Dull Demos

As mentioned in the previous blogpost, Fabular was an enjoyable demo.  There were, however, a bunch of other demos I tried out along with that one.  Regrettably, they were not much fun to play.  Even so, I do want to share my thoughts on four of them here. 

SIGNALIS is a game that I wrote about awhile back.  At the time I was critical of the game for appearing very derivative.  Certainly, there are some attempts at stylistic flourish such as the stairs leading into an underground complex...but after playing the demo I still can't help feeling that I've seen most of this before.  The interior environments look very similar to the ones in the film "Alien" and the enemies are basically copied from Silent Hill.  Heck, there's even a radio that makes weird noises.  Granted, all this would be fine by me if the gameplay were good.  Unfortunately, foes are very bullet spongy and there really isn't any visual feedback (like in Dead Space or Mark of Kri) to indicate the effectiveness of your attacks.  Also, I'm not really sure what the point is of having first-person scenes in which the only thing the player can do is tap the button to move forward.

Conscript is another game that suffers from enemies that soak up bullets.  Set in World War I, players take the role of a French soldier stationed along the trenches of the western front.  It's an interesting setting, but the combat is more comical than intense.  German troops are tough and often attack using melee weapons such as entrenching tools.  Since the player quickly acquires a bold action rifle, the fights result in something that goes like this: 

1. Aim
2. Shoot
3. Run away 
4. Reload
5. Run away again
6. Back to step one

All that's missing is some Yakety Sax music. It's clunky despite some attempts to mix things up with exploding barrels.  At one point I brought ammo to a fellow machine gun crew, but they didn't actually help out.  Eventually, I ran out of rifle rounds and had to switch to my bayonet...which pretty much utilized the same five steps as listed above.  On the plus side, I did like that defeated enemies would sometimes writhe on the ground incapacitated rather than simply die outright.  It seemed like an appropriate fit for the horror aspects of the game.

Ghost Song is the game that has sat on my Steam whish list page the longest.  Having finally played the demo though, I can't say it was worth the wait.  It's basically a Metroid clone, but differentiates itself by having some light RPG elements.  My biggest gripe with the demo is a lack of mouse support, particularly when it comes to aiming.  I guess they wanted players to use a controller.  Hotkeys were another issue since they were not remappable, and in some cases not listed in the options menu (despite being mentioned in the tutorial).  At one point, I forgot which key it was to heal and was forced to simple press keyboard buttons at random until I chanced upon it.  Conversely, I did remember an option to switch between weapon types using the "F" and "G" keys...but didn't seem to work.  That may have been due to some kind of misunderstanding on my part.  Regardless, the interface is a bit rough.

Land Above Sea Below is, as far as I can gather, supposed to be one of those relaxing hexagonal puzzle games like Dorfromantik or Spring Falls.  The soft music and idyllic visuals definitely try to set a relaxing mood.  There's also no timer so the player can proceed at their leisure.  In direct contrast to that though is the game's central mechanic.  As the player places tiles, the surrounding water level rises.  The only way to prevent this aquatic doom is to place similarly themed tiles adjacent to each other.  This will raise their height.  However, new titles cannot be placed over submerged ones.  Worse still, if the player's starting tile gets flooded then it is game over.  Perhaps the developers were trying to create a meta-commentary about humanity's generally laissez fare attitude toward global warming and rising sea levels?  Regardless, the game seems to be actively working against itself, by having these two mutually exclusive elements active at the same time. 

Overall, I feel bad writing this.  I am well aware that these games are made by indie devs who have very little to work with in terms of resources, and as such should managed my expectations accordingly.  Still, I sincerely hope that they give their games a second pass in terms of design, before considering them ready for launch.  With some changes to systems any or all of these four demos could have been spectacular.  As is though they were hampered by some questionable mechanics. 

Once Upon a Spacetime...

