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

Defect is possibly the oddest premise I’ve seen for a build and fly game in a while, but before we begin, like the game, I’d like to make clear which version of the word the title’s using. You’d think, considering the “Spaceship Destruction Simulator”, that it would be as in “Problem or flaw”, but no, it’s actually “Join an opposing side or political group.” Because that’s what your crew does. Every. Sodding. Time.

Every. Single. Bloody. Time.

It’s amusing the first five times it happens. Then you get horrified. What kind of civilisation encourages such disloyalty? Then you just get plain angry. How dare they steal your… Okay, for the first few missions it’s not going to be a sweet ride. But part of the difficulty curve is that you’ll be going up against that ship you built last mission in among the others. It’s an interesting idea, but I’m kind of hoping it’s got a little more nuance than the same set of events each time. “Oh hey, this is now the most powerful ship in the sector! G’Bye Cap’n, we’ll put it to good use!” “Oh… Well, surely that won’t happen next time, huh?”

I’m thinking of defecting myself, engineer lady. It comes from working for a navy that’s obviously a big shower of assholes, the way everyone keeps mutineering. Speaking of, why do they keep letting Crewman Bowie back into the Navy? Why do I keep letting him back onto my ship?!?

Well, okay, we all know the reasons, but still… Everyone in this universe is dumb. But is the game?

Not really, no. The main variation is in what you can build, which increases after each mission. Good example, after I’m done with the tutorial missions, I finally get a shield. Which, unfortunately, I can’t use without some other facet of my ship suffering right now… Like decent guns. Or steering. The UI, and the music, are nice and minimalist, and I do like the caricature designs of the characters who, variously, advise and annoy you. The one problem I have right now, though, is a bit of a weird one…

Take a look at that zoom meter on the right. That will give you *some* idea…

…The maps are too big. On the one hand, this is to allow the frankly huge designs you get later in the game, and fight pretty early on. But for at least the early missions? You’re quite small. And that means you don’t really get to see your ship in action, except as a tiny thing on screen, shooting at other, possibly as tiny things on screen. An automatic zoom helps with this, but it unfortunately doesn’t help that much in the early game. Also not helping is that you are very limited by your Core, and you have to work with that, which becomes… Very fiddly. Seven or eight missions in, and you’re going to wish you had something better. Which leads to the other problem… It’s not very balanced right now, and it seems like you’re pretty much expected to grind missions you’re good at so you can have the equipment to deal with those you don’t. Good example, the game is reminding me why I hate escort missions.

“Oh yeah, defend this freighter against some pirates, and… OH NO, TORPEDO BOMBERS.” Fuck. You. My choices at the time this mission comes up (And three others of its ilk) are something nippy and tough, but with next to no firepower; something able to turn on a dime, but with only forward firing weapons (Because turrets take up more crew than I’m comfortable with); or something that shoots well, shoots in many directions, but has armour thin as tissue paper. This is about where I got frustrated, because everything currently needing work starts giving you a kicking, like a schoolyard bully and his mates. The camera wants to encompass as many enemies as possible, so you have to fight the auto camera to avoid the torpedoes, which will kill you in one, maybe two shots. The game’s preference for forward firing weapons means you have to fight the steering of your design, and the fact that nearly everything is faster than you, because the engines aren’t quite balanced, means that you’ll die… Again… And again… And again, because you can’t quite build something useful.

Yeah, um… Good luck with that!

Then you go back to grind, and realise most of the rewards up till now have been mission rewards. So your rate of new equipment slows to a crawl.

In summary, while Defect is definitely interesting, it’s looking right now like it might be a good idea to wait and see. The mission requirements definitely outpace the equipment right now, the camera needs a bit more work, and it gets frustrating once you’re out of the tutorial. It undeniably has its cool moments, it’s UI is pretty nice (Although Symmetry mode, also, needs some work), and I kinda like what’s going on with the visuals. Thankfully, it’s a pretty early version (0.12.22076), so there’s plenty of time for the devs to balance things, and fix hiccups.

The Mad Welshman sighed as he tumbled through space, waiting for the pickup. You’d think, after the 253rd time, that he’d remember to lock the bridge door.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £6.99
Where To Get It: Steam

In a perfect universe, everything is easily understood, and if you then fuck it up, it’s your fault. Enter newtonian platformer Perfect Universe, a collection of games with the single theme of gravity. Also some nice shaders that make it look a bit like an ink drawing.

This man with no shirt is part of a Perfect Universe. Food for thought…

So let’s talk games. There are several games, three of which are available single player, 6 multiplayer. The SP games are all variants on “Collect the things, and do it quickly for maximum cheevoness”, while the MP games are things like Moon Golf (Warning, does not often contain moons), racing to collect balloons, and platformer Dodgeball. It’s at this point that you may be thinking “Oh, well that’s easy, and not worth my time!”

