Humble Wild Frontier Bundle
Jan. 31st, 2018 08:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroSlime Rancher - I hadn't realized this was an Early Access title; I played v0.6. It's a FPS setup where you gather up free-range slimes with your suction gun, feed them to make them produce “plorts” which you then sell for money, and buy upgrades to your equipment and new areas to explore. It's all very relaxing, actually, because at least early on, there's no time pressure and the slimes are harmless. I think my biggest complaint is that it's a 3D first-person game, and that tends to drag on me. Definitely worth another look once they finish/finalize the game, preferably in a way that adds a little more narrative thrust / sense of accomplishment.
Gods Will Be Watching - This is a narrative point-and-click resource-management game, or in other words, a story that you need to make careful choices to navigate through. The story is a sci-fi thriller, and your actions in each chapter don't directly influence the others (though there's a reason for that). Thankfully, there's a “narrative” mode that sets all the challenges to easy and makes the RNG like you, so you can play through without constant restarting and just enjoy the story. Playing the same chapters over and over to try to guess the best sequence (with randomness factoring in) would not be my cup of tea. (Well, I still need to do the damn desert level a dozen times. Turns out that scouting is critical, despite the time they take, because enemy bases are instant death if you blunder into them.) In the end, the gameplay and the story come together in a reasonably logical, if eventually nihilistic way. Fun story, fun concept, terribly frustrating gameplay model if played straight.
Ice Lakes - Well, this is intensely boring. You run out to find the best spot on the ice, drill a hole and cast your net…and then wait. And wait. And scoop ice off the hole. And wait. And wiggle your line. And wait some more. Then you close the game and uninstall it so you can play something that’s actually fun.
Frontiers - A first-person rpg that's still in beta, presumably about exploring a dark frontier to find your uncle's lost expedition. I poked around in it a bit, but I’m not wild about the first-person setup in general and I’m certainly not sinking time into it knowing that it’s unfinished. I may revisit it at some point to check for updates.
Hard West - An interesting blend of text-based adventure / simulation game and tactical rpg. Set in a haunted, bandit-plagued prospecting town in the old west, you play a father and son gunslinger team who are looking to get out of town and go to Oregon by earning enough money and defending themselves long enough to do so. The tactical combat uses a “luck” mechanic which is both your MP and ability to avoid getting hit and losing HP. If you take a real hit, it refills your luck. It’s a neat concept and an impressively long game, but I didn’t find it appealing enough to play for very long. (Honestly, I think that's partially the game but mostly that “weird wild west” isn't a genre that strongly appeals to me. I was never into cowboys, y'know?)
Renowned Explorers: International Society - This is amusing. It’s a text-based exploration/resource management game, where you move through a map and try to resolve encounters to win renown and treasure. There’s also a tactical combat aspect, but most of the fighting is done via speech, either making your opponents like you or making them feel bad. It has a lot of different tokens, skills, classes and meters to manage (they could easily have been rolled up into fewer things), and at the end of the day it gets repetitive. But it was fun for a bit.
Spintires - The most disappointing game of the lot, because it’s a “driving exploration” game that looked like it would be a lot of fun, but the controls are janky (particularly the gear shift and the camera, which by default map to the same stick) and the physics is “realistic,” by which we mean, “slow and not fun.” You can crawl a truck through the mud, shifting gears and turning on and off the all-wheel drive to try to get unstuck, then tumble down a hill…at which point you’re stuck and need to restart, as there doesn’t seem to be any mechanism to either right yourself or respawn. Blargh.
Overall: I was underwhelmed with this bundle overall. I’d argue that Gods Will Be Watching was entertaining specifically because it has an easy mode, and Hard West and Renowned Explorers: International Society didn’t win me long-term but aren’t bad games. Spintires and Ice Lakes are bad games and should feel bad.
Gods Will Be Watching - This is a narrative point-and-click resource-management game, or in other words, a story that you need to make careful choices to navigate through. The story is a sci-fi thriller, and your actions in each chapter don't directly influence the others (though there's a reason for that). Thankfully, there's a “narrative” mode that sets all the challenges to easy and makes the RNG like you, so you can play through without constant restarting and just enjoy the story. Playing the same chapters over and over to try to guess the best sequence (with randomness factoring in) would not be my cup of tea. (Well, I still need to do the damn desert level a dozen times. Turns out that scouting is critical, despite the time they take, because enemy bases are instant death if you blunder into them.) In the end, the gameplay and the story come together in a reasonably logical, if eventually nihilistic way. Fun story, fun concept, terribly frustrating gameplay model if played straight.
Ice Lakes - Well, this is intensely boring. You run out to find the best spot on the ice, drill a hole and cast your net…and then wait. And wait. And scoop ice off the hole. And wait. And wiggle your line. And wait some more. Then you close the game and uninstall it so you can play something that’s actually fun.
Frontiers - A first-person rpg that's still in beta, presumably about exploring a dark frontier to find your uncle's lost expedition. I poked around in it a bit, but I’m not wild about the first-person setup in general and I’m certainly not sinking time into it knowing that it’s unfinished. I may revisit it at some point to check for updates.
Hard West - An interesting blend of text-based adventure / simulation game and tactical rpg. Set in a haunted, bandit-plagued prospecting town in the old west, you play a father and son gunslinger team who are looking to get out of town and go to Oregon by earning enough money and defending themselves long enough to do so. The tactical combat uses a “luck” mechanic which is both your MP and ability to avoid getting hit and losing HP. If you take a real hit, it refills your luck. It’s a neat concept and an impressively long game, but I didn’t find it appealing enough to play for very long. (Honestly, I think that's partially the game but mostly that “weird wild west” isn't a genre that strongly appeals to me. I was never into cowboys, y'know?)
Renowned Explorers: International Society - This is amusing. It’s a text-based exploration/resource management game, where you move through a map and try to resolve encounters to win renown and treasure. There’s also a tactical combat aspect, but most of the fighting is done via speech, either making your opponents like you or making them feel bad. It has a lot of different tokens, skills, classes and meters to manage (they could easily have been rolled up into fewer things), and at the end of the day it gets repetitive. But it was fun for a bit.
Spintires - The most disappointing game of the lot, because it’s a “driving exploration” game that looked like it would be a lot of fun, but the controls are janky (particularly the gear shift and the camera, which by default map to the same stick) and the physics is “realistic,” by which we mean, “slow and not fun.” You can crawl a truck through the mud, shifting gears and turning on and off the all-wheel drive to try to get unstuck, then tumble down a hill…at which point you’re stuck and need to restart, as there doesn’t seem to be any mechanism to either right yourself or respawn. Blargh.
Overall: I was underwhelmed with this bundle overall. I’d argue that Gods Will Be Watching was entertaining specifically because it has an easy mode, and Hard West and Renowned Explorers: International Society didn’t win me long-term but aren’t bad games. Spintires and Ice Lakes are bad games and should feel bad.
