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Humble PC and Android Bundle 14
Sep. 13th, 2016 04:40 pmPlease Don't Touch Anything - A relatively straightforward puzzle game in which you’re seated at a console with a big red button and asked not to touch anything. There are 25 different “endings” to find by touching everything. Some of the puzzles are maddeningly obtuse, but it’s not like you can lose this game.
You Must Build A Boat - A pure sequel to 10000000 with slightly more plot (you’re sailing from place to place, trying to recruit crew and build a larger boat) but the exact same mechanics (“run” as far as you can in the dungeon by matching tiles to defeat monsters and open chests). It has a nice, smooth difficulty curve and a bunch of extra variety versus 10000000, but it’s essentially the same game. Tile-matching makes numbers go up. Works for me!
Knights of Pen & Paper +1 Edition - This is less a real rpg and more a “numbers go up” casual game; the plot is fourth-wall-ignoring fluff (you can buy items for the room your players are in to enhance their battle prowess; and the GM and table are always visible). I give them credit for there being a decent amount of strategy to the battles (in terms of ailments / debuffs you can inflict and the roles the different classes can fill) even though you can choose to fight more, easier battles rather than fewer hard ones at almost any point in the game; and you can always grind as much as you want. It goes on a bit too long for its conceit: I suspect that the “+1 Edition” added too much bonus content without actually giving me a credit roll to delineate the postgame segments.
Knights of Pen & Paper 2 - A true sequel in that it cleans up some mechanics, improves the dungeon-crawling segments and presents a new plot, but is otherwise unchanged. Upon reflection, I should probably have waited longer after playing the first game to play the sequel, as it’s so very similar it gets tiring. (Though if you were going to play one or the other, you can safely jump straight to this one.)
Desktop Dungeons - I found this very similar to DungeonUp: To quote myself, “A pseudo-roguelike dungeon crawler with randomly generated (but persistent) puzzle-ish levels--and I think calling it a resource-management puzzle game wouldn't be inappropriate.” This has a different frame story (town-building) and more variety to classes and special abilities, but the fundamental strategic gameplay of “figure out what order to fight things in so you’re strong enough to beat the boss; and hope you’re lucky because otherwise you’ll die a lot” holds true. I think there was some vital strategy that I managed to miss, as I managed a number of runs where I could reach the boss, but with nothing else left on the screen still couldn’t beat them. Fun for a couple of hours, but ultimately I found this frustrating.
Badland - An interesting puzzle-platformer where there’s only one control: Tap to go up. It’s amazing how interesting you can make a game based just on that. The aesthetics are lovely and the gameplay falls into the “simple but interesting” category; but for whatever reason it didn’t grab me. I may revisit it.
Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon - Another spin on the puzzle-platformer concept: In this one, you’re a spider who must go from room to room in a manor house, spinning webs (with a limited number of strands) to catch all of the insects and get the most points doing so. Again, it’s pretty and it’s clever, but for whatever reason it didn’t really grab my attention.
I’m interested in trying Unmechanical, but it won’t install on my tablet and I can’t get the Windows version to run.
This bundle also included SPACECOM (which didn’t interest me at all), Asdivine Hearts (which I reviewed under the KEMCO bundle header) and 10000000 (which is delightful in a simple way but I played it a year ago).
Overall: An assortment of delightful casual games. There’s nothing here you’ll play 40 hours of, but there are multiple fun time-wasters here and I’d recommend trying either game in both the 10000000 series and the Knights of Pen & Paper series.
You Must Build A Boat - A pure sequel to 10000000 with slightly more plot (you’re sailing from place to place, trying to recruit crew and build a larger boat) but the exact same mechanics (“run” as far as you can in the dungeon by matching tiles to defeat monsters and open chests). It has a nice, smooth difficulty curve and a bunch of extra variety versus 10000000, but it’s essentially the same game. Tile-matching makes numbers go up. Works for me!
Knights of Pen & Paper +1 Edition - This is less a real rpg and more a “numbers go up” casual game; the plot is fourth-wall-ignoring fluff (you can buy items for the room your players are in to enhance their battle prowess; and the GM and table are always visible). I give them credit for there being a decent amount of strategy to the battles (in terms of ailments / debuffs you can inflict and the roles the different classes can fill) even though you can choose to fight more, easier battles rather than fewer hard ones at almost any point in the game; and you can always grind as much as you want. It goes on a bit too long for its conceit: I suspect that the “+1 Edition” added too much bonus content without actually giving me a credit roll to delineate the postgame segments.
Knights of Pen & Paper 2 - A true sequel in that it cleans up some mechanics, improves the dungeon-crawling segments and presents a new plot, but is otherwise unchanged. Upon reflection, I should probably have waited longer after playing the first game to play the sequel, as it’s so very similar it gets tiring. (Though if you were going to play one or the other, you can safely jump straight to this one.)
Desktop Dungeons - I found this very similar to DungeonUp: To quote myself, “A pseudo-roguelike dungeon crawler with randomly generated (but persistent) puzzle-ish levels--and I think calling it a resource-management puzzle game wouldn't be inappropriate.” This has a different frame story (town-building) and more variety to classes and special abilities, but the fundamental strategic gameplay of “figure out what order to fight things in so you’re strong enough to beat the boss; and hope you’re lucky because otherwise you’ll die a lot” holds true. I think there was some vital strategy that I managed to miss, as I managed a number of runs where I could reach the boss, but with nothing else left on the screen still couldn’t beat them. Fun for a couple of hours, but ultimately I found this frustrating.
Badland - An interesting puzzle-platformer where there’s only one control: Tap to go up. It’s amazing how interesting you can make a game based just on that. The aesthetics are lovely and the gameplay falls into the “simple but interesting” category; but for whatever reason it didn’t grab me. I may revisit it.
Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon - Another spin on the puzzle-platformer concept: In this one, you’re a spider who must go from room to room in a manor house, spinning webs (with a limited number of strands) to catch all of the insects and get the most points doing so. Again, it’s pretty and it’s clever, but for whatever reason it didn’t really grab my attention.
I’m interested in trying Unmechanical, but it won’t install on my tablet and I can’t get the Windows version to run.
This bundle also included SPACECOM (which didn’t interest me at all), Asdivine Hearts (which I reviewed under the KEMCO bundle header) and 10000000 (which is delightful in a simple way but I played it a year ago).
Overall: An assortment of delightful casual games. There’s nothing here you’ll play 40 hours of, but there are multiple fun time-wasters here and I’d recommend trying either game in both the 10000000 series and the Knights of Pen & Paper series.
