Phew! I'm full! I've got a hearty repast of games for you this week, and having taken a first taste of each one, I have to say that Space Food Truck is everything I hoped it would be, but it's not the only tasty tidbit on offer: Lanterns: Harvest Festival offers complex interactions under a soothing surface, Congresswolf is the the cure for the common election, and the Ossuary expansion for Imbroglio is a real kick in the coccyx. Even Android users have something to cheer about this week, with The Quest bringing its hero's journey to Google Play.
Have Hall Pass, will travel.
Space Food Truck
Space Food Truck is a co-op deckbuilding __game with a galaxy map and a heavy emphasis on teamwork. We've been anticipating it since it's Steam debut, and One Man Left didn't disappoint us. SFT is tastier than a deep-space fried moon pie (made with actual moon), so stop reading and go get it. What, you want more? Okay, here’s your second helping: Space Food Truck is like Sentinels of the Multiverse wrapped around a fresh take on Artemis, with a side of Shifts dipping sauce, and it’s drizzled with sci-fi references (what isn’t, these days?) and served with a sense of cooperation and interdependence that’s just as socialist as the Federation, all in the pursuit of commerce pure as gold-pressed latinum.
There's a space taco truck at every jumpgate from iOS to Android.
Lanterns: The Harvest Festival
Lanterns: The Harvest Festival is the mobile version of a Mensa award-winning board game, but it won’t make you feel stupid… at least not at first. You can play this __game casually, even aesthetically, which suits its theme well: you are decorating for a festival with colored lanterns, competing with other players to create sets based on your lanterns and accumulate the most Honor (VP). Though it is ultimately a kind of logic puzzle, with elements of spatial awareness, bluffing, and resource manipulation, Lanterns feels like a competition between artists, as combinations are worth less Honor every time they are played. Moreover, every play you make gives all players resources in a kind of faux-cooperative mechanic that makes advanced play all about screwing over other players in the most genteel way possible: by giving them harmless gifts. If you’re not in the mood for iocaine powder, you can relax and enjoy the tranquil music and animated koi. It’s a win-win.
Lantern-arranging fame awaits you on iOS and Android.
I was hoping the "Faint" command would automatically KO the user.
Mercenaries Saga 2
Mercenaries Saga 2: Order of the Silver Eagle is a SRPG by RideonJapan, the folks who brought us Adventure Bar Story, and it’s a 3DS port, though it looks more like a GBA title, and it’s resolutely in the “wasn’t Final Fantasy Tactics great?” camp of SRPG design. Everything about this title screams “I’m decent, but clearly not exceptional!" If you’re looking for a SRPG that costs less than a latte, I think you’ll be satisfied, just don’t go in expecting FFTA or a Fire Emblem game. The dealmaker or breaker may be that Mercenaries Saga 2 was clearly ported with phones in mind, as it uses a large central d-pad for character movement and doesn’t allow you to select or move by tapping (which would be distinctly preferable on a tablet, but unplayable on a phone).
The protagonist of this iOS exclusive only looks a little like an age-progressed Ramza Beoulve… have you seen me?
The Last Door Season 2
From Cornelius Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia to John Dee’s Monas Hieroglypica and Abdul Alhazred’s Necronomicon to Eliphas Levi’s Dogme et Rituel de la Haut Magie, there is one universal rule of all magic: when traveling between dimensions, close the damn door behind you! Unfortunately, the protagonist of The Last Door Season 1 failed his OWLs and in his ignorance has laid our world open to unspeakable horror. The retro-pixel style of The Last Door does more than recall classic adventure games, it also provides a much-needed element of uncertainty that makes the game’s Lovecraftian horror much more real. I really like the way Season 2 immediately shoves you unto unsettling and bizarre scenes that appear to be “real” - you’ll be expecting things to plunge into otherwordly madness at every moment, and even wondering if they have and you just haven’t noticed yet.
Seek out things humankind was not meant to know and poke them with a stick on iOS and Android.
Elexi
Elexi is a diminishing-resources word game from Lensflare, the one-man operation responsible for the thoughtful, graphically minimalist strategy game Tactical Space Command and Election Manager 2016. Elexi is broadly in the Boggle vein of word games, except that there’s no proximity/line-drawing requirement: you can match freeely from the entire board, but when you do, the letters you used have to cool down for at least a turn before you can use them again, and one of them goes away permanently. There are three game modes, tweaking this basic mechanic, and I’m digging the way you have to manage your resources and think several turns in advance or you’ll be looking at “game over” when that big, high-scoring word leaves you unable to play anything the following turn.
