Source: Review Copy
Price: £6.99
Where To Get It: Steam
Other Reviews: Early Access 2

The world of Caves of Qud (by Freehold Games, creators of Sproggiwood) is a harsh one. I’m too canny to starve, or go thirsty, but I’ve been killed by plants, by hyena-men, by mortars, and by bear-things that should not be. I’m having a whale of a time.

Genre wise, Caves of Qud is a roguelike set in a post-apocalyptic world. Three arcologies hold the last True Humans, who have all, in some fashion, been changed, and mutants are the “average” citizens. I’ve mainly been playing an Artifex, from the Ice Sheathed Arcology of Ibul, in the North, a caste not very good at fighting, but extremely good with the lost artefacts of the days where Things Weren’t Quite So Fucked. But that’s by no means the only option. There are four castes for each Arcology, and the variety of playing mutants, who start with much less money, but make up for it with powers like Light Manipulation (allowing them to not only light their surrounding area easily, but also create lasers by focussing light to a single, searing line). Of course, everyone has their flaws too, and no one build appears broken compared to the others. Perhaps because the world is so deadly.

If you’ve never played a Roguelike, you may be thinking “It’s turn based, and the graphics aren’t modern and shiny, where’s the tension, where’s the excitement?”

You would be surprised. A good example would be a monster found semi-regularly on later floors of the very first dungeon, the Slumberling. Basically a massive, speedy, nigh unkillable bear that, if woken up, can rip you to shreds without much effort at all. Imagine he’s in the middle of a cave, and you’re passing him, step, by step… And then a Snapjaw Hunter (A hyena-man with a bow) fires at you. He didn’t hit the Slumberling or you this turn… But there’s going to be a chance, even if he’s aiming for you, that he misses horribly, and wakes the organic death machine up. In the end, it’ll only be a small comfort that, after dealing with you, it’s probably going to kill the Snapjaw that killed you. What’s your move? Shoot him? Block the arrows as best you can with your body, and hope he doesn’t kill you before you close? Or worse, miss you and hit that Slumberling? Even with the game being turn based, tension is definitely there. It’s just you have all the time in the world to think how you’re going to react to the situation. Still doesn’t mean you’re definitely going to make the right choice.

The interface for the game, as far as Roguelikes go, is actually quite good. Everything has a place, you can easily switch between inventory, or quests, or equipment, even if you went to one of the others without intending to, and everything is clear. The amount of artefacts isn’t huge, but it’s big enough that there’ll always be something you’ll find, providing you live that long, which makes you giggle and wiggle in your seat. And, if you want to stick with and master a single class, the option is there to replay your last character (Albeit with a different selection of equipment) There’s no single skill you have to have, and the skill tree gives you a fair bit of wiggle room. Do you go for Axes, tripping and headbutting enemies as you go? Long Swords, with a skill path that allows you to melee swathes of enemies at once? Or perhaps Persuasion, getting other people to do the dirty work for you, and taking the various traders to the cleaners instead of the other way around? There’s a lot of options, and I definitely enjoy that. Hell, some of the best fun I’ve had in this game is in getting lost, and encountering Gorilla cultists, hunting for water (Both the game’s currency and a necessity. Tip from one who found out the hard way: Don’t take traders for all their “money”, as they’ll die, and upset their friends. Some of whom are mutants with very big guns), and seeking strange new device plans, in equally strange locales (I really have to visit the ocean. I think I will, this run. Just for the hell of it.)

What I’ll admit I don’t enjoy so much is that some of the enemies are not entirely fair. I mentioned Slumberlings are nigh impossible to kill in the early game, but that won’t stop them spawning in the first caves you visit. Ruins are, in the early game, almost certainly deathtraps, with a much higher chance of encountering a still-active heavy weapon turret that ends your life than a much needed artefact. It’s not recommended for the easily frustrated, and it’s definitely not a beginner’s roguelike. But for the price they’re asking (£6.99), it’s definitely a good roguelike, with some interesting ideas. And there’s more on the way.

The Mad Welshman wanders the jungles of Qud, forever dying, forever going back in time. Sometimes he’s a mutant, sometimes he’s a True Human. One day, he shall find the mythical “dying of old age.”