Let me tell you about Mister Legs. Mister Legs laughs at your bravado, knowing it to be ultimately foolish. He waits, eyes wide, because he knows that you will forget that his legs can stick to things, or that he jumps better, so much better, when his legs are firmly planted on terra firma. He may not be a rocket, or a gliding bearded man, but he will make you scream, as you stick his leg to a surface just a little too low, a little too late, and you have to do a segment all… Over… Again. He will not sigh, he will not laugh. For he knows it is a Perfect Universe, and thus, it’s your fault.

Mister Legs, implacable avatar of a Perfect Universe. He has sticky and independently moving feet.

Indeed, each game has its own tricks and traps, and the main one is actually kind of clever: Gravity, in this Perfect Universe, is based on the objects in the world. And this allows for some pretty cool perspective and control tricks. Take Space Station 1, for example. Looks simple, doesn’t it? Go around, jump on platforms, avoid spikes. Just hold ri- Oh, yes, when you’re moving up a surface, up is right. This, combined with the fact that gravity is toward the outer surface of the level (IE – The spikes covering most of it) makes it more of a test of skill than it appears. And, since the rules are easily understandable, and explained early in the game… It really is a test of skill.

If I could reduce the game to a single world, it would be “Minimalist.” The controls are simple (although sometimes oddly placed on the keyboard, such as Enter for jump), the music is low key, mostly piano and some piano synth, and most of the sound is in the background… Apart from the flare of thrusters on the rocket game modes, and the grunts of the half naked beardy man of the main mode. It kind of impresses me how much Will Sykes Games is doing with so little: Perspective tricks, control tricks… For something with simple rules, it’s somewhat hard to sum up.

There’s more than just these two, of course. Rockets. Golf. Balloons. But I wanted to show off this clock, because it’s pretty cool.

I honestly don’t have many gripes about this game, mainly with the single, somewhat lackluster death animation, the fact that some menus are still usable while they’re slowly fading out after you press Quit, the key binds sometimes tripping me up (Only sometimes, though), and some of the game modes not really feeling that appealing to me (I’m not a big fan of the rocket games, but that’s mainly because inertia is a big consideration with those), and, for its price? It’s a perfectly reasonable game, with mostly reasonable challenges based more around doing it better than having to do it perfectly for most of the game, some fun co-op modes, and some cool visual designs. Worth a look if you like simple games that become complex due to the combination of simple rules, rather than through adding complexity to the rules themselves.

The Mad Welshman looked over the endless void, and remembered the old truism: Stare ye not too long into Mr. Legs, for while you stare, Mr. Legs stares also into you. He shivered, then jumped to the next moonlet: Shirtless, bearded, and proud.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £1.99 (Soundtrack £1.99 , whole shebang £3.99)
Where To Get It: Steam, Itch.IO

Sometimes, rainbow robots just want to break free. And they’ll butt their heads into walls, time and time again, at great speed, to do so. This is basically what I take away from Blitz Breaker, an easy to learn, hard to master arcade game about dashing your way to victory, and headbashing your way through obstacles with style. Also collecting coins and square gems.

Things start *relatively* simple…

It’s a somewhat addictive game, and that’s because it’s learned from its spiritual ancestor, Super Meat Boy. Death is two button presses away from getting right back into it. Levels are, at first, pretty short, then get longer as the game goes on. Each stage introduces a new trick, from spikes, to belts, to lasers and beyond, and the rules for how your character moves are extremely clear, so there’s relatively few points in the game you’re going to cry “Bullshit!” Because you know damn well it’s your own fault. Oh dear, I dashed into the spike when I should have used my tiny jump. Oh dear, I didn’t take into account that bullet. Oh well! [push, push] Time to try it one more time!

So how does it feel to play? Well, pretty good, for the most part. There’s that primal satisfaction of learning new tricks that I do like in a game, and the music is either chilling you out through difficult parts (World 2), or pumping you up for a boss fight (Most of the boss tunes.) Here’s a good trick… Want to spend some time waiting for something without losing height? Just remember that, so long as you hit the direction you want to go before you hit a wall, you’ll do it as you hit the wall, and so you can dash back and fore between two walls without losing height!

…Then get a bit more hectic, a bit at a time…

I’ve already mentioned that the music is quite nice, but visually, it’s pleasant too. Everything is pretty clear, so you know what’s what, the background rarely conflicts, and you quickly get a feel for what’s dangerous and what isn’t. My only real gripe is that some of the bosses (World 3’s , particularly) can get a little tedious, and that I’m not really a fan of the vertical letterbox, pretty backgrounds or not. I get that it’s a small game, with small sprites. But it does annoy sometimes.

