More Steam Demos
Feb. 12th, 2023 07:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
got_quietI have been avoiding some real life obligations which has meant a lot of playing videogames. I just ended up binging on more demos. A lot of them are pretty bad games or the sort of cheap shovelware that I'd enjoy as a freebie but is not up to snuff for a real game, but some of them were sleek enough and had an interesting play loop.
The good stuff:
Dungeon Drafters - This one was a little interesting. It's sort of a tactics like game + a deck builder. All your moves are cards and you have to fight enemies on a little grid. It was quite slow, and some of the fights were annoying when you had a bad hand, but it seems like something made for some degree of progression in player power so maybe that's alleviated later on. I felt maybe I could see myself putting time into it if it weren't such a slow game.
Lakeburg Legacies - A weird little game. You build up a town, but that is on rails. You can only ever pick the next building on the linear tech tree. You populate the town with people that have a complicated array of stats, including personality traits that will match up with other people, and you marry them all off so that they can have kids to start the next generation of the town. It's a weird game. There seems to be a lot of just waiting around for the appropriate resource to be high enough, and then when you hit the deadline the game just ends and you prestige, earning a bunch of diamonds for your trouble that I assume allow for upgrades in the next round. It does satisfy the number go up craving though so I played it as far as the demo would let me, which is a decent length of time, but it seems like it's partially an idle game, partially just a management thing, and sort of kind of a rougelite in the "there's a set round and it will end and give you perma resources" vein. There's no real narrative to speak of and the player doesn't do any of the romance bit so I will stick to Against the Storm for this sort of city building itch.
Wall World - This looks like a combo of a mining game where you dig through squares to pick up resources, and a missile defense type game where periodically waves of enemies attack your miner and you have to fend them off. The mechanics are polished and I thought it was a good combo of chill mining and relatively simple combat. Seems like it would suit for when you just want to waste some time and don't want to think too hard. The art is nice and the devs tried to be novel by making the mining horizontal into a "wall" instead of down into the earth, but regardless of the gimmick it was fun.
Yggdrasil - A card based town builder. You place stuff, the stuff you place needs to be near other stuff, you get resources, every time you forward to the next turn you get all the resources laid out in the map, and you have a limited number of turns to win. This was a fun solitare town builder with interesting location based mechanics and decent balance between the various resources that you're expected to exploit. I'm getting a little bit sick of the Viking theme just because surely there are other aesthetics out there but that's a superficial complaint, the game itself is pretty polished. I ended up playing a bunch of rounds cause it was fun.
Town Seek - A cute casual game where you fly around a world in a little shark shaped air ship, trading between towns, picking up little trinkets, and completing your collection. Looks like a good game for those who crave the satisfaction of completionism. It's also the most casual of the bunch. Running around clicking on stuff is all there is.
Light Tracer Spark - A weird one. It's one part visual novelesque RPG that takes both the layout and the skill check system from Disco Elysium, and some sort of map conquest game involving developing regions, getting big numbers, and overwhelming other regions with big numbers. The writing on the RPG side was meh. You're an "Amender," a superior space being who interferes with the future of planets to get them on your desired track. The scenarios are kind of weird and unfortunately since the layout evoked Disco Elysium that's what I started to compare it too, and there's no comparison. For example there's a fighter pilot who has some experimental brain to machine tech. You get the option to talk to him directly into the brain or through his plane, and then tell him where all the rebels are, he blows them up, and then asks for your help pacifying the region so you send in your military to do that. Sending in the military is just clicking a button to summon a big number and telling the number to beat a smaller number. It's very slow gameplay when it isn't in the visual novel part of things. Feels like an interesting idea that doesn't have the execution in either the story or the gameplay. Kind of wish they had focused harder on one or the other.
And the Bad:
Perseus, Titan Slayer - A jank ARPG. You run around spamming your skills which is fine. All of the peripheral mechanics were broken though. It's crazy how big a difference functional UI makes on whether a game is ok or kinda just trash.
Minotaur Princess - A jank ass match three game. I have a weakness for match three but since they are sort of simple to execute there are a lot of bad ones out there. This one was mechanically whatever but was entertaining mostly because it used "AI" art complete with mangled hands for the cut scenes, and the actual game play was probably purchased assets with chonky 3d models. The "story" and the gameplay were not in alignment. You get some sob story about a princess and then when it's time to play she randomly turns into a shirtless Minotaur and and then each level starts with some very bad writing before getting you into the match. And yet I played the demo through to completion because I have a problem.
The Fate of Baldr - a jank ass tower defense shooter that doesn't add anything to the genre. Gonna stick with Orcs Must Die.
---
I've played too many video games lately. I'm getting that gross burnout feeling that happens when my avoidance is starting to really catch up on me so I think I'm going to have to detox a little.
The good stuff:
Dungeon Drafters - This one was a little interesting. It's sort of a tactics like game + a deck builder. All your moves are cards and you have to fight enemies on a little grid. It was quite slow, and some of the fights were annoying when you had a bad hand, but it seems like something made for some degree of progression in player power so maybe that's alleviated later on. I felt maybe I could see myself putting time into it if it weren't such a slow game.
