Symmetry

Originally Published to https://oldgrizzledgamers.com/

Symmetry is the latest survival game to entice me with its pretty art style and allure of simulated suffering in a frozen wasteland. It has a unique charm and an intriguing story. Unfortunately, it is too short and lacks content. Forget the $11.99 price tag for a moment. Because, in terms of actual quality, it feels like the tutorial level of a much larger story.

The Game

Its replay value, which is the saving grace of the survival genre, is crippled because there is nothing to do in this game after your first playthrough. It offers no goals and no progression. It’s as though someone had the idea for a really cool story, made the first level, created the most basic mechanics, and forgot to build on that initial idea.

It doesn’t actually feel like a survival game. This is a very short and linear story with survival elements presented through mundane micromanagement. All you have to do is click the right buttons at the right times until you win. There is no room for creativity and each playthrough is almost exactly alike. The only way to lose is to stop paying attention for a minute.

Should You Buy It

No, you can skip this one. If you like the art, just stare at the screenshots. There is only one map and its appeal fades pretty quickly.

Symmetry has nothing that makes the survival genre enticing. There is no base-building, no exploration, and no community management. While the story is an exotic evil AI romp, it has no satisfying conclusion and matters very little to any of the actual mechanics. This is a shame because the story ends up stringing the player along, making you think there is some compelling reason to not simply beat the game as fast you can. It’s hard to describe how confused and disappointed I was after beating this game 3 times in a few hours, wondering if perhaps I had missed something. But no, there is nothing here to miss.

Check it out for 99¢ during a steam sale. The game is well made, the art style is beautiful, and the story is interesting. My complaints are not because this is a lazy game. It’s a very strange case of real talent on display, but its focus is in the wrong place. I’m not sure why they didn’t keep adding to the game, or why they’re selling it as though it’s a fully realized experience. In its current state, the only reason the player is needed is to tell the astronauts to do their job, go to sleep, and eat their veggies. After a short time, it is not very much fun.

A Rant on Survival Games

To be honest, I’m not sure why I’m drawn to these games. Perhaps they activate the same part of my brain that has led me to almost getting frostbite several times, or it aligns with my pattern of behavior that has left my limbs permanently ruined from skiing down mountains way beyond my skill. I also love camping deep in the Canadian wilderness, living off fish and oatmeal. Whatever the case may be, it’s certainly not because this genre is a consistent source of great games.

What I hope you all get from this review are some of the ingredients that are required to make a great survival game. My desire is that at least one of you, dear readers, will be inspired to go out and make the first game in this genre I’d actually give a 100. Read on for my sake.

Agency

The biggest problem with Symmetry is it doesn’t give the player any goals. On the surface, the game is very straightforward; you must repair your spaceship to escape the planet. However, that is where it stops. It never has that, “see that mountain, you can climb that mountain,” moment where the player is driven by their own desire to explore as opposed to just wanting to win. The game never hands the story over to the player. There are no mechanics that let you say, “This time I’m going to just build a cool base,” or “I’m going to go for broke and see how much of the world I can discover before I die.”

Each playthrough is exactly the same. You essentially have three jobs as the player: Make sure your astronauts don’t die from exhaustion or hunger; assign your five astronauts to one of three resource gathering jobs; upgrade and maintain your base using said resources. The game tasks you to do those three things for as long as you can, with no change in gameplay from start to end. It’s just micromanagement at a very mundane level.

Survival

What Symmetry is more appropriately described as a linear story containing survival-inspired mechanics. If you want survival, go play Rimworld or something.

Once, I purposefully avoided beating the game wondering if perhaps something new happens the longer I survive. Instead, I found there is no difference to winning after 30 minutes or 2 hours. There is no point in surviving indefinitely. You are really deciding how long you want to play before winning. It’s a bit turned around and doesn’t work well as a mechanic.

Story

The story does reveal itself the longer you choose to survive. I say choose because there is a definite way to win the game; If you fix your spaceship you escape. However, if you do that too quickly, you miss the story. This does have an in-game purpose, as it ties into the character development of your crew. Some want to study the mysterious AI, some want to strand themselves to prevent the AI from spreading, and others want to escape ASAP. I really like the concept. 

But, in practice, those story beats and character developments don’t actually show themselves in gameplay or have any impact on your strategy. Your crew will do everything you tell them without any conflict. If you wait too long to escape, the game does not reflect the choice. All you get is some text every 5 minutes describing a crew member’s feelings or thoughts. Even the cutscene and voice-over of your escape are exactly the same.

This game contains a cool premise, but absolutely no follow-through.

Score: 50

This feels like a demo of the first level of a much larger game. The developers are talented and have a lot of skills. But this game needs a lot more content and refinement before I would consider this appropriate to sell. Cool graphics and fun ideas on paper do not make good games. A short game is not bad, but this feels like a 30-minute proof of concept you might find on Kick Starter, trying to sell itself as a full-fledged survival game.

It Lurks Below

Originally Published to https://oldgrizzledgamers.com/

You would not be faulted if you saw “It Lurks Below” and thought, “Oh, how nifty! Another 2d version of Minecraft in Early Access!” You wouldn’t technically be wrong, either. On the surface, it belongs in the pile of voxel-based survival games that make up a nice chunk of many of our steam libraries. However, its appearance conceals an amazing, creative, and innovative game. It might be the next game to absorb all your free time.

“It Lurks Below” is made by the creator of Diablo and that DNA and design sense permeates every corner of this game. It takes the gameplay loop of Diablo (Kill monsters, get loot, kill stronger monsters, get better loot) and focuses it on a much tighter and more casual experience. This brings a level of pacing to the survival genre which typically leans more heavily on open-ended sandbox gameplay.

This game’s roots dig deep in the nerdiest, most hardcore corners of gaming. However, it still manages to deliver that experience in a way that fits a play schedule of short 15-30 minute spurts, or hours of continuous gameplay.

Should you buy it

Yes. If you want more than 10 hours of gameplay, I’d say wait until full release. But if you just want to get in there and start killing demons, the game is ready to cater to you. I didn’t have a single game-breaking glitch, nor anything I’d really call an inconvenience. Which is always my first concern when buying early access.

