The Refined Geek

Stripping away certain aspects of a game is the norm for independent developers as your limited resources constrain what you’re able to accomplish. Whilst on the surface this sounds like it would make for an inferior game often it results with a game that makes incredible use of its bare essentials, creating an overall experience that’s on par with much larger titles. Then there are those that eschew nearly all aspects of traditional games in order to focus on a single aspect. Notable entries include games like Gravity Bone, Thirty Flights of Loving, Auralux and, I’m most pleased to say, the new exploration game Proteus.

Like other exploration games Proteus is one where the narrative is primarily driven by your curiosity. Upon starting the game you’ll be greeted with your own little island (which I assume is procedurally generated so each one is unique). There’s no voice telling you to walk to it, nor any other indication that you should even go there, but of course there’s that little voice at the back of your head telling you to proceed forward. Should you do so the next hour of your life will be dedicated to exploring a world that undergoes wild amounts of change and, eventually, so do you.

Proteus is unique in terms of graphical style, straddling the boundaries of pixel art and early 3D first person shooter games. What I found particularly interesting was despite the bare bones nature everything was instantly recognizable, from the various types of plants and animals to the various bits of other miscellanea that covered my island. I’ll be honest and at first I just thought it was the developer being lazy but the more I played the more I began to appreciate the simplicity as that kind of refinement doesn’t exactly come easy.

There’s no real game mechanics to speak of, the whole point of Proteus is simply for you to explore the island that it has created for you. Whilst the island isn’t particularly huge there’s definitely enough to keep you interested, especially with all the various animals that react in different ways to you approaching them. There’s also a weather system that changes from time to time which, again, changes the island. But this is all just a lead up to the best part of Proteus and it only happens at night.

What could be considered plot spoilers follow:

I remember seeing this for the first time very clearly. The sun had gone down and little lights began to appear everywhere. Up until then I had wondered what the overall point of the game was as whilst it was cool to explore a procedurally generated island there wasn’t much more to it; no purpose, no story. But then the lights began to move in a strange way, they seemed to be all moving towards a single point on the island. Curious I walked towards it and they began to speed up with more and more lights appearing out of nowhere to join them.

The lights began congregating at one location, forming into a kind of vortex centered on a point in the middle of island. I walked towards it and they spun faster still, swarming around me until they erupted in a blinding flash of light. Afterwards I saw it was day time once again but the island had changed. New life had sprung up around me and the world looked very different. I realised then and there what had happened, I had been transported forward in time to the next season.

And so this process repeated itself several times over, each time when night fell I would wait anxiously for the lights to reappear in order for me to advance to the next stage. Eventually winter came to my island and it instantly became a desolate wasteland, home to no perceptible life. I wandered my island aimlessly looking for a sign, something to show that was still alive but alas there was none. I again waited for night to come but the lights never appeared so I kept exploring, hoping that I’d find the solution to a problem I felt I had created. It was then that my slow descent into the clouds began and eventually my eyes closed and my island journey came to an end.

Spoilers over.

Proteus wins my praise for the simple fact it went from a slightly confusing experience to an incredibly magical one by the use of simple mechanics that forced me to build my own narrative. If Auralux is the essence of real time strategy then Proteus is the essence of an exploration game as it does away with pretty much all extraneous elements in favour of the exploration mechanic. It’s short and bittersweet and definitely not for everyone but if you’re a fan of creating your own narrative or exploring games that strip away all things in favour of one aspect then Proteus is definitely worth a look in.

Rating: 8.5/10

Proteus is available on PC right now for $9.99. Total game time was approximately 1 hour.

2012 was the year I decided to ramp up my game reviews significantly, aiming to get at least one done per week. I got pretty close to that goal managing to get through a grand total of 48 games last year, well over the double previous year’s tally. I have to say that I really enjoyed the whole experience as I often found myself going outside my comfort zone in order to find something to review and the number of indie games I’ve played this year is more than all the years prior put together. Now that 2012 is firmly in the rear view mirror it comes time for me to reflect on all the games that I’ve played and crown one of them Game of the Year 2012.

As always here’s a list in chronological order of the games I reviewed during 2012:

• Star Wars: The Old Republic
• Bastion
• Limbo
• To The Moon
• Uncharted 3
• Cave Story+
• Dear Esther
• Anno 2070
• Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning
• Mass Effect 3
• Journey
• Batman: Arkham City
• Trine 2
• I Am Alive
• Botanicula
• Superbrothers: Swords and Sworcery EP
• Warp
• Defense of the Ancients 2
• Diablo III
• Lone Survivor
• Max Payne 3
• Resonance
• Quantum Conundrum
• Spec Ops: The Line
• Splice
• Sol: Exodus
• Prototype 2
• Auralux
• Unmechanical
• Gravity Bone and Thirty Flights of Loving
• Sleeping Dogs
• Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
• Transformers: Fall of Cybertron
• Galaxy on Fire 2
• They Bleed Pixels
• McPixel
• Borderlands 2
• Dishonored
• Blocks That Matter
• Hotline Miami
• The Unfinished Swan
• Deadlight
• Call of Duty: Black Ops II
• Mark of the Ninja
• Primordia
• Endless Space
• Waking Mars
• Far Cry 3

Now people who’ve been here a while (and have read my Guide to Game Reviews on The Refined Geek) will know that my review scores tend towards the infamous 7 to 10 scale rather than 0 to 10 but from time to time I’ll venture below that curve for games that really deserve it. Notable mentions that did this include Lone Survivor, I Am Alive and (drum roll please) this year’s winner of lowest score received: Dear Esther. My review of that game was probably one of the most controversial reviews I’ve ever written as I had people telling me I simply “didn’t get it” all the way up to saying that it wasn’t fair for me to judge it as a game because it wasn’t. Sadly nothing of what anyone sad to me could change the horrific experience I had with Dear Esther and it gives me an undue amount of pleasure to give it the Wooden Spoon as worst game of 2012.

