Source: Review Copy
Price: £17.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Robots can be frustrating things. Colonists and their needs can be frustrating things. So… What happens when you put them together? Well, it sure ain’t cherry pie, friends. So… Autonauts is a colony building game, but instead of a group of colonists you control (directly or indirectly), it’s robots. Robots you… “Program.”

I would say we’ll get to that in a second, but no, it’s a core issue with why I find the game so damn frustrating. It’s got a programming language, programming limitations, but, apart from being able to delete instructions, what is it actually? It’s monkey-see, monkey-do. You set the robot to record actions, you do the things, and… Once you’ve done that, you’d think it was over, right?

Well, not quite. You can change some conditions, such as loop conditions, but without knowing that (It doesn’t actually teach you that explicitly, you have to futz with that menu you see (or know Scratch, and how it does that too) to know this.) But otherwise, there’s not a lot of programming going on, and, since the robots were designed by the Department of Cut Corners, the early game is a massive drag for several reasons. Let’s start with getting your basic industry up and running.

So, in the tutorial, it tells you you need three robots to log and replant an area. Fine, cool, this is technically true. What it doesn’t tell you is that, if you don’t want to be rushing around trying to fill every one of their needs, from recharging (the default bot’s battery life can best be described as “Shit”) to needing tools when they break, you’ll want an extra two bots, one for recharging, one for making tools, a set of crates to put those tools in, and to go back and adjust the robots so they get a tool from the crate when theirs is broken. Not to mention the log chopping bots, the plank chopping bots, the storing bots, the recharge bots for all of these, the mining bot, the stone storing bot, the charging bot for those…

And until you have that basic logging and mining setup, you’re going to be manually doing a lot of this work. Does it get any easier later on? Not… Really. Because then, there are colonists. Who are factories of a resource called, no joke, Wuv. Suffice to say, I have very little Wuv for these parasites, because while I and the robots are working our asses off to fill their pyramid of needs, they… Well, they don’t really do anything except generate Wuv. Which you need for research to improve their needs, and…

Oh shit. We’ve got more industries to deal with. Which you’ll be setting up bots for. You can, to be fair, make this slightly easier by… Building several robots to build robots, a specified number, rather than an infinite loop. That way, you can just hit play on up to four bots to build a more complicated bot. (their charging bot is always active unless it loses battery, and no, another charging bot won’t solve the problem, it’ll just delay it a fair bit (Unless their batteries run down simultaneously early))

But I hope I’m getting across my main problem with this game: It is perhaps the most busywork colony builder I’ve come across in a while, because there’s not much breathing room for things to just work without… Oh. Yeah. Doing the legwork to build, program, and equip several bots for a single task that… I dunno, maybe those lazy bastards we’re feeding, clothing, and housing could help with?

Aesthetically, by the way, it’s quite pleasing. Nice low poly look, good sound, the music is… Well, it’s meant to be relaxing, but, as you might gather, it hasn’t helped a lot. It has clear menus (Although it should be noted that the Blueprint encyclopedia is also the “What’s in the world” encyclopedia. So you know), the Scratch interface for robots is somewhat clear (Yes, I missed conditional loops for hours, so you can imagine how frustrated I was before this small, but very significant detail was spotted), so… This is alright.

But I have to admit, I’m not having fun with it. My colonists are parasites, my robots are flawed, and for every new task I need to do, there’s a lot more setup than is perhaps necessary, and I didn’t feel like the tutorialising was clear. Is it an interesting approach to a colony building game? Yes. Is it unfortunately an unenjoyable romp into this territory? Well, for me, at least, it was.

The Mad Welshman does count his blessings. At least it’s not the SP10 series we’re using.

Okay, that one was a little obscure, even for me.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £21.99 (Supporter edition £26.08, Supporter Pack £6.99)
Where To Get It: Steam

Not all cultures see Death as some grim figure. In some, he’s a laughing man who loves cigars, rum, and sweet cake. In others, they’re a pleasant guide for the departed. Some are beautiful women, some of whom can turn very ugly indeed (both in terms of appearance and temperament) if you aren’t meant to go to an afterlife.

