I sure hope you folks enjoy watching these
as much as I like making 'em,
because... I don't know, these are fun!
These episodes always take us
a couple of months to put together,
so by the time each one comes out,
James has already got
a new batch of games to recommend.
Anyway! You know the drill.
We don't promise that all these games are good,
just that they're different.
Their design is interesting in some way,
even if the most interesting thing about them
is how they failed to achieve
what they're setting out to do.
Anyway, enough talk. Have at you!
Zero Time Dilemma.
Years ago, we recommended 999 in one of these episodes.
It's been quite the journey since then,
but now the franchise (or at least this chapter of it)
is coming to a close, and the story is perhaps
one of the best yet in the series.
The graphics... not so much, but don't let that deter you.
This game may handily demonstrate
just how much better 2D graphics can look,
and that switching to 3D isn't always the best choice,
but, if you've followed the series so far,
you owe it to yourself to finish this one out.
And if you haven't checked these games out yet,
well, maybe get on that.
Inside.
We would be remiss if we didn't mention this one.
Brought to you by the creators of Limbo,
this is a dark and mysterious run
through a puzzle-filled testing facility.
James didn't find it quite as compelling as Limbo,
but it's still a solid title,
and the atmosphere alone is worth your time
if you want to learn how to build
that sort of oppressive feeling into your own games.
Reverse Crawl.
James just tore through this one.
It's one of those, "just one more battle" type games
that'll have you so sucked in
that you won't realize the sun is rising and,
oops, you didn't sleep.
The really interesting thing about this game
is that it takes the "Heroes of Might and Magic"
or "Kings Bounty" formula,
and does away with the exploration.
Now, that might sound terrible -
James felt that way too, at first.
I mean, exploration kind of seems like
the lifeblood of those games.
But by doing away with the exploration,
Reverse Crawl is able to make the combat much tighter,
with specifically designed encounters
and a progression system that really makes the player
consider what they want to be able to play with.
Add to that the fact that the player
can't just barge into battle with a
ridiculously broken combination of units,
but instead has to pick from a wide variety
of pre-made unit groupings for each encounter,
and you get a tightly designed experience.
You can even beat it in one night if you don't sleep.
I don't recommend it, but, I'm just saying, you could.
([evil laugh])
(And this, my distinguished gentlebots,)
(is the new SteamWorld!)
SteamWorld Heist.
Since we're talking strategy games, let's talk about this
pleasantly surprising little gem.
This is a game that takes all the conventions
of our isometric or top-down tactics games,
and puts them on a 2D plane.
And it works!
It works because the designers considered
how 2D might change the formula,
what they might be able to do with the design in 2D
that'd be harder in one of those other formats.
And the conclusion they came to
was to make you aim manually.
Yep, this is a tactics game like any other,
but sort of like Valkyria Chronicles,
when it comes time to shoot, you've gotta eyeball it.
With no reticle to guide you,
this makes variables like cover
become a much more interesting and interactive
element of the game than we saw
even in games like XCOM.
So, if you're looking for a quirky tactics game,
or even just like thinking
about how we can push the formula,
you might want to check out SteamWorld Heist.
(And of course it all went according to plan...)
Now, a whole lot of you asked
if we could talk about some tablet and mobile games
on one of these lists, so let me just throw
a slew of those at you
before we get back to the weird PC games.
Let's start with Galactic Keep.
Galactic Keep is exactly what I always wanted
a storybook adventure to be when I was young.
It takes some of the work done in
Steve Jackson's excellent Sorcery series
to the next level and really makes you feel
like you're playing a solo tabletop role-playing module.
Seriously. I'm not sure I've ever felt more
like I was at the Barrier Peaks
without a GM screen on the table.
Out There.
This game has no combat, and yet, it is brutal.
It's a roguelike survival adventure
where you are the last surviving member
of humanity trying to make it home.
Its vignettes are excellently written,
but unlike most story driven games,
you will not easily reach the end of this story.
I think it's the very fact that Out There
presents a harsh universe where you will die
time and again before ever being
able to see one of its many endings that
kept drawing James back.
If you like sci-fi, if you like roguelikes,
if you like narrative and are interested in a
brutal challenge that never once
involves firing a blaster, you better check this out.
Icebound Concordance.
Speaking of writing, here is a game
that is all about writing.
Or rather, it's all about rewriting.
The game itself is a conversation
with an AI built from the mind of a writer,
and you are there to help it edit and rewrite its last book.
That's pretty interesting in its own right,
but then you get to the real bit:
the Icebound Compendium.
