Tangledeep

I played a fair helping of Tangledeep today, and I feel like I've had my fill. I don't have much to say about this game, so I'll make it short.

Tangledeep is a dungeon crawler which perhaps deviates from the "usual" dungeon crawler by the following:
1. There are classes, but basically no class restrictions - you can wield any weapons, wear any armor, and, without too much effort, rank any skills. You can then mix and match to your liking.
2. You can collect and breed the monsters as pets, then take them with you.
3. There is no passive HP, Stamina, nor Energy (MP) regeneration. Instead the game focuses very heavily on consumables which are dropped in large quantities and can be combined via a cooking system.
Additionally, throw in a bunch of randomness in terms of what monsters you get (although this is not too uncommon in dungeon crawlers), and what you end up is a tangle of stuff alright.

What it feels like is that there has been a heavy focus on quantity over quality, akin to many JRPGs I've played. At first, there's a rather overwhelming amount of stuff to do and making sense of it all takes time, but eventually you kind of learn that some stuff just isn't useful and you end up using only a small portion of the possibilities. It really feels like the focus was on just adding more things without stepping back to look at what's already in the game, if it plays well together, and if it's any fun. In my opinion, it just isn't, and this whole array of "content" is worthless, as I don't want to experience it.

So, as already mentioned, Tangledeep is a mess of things thrown together that doesn't really synergize, and you're left with a whole lot of hollow gameplay. Would not recommend.

Frostpunk

I spent a few hours of the past three days playing Frostpunk. It's a city management game, but with the thematic twist that everything is suddenly freezing over, and people are very distressed by this, so more emphasis is on keeping people alive and away from despair instead of earning money and just building bigger. It's from the same people who made This War of Mine. If you're familiar with that, it might give some insight into the theme of this game. Otherwise, Frostpunk is just a city management game - collect resources, unlock new buildings, try to match your rate of progress with the progressively worsening climate conditions and morale of your people.

What first caught my attention was how beautiful the game looked. I think it really captured the feeling it was going for, as I could feel the cold and hopelessness just from looking at the entire thing. The music also contributed nicely. By the end of my first day of playing, which was about 5 hours, I really liked it, and I was itching to get back and play. Over the next two days my excitement slowly fell, but I remained pretty invested. That is, until I reached the point where I realized they were wrapping things up, the game was going to end, and... that was it. I didn't really feel like starting again, since I had seen pretty much everything, and it would just be more of the same. So, rather abruptly, disappointment hit. But allow me to explain in more detail.

While most city management games have what we'd know as a free-play mode as their main mode, and then maybe some scenarios to show off interesting aspects of their game that might not happen naturally as part of the free-play mode, Frostpunk only has scenarios. And at the time of writing, only a couple, though with more promised to come. But that last bit is irrelevant. There's a problem with scenarios in a game like this. Sure, they may give a very well-tailored experience where all the events have been carefully balanced to keep you on edge, yet not overwhelm you (though it might still be too hard or easy, depending on how well you're doing), but once you're done, you're done. There's no reason to go back, because there are basically no random variables. All the resources, locations, the weather, all the events are pre-scripted. A fair amount of time has been spent on developing these interconnecting mechanics which allow for simulation-like gameplay, and then it's completely hindered by fixing all the things that drive your decisions in place, effectively removing most of the emergent gameplay possibilities. And in this example specifically, if you deviate from that path to play in a different way "this time", you will have a hard time winning.

Overall, for the first playthrough, Frostpunk is a really well made game, and I absolutely loved playing it. The uncertainty of what's to come, if you'll survive, and how, keeps things very interesting. There's constant surprises to knock you off balance just as you feel you're about to regain your metaphorical footing, and the ending is lovely as well. Sadly, the playthrough is short - 12 hours at best, and there is nigh zero replay value after that. You can decide for yourself if the cost is an issue for that much game time, but if it's not, I would in fact recommend playing it. Due to the lack of replayability though, it will not earn a spot in the Hall.