Whilst 2011 saw me give a notable mention to Gemini Rue for being a stand out indie game of that year I can’t feel like I can do the same this year: there’s just so many deserving titles and unlike Gemini Rue nearly all of them got the praise they deserved. Indeed the reason I found out (and subsequently played) so many indie titles this year was because of the attention they were receiving in the larger video games press and if it wasn’t for a few kind words from some of my trusted sources many of these indie games might not have seen a review here. Whilst I’ll stop short of giving an award to the indie game scene (because that’s incredibly lame) I will say that I’m looking forward to what the indie scene brings forth in 2013 and beyond.

One game that I’d like to give an honourable mention to, since it is by far my most played game of 2012 by a long shot, is Defense of the Ancients 2 (DOTA 2). Whilst I starting playing it back towards the end of 2011 I really didn’t get that into it until just after I wrote my initial review of it but after then my play time in it snow balled considerably. This was helped a lot by the fact that a cadre of my competitive gaming friends joined along with me which fuelled my addiction to it to perilous heights. Today I’ve played over 600 games and ranked up well over the same amount of hours playing, watching and talking about DOTA 2 and Valve deserves an extraordinary amount of credit for making this game what it is today. It’s not my game of the year since it’s more like a meth addiction than anything else, but that doesn’t detract from its accomplishments.

I’ll be honest, choosing my game of the year (even with the beautiful hindsight granted by having a big list of games I’ve played right there to look over) was tough. Whilst there were a lot of good games there were no amazing stand outs like there was the year previous. Going by review scores the best game of last year for me was Journey and whilst I was very tempted to give it that honour, like IGN has done, I couldn’t shake this feeling in the back of my head that there was another game that was more deserving but I couldn’t figure out which one to pick. The answer came to me, funnily enough, in the middle of a New Years eve party in the early hours of the morning and I still agree with that decision today.

My Game of the Year for 2012 is To The Moon.

If for the simple fact that I’m fighting back tears right now isn’t proof enough that this game had a massive impact on me To The Moon is one of those games that eschewed game play in favour of telling a beautiful, gripping story. Sure the game play was flawed and the disjointed pacing was one of the reasons that it didn’t score better than Journey but if just thinking about it can cause that kind of reaction in me then I know it had an impact that few games have had. I could continue gushing about it for hours if I wanted to but you really need to experience it for yourself as it’s an incredibly personal experience, one that will stick with you for a long time.

I had debated whether or not to continue my 1 review per week deal this year as whilst I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and opportunities it has granted me (2 games this year were sent to me for review, a 100% increase on last year!) it does take a fair bit of time to get through them. However considering the amount of DOTA 2 I’ve managed to fit in the past year I figure that cutting back on that in favour of more games will see more deadlines hit more frequently meaning more regular reviews for you, my readers. I won’t make any grandiose promises about reviewing more games this year than last but I’ll guarantee I’ll try my hardest to get one out a week and continue to pillage the vast reaches of all game genres and developers.

P.S. What was your game of the year? I’m really keen to know.

They say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery and if there’s any truth to that then Notch, creator of  Minecraft, must be feeling awfully flattered. Whilst there’s only been a few outright copies that have looked to capitalize on Minecraft’s success there’s seemingly an endless number of games that have drawn inspiration from it. From games like Terraria which translated the idea into 2D and then added its own flavour to others which have taken the block/mining/building idea and put some kind of twist on it. Blocks That Matter is the latter, being a 2D puzzler that uses the idea of mining and placing blocks as the main game play component.

Blocks That Matter puts you in control Tetrobot, a small white block with arms, legs and a drill who’s capable of mining blocks and placing them anywhere on the map. You’re the creation of 2 struggling game developers who, instead of working on their latest title, were working on you. This drew the ire of a mysterious individual who kidnaps the developers and forces them to complete their game. You are their only hope for rescue and in order to make it to them you have to navigate your way through various puzzle areas in order to reach a portal that will transport you closer to them.

Whilst there’s nothing particularly amazing about the graphics of Blocks That Matter I did find it quite visually pleasing, mostly because of the neo-retro aesthetic that’s consistent throughout the entire game. There’s a definite homage to the classic platformers with many of the tile sets bearing a striking resemblance to the games that inspired them. That being said whilst it might be inspired by several different games of yore Blocks That Matter still has its own distinct style about it and I certainly never found myself thinking I was bored with it visually.

As I alluded to earlier Blocks That Matter draws inspiration from Minecraft for one of its main mechanics but it also combines aspects from another game to give it a challenging bent. Whilst you’re free to mine and collect certain types of blocks (a selection which gets expanded as you progress) you can’t simply place any block wherever you want. There are 2 simple rules to placing blocks: the first is that it must attach to another block or a wall somewhere, meaning you can’t just place them in the middle of the air. The second, and by far the most challenging aspect, is that all the blocks must be placed in sets of 4 meaning all the shapes you can create are in fact are tetrominoes (the pieces found in Tetris).

In the beginning this doesn’t present too much of a challenge, especially once you figure out certain ways to construct things that will allow you to recover the majority of your blocks whilst getting one of them into the position you needed it in. There’s also some areas where Blocks That Matter shows off some emergent game play aspects because of this as if you manage to save enough blocks you can effectively get yourself anywhere on the map without too much trouble. This idea of block conservation becomes key in later levels as many of the puzzles will be incredibly difficult unless you have a certain number of blocks spare.

This becomes even more important when you’re given the skill which can destroy any type of block (useful as there’s many block types that you will simply never be able to drill) as long as they’re in a row of eight or more. Quite often you will be able to make rows with a certain minimum number of blocks, however should you simply rush into it you’ll end up wasting blocks that you didn’t need to. Finding these little block advantages isn’t necessarily required if you’re just trying to get to the end however should you want to mine the block that matters (the little treasure chest shown in the bottom left hand corner in the screenshot above) every block counts as most of the time you’ll need all of them to get to it.

