Bytepath

Bytepath is basically a game of Asteroids on steroids. The premise is mostly the same in that various stuff flies in from the edges of the screen, and you got to shoot and/or dodge that stuff. What sets Bytepath apart though, is it's insane upgrade system. There's several different ships, a few dozen classes, and several hundred passive skill nodes in the form of a Path of Exile skill tree, which it most definitely did rip off, but that's not a bad thing.
These upgrade systems allow for many different paths, allowing you to come up with your own unique way of beating the game. It's quite satisfying to see the synergies between the upgrades play out, and the entire thing is like an incremental game.

Now, what is bad, is that the game kind of fails to do anything with this potential. In fact, just as I'm about to reach the point where I'm just getting these ridiculous(ly fun) synergies up, I also reach the point where I beat the game. You can start over with even more increased power, but there's no real point.
Basically, you need to get to level 40 to win, up to which point the difficulty ramps up at a balanced pace. After that, the game quickly throws everything else it has at you, and if your build is good enough to survive that, you might as well keep playing forever. (Picture related.) I found out I could get to the point where I basically get invincibility off of killing enemies, and that invincibility lasted longer than it took to get it. Couple it with an ever increasing attack speed buff from kills, and I was all set to play until I get bored of gaining points. (As you can see, the points left the screen, my combo counter is over 10000, giving me over 1000% extra attack speed. I'm also at level 100, which is far past the final level of 40.)

Overall, I had fun playing it, but it quickly exhausts itself due to the lack of things to do. In less than an hour, Bytepath becomes a game of just mindlessly holding down buttons, watching as everything before you dies. You stop caring for enemy types and pickups, and you don't really get to feel the potential of this bullet-spewing monstrosity you've created. I would've loved a bigger map, maybe some bosses, and it could have really shined if it actually added a game to the upgrade simulator. But as it stands, it won't make my list. A partial recommendation only - if you want something to do for an hour or two.

PS. This actually opened up my eyes to why Path of Exile might be more fun then I've given it credit for. I haven't looked at it enough from the perspective of it being an upgrade simulator instead of an ARPG.

Music Racer

Sometimes I wonder if I should even post about the bad games I find. And I don't mean just game I didn't enjoy enough, because that's most all of the content here, I mean actually bad games.
Music Racer is someone's attempt at Audiosurf, except I don't think they ever quite hit the point of having at least all the same features in it, let alone any improvements. Curious why I even added this game to my list, since I'm not a big fan of listening to music of my own choice for the sole purpose of playing along to it. That's all this game is, see. The comparisons to Audiosurf are all well and accurate, and this is basically a downgrade on all accounts. I've nothing to say. No use even considering this.

End-of-week Report

Oh boy, Overwatch and Star Citizen free weekends.
I last tried Overwatch during its open beta, and I can say nothing noteworthy has changed. I can of course not deny that it is a well made game and deserves its popularity, but on a personal level, if I wanted to play a shooter, I'd play a regular one without all the twitch-based gameplay, and if I wanted to play a team-based ability spam game, I'd turn to a traditional MOBA. Hence, I've no motivation to play it. This is as close to a review as you're going to get from me.

As for Star Citizen, it is a game about the future, for the future. Even after 200 million dollars and several years of development time, it still seems a long ways off from being a coherent, playable thing. I must say that what they do have so far is very impressive, and if a game of this quality would release in full, it would be absolutely astonishing, but it hasn't yet, so it isn't yet.
It also still has numerous bugs, the user experience is often clunky, and most importantly of all, it's a game for the future, because computers of this age can not run it. With 16GB of RAM, the best last gen i5 CPU, a GTX 960, and a well-optimized computer, this thing is pulling around 20 fps with up to a second lag spikes every ten-or-so seconds. And that's on the absolute lowest settings. Barely playable. If I had to recommend specs? 32GB of RAM, newest generation i7 or better, along with at least a GTX 1070, and all 50-100GB of it installed on an SSD.
But I am most definitely looking forward to playing it in 5 years or so. What they're doing is really impressive. They just have to hope nothing comes along and makes a similar thing faster and releases before them.

