Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £6.99
Where To Get It: Steam, Itch.IO, Humble Store

It is a fact that, the faster you go, the slower time goes by. This phenomenon is often noted with drivers of 80s muscle cars, who are often amazed to find that they had been “Out all day” when they only intended a small dri-

-Wait, I’m being informed by my editorial crew that this is for a different reason than time dilation at lightspeed. Which, in part, is what this clever, lo-fi visual novel is about. The rest? Becoming a stranger in a strange land, that land consisting entirely of the river of Time. Which is, I think you’ll agree, an awkward place to live, except that we somehow do it by not thinking about it too often.

As a visual novel, there are concessions to story and game. For example, you don’t have 50,000,000 social media messages to scroll through, rising as the game progresses, but much more managable, almost curated numbers, split into your social circle in FriendPage, and the news on Skimmit. Being a VN, there isn’t a time limit, and you go through the 30 minutes of interstellar travel at your own pace.

Of course… You’ll nearly always be left behind. By the time you’ve left, Augmented Reality has finally hit. By the time you get there… A lot more has happened. Some might argue a bit too much for a single VN to cover. But it’s well written in its simplicity, and I felt a tiny tear or two trickle down my cheeks as, while I fulfilled my promise to never forget my friends, they forgot me. Some found happiness. Some just found new social media platforms. Others… Were never found again. Spending the last four or five days just clicking “refresh”, hoping for a message, an update that wasn’t failing ebooks accounts… Anything… Was just heartbreaking.

At least I was relatively certain they’re not dead. Relatively.

If you want a somewhat poignant game, with some good futurism behind it, Killing Time At Lightspeed is a good choice.

…Okay, I couldn’t resist putting this one in. I’m moderately sure it’s a joke. 😛

The Mad Welshman doesn’t understand qubits. He was never In The Cloud. He feels terribly old.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £14.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Spoilers. Spoilers spoilers spoilers. There you go, there’s the story of Inside, the latest offering from creators of Limbo, Playdead. Oh, wait, there’s non spoilery things I can say: There is a small boy. He’s running from some weird stuff. Stuff that can kill him stone dead. Also there are brain machines, around which quite a few puzzles revolve.

Pictured: Technically A Spoiler.

This, in essence, is one of the biggest problems with reviewing Inside… That it’s a game that wows you, that frustrates you, and has all of these experiences… And, for fear of the dreaded cry of “UGHHHH SPOILERS DUDE”, we can’t talk about most of it. We can tell you that the animations are subtle and interesting. We can tell you that the movement is fluid. We can tell you that, on keyboard, the action key is right control, and that because the game starts immediately, and is checkpoint based on its saves, you may have a few annoyed minutes of fumbling because there are no tooltips in the game.

But then you get into the game, running from dogs, strange masked people, and other weirdnesses, and you get involved in a story. A story for our time. An enthralling story. A well checkpointed story with well designed, self contained puzzles such as REDACTED, REDACTED, and, of course, REDACTED.

…Y’know what? Sod this, the internet’s saturated with spoilers and I’m going to damn well have my fun. There’s an early puzzle that amused me, and was high octane, even though it shouldn’t have been with how stupid and predictable the dogs chasing me were. I climb a fence… They go the long way round to try and get me. So I climb back, making sure they’re nipping at my heels (But not literally nipping at my heels, or they’d kill me in a particularly gruesome manner), then I climb back over, pull a board out of the boarded up doorway, and climb back over the fence just as the dogs reach me. I repeat this the magic three times, then just manage to get away from the dogs.

Pictured: Something quite atmospheric. Also technically a spoiler.

“I only just managed it” is this game’s thing, when it’s not “Wait, I was actually meant to… [FACEPALM] IT’S SO OBVIOUS!”

The adrenaline, the tricks the developers play that, nonetheless, make perfect sense in the world’s logic, and, furthermore, get applied later so you know that yes, they’re not just doing it as a one off. The secret thingumajiggers that lead to the secret ending… Yes, there’s a secret ending. The subtle horror of a small child in a world gone oh so wrong. That’s the magic of Inside. Not necessarily the puzzles we don’t talk about, which, believe me, won’t help you all that much. The next one’s a doozy. They’re all doozies… Until you solve them, and they’re not anymore.