From top to bottom Fabular is an odd game demo, but one that grows more familiar the more you play it.  The green and gold dominated color palette is used to paint an outer space-like void complete with a sprinkling of planetoids adrift in the aether.  In this quasi-Spelljammer setting, the game begins with the player receiving tutelage from a mentor who I can only describe as a lizardman dressed in gothic plate armor.  It becomes apparent very quickly that your character is the heir apparent to a royal house.  As is often the case for tutorials, bother character and player are being taught the finer points of travel in this fantastical environment.  Excluding this starting zone, each of the five regional maps are semi-random in layout (similar to sectors in FTL).  Clusters of interconnected nodes represent points of interest.  Typically, traveling to one triggers an event which can (in turn) lead to combat or treasure.  Battles are top-down and 2D, making the gameplay a bit similar to that Atari classic Asteroids.  Your spaceship (if it can really be called such a thing) has arm-like protrusions that are armed with oversized melee weapons.  A lot of fighting consists of getting in close and bashing an opponent's ship to flinders.  However, this isn't the only approach.  There are ranged attacks, as well as a bunch of other tricks that the player can employ - such as a grappling hook or decoys.  Even the environment itself can be used as a weapon since it contains dense thickets of drifting boulders.  Rewards for victory include upgrade materials, healing items, new armaments, precious fuel and coins.  That last one is useful when the player chances upon a merchant.  Each section of the game ends with a boss battle.  In addition, there is a gradually rising "threat level" meter that indicates how challenging any given combat encounter will be. 

If the player is defeated then their Young (Little?) Prince character is warped back to his father's throne room.  There, the journey restarts from the beginning in typical rogue-like fashion.  Three types of ship are available to choose from (each with it's own approach to combat).  On top of this, the player can spend a special kind of currency (acquired throughout previous journeys) to purchase permanent starting bonuses that carry over from one attempt to the next.  Is this beginning to sound like something you have played before?...Sunless Sea or Sky perhaps?  It took me a few runs before I could fully grasp the controls and overall strategy.  After that, I began to enjoy the game quite a bit.  Something that helped a great deal in overcoming this initial learning curve was the option to set the movement orientation to either "relative" or "absolute", a nice feature to have in twin stick style shooters...much in the same way that a third-person shooter offers standard or inverted camera controls.

If I have one complaint, it's that I saw some repeat events when visiting map nodes.  Granted, that's to be expected on subsequent runs.  Even so,  I hope the full version of the game will be richer in terms of content.  If they do that, and add some more variety to the enemy types, then this game is going to be fabulous...or should I say Fabular?  

     

Victims of Nostalgia

Ironically, people watching online got a better
show due some audio issues in the actual venue

Well, the Summer Game Fest has concluded for 2022 and the general consensus seems to be that the future of video games looks a bit grim...or at the very least the show wasn't good.  Personally, I enjoyed it.  Being a fan of survival horror and media that blends sci-fi with horror probably had a lot to do with it.  Certainly, if you're not interested in those sorts of genres then I can see why you'd feel disappointment.  Having extended that metaphorical olive branch, I'm going to promptly discard it by saying I don't understand the "I miss E3" sentiment that is going around.

Before it's cancelation, the Electronics Entertainment Expo had been constantly terrible for a number of years.  Worse still, the people that hosted the event (the ESRB) are a bunch of amoral money grubbers who have long since abandoned any pretense of caring about the people who make games or gaming as an artform.  Their only goal is to milk the industry as much as they can even if that means endorsing loot boxes and pushing gambling on children.  Additionally, bringing back E3 isn't going to suddenly cause Sony and Nintendo to return.  The pandemic has wrecked developer timetables and made large public gatherings a significant health hazard.  All this is compounded by a generational shift in console hardware, something that typically creates a lull in terms of big-budget releases.

Conversely, the indie scene continues to thrive.  Summer Game Fest probably would have benefitted from mid-show montage of short clips taken from a bunch of these smaller games in order to increase the variety and quality of what they were presenting.  Talking with the flesh-and-blood creators of video games is always a welcome feature in my book, but I feel like it's the kind of thing that benefits from a more leisurely low-key format that one might find in an after-show segment.  

In Geoff Keighley the show host's defense, he did try to subdue they hype pre-show over social media by encouraging people to limit their expectations.  Still, it appears that a lot of viewers were expecting more than what they got.  As I stated earlier, it's understandable...but the folks who want E3 back really need to take off the rose colored glasses.              

A Few Suggestions

After completing most of the content currently available for Vintage Story (aside form cheese making), I found myself considering a couple of interesting directions the game could go in.  Cosmetically, the addition of heat mirages in hot desert environments would help convey the feeling of high temperatures (much the same way frost does in extreme cold).  On the audio front, maybe owls or crickets at night and cicadas or frogs in summer would be a nice touch.  In terms of gameplay I have a number of thoughts I'd like to share in detail.  Of course,  lots of other people have already made numerous suggestions (with regards to game mechanics) on the official forums.  Most of the ideas I've seen there though tend to fall into one of two categories: the why-can't-this-cat-be-more-like-a-dog variety or unworkable pie-in-the-sky wish lists.  That's not to say my suggestions are better than all the rest...I just like to think these particular ideas are being presented with an eye on how they can complement systems already present in the game.  So, without further ado - here they are.