Currently, the gameplay is limited to 5 bosses. After beating them, you can continue to play by building your homestead, farming for better equipment and weapons, or increasing the difficulty of the game and giving it another whirl. Be warned, increasing the difficulty hurts if you’re not properly leveled and geared up. Fans of Diablo should be very familiar with this experience.

In summary, I don’t think you can go wrong buying this game if you enjoy action RPGs and dungeon crawlers.

Magic-Rifle-Laser-Wands

What sets this apart from games that look very similar, is that combat takes center stage. It’s incredibly well implemented and smooth but Melee combat is not really present. Instead, you have magic wands which are really laser guns that come with a handful of different effects. You aim by moving the mouse around your custom avatar, which will point the laser at your cursor in a 360 arc around your body. Click to shoot and you’re ready to kill demons.

Weapon effects range from simple bullets that go straight until they hit something to bullets that bounce of walls, giant beams of energy, bullets that freeze enemies, etc. I can imagine more and more of these will be added as the early access continues. The current amount felt like a good start, but unless they add a lot more weapon types, I’m not sure this system will stand up to long-term gameplay.

Mana also makes an appearance, acting as ammo for your laser wands. As you level up, you can choose to increase your mana pool or cause your mana to recharge faster, a mechanic which effectively works identically to reloading in a shooter.

Right now, all weapons are randomized and drop when killing demons. That said, you do craft your first weapon, so perhaps the crafting aspect of the game will be expanded in the future.

Armor and Loot

Armor is incredibly important as you delve deeper into the 2d depths and find Lovecraftian horrors between you and the loot. The armor must be crafted from the ores you find as you dig down. Each piece has a slot for gems that give the armor stats and unique abilities. The unique abilities are very standard action RPG stats, such as increasing your chance to find more items and increasing your health or mana. Again, a great foundation but will need to be expanded with more modifiers.

Overall, it’s a very satisfying system, even in its current state. Gems can be swapped out at ease without destroying them, effectively taking the place of randomized armor you would find a traditional RPG. This gives players a lot more flexibility in choosing what kind of stats they have equipped.

This is not to say I want all games to introduce this type of casual gearing-up, but it does add a unique twist to the RPG formula by allowing players to change what stats their armor has without punishing the player by weakening them too much for experimenting.

RPG Stats

Character stats make an appearance and have an impact on gameplay as you level up. There are several classes to choose from, though I did not notice a difference between what stats benefit which class. Instead, the classes are varied by the magical items they are given which change how you approach to combat (my bard was given a magical flute that damages every enemy around me).

You have four stats to improve as you level up: Attack power, Vitality, Intelligence, and Wisdom. Attack power makes your guns hit harder. Vitality increases your health pool. Intelligence increases your mana pool. Wisdom decreases the reload time of your laser guns.

Beyond these stats, you have the opportunity to craft various rings which further alter your gameplay in different ways. One ring makes you mine three squares instead of one, another gives you heat vision to see enemies in the dark, and another generates light around you saving torches. The number of rings is already a good selection and I imagine more will come before release.

AI

The enemies in the game are fairly straightforward at first. They stand still while you shoot. I was disappointed as I began my adventure, only to realize the game was holding my hand before completely turning the tables and filling dungeon after dungeon with creative and well-thought-out enemies. Everything from spooky ninja guys who appear behind you to give a healthy shanking, to exploding giants and squid men with their own lasers who have the pesky habit of blowing up bricks you’re hiding behind.

The bosses are a real treat as well. They felt as well designed as a Zelda boss, forcing me to take into account all the knowledge and skills I had developed and actually think through how to beat them. The game allows you to use the environment and block-building to solve the puzzle of beating its bosses. It’s a fun experience using block-building mechanics to enhance the actual gameplay of combat.

What truly stands out here is that AI is very well designed. The game shuns a bit of the modern credo of advanced AI and relies heavily on scripted behavior, but it really worked for me. You could tell that each enemy was thoughtfully designed and the creator intended to trick you and kill you. It reminds me of playing a classic arcade cabinet like Galaga, where the challenge isn’t so much predicting a billion possibilities of the AI, but discovering their patterns and exploiting them.

Survival

Survival is implemented in a casual way that paces the player as they dig deep into the catacombs beneath their newly established village. You have a hunger meter and a rest meter. When hunger reaches zero, you quickly lose health until you die! Your rest meter depleting is a much less dramatic scenario; movement slows until you get to your bed or sleep on the floor. A bed regenerates fatigue and health much faster.

You are tasked with building a home and farm. Your farm can either be filled with plants that require tending and replanting after harvest, or with perennials that only need to be planted once and can be harvested again and again, but take much longer to regrow in between. I opted for the second option since I really didn’t feel like working a farm this past week. Even still, as I got more and more hooked on this game, I found myself optimizing my farm and ensuring it fits my playstyle.

As you beat bosses you unlock shops to add to your village. This adds a nice sense of visual progression to the game. As you go deeper underground, your village above ground grows and prospers.

Overall, the survival elements are light enough to not take away from the RPG mechanics but are not tacked on so simply that they can be ignored. The game does offer a creative mode if you do not feel like dealing with survival elements, but I found that they added a level of planning and pacing to the game. Instead of simply diving deeper and deeper with little thought for your character’s wellbeing, the survival mechanics force you to take breaks as you rest your character and stock up on food. It’s a very natural process, and I found it a convenient time to sell my extra loot, tend to my farm, and craft new items.

In Conclusion!

Now, dear readers, please believe me when I say I love sandbox games, despite my heavy critiques of them. Give me a digital pickaxe and I’ll happily bore away at the earth until I reach the core of hell, the latter being more likely in this context. However, I found it a wonderful breath of fresh air to see these mechanics presented in a new light. “It Lurks Below” is a great example of the benefits of putting gameplay rules and goals into the survival genre.

This isn’t an open-ended sandbox, the game world is actually fairly small. But it is a very well-developed and thoughtful RPG that challenges what a survival game has played like.

