Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £10.99 (£3.99 each for Undermountain and Skullport modules)
Where To Get It: Steam

There should be a word, perhaps, for when a game feels emptier and cheaper than it, in fact, is. That word would work very well with Lords of Waterdeep (Full title: D&D Lords of Waterdeep, to differentiate it from Waterdeep, Ohio, I guess.)

It is important to note that your avatar has no bearing on which lord you get. That’s down to *faction* . This screen also serves as a handy guide to what the expansions add.

Before we get into that, the basic idea of Lords of Waterdeep is that you are one of the titular Masked Lords of Waterdeep, rulers of the city who are, for the purposes of this game, at odds with each other. Each Lord (Chosen randomly from a faction pool) has special abilities, preferences, and goals, and winning the game involves making maximum use of your cards, and limited agents per round, in order to get Victory Points. It’s got a lot to it for something with such a simple base concept, and not for nothing was it, and games that follow a similar vein, quite lauded in the board game industry.

Part of the problem is, quite frankly, that it’s a direct iOS port of a game where the most effort has clearly gone into making sure the game itself works. The art is servicable, but the UI is iffy, and has trouble handling more than 6 buildings in a game (It is highly recommended to play the tutorial, to get used to the UI.) The music, I turned off rather quickly. It’s a single song. What you’re meant to mainly be enjoying here is the game itself, and play with others.

This is the first time I will see this card being played. It won’t be the last this turn. Not by a long shot.

Which can, honestly, be a disorienting experience, be it in multiplayer or offline, hotseat mode. On the one hand, I can understand why the decision was made to have every other player’s turn recap for every player, and why it will suddenly jump to another player (Who will also recap what they missed) every time someone has to confirm or choose something as a reaction, but there is not only no way I can see to turn this off (Should, say, you be playing hotseat on the honour system), and you need to go into settings to change the animation speed, that games can, at times, feel excruciating. Yes, I know Arilyn Moonblade did this, this, and this, I saw it happen. I don’t particularly feel the desire to see it four times in a five player match.

The AI in the game is pretty vicious, and even with an “easy” AI, there is a good chance you’re going to have to play pretty well to beat them, and, in the end, the main thing recommending this game is that it’s cheaper than the board game and its expansions. Overall, it feels kludgy, and very much a case of “You get what you pay for.”

On the one hand, thanks to post game scoring, I didn’t lose as badly as I could have done this game. But Mystra, to lose to a Moon Elf playing a Halfling. UGH. (And yes, that is apparently a halfling. CORRECTION: A Halfling replaced by a Doppelganger. THE REALMS, EVERYONE.)

The Mad Welshman is extremely salty that he lost to, of all people, Arilyn bloody Moonblade. Although he supposes it could be worse. It could have been Danilo Thann or Khelben Arunsen.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £4.99
Where To Get It: Steam

You’d think, after all the times I’ve said “It does what it says on the tin”, that Pixel Puzzles Picross would be that. And you know what? Mostly, it’s true. At its most basic level, P-P-Picross (R-R-Raggy?) is exactly that: You logically deduce what bits should be filled in in a grid made of 5×5 grids, using numbers at the top of each column and the left of each row, and the knowledge that there has to be a single space between each number. Do it right, and you get a pixel picture that the game colours in, and the sweet, sweet acknowledgement of your intellectual prowess. Go you.

LOOK, IT’S A SPOILER, A MASSIVE SPO- h, wait, no, it’s just a fire hydrant. Silly me!

However, this is not quite the whole story, and what’s left… Somewhat confuses me. You see, there are bits of Normal mode that feel like they would have fit better in Hard mode, and bits of Hard mode that would have felt better in Normal mode. Normal mode doesn’t use lives, while Hard mode does. So far, so good. But Normal mode doesn’t properly inform you when you’ve filled a segment in properly, and has a timer, while Hard mode… does tell you, once you’ve done things the right way, that yes, you no longer need to worry about that 2, 1, 1, 3, and only have to worry about the 1, and 1 (To give an example), and has no timer to feed your ego.

This doesn’t really detract from the game, per se, but it does feel off, and I find myself flailing about a lot more in Normal mode than Hard. Beyond this, though, there’s honestly not a lot to say that hasn’t already been said. Normal puzzles and Hard puzzles have separate scores, despite the fact they appear to be the same images throughout, there are only a few tunes, the UI’s pretty friendly, but it’s not recommended to run this maximised unless you like to be annoyed by your steam overlay messages not going away and being drawn over by other steam overlay things (A relatively common draw problem, fixable, but also easily avoided), and the option exists to turn off what I found to be a very helpful feature (Once you’ve held down the left or right mouse button to draw and chosen a direction, it won’t go outside of that row or column until you release it.)

OMGIOD SPO- h wait, no, this is a good illustration of how you play Picross without finishing the image.

Beyond that, well… It’s a Picross puzzle game, it has a fair few puzzles, from ones you’ve probably seen before (Oh look, a heart) to things like space shuttles, pitcher’s mitts, and seahorses, all thematically arranged. It works, niggles aside, and it’s a perfectly serviceable game, all told. Are there better ones out there? Yes. But there’s very few puzzles here that are annoying, it’s accessible, it’s clear, and it’s got a perfectly acceptable price-tag about it.