Fish are conspicuously absent from Vintage Story.  Unlike Minecraft, my hope is we never see a line and rod.  Instead, I'd prefer something less passive like spear fishing.  Plus, the panning in Vintage Story is mechanically pretty similar in that it involves a simple and repetitive action for a semi-random reward.  Having said all that, I don't think fish should be in every pond.  Rather, they should only spawn in lakes that meet a certain minimum breadth and depth.  This brings me to my next suggestion - rivers.  Actually, rivers are hardly my idea - they've been on the developer's to-do list for awhile now.  However, I do have a specific suggestion I'd like to make.  By themselves, rivers aren't terribly interesting, but what about things that utilize them such as watermills?  They could provide mechanical power more consistently than windmills; only stopping in winter when the water freezes over.  Also, what about river-borne traders?  Instead of being found exclusively in wagons, how about having a few found in barges parked on riverbanks?  I like the idea of them being multi-block designs with some cargo capacity and maybe even a sail.  Vintage Story is in need of forms of fast travel beyond what translocators can offer.  Speedy boats combined with long rivers could certainly fit the bill.  Why stop at rivers though when there could be oceans too?  In the case of seas, adding aquatic predators (such as the one in the shark mod) would be a good way to discourage swimming and incentivizing boat building for safe passage over these large bodies of water.  Underground lakes and river could be a neat feature as well.  While rivers would have a current, I like the idea of oceans having small waves along their coasts.  Perhaps they could be generated by a system similar to what is used to make cloud formations in the current version of the game (albeit with some tweaks).

Anyway...those are just a few ideas I had.  Most likely, the developers of Vintage Story have already though about everything I have mentioned and more.  In the off-chance they haven't though, I hope they will consider implementing some of my suggestions in future updates.

Update Pending...

A common complaint about buying early access games is you don't know ultimately what you're going to get.  This is certainly the case with Hardspace: Shipbreaker, a game that most people thought would eventually feature a wide variety of spacecraft to dismantle.  Counter to that expectation though, the full version of the game ended up focusing on the storytelling aspects of the game.  Don't get me wrong, it's a topical tale that is very relevant to the world we live in today.  Even so, I feel like it was (for me at least) one of the less interesting direction the developers could have gone in...well, it is a finished product for better or worse.  Some early access games have far less certain futures.  So much so, the real question isn't a matter of "what", but "when".

Developer roadmaps are nice because they let the players (current and potential) see what's coming.  The thing they don't show though is when, if ever, those updates are going to materialize.  In some cases it's understandable.  Stoneshard, for example, has some of it's dev team located in Ukraine - obviously not the easiest place to be making a game right now (with the war going on).  Satisfactory, on the other hand, seems to have lost some of it's momentum since the pandemic started in terms of frequency and substance when it comes to updates.  Still other games, such as Dwarf Fortress, have been steadily chipping away at their intended goals for what feels like more than a decade at this point.  Granted, that game will probably never truly be feature complete.  However, there has been a significant push in the last few years to get it in polished up state for it's release on Steam.  Thankfully, Dwarf Fortress is already extremely feature rich, so players have plenty to sink their teeth into while they wait.  For other games though, that's not the case.

Ultimate Admiral: Dreadnaughts is an odd game.  Ostensibly, it's all about modeling surface engagements between opposing warships.  The thing is, surface-only navel warfare ended about the same time HMS Dreadnaught came down the slipway.  Starting around the First World War, submarines and aircraft began to play increasingly important roles in naval combat.  Ultimate Admiral don't model any of that (at least not yet).  As a sandbox simulator for iron-clads and pre-dreadnaughts it works well enough, but it's really weird to have World War 2 era destroyers without any anti-aircraft guns or depth charge racks.  In other words the game has yet to update to the types of warfare it's supposed to simulate.

Lastly, I want to mention a real oddball, ΔV: Rings of Saturn.  As far as 2D space sims go it's alright.  The zero-G physics are accurate and the technology in the game feels appropriately near future in design.  Updates continue to be common and incremental in terms of improvements, but then (seemingly out of nowhere) the developer introduced paid DLC that adds anthropomorphic crew members into the game.  Now, I'm not categorically opposed to this sort of thing...but suffice to say I won't be buying this kind of content either.  It's a weird digression that I can only assume the dev made in order to make some extra money off a certain subset of his player base.  Let's hope we don't see this sort of thing in other games like Darkest Dungeon II.  That game has had enough ups and downs throughout its troubled history as is.