And, in Felix the Reaper, Death is a Ministry Department, and one Death in particular is a fat, dancing skeleton with some serious moves, and the hots for one of his opposite numbers, Betty (Oh, Betty!), a similarly Rubenesque lady who works for the Ministry of Life. Star crossed lovers? A tragic tale in the making?

Well… Maybe. But this is a comedy puzzle game, so I wouldn’t lay money on it. But what kind of puzzle game is it?

Well, as a reaper, Felix struts his stuff, trying to arrange a series of events that will lead to the demise of his designated assignment (This includes arranging accidents for other living creatures.) Problem is, the sun is painful to him, so he has to stick to the shadows. Thankfully for him, the Ministry has equipped him with a sun-dial. As in, despite time being stopped, it literally moves the sun. What you have to do is work out how to get Felix from Alpha to Omega. And, like any good Ministry, you have targets. Although these mostly function in the scoring sense.

Aesthetically, it’s gorgeous. Well crafted landscapes, handily blocked into tiles, some charming character models, all well animated (especially, obviously, Felix, who flips, slides, grooves, and cha chas his way through his work)… There is also, of course, the Mentor, voiced by Sir Patrick Stewart, who plays the beleaguered, but friendly bureacrat well. Writing wise, there’s a lot of humour, a lot of it nonverbal. Here, the poor hunter who can’t win, because his friend either disturbs his hunt by angrily yelling at the lack of beer (without Felix’s intervention) or belching so loudly he scares the prey away (With.)

As to the puzzles? Well, they ramp up relatively quickly, but each one has a tight solution. The trick is to get there. Thankfully, levels can be replayed, if you’re a completionist, like I am, and there are also harder levels, for those who like a bigger challenge. Nice! The game is also quite helpful in limiting the directions you can change the light in, so not only do you have less red herrings to think about, everything can be done with the mouse. And, for those having trouble with the puzzles themselves, it has a helpful “Show next Step” button. Nice!

Now, it should be said, at this point, that it isn’t a complex game. It doesn’t layer mechanics, it’s pretty focused on just “How do I move objects and switch the light around to get where I need to?” If that’s a turnoff, I understand. Personally, I like the simplicity, and I’m sure others will too. The requirements for your completionist stickers (of Felix’s adorable skullface) get pretty strict at times, especially later on, but I have to admit, I’ve been having a lot of fun.

Maybe it’s Felix’s sweet moves, even when “idling.” Maybe it’s the charm and humour of the game’s writing. Maybe it’s the fact that its puzzle design is laser focused on a few elements, leaving the complexity down to the specifics of the individual puzzle. But with these elements coming together, I can’t not recommend this one.

The Mad Welshman appreciates the work of both Ministries of Life and Death. Without their efforts, existence wouldn’t be quite as fun. Although they could maybe do with being longer. That’s nitpicking though.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £15.49
Where To Get It: Steam

This has been a week for odd decisions with games. Like Noita, Last Days of Tascaria seems to be unloading and loading different windows, and… Doesn’t have a windowed mode. Which would just be a niggle, a wagging of the finger and “Come on, you can add that), if it weren’t for the game… Not being very fun to play.

The general idea is one of a warrior and a wizardess, recruiting others, exploring a map in a turn-based fashion, skilling up, and engaging in pausable real time battles against groups of enemies, occasionally fighting a boss, on their path to… Destroy a heroine who’d turned evil, raised an army of the undead, because it was a relic, and now she’s resurrecting a lich king for some reason… Look, maybe she thinks being almost invincible due to her relics, while having an army that grows stronger with every victory isn’t enough or something. Any which way, that’s what you do.

And the combat is, in a word, tedious. There’s a rock-paper-scissors style thing going on with the combat (axes are best against armoured enemies, while dodge has to be countered with swords, so… Hit dodgy and armoured enemies once with sword, switch to axe, start over when they regain dodge) The wizardess, meanwhile, also has a rock-paper scissors thing with elements, but is pretty good ranged support. Them’s your basics.

