Source: Free
Where To Get It: Steam

Let’s begin this review with the most important facts of all: Mandagon is free. It takes, on average, less than an hour to play. Also, it is meant to represent Bardo, which is described as “Limbo” in the game’s description.

This is, presumably, a good thing. Also, proof the game is somewhat pretty.

These are important things to note, and indeed, look up, because the last one is pretty much going to be the focus of this review. So let’s get the mechanical and visual stuff out of the way first: There is no death, it’s just exploration. It tells a story of a man who has sacrificed himself for the sake of his daughter. It’s visually pretty, and the music and sound are all chill as heck. Also there is a not-bad representation of Palden Lhamo, who you may confuse for Kali (Indeed, there are some schools of thought stating that she’s an emanation of Kali.) The controls, as such, are simple, although the “maps” do not seem to show where you’re meant to go… Although the six sacred tablets do show you where they’re meant to go if you activate them in your inventory.

Bam, mechanical, visual, and aural stuff over with. Let’s get to the meat of things, and why, despite the game being free, I’m being a bit critical. Not of the game mechanically, but culturally. It should also be noted that I am not, myself, a Tibetan Buddhist, so my own criticism should be taken with a grain of salt. All that being said, let’s start with the elephant in the room: Cultural Shoehorning. We see this a lot, even within Europe (Wales, Brittany, the Scandinavian nations, pretty much anything that’s been shoved under “Faerie”… The list is a pretty long one), and to be honest, it annoys.

Bardo is not Limbo. Heck, this is only one sixth of what Bardo appears to be (Chönyi Bardo , the Luminosity of the True Nature, commencing in between the final breath and the transmigration of the mindstream to its next existence, going back to the first Bardo, Kyenay bardo, which encompasses a person’s life.) Making it worse, not even Limbo is Limbo as most folks understand it, and yet the term continues to be used for a transitional state between lives (A concept that mainly came into the consciousness via Dante’s Inferno, which was, itself, a sort of discussion of the theological concept), despite being… Er… Not really a transitional state.

As you might have guessed, this is a game world. The map is showing me where I am.

Yes, I know that’s some heavy shit to lay on you this early. Stick with me. Anyways, Chönyi Bardo is when those who have finally died experience visions, and the nature of those visions depends upon how they practiced and/or understood Buddhism during their life, and whether they recognise this in the first place. Spoilers, the main character of Mandagon must have been someone spiritually buff as hell. I mean, we’re talking enlightenment muscles out the wazoo.

Not that, you know, enlightenment is like muscles. Or maybe it can be. Enlightenment’s odd like that. Anyway, the point is, that only if you are a spiritually aware person will you have the chill as heck experience as you do in game. Otherwise, to simplify things a little, you terrify and delude yourself, adding this baggage to your next existence because you didn’t prepare to shed said baggage. However, that they do not get reborn is perhaps another sign of this, as adherence to the precepts of Karma allow one to escape the beginningless cycle of rebirth that Buddhism calls Samsara (In many forms of Buddhism, a less than ideal state, as opposed to a state of acknowledging unbeing or non-self.)

This may seem like grumping, or nit-picking, but it’s actually kind of important to note, because too often, we simply accept a thing for what it seems to be, rather than what it is. A good example of this would be the Steam discussion on what actually happened in game, where there’s a sadly unsurprising lack of awareness of a lot of this, even with the individual who appears closest to “Getting it”, as it were. Games abstract things, sometimes to the point of misrepresentation, and Mandagon, while very pretty, very chill, and having some great moments, does this by its very simplicity.

Palden Lhamo. Kind of important. 😉

So this isn’t so much nit-picking, or grumping, as helping you be aware that yes, while this is a pretty game, a chill game, a short game, and a free game, it’s also a game referencing a thing that’s a lot more complicated and interesting than the game presents it as. So go enjoy it, it’s all good, it’s free… And then do what I did, and look at the bigger picture. Otherwise, it’ll end up like that Bill Bailey line about the Gandhi Pinball Machine, where you have to light the three Magic Naan-Breads to… Oh, you get the picture!