Hey,

Good review. Although when you were talking about the game in chat, you had some really interesting points that didn’t make it into the article. I think with a game like this, that surprised you in a good way, it’s nice if you delve a bit into why exactly it’s so good because explaining the mechanics usually doesn’t get it across. I liked how you described how it predicted your “solutions” and subverted them. No need to change much, just something to keep in mind when things are great or terrible - give a game design lesson.

You’re good to go to WP. Decide if this is good enough for a full review (I give a score and so forth when a game would have gotten at least 75 - I figure that’s good enough to slap a “hidden gem” thing on it and the developers won’t mind a positive review of their early access).

Avernum 3: Ruined World

Originally Published to https://oldgrizzledgamers.com/

Avernum 3: Ruined World recreates classic isometric RPGs, a la Fallout and Ultima. It’s incredibly fun, that is, as long as you’re a sucker for RPGs regardless of overall quality and polish, like me! While I enjoyed myself, I don’t think this game is anything special and feels like it’s selling itself purely on nostalgia. 

For a lot of folks, capturing that feeling might be enough to justify a full playthrough; or, if you’re a curious younger person like myself, who was understandably not cognizant during Avernum 3’s original release, this is a great opportunity to discover the franchise. But, if you want a game that is going to surprise you as it tries new things, you won’t find anything like that. This is a very by-the-book and standard RPG.

In the process of reinventing this game, they merged modern approaches towards design with outdated choices, creating a strange and clunky amalgamation of a game. It feels like a modern RPG hiding behind an archaic façade. Some of these choices are bizarre, like a limited UI that is frustrating to work with. This is paired with a redesigned skill tree and spell system that would fit perfectly in the Witcher or Skyrim. Is it retro? Is it modern? It’s a bit of both and not better for being either.

I didn’t find this middle road approach captivating and if it weren’t for the fact that the story and quests were unique and entertaining, this wouldn’t be a fun game. If you can pretend that Avernum 3 is not a remake and is simply a 2018 indie title, it's a great story wrapped up in the most annoying design limitations of yesteryear.

Should You Buy It

After that tiny rant, you may think I would say, “NO NO NO NO NO! DO NOT BUY!” However, I’m a sucker for older games; read my bio at the bottom of this article. I owe my tastes in gaming to accidentally coming across a download for a pirated copy of Fallout 1 in my youth. On top of that, if you’re someone who, like myself, constantly craves new RPGs, Avernum 3 will scratch that itch.

However, If you want something polished and easily consumable, stay away. If you want to actually know what niche games were like 20 years ago, stay away. If you’re not really into RPGs and you’re reading this article out of curiosity, go play Divinity: Original Sin 2 and report back here to pick one of the previous options.

Why? The learning curve on this game is steep; which would be forgivable if it were due to being an actually difficult game. But the entire curve is just learning how to use the UI. I cannot see this game appealing to those not already sold on RPGs. There are better games in the genre that are way easier to start playing and more fun.

The UI will cause you more grief over the first 10-20 hours than any of the bosses you face. I apparently have a great deal of patience and I’m content with the time I spend learning to play. Once I figured out how to actually do simple things, the game opened up and became brilliant. However, you might not be so patient and forgiving as to wait 10 hours before this game becomes playable.

The Game

This is a very straightforward isometric RPG. Your mouse is the primary vehicle by which you’ll interact with the world: click to move, click to interact, click to attack, click to talk. While you also can play this almost entirely with a keyboard, I didn’t think that control scheme was designed well. So for us normies, we’ll be doing a lot of clicking.

You are given a team of four heroes. Customization is limited to picking between four classes, a few races, cycling through a few sprites for each race, and creating a somewhat short name. It’s disappointing, as this is an easy place to add improvements to a classic game without moving too far from the original experience. But, nonetheless, after making your team you are put right into the action and the game once again has a misstep.

It is not uncommon for games to give you space to organically learn how to play. Doing this well is the height of game design. You could study something like Portal and write hundreds of papers on how it teaches people to play without ever taking them out of the game. Avernum 3’s opening is nothing close to that experience. Your first bouts of combat are messy and overly difficult. You’ll be confused trying to figure out how to use your character’s special abilities. You are more or less left to figure everything out on your own, all of it convoluted by the sub-par UI.

The RP in your G

Roleplaying is fairly limited in Avernum 3 as far as choices go. While you are given a small handful of dialogue options for each NPC, they don’t achieve anything beyond being prompts for more exposition. Occasionally, a dialogue choice will have a permanent repercussion, but this felt a bit random and never overtly important. I usually didn’t know my choice was permanent until after the fact, which took some of the fun away. Making choices only feels important when you know you are making a choice.

On top of that, I felt hamstrung into behaving in ways I wouldn’t have wanted my characters to as there was rarely more than one way to complete a quest. While I’m sure I missed a lot of choices, overall this felt like a completely linear game. It’s focused on stats and leveling as a means towards roleplaying, not so much interacting with choices.

All that said, the place where choices did appear and have an impact is while exploring the overworld map and running into monsters. Bump into a group of unicorns, roaches, or blobs and you may be pleased with unexpected results when prompted with a variety of options in how to proceed. What this showed me was the potential and know-how were there, but choices were simply not a major element in how this game was designed. Instead, the real goal is to complete every quest, regardless of what kind of character you want to roleplay.

The other disappointment is that character creation didn’t really play into roleplay either. I believe that putting non-human races into your party does give you special flavor texts from time to time, but it rarely felt like it mattered that half my party was not human. The game didn’t even appear willing to commit to its own world-building. You are told at the start that your heroes are spies who would be killed if they were discovered. Instead, every NPC seems aware of who you are and your mission, and they don’t care. The fun of role-playing spies is stripped away before it even starts.

The writing is top-notch, however. It kept me laughing and engaged for 25 hours and I bet it would have continued to do so for another 30. That said, I like choices in my RPGs that go a bit beyond to kill or not to kill.

