Slime Rancher

Slime Rancher

Kind of a simple silly game but it scratched an itch. I liked the collection, exploration, and base building.

Everspace

Everspace

Not my thing. I've never loved keyboard+mouse for action spaceflight. This game doesn't seem to add much to the genre.

The Escapists

A cute game of prison break.

Brief Review

I gave this less than an hour. It isn't my thing. There is much repetition, and it's easy to lose progress. There is some fun game to it, but not worth the effort. 

Surviving Mars

Simcity on Mars

Overview

The Sim City genre has really exploded since Maxis' masterpiece from the 80s. Surviving Mars is a nice balance of sandbox, game, and story.

Three important aspects of Surviving Mars are managing the economy, planning, and experiencing the story.

Economic Management

A large part of the game is managing resources. There are about a dozen different resources and some short supply chains. For the most part, this is satisfying. There is a lot of automation and it's fun to watch your drones carry things around. The transport drone and the cargo rockets from Earth will cover you if you find yourself scare in a resource. It's fun to set up supply chains, and there isn't much stress about getting it perfect because Earth will save you.

Planning and Technology Research

Early on there are a few important decisions to make. Do you try to mine rare minerals to sell to Earth? Do you research advanced factories, buy the factories from earth, or just buy the finished good from Earth? Can you harvest loose surface metal or do you need to build a metal extractor?

In the two games I played, I didn't feel these decisions were important. I had enough money that I could buy whatever I needed from Earth. Factories are cheap to buy but expensive to research, and having one of each is enough to last for a very long time. 

Research is slow and most of the upgrades don't feel especially meaningful.

Planning location and contents of living domes is very important and interesting.

The Story

There are about a dozen "mysteries" to choose from every time you play. These have only a mild impact on the game, but do provide a nice distraction. Every time I was getting bored, this nice piece of fiction would show up to engage me. All in all, it is minor but nice.

Complaints

Lack of Depth

My biggest complaint is the lack of depth. There aren't that many different things to build. There aren't many different types of resources to exploit. The research path doesn't seem to vary much. I played two games. Neither was very tense, but I suspect that the tension wouldn't be fun. Much of the game isn't precise, but the game is quite forgiving. Being forced to play more precise would likely not be much fun.

Managing Colonists

I read an excellent piece of advice that said to not micromanage the colonists. Dealing with them is often frustrating and the UI for managing them is clunky. Sometimes this is a big deal. Rather than stress about it, it's better to play on an easier difficulty and try to organize your buildings in such a way for them to sort themselves out. Still, given that colonist management is the majority of the late game, this was disappointing.

Recommendation

This is a really tough one. As a Sim City sandbox game on Mars I got 20 hours of fun. The "game" aspect was not strong, but it was fun to see the different events once or twice. If pressed, I would reluctantly give Surviving Mars a thumbs-down.

We Need To Go Deeper

It's kind of cute, but there are so many good games to play with friends, this is not anywhere near the top of the list.

This War of Mine

A grim survival game that highlights the tragedy of war.

Overview

Due to slow gameplay, I only spent 8 hours on this game.

Edit: I went back and gave it another 16 hours. It didn't change my mind very much.

Theme

Solid, if you enjoy a depressing tale of survival in a war torn city.

Innovation

 Medium. The survival genre is overdone. This is still a game of building defense during the day and scavenging at night. 

What sets This War of Mine apart is how it humanizes the NPCs. Do you steal from your elderly neighbors to feed yourself for another day? The dialog, reinforced by negative consequences, do a good job at bringing out your emotion.

Gameplay

Meh. The day phase is almost interesting, but I spent most days with little to do, and the survivors were often too tired or wounded to do anything anyway. The night phase is fairly fun exploration. I didn't experience much combat. My scavengers were rarely armed, and even the easiest combat left them lethally wounded.

Permadeath

Or rogue-lite. The permadeath aspect is pretty good. Like any good survival game, there are many problems happening at once. As long as the player can keep them all in check, everything is fine. Once one thing gets out of hand, it is likely another will soon follow until the catastrophes snowball and everyone is dead. This War of Mine handles this well. 

My big complaint is that many systems have to be discovered through trial and error. If I could reload a save game, that wouldn't be a big deal. But with permadeath, it's a hassle to have to start over just because I didn't understand one simple mechanic. More on this later.