But the heroes don’t so much fling themselves into combat as stroll, swinging weapons with little impact behind their blows, flinching often from ranged enemies… And oh boy do they like their ranged enemies. The warrior (look, I don’t even care about learning their names) has a shield, but it’s directional, doesn’t last long, and enemy groups are, best case, double your size early in the game. You have to kill half of them to win the battle, and healing opportunities are… Not common.

What results is a slog. When I wasn’t looking on with a sigh, I was hitting that quit button with an irritated grumble. So… What about events? Well, those aren’t terribly interesting either. The problem with a game with turn-based walking around, and turn-based events, is that you somewhat have to care about the rest of it, and even then, dull writing can still be a turn-off. And this is… This is almost as generic as high fantasy can get. Aesthetically, it’s okay, but the animations don’t have much impact, or character, the music is about as generic as the world…

I’m not ashamed to say I checked out pretty early. If the combat later was anything like the combat earlier, then no, it doesn’t really get better later. It feels generic, tedious, and its tactical options are, on the face of things, pretty limited, a time your cooldowns and use items well style affair that I wasn’t the biggest fan of in the first place.

The Mad Welshman repeats: More hot orcs.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £43.99
Where To Get It: Steam

What is it with posthuman cult leaders and bad fashion sense? Yes, I know, if you’ve heard about The Surge or played it, you know that’s the least of your worries, but… It nags at me. Anyway, about the game.

So, let’s get the spoilers out of the way niiiice and early: Burke lived, and you find that out in the first area! Warren lived, and this is pretty heavily implied by the mysterious stranger you meet just outside the first area! Shit’s gone to hell, which is exactly what you’d expect for a sequel! There, we’re done. That wasn’t hard now, was it?

In any case, The Surge is a science-fiction… Deep sigh, because I hate saying this… Soulslike. You have checkpoints, which you return to when you die, minus what money you’ve earned. Combat is based upon pattern recognition, good dodging/parrying skills, and managing your stamina. The Surge even added its own touches, such as rewards increasing the longer you spend between returns to a checkpoint (an interesting risk/reward system, which I have not taken much advantage of because I’m a coward), and the ability to target specific limbs, something you need to do for specific rewards, such as a blueprint of the opponent’s exo-limb.

Oh, and the online functionality, which introduces revenge enemies (Enemies with more health who killed another player, but drop lots of resources if you kill them), tags, the occasional battery drop where a player died, that sort of fun stuff. You can play offline, but these additions do add a bit of spice.

Controller is recommended, because while the keyboard/mouse controls are okay, and remappable, parrying appears harder to do well in kb/m. Okay, base mechanical stuff done with, let’s get into what I like and don’t like.

Aesthetically, the game is good, and, if your rig can handle it, it can look beautiful. Some facets are a little confusing, such as targeting, or the very small “You can backstun this fool” prompt, but it, and the sound, are pretty good. Also, while the protagonist isn’t voiced, the others are pleasant to hear, fairly well acted, and it made my day to hear a proper South Wales accent in the game… It was tidy, you might say. Motion Blur as a default is… Annoying, to say the least, but having the amount of it as a slider, along with a couple of other effects? That’s a good move.

I’m also quite fond of the combat, being meaty, pretty well explained, and having a nice back and fore rhythm… Well, if you take the advice of timing your blows, rather than being a button masher like me. Still, I parry well, and I dodge okay, so I’m finding it pleasing to fight. Master one of these skills, and be at least okay with the other, or you’re going to have a hard time. Encouragement to use at least a partial set through partial and full set benefits is also a pleasing bit of incentivising styles of play, and that the first armour heals you a little when you finish off an enemy? That’s a good starter. There’s a few new weapon types, and, while I haven’t experimented with them much, they seem pretty cool, with nice tricks on the charge attacks.

I am, however, less fond of the levelling system. Not the actual levelling itself, which is reasonable, but the Core Power being tied to your level. It’s about ten, maybe fifteen levels until you can properly equip a full set, and it was a little annoying to have to grind up to my first full set.

I could go on for quite a bit about all the quality of life improvements, but, essentially, if you played The Surge 1, it’s an improvement in many respects, and, if you’re starting out with The Surge 2, well… Going back to The Surge 1 may be a little tougher, although the basics remain the same. It feels pretty good, exploring this new, more open world with its diverse locations, it feels good to fight, and I would recommend this, even as someone who got very tired of games taking elements from the Souls series pretty quickly.

