Originally published at: http://statelyplay.com/2018/07/06/stately-scrying-what-were-playing-this-weekend-16/
Well, today marks the end of the second week of slaving away at a real job which means I was greeted with a paycheck upon arrival at my cube-shaped work area this morning. Now I remember why people do this “work” thing. That said, two weeks of work is a long-ass time when you’ve been out of the game, so next week I’m heading on vacation. This is not a joke, I’ll be heading down to Indiana with my wife’s family for the week. None of us live in Indiana, mind you, but Wisconsin is dull enough to make Indiana seem like a vacation destination. I should have WiFi and whatnot next week, so I’m not sure anyone will notice a change in operations, but I wanted to make sure you all knew just in case I’m not hanging around the forums or if I miss a turn here-and-there in any online games I’m currently in. Oh, and I wanted to make sure you realized that my life involves vacationing in Indiana. Twice. Later this summer we’re all going to Indiana again for a family vacation. That one revolves around Gen Con, though, so I’m not too upset about heading down I-65 again. Anyway, on to everyone’s weekend:
The Magic Circle (and more)
https://youtu.be/Kzxm4WtVUt0Another weekend’s gaming awaits. I’m seriously jazzed about playing some of my new Steam Sale acquisitions with my kiddo, especially The Magic Circle. The Magic Circle is largely about solving puzzles by giving objects the right combinations of properties (like “melee attack” and “fireproof”). “Hacking” in-game objects and changing their traits and behaviors suits this story about breaking - or is that fixing? - a game that has been in development hell for eighteen years. It’s the closest thing to “Working for Peter Molyneux, the Game” you’ll ever play. It’s hilarious, and not too edgy, and some of the puzzles are very clever.
Another Steam Sale game my 7yo has latched onto is MidBoss. In this roguelike, you play as lowly imp with a familiar spirit, “Mid,” who calls you “Boss” and encourages you not to accept your status in the dungeon (getting bullied by Skeleton really sucks) and to rise above… by marking other monsters for possession and then taking over their bodies when you kill them in a quest to ultimately supplant the current master of the dungeon and rule over all its monstrous inhabitants. Traditional, wholesome, family fun, now available without the need to draw a pentagram and literally summon Satan [unless you want to -ed.].
I’m probably also going to be playing XCOM 2. No, I didn’t pick it up in the Steam Sale, it’s been sitting, mostly unplayed, in my library for a while. At first I wasn’t sure why I’ve been cycling through games in the vein of the original UFO: Enemy Unknown, then I figured it out: Julian Gollup’s Phoenix Point, the “X-Com spiritual sequel” to rule them all is coming out soon, and my subconscious mind is obsessed.
Speaking of sequels and obsession, A#'s Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind is out. Spiritual successor the King of Dragon Pass, one of the best games ever released on mobile, Six Ages is a triumphant return to the beautifully odd world of tabletop RPG Glorantha and to story-driven clan management. This time you play as a tribe that worshipped Yelm, the solar emperor, until Orlanth slew him for killing his daddy, and now the gods are at war, which is really bad for children and other living things and maybe the world is ending? Cool beans.
-Tof Eklund
- The Magic Circle for PC/Mac/Linux via Steam, $20
- MidBoss for PC/Mac/Linux via Steam, $15
- XCOM 2 for PC/Mac/Linux via Steam, $60
- Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind for iOS Universal, $10
Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered (and more)
https://youtu.be/_OKenNxyLmAI once again find myself liberating the oppressed miners of Mars in Red Faction: Guerrilla, a game I’ve come back to every couple of years since its release. This time the occasion is the recent release of the “ReMARSter”, which was so generously given free of charge to everyone who owned the original release on Steam. Aside from missing nearly a decade of shooter control refinements, it has aged remarkably well. It helps that there hasn’t really been a game that’s achieved the same level of detailed destruction and calculated mayhem since. Even its follow-up, Armageddon, missed the point. There’s just not many games out there where many problems can be solved by driving a truck through a building, y’know?
And I’ll be playing more Lumines Remastered when I feel like getting away from my desk, now that I’ve read up a little bit more on some strategies. This will be my last weekend with any free time for games for a couple weeks, so I’ll probably manage to squeeze in a few more, like Slay the Spire or a bit of my second playthrough of Picross 3D 2.
-Tanner Hendrickson
- Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered for PC via Steam, $10
- Lumines Remastered for Nintendo Switch, $15
- Slay the Spire for PC/Mac/Linux via Steam Early Access, $16
- Picross 3D Round 2 for Nintendo 3DS, $30
Phoenix Point (and more)
https://youtu.be/iuN9g502cYMHello Statelies. Wallowing in the post-Steam Summer Sale malaise, I’m geared up for a Scrye. Let’s see if the rubber hits the road, because last week’s effort had me hover over 7,62 Hard Life for a second, before unsurprisingly shelving the struggle for Battlestar Galactica Deadlock. Because, you know, it’s Battlestar Galactica Deadlock.