The Mad Welshman is a long way from breaking out of the cycle. And he likes it that way.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £10.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Defect: SDK (Standing for Ship Destruction Kit) is a game where, despite knowing it’s partly my fault, I can’t help but get frustrated. And it’s down to a lot of things.

Firstly, there’s the UI. Now, good UI design is hard, because while we often talk about how many interactions (Clicks or keypresses), it takes to do a thing, that’s only one factor. There’s also another pair of factors that doesn’t always get talked about with the design there: Time and attention. So, for educational purposes, I’m linking this rough note of the main game UI for Defect.

This isn’t that linked UI pic, but this does illustrate how big things can get. These are *nowhere* near the biggest things in the game.

That’s potentially a lot of things for what the game is, which is a mission based, effectively score attack arcade shooter with construction elements and unlockable upgrades. Bars go down, numbers go up, and, by even the end of the tutorial, fire is going to be coming at you from many directions, and many sizes of ships. I mentioned in the Early Access review that, at least in the early game, you are not big. But other things definitely are. Pay attention to them, and the smaller ships become somewhat hard to intuitively evade. Pay attention to the smaller ships, and you probably won’t even see the frigate that murdered your ass from what you perceive to be several screens away.

That’s a fair bit to keep an eye on over what often turns out to be a short space of time, and that’s frustrating.

Similarly, the game’s balance very much relies, not only on the mission objectives, but one to two core pieces of equipment, including: The Core. This blows up, you blow up. But this makes other decisions extremely tough, and it only takes the second core component, the cockpit, to see why. Just crew, on your first core, can take a tenth of your energy for… A small fighter at a time where you’re probably wanting something bigger, or a quarter of your energy for… Just over twice the crew. This is, by the way, before you start putting in the things that require both crew and power, which include the engines, weapons, armour, and… Wings. No, I’m not joking, each wing you put on your ship requires a crewmember to man it. Out of, at the end of the tutorial, an absolute maximum of… 25. It slowly gets better as the game progresses, but the key word there is slowly. Most of the time, you’re going to be making heavy compromises. Something tanky and shooty, but slow as heck and steers like a cow. Something quick, but with very few weapons and next to no armour. That first one will fail you quite a few of the missions from the second tier (Most of which involve speed or agility), while the second… May well run into another limiting factor, and the key behind the game’s name.

With this new core, I can… Spend 200 extra scrap for 30 extra power. Which I’d need to spend extra scrap to use. Grrr.

Defect (v.) – Abandon one’s country or cause in favour of an opposing one. Aka what your crew do after every. Single. Mission. It’s meant to be a running gag, but it wears extremely thin once you build a small, nippy ship for, say, doing a mission involving a trench run on the weakpoint of a planet smashing laser platform, only to then have to destroy the ship you built last mission, which has lots more armour, and about four more weapons. At least two of which are semi-guided missiles, and likely a turret that tracks a hell of a lot better than I do when I have the damn things.

Now, in balance, I will say that the visual style of Defect is damn fine. I love the artwork. I somewhat like the ambient music and the creepy drama of the title theme. The sound design is good, and the customisation is mostly well explained. Nothing like seeing a lovingly rendered Crewman Ziggy stab you in the back, or listening to the fwwwwwoooosh of your thrusters (Or, in the case of some later ones, the RRRFWSHWRRRRWRRSH.) The basic controls, similarly, are pretty simple: WASD for tank-control style movement, mouse for pretty much everything else. Bam.

But, in a very real sense, Defect is built on conflicts of design and compromise, and, while I’m certain at least part of it is that I’m not great at arcade twin sticks, another part of it is that yes, the game conflicts with itself at times. I’m sure there’s an ideal path through the game, one that allows you to build progressively better ships, going through the missions, and managing to destroy your traitorous crew each time with few problems. I’m equally sure that people are enjoying it more than I am, exploring the requirements of each mission with gusto, creating tricked out ships that shouldn’t work, but do.

