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

Robots just seem to get the short end of the stick sometimes. Here,in the Endhall, we’re faced with a robot that is tempted, oh so tempted, by all the sights it’s been shown, but noooo, to see those sights, they have to fight their way through a crumbling hall of murder robots, mines, and turrets, with limited resources. Killing regains battery power, which double as health and turn-timer, and, after each successful area, you get to pick an ability to add to your deck, while never improving in base statistics.

And that, essentially, is everything mechanical about the game except for spoilers, that there’s ten levels in each run, and your starting moves, which are always the same. So… It’s minimalist turn-based strategy. Cool!

Aesthetically it looks alright, the music’s fine, what writing there is clearly lays out its short narrative… No move feels completely useless (Although some, such as Small Move, are more situational than most), and I never felt, when beginning a level, that it was impossible to complete, usually spotting where I’d screwed up a couple of turns before my demise.

Beyond that, it’s small, it’s tight, it does what it says on the tin, and what’s left are gripes. Namely that the tooltips for the enemy health aren’t always that readable (dark red… Argh), and that time-bombs counting as enemies is frustrating in layouts where they aren’t useful as environmental damage. Worth a look if you like minimalist pixel strategy titles.

Due to the fact individual runs are short, The Mad Welshman is amused to note that a third of his screenshots taken are, technically, SPOILERS.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £15.49
Where To Get It: Steam
Other Reviews: Early Access

There is something deeply cathartic about smacking things with mechanical rocketfists. It doesn’t matter that it’s turn-based, and that this rocket-fist has been carefully considered after a couple of minutes. It doesn’t even matter that this is presented as the same comic frame for this move, repeated every time I choose it. The power of a good comic frame, really… It entertains even when you’ve seen it multiple times.

This screenshot is not, technically, lying. Sometimes you can get a Double Strike with more than two attacks. Ehehehe.

Similarly, that presentation helps make Deep Sky Derelicts as fun as it is. Which, when you think about it, is quite the achievement, considering it’s effectively a turn-based dungeon crawler where you want pretty numbers to go up. Consider: What I just said, compared to “You are a trio of convicts from diverse backgrounds, in a dystopian future, tasked by the Station Manager to find an ancient mothership by hopping from hulk to hulk, solving problems and being menaced by a variety of deadly aliens, mechanoid horrors, and environmental hazards.”

Makes all the difference. As does one of its little mechanical touches: Energy. Even though it’s rarely truly threatening, thanks to various means of getting it and conserving it that are open to characters, it’s never far from your thoughts, as it goes down with each move, each combat turn, each time you want to see just that little bit further… And if it goes to 0, you all die. Because it’s your suit energy.

As mentioned, though, the energy economy in the game is quite good, so it’s mostly inattention that gets you there. No, where the game gets you is when the enemies decide to take their gloves off. Because when they do, they do it hard. Summons. Armour. Miss chances, misfires, radiation… That last one, especially, is evil, because normally, your shields regenerate, and can easily be replenished, unlike your health, which stays gone, and can only be fixed up back at home base for prices best described as “Exorbitant” (Even in the midgame, when you’re getting a lot of stuff to sell, it can hurt.) Even with a mode where you can freely load from your last save, and death of a party member is reversible, around level 5, it starts getting tough.

This is one of the “nicer” enemy groupings of Level 5. And it was only due to liberal use of stuns on the Alpha Skinks there that I got out of it only needing to leave the station and heal…

Aesthetically, it comes together quite well. Comic book stylings (complete with frames that pop in for your moves) mesh well with a solid UI, marred only by some odd control issues (Sometimes, the mouse fails to register clicks until you move it, once you’ve left an event, for example) , and equally odd choices (Scanning should be default when exploring, but it’s a part of your PDA, and so… Don’t close your PDA out of inventory, save some time and click the “Scanner” button instead.) It has some nice dark tones going on with the music, and the events that are scattered around the various hulks are varied and interesting, such as the morally grey tale of the man who wants to be an AI, or the lighter events where a giant pest can be dealt with… Well, differently to your usual solutions of “Hack it, shoot it, hack it in the swordy type sense.”

As to problems, well, apart from the aforementioned oddities, it should be noted that the game’s fast music somewhat belies its slowish pacing (and loading.) It’s turn based, and, while the hulks do have enemies, events, and later environmental hazards and traps, early on, they feel empty, and later on, you sometimes find yourself wishing they were a little more empty, as the difficulty spikes around the aforementioned level 5 mark. Thankfully, one of my other niggles is somewhat dealt with by mousing over cards (When your hand gets big enough, it’s hard to see the cards), but never entirely goes away. Otherwise, it does something a little different with a formula that’s become all too familiar, and it’s a solidly presented game in an interesting world. Worth a look.