Skelly Selest

It's been a long while since I last randomed a game from my list. Feels nice to be back, I hope my writing is not rusty.

Skelly Selest is an action-rogue-like where you run around, whack enemies with your axe, shoot them with your pistol, and try not to get hit. The usual stuff. There's some dungeons, some items, some enemies... Some, but not a lot. I saw nothing special in the gameplay possibilities this game offered. Same stuff as most of these dungeon-crawly-shooty-slashy games, except both less variety and content than what I feel would be a good standard. So nothing interesting, nothing good here.

The art style was nice in an aesthetic sense, but sadly a hindrance. I found it difficult to look at, difficult to read the writing, and difficult to track enemies and projectiles. Functionality should always come first. And speaking of writing, using "thee" and "thy" at literally every possible opportunity is not pleasant to read either.

Skelly Selest has oddly high ratings (although not too many of them), but I see no reason for this. It has nothing unique, and just a subset of features of some better games of the same genre. I wouldn't recommend playing it - there's nothing to be seen here.

End-of-week Report

Somewhere in the middle of copying over the games from my personal list to the Hall of Games I realized a few things.
For one, it strikes me as barbaric to keep a copy of a single thing in two places, where both of those places have to be manually updated. I considered if automatic updating was a possibility, but no sane solution struck me.
Secondly, formatting this stuff with HTML and CSS in the equivalent of a Notepad text editor is torture. The process of adding a single game, or, heavens forbid, a whole new category, is way too much overhead, not to mention the previous point of having to do this in two places separately.
As such, I've decided to remove the half-finished Hall of Games and All Games pages from this blog and instead remove any personal information from my personal lists which I update anyways and link to those. They're not as pretty, but it also has some other tabs you may or may not care about, such as most of my backlog.
This is definitely not an equivalent alternative, but rather a compromise. However, due to the two points listed above, I decided it's really not worth my time to keep a duplicate which is also a pain to update. Still, this should no doubt be a better alternative to not having any list at all.
I am now just missing short descriptions from all the games on the list, but I guess I can add them at a later point in time, when I feel like writing a bunch. But I've reached this milestone, so I feel comfortable playing something new at long last. It's July, and it's about damn time for that.

In any case, speaking of my backlog:

• Games in backlog: 282 (+2)
• of which VR: 19
• of which Visual Novels: 47
• of which Early Access: 61
• Games reviewed last week: 0

PS. I finished watching Neon Genesis Evangelion some time ago. I must say it was quite different from any other anime I've experienced. That's not to say it was good, but I must give it points for being so bold with a lot of its choices. Overall it was definitely worth watching.

End-of-week Report

What's this? June's almost over, and there's still no news of starting any games? Well, I've been playing Terraria for like a week straight now, which might explain the lack of everything else. That's going to end some day though, and by that time I'll probably have finished the Hall of Games I've been working on.

In fact, if you take a look at the sidebar right now, you can see a new page titled "All Games". As previously mentioned, that's where I will keep a record of all the games I've played, in alphabetical order. As also explained on that page, it's probably missing a few games, since I couldn't gather literally everything, and it will lag behind the actual list by a bit. Currently, it's over 400 games strong, and I hope to get that number up in the near future.

Onto the report:

• Games in backlog: 280 (+1)
• of which VR: 19
• of which Visual Novels: 47 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 61
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

A report at a bit of an unusual time, and after missing the last week's. See, I wasn't home last weekend, having to deal with matters pertaining to attending mandatory military service. In an unrelated case, I also won't be home this weekend, since I'm moving away for a few months. (To clarify, I will be available after moving, it's just one weekend.)

I've been making more progress on the Hall of Games, also opting to make a very basic list of all the games I've ever played (as far as I can gather). The end is somewhat in sight now, and then I just have to get into the habit of playing new games again. The habit's broken right now, so I'm reluctant to start anything new, but I know for sure that once I get back into it, and since I have time now, I will be blazing through games real fast. Just have to make that initial push away from the comfort of old games I've been playing.