Lakeburg Legacies - A weird little game. You build up a town, but that is on rails. You can only ever pick the next building on the linear tech tree. You populate the town with people that have a complicated array of stats, including personality traits that will match up with other people, and you marry them all off so that they can have kids to start the next generation of the town. It's a weird game. There seems to be a lot of just waiting around for the appropriate resource to be high enough, and then when you hit the deadline the game just ends and you prestige, earning a bunch of diamonds for your trouble that I assume allow for upgrades in the next round. It does satisfy the number go up craving though so I played it as far as the demo would let me, which is a decent length of time, but it seems like it's partially an idle game, partially just a management thing, and sort of kind of a rougelite in the "there's a set round and it will end and give you perma resources" vein. There's no real narrative to speak of and the player doesn't do any of the romance bit so I will stick to Against the Storm for this sort of city building itch.
Wall World - This looks like a combo of a mining game where you dig through squares to pick up resources, and a missile defense type game where periodically waves of enemies attack your miner and you have to fend them off. The mechanics are polished and I thought it was a good combo of chill mining and relatively simple combat. Seems like it would suit for when you just want to waste some time and don't want to think too hard. The art is nice and the devs tried to be novel by making the mining horizontal into a "wall" instead of down into the earth, but regardless of the gimmick it was fun.
Yggdrasil - A card based town builder. You place stuff, the stuff you place needs to be near other stuff, you get resources, every time you forward to the next turn you get all the resources laid out in the map, and you have a limited number of turns to win. This was a fun solitare town builder with interesting location based mechanics and decent balance between the various resources that you're expected to exploit. I'm getting a little bit sick of the Viking theme just because surely there are other aesthetics out there but that's a superficial complaint, the game itself is pretty polished. I ended up playing a bunch of rounds cause it was fun.
Town Seek - A cute casual game where you fly around a world in a little shark shaped air ship, trading between towns, picking up little trinkets, and completing your collection. Looks like a good game for those who crave the satisfaction of completionism. It's also the most casual of the bunch. Running around clicking on stuff is all there is.
The Meh:
Fabledom - This advertises itself as a city builder + romance game? It had a cartoony, clean art direction so I thought I'd try it. The city building is slow and I wasn't a huge fan, and the relationship management was restricted to meeting a single neighbor, who also looked extremely cartoony. I don't know, I did not feel excited to see how the relationship management worked when a possible suitor looked so silly. The demo is also strictly abbreviated, so I couldn't get a feel on if it gets more complex or interesting in the future. I didn't find myself compelled from the short bit that we were allowed to play.
Find All: Magic - Hidden object games are a genre of game I've always been mildly curious about so I figured I'd give it a shot. I know there are a lot of them out there, where all you do is try to find little items in a busy pictures, and I can see how it's kind of just a chill thing to do, but after doing it I felt kind of bad, like I had really wasted my time. Instead of feeling chill it stressed me out a little cause I wanted to hurry up and finish it. So probably not for me. Since it's the only game in the genre I've ever played I don't know if it was a good one or a bad one.
Light Tracer Spark - A weird one. It's one part visual novelesque RPG that takes both the layout and the skill check system from Disco Elysium, and some sort of map conquest game involving developing regions, getting big numbers, and overwhelming other regions with big numbers. The writing on the RPG side was meh. You're an "Amender," a superior space being who interferes with the future of planets to get them on your desired track. The scenarios are kind of weird and unfortunately since the layout evoked Disco Elysium that's what I started to compare it too, and there's no comparison. For example there's a fighter pilot who has some experimental brain to machine tech. You get the option to talk to him directly into the brain or through his plane, and then tell him where all the rebels are, he blows them up, and then asks for your help pacifying the region so you send in your military to do that. Sending in the military is just clicking a button to summon a big number and telling the number to beat a smaller number. It's very slow gameplay when it isn't in the visual novel part of things. Feels like an interesting idea that doesn't have the execution in either the story or the gameplay. Kind of wish they had focused harder on one or the other.
And the Bad:
Perseus, Titan Slayer - A jank ARPG. You run around spamming your skills which is fine. All of the peripheral mechanics were broken though. It's crazy how big a difference functional UI makes on whether a game is ok or kinda just trash.
Minotaur Princess - A jank ass match three game. I have a weakness for match three but since they are sort of simple to execute there are a lot of bad ones out there. This one was mechanically whatever but was entertaining mostly because it used "AI" art complete with mangled hands for the cut scenes, and the actual game play was probably purchased assets with chonky 3d models. The "story" and the gameplay were not in alignment. You get some sob story about a princess and then when it's time to play she randomly turns into a shirtless Minotaur and and then each level starts with some very bad writing before getting you into the match. And yet I played the demo through to completion because I have a problem.
The Fate of Baldr - a jank ass tower defense shooter that doesn't add anything to the genre. Gonna stick with Orcs Must Die.
---
I've played too many video games lately. I'm getting that gross burnout feeling that happens when my avoidance is starting to really catch up on me so I think I'm going to have to detox a little.
no subject
Date: 2023-02-14 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-02-14 10:41 pm (UTC)Taxes are indeed on the "It can't seem me if I don't see it" pile. Best of luck getting through it all D=