, but you get to swing your controllers like lightsabers and occasionally dodge obstacles flying at you. Very satisfying. 

The Room: I liked the PC editions in this series, so getting it for Oculus was a no brainer. This was amazing, at least to me as a new Oculus owner. The puzzles are less intricate and perhaps easier than PC versions, but the immersion is fantastic.

Red Matter: Suggested to me because I liked The Room. Very immersive, simpler puzzles.

Bigscreen: A strangely satisfying social app to watch movies. For watching movies by yourself, this likely won't replace the convenience of a TV, although it gives you a large screen in a portable format. Someone else using the TV? Want a big screen while lying in bed? Put on the headset. Where Bigscreen really shines is for watching movies with other people. Want to see a movie with a friend in another city? Easy. You have avatars to see each other and the voice chat works well. Also, you can join a large theater with strangers to recreate the movie-going experience during quarantine.

PC Games

I've downloaded a few crappy PC games to try. After some annoying configuration, it all worked well. The only "good" game I've played is Star Wars Squadrons. If you are the kind of person to buy a $100 joystick to shoot down TIE fighters, you will love shooting down TIEs in 3D. 

I was hoping to play Skyrim and Fallout 4 in VR, but they are separate applications that command full price. I've played both of them to death so I doubt I'll buy the VR version.

Price

The price is reasonable for anyone thinking of purchasing a game system. I hope that Oculus will compete well with Playstation and Nintendo. 

Negatives

The biggest negative is that Oculus is owned by Facebook and they require you link your Facebook account. It might be possible to create a dummy Facebook account, but I have heard tales of dummy accounts being deleted and people losing all of their Oculus software. The Oculus has a camera and microphone, and I would not be surprised if Facebook used them for their own nefarious purposes.

The Oculus Quest 2 is mostly consumer friendly, but it still has quirks. The head strap, face plate, and lens holders aren't perfect although there are aftermarket solutions. The lenses are easy to scratch and they don't offer replacements. If you wear glasses, they don't do vision correction in software so you need your own lens. The provides solutions are annoying (wear contacts or use the headset extender to give more room for glasses). There are aftermarket solutions which work pretty well, but now you are getting into the realm of hobbyist. 

Should You Buy It?

I'm just gonna go ahead and say yes. The Quest 2 surprised me with how well it works. For value, think of it like a console with an upfront cost and $15-$30 games, most of which are pretty short.

 Mindustry

Half building game, half tower defense. Note: This review is a year late.

Overview

You build factories, mines, and conveyors to create ammo which feeds weapons. Those weapons destroy invading enemies.

Compare To

Factorio

Mindustry is like a streamlined version of Factorio. You can't do nearly as much cool design as you can in Factorio, but some people find Factorio to be overwhelming, or don't like having to build complicated systems.

Rimworld

These games don't really have much in common, other than the occasional wave of enemies to fight. Rimworld is best when thought of more as a simulator than a strategy game, while Factorio is just building and fighting with a very thin plot.

Tower Defense

Although Mindustry seems like a tower defense game, it really isn't. Tower Defense is usually about efficient tower placement to counter enemies. Mindustry is more about building efficient factory and delivery systems.

Should You Buy It?

Yes. Mindustry is free or cheap. It's easy to get into and plenty fun. If the premise has any appeal, it is a no-brainer to install and give it a shot. I prefer the PC version, but the mobile app also has good reviews.