No, if you’re going to buy Inside, buy it because you’re interested in world building, in how a story can be told without a single line of dialogue. Buy it because you want to see animation done well. Buy it because it’s a story you’ll want to remember, and read again by playing it, occasionally stumbling as you forget exactly how you did that one puzzle. Don’t buy it if you never liked Flashback, or the original Prince of Persia, or any of the puzzle-action-platformers that led up to the creation of Inside, and no doubt will lead to more interesting gems like this one.

It’s really that simple.

Pictured: Something subtly horrific. Guess.

The Mad Welshman scratched his head, and The Mind Controlled Englishman scratched his head. Unseen to both, The Also Mind Controlled Uruguayan scratched his head. But somewhere in those dominated neurons, a personality was chuckling. “They’ll never find me.”

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £29.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Spike Chunsoft, much like their serial antagonist of many faces, Zero, has left me in a bit of a pickle. Thankfully not one involving Running Man style exploding collars, or deathtraps, or locked rooms, but one involving that most dangerous of minefields for a reviewer. SPOILERS.

…Oh, it might be, it might not be. Every screenshot potentially is for me. 😛

Beyond what I just said, and the fact that I think the game is quite interesting and cool (And that it’s good news that the other two games, 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and Virtue’s Last Reward), you won’t find any. Or maybe you will. It can, in the middle of play, feel as confusing as whether this game is a sequel, a midquel, a threequel, or all of the above… Although I’m moderately sure “None of the above” is not a valid answer, leading only to the Bad End of dubious canon. I’m only going to tell you what you need to know to make a decision.

First up, it’s a voiced, 3D visual novel with puzzles that remind one of earlier games like The 7^th Guest and Myst, where skipping dialogue for the first time through is not recommended, and where philosophy, Pop Quantum Physics, and death all reign. There are six billion lives at stake, and this is not a spoiler because you’re told that in the first minute or so of the bloody game. Click on things, move things, escape from rooms, and make choices that will have a momentous effect on the game’s world… Or not. If the Pop Quantum Physics mention didn’t clue you in, not everything is as it appears at first.

And that’s actually the second important thing to note that isn’t a spoiler. The game is, for the most part, non linear. Even in the middle of a puzzle, you can, for the most part, sod off to a different, unlocked part of the story, and the game relies on this for multiple reasons. At first, you will get annoyed at unlocking Bad Ends (Some messier than others), but as the game progresses… As more of the timeline unlocks… Those “Grr”s will soon turn to “Ohhhhhh”s and “Wait, WHA-”s. More of the former than the latter, which is a credit to the writing team.

…For example, even this beginning segment says things. 🙁

Similarly, the voice acting team and musicians deserve kudos, because the English dub of this game is not bad at all. The VA in general is well delivered, the music is mostly fitting to its atmosphere and well crafted (The exceptions not actually being the musical and VA teams’ fault, as there is, unfortunately, a currently unpatched bug that sometimes cuts the music out before it’s meant to end, and if you don’t turn the music and SFX down a little, it sometimes overrides the voice acting), and, while the SFX aren’t always that great (About on par, I would say, with the aforementioned FMV adventure games of days gone by, so still alright), the visuals and area design managed to keep my interest for 8 straight hours in a row, helped along by an intriguing story with twists and turns aplenty.

Of course, no game is perfect. There are bugs, but thankfully not many. Some of the dialogue, due to the non-linear nature of the game, will feel repetitive even with the best VA and writing (And, often, the VA and writing dip into “Only fair to good”, with the occasional pun that even makes me groan. I’m not kitten…) Finally, it’s not greatly intuitive how to unlock certain scenes (Suffice to say, the triggers are sometimes spread across more than one scene), and that can lead to some frustration around the midgame.

Pictured: Not The Midgame, But Somewhat Eye-Murdering.

But, as far as adventures go, this one is a corker. There is an internal logic, and it can be discerned, but exploration is a must, both through space and time. So long as you understand that, I think adventure fans and VN fans alike may well enjoy Zero Time Dilemma, and, while I wouldn’t call it a great introduction to either genre, if you feel like a challenge, this is well priced.

The Mad Welshman is now going to tell your future. You are going to scroll down from these words… Or up from the previous article in the list, and be injected with Rad-Spoiler-7. Fortunately, Rad-Spoiler-7, while 100% fatal otherwise, is the only known antidote to Irritato-BadEnd , which is 75% fatal.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £14.99 (£18.99 with More To Explore, £5.29 for More To Explore if you have the base game already)
Where To Get It: Steam

I missed Renowned Explorers the first time round, somewhat irritating considering I liked their previous offering, Reus, enough to put in 41 hours and 71% of the achievements before annoyance set in. Thankfully, with the DLC, I get to review not only this charming explore-em-up, but the DLC, adding two expeditions, some extra mechanics, and bonus treasure effects and events in the form of the Campfire Tales. So, before we begin, a quick summary of what Renowned Explorers is, for those who haven’t played.

