Source: Review Copy
Price: £49.99 (Assorted DLC comes to £41.96)
Where To Get It: Steam

The bandits were raiding the village, and my two heroes had things well in hand. Well, except when the next wave of bandits appeared, and… One was really close to a set of villagers, villagers I was meant to be protecting. So, some of this peaceful village died, died because I was too slow. And then some more died… Because they ran headlong into the two barbarian heroes I was trying to kill. I still won the day, but I wondered… Could I have done things differently? Could I have saved everyone?

Well, theoretically, yes. In practice… Welcome to the Langrisser games, turn based strategy RPGs where you can muddle through, but perfection requires pinpoint precision.

And do you know, I quite like it. At least partly because it’s of the more black and white SRPG type, where you fail, because your heroes were killed… Or you win. This, I appreciate.

In any case, Langrisser is one of those fantasy worlds where the story will seem quite familiar to players of this sort of game: King gets murdered, or other horrible thing happens, the protagonist and their friend(s) escape, they defeat evils on their way to returning home to retake it, but wait, a greater evil arises in the second or third act, and…

It still works surprisingly well. In fact, this pair of remakes of a now almost 30 year old franchise is a pretty solid one, with simple core mechanics (Infantry beats spears, Spears beat Cavalry, Cavalry beats Infantry, your mercs work better inside your commander’s command radius, they heal when they end their turn directly adjacent to you, and killing commanders removes their mercs from the field too, bish, bash, bosh, there’s your basic primer on everything Langrisser), solid combat, an interesting system where your character’s class can change the way they play a fair bit, and, of course, some nice aesthetics, with good music, clear tiles, workable and slightly charming battle animations, and plot divergences.

Basically, it ain’t bad, and with twelve hours average on a run of Langrisser I (for lo, there is a New Game+ on both games), there’s a lot of playtime to be had…

At least some of which is due to unskippable combat animations, and individual movement animations even if you automate. Personally, I don’t mind it, mainly because I prefer manual movement myself. But I can see how that would be a turnoff.

Still, I’ve enjoyed my time with Langrisser, and I expect to enjoy more time with it. It doesn’t overcomplicate things, its characters charm, its aesthetics please, and… It’s something where I know where I stand. Because it lets me know clearly. And I appreciate something that does that.

The Mad Welshman is off to… Ahaha, not save the kingdom! Conquer it! Big difference!

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £14.99
Where To Get It: Steam

For all that I am not the biggest fan of tower defense games, I do respect a game that respects my time. And Necronator, being a tower defense roguelike, is a game that respects my time. And has a sense of humour. And, so far, only a few flaws.

If you’ve never played one of these, the deal in this one is relatively simple. You summon enemies from your own “tower” (a crystal sphere, in this case), they go toward the enemy settlements or along the path you choose for them (by flipping signs), and the enemy does the same from their castle. Why a crystal ball and a castle?

Well, because you’re an evil overlord. Well, an evil overlord in training. And each time you defeat a settlement, be it an actual battle, a shop, an event, or a rest point, you move onto the next, down a branching map until… The boss. Gaining more servants along the way, that you cast.

There’s more to it than that, of course, mana, how getting minor settlements from the enemy speeds up your mana production, and makes defending a lane a little easier, how if you’re not quick enough to ruin an opponent, they reinforce, and the fight gets harder the longer it drags on… It’s a deckbuilder too.

Anyway, yes, battles are, overall, short. They get longer, as the sectors drag on, but for the first hour or so of play, you’ll be hard pressed to find one that lasts longer than five minutes. And I respect that. It’s pretty frantic, it looks pretty nice, and a rotatable view means that things can obscure the path you’re looking at, but it’s never more than a keyboard press away, and dragging units onto the field can be done anywhere, so this is a pretty good deal.

Helps that it aesthetically looks pretty good, with some nice music, a good pixelly feel mixing well with cel-shaded art… My main criticism, aesthetically, is that some things don’t seem to get sound cues, so you have to trust, for example, that enrages are proccing, and that the status symbols over a unit are small unless you zoom in… Which you don’t, generally speaking, want to do.

Overall, though, it feels frantic and challenging without actually being twitchy, it’s got an interesting deck mix, a good aesthetic, it respects your time… It’s a promising start for Necronator, and I look forward to seeing where it’s going.

The Mad Welshman salutes his fellow Overlords. Soon, brethren, soon, we shall face… The Finals!

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £5.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Hidden object games, when they’re purely hidden object games, are normally extremely my jam, not least because they seem like a bit of a lost art.

Hidden Through Time, while it definitely has its good points… Also misses the point enough times that although I’ve completed it, I find myself with mixed feelings. And some eyestrain.

