Source: Early Access Purchase
Price: £22.99
Where To Get It: Steam, Official Page
Other Reviews: Early Access

Clockwork Empires is meant to be a survival management game (Like Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, or the like, where orders are indirect and resource/building management is important) set in a lovecraftian, jingoistic steampunk world based on a satire of Victorian Britain. Unfortunately, not all of that satire on drudgery and misery is intentional. So… Let’s talk about housing. And cabinets.

Mood is an important factor of Clockwork Empires, as happy labourers and overseers will work an extra shift, whereas despairing ones will slack off, and fearful or angry ones will be actively counterproductive. Obviously, this at least partly means housing them, and making that housing appealing. The workplace must also be prettified, or production will suffer.

There’s just one small problem with this, and the game doesn’t bother to inform you of it: Cabinet Tax. Let us assume, for a moment, that you have 2 labourers, and give them a 3×3 house with 2 windows, a door, and a bed. They aren’t happy with it, they aren’t unhappy with it… But you may have noticed the population count go up by 6. Because each of those houses can add population. So, when those labourers inevitably turn up, you build 6 more of these houses. And now you have many more labourers than you know what to do with, eating your food. Each building has a Quality Level, and this is, effectively, based on cabinets (and shrines for houses) in the early game. So, building individual housing? That’s… 12 cabinets to build to make them happy. The situation then becomes more clear when you turn to the workplace. Let’s use the carpenter as an example. You need a workstation (for cutting wood, making paper, etc), an assembly station (To build other workstations), and a décor station to build wood decorations. Y’know, like cabinets. But each of those workstations beyond the first reduces the Quality of a building, making workers unhappy. And when you try and build your first labourer housing more efficiently (7 beds, for the two workers you have, and the 5 you’ll eventually get.) you realise that this applies to houses too (For lo, the bed is a workstation as far as quality goes. I can understand why, few folks enjoy bunking long-term.) So your efficient solution still requires 12 cabinets for maximum happiness (6 for the extra beds, 6 for max Quality)

So, for a good, efficient first labourer house, you’re looking at at least a 14 x 10 building (Space for beds, and space for at least two windows, and 12 cabinets/shrines. After that, it’s a little easier, as you’re only catering for 4 or 5 labourers at a time, but as it is, you have a minimum “happiness tax” on all your buildings of 1.5 logs x (Number of Workstations/Beds -1) , and, obviously, the extra time and labour to make them. And no, you can’t just make more work buildings of the same type to get around this, due to the Overseer system, limiting both your number of workshops, and the number of job types you can do at any one time. Labourers just allow for more of the same job type once assigned, or, in the case of single jobs like mining or farming, doing it quicker. And yes, individual farms count as a job.

The in-game help hints at some of this. Specifically, the overseer job limitation, the fact that mood is affected by decorations, and that houses have conditions (That you won’t know until you build them) on extra population counts. Gee, I hope you found some sand, or can trade for it, because otherwise you’re in big trouble later on!

…Or, of course, you could not know this, and play for several hours, and an in-game month, and watch as your labourers and overseers become less efficient, before you realise what’s going on. It’s not very intuitive, and it may take quite a while for you to realise how badly you’ve made mistakes. Considering that a month of in-game time took me something like 3 or 4 hours to play out, it’s the kind of unfriendliness that turns me off playing for the long periods of time the game obviously wants me to play.

And this is a damn shame, because the game is visually kind of nice, the music fits the mood very well, changing with events. Unfortunately, the game is best described as “plodding”, “unintuitive”, and “frustrating.” I can’t select things behind buildings, even with the walls visually turned off. If I want to know what kind of mine I can build on a survey point, and there’s anything in the way, well… Good fucking luck without clearing the obstruction, mate!