The G in your RP

So what is the actual combat gameplay like? Firstly, it's turn-based. Your heroes have a set number of action points that are used for both movement and attack. Action points are a fairly common mechanic in RPGs old and new, to summarize: the more action points a hero has, the more things they can do during their turn. As my heroes grew more powerful they started being able to get two attacks in, instead of settling for just one. I’m sure after 60 hours they’ll be throwing spells about, jumping around the map like nobody's business.

If you are looking for a game that is going to challenge you, you’ll be disappointed as strategy isn’t much of a concern here. The spell system is terribly unbalanced. Most of the spells affect large areas and do the same damage as a normal attack. This is overpowered since a party full of magic users far outcompetes having non-magic users in your group. 

The game tries to balance this by making mages unable to wear full armor, making them more vulnerable to the enemy. But with near-unlimited healing available and obtainable traits that let you override this armor restriction, they dominate in combat. The best strategy was to attack the largest group of enemies you can and bomb them with AOE Spells.

A bit more on combat

Movement is done by traversing tiles in the eight cardinal directions allowing you to creatively use hallways and doors to corral and direct enemies into favorable positions. The movement system is very well done and I quite enjoyed how I could dramatically alter the outcome of the fight by positioning myself favorably. So snaps to you.

Much of the NPC behavior in combat is unpredictable, perhaps driven by some level of randomness. This creates encounters that play out a bit more interesting than what other RPGs offer. But it also means you could cheese the system by scum saving until the NPCs did enough stupid stuff to ensure your victory.

Questing

A few minutes in you’ll click on a few NPCs and hopefully read what they have to say, giving you enough clues to complete your first few quests. This is where the game is strongest, and also the least changed from classic RPGs. You’ll never be directly pointed towards where you are supposed to go and If you’re not paying attention, you’re likely to get lost quickly.

You’ll face goblins, bandits, sentient goo, and evil unicorns. Kill enough bad guys and you’ll level up. All in all, it’s about as straightforward as an RPG can get. I don’t feel it brought anything new to the table, other than feeling a bit more like a paper and pen experience than normal.

I don’t think that hurts the overall game, even though it's not the most mechanically interesting. If you like RPGs you’ll already be very familiar with everything Avernum 3 is offering. It isn’t going to win any converts who don’t like RPGs nor is it going to impress fanatics. It's just a solidly, okay game.

Level Up!

When you level up, you are actually presented with a very modern experience. Perhaps the best-designed element of the game. You choose between improving 1 of 4 stats. Strength makes you hit harder, dexterity makes your archery better, etc. The talent tree feels lifted out of WoW or Skyrim, with lines connecting various skills which all provide a very direct and immediate impact on gameplay. It is very modern and probably a turn-off for people looking for a truly classic experience.

You also have a few points to spend on talents, things like allowing a mage to wear full armor or an extra bonus to lock picking. It is a very enjoyable and simple skill system that allows for a lot of forward-thinking as you try to solve problems and beat quests. When a quest involved a locked door that required a higher skill than I had, I spent the next three levels dumping points into lockpicking until I could open it. I love these kinds of skill systems, as it makes your heroes’ progress feel real and tangible.

The most standout aspect of the skill system is that non-combat skills stack between party members. Instead of having one hero who you dump points into lockpicking and another who you dump points into speech, Avernum 3 uses the total points of your team to determine how good you are at something. I’m not really sure how you explain this logically, four people who are terrible at picking locks wouldn’t be able to suddenly crack a world-class safe just because they put their heads together, but if you step back from that, it is unique and fun to exploit. 

Score: 68

There just is enough good stuff to make this game fun. The writing is top-notch, combat is okay, and the UI is sub-par. Other than the storytelling, nothing else is noteworthy; and to be frank, I don’t think the writing is enough to salvage this HD remake. Everything feels like a rough draft of what could be an amazing game. I don’t feel like this recreation stands on its own feet.

If the original release wasn’t beloved, I doubt this game would have even been noticed. It’s fun and it works, which is probably more than enough to make it worth buying, if not at full price then certainly on sale.

Fade To Silence

Originally Published to https://oldgrizzledgamers.com/

Fade to Silence is an early access survival horror game that is fighting to stand out from the crowd. Its unique world entices you with a Lovecraftian hellscape frozen in a perpetual winter. I was initially pulled to the game by the focus on managing a village along with tower defense mechanics. All while exploring and maintaining the slate of usual needs: hunger, rest, and body temperature. 

In retrospect, this is a boring and poorly designed game. It lacks originality and is unfortunately caught in the trap of trying to look like a blockbuster AAA game than actually being fun. It took me 2 revisions of this article to actually realize, I didn't like this game. Each time I went back to rewrite a paragraph, I found myself realizing how poorly designed each system is. Even learning to play is overly complex and abstract. It managed to hit every one of the points I love in survival games but disappoints in implementation. This game needs an overhaul before full release, everything needs to be redone. If all they do is build upon what they have, at best it'll be a generic, flashy third-person flop.

Should you buy it?

You probably want to wait till full release. It’s is very incomplete and is filled with poor design choices such as an abundance of QTE. Game performance is also bad at the moment. A patch did make the game run a bit smoother, but it still needs a lot more work. It’s annoying and interrupts the experience. 

If you are predominantly drawn to the village management, this only is the barebones of everything they are promising. At this time, the system lacks any meaningful impact on the world. Furthermore, while the ability to construct defenses is fun, it feels needless since the enemy AI is still too stupid to put up much of a fight.

After a few months of patches, they may fix the graphics issues and the village management may be more extensive. Then I would feel more comfortable suggesting people buy the game. In any case, you should keep your eye on Fade to Silence. It’s fun, but still not ready for mass consumption.

The Game

This is one of the better depictions of a Lovecraftian nightmare. An evil voice whispers into your ear making fun of you while you struggle to survive. You’ll come across fascinating sights that defy logical thinking; tentacles writhing in the ground, blood veins crawling up trees, and the threat of falling debris from a floating mountain made of skyscrapers. It all creates a dream-like atmosphere.