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Source: Kickstarter Backer
Price: £10.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Attack on Cataclysm looks like an old school fighter. It has the story mode of an old school fighter: Two characters, standing in nothingness and talking to each other before character relevant fights (Everyone gets the “Go home and be a family man” type victory/defeat screens), and with the difficulty increasing as you get further in. 11 characters to compare to the frankly silly rosters of some modern fighters, including Jet, who the game as much as stated was “White Dudley” in the beta, Crow the creepy Shota (He plays a bit like Ryu or Guile from SF, but sounds like the creepy villains who’re “Only doing what’s best for you, darling”), and… Look, suffice to say, nearly every style of fighting, from chargers to grapplers is represented here, so thought was put into the roster. So far, so normal fightin’ game, right?

Well… Not quite. The devs, you see, are ex-SNK, and they wanted to fiddle around with the formula, so there is no single block or parry. Sounds like a small thing, but in fighting games, little details like this matter. Specifically, it has a High-Low parry system. Two buttons for punching (Low and High), two buttons for kicking (Low and High), two button combos for throwing (Low and High), and two parries (Low and High). That last one is important, because if you get it right, you get to immediately counterattack, and will do more damage. Get it wrong, and not only will they get more attacks in, you’ll be completely open. Similarly, superjumps (down, then jump) are different, being lower when you jump forward, and they, also, have the risk of getting damaged more if somebody gets priority on you (IE – they hit first.) Don’t make the mistake of thinking that, because the controls are simple, and the special moves relatively limited, there’s no depth to this game.

So what does this mean? It means it’s a more thoughtful fighter, in a sense. Button mashing will mostly work against a normal CPU (Although bad matchups can obviously work against you), but against another player, you’re going to get wrecked harder than normal for attacking without consideration. It’s e-sports focused, and part of that can be seen in its social media plugin (Allowing you to tweet your victories/fights/losses), its tournament registry, and the commentators system. Yes, multiple commentators. Normally, in a fighting game, you just have one voice yelling things like WHAT A HIT or SPECTACULAR FAIL, but in Attack on Cataclysm, e-sports players and commentators like Kokujin (SFIII) or Kamichang (Soul Calibur 5) have recorded some lines of commentary, each with their own personalities, along with character commentary (so Chadha can tell you how bad your combos are), and you can pick between them (or, of course, have no commentator, for blessed silence while you beat the living snot out of your opponents without a sudden AIIEEEEEEE! Breaking your concentration.)

This isn’t to say I don’t have niggles. I have yet to find how to set my keyboard keys (It seems stuck in gamepad mode for key reassignment, and while I know a keyboard is “worse”, it still annoys), the game is always 4:3, so running in fullscreen is generally recommended (Leaving my windowed choices as Somewhat Small, or bigger vertically than my screen can handle at 2x, none of which are really optimal for me streaming my ass getting kicked), and the story mode seems a bit rough… Not in the sense of difficulty, I can generally beat Normal CPU in story mode, despite being relatively bad at fighting games, but in visual terms. Design wise, well… Hanzo in particular has a bad case of boob-window clothing design, and everybody has, to some extent or another, spray-on-clothing. Doesn’t make the game any worse in terms of gameplay, but I’m not a big fan of the ladies in this game, in terms of visual design.

For what the Yatagarasu team are asking for the main game, though (£10.99), it’s definitely worth a go if you like fighting games, although I personally think the pricing of the Custom Voice packs (£22.99) a bit much for something I’m not really going to use. Personal taste, I guess.

The Mad Welshman has a style known as Leap, Hit, and Pray He’s Not Parried. He proudly wears the bruises from sticking to this style.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £1.59
Where To Get It: Steam

Energy Balance is, at its core, a game for math puzzle fans, and that’s about it. If you don’t like rearranging numbers to fit arbitrary goals in the name of mathematics (Okay, there’s something about fixing an engine so an alien and their robo-cat can get home) without hints, and you don’t like the idea of not being able to save your progress, then this game is not for you. Because that is, in essence, the entirety of the game. 12 configurations of numbers to arrange into their “true” forms, 12 static cutscenes, for a quid and a bit. Which makes it somewhat hard to review, beyond the statement I gave at the beginning. So let’s talk about aliens and robot cats for a bit.

Aliens, it seems, are similar to us, in that we don’t like to RTFM (Read The Fucking Manual), and that they give responsibility of driving powerful, deadly machines to people, then promptly forget about refreshers unless they fuck up. They’re prone to navel gazing, and talking to their robot cats. Robot cats, in the meantime, are often anthropomorphised by aliens in much the same way we do our cats, while being… Well, cats. One thing I didn’t know beforehand about aliens, however, is that their engines, navigation systems, weapons, et al, are all run on the same idiot proof UI that requires them to solve a math puzzle, thus showing basic competency in some of the skills they need to pilot the bloody things safely. Also they apparently enjoy war for nebulous, fallacious reasons like “honour” and “glory”, like some of us do.