And eldritch things and events. Oh, how those make me sad. Just before release, I had played a full month, and, while some eldritch things did happen, such as an invasion of moon-balls, another of eldritch cuboids and polyhedrons, and at least seven or eight obviously occult things dug up, the one death was from… Bandits. And that was because I hadn’t switched to my better weaponry because I hadn’t properly understood that 1 set of stone pellets equalled about 100 rounds. Meanwhile, the entire time, said eldritch gewgaws, such as a canopic urn that was actually a klein bottle, sat happily vibrating or lurching awkwardly in spacetime in between the maize chowder, some planks, and some coal that had eventually been put there by my heavily depressed people.

When the game goes well, it goes really well, and you can build up some serious cities in the limited space allotted to you, researching cool things, arming your soldiery with lightning guns (Leyden Weaponry) and clockwork armour, oppressing the fishy natives, and generally being the colonial asshole you may have dreamed you are. But to get there, you have to struggle with odd limitations, an AI that isn’t entirely sure if it’s coming or going, and a UI that makes the increased busywork from more colonists more and more a matter of hitting pause and checking things, slowing the game’s pace even when things begin to get interesting. And I’m really not certain I’m up to that.

The Mad Welshman liked his new Shining Trapezohedron. It set off the Crystal Egg, the Green Soapstone bookends of unknown providence, and the Eldritch Tomes he’d been collecting from the book club. Just another day…

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £5.99
Where To Get It: Steam

I’ve always had an odd relationship with slasher movies. On the one hand, they sometimes do interesting things with horror, and I enjoy some of them for interesting ideas, but on the other, they tend to suffer really badly from sequelitis (How many times has “Jason” died again? Or Freddy Krueger?), unnecessary remakes/reboots, and their formula is often, in some ways, still stuck in the early days of the subgenre (OH NOOOO, THOSE TEENS ARE HAVING SEX, THEY’RE GOING TO DIE BECAUSE SLASHER MOVIES!)

Slayaway Camp, on the other hand, I’m fairly unambiguous about, as it’s a sliding puzzle using slasher movies as a theme, and not a bad one at that. Warning: There is voxellated gore and murder.

Anyway, mechanically, what can I say? It’s a puzzle about murdering unwary teens in a series of slasher movies, all loosely linked, and each with a theme and added mechanic, such as SWAT cops , who are unkillable unless either you drop something on them or you flank them in the dark, or cats… A common ruiner of murderous plans in movies, and not to be killed because… Well, for the same reason a lot of the puzzle elements are the way they are – Because it at least used to be a thing in slasher movies. Due to the fact that you can only move in one of the four cardinal directions, and keep moving until you hit something (Be it an obstacle, a usable thing, an unfortunate teen, or something that’s going to kill you or make you Break The Rules), there’s only a limited number of possible solutions, so the puzzles can be brute forced, but most of the time, the gimmicks are visible enough, and the rules clear enough that you don’t need to, and successfully completing levels or the murder minigame gives you the opportunity to buy a hint and a solution, in that order.

Okay, so mechanically, it’s clear, it’s intuitive, and fuckups are definitely your fault. So far, so good. It becomes a little bit grindy if you want to unlock all the skins and murders, but I’m willing to give it a pass on that because a) It’s cosmetic stuff , b) Finishing each level unlocks “Deleted Scenes” (Some of the same levels, but with added features… Not always more difficult, but definitely more of them) and finishing all the movies earns even more puzzles, and c) The grinding minigame is effectively the murder scene minigame, and this becomes a little more visually varied with the aforementioned cosmetic stuff. There’s some nice cutscenes with parodies of slasher movie trailers and some amusing murders (A thing you rarely hear outside of the context of slasher movies, which sometimes go for creative and/or ironic deaths), it’s visually quite clear, and I had no colourblindness issues (Some issues with gore covering pits, but that goes away with something like 30 seconds of waiting, which again, gets it a pass), and my only real issues with the game are that it starts immediately the first time you play it, rather than do the video store menu thing, which was a tadge confusing, and that some of the humour’s a little forced (Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it… BIG LETTERED. Ho de ho ho.)

Nonetheless, I like Slayaway Camp. It’s not trying to reinvent the wheel, and it doesn’t need to. It’s not a big game, but it’s got charm. If you like puzzle games, this isn’t MENSA level stuff, but it’ll make you scratch your head for at least a bit, and I can respect that.