If you're willing to pony up $25
to pick up the companion book,
you are in for something... novel.
I can't say much about the Compendium
without spoiling things, but,
suffice it to say that periodically
throughout the game you will be prompted
to search through the book for pages
related to some of what's going on on-screen.
Then, the game will use your iPad camera
to scan the pages and to
make the book itself come to life.
My only complaint here is that
the book itself is poorly made.
The cover fell off the binding of James' copy
before it even got through the mail.
Of course, that's a sample size of one James,
so hopefully yours will be sturdier.
(♪ This is the Guild of Dungeoneering,)
(♪ On our quest, we're never fearing...)
The Guild of Dungeoneering.
This game is here simply as an example
of what a difference platform can make.
James found this to be a mediocre strategy title
when he first played it on PC,
but on a tablet, its lighter shorter sessions
and more casual strategy experience really works.
If you want a relaxing strategy game
to play on the go, it's worth trying.
Really though, this game is worth
buying for the songs alone.
(♪ The Guild of Dungeoneering!)
(♪ Curse and swear, but don't despair,)
(♪ The way out appears to be over there,)
(♪ I think we're lost, but what do we care?)
(♪ The Guild of Dungeoneering!)
Templar Battleforce.
I haven't tried this game on PC,
but the mobile version was exactly what
James was looking for in a
slightly more hardcore tactics game.
If you want to play Space Hulk, but the actual modern
Space Hulk video game didn't cut it for you,
get Templar Battleforce.
It's everything Space Hulk should be.
It's got an interesting class system,
a varied advancement tree,
multiple ways to customize units of the same class,
and yet the levels are short enough to play on the go.
Alright, that's enough mobile games.
Let's return to the PC, and let's get weird.
Cat Lady.
We so rarely get to recommend adventure games,
so I'm glad we get to talk about
this piece of weirdness.
There are a lot of counter-intuitive
design decisions in this game:
sometimes on purpose, sometimes as pitfalls
of the old-school adventure game ethos,
but if you're looking for something
surreal, creepy, and dark,
Cat Lady has you covered.
The art style perfectly fits the madness,
feeling at times like Monty Python channeling Poe.
And the decision to do away with the mouse entirely
in an old-school adventure game
and streamline things by going with
a keyboard interface alone?
That'll put you on a
"Games You Might Not Have Tried" list.
Fran Bow.
We can't talk about horror games
without talking Fran Bow.
If you want disturbing and strange,
this game has it in spades,
but it's the ambiguity of this game that I love.
I'll try not to spoil anything, but let's just say,
the game leaves itself open for
interpretation, and I think that's great.
Too often, horror stories try to explain
all their nightmarish surreality,
and in doing so, kill the horror.
That's not to say that horror stories
shouldn't make sense, but leaving your
nightmare world as an ambiguous metaphor
is often so much better than feeling
like you have to tie up all the loose ends
by saying something like,
"See? It was a dream all along!"
Fran Bow is an excellent example of this.
Killing Time at Lightspeed.
I love the premise of this game.
You've left Earth. You're traveling away at light speed,
but you can still see your Facebook feed.
But here's the catch: at relativistic speed,
every time you hit refresh, a year has passed.
You can touch base for one snapshot
of everyone's lives back home
then it whirls past and time moves on -
for them, if not for you.
My only complaint is that most of the time,
most of my friends back home simply
talked about the news, and for me at least,
that's not how social networks work.
That's a big part of it to be sure,
but it's in the background of all the tiny
day-to-day things that people post.
I would have loved to have more emphasis
on the personal, on the relationships of
people and their daily lives, as that
backdrop would have given the big events
of the world that much more impact,
seeing how they affected the people I loved
even as I whipped away from them at the speed of light.
Anyway, neat game. Try it out.
And finally, Quadrilateral Cowboy.
What happens when you mix stealth capers with
command line hacking and a PS1 visual aesthetic?
Well, you get Quadrilateral Cowboy.
Your mileage may vary with the art style,
but there is something so cyberpunk
about actually hooking up a computer to a jack
and having to turn off a security laser
with a series of semicolon delineated commands.
Am I alone, though, in this making me long for
a multiplayer game where one player plays
the stealth action hero, and the other one
plays their off-site hacker buddy?
Like, unlocking the doors and shutting off
security cameras in the nick of time
with a command-line interface?
That would be rad. Somebody, get on that.
Anyway, I think that'll do it for today.
Thank you for watching; recommend some of
your own weird favorites in the comments below,
and we will see you next week.