In order to survive this strange world, you must build a safe and industrious village. A permadeath system gives you six lives to do so before starting over. You must collect wood, food, and scrap metal. As time progresses, monsters attack your home with increasing difficulty. Tower defense meets village management. You must balance building defenses with creating and upgrading shops. These shops are where your villagers will craft better weapons and equipment so you can explore the world. This, in turn, will allow you to discover more resources, fight more difficult monsters, and rescue new villagers.

Unfortunately, the learning curve for the game is poorly paced. It doesn’t do a great job of explaining how to do most of what I just described. I was left confused when trying to learn more complex mechanics and in the end, felt like I had wasted lots of time. It would have been a more enjoyable experience if the game had guided me to crucial information instead of hoping I stick around long enough to learn. If the developers don’t find a smart way to teach players how to play I can see this game becoming a confusing mess as it expands.

Exploration

Exploration is key to building your village and you act as a scout who must go out and find crafting materials. As you explore, you’ll come across “Eldritch” shrines that are consuming the few natural resources remaining. Destroying these shrines by initiating some lack-luster QTEs frees the supplies. Since you’ll be destroying a lot of these shrines, I hope they come up with a more interesting mechanic. Nonetheless, once destroyed you can either assign a villager to travel out and harvest that resource or you can stuff your pockets and carry back as much as you can.

As you deplete resources near your village, you need to explore further to find more. This leads you towards increasingly dangerous monsters. The more you explore, the more you need your villagers to craft better weapons and survival gear for yourself.

A very obvious loop emerges here. Explore, collect resources, create better gear, explore, collect more resources. There is the potential for a lot of nuance in this system. However, right now you can ignore the powerful upgrades villagers give and get by with the basic survival items that you craft on your own. It’ll take some fine-tuning for this loop to be worthwhile.

One last note about exploration; there are several travel options available. You can go by foot, by dog sled, or unlock fast travel points. The sled simply allows you to move faster. However, the physics system breaks often, making your sled disappear and leaving you stranded. Fast travel is unlocked by defeating mini-bosses who guard areas called strongholds. Upon successfully defeating the monsters there, you will have the ability to spend a rare crystal resource to move between your village and that stronghold.

Combat

Combat is straightforward and recycled from every game that includes a stamina meter. You have a strong attack, a fast attack, and a roll button. Most fights are one on one, which offers little excitement most of the time. The most common enemies are limited to ineffective range attacks and after a while I mostly ignored them. The game’s less common melee enemies do create a delightfully high anxiety situation. If you get cocky, you’ll deplete your stamina, be unable to roll away, and lose one of your precious lives.

Ranged combat is the best option for most fights. At the moment, the enemy AI has no real counter to your onslaught of arrows. The only situations where the bow didn’t work were when the framerate dropped or when the aiming system became confused and shoot the arrow in the wrong direction.

Limited AI

The AI is very simple. When your villagers see a monster, they rush towards it. They seem to ignore the rules you must follow and easily kill anything. Furthermore, you are better off not creating walls right now. They look cool and keep the bad guys out, but your villagers are stupid and get stuck on the inside. Meaning, they can’t help defend when under attack.

Monster AI isn’t great either, as I’ve mentioned. However, the only unfair enemy I encountered was some kind of demon dog. They are completely broken as they can teleport, hit you, and disappear before you even see them. In addition to this, most enemies would glitch from time to time. But, that usually meant you could cheat some of the bigger fights.

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed my time in Fade to Silence, but other than some cute sled-pulling-puppers the game fails to stand out still. I think there is a lot of potential for something great to emerge if they expand on the village management system. We haven’t seen an immersive survival game really branch into the management genre yet. If they don’t, we’ll just end up with a generic survival horror game.

They are looking to release this game in mid-2018 with four major patches before then. The patches are planned for the end of every month from January to May. I doubt how reasonable that is. With the number of problems currently in the game, four months doesn’t seem like enough time. Unless they're hiding some good stuff up their sleeve, I believe the game still needs some major design revisions.

I Fell From Grace

Originally Published to https://oldgrizzledgamers.com/

I Fell from Grace is a 2D adventure game with one of the most fully realized branching stories that I’ve ever played. It presents a wealth of winding paths to be navigated by making meaningful and often disturbing choices. The narrative unfolds into a dark and pessimistic tragedy overrun with uncanny characters. The game flaunts grotesque imagery, in the literary sense, where the human body is distorted and morphed. A depressing and nihilistic view of humanity hides away in every corner. It openly prompts you to replay it over and over, making new choices and trying to solve a looming mystery. It’s weird, fun, and entertaining to explore.

I wish I could say this is an almost perfect game. But, there are some big issues with gameplay that brings down the experience immensely. The narrative and atmosphere are enough to carry the experience and justify buying the game. However, it doesn’t live up to its full potential. 

While the thought and work put into the world and characters stand out, it feels like the game systems were not given enough development. How the player interacts with the world needs to be a priority in a game’s design. I Fell from Grace feels like it has only the bare minimum mechanics required. That being said, what I love about I Fell from Grace far outweighs what I disliked.

Should You Buy It?

Yes, I truly think so. Especially if you like adventure games already. Not only is it fun, but it leaves you thinking and wanting to play more. The issues with gameplay don’t really stop you from experiencing the game. At worst, you’ll need to split up your play sessions a bit more than normal. 

It checks off all the boxes for games that explore the idea of choices and fate. I could see a game like this gaining the kind of community and fan obsession that a similar game like Undertale has. They hit a lot of the same themes and both are filled with lore and unanswered questions.

If you don’t like adventure games, then you probably won’t like this one. Not because it’s bad, but because it's firmly planted in that genre. So if you have a problem with the genre in general, this game isn’t trying to extend any olive branches to you. But if you like these puzzle-filled, story-driven experiences then you’ll find this is time well spent.

The Game (or The Tragedy of Henry)

Within the first minute, it captivated me. The tone is immediately set with a cryptic poem and a short scene that foreshadows the gore to come. The world is bizarre. A city filled with people who speak completely in rhymes. Without spoiling the game, our protagonist has a very long and painful journey ahead. It takes place over multiple playthroughs as you learn about who lives in this world and about Henry’s own life. 