That’s a lot of cards. Thing is, I could have *even more*

The Mad Welshman reminds you that exploring old hulks is dangerous. Old games, less so.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £7.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Endless Road could probably be considered at least interesting, if its translation had worked a little better, or its information flow… But alas, neither are true, and it’s this core issue that really prevents it from being as fun or interesting as it maybe could be.

There are many pigs in the early levels. They’re all cute, and often deadly.

Endless Rogue is one of those incremental RPGs, where death nonetheless earns you stuff (or at least unlocks), set on a road that may branch, and branch, but will inevitably lead to a boss, and the next part of this… Endless Road. Along the way, you fight monsters, get random events, items to help you survive, and make tradeoffs. It’s largely fairly simple, and there’s a lot of tooltips, but…

See, I can get the sentiment here, roughly speaking… But it really doesn’t flow well..

…Here’s where that whole “Not great translation” plays in. Some skills and elements (Whether yours or the enemy’s) are either untranslated, or missing, which doesn’t exactly help, and, as a result, there’s a lot of cards whose synergy really isn’t clear. Why, pray tell, would I want my enemy to have 100 attack points in a turn? What ability would make that worth certainly taking damage? Do the traps really apply to me? Large swathes of abilities are unclear, and so, through confusion, I’m just not playing as well as I should. Said translation also makes the letters, which appear to be to our character from somebody called Rice, miss their mark, which, at a guess, is meant to be wistful and soulful, as our heroine goes further and further from home, but keeps finding these letters?

Any which way, it’s certainly playable, as there are still abilities clear enough to use, and a lot of it is about managing your various resources. In the board aspect of the game, moving forward takes SP (Stamina Points, I’m guessing), so you need items or events to replenish this, lest bad events become more and more common (They’re moderately common already.) Meanwhile, you’re trading health, stamina, and gold for various improvements and abilities, using items to gain that health, and occasionally getting into fights, where the goal, each turn, is to score more points with your cards than the opponent does with theirs. Simple enough, except that’s then complicated by abilities. Some enemies, for example, punish close point values, others large differences, and cards can do various things as well, and so those tooltips (mouse over an ability or card) become quite important. Escape is, unless you have a certain item (Monster Mucus) impossible, and besides… Some of them drop sweet, sweet loot.

Every area made of lovingly hand drawn bits? My jam.

It looks pretty nice, to the point where I feel very sad about attacking some low level monsters (I’M SO SORRY, BANDIT-PIG-SAN, BUT I MUST DO THIS), and can recognise, roughly, what abilities a monster has by their visuals and repeated play. But while it’s certainly playable, and it’s not resource intensive, those translation issues take away a lot of the potential fun and mood.

Which is, if we’re being honest, a crying shame.

The Mad Welshman reminds you that if you want to gain an international audience, please translate responsibly.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £12.39
Where To Get It: Steam
Version Reviewed: Second Update (2/8/18)
Other Reviews: Early Access 2

The post mutation landscape is one hell of a place, alright. A wide open world, filled with all sorts of folk. Death is pretty much certain, and if it isn’t from violence, it’s from losing all hope in a world where old Homo Sap has been replaced by Homo Instert-Here-As-Many-Times-As-Necessary.

The contour lines are a nice touch, visually speaking, and I like the clarity.

Welcome to Posthuman: Sanctuary, a not-quite adaptation of the survival board game of the same name. Although, at the present stage, the major shift from the board game, a story mode, is not available. Still, there’s survival mode, and, right now? That’s a fairly replayable doozy, with a few quibbles.

The overall idea is that you’re trying to get to three specific waypoints on the map, eventually reaching the fabled Sanctuary. However, to get there, not only do you have to unlock those waypoints by visiting certain tile types (Forests, Mountains, Rural Areas, and Cities) in a specific order before you get to them, you have to deal with hunger, morale, the loyalty of any fellow survivors you meet along the way, mutants… And the possibility you’ll mutate yourself (At which point you’ll no longer be welcome in this strictly human sanctuary.) Not having had the foresight to scan the surroundings yourself (and with Google Maps long gone), you don’t actually know much of what’s beyond your safezone, beyond the existence of the waypoints, and certain survivors.

Add in weather, the fact you take one action a day (out of Scouting, Moving, Foraging, and Camping), and it costs food per day, combat, and events, and… Well, good luck!

A fine example: Karl Marx murdered me just a turn or two after this picture. Turns out the Kommune are badasses.