Polish

Bad. Well, the visual and story polish are well done, but many things could be done to improve the fun factor. Some examples:

• During the day, don't blur out the screen during pause. It's already awkward to give out orders, at least let me do it when the game is paused.
• Once you research the axe, all of your furniture is granted a new "destroy" icon. It is easy to accidentally click, and for most built furniture you rarely want to do it. I would vastly prefer to spend 10 seconds clicking through obscure menus to destroy an object once per game than to constantly fear demolishing my beds.
• Unforgiving for stupid crap. It's easy to accidentally build the wrong object and you can't cancel it. If I put a chair in the wrong location, let me move it.

Transparency

This War of Mine hits on a pet peeve. I dislike when a game has a simple mechanic that is obscure. For example, bandages will heal one level of damage (like from "severely wounded" to "wounded"). This healing happens at the end of the night phase. However, this isn't described anywhere. Also, wounds more severe than "lightly wounded" cannot be healed through bed rest, even though when it bed it says you are "recovering". I believe "recovering" means "the wound won't get worse".

I understand when a game hides the underlying mechanics so that the player can figure them out. However, simple mechanics should be clearly disclosed. 

Recommendation

I don't recommend This War of Mine. Perhaps if there was a fast-forward button and a better manual I would enjoy it more. 

Deep Sky Derelicts

Dereliction of Gameplay

Turn based Final Fantasy style combat with RPG elements and unique style.

Overview

At it's core, Deep Sky Derelicts is the classic game we have seen over and over. You have a 3-person squad that takes turns doing damage to the enemies. Usually you attack but sometimes you might heal, defend, or buff. It has been compared to Darkest Dungeon and Slay the Spire. While it shares much with Darkest Dungeon (my review) , it is nothing like Slay the Spire.

Combat

Most of the game is spent on the combat screen. I find this genre of combat old and tired but Derelicts keeps it fresh through the use of randomly drawn cards. All in all, for this genre, the combat is satisfying.

RPG

There are a few classes, and each class has a few choices for subclasses. You have four gear slots and each slot has two mod, for a total of twelve equipment choices. This gives a lot of choices for customization. Finding new items was fun and leveling was fun.

Exploration

The energy system and map exploration is pretty weak. It doesn't detract much, but doesn't add much either. Still, it helps bring together the fiction searching ancient abandoned ships.  Furthermore, the energy system is fairly unobtrusive and far less annoying than the sanity mechanic in Darkest Dungeon. 

Story

It is often difficult for a tactical game to get me engaged in the story, and Deep Sky Derelicts doesn't come close. It doesn't take itself seriously, the side quests are few and would be bland if they weren't ridiculous. Instead of the tired "kill three enemies" it's "kill three enemies who are robots who think they are ancient heroes and are named after the three musketeers".

The art is unique. If you like that comic book futuristic horror style, this game is worth it for that alone.

This music is fine but repetitive -- almost intrusive but not quite.

Bug and Annoyances

Equipment is a bit of a chore. You find a whole lot of gear. Much of it is obviously junk or not for your class. The rest has to be compared to what you already have equipped. The interface isn't great for this. Modern games tooltip your current item to compare. 

Side quests aren't tracked well. I found the mcguffin, who was I supposed to give it to?

In my game, I twice encountered an enemy with 0 health. If he went before me, the game crashed. If I went before him, I could kill him. This cost me a few restarts.

In the end, the game seemed unwinnable. On the final mission, I could not find a way to unlock the doors. At this point I was very bored with the game so I only spent five minutes trying to google a solution. 

Deeper than the Darkest Dungeon

This game is very similar to Darkest Dungeon, which is quite popular. Personally, I enjoyed Deep Sky Derelicts more than Darkest Dungeon. While Darkest Dungeon had a far superior environment and felt grittier, I disliked the combat. Darkest Dungeon felt grindy, but Deep Sky Derelicts feels repetitive, a subtle distinction.

Recommendation

I don't recommend Deep Sky Derelicts. Even though it fixed two complaints I have about Darkest Dungeon, it is still not engaging enough. However, if you are a fan of that Final Fantasy style combat, perhaps Deep Sky Derelicts is for you.