When we begin, his wife is terminally ill, he’s about to lose his job as a researcher at a pharmaceutical company, and their debts are growing. All this while the couple is still grieving after a miscarriage.

One morning Henry finds magical pills that cure any disease in his mailbox. It’s a great premise for a branching narrative and it will surprise and shock you with some of the choices you can make. I’ve not played a game that manages to follow through with so many decisions. As you replay it, you appreciate how little things build up into huge stories. It feels like completely different stories from one playthrough to another. While there is no way to get a game over screen before reaching the end of a play-through, some routes do end prematurely and are less kind to poor Henry. There is also a “true ending” for those with some patience. This ending wraps up the game in spectacular style and will no doubt generate enough fan theories to rival Lost or Inception.

The game is filled with gore which is surprising to see in 2d retro-styled art. It’s certainly not the first game to take this route. Hotline Miami comes to mind immediately. However, I believe the context of the gore is what’s shocking. I Fell from Grace is filled with contrast. The characters seem to be in a normal world but are surrounded by terrifying scenes lingering behind closed doors. It’s unnerving how it appears to be normal, and creates an uncomfortable and weird atmosphere.

Gameplay Issues

The gameplay is very straightforward. You move left or right on the screen to navigate the maps. When you come across an object you can interact with, a little subtitle appears above your character’s head. Pressing the interact key will either pick up an item, give you a few options, or simply give you some informative text.

You will be solving puzzles that are very reminiscent of classic point-and-click adventures. None of it is too difficult to figure out since the real focus in the game is on the choices you make. As I mentioned, you are prompted to replay the game several times while making new choices. There is an overarching quest that can only be completed through trial and error.

The problem is, the first 20 minutes of the game aren’t that interesting after you’ve played it once. It felt like it took close to an hour before I would get to the branches of the story I had not yet experienced. On top of that, you will want to repeat a lot of the side quests each playthrough. It turns into a slog after 2 or 3 times. The branching narratives are great, but they are walled away by repetitive gameplay that becomes boring while you wait for the good stuff. You can’t help but think there’s a way to design this better.

A Limited Save System

You are currently limited to 1 save slot which gets overridden each time you make a choice. It’s just annoying. If a choice has multiple branches, I have to replay everything up to that choice to experience each branch. Simply being able to make a save before that choice would let you avoid needless repetition and make the game more fun on multiple playthroughs. I can accept that there is a creative decision in this mechanic, but it would be nice to see at least some creative way to enhance the experience of replaying the game.

Not Enough Direction

The game doesn’t talk to you enough. For the most part, I found the game to be very straightforward when solving the puzzles. However, if you walk past a person who you were supposed to talk to or accidentally miss an item on the ground, you can be completely dumbfounded as to what the game wants you to do. You’ll find yourself backtracking and clicking everything over and over until you discover what you missed. It's an old problem in the genre as a whole.

The game exchanges an overt hint system for listening to gossip around your office and by talking to people. It’s an interesting way to push the player forward, but I Fell from Grace doesn’t even have a quest log to accompany this. You have to pay attention to every hint in the conversations or you’ll miss some crucial point on how to progress the game.

Even making sure you pick up all the items can be a bit of a chore. It was easy to miss items if you were not looking closely. This led to some really aggravating moments of confusion. There is no way to know what items you’ve missed and the game doesn’t notice when you’re stuck. There is no help button or way to get an extra hint if you're confused. On top of this, there are no real walkthroughs and guides to refer to at this time. So it can very be annoying to progress this game during small intervals.

Glitches

There are also random glitches dispersed throughout, but these are being patched. My guess is because of how few people play the game at the moment, it isn’t being poked enough to find all the little problems. None of it is game-breaking and I am willing to forgive this for the most part. Especially since they are fixing them.

The Score - 77

I really wanted to get across how impressed I am with what I played. It kept me engaged and I’m honestly itching to try one or two more playthroughs. I only got 33% of the achievements, so there is a huge portion of this game I didn’t even touch. For fans of branching narratives, this is a must-play. It's fun to watch the consequences of your choices be fully realized. Each storyline has a great payoff. It’s entertaining and enjoyable. I can see this game becoming a cult classic and I’m surprised that it hasn’t had much traction yet. Despite its flaws, there is a good game here.

I want to give the game a higher score. If I only had to rate the storytelling elements, this would be a solid 90. However, the mechanics, or the lack of mechanics that would allow for better re-play potential, get in the way of the amazing level of detail that has been put into these branching narratives.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Originally Published to https://oldgrizzledgamers.com/

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an Open World Survival Medieval Simulator Role Playing Game or OWSMSRPG. It’s fabulously detailed; filled with lush forests, quiet hamlets, and many NPCs for you to terrorize as you loot and pillage your way through the lovely Eastern European countryside. What’s more, it earns a seat among the more ambitious games to come out in the past decade of our indie gaming renaissance. It aims to take the formulas of modern blockbuster RPGs and ground those ideas and tropes in a realistic setting. There is no magic, only swords and bows. No living skeletons and ghosts, only normal people.

For the most part, it succeeds and presents an opportunity for us to discover what is actually fun about modern RPGs. Is the genre actually good when you wipe away all the fantasy, magic, and world-building that have propelled franchises like Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls, and The Witcher into the mainstream? What happens when RPG mechanics are used to create an interpretation of reality.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Kingdom Come: Deliverance makes the best case for realistic RPGs. Its world is dull and tone deaf, and overall doesn’t take advantage of its opportunity to tell a unique and well-crafted story based on an interesting moment in history. That said, the game mechanics are creative and interesting, creating a fun experience with a forgettable story.

A Quick Note!

Before I give my opinion on the game itself, I want to acknowledge the controversies that have followed Kingdom Come’s release. We have decided to review the game as a separate entity from the opinions and behavior of its creator. However, we are not trying to ignore what other people have said about the game. Specifically, about the lack of people of color or how it portrays women. I do encourage you to voice your opinions on the game in the comments though, as these are important aspects for everyone when deciding whether or not you want to buy it. We also have an article explaining this decision I encourage you to check out, written by OGGs editor and chief, Galp.