Well, that was a fun double mini-review. Onto the regular report.

• Games in backlog: 283 (+4)
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 51 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 60 (-1)
• Games reviewed last week: 2-ish

Age of Wonders III

Age of Wonders III, like most 4X games, isn't really the kind you can complete entirely, since you're supposed to just keep starting over until you don't feel like playing anymore. Of course, if you like the game, who knows how long into it that will happen. I would never get around to telling you my thoughts on it at that rate. So instead, I played a little bit of the campaign, won a couple scenarios, and am now ready to impart my gained knowledge.

Hoping you'd know what a 4X game is, I'd jump straight to comparing Age of Wonders with some others of the genre.

• Inevitably, I can not leave out Civilization V, it being the most well-known of them. And as usual, the main difference I would point out is that Age of Wonders focuses a lot more heavily on combat. Not any more heavily than most strategy games of the turn-based nature, mind you, but rather it's Civ that's the odd one out.
• The other large difference, and this time from all others that I know, is that Age of Wonders plays a lot quicker. There's approximately just as much action going on in a single turn, but 40-turn games are entirely feasible, while even the longest ones probably wouldn't pass 200 turns. That is of course assuming all the players are not prolongening it on purpose. I find this a really nice aspect of the game, as it actually allows for games to be completed in a single sitting, or just a few, instead of dragging on for weeks or months. Not that I don't like long games, it's just that it's great to have a shorter option available.
• As a moderate difference, Age of Wonders has fairly complicated units and battle interactions. The battles are played out on a hex grid, and instead of the usual attack, defense, and whether the unit is ranged, each unit instead has it's own set of abilities, and a "character sheet" consisting of potentially dozens of different traits that further shape it.
• There is a rather extensive magic system, which allows for major influence over the world through its use. Terraforming, summons, offensive and defensive spells, and more.
• As for downsides, I find town customization options are heavily limited and boring. There's very few buildings, and their effects are very simplistic.
• Additionally, there is no tech tree in the game, which I believe is a contributor to the fast pacing. Town upgrades and spells dictate how powerful your units can be, and both can get to end-game levels fairly quickly, while skipping lots of lower level stuff.
• And finally, though this would need more playtime from me to confirm, I have a feeling like the balance is slightly off.

Overall, a simpler and faster 4X TBS game than most, but it definitely has a spot on my list for still being pretty good, as well as filling a sort of gap in the genre. Would recommend.

End-of-week Report

Slow progress, and I feel like there's a bunch of games that are nearing completion, but just aren't getting there for one reason or another. When talking multiplayer, I completely blame my friends' apparent reluctance to finish anything. Play it until just before the end, then quit. Baffling.
Have the latest report...

• Games in backlog: 279 (-1)
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 50
• of which Early Access: 61 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 2

Delver

Delver is like Minecraft. Except it doesn't have mining. Or crafting. I guess it only has the blocky, pixely world with the same kind of first person camera and is, coincidentally, made in Java. (Which, by no coincidence this time, also creates technical problems for the game.) Anyways, it's not a very good comparison, but I'm just feeling tired this time around.

See, Delver's a roguelike instead, and this time rather close to the formula. True permadeath, lots of mystery surrounding the world the first time around, and other stuff, I'm sure. I don't know, I don't have much to say. It's not very fun. It's short, poorly utilizes the height dimension to the point where the bugs (like bad hitboxes) caused by it outweigh any benefits it may bring. That is, except for the nice graphics. I think it does the blocky art style pretty well, especially once you consider the particles and lighting. But the controls were no good, there wasn't much content, and whatever mystery it held for the first 15-30 minutes quickly wore off.
I'll be honest, maybe I should actually be feeling like playing a new game when I do, but I think I wouldn't have thought much better of it anyways. So that's that - it's no good.

