Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £7.19
Where To Get It: Steam

Sometimes, the old ones are the best. Pong has somehow survived to the modern day, although in oft unrecognisable forms. As have Tetrominoes and Puyos. And there is even room, in the modern day, for twists on Snake. Some are clever puzzlers with a snakey theme, some are repetitive minigames to represent grind or hacking (No, really), and sometimes… Well, sometimes, it tries 3D. I’d say that Snakeybus is one of the more successful ones on that front, and it’s largely due to having interesting maps.

So, one thing to get out of the way right now: Snakeybus is not the most polished of games. The UI is a utilitarian, boxy affair, the models and physics relatively simple, and the maps and garage are both relatively small. When passengers are dropped off, and the bus elongates, it does so by literally popping in the bus segments, rather than anything fancy, and, apart from the motion of the bus (and ragdolling of passengers on death), animation’s somewhat crude.

Okay, fine, but, and this is the important but: It does exactly what you would expect with a portmanteau of Snake and Bus: You move (slowing or accelerating depending on your W/S keys, steering at a fixed rate with your A/D, a little harder with shift), picking up passengers, and, preferably when the bus is full, you drop them off at a specific, fixed point (one of several is chosen), grow some, and you attempt to do this until you explode. Now do it again, but better. And this would, very quickly, become an exercise in frustration if it weren’t for… Your other key: The spacebar, aka “JUMP.”

Yup, this bus not only grows depending on how many passengers it’s dropped off, it can fly too. And, if you manage to hit ramps at the right angle (IE – without knocking them over), and a fair clip, you can get over obstacles (including yourself) that way too. It’s… An understatedly fun experience, honestly. Even if Endless (the 7^th main map) is kind of a bad joke.

The “joke” is that there’s no passengers, just an endless, uncrashable bus ride, constantly lengthening until either the game crashes, your computer does, or you realise what it’s doing from the achievement and grumpily hit the ESCape to leave.

Despite that, and the lack of polish, though, Snakeybus is definitely a relaxing way to spend a lunch break. Seeing what silly tricks you can pull, hearing the screams of the passengers sucked into the Bus of Inevitable Doom while light driving jazz plays, trying to ride your bus along the top of your bus… It’s a short, silly game, played in short, silly sessions, and that’s a niche I can respect.

The Mad Welshman likes it when folks keep it simple. Om nom nom.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £19.99
Where To Get It: Steam
Other Reviews: Early Access

I appreciate modular difficulty sliders. I appreciate the ability to customise one’s experience somewhat. I appreciate survival, and I appreciate 4Xs. What I am not, strictly speaking, so fond about, however, is when the percentage of your “Normal” difficulty is 150% difficulty. That, and needing to survive 100 turns on “Normal” difficulty, are a fair portion of my irritation with Thea 2: The Shattering, a survival 4X that I had taken a look at in Early Access.

And, just to make this clear, the game has improved from last time, in several important senses. But in terms of feeling whether the devs actually want me, someone who isn’t dealing amazingly well with Thea’s particular brand of conflicting desires, to see more of its content? Thaaat’s not so hot still.

So, let’s back up a second, quick recap: World’s Nordic in flavour, pantheistic, got a bit of a problem with the world maybe ending sometime in the near-ish future. And your deity has chosen you to lead a small group of folks to grow, to expand, and hopefully to survive long enough to find out what the Darkness is, and, best case scenario, how to defeat it. And, being fair to the developers, they have introduced more to help deal with that. An extra modular difficulty setting, allowing you to autoresolve conflicts more easily (or with more difficulty.) A lumber building that gives wood, even if there’s no wood nearby. That sort of thing.

But, in the end, here’s the thing. As I mentioned right at the top, unlocking more things is a royal pain in the ass. I need 9 God Points to get a new Deity to try out. I need at least 5 to get new potential starting bonuses (At least some of which are locked behind their respective Deities.) I will, if I do well on “Normal” difficulty (Surviving at least 100 turns, completing various events) gain… Maybe 3. For about an hour and a half worth of play, maybe more. And “Normal” difficulty is tough, not least because of conflicting desires.