I can confirm, as a human being, that these systems can be muddled through without much critical thought and brute forced without catastrophic systems damage. I can also confirm that it is more enjoyable to do so with your own music, as the aliens’ system apparently doesn’t have volume control, only an on-off switch. We are, thankfully, superior to these aliens in some respects, it seems. Mathematically inclined human beings who play games may find this simple, as proven by my friend, who quite helpfully informed me after ten minutes of brute forcing that I could switch two numbers around to finish the calibrations I was engaged in… Which was correct. I can also confirm that these engines will only tell you when you have correctly mathed up a solution to individual rows or columns, as opposed to the whole thing, which will mislead and frustrate those who aren’t mathematically inclined.

Completing the 12 main configs nets you 3 more, and another static cutscene. Yaaay. I would, however, reiterate that this game is for the mathematics puzzle inclined, and probably not for anyone who doesn’t like doing that sort of puzzle over and over, smug in the knowledge that they can math better than the rest of us. It also serves as a reminder that, despite popular perception, puzzle games are not “casual” games. Learning this lesson will only cost you £1.59 , although alternatives with hints exist out there for those of us who don’t feel hinting ruins a puzzle.

Meow (Cautious)

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Source: Own cashmoneys
Price: £4.24
Where To Get It: Steam, Developer’s Site

I knew, when I heard the gloating words of Lord Herx, that I was going to die. It was the second dungeon level, and he was sending a minotaur? I didn’t have much time, so I…

…Crap, it’s coming… It’s HUGE! It’s somehow phasing through the roof of the dungeon, it’s that bi-

-Last Words of Mika, Mercantile Adventurer into Lord Herx’s Dungeon.

There are times when you celebrate someone for trying, for experimenting. Barony, by Turning Wheel LLC, is not one of those times. I’d just like to quote the Steam summary of this game for a moment:

“Barony is a 3D, first-person roguelike that brings back the cryptic and intricate designs of classic roguelikes such as Nethack and melds them with RPGs like Ultima Underworld, System Shock, and Daggerfall. Challenge is the calling card of this hard-boiled dungeon-crawler.”

This is what we in the industry like to call “an overly ambitious description.” Also one that is wrong. What Barony actually is is a real-time first person roguelike using Minecraft style graphics that owes a little to Nethack, but hasn’t really learned what a good Roguelike is about. For example, for all that Roguelikes are about challenge, they are not, for the most part, about dicking you over. That segment I wrote at the top? Is a thing that is entirely likely to happen. The minotaur is big. He has oodles of hitpoints. And, if he is the “insane event” of the second level (Because hey, the game promises “insane events one could expect to find in games like Nethack”), there is very little you can do to stop it. There’s a chance you’ll find the imaginatively titled ZAP Brigade (Lightning staff wielding nutters who love to hunt Minotaurs), or the stairs out of the level, but, just as likely, you’ll note the event is coming, try and find the exit for a minute or two, then get squished in one or two attacks by a Minotaur that, if you’re “indoors”, will clip through the ceiling.

…Or you could just hit enter, and type “/killmonsters”, hitting enter again at the right moment. Won’t get you any XP, but it’s clearly documented in the README (The only documentation for this game that I could find, apart from a new and largely incomplete Wikia), so why not use it, eh? These two things alone will give you some idea of the implementation of the grand vision described in the game’s Steam summary. Think I’m being unfair? Then pay the £5 for the game, open up the game’s directory, then go to the “books” subfolder, and read “The Lusty Goblin”, which I can only imagine to be a pastiche of the “Lusty Argonian Maid.” It’s easy to do, as, presumably to allow easy modding for the IP based multiplayer shenanigans, the 31 books of the game are all in .TXT format.

Character generation, similarly, is disappointing. Ten classes, two genders, and five skins that are all white human beings (presumably it’s to do with hair colour), and the classes are not amazingly balanced. The Merchant, for example, starts with weak weaponry and bad HP, but, and this is an important but, can quickly and efficiently identify nearly every item dropped on the first and second floors. The only one I’ve found trouble with? Glass Gems (Which are worthless.) By contrast, the warrior starts strong, but will quickly find himself in a world of death and pain if he encounters, say, a poisonous spider (Spawns on the second level.) The Wizard can cast Force Bolt to his heart’s content, murdering quite a few enemies quickly and efficiently, but Light will drain his mana more rapidly than you’d like.

