Oxygen Not Included :: Chaotic Clone Suffocation Simulator

Oxygen Not Included is a wonderful, beautiful mess. From the first moments of Cycle 1, where you’re desperately trying to erect rudimentary beds and a working bathroom area for your asteroid colony, through Cycle 100 and beyond, where you’re flying clones to other stellar bodies and trying to cope with the inevitable, insidious rise in temperature of your base; this off-the-wall management simulator by Klei Entertainment, the creator of the similarly marvellous Don’t Starve and Invisible Inc., will sink its characterful claws into anyone with a penchant for colony simulators, and refuse to let go until long after you’ve mastered the game.

Factorio :: Designing Factories Has Never Been More Fun

I must confess that at first I didn’t see what all the fuss was about with Factorio. I played around in a world for an hour or so, and was left feeling confused that this strange little game was the second-highest rated game of all time on Steam. After several months, I came back to it, thinking I must have missed something. And here we are, 700 hours later – and I’m still as gripped as I’ve ever been with any game in recent years.

Darkest Dungeon :: Antediluvian Eldritch Splendour

I think it’s fair to say that, aside from anything else, Red Hook Studios’s 2016 title Darkest Dungeon is a very well-crafted game. That’s not to say we all have to like it; as a Lovecraft-inspired roguelite RPG that focuses upon the nature of stress and insanity, it’s hardly a game catered to everyone’s tastes. But when you look at it less as a game to play, and more as a piece of art, comprised of various constituent mechanics and thematic decisions all working together to create this unique experience, you can’t help but admire the mastery with which it has all been put together.

Duet :: A Mobile Masterpiece

I won’t normally be writing about mobile games on this blog, for the simple reason that I don’t often play them. Here, however, you will find a very notable exception. It took all of two minutes playing the opening levels of Duet for me to realize exactly what Kumobius Games had accomplished with this unassuming app. Not since Portal has there existed such a singular and perfect gameplay concept.

Endless Legend :: Reforming The 4X Genre

Endless Legend did something very special back in 2014. It came along as if from nowhere and surprised everyone with a very ambitious, refreshing new take on the turn-based 4X genre, dominated for so long by the venerable Civilization franchise. I put in around 100 hours of gameplay into Endless Legend when I first got my hands on it, and then I was forced to leave it alone for a while as I returned to university work. Now, with the Easter holidays upon us, Endless Legend is almost always the first game that springs to mind when I wonder what to do with my new-found free time.

Scrolls :: Beautiful, Intelligent, Undervalued

It’s a shame in many ways that development of Mojang’s Scrolls happened to coincide with development of Blizzard’s own new CCG, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. Both are extremely well put together strategy card games, but Hearthstone seemed to take a lot of the wind out of its competitor’s sails, and at any given time Hearthstone just seemed like a more polished game than Scrolls did. And that’s not to say either game is not worthy of your time (I’ve played both, and enjoyed both immensely). But I feel that Scrolls somewhat lacks the attention it deserves in many departments. The department I will be focusing on today is its music.

Some Thoughts On Mental Health And Games

Can games tackle the issue of mental health in a meaningful way, or should we just give up now? I explain my opinion on the matter, and highlight a few games which people interested in the topic might like to take a look at.

Boid :: A Simplistic, Minimalistic And Fantastic RTS

Boid is an exercise in simplicity. It’s a 2D microbial RTS, developed by Mokus Games and published by tinyBuild Games, in which players control groups of simple mutatable units and attempt to dominate the map by wiping out your opponent’s units. It’s also a perfect example of what a game can do if it abandons the pretence of being anything more than its essential gameplay mechanics.