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.

Endless Space 2

The never-ending sequel to the never-ending space 4X.

It surprises me how little the 4X genre has changed in the last 30 years. Endless Space adds some interesting features, but it's fails to address the core gameplay issues that really make or break a 4X game.

When comparing Endless Space 2 to a classic like Masters of Orion, I am struck by how many of the new systems feel like they add complexity without depth. For example, consider space combat.

Space Combat

There are an amazing number of options for space combat. There are different hulls, half a dozen basic types of weapon, two defense systems, and dozens of optional modules. All of those can be further modified into a mind-boggling number of combinations. Using a hero adds a whole new dimension of specific fleet bonuses. Then, depending on the engagement, you can choose from a number of battle plans. That all sounds great, but in the end you are just playing rock-paper-scissors. If the AI is smart enough to counter a focused build, the best strategy is to use a balanced mix. 

To be fair, it's not quite that simple. When you research better scissors, the enemy has to build more rocks to counter. However, the complexity involved is largely unnecessary.

Heroes

Including heroes in this type of game is always a bit awkward. It's easy for them to be either meaningless or overpowered. The balance seems about right in Endless Space 2. My biggest complaint is the skills interface. For the most part, the skill choice is obvious depending if the hero leads a fleet or sits on a planet. However, the interface makes it difficult to distinguish between the two. Eventually I dreaded having to choose new skills. Also, sometimes it is unclear where a hero would be most effective. I really want a button to auto-assign the hero to where he will be most effective. It doesn't have to be perfect, but I really don't want to sit around doing math to figure out where to send my economy hero ever 10 turns.

Species

There are quite a few different species in the game. This is a great feature that's been popular since Masters of Orion. However, this implementation leaves something to be desired. 

The worst problem is the annoying micromanagement. I want a button to "optimize research" or something like that. Such a button exists, but it doesn't work. This is a constant problem because of population growth, planetary developments, terraforming, and population transfer.

There is a missing feature to destroy population. For this, there are some poor workarounds. You can convert population into generic military force (which is wasted during peacetime). That would be fine except it takes precious planetary build time. Also, I don't think you can select the specific species to convert, which defeats the purpose. Another solution is to send population to a full planet. They spend the rest of the game in orbit. That's fine, but it feels like cheating. It also requires a planet that you don't mind being constantly full and unable to change the species. The easy solution for this would be to get rid of the "send them away" loophole and then provide another mechanism to remove the population. Perhaps the military conversion is good enough, even though it is expensive.

Politics

Actually, this feels about right. There is a lot of complexity there, but I was able to largely ignore it and just suffer the consequences. It remains an area where I can get better at the game, and it doesn't seem overbearing. 

System Build Queues

Why is this so hard to get right? For every colony, I want to start with building-A, building-B, and building-C. I want a button to automatically filter out upgrades that use scarce resources. Some upgrades, I don't want to see unless my colony is sufficiently developed. The AI governors are terrible, and for me, this should be the fun part of the game. The interface is poor. There are only 20 or 30 total possible things to build -- why do I have to scroll so much, and why isn't there a brief summary of what each upgrade does? This should be a core features of the game, why is it worse than what we had 30 years ago?

Diplomacy

The diplomacy in these games is always pretty bad. This one seems better, but not great. Still, I'm happy to see these system improve.

Story / Random Events

This was kind of new to me and it was surprisingly satisfying. It injects a bit of flavor into a dry game and mixes things up a bit. I couldn't really tell how impactful the events are. I imagine it might drive diplomacy and alliances. It might give incentive to avoid a full peaceful or military strategy.

Research

My main complaint is the poor interface on the technology tree. It takes too long to figure out what each technology does. 

Conclusion

I got too bored to complete my first game. I was spending 90% of my time doing tasks which should have been automated or simplified. I don't know what the gold standard is today for a 4X space game, but I hope it isn't this.

Crashlands

 Crashlands

A fun little game with some action, crafting, and collection elements. Kind of like Don't Starve, but less survival and more action. It has more direction and is much less of a sandbox than Don't Starve.

It's a fine game for light action and some crafting. I'd rather play Diablo, Don't Starve, or Realm of the Mad God, but for an easy single-player experience, Crashlands is just fine.

 Bomber Crew

A cute game of crew management.

Overview

In Bomber Crew, you send your plane out to do bombing missions in WW2 Western Europe. Most encounters involve trying to destroy a ground target while being harassed by enemy fighters. Most tasks are pretty simple but the meat of the game comes when you need to do too many things at once. 

Various Mechanics

Management

For the most part, your seven crew members do not need to be managed. When everything is going well, very little interaction is required. The stress of the game comes when problems arise. If the electrical system goes out, you need to order someone to repair it, then later order him back to his station. When a lot of things go wrong at the same time, it is overwhelming. Two gunners run out of ammo, the mechanic needs medical attention, an engine catches fire, and you are passing over your bombing target -- what do you do? This stress brilliantly captures the feel of "long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror", although without the boredom.

RPG

Your crew gains levels, you buy equipment, you unlock new stuff, you improve your airplane. The RPG elements could be improved, but they aren't bad for such a simple game.

Permadeath

The game is a little awkward when you lose your plane and crew. Instead of losing the game, you get replacements. These replacements are fairly well leveled, but likely weaker than what you had. This means that death just makes the game harder until you can recover. However, it makes me lose the connection I feel with my crew. Losing your plane is fairly easy to do.

Mechanics That Don't Work Well

This game has some cool mechanics that don't really play well.

Parachutes: In practice, it is rare to be in a situation where you need parachutes and have time to use them. Earlier in the game, medkits are far more useful.

Item Unlocks: This just feels clunky to me. Why not have everything unlocked from the beginning but be cost prohibitive? 

Survival Skills: If you plane goes down behind enemy lines, your crewmen might survive. That's cool and all, but it wasn't an important part of the game. My crew are far more likely to die during a mission. This mechanic should either be magnified or removed.

Crew Advancement: This is a huge missed opportunity. You only have one set of crew, they have unique roles, and death is reasonably frequent. When a crewman dies, you recruit a replacement. When a crewman is wounded, he is ready for the next battle. This isn't bad, but with a few tweaks, it could have been a really fun system of recruitment and training, similar to XCom. You could maintain backup crew that slowly gain levels from training. On easy missions you could swap some of your backup crew to give them more xp. With a full backup crew, losing your primary crew wouldn't hurt, but if you then lost your backup crew that could signal the end of the game. Forcing wounded crew to lose a few missions while they recover would make for interesting strategic choices. The frustrating thing is that all of those system almost exist -- crew gets wounded, there is a screen for recruitment, etc.

Other Annoyances

• Ordering the crew is often awkward. If a wounded guy is next to a turret, clicking in the area might heal the crew, man the turret, or just stand there doing nothing.
• Not enough feedback for who is selected. You are ordering people around but didn't realize you had the pilot selected? The ship starts to plummet.
• Selecting things is difficult. I've lost a few missions because I simply couldn't convince the crewman to pick up a medkit. I still haven't figured this out, even after asking Google.
• Parts of the plane are difficult to access. The inner port engine is hard to click on. The bomber station is hard to click on while doing an emergency dive. 

Should You Buy It

Despite the complaints, I do recommend Bomber Crew. It is cheap, easy to get into, and fun. It has some depth and replayability. I didn't finish the campaign, but someone with more patience, a faster brain, or the willingness to save-cheat would not have any problems.