For the most part the puzzles are challenging and rewarding upon completion, especially when you manage to get through them the first time through. However I feel there’s a critical flaw in the way most puzzles play out. You see it’s quite possible for you to get yourself into a situation where you will not be able to complete a level (like being trapped under undrillable blocks). Don’t worry you can suicide yourself and restart the level, all good right? Well whilst that does get around the sticky problem of having to playtest everything so thoroughly that the players can never truly bugger themselves up it does mean that challenges you once completed get undone, forcing you to replay that section of the level. When you make a simple mistake right at the end of the level having to replay it all from the beginning isn’t that fun, especially if that “mistake” was misplacing a block which you could no longer recover.

The puzzles also start to get a bit samey after a while, even with the additional upgrades that add different game mechanics. There’s just over 40 levels in the adventure mode and another dozen or so in the bonus section but by about the halfway point you will have seen most of the tricks. From there on it’s just a matter of making your way through them, conserving blocks and figuring out which types need to be saved and which can be turfed. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there’s a lot of people who will enjoy that kind of challenge, but it certainly lost me by about level 34 or so, to the point where I didn’t bother playing through until the end.

The story is also a little strange as it takes the 4th wall, smashes it into pieces and then proceeds to dance on its bloody corpse for the rest of the game. The characters are Penny Arcade style spin offs of their creators being 2 independent game developers which mirrors Swing Swing Submarine’s actual development crew. It’s a rather light hearted affair and really only there to give you some modicum of motivation to keep doing what you’re doing but I couldn’t help but feel a little awkward during any of the plot points thanks to that 4th wall chicanery.

For a game that’s essentially a mash up of nearly every game that my generation grew up on Blocks That Matter does a great job of creating its own unique experience using all those elements without feeling like a cheap imitation. The puzzles are challenging, artwork unique yet familiar and the overall experience is smooth and trouble free. The story and having to repeat challenges ad nauseum are where Blocks That Matter lets itself down and whilst there’s no easy way to fix the story the addition of a quick save system would go a long way to making those long, complicated puzzles towards the end much more enjoyable. For fans of puzzlers or just those of us who grew up on all the titles that Blocks That Matter pays homage to there’s a lot to love in this game and is worth paltry price of admission.

Rating: 7.25/10

Blocks That Matter is available on PC and Xbox right now for $4.99 and 240 Microsoft Points respectively. Game was played entirely on the PC with around 4 hours played and 28% of the achievements unlocked.

4 hours played, 28% of the achievements unlocked.

With this whole 1 review a week deal thing I committed to at the start of the year I often find myself getting towards the end of a week without having a game fully completed for review. Most of the time its because a game will overrun the amount of available time I have to complete it (like Borderlands 2 did for this week) and then I’ll usually do a mad rush looking for a recent release that has a shorter game time in order to make deadline. Yesterday’s review of McPixel was one of these such occasions and whilst I’d like to say that I came across it due to it being the first ever project to be Greenlit onto Steam I instead found out about it due the hubbub it made on the various game sites I frequent.

Of course I found out about this afterwards when I went to post my review to the Steam community boards for McPixel. What surprised me though is unlike many of the other discussion boards which usually focus on issues, improvements and just generally talking about the game I found a thread¹ with over 100 comments wondering why this game was brought to steam in the first place. Whilst there was no shortage of people defending McPixel it certainly seemed to be an argument that split the community right down the middle. That seems rather strange as Greenlight is predicated on the fact that the community wants that game to come to the Steam platform and it raises some questions about how it will function going forward.

Steam Greenlight, for the uninitiated, is a crowd approval system developed by Valve in order to tap the collective desires of their customer base. Put simply it allows developers to put one of their games which is not currently available on Steam up on the Greenlight site and should it prove popular enough by votes from the larger Steam community it will find itself on the platform in short notice. For unproven and independent developers it’s a great way to use their community in order to leverage onto the biggest digital distribution platform around and I’m firmly with (I feel) the majority who believe its a good idea. McPixel’s addition to the Steam catalogue via this process seems to have set a fire underneath a part of the community, something which you wouldn’t expect given the nature of how it came onto the platform.

As with anything that attempts to tap into the wisdom of crowds not every decision that is born of that process will be unanimously accepted by said crowd. Thus it was inevitable that McPixel’s release would be met with some less than stellar sentiment. The thread I stumbled across then was a kind of two sided echo chamber with the supporters, who were likely involved in getting the game Greenlit in the first place, rallying against the other side who derided it for the confusing game play and seemingly crude production. Strangely enough Sos, the developer behind McPixel, cites these very characteristics as things that previously stopped McPixel from appearing on Steam in the first place when he tried to get it on there through the official channels.

What does this mean then for Greenlight as a service? I’m not entirely sure, if I’m honest as realistically it’s not an uncommon thing to encounter with Internet based communities. I think it’s probably telling of the wide range of gamers who are present on Steam and whilst Greenlit games will be a good indication of those who support that title it’ll be less obvious how the wider community will react to it. It’d be interesting to see the numbers of support vs not interested as that’s captured within Greenlight (although whether people actually click that button or simply ignore the game is another question entirely).

In all honesty the reaction shouldn’t have come as a surprise but I definitely wasn’t expecting it, especially for a game that was met with such universal approval everywhere else. Whilst the first game that was brought to Steam via the community might not have attracted an unanimous approval rating it certainly hasn’t been met with universal criticism so there is still a lot of value to be derived from Greenlight. It will be interesting to see if this dual echo chamber effect comes into play on other Greenlit titles as it certainly has the potential to do so.

¹At the time of writing I was unable to get into the Steam community boards in order to link to the thread directly.