• Games in backlog: 279 (+6)
• of which VR: 19 (+1)
• of which Visual Novels: 46
• of which Early Access: 61
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

Classes have ended, and just two exams left to go. Just a week, and then I'm free for months. Still, looking at my list and looking at the time I have been given, it would amount to roughly 3 games every single day to get through them all. I guess, as usual, the goals should be more manageable, and I should simply aim at getting my backlog to acceptable levels.

• Games in backlog: 273 (+7)
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 46 (+2)
• of which Early Access: 61 (+2)
• Games reviewed last week: 1

Dauntless

It's a rare occasion I check something out as soon as it comes out, but this was the case with Dauntless. See, my friends and I were looking for some co-op games to play, so I had to mention this new one that just went into open beta. They ended up liking it, and so it happened I got a fair bit of game time in alongside them. Quite the optimal situation for the game, since most games are better when played with people you know, instead of alone or with random ones. Despite this, and despite the positivity they received it with, I was not as amused.

Dauntless is a game about running around on an island, and beating up giant monsters with giant weapons. Find them, kill them, collect their parts, upgrade your equipment, rinse, and repeat. And really, it is mainly because of this lack of things to do that the game feels boring.
The islands are quite similar in appearance and functionality. The monsters, or behemoths, are reasonably varied, actually, but they are recycled - the same ones can appear with a different name, some elemental effects, and just a few tweaks in abilities, but no difference in overall feel. So there's just a handful actually distinct ones. And then there's five weapons, which, while also different, don't actually have all that varied strategies associated with them. It's always just running up to the behemoth, whacking it for a while, and dodging any attacks it may do. And that really starts to get old pretty fast.

For what content is in the game, it's not bad at all. The fighting is satisfying, learning a behemoths attack patterns has a nice boss fight feel to it. Toss in co-op play, a non-pay-to-win free-to-play model, and it's pretty good. Until you've gone through most all unique content in a day, and then through literally all content in a week, at most. That is, if you play for a few hours every day.

But I simply can not leave out the horrid state it launched in, with login queues ranging from 3 to 12 hours, disconnects and waiting delays for 5-30 minutes after each mission, and the party system being broken half the time. Heavens forbid your game crashed, for then you had to sit through the queue again. I'm sure there were more problems, and while the queue and other delays have been greatly reduced or eliminated, the state it was in was still pretty unacceptable.

Overall, while the core gameplay was decent, the lack of content and unignorable technical problems keep me from recommending it. "But Torn, Dauntless is in open beta, you can't have your final verdict yet." Well, I don't particularly buy into that kind of stuff. For one, it's kind of like an MMO (the crappy themepark kind always made these days), and an open beta is basically launch for those. Secondly, I don't really have much faith they'll improve on this lack of content. Simply adding more weapons and behemoths won't fix the issue, they would need something more. So no recommendation it is.

End-of-week Report

It's been a rough month, but the coming week is the last week of school for me this semester. Then supposedly begins the exam period, but I've only one exam scheduled for the first week of that, so it's comparatively nothing. So, a week, and then I can get back to games at long last. And what a list I've accumulated...

• Games in backlog: 266 (+7)
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 45 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 59
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

Pulled one with that last minute review, aye? Well, that's all I can do, as I'm basically being pressed for 80 hour work weeks at the end of this semester right now. For some reason, every course I'm taking decided they want to get stuff over with quickly, so I have exams while other big tests, lectures, and whatnot are still happening, meaning I both have to finish up all projects I have, as well as study for exams, and then it's all suddenly over in June when the exam period is supposed to start. Fuck me, I'm gonna lose my hair at this rate.
Anyways, that's not why you're here...

• Games in backlog: 259
• of which VR: 18
• of which Visual Novels: 44 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 59 (-1)
• Games reviewed last week: 1

Dungeon on the Endless

Hey, surprise, it's a game. Dungeon of the Endless.