It wants you to move from Island to Island. It wants you to do events. But it also wants you to hunker down, because this adds its own benefits. It wants you to spread, but gives a pittance of children and growth, slowly depleting the resources, and increasing the hostility. And, in essence, the games feel the same, because they tread along the exact same path. Here, the Witch’s hut, and gathering food, and finding a settlement. There, the Cmuch prince, the Wisps, the Demon Games. That very sameyness means that, to unlock more Gods, more things that maybe help you get further, you have to tread the same path over, and over, and over again, and…

…Thea 2 has some interesting ideas. It has an interesting world. But I’ve never really felt like the game wants me to explore that world, to look down its path. And, even with the narrative conceit that yes, the world is hostile, it is not a game that resists being played in a fun way. It merely resists, struggling against being enjoyed, and that saddens me.

The Mad Welshman wants games to be enjoyed. Sometimes, the games themselves don’t help.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £11.39 (£13.74 for game+soundtrack, £5.79 for soundtrack)
Where To Get It: Steam

Hey you! Do you remember the 80s? How about something more recent that remembers the 80s, Vaporwave? Okay, okay, let’s make this a little easier? How much do you know about shooting spaceships in procgenned patterns that then go boom, followed by a bigger boss spaceship, and doing that until you go boom, at which point you get points to buy better stats, then do it again?

Ah, okay, I feel we reached the maximum number of folks with that last one.

So yes, Black Paradox is a shoot-em-up, of the horizontal variety, where you, a bounty hunter with duplication powers called Black Paradox, shoot space pirates, cowboys, and other ne’er do wells, beat bosses in a space DeLorean, and, when you die, you get the chance to use the money you earned to buy upgrades. Not new weapons, mind you, because weapons drop from Carriers in level, and it’s random what you can pick up, but stat upgrades, to things like health, attack, speed, and fire rate (With added percentage chance of something extra per shot, according to the chip you slot.)

So, what’s it like? Well, I feel like the main good points are its aesthetic, and the energy of its weapons. Aesthetic wise, Black Paradox is trying for a Vaporwave aesthetic, a style that pays an odd kind of homage to the 80s styles while also ambiguously satirising the consumer culture of the period. So, on the one hand, synth tunes with a distinct 80s feel, bike helmets, big triangles, and, on the other, parodies of popular 80s icons like Lobo, Tex Hex, and the Master Blaster duo. It’s mostly surface level, but it does work moodwise.

As to the weapons, well, there’s quite a few of them, and, beyond the bog standard gun with middling round bullets wot go pew pew pew, there are lasers, deadly boomerangs, railguns, flamethrowers… Each weapon acts pretty differently, and some, like the railgun, are definitely meant for use on bosses or big enemies only. What matters is that they are all, from the weakest to the strongest, chunky and exciting to use. I love being slowed down by the Dart Punk, my missile pods wrecking anything silly enough to stay in the way. I love filling the screen with boomerangs, wandering around the screen as entire asteroid fields (and the ambushes behind them) die before I really get to see them. And equally, I love a lot of the powerups you get from defeating one of the seven bosses. The blade drone (A roomba, but with knives.) The medic drone, occasionally topping me up because, boy, I also love running into bullets and exploding a lot.

Of course, that’s because, at any given time, there’s a fair amount of bullets on screen at any one time. It isn’t quite bullet hell, but it comes pretty close, and there are some attacks that make you panic. But runs are quick to restart, and I know, with each failed run, I’m a tiny bit closer to getting more powerful. I could do with becoming more powerful a little more quickly (As higher level chips cost a lot more, and so do the chip slots), but, honestly, it isn’t terrible. Know that, unless you’re good at these ol’ shmups, you may be a while to properly powerup, and, if you’re cool with that, then it’s all good.

So yeah, overall, I feel positive about Black Paradox. It’s a little slow to get going if you’re not great at shmups (HI), but its aesthetic is nice, its weapons feel good, especially once you get how they work, its music is good, and I can see myself coming back to this quite a bit.

The Mad Welshman unfortunately has neither the touch, nor the power to take on the final boss yet, but when he does, he will dare, dare to believe he will suriiiiiive.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £49.99
Where To Get It: Steam

CONTENT WARNING: It should be mentioned that Zanki Zero deals with adult themes like abuse (sexual or otherwise), gaslighting, and murder, so… Yeah, be warned, this game deals with squicky subjects.