Should You Buy It

I’m a bit late to the ball game here. But, if you’re still mulling over whether this belongs on your wishlist or not, I’ve got a good heap of opinions for you. But yes, you should buy this game.

It is filled with novel mechanics and dynamic storytelling. Its strength lies in the small choices that you make  instead of an overarching plot or theme. The kinds of armor and clothes you wear around town, what skills you choose, how you interact with local merchants all changes how the world reacts to you, to an extent greater than I’ve experienced before. In many ways, how you chose to live from day to day as your character has more impact than the dialogue choices.

This is coupled with a skill-based combat system. Stats and armor do play into your ability to survive fights, but you as the player must actually learn how to use the fighting mechanics. This will probably be the biggest turn off for people. It will frustrate you when you start, as the game doesn’t pull punches. You will have to practice timing and reflexes, just like you would in any other skill based game. If you enjoy simple block, attack, and roll systems, you might not find this very fun.

The Game

If the jokey acronym from the intro didn’t key you in, Kingdom Come: Deliverance is going to be asking you to do a lot. So I’m going to try to organize my review by breaking down each of the game’s distinct elements.

At its center, this is a hardcore RPG. The game is unforgiving and has very little quality of life inclusions when it comes to questing and combat. You will fail quests from time to time. The stat system will leave you a bit confused. Though its complexity and difficulty allows you to experiment. By creating a space for failure, Kingdom Come creates a unique divergence from other RPGs. While most franchises try to simplify, here they use complexity to add an interesting layer of choice to their game.

For instance, there is no charisma stat. While you can invest time into getting good at casually talking to people by picking certain perks that help you talk your way through quests, you can also use your menacing strength to threaten everyone you meet. Or dress for the occasion, wearing rich clothing that makes people more receptive to you. Another option is to have deep pockets and throw money at problems. This is complicated further by each NPC responding differently to each approach available to you. There is a lot of nuance to what kind of a person you want to be with the stat system.

The World

The physical game world of Kingdom Come: Deliverance is astounding. The amount of detail included blows my mind. It has everything an armchair historian could desire, from the differences between hunting in tended and untended forests; to recreations of castles all the way down to the indoor toilets and wooden armaments that most of us are probably ignorant of.

The story which leads you through this world is sufficient. It's not the best story, but it manages to stay fresh from quest to quest by focusing on talking to NPCs and exploring the world. What is most refreshing, is combat is not the main focus of the story. Fights are used to create climaxes throughout the quests, which improves the pacing of the game immensely. I never felt like enemies were being thrown at me thoughtlessly.

Unfortunately, the NPCs who reside in this world are pretty boring. It seems in their endeavor to take the fantasy out of RPGs, they forgot to replace it with anything. There are very few quests or NPC encounters that feel like the characters have any sort of emotion or motivation beyond serving as a plot device. Even the main character and his love interest are devoid of any realistic response to the horrors of medieval warfare which they are made victims of in the game’s opening.

A Rant on Flat NPCs

I can accept that in a franchise like Elder Scrolls, NPCs might have a have a more laissez-faire opinion of warfare when there are literal monsters outside their doors. Seeing your village massacred might not rank as high on the list of emotionally traumatizing events when it's competing with the fear of said village returning to life and eating you.

But, when you are trying to sell me the idea that these NPCs are living in an interpretation of the real world, I do expect a bit more nuance as to how people might cope with the deaths of their entire family and all their friends.

Furthermore, while the game does a good job of creating a superficially realistic depiction of history, it lacks some much needed in-world criticism. It is all good and dandy to show that there is a caste system at work, where a person’s standing in society corresponds with their job and family; but the characters have almost no expression beyond that. Or in its depiction of women, there is hardly any dialogue referencing discontent, justification, or hardly any opinions at all about their place in society.

I can believe that people in this time period genuinely felt that their society was structured in a moral and good way. But I imagine they were still were filled with opinions and thoughts about their place in the world just as we are. Instead, NPCs act as empty and opinion-less as a fantasy farmer who watched his father die at the hands of giants and but figures, that’s just the way it is. This is Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s greatest failing. 

Survival Elements

The first thing you are tasked to do after starting a new game is go eat some of your mom's freshly made soup, lest you starve to death before her eyes. You also have to be sure to get a few winks of sleep in from time to time or your character’s eyelids will envelop the screen in a terrifying and uncanny eyelid shaped darkness. 

Personally, I found the survival elements to be underwhelming. You must eat so your hunger score doesn’t reach zero, the longer you wait the more you maximum health will diminish. If you let your sleep score hit zero, you pass out. Sleeping also allows you to save your game. You can only save without sleeping by buying special alcohol. I find this system to be a little silly. However, it’s a survival game so, obviously, it needed to be included?

The only reason I don’t completely dismiss the survival elements is that they do manage to add another level of depth to the game. Despite being unoriginal and boring, they do force you to interact with innkeepers and food vendors from time to time. It also requires that you put a bit of thought into your travel plans as you go from town to town. If you use fast travel without thinking, you could arrive at your destination exhausted and hungry; not ready to fight.

I lost quite a few battles because my stats were lowered when I ignored my hunger. So I appreciate that there are real consequences that come along with the system, besides just keeling over. But it's a missed opportunity. A complaint not specific to Kingdom Come.

Combat Elements

Combat is where Kingdom Come diverges the most from mainstream RPGs. It is very difficult but learnable. Its complexity allows for an incredible amount of control and interactivity in the battles, something open world RPGs are sorely missing. Fights feel much direr and more interesting since victory is based on your own reflexes and instincts rather than solely on timing animations.

When you wield a weapon, you are presented with a 5 pointed star around the center reticle which locks on to your opponent. This star and its center represent 6 basic positions with which you can begin an attack. Say you want to swing your sword down onto your opponent’s head; simply move your mouse up and the top point of the star will be highlighted and your character’s hands will rise above his head waiting for you initiate the swing with a mouse click.