I’m still somewhat confused about the difficulty differences though, and will probably remain so.

There are quite a few categories, with lots of levels, although, as mentioned, I’m somewhat befuddled by the idea that completing it on hard doesn’t also complete it on normal.

The Mad Welshman loves him some Picross. He will stamp those pixels down aaaaall day when he’s in the right mood.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: 6.99
Where To Get It: Steam

For a while, Alphabear was a sensation. Haha, look at the often strange things they say using words I spelled in game! Oh dear, Alphabears, I don’t think you really meant to say that! I’ll freely admit, I was mostly confused when this happened. Confusion is sort of my base state when it comes to what becomes a darling, so I think we can safely move onto the fact that Alphabear is now not just on your phone, but on your computer. So how is it?

Hehehe. When Thesaurus butts.

Well… It’s a word puzzle game. It’s kind of cute. And if you’ve already got it on your phone, you’re not missing out on special PC only content, just having it on a bigger screen. You make words with letters, which have point values that add up depending on the length of word and the kinds of bears you brought into the puzzle, and each time you make a word, the letters you used become bears (or become part of a bigger bear), the point value of any letters you didn’t use goes down by 1, adjacent letters get exposed, and if any of the letters go down to 0 point value, they become rocks that permanently block bear expansion. The bigger the bears you have at the end, the bigger the bonus, and you unlock more bears and levels by beating the score it asks you to. Did you get all that?

Thankfully, it’s much less of a mouthful to play than explain, although sadly, if you screw up spelling a word, you’re better off just clicking the big X to completely erase than to try and remember the specific letter you were trying to get rid of. That niggle aside, it’s pretty clear, it’s pretty accessible, and the difficulty curve is just that… A curve, rather than a spiky mess.

Yes, I quite agree. Thunderous Plagiarisers be warned, neither I nor an actual thieving bear like you for plagiary.

Indeed, pretty much all of my problems with the game are not problems, but niggles. “Leaderboard” just links to the limited Steam Achievements. The bear unlocks are pretty much random chance, although you’d have to be fairly unlucky not to unlock all non-legendary bears before the end of a chapter. But the core of the game works, it’s just as cute as its original mobile/tablet incarnation, its dictionary has the same limitations (Sometimes it doesn’t have a definition for a word, like Wastel, sometimes, it doesn’t know things that totally are words), and essentially, whether you like it or not is dependent on whether you like word puzzles, specifically this kind of word puzzle, or not.

I happen to quite like it, and would thus finish by informing you that wastel bread was perhaps the best kind of bread you could get in the middle ages. So now you know.

As much as you may hate to admit it, this is the perfect Alphabear body.

The Mad Welshman is very fond of word games. Alas, generally he can’t enjoy them as much, since they are his 1.5th epileptic trigger. Sad times.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £10.99
Where To Get It: Steam
Other Reviews: Early Access

20XX is a game with a laudable goal: A platformer heavily inspired by the MegaMan X games with random level generation. All the ideas, all the replayability! It’s just a shame it doesn’t really work out that way, for a variety of reasons.

Pictured: Ace and Nina’s unscrupulous creators don’t take failure kindly.

Aesthetically, 20XX has come a long way from when it was under a different name. It’s clean, it’s got good tunes, it’s got moderately good sounds. The enemies are visually distinct, and so you quickly learn what type is what, whether you can get nice things out of them, and what they do. That’s good.

Not so good is the fact I have little to no incentive to play Nina, the Not-megaman of the pair of Nina and Ace (who is Not-Protoman/Zero.) Equally not so good is the fact that the stages, very often, are more lethal than the bosses. And some of the bosses, honestly, are eh, even in their difficult forms. Let’s get into that a little more, starting with the linked problem of Nina and the levels.

The game features two characters: Nina, who shoots bullets, and has a piercing charge shot (with the option to change this basic attack to a variety of directional bullets or a wave-beam if you find the right powerup.) , and Ace, who has a sword, which he can charge, but, honestly, doesn’t need to (and, like Nina, can switch out for a variety of melee type weapons of varying utility, damage, range, and speed.) Both can dash jump. Both can use the same boss weapons, in the same way. Both can use the same permanent and per-run powerups that are unlocked by gaining one of the three types of currency in the game.

FUCKING BATS. Although thankfully not over a deathpit, or between two platforms, or any of the innumerable situations they just ANNOY THE HELL OUT OF ME.

When playing as Nina, to deal with hordes of bats, I need to waste a second or two charging my weapon, and lining it up. Without an alternate weapon, I have no means of dealing with enemies above me. When playing as Ace, most of my weapons can attack at least a little upward by default, have a wide area, and can chump hordes of bats with a few quick taps of the attack button. It’s not even a subtle difference. I have little incentive to play as Nina.