Alas, I am not one of those folks.

One of my many flawed attempts at building a ship. Try and spot the main flaws here.

The Mad Welshman fogged up his faceplate with a gusty sigh. He was somewhat used to treachery, but normally he was on the other end of it. Oh well, he thought, nothing to do but wait for the rescue craft.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £1.99 (£2.37 for the soundtrack, interactive soundtrack, and companion artbook too, or 79p each for each of these things.)
Where To Get It: Steam

I’ve seen a lot of comparisons with Reigns. Tinder: The Visual Novel (because swiping left or right is the main decision making mechanic.) Cards Against Royalty (because there are event cards, and horrible things can happen.) Long Live The King (Because, effectively, it’s a visual novel with a lot of bad ends, like Long Live The Queen.) But, while these do indeed illustrate aspects of this game by Nerial, it’s definitely its own thing.

You could be seeing this a fair bit.

Essentially, you are a King. An archetypal King, for good or ill. One who’s made a deal with The Devil for an endless life. Of course, nobody specified that this life couldn’t involve reincarnation. So you’re stuck in a cycle of life and death, trying to find a way out of this curse. And you will die. It says a lot that the very first achievement in the game is “Survive for 5 years.”

Now, it should be mentioned that, just like your average visual novel, once you’re aware of events you can plan for them, and move toward the True Ending of the game. It should also be mentioned that, like a Visual Novel, it’s somewhat short (34 minutes in, I’d gone through seven kings and met just over a third of the cast. An hour in, and I’d been given An Important Clue.) But it’s a game where things genuinely get better as time goes by, and that “Gets Better” is around five minutes in. As part of the design.

One of the people you meet. If you guessed they might not be helpful, win an imaginary cookie.

You see, as you progress down the lineage of kings (Harry the Doomed, Michael the Martyr… Y’know, just king stuff), you start to meet people who can help you in your long, slow battle against the devil. People who make your life easier… Mostly. I’m not even going to pretend that some of them are assholes that I won’t miss. And being a king, as it turns out, is somewhat difficult, because you have to balance things, and I really do mean balance. Run out of Papal Power, and the pagan hordes string you up. Give the church too much, and you find yourself declared a heretic. Similarly with the other three concerns (Population, Military Power, and, the thing The Mad Welshman keenly understands, Cashmoneys.) It also introduces new concepts at a reasonable rate, and so, the further in, the more interesting it gets.

In the name of balancing my own Review meter, it should also be noted that, once you understand what does what in an event, this is unlikely to change, although the spread of events does, narrowing at times, but generally expanding. So I now know that if I’m absolutely sure I want to stop my military from overthrowing me, I can send them to pacify the east… So long as that doesn’t max out anything else. The game even helps a little with this understanding, giving you little dots for a small change, and big dots for a big one (Although not everything you do has an immediate effect.)

You partied so hard you died. Because you had all the money. Haha on you for being such a fiscally successful king! XP

In short, it’s interesting, it’s accessible, it’s kind of fun, and it’s £2.

The Mad Welshman has lived many lives. He’s even swiped in a couple of them. But this “swipe left/right” thing is a new definition for him.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £34.99
Where To Get It: Steam

This game has been somewhat of a thorn in my side, reviewing wise. Because I’ve wanted to give it a fair shake. But it’s time to admit that The Technomancer and I just don’t get along. This isn’t to say that there aren’t elements of good design in there, but there are quite a few things that make this game Not For Me. So take this review with a larger than usual grain of salt.

It starts with a plot. Water is scarce on Mars, so there are gangs and mutants and corporations of varying evilness, and you are a member of one of those Special organisations who…

Okay, let me stop for a minute and bring up one of the tooltips. This is emblematic of why I’m not so keen on the Technomancer.

What a load of Old Dome. 🙁

Electric, electric, electric… I feel like Billy Connolly at an opera. “I FUCKIN’ GEEET ITTT!” But of course, this is before the game has even started properly. Once it does, I’m in character generation, and I am Zachariah. I am always Zachariah. Zachariah can be dark of skin or pale, of many faces, but it’s always… Zachariah.