Let’s get the obvious, glaring flaw out of the way right now: There are a fair few objects and people… Who are more than 75% obscured, or hidden in colour identical (or nearly identical) areas. Yes, developers. You want people to have a hardish time, explore your lovingly crafted scenes to find those objects… But if it’s more than 25% obscured, especially if, for example, it’s a thin god-damn thing to start with (Hi, nearly every instance of the mace I saw!), it’s going to irritate people when they find it, even if it is the only instance of the object around. The mace, as the most irritating example I remember, could have been put out in the open. There’s enough visual confusion that it would still be missed on a cursory pass, believe me. Otherwise, that full view of the object in the hints, regardless of what clue you give? Useless to me, or any other player. I got those through sheer bloody mindedness. And no, the outlines don’t actually help with the smaller items. In the case of the smallest items, it makes them harder to identify.

Rant over. Now let’s get on with nice things. Aesthetically, it’s quite nice. The clue boxes themselves are clear, there’s a nice, simplistic style, which, with the exception of the small, fiddly objects, works for it… And there’s a fairly easy to learn editor, allowing you to set your own objectives and clues, and for others to play those online, nice! It is somewhat irritating that some objects you’d consider rather common, like skeletons (Let’s face it, skeletons in games are really common) are restricted to the age they’re first found in, but that’s, honestly, a minor niggle in the face of things. Music wise, it doesn’t wear out its welcome, although it’s not really memorable stuff.

Scenario wise, I do somewhat like the story mode’s stories, for the most part. The stone age stuff is very reminiscent of both the Flintstones and old children’s puzzle books, which would also sometimes have things like “What if a zoo, but stone age?” , or little touches like the builders in the egyptian setting leaving their tools back at the workplace, or dropping them, or accidentally breaking the pillar they’ve built… These are nice touches, and they definitely helped bring things back from irritation with the negative aspects of the design, to the more positive end of things.

So, overall, Hidden Through Time is flawed, but it’s still a game that doesn’t outstay its welcome, that allows replayability through creation, has at least an accessible UX (Alas, a lack of colourblindness support, and the aforementioned eyestrain inducement of finding the tinier, skinnier things loses this one accessibility points), and is, overall, a hidden object game to definitely try. You’ll find out pretty quickly if this one’s a turn-off for you.

The Mad Welshman has found everything. Except his mind.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £7.19
Where To Get It: Steam

Voxelgram is an interesting beast. A 3D Nonagram, or Picross game, where the objective is to take the clues of row, column, and… Other row? Yes, that works… Anyway, to take the contextual clues on the relevant axes of “(maybe a gap) Number (gap of at least 1) Number, etcetera”, until you have a shape that, when coloured, creates an object or scene. In this case, it’s all objects, but this is the general idea.

But it differs in a few aspects beyond the obvious “In 3D.” Aspects that work, but may at first annoy. And they work precisely because the puzzles are designed around them. For example, that explanation of the clue format? Untrue in this case. Instead, it’s “Number [number of gaps].” It doesn’t specify the gap length, just as a normal Picross puzzle doesn’t… It simply rephrases the format in a way that makes it a little more difficult to decipher, needing more clues to be placed. Similarly, instead of the usual “maybe, yes, no” options, there’s marking blocks and deleting blocks (the yes and no), and… Putting blocks on other blocks, effectively a means of erasing mistakes. And again, this pretty much works because you’re not marking blocks as wrong or right: You’re deleting them.

And finally, there’s the layering system. You can rotate the puzzle fairly easily, and, since the puzzle clues are written on the cubes themselves, rotating doesn’t make things awkward. What takes a tiny bit of getting used to, however, is switching between layers. It’ll always pick the frontmost side, and when you change sides, the entire slice resets before you go through the layers from that direction. Just like every mechanical change in the game, it makes sense in the context, but takes a little getting used to.

Aesthetically, it’s visually clear, with only the gap number being a little small (but only a little), the dioramas look nice when they’re done, and the solemn piano music (with the occasional small choir) gives it this odd, melancholy vibe. This is an unfinished world. Why don’t you finish it?

So it’s interesting. It doesn’t have a lot, but it does a fair bit with it. So, do I have any gripes?

Well, yes. The puzzles vary quite widely in difficulty. There are a few real posers early on, and then… A diorama or two later, it’s a series of easy puzzles, every clue leading very clearly to its conclusion. Which, honestly, feels odd to say considering this is the ideal state of a puzzle of this nature, but it feels oddly… Unsatisfying.

Does this mean I don’t recommend it? Well, no, I do recommend it. Because it makes for a relatively relaxing time, Picross puzzle wise. And there’s at least one less than obvious quality of life feature: For all that it looks like you can go outside of a row or column if you unwisely mouse over another part of the puzzle, it doesn’t actually let you. Makes life easier when deleting blocks. And finally, a word of caution that may apply only to me… Every time I did the tutorial, it erased my progress when I restarted the game. An odd bug, but a minor one where the solution is, essentially, to do the tutorial for the achievement, quit, then start with the diorama puzzles, and never touch the tutorial again.

3D Picross is an interesting deal. And I hope we see more of it, over time.

5 4 3… The Mad Welshman didn’t want to make a puzzle… He just wanted to say out loud a row or column from a Picross puzzle. He doesn’t need a reason.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: $4.20 (Approximately £3.50, with the option to donate.)
Where To Get It: Itch.IO

Content Warning: This is an adult only platformer.

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Filed under: Adult Only Games, Game Reviews by admin

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