From here, you have a huge amount of choice. You can try to fake out your opponent by clicking the attack button and quickly changing the direction of your attack; or you can chain attacks by timing your swings and choosing new directions at the appropriate tempo. There are also combos which your character can learn and use to great effect. I’d compare its complexity to a fighting game, and I hope developers continue to explore new ways of presenting combat in RPGs, like Kingdom Come has done.

A bit on Bows

If that all sounds much too complex and you’d like to use archery instead, they have managed to complicate this as well. Firstly, they remove the reticle when you try to aim, forcing you to learn intuitively how your arrows will fly. On top of this, your character’s hands are not steady, making aiming slow. Its near useless at first until you and your character both improve.

Furthermore, pulling an arrow back drains your stamina very quickly. Shooting more than one or two arrows with accuracy quickly is near impossible, especially early on in the game. But I enjoyed this complexity for both the sword and bows if no other reason than they dared to do something new and managed to pull it off decently. I don’t want to say either system is great, but they are functional and you will become good at the game after a while.

 Score: 82

Overall, a great game. I give it an 82 because of my complaints with the story and world mostly. RPGs are not just pure mechanics and rules like a game of chess or checkers but are worlds created for us to explore, criticize, and be criticized. We want our choices to have repercussions and want to know what these people are feeling and thinking. Its cathartic to see the immediate result of our actions and to have these fictional characters open up to us and lets us into their thoughts. However, this game is fun and enjoyable and I plan to spend an objectively unhealthy amount of time in this game.

Slumlord Simulator Review

Originally posted to: https://oldgrizzledgamers.com/

Slumlord Simulator is the anti-Simcity. There are no sprawling metropolises and happiness meters here. Instead a cryptic red bar measures the growing anarchy in your tenements. All while a box displays a thesaurus worth of words to describe each new level of hatred your tenants feel towards you. The goal is to wring as much money out of the people as you can in order to escape to Bermuda before you’re killed by an angry mob. Good luck!

Right off the bat, this is a niche of a niche game. I would not call this a strategy game but instead it’s more like a puzzle. This is not a freeform management game as the store page implies and there doesn’t seem to be any actual simulation. 

Gameplay is pretty straight forward. You’re greeted by a 3x4 grid of trees with a single tenement near the center and no explanation of what comes next. You have a variety of actions you can do on each tile adjacent to a tile you’ve built upon. You can leave the forests as they are and use them as shelters for meth labs; or you can cut down the forest and build improvements that bring in more money and cause your tenants to wanna kill you a bit faster. 

All improvements are temporary except for tenements. Tenanments net the most money, cost the most to build, and means a tile generates no income for 10 turns while being built. Temporary improvements are running illegal drag races, allowing drug smugglers to use the road, and leasing the land to farms and factories. You also have some actions available at your office each turn. This is mostly improving your personal security. Lastly, you have a variety of “schemes” you can do. These are the more evil ways to make money. They includes things like using unpaid interns as workers and bootlegging moonshine in the basement.

The reactions of my tenants appeared to be hardcoded to decrease at the same rate no matter what actions I took. There are events which prompt you for decisions and are reminiscent of a visual novel. However, they will always occur on the same turn number and never change. A lost game is decided not by an abstraction of a community’s tolerance towards your terrible land management skills, but instead by random chance at the start of each turn. You can lower this chance by investing money, but the game still is only won by luck or by save scumming. Which is the route I eventually took just to see the end game screen.

With all that negativity out of the way, I enjoyed the game. You’ll quickly find you have little control over how your AI tenants respond to you. Furthermore, you as a landlord are only allowed to make bad choices. Success is not measured in how great of landlord you become. Instead, it's in how much money you manage to pocket for yourself. All of this frees you from the pesky OCD tendencies of city management to become a truly despicable slumlord.

Your goal is to escape to Bermuda. This requires earning a small amount of money and waiting a certain number of turns before you can make your trip. As you grow ever closer to your goal your tenants will become angrier with you. If unopposed an angry mob will storm your office and kill you. You have to find a way to delay this long enough so you can finish making your preparations and escape. You’ll be deciding between preparing for your trip, spending money to build more tenements, investing in private security, or suppressing the anger of the people.

The game presents these actions with dark and ironic humor. Your main source of income early on is divided between running meth labs, selling you’re tenants private information, and deciding which of their utilities you’re going to shut off the for the day. I personally found that I preferred running a fake lottery for the first 30 turns. After this I invested heavily in enforcers to keep to people in line. Some of the choices are ridiculous and specific enough that I questioned whether there was some kind of context I was missing while playing.

It had never occurred to me that a landlord would think to put up big brother styled posters of themselves or steal their tenants’ TV antennas for some quick cash. It all works towards allowing the player to truly step into a unique role of someone who genuinely and comically doesn’t care about other humans. After enough games of being murdered by an angry mob you’ll eventually grow calloused to their threats as the same complaints pop up no matter what you do. Saving yourself will become your only priority.

Score: 60

That’s why I enjoyed the game. I can forgive the frustrating design choice where victory or loss comes down to a hundred or so dice roles. It would actually be a simulation if I could win based on making correct and strategic choices. Once I realized this isn’t trying to do that, but instead is a puzzle with only one or two solutions I was quickly drawn into the game. I would find myself thinking about solutions between short play sessions. My mind fully engaged with solving this impossible puzzle that had fallen into my lap. I would have aha moments, fail, rage quit, and return with a slightly revised plan and new hope.

However, I’m not sure if I could have beat the game without save scumming. Though, I came within a few turns once or twice it ultimately came down to random chance. The game is also completely unknown on the web. Besides a few lets plays, it's near impossible to find any information about the game to get help with winning. The lack of information is going to bite you when you encounter glitches or mechanics that don’t seem to be working properly.

The game is also short. There is a high score section on the main menu and it prompts you to try and win with the more money in your pocket. However, for me this is one time play through. That being said, I know there are people who might obsess over a game like this. I’m not sure I would outright recommend this game to the general population, but if its sounds even remotely interesting from the store page or this review I would say buy it. It’s not a perfect game. But its unique enough that it stretched my thinking and challenged my ability to plan ahead. Most importantly, I found it fun despite its flaws.