Keen readers have noticed that my last couple months worth of game reviews are following a trend. Quite a lot of the titles are from independent developers and the vast majority of them have been shorter, simpler titles who’s play time doesn’t exceed more than 4 hours. I’ll be honest and say that the reason behind this is mostly because I’ve been thoroughly enjoying countless hours in DOTA 2 but it’s also because we’re in that lull that happens in the middle of the year where AAA titles have already been released or are due to be released soon. For me this lull used to be filled with MMORPGs and replaying old titles but the indie scene doesn’t care as much about marketing cycles as their publisher backed brethren do and that means I’m usually flooded with all sorts of interesting titles to have a crack at. Unmechanical is one such title that just happened to cross my path late Friday evening and based purely off the fact that it reminded me of Machinarium I felt it was worth a look in.

You play as small, propeller headed robot just casually going about your business with what I assume is your family of other propeller headed robots. Out of nowhere a pipe, very reminiscent of the ones in the Mario Brothers series of games, abducts you away from your family who seem to be blissfully unaware that this is going on. You then wake up in a  cave deep underground which you then spend the entire game attempting to get out of.

Unmechanical is quite visually pleasing thanks in part to its development on the Unreal Developer’s Kit which it will constantly mention during the non-game events. It felt very reminiscent of Trine in that regard even though Trine uses its own in house engine but the visual styles seemed very comparable. The graphics aren’t exactly cutting edge and they have most definitely been heavily optimized for the 2D game play but the heavy use of stylization, modern lighting effects and vibrant colour palette mean that Unmechanical is always a pleasure to look at.

Physics based puzzle solving is the core game mechanic of Unmechanical. There’s nothing particularly unique about this particular mechanic, nearly every game with a physics engine these days incorporates some kind of puzzle solving element in it, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable. For the most part you’ll be picking up objects, moving them around and even doing a couple timed events that require precision placement in order to get everything working just right. In terms of the actual mechanics its pretty seamless as I never had any of the puzzles break on me but I did feel like there was a more subtle issue that could cause some people to get frustrated with Unmechanical.

Unmechanical is an incredibly simple game and this is by design. There’s no dialogue to speak of nor is there much in the way of explanation given for many of the things happening on the screen. This is fine however it also means that the way that most things work in this world are based around typical gaming conventions. Now depending on what kind of gamer you are some of these will be obvious and some will not. For me many of the puzzles made sense the second I saw them however there were a few where I had no idea what Unmechanical wanted me to do, leaving me to move wildly around trying to move everything in sight to see what would work. This could very well be part of the challenge but its one of those design choices that could very well lead to people dropping the game long before finishing it. I guess its not a fault per se, more something you need to be aware of going into it.

What really got me about Unmechanical though was just how good it was at telling a story without a whiff of dialogue. The screenshots don’t really do it justice and I won’t go into details about the actual story itself but suffice to say that there are enough visual clues to lead you to draw your own conclusions about the situation the main character is in, the world that surrounds it and ultimately the decision you make about how your journey ends. In essence the story can be as intricate and complex as you like or you can ignore it completely and just enjoy the puzzles. Both of these play styles would be rewarding in my view.

Unmechanical then was one of those pleasant surprises that I get every so often when I take a risk on buying a game that I know almost nothing about. The game mechanics might have been decidedly simplistic but the visual style and storytelling captivated me, enough so that I can’t bring myself to write it off as just another physics based puzzler with decent graphics. The heavy reliance on gaming conventions might make it something of a chore for some but for those who’ve got a few years of gaming experience under their belts I can’t see you struggling that much and indeed I believe there will be something in Unmechanical for nearly all gamers to enjoy.

Rating: 8.0/10

Unmechanical is available on PC right now for $9.99. Game was completed in approximately 2.3 hours with 40% of the achievements unlocked. 

If survival horror is one of the game genres that I tend to rate poorly because of my internal bias against them then real time strategy is the genre that I find myself rating consistently higher for the same reasons. This could be some kind of survivor bias that led me to drop many RTS style games early on in their lives before I could make it to the end to review them (Company of Heroes comes to mind in this regard) but it’s probably more due to my gaming roots being firmly planted in this space having whiled away many hours on the RTS classic, Dune 2. You can then imagine my intrigue when Auralux, a game from independent developer E.B. McNeill, claimed to be the very essence of RTS, cutting away all the peripheral elements until the game was refined to its core.

Auralux, like many independently developed games, has had to make choices as to what needed to be included in the game and what should be excluded. For Auralux this means that there is no story to speak of, you are simply a sun orbited by little dots who needs to take over all the other suns in the area whilst competing with 2 NPC suns who are doing the same thing. The introduction to the game is also quite thin on the ground as well but considering that there really isn’t that much to explain it actually suffices quite well. Your missions start out easy but as time goes on they get increasingly more difficult but you’re also blessed with some additional options to make your time with Auralux much more enjoyable.

The graphics of Auralux are incredibly simple with the most complex item on the whole screen being the suns that dot the landscape. It’s akin to many other ambient titles where the minimalistic graphics combined with the soothing background music make for a very pleasing game experience. The simple graphics are also due in part to the fact that Auralux is also available on Android and whilst many handsets are capable of producing much more elaborate visuals than what Auralux has that narrows the potential market for this game significantly. All that being said it’d probably look a whole lot better on a smaller screen so I’m probably being a bit harsh in that regard.

As I alluded to earlier the core game of Auralux is incredibly simple. You start off with a sun that produces little dots that you can use to take over other, unoccupied suns or to upgrade your own if its capable of doing so. Those same little dots are also your battle units and you can use them to take over other suns owned by the other players. That’s essentially it and the rest of the game is played inside your head as you work out the best strategy to overcome your foes and inevitably take over the entire board with your glowy blue goodness.

Initially the odds are heavily stacked in your favour with you usually starting from a position of power strategically. This serves as the tutorial of sorts as whilst the game play is refined down to the absolute basics its still very easy for you to get into a position that you can’t recover from. The games are also slow and methodical at the start, encouraging you to take your time with each move and consider the best path of action before committing all your available units to it. It’s a good introduction to the idea but it eventually starts to wear thin as you sometimes have to wait for a significant amount of time to pass before you’re able to progress to the next stage.