Meanwhile, one of the elements of the game is random level generation, using native enemy types, bats (Which are everywhere, and are annoying obstacles just as with videogame bats everywhere), and native trap types. Agnisort, the fire area, has conveyor belts and fireball launchers, with welding flames on the walls, belts, small pits… Anywhere they would fit, and a couple of places they shouldn’t. Vaculab, meanwhile, has that MegaMan staple, Yoku blocks (blocks that appear and disappear on a timer) and deadly vines. Skytemple relies on lasers, conveyor belts, and bottomless pits to kill you, while Frostor has spike shooters seemingly everywhere, even in places that are meant to be considered safe. It’s all generated according to a rough plan, it’s true, but I can almost guarantee you’re going to take, especially toward the end as the frequency of the traps increases, more damage from the stages than you are the bosses. Occasionally, the game will even generate a big ol’ middle finger, like the time my only path to progress was blocked by a pair of vertical lasers, each perfectly bisecting the platforms I needed, and seemingly timed to go active while the platforms were accessible.

Suffice to say, I didn’t appreciate that one tiny bit.

This jerk has gone through multiple iterations. He’s *less* annoying in the final release.

While we’re here, let’s talk about the bosses and their weapons. Bosses are, with only two exceptions, larger versions of the level enemies, with their highly pattern based gimmicks. Rollster is a robot hamster in a sawblade monowheel, and he bounces and fires sawblades. The Astral Twins are fireball spewing robot gorillas who will resurrect each other if you don’t kill them both within about ten seconds of each other. As the boss order is also randomly generated, both levels and bosses are meant to get harder the further you get. This is very true for the levels, but the bosses? The stages consistently seem to do more damage, and their weapons vary wildly in use. One, Skydragon’s, is essentially there as a reference to Aqua Teen Hunger Force. It’s a big, slow moving cuboid bullet. Yes, whatever it hits will take heavy damage, and it has some piercing, but it’s also easily blocked, and, just like the sketch with the Mooninites, it moves slowly enough that you might as well not bother with it.

In the end, one of the biggest problems with 20XX is that it’s trying to recreate the feel of a game series that mostly relied on tight level design with procedural generation, and so many of the obstacles and “set-pieces” feel arbitrary. Oh look, six bats. That I have to wait for, watching them crawl across the screen, because if I don’t, I’m going to screw up the timing of this conveyorbelt/fireball/welding torch “puzzle” that’s also going on.

Occasionally, the procgen will just outright screw you. Just quit to the menu at this point, you’re going to die.

BATS ARE BAD, DO NOT USE BATS. BATS ARE BAD, DO NOT USE BATS.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: Approximately £3 ($5 USD)
Where To Get It: Itch.IO
Other Reviews: Early Access 2, Release

Sometimes, the breadth of what people will experiment with interests me greatly. Asteroids, for example, is a simple formula, and yet, believe me, there are games that screw with that formula, some good, some bad. But I’ve had yet to see a game that experiments in order to encourage movement in an Asteroids game, and R-Coil, by Mike T, is one such game.

The spread shot is very nice, but one of the weapons to seriously push you back. So be careful!

If you’ve ever played Asteroids, you’d have the general idea: There are rocks, and you blow them up for some score. There are enemies attacking you, and you blow them up for a better score, while trying not to get blown up yourself. As in some Asteroids games, there are nastier enemies, and bosses, and yes, blowing them up involves big points … And a higher risk of dying. There’s a variety of limited use powerups, from the Death Ray, to drones that back you up (and serve as a shield.)

But the main thing is that R-Coil, when playing with the mouse, at least, is a one button game. Tapping the left mouse button fires, while holding it down thrusts. And so, not only do you have less control over movement than traditional Asteroids, you also have to consider that weapons fire knocks you back, from “A little way back” in the case of bog-standard bullets, to “WHEEEE!” in the case of the Death Ray. It is, in the scheme of things, a small change… But it makes all the difference, and remains challenging rather than frustratingly difficult. Only a few enemies fire shots directly at you, and those can quickly be prioritised due to the mostly clear visuals on the game (Screen shake and shudder can, at the time of writing, be turned on or off to taste.)

Alas, sooner or later, your lives run out, and it’s time to put another quarte- Oh, wait, no quarters needed? Isn’t progress wonderful!

As such, the game is one of those simple to play, but hard to master type games that I kind of enjoy, and the vector style graphics (inspired by the original Asteroids games) are pretty nice on the eyes. A little less nice on the ears is the retro beeps, boops, and sine noises that come from your weapons, especially the laser, although that may be subject to change, since the game is effectively in a fairly polished alpha state. It doesn’t have much of a story to speak of, which is skippable, and this works. Games don’t always need a story. Adding to the fun is the ability to locally co-op with both other players, and with AI companions, and a duel mode with the same features.

So if you like retro shooters, R-Coil is currently available on Itch.IO, quite clearly informing you that it’s still in development, is approximately £3 ($5 USD) , and, to arcade fans like me, seems quite enjoyable, challenging without being arsey, and, generally speaking, a fun time. Worth a look.

Of course, one of the problems with screenshots is that they don’t sum up quite how the pace of the game is quick, but not overwhelming. These are but moments in a smooth experience, taken out of context.

The Mad Welshman is a fan of reworking old things in more fun ways. Why, a death ray that expands? GLORIOUS!

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