The Mad Welshman remains pretty easy to make in the majority of games. And he looks good in an exosuit. Nanomachines, son!

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £19.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Keep Talking, friends, and Nobody Gets Possessed. Had to get that joke in there. Anyway, yes, games with a co-op element can be so fun sometimes. Aaaand sometimes, they’re friendship ruiners. It all depends on who’s playing, really. And so it is with Exorcise the Demons, a game in which one player sees things, but has no idea what they’re doing, and their friend, who knows what the other player’s meant to do, but can’t see anything. Well, if you play it the way it’s meant to be played, anyway.

Mechanically, there’s honestly not a lot more to it than that: The main player, in first person, runs around a demonic hellscape, in which there are a potential of 7 rituals to complete. All of them have to be completed successfully before you go up to the flaming book and pentagram, where a demon will appear, and you’ll find out if you have completed them successfully. Do so, and the demon’s fireball aimed at your bonce is shielded against, and you banish them. Fail on one puzzle, even one, and… Congrats, your soul is now theirs. So, naturally, there’s a fair bit of recrimination if you seem to have done everything right (Because there is no “You’ve done this right” sign for any single puzzle), and a bit of relieved joy if you actually have. There’s some physics manipulation involved, but it’s nowhere near as bad as you’d think, as objects set remain set, and the majority is “Click on the thing or drag the thing over the other thing.” Cool.

There is also a story mode of 25 levels, about a confused, amnesiac man named John, and his ally, who is… Of no help beyond giving story, so yes, you still need a friend to play this, although they don’t need the game. Story mode is where collectibles get unlocked, and it’s completion only that’s required to unlock things. Cool. And puzzles do appear to be randomised during Story levels too. I didn’t particularly feel like the writing of story mode was really drawing me in, unfortunately, and the voices were… Well, they were alright. So… Let’s deal with the Book of Rituals. Because only one player needs the game, and the other uses this.

The Book of Rituals is, like the bomb manual in Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, misleading. Not factually misleading, but at times obtuse (the Ouija Board, for example, involves a wordsearch, when all you actually need is the position of the last letter of the demon’s name), and other times, worded so you can easily miss segments (While streaming this, a friend and I consistently failed the Circle of Protection segment. Turns out, there was a small, but significant point we were missing: The colour of the outside flames was the key.)

I’m pretty sure it’s going to be trimmed down by avid players, but it is something to be aware of (“Okay, check M first… Is it red? Okay, from left to right, you need to light the second and third candle, and hit YES on the Ouija Board. Also, I’m deliberately lying for the sake of an example.”)

Finally, there are curses and tattoos. These seem to be in for adding a bit of spice to both the practice mode, and padding out the story levels a little. Sometimes, your controls are wonky. Sometimes, what you see may not necessarily be true. Sometimes, you can freeze time during rituals, and sometimes, you can run faster between puzzles, as examples of precisely half the curses and tattoos available in game. Whee, that was a ride, wasn’t it?

So, obviously, how it feels depends on you and your friend. I had the hardest time communicating the Rune and Crystal puzzles with my co-op partner, although, in the former case, we’d been struggling to communicate at first, and, in the latter case, they have… Green and Yellow crystals. But the developers are, thankfully, aware of this, so I’m expecting a change to happen soon to make it more colourblind friendly. Aesthetically, well, like Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, you’re going to be looking at the same visual presentation of puzzles, and the same play area a lot. It’s a very pretty one, and I like the grime, grit, and hellfire myself, along with the dramatic music, but be aware, that may or may not pall on you.

Overall, though, Exorcise the Demons does exactly what it sets out to do: Create a supernatural co-op puzzle experience, in which unreliable information is passed between players to co-operatively solve puzzles. And it’s been an enjoyable experience for me. Well, bitter arguments about how to do the Circle of Protection puzzle aside.

The Mad Welshman actually doesn’t mind demons. But it is rude to possess another nonconsensually.

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