Thankfully the developer behind Auralux realised this and after a few levels you’re able to unlock “speed mode” which allows you to play the exact same game sped up significantly. This turns matches that would last 10~20 minutes into 5 minute affairs something that is definitely required considering how long it can take to build up and move your army around the map. Once I unlocked the mode I didn’t play it any other way and still managed to eek out a couple hours worth of game time and I didn’t feel like I missed out on anything by doing so.

The bulk of the game stays in either the stacked in your favour or equal footing level of difficulty where you can get by with relatively unimaginative strategies. The last quarter or so puts you in situations where the odds are clearly stacked against you, usually either starving you of resources compared to your competitors or putting you in a really non-strategic position. These maps are the ones that require an incredible amount of strategy to conquer and I can say that these maps took up the vast majority of my total game time.

Something that I feel is key to understanding this game (that is only made clear to you in one of the tips that’s quite easy to miss) is that whilst the AI appears to work differently on different levels it is in fact identical across the board. Now it’s not strict as far as I can tell, it will make different decisions when two options are basically equal, but the way it operates stays the same no matter the map you’re on. Considering the matches are essentially a free for all (or more realistically a 2v1) the game then is usually to get the 2 computers to fight each other so you can quietly build up an army and devastate them before they can retaliate.

Indeed the only advantage you have as a human in this game is the fact that you’re able to think non-linearly. The screenshot below is an example of this as the AI has the terrible habit of putting all of its available units on the front lines leaving its production at the rear incredibly exposed, letting me swoop in to get it. Now if you play like the AI does you’re pretty much guaranteed to lose as the AI is very aware of when 2 of its opponents are duking it out and will take advantage of this so the way to win most games is to wait for an opportunity like the one below and make yourself an unattractive target for the other AI. There may be other ways to win but this was the only way I found to win consistently and even then I’d sometimes lose because both the AIs figured out I was an easier target then the other AI, devastating me in a short time.

Whilst the metagame might not be as rich as other RTS titles it’s still thoroughly enjoyable when you manage to pull off an incredibly risky maneuver that gives you the game winning advantage. It’s true that this is probably the simplest game that you could still reasonably call a RTS and whilst that’s an achievement in itself it also means that the variety of game play possible is also limited. The replayability of Auralux isn’t particularly high if you approach it like a traditional game but for a timewaster on a phone I can see it having quite a long life.

Auralux then is one of those curious indie games that, by necessity, strips back all extravagances in favour of a solid core game mechanic. Auralux does it well and I’d struggle to find anything simpler that could still be realistically called a RTS, even from 2 decades when games had to be simple. Whilst I might’ve cursed its name for the apparent randomness and the AIs ganging up on me I came to realise that it’s all part of the higher order strategy required to conquer your opponents. For RTS fans and casual gamers alike there’s much to love in Auralux and I’d heartily recommend a play through.

Rating: 8.0/10

Auralux is available on PC and Android for $4.99 and free respectively. Game was played entirely on the PC with about 3 hours of total play time.

I’ve always loved space simulators, even before I discovered my passion for all things space related some years ago. For the last 2 times I’ve found myself between Internet connections at home I’ve always found myself playing through the campaign of Freelancer at least once just because there’s something so incredibly satisfying about the experience. Few games have close to generating that same feeling even though there’s been quite a few that tried (DarkStar One and Evochron Mercenaries come to mind). Sol: Exodus is a recent title in the space sim genre and it came as part of one of the Indie Bundles currently going on steam. From what little I had heard about it Sol: Exodus looked decent enough to warrant me giving it the once over.

Sol: Exodus takes place 500 years into the future where humanity has devastated our home planet and we have instead become a space bound race. You play as Commander Michael David, a well trained space pilot who’s been tasked with protecting the last hope for humanity: a series of science vessels designed to scout out potential planets for settlement. Just as the scientists relay the exciting news that they’ve found a planet that would be suitable your fleet comes under attack by a religious zealot group who are hell bent on ensuring that humanity stays bound to space. You and your command ship survive and this begins your journey into bringing them to justice whilst also bringing about humanity’s salvation.

The graphics of Sol: Exodus are a mix of very nicely done spacescapes coupled with rather rudimentary level models and textures for everything else on screen. Now I won’t be unduly harsh on the developers behind Sol: Exodus because of this, there’s only so much you can do with such a small team, but it bears mentioning that the art work isn’t anything stellar. Couple this with the almost pixel art level renditions of the character portraits and the game feels like it was released around the same time as my go to favourite Freelancer more than it does for a title of the present day. Still the backgrounds are usually quite pretty so they win back some points for that.

The main game mechanic of Sol: Exodus is good old fashioned space dogfighting with a couple mini-games thrown in to break up it a little bit. It functions pretty much as you’d expect, you have a targeting system that paints target after target for you to gun down and you can do so with either your homing missiles (which have a limited supply) or you can try to mow them down using your unlimited ammunition gattling gun using the provided aim ahead reticle. Apart from that there’s not that much more to it (apart from the mini-games which I’ll get into later) and for the most part it works well save for a few little quirks I think need to be mentioned.

Like all space games with dogfighting in them (apart from games like EVE Online where you’re movement is almost irrelevant to the combat) you’ll spend a great deal of time chasing enemies from behind, sending torrents of bullets and missiles after them. The AI is unfortunately somewhat rudimentary and whilst they provide a decent challenge, especially the later elite ones, they are quite dumb and will gladly fly to their deaths by ramming into any obstacle that happens to be near by. This could be your ship, an NPC ship or anything that has collision detection on it. Whilst it’s not really possible to get them to fly into stuff by baiting them into it you’ll be likely witness to dozens of them driving their crafts into inanimate objects just for the hell of it. It’s amusing but a sign that the game AI is only half baked.

The mini-games I’ve referred to usually take the form of a scramble pad that pops up which displays a whole lot of random characters. After a couple seconds 3 letters will be highlighted and then you’ll be presented with a list of similar codes and the code that was just displayed, leaving you to chose the correct one. In all the times the game came up I only stuffed it up once but that came down to the font of the game having quite similar characters for 1 and I. Once you choose the right code you can then perform some function on the device you just hacked, usually disabling something or downloading blueprints.