Aesthetically, the game is currently fairly good visually, with a clear, comic like style, and musically alright, with tracks that aren’t intrusive, but fit their mood quite well. The UI’s pretty clear, although it must be said that it would be nice, certainly, to know how many survival points I have to my next character unlock.

It would also be a good time to point out that hitting the options at the start, minimalist as they currently are, would be a good idea due to the simple virtue of noticing that there are R Rated events, and turning them off if you don’t like that idea. They may well be on the level of “I slept with this person, and it felt good” , but I can understand that’s not for everyone, and the game has enough to deal with as it is. Funnily enough, post apocalyptic settings are not nice places to be, so I’ve dealt with lynch mobs, cannibals, mutant haters and human haters alike, and a bundle of other not nice folks.

Apart from that, and my other niggle that once you select an event, you can’t seem to unselect it (which has been rather trying when I misclicked) , the game, honestly, feels alright at the present stage. Combat is easy to understand, the board portion is easy to understand, and I haven’t felt dicked over any more than I would expect in a board game, in a post apocalyptic setting, where life is kinda rough. It’s nice to see a clear UI, and explanations of events easily accessible, the events are interesting, the world seems interesting, and I look forward to seeing more.

On the one hand, shades of grey, fairly nice. On the other, it’s basically Mutants/Humans right now, which… Well, that’s an approach that has its issues.

The Mad Welshman would probably be a bad survivor. An okay tyrant, sure… But a bad survivor.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £9.29
Where To Get It: Steam
Version Reviewed: 8/8 Update.
Other Reviews: Release

Wayward Souls is, at the present time, a game with no in between. Not completely, as health is a bar, special abilities are ammo or inventory based, and, even with death, money is accrued which can be put into character abilities. No, I’m mainly talking, at the present time, about one of the core features of Wayward Souls: The enemies.

Swarmed by boars. Cause for concern? Well… Not really.

Enemies, in Wayward Souls, are either light speedbumps, or lethal terrors… And there’s no real in-between to the two. Bats? Well, they’ll hurt you if you’re inattentive, sure. But that’s usually because you’re worrying more about the five fellers throwing rocks and pickaxes, or the big crushy robots that only die when they charge into a wall twice. But pickaxe wielders are never really a problem on their own, despite their aiming. Rock fellers lose most of their threat once they switch to melee mode… Even within enemy types, there are states where the challenge swiftly moves from “Will most likely get hurt if I tangle with this (and I have to, because I’m locked in with it)” to “Will only catch me unawares if I’m literally asleep.”

The problem being that this feeling of the seemingly arbitrary bleeds over into other areas. Why are some areas of the mine, the first dungeon’s major locale, almost unreadably dark, while others are brightly lit enough that everything is clear? Unknown. Why do I feel absolutely nothing about spending a ramping amount on what may end up 16% crit chance (1,2,4,8,16), and may end up a measly, overexpensive 5% (1,2,3,4,5)? Well, the clue there is that both numbers aren’t exactly big, and spending money on an individual character is an investment you maybe want to feel something about (In the majority of cases, I don’t.) Why was switching healing at the end of the level with, er… Finding a healing fountain you can use once per level considered a change, rather than a restatement of “You only get one heal per level of the dungeon?” I don’t know. All I know is how I feel about them, and I don’t particularly feel great.

Sometimes, there will be ghosts. Who have somewhat interesting things to say.

Thing is, Wayward Souls has some good ideas hidden in the murk of this oddly arbitrary feeling balance. Splitting up dungeons is good. Having different stories for the different characters (some of whom are unlocked via progress), giving different perspectives… That’s good. Being able to pick your playstyle, to a certain extent, with characters… That’s good. And some of the enemy designs are, to be fair, very nice, the music is nice, and the sound works well… Heck, it even has the nice touch that your grave messages can be seen by friends (or people with the friend code), and you can leave gifts with those grave messages. That’s a genuinely nice touch…

…But, at the present time, the core of the game, the fighting of enemies, feels not so much like a gradation, slowly moving upwards, but a chaotic jumble of the easy and the rough, slapped together. I have more trouble with levels than I do the bosses, and even that isn’t a hard and fast rule, and that… That just feels wrong.

Maybe Wayward Souls will improve. But right now, the enemies feel oddly inconsistent, the early levels feel muddy, and the interesting ideas the game is presenting just aren’t saving it.

On the one hand, an amusing message from a bud is its own reward. On the other, the protection buff definitely didn’t hurt either.

The Mad Welshman reminds developers: Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater, and always consider interesting ideas when you see them.

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