For less than £2 , however, this will present some good, arcadey fun, and perhaps a couple of visits to the dentist as you grind your teeth trying to unlock everything. If you liked Super Meat Boy, definitely give this one a go, as it’s learned many of the (pleasant) design lessons that game teaches. There’s unlockable character skins, at least one “secret” world, and a fair amount of good chiptunes.

…And then you come across some headscratchers.

The Mad Welshman doesn’t have time to ponder your lasers! CHAAAAA- FZZAP.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £6.99 , £10.99 for the deluxe edition, which includes the map they didn’t really put in the game.
Where To Get It: Steam, itch.io, Humble Store

I liked the Souls games. I loved Shadow of the Colossus. I like me some Metroidvanias (I 100%ed Symphony of the Night at least once, which was… A thing.) I don’t mind me exploration. But Aquatic Adventures of The Last Human feels, to me, like it didn’t really learn from them. It tried. Bless it, it tried. But I feel like core lessons weren’t learned. Let’s go into that.

Where’s the Upper Harpoon, you say? Only once you find enough upgrades, cabrone!

First up, the first weapon. I found it, was led into a room that looked suspiciously like a boss arena, and lo… It was. This would all be well and good, if the first weapon wasn’t the thing it was. But the first weapon was a harpoon. That only fires from the bottom of your craft, because reasons. Not just that, but a really slow to charge harpoon. We’re talking a good three or so seconds between max charge shots. Which, as you might expect when the boss is an annelid around 100 times larger than your ship, about as useful as a wet fart in a diving suit. Let’s compare that for a second with, say, the Souls games and SotC, shall we?

In the souls games, similarly, you start with utter tat, and similarly, the bosses feel more like you’re giving them a tattoo than actually harming them, the first time through. But firstly, that changes rather rapidly, and secondly, no matter what you’re doing, you’re quite obviously giving it your all. There’s a sense of effort to connect with, a struggle for life, that shows in every grunting, snarling, huffing movement you make. Similarly, in Shadow of the Colossus, once you find a colossus, the fight does take ages, but you don’t mind because the entire struggle is visceral… You have to hold on for dear life, jump on something that could squash you like a bug with a mis-step, and when you do manage to do something? Oh my, the accomplishment!

The story of humanity is apparently a struggle between Terrorist BluePeace, and an increasingly authoritaria- Wait, where are you going?

There is none of that in the early fights of Aquatic Adventures. What there is is “wokawokawOkAwOkAWOKAWOKAWOKAWOKA- CHUNK”, except for the times when certain attacks occur, when it becomes “brmbrmbrmbrmbrm ch-ch-ch-ch.” Those are the sounds, specifically, of charging up your harpoon to attack at its highest damage and range (piddling), and the sounds of avoiding projectiles of some sort while firing your harpoon at its weakest as quickly as you can (About twice a second, at an estimate.)

In other fights, in other worlds, other games, I at least feel something. But in the early fights of Aquatic Adventures, I feel, at best, like some brigadier calmly calling “Chap with the flukes, five rounds… Er… As rapidly as you can manage, private.” And then, occasionally, something will kill me that I didn’t even see coming. Because the other thing this game doesn’t do well is readability.

Make no mistake, it’s pretty. I appreciated how different strata of this underwater world feel different: From the top, which is relatively simple outposts, the last remnants of a now dead humanity, to Settlement Seven, media dominated, with generators and television screens that have somehow survived several millennia of saltwater corrosion (Somewhat optimistically), to Central, the dark, authoritarian part of our slow descent into extinction. But navigating these areas, and more, are somewhat of an annoyance, as many are dark, and all of them are somewhat hard to read. Similarly, the majority of underwater creatures (In the beginning at least) aren’t hostile, but I spent the first thirty minutes shooting inoffensive fish because… Well, I couldn’t be sure. As it turned out, the thing I didn’t even see coming was one of the second boss’ attacks. Which is a good point to mention the bosses.

The Tranquil, about two minutes after it started annoying me…

I thought, after the first few fights, that it would become less tedious. It didn’t. Even with charge upgrades, and a saw to get me new areas, my choices of boss were a fish that constantly healed itself unless I destroyed, er… The bits of itself it was shooting out, then eating to heal; An octopus which required slowly weaking limbs, chopping them off… Aaand they came back completely for the second half. No, you don’t get a checkpoint, and no, at no point do you feel awesome for doing it. Mostly, you just get annoyed when a segment you thought you’d damaged enough wasn’t as damaged as you thought, or you got damaged despite having the saw, and that kills you, forcing you to do the whole tedious mess… All… Over… Again. Oh, and while it would be spoilers to mention where a certain useful utility power up would be, suffice to say, it’s in the very last place you would look.