It’s an interesting exercise, to tot up the thematic elements of a developer. And for Spike Chunsoft, there’s a fair amount to pick from. Sins of the past. Just about believable pseudoscience made believable. Big twists. And attacking the heartstrings with comically large pliers.

And Zanki Zero definitely goes in for all of these, along with a bit of cringe early on. If I had a nickel for every time a “wacky” cartoon character was just groan inducingly gross, I’d have enough to whack said cartoon characters with a small sack of nickels. Thanks, Zanki Zero, for the unnecessary addition that one of your MCs is proud of pissing themselves on camera. I’m only grateful that’s told, not shown.

Iiin any case, once the game gets going, the cringe seems to die down (somewhat, although content warnings for abuse, sexism, violence and murder definitely apply throughout), and the game gets interesting. A survival RPG/Visual Novel hybrid, Zanki Zero follows eight protagonists, and… Seven sins? Ah, one of them is secretly an architect of this whole mess where humanity is extinct, and eight (?) clones of people are asked to rebuild a cloning machine to resurrect humanity, despite the fact that they, as clones, cannot breed. I’m sure this’ll at least try to make more sense down the line, but at the beginning, mysteries, gribbleys, failed human clones, and ruins abound, with various systems unlocking as you go. Building elements of your base. Cooking, crafting, upgrading. And, through it all, the clone mechanics.

At first, as described, it’s stressful, and the game makes sure to kill off a character to get the point across, but, while death isn’t the end, and can be beneficial in certain aspects (Dying in Adult life, for example, extends Adult life by 1 day), it costs to resurrect someone, so care must still be taken, as there’s a lot that can screw you up. Traps, monsters, the threat that some of the gifts you get from the EXTEND Machine have strings attached. You know, losing what’s left of your humanity, that sort of thing. I’ve been playing it on the second difficulty setting, and this honestly seems reasonable for me, since my only party wipe was through overconfidence. It’s only later, with the introduction of various traps, that it starts to get properly mean. God-damn bird…

The game’s pace is, honestly, pretty good, and, some odd keybinds aside, it tutorialises pretty well. This, plus the interesting way combat and “survival” plays out (The bars, equally, decrease and increase at sensible rates, so I rarely felt I was nannying) means that, overall, I quite like Zanki Zero. Sho, the cringier of the two Extend TV hosts, is a different story, but thankfully, his segments are quite brief. If you want to explore a VN/RPG hybrid which adds depth as it goes on, Zanki Zero is definitely an interesting one to check out.

The Mad Welshman doesn’t have anything clever to say here. How can he, when Humankind is long gone?

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £4.79
Where To Get It: Steam

Ahhh, the city builder. The puzzle city builder. They’ve both got their own beauty, but, done well, both can be extremely relaxing times. And Islanders… Is done pretty well.

As with city builders, buildings in the right range of each other create synergy, for good or for ill. A lumberjack does well with lots of trees around, better with a statue, better with a sawmill… But it makes parks, shamans, and other stuff less palatable to place nearby. Some buildings, like the Temple, are very picky, so thinking ahead is definitely a useful skill.

And then there’s the title. See, it all revolves around islands. Sometimes tiny archipelagos, sometimes big grassy dealios with ruins… But always, space is at a premium. And always, progress must be made. Most of the time, this means making enough points to get more buildings. But once you get far enough, the next island starts calling, and, whether through feeling you’ve maximised your work here, running out of useful buildings, or simply from having placed a lot of buildings, it’s time to move to the next, keeping only the score you’ve accumulated so far.

Thing is, while it is challenging, it does a lot to make it a chill experience. Tooltips handily tell you what a building does before placing it, allowing you to think. When placing things, there’s visual guides both to its sphere of influence and the points you’ll rack up from placement (Occasionally leading to “Just a pixel to the left, and… BAM, 32!”) It’s very quickly clear what’s what, and, throughout, light, relaxing music is playing, keeping you calm. Since the game automatically restarts on a loss, and saves progress if you leave, there’s also no pressure there, and I like that.

Islanders, overall, feels quite pleasant to play, sounds good, looks good… And, of course, the feeling when you have an island almost filled is a good feeling. Sometimes, you need something relaxing that still challenges the mind, and Islanders is definitely that.

The Mad Welshman always has time for relaxation. So ISLANDERS is definitely going in his “Play this when things are getting you down” folder.

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