The Mad Welshman cowered in the bathroom… Shower? No, too dangerous. Brushing teeth? Not while the cat was nearby to fake scare him before he gets murdered. Living in Slasherworld is tough.

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

Skulls. Why’d it have to be skulls? Of all the spaceports, in all the universe, there had to be skulls on this one insignificant rock in the asscleft of the galaxy. God-damn, I just wanna get off this stinkin’ rock. Such is the main, stated goal of Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor: Get rid of Cursed Skull, maybe get off the planet.

And how it does it is interesting, if not for everybody: Grind. It’s quite clearly deliberate grind, and in its way, it’s soul crushing. Get rubbish. Maybe find a better deal on rubbish. Incinerate other rubbish, until you can’t anymore. Maybe have enough money to eat, or pay for the gender shifts (Including that most well known of gender choices, Susan Sarandon) so you can sleep and be well. Generally don’t eat garbage. Propitiate all the deities of this alien world so you can get their idols. Sleep to recharge your garbage incinerator, and get paid a pittance.

Meanwhile, you don’t really know your way around, and even getting home can sometimes be a struggle if you’ve gotten turned around. Everyone’s got some kind of angle, from the container obsessive next to that dungeon that kicks everything off, to even the Cat-vangelists that hang out and sing loudly and cheerily every now and again in service of their goddess. But to get anywhere, you have to find those important clues and details from people. And every day, you’re going to go home bone tired, and feeling less lucky than you were before.

Welcome, in short, to being an alien on a low paid job in a capitalist society. The cursed skull is just rubbing it in at this point. And the game does a good job of keeping that mystery, that sense of being out of place, and largely unwanted. The police will occasionally hassle you, for no good reason beyond the sense of their own power. Nobody will lift a finger to help you without something in return (Something that, often, involves rooting through garbage.) And you’re sometimes too poor to even get healthcare or food when you get sick… Better work harder, because there’s no handouts in this alien spaceport.

But, surprisingly, the game is pretty chill. Walking through the lo-fi environs (The developers even reference this in their graphics settings, which are Bad… and Worse) , until you hit one or more triggers (Night-time makes you sleepy, for example, and running out of garbage incinerator energy seems to bring this on faster), you can wander to your heart’s content. You can start to get a feel for the spaceport, where the shrines to various gods are (Including your patron deity… Mine being the enigmatic Orb of Curses, Sprence. I mean… Orbs!), and, most importantly, where various food and gender shift boxes are.

But of course, it takes time. Everything is going to take time. And a lot of hard work, of scrimping and saving, avoiding the attentions of the constabulary, avoiding ill health… Welcome, in short, to a game about being the underclass, the marginalised. That’s Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor.

The Mad Welshman felt like a change. Actually, he needed a change. But he couldn’t remember where the nearest Gender Shift booth was, he was out of money, and he was sleepy. Shame, he really wanted to identify as Cary Elwes. Just for a bit.

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Source: Early Access Purchase
Price: £22.99
Where To Get It: Steam, Official Page
Version: Beta 54.
Other Reviews: Release

I love me some Lovecraftian fiction. Yes, he was racist as hell, and a lot of his horror stories were based on that, but they’re enjoyable nonetheless. Similarly, I love me some fictional jingoism. Real life jingoism? Sucks. I mean, you only have to turn on the news to see sabers being rattled to see that. Finally, I love me some Steampunk, despite the fact that, often, it’s classist as hell. You rarely see the working man in such settings, only the rich idle going on adventures. But it’s an interesting aesthetic done right.

As such, your first instinct, considering Clockwork Empires contains all three, would be to say that I like this game. Eeeeeehhhhh…. Sort of. It’s like a banana-curry-chocolate cake, in that it contains things I like, but the whole? Not so much. Let’s start with the fact it’s somewhat unfriendly to new players.