This is the worst part. The music is good. The visual aesthetic (once you ignore what the nice gamma slider person says) is okay. But this is a game about the end of humanity (Apparently through several terminal cases of stupidity), and I… Don’t feel anything. When a boss kills me, the “You died” and restart to checkpoint just makes me sigh a little. When the messages from Blue Earth Alliance (Think Greenpeace, but definitely terrorists) turn up, I feel no reason to care. Everything I’ve come across in this game is emotionally detached, and strangely devoid of anything beyond surface detail that I can really get to grips with. That, at least, triggers an emotion or two: Sadness and feeling awkward.

This used to be above water. Now, it’s simply a curiosity.

The Mad Welshman looked at the Tranquil. The Tranquil gazed back with its giant yellow eyes. And The Mad Welshman started singing “I Crush Everything”, for no good reason he could name.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £3.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Lucifer, it appears, is a game developer. Through the receptacle of Daniel Mullins Games, they have created something devilishly amusing, and somewhat fourth wall breaking. There’s just one problem with reviewing it… If I tell you pretty much anything that happens, it’s going to spoil the damn game. So let’s talk in generalities, and in mood.

PonyIsland.JPG

Your mood when you begin (Or, indeed, look at the Steam page) can be summed up as something like “Oh christ, ponies. Fucking ponies.” Followed quickly by “Oh christ, Creepypasta… Bloody creepypasta.” It is my recommendation that you ignore these first two instincts. After all, the store page pretty much told you that the game was (in-game, at least) written by the Devil themselves, so you only have yourself to blame if you think these things after it’s outright told you.

Indeed, once you ignore these two beginning urges, you get to the puzzle elements of the game. And they’re clever. At first, they’re simple, switching symbols to get code to work. That much, I can mention. But it gets cleverer, and requires timing, and both the puzzles and the game begin to escalate. Kill things as soon as you’re able. But don’t kill other things. Beat the devil at his own game, or rather through the code of his own game (While playing his own game), and eventually, you will come to an awesome, hectic, and somewhat odd finale. Then, if you’re a good person, you will uninstall the game. All the while, you will be encouraged to give your soul to the developer of the game within the game. But screw that! (At least partly because it is “common wisdom” that we reviewers don’t have one. Pfeh, common wisdom. We just don’t like giving them away.)

ALSO PonyIsland.JPG

Of course, I am a moustache twirler, not a nice person. So I reinstalled, and went back in. And not everything fits as well as it could. The overall narrative? Yes. It twists, it turns, it has some clever moments that are only implied through showing, never outright shown, never outright told. But it has moments of “BUT THOU MUST” that you’ll probably only notice on a second playthrough. I can’t deliberately fail certain moments, though I know I want to fail them, no matter how innocent (or not) they appear.

But the simple sound, the lo-fi aesthetic, the implications within the story (Despite having all the time in the universe, the Devil, it seems, is an insecure and passive-aggressive game developer) draw me back in for another go, to see the rest of my life story (Such as it is, and slightly cliched though it may be), and to experience that finale one more time. For £4 , I won’t say it’s for everyone. Not everyone’s going to appreciate the puzzles, or the switches between a simple arcade style using the mouse, and the not so simple segments. But if you’re okay with games that switch between simple (And I do mean simple) arcade games, a boss fight or two (More complex), some logic and timing puzzles in between (Forming around half of the game), and humour that I’m guessing is aimed at “Oldschool Gamedev”… Y’know, the kind of folks who think a game isn’t fun without a death pit, or one-hit kills, then this might be worth a shot.

If you guessed this was also PonyIsland.JPG , you can now give me your soul as a reward.

There’s a lot I could say about it. About how the dutch angles are a nice touch, nice and subtle. About how the developer has nailed “Sickeningly cutesy” in places, and “OhGodWhy” in others. Little touches, little things. But all I will say is: It’s worth a go if you like something moderately amusing that will take you about 3 or 4 hours to finish the first time, then go back to see if you can get all the tickets, or remember a password, or maybe learn the full story of… Well, something.

Things it is not too much like: Undertale. Things it is somewhat like: Frog Fractions. Things it is exactly like: Not a bleeding one, it’s its own thing.

The Mad Welshman also wants your soul. Well, actually, all he really wants is to pay his bills. He has enough trouble with one soul, ta muchly!

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