First cab off the rank is Phoenix Point’s freshest pre-alpha build. It’s very good, but until we see more of the meta game and unit development, I wonder if body horror XCOM, or X-Com, will be enough in a post-XCOM 2 world [more XCOM is always a good thing -ed.]. Still, it’d be disingenuous to say Julian Gollop is shamelessly ripping off, uh, his own life’s work. Mechanically, the chef is kissing many a finger, and Snapshot Games continues to have some of the best art direction in the industry, sidestepping tired old tropes in very subtle ways. More to come.
Seduced by PBEM, one such Steam Sale pickup was Field of Glory 2. Sorry, Kolbex! I did ogle Ogre, another siren singing the asynchronous song, but it was time to get all fuddy-duddy and try to recall what I should have remembered from high school Ancient History. I’m looking forward to being routed in battles apart from the crushing realities of time, dreaming of driving my Legio III Gallica across a field to fame and fortune.
I finally picked up a copy of STALKER series’ black sheep, Clear Skies. A prequel to Shadow of Chernobyl and Call of Pripyat, so with the Sky Reclamation Project mod applied and a little bit of the Atmosfear and Absolute Nature patches slipped in for good measure, I’m ready to get the skinny on this irradiated afffair. Its stablemates are top shelf games, and I expect nothing less of Clear Skies - at least for atmosphere. This is how a man rides out the wait for Metro Exodus.
Finally, System Shock: Enhanced Edition was snagged for a swipe of the Citadel passcard. I never played this dark cyberpunk opus back in the day, but twenty four years on, an investigate is warranted. For science, creature of meat and bone.
Have a fine one.
-Alex Connolly
- Phoenix Point pre-Alpha for PC/Mac/Linux, $30
- Field of Glory 2 for PC via Steam, $30
- STALKER: Clear Sky for PC via Steam, $10
- System Shock: Enhanced Edition for PC via Steam, $10
Card Quest - Combat Card Game and Dungeon Maker: Dark Lord
https://youtu.be/RddnJ7qfh7YI’ve got a couple iPad time wasters on hand for the weekend.
First, the poorly named Card Quest - Combat Card Game. There’s definitely cards and combat, and well-designed combat at that. You play as an adventurer—wizard, rogue, warrior, or hunter—and have a deck full of class-appropriate cards to use in a series of encounters against deadly monsters. Combat is tactically challenging as you try to determine how best to avoid getting your ass handed to you every single turn. Attrition is a problem, as you don’t regain health between fights, so it’s all about playing your cards efficiently. As you progress you get access to better weapons, magic, and gear which improves your cards. You play until you die and then, well, play again. I’ve only scratched the surface but the classes all play differently enough to be interesting in their own right. I’d recommend playing on a tablet as the font is pretty small for a phone.
Second is the appropriately named Dungeon Maker: Dark Lord. There’s a lot I don’t like about this game. The graphics are bad, the UI is worse, and the game does very little to help you understand how it actually works. The thing is, I keep playing it because the central idea is a fun one. You are a dark lord and you have a dungeon, as the game’s name points out. Your job is to setup traps and monsters so that the do-gooder heroes of the world can’t come and slay you, sort of a simplified tower defense situation. Game play progresses through a series of choices, most of which are battles, but some offer opportunities to upgrade your dungeon or buy stuff off a merchant (I assume a Home Depot for dungeon lords kind of thing). It’s fast and fun with enough going on to keep me interested for play sessions of up to an hour.
-Nick Vigdahl
- Card Quest - Combat Card Game for iOS Universal, $5
- Card Quest for Android, $5
- Card Quest for PC/Mac via Steam, $10
- Dungeon Maker: Dark Lord for iOS Universal, $3
- Dungeon Maker: Dark Lord for Android, $3
Tabletop Gaming
https://youtu.be/GQyLW9gkj9MAs we’re leaving on vacation this Monday and abandoning my game shelves, I think I’m going to really try and get some tabletop gaming in before we go. Specifically some solo gaming as I have the urge to get Nemo’s War and Dawn of the Zeds back to the table. I also have Darkest Night in that stack so, if I find the time, I’ll try to get them all played at least once.
I’m also looking for a way to play 18xx games with my group when we can’t all sit around the table. There are VASSAL mods out there, but I was hoping for something a little more user-friendly and was coming up empty. I’m currently trying to teach myself Unity and C#, so I think 1889 might be the project to tackle. I’m not sure I’ll ever have anything that actually works, but at least now I have a goal. I’m also working on a digital version of Healthy Heart Hospital. Not an official version (yet!) but I’m hoping to use it to impress someone to let me work on an official board game port somewhere down the road. These are the stupid things that run through my head at 1:30am. We’ll see if I can actually follow through.
-Dave Neumann