I played through this with my friend over the course of a few days, and it was just barely entertaining enough to keep us from quitting midway. But was it good? No, I'm fairly sure I would not say that.

To start off with the things the Endless series has always been pretty good at - art, music, lore - those were all well present here too. Well, maybe not the lore so much. In fact, I would point out that I did feel like it was trying to push too hard on some sort of comedic value. From item and skill descriptions, names, characters, to the lore bits... Always making puns and jokes, but they weren't really good, and did take away from the precious space where something actually useful could have been. An undescriptive (but maybe slightly humorous) one-word ability name in small text, but a whole paragraph telling some flighty joke about the item that maybe bears a relevancy to what it does? Sure, it's not like I need to know what any of them do anyways. This and everything similar led to a lot of trial and error, instead of the ability to make educated decisions.

Going forward to the actual gameplay, there wasn't much. While I'm by no means against automating parts of gameplay, I find that since combat is completely automated, there isn't anything left for the players to do. Sure, positioning, building, deciding which rooms to power, but when the action is happening, you're just sitting there watching things unfold with no possibility for meaningful input.
Further, the balance was off. The vast majority of buildings - useless. Spoiler alert, but just stack food production. Get some tanky low mobility guys with tons of firepower and health regen into a room through which all enemies must path, and have one speedy guy do the final crystal carry each level. It's still by no means easy (despite the misleading difficulty levels), but it's the best strategy we found, and is fairly risk-free.

Overall, Dungeon of the Endless is a nice-ish game, which just focuses on the wrong parts of what makes a game fun. After some initial discovery, the gameplay becomes a rather monotonous rut, and I at least lost interest before too long. Maybe find some nice tower defense or rogue-like game, whichever you see in this, but I wouldn't recommend Dungeon of the Endless.

End-of-week Report

• Games in backlog: 259 (+3)
• of which VR: 18 (+1)
• of which Visual Novels: 43
• of which Early Access: 60
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

Fuck it, I give up. New games in the summer, anything else is too much of a promise. I'll just continue these weekly reports and feel terrified by how much is left undone in the meanwhile. But hey, on the bright side, it's been 9 weeks without new games, only 4 more until school ends for the year, and I'll have all the free time in the world.

• Games in backlog: 256 (+6)
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 43
• of which Early Access: 60 (+2)
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

Next week is the week when I get my shit back together. With the start of May, I have Monday off, in addition to my usual free days of Friday and Tuesday (homework notwithstanding). This leaves me with 5 nice consecutive days of not having to go to school. This means time. And time is just what I asked for. In relation to this blog, the first priority is finishing up the Hall of Games page, then I can play some new ones.

Another weekly report, still continuing its record consecutive growth, reaching a quarter thousand games. I fear.

• Games in backlog: 250 (+1)
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 43
• of which Early Access: 58 (-1)
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

I'm so tired my skin is deforming or something. I don't know what's happening anymore. What happens when you have no free time in a week, and then you add in a 48 hour game jam? Well, I'm feeling it right now, and I wouldn't recommend it. So this is a hastily written post, because I really can't be bothered to do anything more. It was LD41 this weekend, and the local competition didn't even last 3 days unlike the global jam, but just 2 days, because they couldn't get rooms. Game's here if you want to play it. Not super proud of it or anything, and the only reason I participated this time around, is because I need the points for my university "participation in hackathons" course. I'm quite possibly sitting out the next one in summer, or maybe doing the compo instead.

But here's the weekly report, which is running for a record time without any new games. I'm mentally basically dead because I have no free time anymore, and I don't know how to escape this hell. Send help before I hurt myself from overworking.