The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile

Would you look at that, it's The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile - a game from the makers of Salt and Sanctuary. The former was published on Steam a year later (along with Charlie Murder), probably due to the resounding success of Salt and Sanctuary, but it's actually a game from 2011. Overall, not that old, but still worth noting that it came out quite a few years before their big success.

I am immediately reminded of the hyper-violence games I used to play on Kongregate and Newgrounds. Back then, I had no clue what I was doing, mostly just mashing buttons, following a rather linear path to wherever the game guided me. I might have thought that this was just due to being a kid, and not being all that bright at the time, but looking at this game, there really isn't much of an indicator as to what the grander goal is. The camera is zoomed in real close, I'm given no feedback on how much damage I might be doing, how much I might need to do, or what might be triggering the various things that are happening. Luckily if I button mash with just a little bit of sense, I can get through it all while still feeling pretty good about myself due to the visual effects the game gives me.

Sadly, I can't say it's very fun to mash buttons and effortlessly kill stuff. This game does just feel a bit gratuitous, and I'm not a big fan of that. It doesn't feel like it does anything more than the free games I got to play 10 years ago, though, yes, I would be comparing it to the best ones of that time, and further, I can't even say I didn't have fun.

Difficult verdict to place here, but I'm afraid it just isn't good enough for my list. However, if you have a few hours to kill and feel like playing something violent, this isn't at all a bad pick. Play it, maybe have some fun, but don't expect too much.

End-of-week Report

Ludum Dare is this weekend, so I have been doing that and will continue tomorrow. Honestly, I understand less and less each year why I'm still taking part in it. It was a really helpful experience the first couple times, but each next time I'm just even more dissatisfied with both the journey and the destination. Maybe solo it would work, but there's just no such thing as an unified vision as a team. If the person whose idea is being made is not a strong leader, everyone else will either suffer or make others suffer due to misaligned goals.
But enough bitter rambling, have a report. Last 3 weeks to go before school begins again. Got to make the most of it.

• Games in backlog: 280
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 50
• of which Early Access: 60 (-1)
• Games reviewed last week: 2

Superflight

Superflight is almost in Steam's top 100 in terms of user reviews at the time of writing, so I expected it to be a fun game. It's a game about gliding in a wingsuit or some such through randomly generated short, blocky, and colorful levels. Gain points for flying close to walls or through loops, stay alive for as long as you can, and get a high score.

Honestly, the gliding thing wasn't half-bad... for the first 10 minutes, but after that, I'm not really sure what to look for in this game. I guess you could practice and get good at flying through lots of tiny holes and near all sorts of walls, but that's such a simplistic thing to get good at - there really are no other features in the game. What's more, if you're going for a high score, just don't take any risks. Fly for hours, days even, taking no risks, and you'll get the top score. Except you obviously don't want to play that long.

I'm really just disappointed in such a highly rated game, but I guess the tranquility factor in this game was appealing to a lot of people. Personally, I don't see it at all, and would confidently suggest staying away.

Space Between Worlds

I happened upon this little free game recently, and something about it captured my attention that I wanted to play right away. I'm glad I did. It's a 10 minute long emotional experience, with basically no graphics nor much gameplay, but it really reminds me of the good times I had playing free Flash games back in the day. It's just the same style.
I'd recommend taking 10 minutes out of your day and playing it, there's really not much to lose.

End-of-week Report

Chugging along, doing things, writing this way too late in the evening...
Can't really think of anything to say, so just have the progress report.

Oh yeah, I missed the goal I set for myself by like 30 games. As we can see from the past 30 days, I'm clearly not going to reach an average of 1 game more played than added per day by the end of this month either. But I have to get through these games somehow. What to do, what to do...

• Games in backlog: 280 (-2)
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 50 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 61 (-1)
• Games reviewed last week: 2

PS. Finished watching Trigun. It was okay I guess. Couldn't quite relate.