Now, yes, before you say anything, it’s a survival strategy game, those tend not to hold your hand, but while the tutorial does indeed teach well (This is your early game order, etc, etc), the UI… Needs work. For example, you may wonder, if you play the game, how to stop seeing a farm’s statbox. Farms are, apparently, offices… So it’s the office button next to “Work Crews.” Some things work just by mousing over, such as the population and food button, others stay up until you left click the “Cancel” button that appears at the top, and there don’t appear to be keybindings in the Beta of Clockwork Empires.

Basically, it’s busy, it’s not very well explained, and as such, it makes a game in a genre that’s already quite slow even slower with all the pausing I’m doing. On the upside, the people are fairly readable. If they’re clomping around, they’re particularly annoyed. If they’re doin’ the Strut, they’re happy, if their heads and arms are down, they’re sad, and if their arms are waving and they’re on fire, something has probably gone wrong. Y’know, as it often does in such games. Of course, all that stops when they actually start a job, which is a shame… But at least you have some warning.

Visually, it’s much like the UI: Busy, lovely to look at in places, but not overly readable as a result. This, by the way, is nothing to do with the colourblind function (Which is a nice touch), but just the sheer amount of things and textures on view, and how a fair amount of it actually is useless. Add in the houses and workshops, and the fact that you can’t click on colonists “behind” them even if you have the walls off, and you start to have problems. Happily though, the music is fairly calming, and helps lower the irritation factor. Somewhat.

In any case, as you might have guessed, the game is all about tough choices. Day 4 of my colony saw a bandit group incoming, and I was several days away from a Barracks for soldiery. I was a few weeks away from giving them decent weaponry. So I decided to let them raid a little. In other games, I made friends with fishmen (Which is bound not to go sour when home finds out, eh?), discovered an ancient idol, and had a meteor from the moon disgorge… Something. Which thankfully, was beaten off by a warlike Overseer with a stick.

Of course, being a complex game in Early Access, bugs are bound to happen. One to watch out for currently is the infinite workshop job bug, where having more than one workstation in your workshop with the same job can mean that one job correctly registers the job being done, while the other… Doesn’t. In the case of “Minimum X of items”, this can mean you’re building planks forever and ever, whether you need them or not.

I feel kind of sad, actually, because there’s a lot of interesting events, and yet… Bureaucratic bumf and a flawed system bar me from getting to those interesting things. For example, I currently have a bandit corpse lying in my kitchen (Most unsanitary, I think you’ll agree), and yet… I can’t build a graveyard because it has a set space requirement, and nobody seems to want to flatten the terrain. Being a pastiche of Victorian Brits, the workers take a break at tea-time, do not burn the candle at both ends, and, once assigned a job, seem to pursue it with a single mindedness that bars common sense. And, of course, when it rains, it pours, as a day later (Corpse still there, ground un-flattened), the grass and rocks start singing eerily, which may have nasty effects if I don’t clear the ground nearby (A different job in and of itself.) This, basically, is to do with the Overseer system. Rather than have jobs be individually between workers, there are Overseers (Who pick what job there is) and Labourers (Who are assigned to Overseers.)

It’s a very management heavy game, even for a strategy survival game, and, honestly? It’s leaving a bit of a sour taste in my mouth, as everything appears to be going wrong. A little late, I realise… Oh, yes, becoming a Workshop Overseer disables all other jobs. A rhythmic “Whud… Whud… Whud…” floats across the colony, mixing with the sound of flies buzzing around a corpse, and the eerie singing of rocks and grass. It’s the morning of Day 8.

In the afternoon, a bandit raid occurs. In the evening, a grimoire is uncovered while trying to make room for the graveyard. Ohhhh boy…

Right now, Clockwork Empires, sadly, feels clunky, unintuitive, and unfriendly rather than challenging. Which is a shame, because I’d like to see more of these strange events and cool things, but the game itself seems to be resisting any pace above plodding with some very hard limits on what can be done, and a lack of useful explanation for many of its systems and trees. It doesn’t help that some systems appear to have more than one “method”, and it’s unclear which works (Is hunting via the Naturalists’ Office, or via the Hunting labour? And are we not able to hunt before we achieve some sort of iron ranged weapon and the ammunition at all? I wasn’t able to find a clear answer.)