• Games in backlog: 249 (+9)
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 43 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 59 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

Have I told you my theory on procrastination yet? I think I have, actually, but let me go over it quickly once more.
I think procrastination stacks. Once you start, things start piling up. As they do, you feel less and less inclined to complete them. If you give in bit by bit then first it leads to stress as you get everything done at the last minute, then it furthers to not getting some things done at all. And all the while you never feel like you have time because there's so much to do.
A lot of people start to resist before it gets to the point of some things being left undone, so they linger forever in this stressful state of not having any time, and always having so much to do. I, too, feel like I'm slowly reaching that point due to a few days of procrastination, and now it's harder to push back. The opposite of this state also exists though, when everything is done, and you have all the time you could want. New chores get completed in one of those many pockets of free time, and cause no inconvenience at all, leaving you in this perpetual state until you get really, really lazy for some period of time. I should make an effort one of these days to get back to that state - it's nice there.

Anyways, onto the report. I missed last week due to my birthday celebrations, and I completely forgot about it after the weekend. Same old though, so it's hopefully no loss. Should really be setting up another "play X games" goal sometime, but getting my real life in order might be a better idea first.

• Games in backlog: 240 (+8)
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 42
• of which Early Access: 58 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

I've been pouring more time than I expected (and more time than it may seem) into copying games over from my private list. Can't believe it's been a whole month and then a week since I decided that I'll be doing this, and I'm still not done with it.
It's a kind of dangerously tedious type of work, since I know I tend to blow quitting out of proportion. I've been having real difficulty in deciding the new categorization of games, what makes it in, what doesn't, and all that, often taking like an hour to decide on something really simple. I hate that perfectionist side of me, but I can't just half-ass it because "why do it in the first place then?" But yeah, it's "dangerous" because I'm afraid that if I can't figure this stuff out I'll give up so hard I might abandon the whole game reviewing side of my hobby. After all, playing's the fun part. If this turns from time-consuming to frustrating, it might not be worth it anymore. Here's to hoping that won't happen and I'll instead sort this stuff out in my head, and we'll all be happier in the end.

I've actually also learned quite a lot of how Blogger works in the process. Custom overall CSS is already in, meaning I have less (mostly none, now) style info to write into each post. This also synergizes really well with the Web Application course I'm taking right now. I've noticed how terrible and kind of antiquated this Blogger theme I'm using is, but I've also learned how to fix that. Basically, I feel like I could write an entire theme from scratch, making it look like whatever I wanted. The state of things is not bad enough yet, and it would of course be a huge time sink, so I'm not doing that, but I'm glad I have the opportunity. Maybe when I'm bored in the summer.

So, after a terribly long ramble written in the middle of the week since I needed to let off steam at the time, here is the week-end report.

• Games in backlog: 232 (+2)
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 42
• of which Early Access: 57
• Games reviewed last week: 0

PS. Happy April Fools, or however you celebrate. =D It's coincidentally also basically my birthday, and the 300th post I write on this blog.

End-of-week Report

I think the worst of the semester is behind me now, the exam period aside. It's likely I'll have time for some new games in the next week, or at the very least the one after that, to finally end the month-long drought.

• Games in backlog: 230 (+3)
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 42
• of which Early Access: 57 (+2)
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

You like working 12-hour weekends? Me neither, and I'm not even getting paid for it. School's seriously frustrating right now, and I just want to take a break and play some games, but I can't because I have deadlines all the time.
Here's a project I'm working on though, which very much fits this blog. I hope to be keeping up the site even after the corresponding school course has ended, so I could have a place to check for games. There will be a lot of features added to the site in the future, like multiple pages, game filtering, maybe even score history. But right now, developing it is being the death of me.

For once, no change in the numbers.

• Games in backlog: 227
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 42
• of which Early Access: 55
• Games reviewed last week: 0

End-of-week Report

Work, work, work. It's a little bit stressful already, and I want it to stop.
With a new season of Heroes of the Storm starting, I'm actually trying to play it less now. Maybe just when a new patch comes out, if there's a fun brawl, and probably just to get a rank during the season. Hopefully this will overall leave me with more time and less frustration.
Other than that, I got nothing to say.

• Games in backlog: 227 (+4)
• of which VR: 17
• of which Visual Novels: 42 (+1)
• of which Early Access: 55 (+1)
• Games reviewed last week: 0