My first main team. I have all of them as Captains now, but still have some fondness for playing this lil’ group. I mean, how could I not?

Renowned Explorers is an adventure strategy hybrid, where you pick three explorers, a Captain and two Crew, from a pool of 16 choices (Although only 4 of them are available as Captains from the beginning.) Once chosen, their skills and stats work along one of three complementary paths: Aggression (Beating the tar out of things), Deceit (Making people feel bad, lying, cheating, etc), and Friendship (Being the Good Example to all tiny Explorers and Natives everywhere.) None of these paths are, strictly speaking, closed off to you, and good strategy involves mixing the abilities of all three to maximum effect (Only Friendship skills, for example, seem to heal, while Aggression Skills can lay the hurt on a number of foes), but it’s important to know your strengths, because by playing to them, you’re going to do so much better in beating your rival Explorer groups to the top spot, unearthing ancient artefacts, and discovering awesome things, sometimes involving sheep drugs.

No, I’m not entirely joking with that last sentence.

…sometimes, the implications of the unique game overs makes me want to go have a lie down [fans self]

…And also kick righteous buttock, such as out fighting Tommy, the not-bright, but tough member of the Rivaleux, out charm Cassandra Shafiq, the temptress of the same team, deal with a possession by the evil Erzbet Bathory (She of the controversial Virgin Bloodbath Makeover Treatment), and rob tombs all over the world, from Ireland to the Andes…

FOR SCIENCE, HELL YEAH!

…So if you like feeling like a combination of Carmen Sandiego, Indiana Jones, and Lara Croft, don’t mind turn based combat, and love a good procedurally generated exploration story game, then Renowned Explorers just got more awesome, and while the DLC isn’t necessary to its enjoyment, it most certainly helps, and is worth a look!

The Mad Welshman is currently on indefinite vacation with Erzbet Bathory.

Let’s end it on a high note. FRIENDSHIP!

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £5.99
Where To Get It: Steam, Official Site, Humble Store

The Slaughter is a potentially interesting adventure game, with some good writing, and puzzles that… Could have been put together better. It’s the first part in a trilogy involving Sydney Emerson, a private investigator who is investigating the death of his saviour from a savage beating. The Ripper may be involved. Dreams definitely are. But unless the puzzles are cleared up, I’m not terribly confident about its chances. Still, let’s talk nice things first.

Pictured: Some Victorian hijinks. Oh, how they laughed as the poor doctor’s head swelled!

There is some pretty good dialogue in the game, such as wry commentary on the White Knight stereotype near the beginning, and some clever dream symbology. The music is at least fitting in mood, and I was near to tears as Sydney thanks his saviour post mortem (A prostitute whose murder kicks off the plot.) There are interesting characters.

But the puzzles… The puzzles need work. No, I’m not going to mince words here, some of the puzzles are poorly signposted, and plain don’t fit. Chapter 2, for example, requires you to ask for a Screwdriver (The cocktail), to get a Screwdriver (The object), to unscrew a window. The Screwdriver… The cocktail, that is… Didn’t exist in Victorian times. In fact, it didn’t exist for at least another half century.

One of the few documents of the game, but nonetheless, an important one.

The game does end on an interesting note, but unfortunately, the example used here is just one of a variety that require the facility to read the developer’s mind, and I was forced to search for a walkthrough for quite a few portions of the third and final act. Especially as some triggers are a little finicky, requiring you to ask about obvious possessions, for example, before being able to ask for them as a prize in a minigame that’s… Equally finicky, albeit for a different reason (Due to the nature of the game in question, you often find yourself mousing over the Quit button more than you may, perhaps, wish.)

This is a dream situation. Which, unsurprisingly, means it’s a dream.

There is promise in The Slaughter, Act One… But to get there requires some leaps of logic, and I’m hoping that the second act, when it comes out, is less finicky and haphazard in the puzzle design. Sadly, I’m not a big fan, but if you’re willing to try it out for yourself, it may perhaps be a little more transparent to you.

The Mad Welshman slammed back a Black Russian as he adjusted his camisole. Dark times were afoot, and he needed to work out how to get home safely.

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