This, too, I understand. Sometimes, you want to write a plot with a very specific protag, and that’s Okay. It works for the Witcher. It works for Bayonetta. It’s worked for a lot of games. I even understand why he’s always voiced by the same person… Because VO is expensive. I’m down with that.

There’s a sense of uncanny valley about some of the voices compared to the animations.

I’m less down with the fact that, half an hour in, I have yet to leave the tutorial mission, I have made precisely one dialogue choice, and I have, so far, been the only person of colour (In character, anyway. In real life I have been described as “The Whitest of White Folks”) I have seen. It’s somewhat hard to tell in the tutorial mission, because everyone is wearing some kind of wrap or bucket or other concealing clothing (There’s a reason for that. Turns out, the sun on Mars turns people into Mutants. No, I don’t know either.) The world I’ve been pacing through, similarly, has been one note. It tells a story, but it’s a story I know because this is how this kind of story goes. Resource scarcity (Water, specifically) has led to a decline in population, and so lots of buildings out there are ruined. Also, Mars is not exactly known for the variety in its landscapes, as such.

Of course, this isn’t stated as such in the tutorial mission, beyond the reasoning behind the moral choice in this game (Kill for more resources, but leave the world lessened by it, or don’t kill, but deal nonlethally with things, despite the possibility that many of these people are themselves going to kill and Drain Serum, because you’re Good Like That.)

I’m mostly talking about the tutorial mission, by the way, because it’s emblematic, much like that splash screen. And the ending of the tutorial… Oh no, Technomancers are actually mutants (Who are second class citizens at best as it is), and their little hazing ritual base has been invaded by bugs from below, so…

“Hudson, er… Zachariah!”
“Is this gonna be another Bug Hunt, Sir?”

…The moment I saw the End of Tutorial boss, I just sighed. Yep, it was a big bug. Yep, it had boodles of hit points, and an obvious, fleshy weakpoint. Yes, you could animation lock it. It’s… Predictable. It’s similarly predictable that it ends each “phase” by covering it’s weakpoint, trying to kill you with collision damage (often succeeding), and summoning its lil’ sandhopper brethren. Worst of all, I’d known this from the moment I saw a big circular arena and bugs. So… Good signposting, I guess?

And it doesn’t really get better. Combat nearly always involves multiple enemies, because if it was a single enemy, then you would attack a few times, dodge out of its attack, and repeat until it fell down… As such, it becomes a slog. The story involves the very same Big Secret you’re meant to keep getting out there, and now you’re the Rebels to the Martian Empire…

…It makes me so very tired. I wanted to give it a fair shake. But the game, to me, resists being played. And that’s often the worst thing for me to try and review.

The Mad Welshman also has powers. Train-tying hands. Train-tying train-time prediction. Train-tying mad cackling… The list is highly varied, you know!

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £14.99
Where To Get It: Steam
Other Reviews: Early Access 2, Release

Confidence is a fine thing, bravado a little less so. So you can imagine my surprise when I see the words “Three years to develop The Book of Demons” (and it’s still in development), and then the intro to the game reveals it’s just 1 part of a seven part, presumably episodic set of games meant to create more accessible versions of popular game types, I worry somewhat. I also find two words that are going to be the theme of this review.

“Truly accessible.”

Look, it’s gotta be a friendlier game, Satan has a rubber duck! That’s a good sign, right?!?

These are not words said lightly. Games do exclude some players, sometimes because the developers don’t get that they want to attract new players… Yes, you can market a game to the “truly hardcore”, but you’re only limiting your audience that way, even beyond genre. Sometimes it’s because of the nature of the genre itself, and the impression I get is that The Book of Demons is trying to make ARPGs “accessible” so people can… Return2Games. Oh ho, ho ho ho ho.