Shift Quantum

Small world out there. I found Shift Quantum on the Steam store the other day, and I can only assume it's the same folks who made the various Shift games in Flash back in the day. Fun little games, pretty good for being free and what was available at the time. They also made Epistory as it turns out, which I rather liked. Always good to see developers whose games I played all those years ago still there, still making games.

Shift is a puzzle game where you have to traverse a level via platforming. The twist? You can press shift to Shift, which turns everything inside out. What's up is now down, and what's solid is now not. This creates a whole bunch of new possibilities when combined with the other mechanics, such as pushing blocks, collecting stuff to open/move doors/platforms, and even changing the direction of gravity. It's not a very complicated mechanic, but it creates ways to think outside the box, like Portal, except not quite such a stroke of gold.

Quantum doesn't really deliver much anything new except for nicer graphics and sounds, and a bit more gameplay. Overall though, it's still too short for my liking and nothing that great as a game. Good for a free Flash game, not good enough for a paid game. But if you've never played Shift before and like non-standard puzzlers, it might be worth trying out, even if just the Flash versions while they're still available.

Siralim 2

Siralim 2 is a dungeon-crawler based on randomness and quantity. Basically, what has been done is that hundreds of monsters, items, spells, and other such bits have been created, most have been given some forms of random enhancements and allow for combinations between them to create a near-infinite amount of combinations. Throw these things into dungeons, allow the player the capture and find them, then create challenges that the player has to try to overcome by assembling a proper team.
And this sounds real fine on paper for me. I'm a huge fan of generated content, combinations and synergies, and the emergent gameplay that could and should arise from that. However, I found my time with it to be incredibly tedious.

I'd like to start off with criticizing the control scheme and looks of the game. Rather uncharacteristic of me, as I absolutely love, for example, Dwarf Fortress, which is rather guilty of both of these things.
An easy problem to see is that the game is played with just 6 keys - WASD, select, and back. While it means there's no difficulty in learning the controls, it's quite hindering to get around the menus. And this game requires a metric ton of navigating menus. Mouse selection or keyboard shortcuts instead of clicking S 10 times followed by W 10 times soon afterwards would be really, really nice. if you're going for a keyboard-only control scheme, make it very well optimized. This one is not.
As for the graphics, they're simply charring. While that doesn't really hurt the gameplay, I just dislike looking at them most of the time. I wouldn't complain about graphics that aren't good and don't try to be, but I do complain if they're trying to be more than the author was capable of. Also there's recurring problems with the pixels getting very un-square if any of the viewport settings are just slightly off the default. It's hard to explain, but it looks really bad.

As for the gameplay, I find it to be too much of a grindfest. The huge amount of randomization is good for keeping things somewhat fresh for however long you want to play, or for collection enthusiasts, so if you've got 1000 hours to burn, and just want to do something, it can be a nice time waster. However, if you're like me and desire quality over quantity, then all this nigh-infinite content doesn't matter, since it's not enjoyable enough.
You're allowed to advance at your own pace for the most part, but you can't just rush through everything since you're not strong enough. Grind away at lower floors for as long as you want and you should eventually win one way or the other. I personally would prefer the perfectionist approach, where I take my time to explore everything and look through all the possibilities, but the game throws so much stuff at me all the time, that looking through all my spells, all my equipment, all my monsters is infeasible.
And these describe the two alternative paths through which you should be able to play the game, as well as the problems with them. Either grind or think of the right combinations to get really strong. But grinding is boring button mashing, and thinking takes too long, not because it's difficult but because there's too many things.

Overall, this game may very well be enjoyable to those to whom these things do not sound so bad. It's not very popular, but it is quite highly rated on Steam, meaning the few people who play it, like it. But unless you can go look at what the game is and think to yourself that "yes, this is exactly what I've been looking for", it's not going to be enjoyable. For the record, there's also a third game out in Early Access right now. Much like with the first game, it's mostly just more of the same, but with a few differences, as far as I understand. No major revamps to any game systems or graphics.