See if you can make words without vowels on iOS or Android.
Congresswolf
You have to love a game that opens with “Congress has been debating the upcoming bill about civil rights for werewolves off and on for a year now.” Political games are all about literal animals this year, aren’t they? You can call me a lycanthrope-lover, but I’d take a stirring debate over the rights of the moonlight-affected over the actual content of the US election cycle this year in a heartbeat. Sure, it’s the same winking reference to outsiders and minorities that True Blood played off of, and The X-Men before that, but it’s not about the schtick, it’s how well you pull it off, and I think Choice of Games' Congresswolf is tapping into the zeitgeist. Early polling (of me, by me) suggests that mobile gaming pundits as a demographic are likely to support Congresswolf’s platform of slightly-abstracted satire favorably and are unfazed by the “slight continuity update” scandal.
Someone page Wolff and Byrd, there's a class-action suit under the Americans with Fur Act in the making on iOS and Android.
Damn, that's a lot of options. Is there one for "get overwhelmed and go back to bed?"
Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven
Jim Dattilo’s Zombie Exodus is the breakaway hit to come out of Choice of Games’ Hosted Games program, with the original game spanning five parts each the length of an average gamebook. Now the first part of Dattilo’s sequel is available free, with additional parts to come as IAP. With a lot of emphasis on character customization and skills, these games play differently from titles in Choice of Games signature line (like Congresswolf), but Dattilo’s writing, always good, has only gotten better, and Safe Haven is a good entry point for those who haven’t played Zombie Exodus, as well as a real treat for fans.
Undead horrors with serpents' tongues await on iOS and Android.
Cute? That feathery little enforcer is looking at me like he's fitting me for cement overshoes!
The Trail
Peter “Perpetual Disappointment” Molyneux’s studio 22cans has been hard at work on anything-but-Godus for some time now. That “anything” is a casual survival-crafting game called The Trail and it features some impressive hats and revisionist history in which the colonization of “the new world” was a jolly, peaceable endeavour. It’s… actually not bad for what it is, though it may be benefitting from reduced expectations in the wake of Godus and (shudder) Curiosity: What’s In the Box.
If you have an Android device, you can get in on the open beta of The Trail and begin wondering just how aggressively the FTP elements will be pushed in the “release” version. The Trail is available right now on iOS and Android.
For a smuggler's den, this place is unusually hellmouth-y.
The Quest HD
The Quest was the definitive iOS RPG back in 2009, and a series of expansions and updates have kept it relevant, even as SquareSoft and other titans have entered the mobile market. In July, the HD remake gave the original game a complete facelift and a modern codebase, and now, for the first time ever, Android users can play Redshift’s classic. The Android version lacks the “HD” tag, but it is the HD version, and I’ve been sinking a lot of time into it and feeling warm, soothing waves of nostalgia wash over me. The Quest is old school, but it’s not brutal: a detailed automap, reasonably forgiving autosave and straightforward controls give that old wizardry new might and magic. This one’s a bard’s tale that I won’t be setting down anytime soon.
Bear in mind that poison doesn’t just “wear off” and you may live long enough to save the world on iOS or Android.
Imbroglio: Ossuary
Michael Brough’s unique roguelike Imbroglio has received its first paid expansion, and would you believe that the whole thing’s a homage to another game? Don’t worry, the ever-strange Brough hasn’t sold out: Ossuary is a love letter to the surreal indie PC game of the same name, and it’s easy to see the connection: that game is even weirder than Imbroglio, and that’s no mean feat. So brace yourself for the Discordian boneyard, because Ossuary turns Imbroglio on it’s head - sometimes literally, as with the Brainspoon’s ability to take control of an enemy at the price of losing control of your hero. The Chaos Oracle and the Rainbow Jester are my new favorite characters, and all the mechanics are polished to Brough-fection, so Ossuary enables a number of new strategies without breaking game balance or leaving behind any of the existing heroes.
Better bone up on your strategy for this one. Imbroglio: Ossuary is iOS only.
No comments:
Post a Comment