There’s just one problem. I’m not even a third of the way in, and those two words are beginning to sound increasingly hollow. Let’s discuss why. Starting with how The Book of Demons tries to simplify the ARPG formula… Because, in case it wasn’t obvious by the screenshots, this is meant to be a sort of Diablo Lite. There’s a town, it’s been infected with an evil under the church, and hell has broken loose. Heck, the first quest is even called “The Cook”, a reference to Diablo 1’s “The Butcher.”

This is about a minute before I died. Can you spot some of the reasons why?

Anyways, there are a couple of ways it tries to simplify, and they don’t… Particularly help. First up is exchanging buying items, using spells and the like, for… Cards that do exactly the same thing. On the one hand, it cuts down on inventory management, because, once you start a dungeon area, you can’t change them out, you can only add cards (if you have room) or change them in town. But while this changes things on the surface, it still means you’re using number keys for potions and abilities and the like, so it just… Limits things. And The Gypsy (let’s not go there, beyond saying “Please can we not do that thing where you have a spiteful, yet helpful magic lady who is a Gypsy, ta?”) even jokes about how using a blacksmith was so inefficient, oh ho ho ho!

If that was the only example of trying to simplify by limiting, and not fully thinking it through, I’d be okay. But there’s one core element that fucks things up righteously. You can only move along a set of rails. You’re still holding LMB to move, and attack, and do other things we’ll get into in a second, but your area of movement is limited.

Sounds okay, until you realise that the monsters you find in the dungeon have no such restriction. Gargoyles quite happily leap into your “able to be attacked” radius, some doing area of effect attacks, then out again. Zombies explode into poisonous clouds that, sometimes, it’s much harder to avoid… And god help you if you’re blocked by a monster in a group from retreating, because yes, that can happen, and unlike many other ARPGs, you don’t have the option of going round.

Let’s unpack this. Two of the enemies require holding LMB over their shield before I can hurt them. One is casting a spell to summon two more of these that will make them invincible. If I want to regain *some* health I have to mouse over those hearts too, and those skulls are a poison effect that’s about to make my health sphere go green and damage me, with the option to click on the *health sphere* to remove the poison quicker. Oh, and the spell icon needs to be LMB held over to stop the spell.

That’s what has led to every single death so far, tbh… There have been large groups of varied monsters, and one of them, sometimes two, have blocked my avenue of retreat, and while focusing on them, the other monsters wrecked my day. All the while, I was having to keep an eye on several different things, just like a supposedly less accessible ARPG, with the added funtimes that I could, theoretically stop a spellcaster from, say, teleporting large groups of monsters to my location, or freezing me, or, in later parts of the first third of the game, summon enemies with shields (requiring further click fuckery) that make the spellcaster immune to any and all damage while they’re still alive.

Somehow, in the quest for simplicity and accessibility, Thing Trunk, the developers, have actually made it more complicated. Now, I’m not an ARPG novice. I’ve beaten the first two Diablos, the first Torchlight, and have gotten most of the way through the second (It’s only really the reviewing that really stops me from knuckling down there, as there’s always something new to get through.) I’m having difficulty curve troubles, before I even get to The Butcher equivalent, that I didn’t get in Diablo, the game they’re trying to make more accessible.

Yes, it’s Early Access, and not all of the classes are in yet. Yes, they no doubt have time… But not as much time as they think they have if this is the first in seven games to fill up that intro set of book podiums. This is the sort of project I want to succeed, because making games more accessible means more people play, and I get more people to talk shit over with, and we can then maybe… Just maybe… Stop with all this “Elite Player” bullshit and just get down to play together.

But this isn’t exactly inspiring my confidence that Thing Trunk, despite talking a good game (Make no mistake, their marketing has been very well planned), are the ones to help people Return 2 Games.

We can, at least, point out that this *is* a laudable goal.

The Mad Welshman started. All of a sudden, he couldn’t turn left… Or right. As the monsters closed in, leering skinlessly as only skeletons can, he tried desperately to wake up.

Their claws disabused him of the notion it was just a nightmare. And that he was going to wake up.

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