The blueprints function as a sort of unlock that allows you to take down the larger capital ships that you’ll come across from time to time. Once you have the blueprints parts of the craft will become highlighted in red with a big “Weakness Point” dialog hovering over the top of them, showing where you need to start hammering away. You don’t seem to need to hit all the weak points in order to take down a craft though so if you’re strategic about it you can take them down quite quickly. It’s a pretty cool, if completely unoriginal, idea although it does feel quite samey after you do it a couple times.

There’s also an incredibly simplistic upgrade system that gives you the choice of upgrading your weapons, giving you more missiles and allowing you to fire the canons longer before overheating, your armour or your afterburners.Out of the 3 upgrades the most useful is, of course, the weapons as whilst the armour upgrades are handy you in fact don’t really need it as you can repair at your capital ship at any time during the mission. There are missions when your capital isn’t there but once you get to them you’ve probably already upgraded your weapons to max and then you can easily spare some points for armour upgrades. The speed boost upgrade seems rather useless as the default one is pretty much sufficient as long as you use it wisely.

The upgrade points come to you when you complete a mission and should you hit on an extra objective you’ll get 2 instead of 1. Unfortunately this isn’t made clear to you before the mission and whilst you can kind of guess what the objective is there’s really no way to know what you should prioritize if you’re hungering for those upgrades (or achievements, but you can just read them in the steam profile). I think there was only 3 missions where I didn’t manage to get the extra upgrade points, so it’s probably moot anyway.

The story is pretty uninspired being a rather generic space opera kind of deal with a dash of religious commentary thrown in just for good measure. The characters are given little back story or development and whilst it’s fully voice acted (commendable given its indie nature) there’s nothing really notable about the performances. Suffice to say if you ignore the story completely I don’t think you’d really be missing out on anything and the fact they committed the cardinal sin of leaving the ending open (they even said TO BE CONTINUED at the credits screen) leaves me the only option of saying you’re probably better off for doing so.

In the end Sol: Exodus feels like a good starting point for a space simulator game, one that could be so much more than it currently is. It’s incredibly short, even by indie standards, and there’s no multiplayer to speak of, something which would have made the short campaign length more understandable. Granted Seamless Entertainment are a small studio and should be commended for getting to this point but the fact remains that Sol: Exodus isn’t much more than an afternoon’s distraction and feels like it would be much better suited to the iOS/Android platform than the PC it resides on. Maybe we’ll see more from the developers in the future where they use all the investment in Sol: Exodus to produce something that has a lot more meat to it than their latest title does.

Rating: 6.0/10

Sol: Exodus is available on PC right  now for $9.99. Total game time was approximately 2.5 hours with 57% of the achievements unlocked.

The last few years have seen many independent developers attempt to expand on the traditional platformer style, usually either by re-imagining the concept or by combining it with elements that are common place amongst more modern games. Few however attempt to make a platformer that wouldn’t be out of place with its ancestors, in both regards to game play and graphics. Cave Story+ is one of those rare few, being first released over 7 years ago makes it even rarer as there was nary an indie scene to speak of, and it’s recent re-release on steam (and inclusion in the Humble Bundle) has seen it meet many more eyeballs, including my own.

Without so much as little bit of back story or title sequences explaining things you’re dumped straight into the game. You, although you’ll only find this out as you work your way through the game, are an amnesiac robot who’s managed to find himself in the middle of a plot being hatched by someone simply referred to as the Doctor. His plot seems to revolve around the native inhabitants of the area called the Mimiga, a race of humanoid rabbit looking folk. You then dive into the various sections of the world in order to help out the Mimiga and hopefully foil the plot of the Doctor.

I hate to start off the review with a criticism like this but the absence of some form of a tutorial makes the first hour or so (and some sections later on) with Cave Story+ a little frustrating. Whilst the arrow keys control movement the jump button isn’t up or space (it’s x) and fire is z. This wouldn’t be too much of a problem, I’d just check the options menu I hear you say, well unfortunately that’s not accessible once you start playing the game. You’ll have to quit to the main menu in order to be able to view the key bindings. It’s a shame really as this game has gone through several revisions since it was first released and I can’t be the only one who thought this wasn’t ideal, so my mind boggles as to why it’s still that way.

Cave Story+ does get points though for having art work that would not be out of place in games that were almost a decade its senior. Whilst there’s no real evocative mood along the lines of other recent pixelart games like Gemini Rue and To The Moon the artwork does a good job of paying homage to the games that inspired it. My only complaint about it would be that it’s sometimes hard to tell which things are meant to be interactive and which things aren’t, although to be fair that was true of the games that Cave Story+ seeks to emulate and is probably intentional.

Like it’s ancestors Cave Story+’s story is driven by the good old fashioned wall of scrolling text. There’s a good amount of dialogue in Cave Story+ as well, enough so that the back stories of each character get filled out well enough that you can understand their motivations in the story. This makes up somewhat for the beginning’s complete lack of information and confusing switching between you and another character.

One annoying part though was the limited way in which to skip dialogue. You can hold down the enter key to make it scroll faster but you’ll have to hit it again every time they reach the end of their section of dialogue. This wouldn’t be too bad but there are some sections where you’re required to make a choice, and with the default always being “Yes” this means that it’s quite easy to make a wrong choice at a point (as I did a few times). You can reload to do it again, but there’s also the issue with that as should you fail at a section and restart at your last save point you’ll have to go through all the dialogue again, even if there are no choices to be made.

Combat in Cave Story+ though is surprisingly inventive, varied and above all fun. Whilst you start out with only a single gun, what appears to be a Revolver named the Polar Star, your arsenal quickly expands to multiple weapons. Each of the weapons has their own unique ability, like bouncing balls of fire or a gun that blows protecting bubbles around you, and depending on your situation there will be a weapon that’s ideal for that particular engagement. This is what makes Cave Story+ so appealing, but it doesn’t stop there.