In short, the game’s description is constantly reminding me of better games, and sometimes, the game itself is reminding me of better games. The graphics are voxel based, so, if you’re like me, you immediately think “I could be playing Minecraft right about now. Or maybe even Vox. Yeah, Vox sounds like a plan.” When you find that Lusty Goblin Maid book, you think “I could be playing Morrowind.” There’s enough replayability in this game for £5, but that same £5 could, by contrast, get me a better game. One which documents itself, tutorialises well, and doesn’t have a random event on the second floor that will most likely kill you, or rolling boulder traps, that, more often than not, you don’t even realise you’d triggered until it’s rolled past behind you.

This game, in short, is sadly not recommended for anybody, at least until some hefty reworking is done. Being able to starve on the second level is not good roguelike design. A “get through the level and/or find this thing before another thing kills you” on the second level is not good design. And I honestly can’t think how this would “improve” with Multiplayer.

The Mad Welshman sighed as another boulder trap rolled merrily along behind him. The town of Hamlet remained unsaved, and Baron Herx’s Devil’s Dungeon remained closed.

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Brainpipe is, at first glance, a simple game. It’s a game about falling down a tube, trying to last as long as possible, while collecting glyphs for extra score, and not being hurt by various things. But that’s quite a reductive way of looking at it. Let’s look at it some different ways.

Brainpipe appears to have an ending. I’ve never seen it, but it would appear to have a finite number of levels, with a finite number of glyphs. Providing you’ve done extremely well, there are 9 glyphs in each level. Missing one makes you lose out on the rest for that level. There’s something there. But again, that’s still too reductive. Whether it has a win state, or is an endless falling game, or a fail state (Yes, it has that, for sure, as well as regenerating health) isn’t important here, that’s not the selling point. Nor is the fact that, on Steam, it’s all of £1.59. No, there’s more to it than that, something quite clever.

It makes references to the oblivion of the self (You are falling down the brainpipe to self-oblivion.) The guide for whether you hit or miss an obstacle looks like a wireframe of an eyeball. Your eyeball… If you focus where the eyeball is, you genuinely do better. Get distracted, and you hit things. Hit things, and the eyeball dilates (Like it does when you’re shocked, or in pain.) If it dilates all the way, you lose. But again, this is too reductive. This is mechanics, and Brainpipe is clever, in that the mechanics blend into the experience it wants to present. I have no doubt somebody is reading this and saying “What, it’s an arcade tunnel falling game, what the fuck kind of deep insight are you looking for here?”

You’re probably not getting it because it’s something that has to be experienced, to be seen, and, just as importantly, heard. You see, your own mind struggles against the concept of self oblivion. It wants stimulus… And in Brainpipe, stimulus is precisely your enemy. The game assaults you, with sound, with pretty lights, with smoke and shifting walls and morphing numbers… When your eye should be on the prize… The subsumation of the self into a single goal… The eye must catch those glyphs, eat them up, as the brain tries ever harder to stop you focussing, the game tries ever harder to trip you up, and you get the urge to move, quickly now, out of the way of an obstacle. You can slow down for a bit, if you want… But if you do, you earn less… You have to rush to oblivion.

Oh, you don’t fool me, Brainpipe. Or rather, at first you don’t. You start off distracting me only a little. And then you ramp it up. Opera. Showtunes. A man crying “pew pew pew”. A lady muttering, and the only word you can catch is “death”. You’re ominous, then bright, then silly, then dark, then… Fuck, I’ve hit an obstacle. Fuck, I’ve hit ano-fuck fuck fuck TINKLE…

…High score. But those glyphs… Those glyphs still taunt me. I’m almost certain there’s something there, but I’m sure as hell not begging. I’m not asking. And that’s…

…That’s self destructive. There’s the moment of revelation, right there. This is a game that makes you want to destroy your avatar, makes you want to take risks… For a secret that may not even exist, an enlightenment of no-thought, only subtle movements of your eye and mouse, getting twitchier the further you get in, more frightened of failure, of your own forthcoming oblivion.

It’s secretly a really fucking clever game.

Brainpipe is available on Steam . There is only one achievement, and it is not a Steam achievement. It is an achievement of the self. Nobody I know has attained it.

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