The Mad Welshman sighed, understanding why the jolly old bureaucrat at the Foreign Office was so delighted to send him on this job. He whiled away his time thinking of synonyms for “Feckless”, “Moaning”, and “Children of Low Breeding” these days…

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £1.99
Where To Get It: Steam, IndieGameStand, AppStore, Google Play

Good murder mysteries, at their core, are problems of logic. Whodunnit? Howdunnit? Whydunnit? Be able to come to an answer at the same time or before the detective does, and you know you have a good murder mystery. A good murder mystery game, on the other hand? Ooooh, that changes what questions you’re asking a bit. Howsolveit? Whyloseit?

…Don’t think those are as catchy though, so let’s talk about the game itself, a procedural murder mystery game based on that good old murder mystery staple, the mansion murder. There’s an hour before the Bobbies arrive (Well, one Bobby, but he is a Bobby, in the vernacular), and if you want to feel like a clever clogs, you’re going to have to work it all out from a somewhat limited set of tools. Specifically, asking the guests one of three questions (Alibi, Weapon, or Motive), clicking on evidence (Be it something out of place, or the possibilities for the murder weapon), and going over your notes looking for contradictions. If you want to really feel like a clever clogs, try solving one in half the time by hitting the “Master Detective” checkbox in the Settings.

In any case, the game is in two “parts”, both procedurally generated. There are the stories, of which there are 12 (Plus the tutorial), and generating a case whole cloth. The major difference? With the stories, you know what the gimmick is from the first or second time you play it, whereas the “Generate A Mystery” uses at least one of these gimmicks. So it’s pretty safe to say the generated stories are where the main play is at, while the stories are an extended tutorial as to what sort of things to be looking out for. Enjoyable… But more predictable.

The art style is nice and simple. Hand drawn, it gives you clear differentiation between items, and everything has a place. People, evidence, weapons, secret door handles… Oh, did I not mention the game has secret doors? The achievements do. And if you’re buying this game to get some more achievements, you’ll have a fairly easy time, as the two hardest to get are for… Getting murdered, and letting the killer escape. Musically, it’s a lilting, Victorian style score that sets the scene and then, for the most part, stays in the background. I’m quite fond of both the art and music for their clarity and simplicity.

In any case, the real draw of this game is the fact that yes, more than one gimmick can exist at a time in the generated mysteries. One case, I had items lying about to prove people’s alibis, but it was a red herring, and one that lost me the case, as I discovered, too late, that what I needed most was to work out who had held the murder weapon last. Another, I felt exceedingly clever by not only catching out the murderer, but proving somebody else was covering for him by the hole in their own alibi. Generating a mystery, solving it. Each case takes about five to ten minutes, so it is, essentially, a game that you play in short sittings, when you have a hankering for feeling like a proper clever clogs.

Of course, sometimes, more than one gimmick leads to the same result, leading to a bit of confusion. I didn’t calmly explain how Rector Qualms was the last person to get his grubby little mittens on the poker, Narrator. I calmly explained how there was proof the other Detective Durbin (Named via the settings, a small, but nice touch) was in a room, making his story match with Master Percy’s, but Qualms had said he was with Detective Durbin in an entirely different room that she wasn’t in! Sheesh! Still, that’s a relatively minor quibble, and fixing it so the game knows which of the alibi gimmicks you used if it used two at once would most likely be a pain in the posterior. The only other minor quibble is that you can’t seem to set the monitor it displays on in-game.

However, I think, for £2, I’ve most definitely achieved satisfaction in this arena, and can happily come back every now and again when I need a boost to the confidence I have in my critical faculties. Also playing a murder mystery in which my friends (Or, more likely, those foolish enough to earn my ire) are the guests. A simple, accessible, and entertaining game, overall!

The Mad Welshman does not believe Insanity is a valid motive for murder. It’s somewhat ableist, and paints a dim view of folks with real problems. The other motives, on the other hand? Naaah, those are just fiiiine. Now, how much did you owe me for not talking about the Scarlet Crozius Incident, Vicar?

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