As you defeat enemies they drop little glowing triangles and collecting these will level up the weapon you currently have equipped. Each weapon changes significantly as it progresses through the levels and at the final level they usually have some kind of added bonus that makes them really worth while. My weapon of choice was the Machine Gun as it’s level 3 ability is to be able to push you upwards if you fire it downwards, making the platforming sections much easier and a lot of fights trivial. This is followed in close second by the sword which functions as an area of effect weapon at its highest level and is particularly devastating against bosses.

The weapon system also plays a heavy part in the strategies that you’ll form as you go through Cave Story+. You see when you get hit both your life and current weapon level will go down and depending on the weapon this can mean an instance de-level (like with the sword). For some boss fights then, when its impossible to not get hit, switching between the appropriate weapon and another one you don’t care about can mean the difference between beating the boss easily or stumbling your way through with the wrong weapon for the job. It’s immensely satisfying and is undoubtedly why Cave Story+ has a following like it does.

As for the overall story itself I could take it or leave it as there’s nothing particularly memorable about any of the characters which I’d say is due to the limited amount of dialogue in it. Sure there’s enough to keep the story going but after being spoiled with great stories recently, even ones without dialogue, I can’t help but feel that Cave Story+ doesn’t deliver in the story department. I’m putting myself at odds here with the greater community who commend Cave Story+’s err story but I stand by my comments.

Despite all these difficulties though Cave Story+ is still at its heart very fun to play. I didn’t catch myself wondering why I was playing this game, questioning whether or not I was doing it just for the review, which speaks volumes to Cave Story+’s game play. If you’re a fan of the old school style platformers then Cave Story+ is right up your alley and even if you’re not it still stands on its own as a really enjoyable game, even if it suffers from some solvable problems.

Rating: 8.25/10

Cave Story+ (or some form of it) is available right now on PC, OSX, WiiWare and DSiWare right now for $9.99, $9.99 and some amount of Nintendo points. Game was played entirely on the PC on the Easy difficult setting with around 5 hours played and 45% of the achievements unlocked.

Just over a year ago I wrote a post exploring my own experiences with games of varying length and the gaming community’s views on what constitutes a good game length. At the time I strongly felt that gamers, as a whole, were annoyed with the trend for AAA titles to shoot for shorter lengths, feeling they were being cheated since they were no longer getting the same amount of value as they used to. For me personally the shorter lengths were actually somewhat of a blessing as 20+ hour games, whilst usually quite enjoyable, would take me weeks to finish at my usual rate of play. Thus I tended to favour the slightly shorter games that could be done in a single intense weekend which made titles like Heavy Rain feel far more intense and immersive than they otherwise would have been. 

The last year, for me at least, hasn’t seen my view on game length change much. I still balk at games I know that will take a long time to finish but if the hype and recommendations from friends are good enough I’ll make the investment in them anyway. It probably doesn’t help that I’ve become something of a Starcraft 2 fiend of late which soaks up a good portion of my gaming time which tends to push me towards the sub 10 hour bracket length bracket. Unlike me however it seems the gaming community, or at least some game developers, now believe the trend is towards such shorter titles:

The likes of social and casual games, particularly the cheap games available on mobile, have changed the expectations of gamers, the panel concluded. By gamers are paying less money, there’s less need to create 10-hour-plus gaming experiences, because consumers no longer feel shortchanged. This could be particularly beneficial for self-publishing indie developers, they said, who could charge less but gain a larger percentage of sales. 

I usually draw a line in the sand between what I call traditional gamers¹ and those who just play games when it comes to points like those stated above. Social and casual games typically don’t attract traditional gamers (and yes I’m talking out my ass on this, if you have figures to the contrary please share) and I believe the opposite is true for traditional console and PC releases. However with the gamer population seeming to age at a rather rapid rate (it felt like only last year that the average age was 30) there may be a tendency for traditional gamers to trend towards more casual-esque games simply because they can’t afford the same time investment they used to.

As I said in last year’s post the length of the game is usually quite irrelevant to the overall experience. My most recently completed title with 10+ hours of game play, L.A. Noire, was extremely enjoyable for the 22 hours I spent with it. Compare that with say Duke Nukem Forever which made 8 hours feel like 40 and it becomes quite clear that game length, whilst definitely an initial factor in my purchasing decisions, ultimately does little to affect my overall perception of the title. This does mean that I agree with one of the panel’s points though, rarely do I feel short changed now when a game only lasts 10 hours, especially if said game was a complete blast to play. If I’m honest I am spending more on games now than I have done previously (because I’m more honest now than I was back then, if you get my drift), but the price per game is usually a lot less than I used to pay thanks to Steam.

All that being said however I can’t deny the impact that social and casual games are having on the market. I might not partake of many of them myself (although Bejewled on my iPhone claimed a good 10 hours of my life) but an overwhelming number of people have and that tidal wide of people is changing the gaming landscape. Many developers are now realising the potential of the free to play, micro-transaction supported platform and independent game developers now have multiple viable avenues in which to push their wares. All this would appear to be pushing towards shorter, more easily consumed titles. However I personally believe that it will be limited to the non-traditional gamer market as they’re the ones driving the changes. Traditional gamers on the other hand seem to have no problem with longer titles, as long it’s appropriate.

¹Traditional gamers in my definition refers to those of us who would identify as a gamer in the demographic sense. For us traditional gamers it’s part of our identity as we’re involved in the gaming community in some way (whether that’s blog posts like these or being part of a gaming group like a forum or clan) and generally we’ve been gaming for a good portion of our lives. Social and casual gamers don’t tend to fit this mould instead seeing games as something of a distraction in the same vein as TV shows or movies. 

It seems like the classic genres of games are undergoing something of a renaissance thanks to the now extremely viable independent game developer market. Whilst a lot of gamers will still go for the current staples (FPS, RTS, RPG) many independent developers are making a good living out of things like top-down shooters, adventure games and the good old fashioned platformer. What’s really surprising though is what sets them apart from their classic brethren and one such example of this is Trine which takes the idea of a platformer and turns it on its head by adding in all sorts of curious game mechanics.

You start off the game by being introduced to the 3 characters you’ll be playing throughout the game. They are (from left to right in the picture above) simply named as The Wizard, The Thief and The Warrior. The thief, in attempting to steal treasure from the Astral Academy, stumbles across a mysterious artifact that when touched bound her to it. Hearing the noise the warrior runs down to protect it, only to himself be bound to the object. The wizard, who has remained in the academy to study the skies, also came down to see what was going on and upon touching the object all of them vanished. From then on only one of them could exist physically while the rest would have to reside in the artifact, which the Wizard recalls being named The Trine.

It’s an interesting set up for the core mechanics of the game which are heavily physics based. You can only control one of each of the three characters at any one time and each of them has their own set of unique abilities. The wizard has the ability to conjure objects (platforms and planks) and control them via levitation. This also extends to a good number of environmental objects throughout Trine which will need to be used in order solve certain puzzles. He also lacks any form of direct combat ability being only able to thwart enemies by dropping things on them or conjuring objects that fall on them. The Wizard then is almost wholly dedicated to solving puzzles.

The warrior is at the complete opposite of the spectrum, being almost entirely used for combat. His initial abilities are quite simple, he has a sword which he uses to kill things and a shield that he can use to deflect things trying to kill him. As you progress he gets the ability to charge at enemies, useful for when they get a bit tougher and have shields of their own, as well as a two handed hammer that does more damage and can be charged up to shake the ground when released. Considering there are times when you’re swamped with enemies the Warrior is far from useless in this predominantly puzzled based platformer.

In the middle of these two extremes is the Thief being both a capable fighter as well as an essential part of the solution to some of the puzzles. Her main weapon is the bow which can be upgraded to fire up to 4 arrows in one shot. She also has a grappling hook which can latch onto any wooden or other appropriate surface which she can then use to swing around from. Her bow can also be upgraded to fire arrows for those few levels where there’s little ambient light but torches sprinkled around for convenience. Out of all the heroes I found myself using her the most since she was so versatile, even if I don’t have a single screenshot of her here (thanks to her being a bit tricky to use whilst also mashing the screenshot key).

The game itself is quite pretty especially when you consider that it was released back in late 2009. All of the environments are lush and rich with little bits of detail from the forests with plant life littering every corner to the dank dungeons with bones and all sorts of nasty things strewn everywhere. Trine also has an extremely vibrant colour palette which is amplified by the extensive use of bloom throughout the game. Whilst this might be seen as gaudy by some Blizzard has shown that a lively colour palette keeps people interested whilst also making it a lot easier to distinguish enemies from a bland background. Personally I quite enjoyed it, even if it seemed a little too outlandish at some points.

Trine also combines a few RPG elements so that they can throw ever increasingly harder puzzles at you as the game progresses. Littered through each level are green experience jars that you have to pick up with some of them dropping directly from enemies. Every 50 of these will grant you a level and a point to spend in upgrading your characters skills. These allow you to do things like conjure more boxes as the wizard, shoot more arrows as the thief and be more effective in combat as the warrior. There are also various chests hidden around each level that contain special items that can augment your abilities, grant special powers like resurrection or reduce downtime like restoring health if it drops below a certain level. Whilst you can complete the game without hunting all of these down they do make the game quite a lot easier if you do, as you can see below.

Thanks to its heavy reliance on physics for the basis of nearly all its puzzles Trine is also subject to the same emergent game play phenomena that all its predecessors were prey to. Whilst it’s obvious that the level designers had a certain solution in mind it’s obvious that there are easier ways of doing them if you mix certain abilities in an unusual way. The screenshot above showcases one such idea where I built a bridge using 5 of the wizards objects which I carefully counter balanced so it wouldn’t fall to pieces when I ran over it. This starts to take on a whole new level when you get the conjure floating platform ability as the wizard, especially when upgraded so the thief can hook onto it.

Whilst this game play idea does make the game infinitely intriguing at points it is also its ultimate down fall. The heavy reliance on the physics engine means there’s always quirks in the way it functions such as when you hit a ledge there’s a moment when your character is considered “standing” for a brief moment allowing you to jump again. This trivializes many of the puzzles and whilst you can avoid doing it the tendency to spam the space bar is not unique to me, so I’m sure many people have found it before. Additionally whilst the game designers coded a fail safe to stop you levitating objects you’re standing directly on you can put a single platform on top of anything and the levitate to your hearts content, wizard surfing your way past almost anything.

Combat, whilst well done for the most part, also let’s Trine down in some parts. Initially it feels like any other part of the game but towards the end there are points where enemies will continue to spawn endlessly until you get far enough away from that point. That’s all well and good but when you’re right at the end of a puzzle and the next check point in sight it’s a damned shame to have to cut through 50 skeletons just to get there, especially if you’ve killed 45 of them not 5 minutes ago. It’s the same complaint that many had with Dragon Age 2 spawning multiple waves of guys, ruining the idea of planning a strategy out before engaging.

Despite these complaints however I still enjoyed Trine throughout the 7 hours I spent with it. The wonderfully lush environments and emergent game play made me feel like I was figuring out solutions that had never been thought of before. Whilst there would be some frustrating times where I’d die over and over again I still kept coming back, trying every avenue I had available to me. The story, whilst simple in its ideas and execution, was enough to carry Trine through to the end and wrap it up succinctly, a rarity in today’s market. Overall Trine is an enjoyable experience for both the things it gets right and the flaws you can so lovingly exploit.

Rating: 7.5/10

Trine is available on PC right now for $19.99. Game was played on the Hard difficulty with about 7 hours of total play time. I’d guess I got about 80% of the total experience and secretes available in the game.