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

A Nonagram puzzle, often known as a Picross or Griddler puzzle, is, usually, a calm exercise in logic, where rows and columns are broken into sets of numbers, and you have to deduce the position of blocks in them. The game simply titled “Nonagram” , wants to be the final word in such games, and, can’t lie, it takes a good stab at it.

It is a *pretty* Picross game, I’ll give it that!

Musically, it is quite calming, with lots of xylophones, wind, and piano that you’d find on an Easy Listening Instrumental album… In fact, I’m pretty sure a couple of the tunes are easy listening covers, but that’s by the by. It presents itself well in its Gallery mode and in presentation (I quite like how, rather than a straight grid, coloured puzzles are squares of different values. Pleasing to the eye.) It even has a third option beyond the usual two of “This is definitely a square” and “This is definitely not a square”, which I generally use for checking what could be a square. An editor, and community puzzles, a timed mode and a zoom control allowing for really big puzzles (Alt-Left mouse moves it around, and the column/row numbers don’t change with where you are, just to clarify. So it does work, and you can’t break the puzzles into smaller ones with it.)

Wait, what? AAAARGH, USE THAT NEGATIVE SPACE!

So… So far, so good. I might even go so far as to say “Damn fine.” But, as is often the case, niggles and problems do exist. Gallery mode is relatively accessible, but it’s important to note that timed mode is a challenge mode (So there is a limit), and “Classic” mode starts with a 50×35 puzzle (Definitely requiring zoom.) With or without the zoom to help, puzzles can get finicky, and the game’s definition of perfect is just that: One mistake, and no shiny crown for you!

The size of the puzzles is, itself, somewhat odd… There’s a lot of negative space there, and it’s not being used. Finally, although this is apparently on the roadmap to fixing, the automatic fade-out of numbers you’ve correctly worked out is currently bugged, and so doesn’t accurately display your solving status. Not a game-breaker, but still rather annoying.

As such, it is, undoubtedly, a good Picross game, and has the potential to be a great one. It just needs to somewhat up its game with the bigger puzzles, accessibility wise.

Ah, Gallery mode. Spot the video game references, there are quite a few…

The Mad Welshman wonders if, like with previous genres he’s looked at, he’s going to be known as “The Picross Guy” now. He rather hopes not.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £19.49
Where To Get It: Steam

A lot can be said about how intimidating it is, playing a largely pacifist mouse in a world of giant, angry rats, that it’s taken me this long to take a look at Ghost of a Tale, the stealth action RPG by SeithCG. But, like Tilo, the mouse bard protagonist of this game, I’ve gotten over that, and honestly? I’m glad I have.

I feel you, little guy… They *are* scary!

Ghost of a Tale is, at its most basic level, a game where you, Tilo the mouse bard, must explore an ancient keep, hoping to save your wife Merra (Imprisoned, like you, for treason) and escape. Of course, if it were that simple, we wouldn’t have either the tension or the interest, so there’s a pretty wide cast of characters, some friendly, some not quite friendly, and many of which aren’t friendly at all, considering that they’re either beasties out for any blood they can get… Or the rat guards, who, understandably considering the charge you’ve been imprisoned under, aren’t exactly fond of you.

Of course, this doesn’t bring secret doors, shortcuts, a hint system in the form of a seemingly friendly blacksmith, a small web of intrigue, and something about an Emerald Flame, a great evil that may or may not be rising again… And some fine characters, all set in a beautifully rendered environment. There’s a fair bit to do in Ghost of a Tale, and I appreciate how, while the rats are a threat, they’re a threat that can be dealt with in a variety of ways, including running away (Even walking, you are slightly faster than the rat guards) and hiding until they return to their posts. Failing that, slime trips them up (if they’re not wearing boots), bottles knock them out (if they’re not wearing helmets), and, eventually, two sets of armour that allow you to move unchallenged… Past the guards, anyway.

I get the distinct feeling I’m not meant to be up here… Yet.

There’s a fair amount I like about Ghost of a Tale, as the shortcuts are helpful, the world is pretty, and the characters are, when they speak, charming and amusing (Kerold the Frog Pirate, for example, has a fine example of breaking the fourth wall with items that don’t turn up until you know they’re there… I won’t spoil it for you.) But this isn’t to say there aren’t things I get a bit grumpy about. There’s a fair amount of the game that can best be described as “Collectathon-ing” , and some of the puzzles are a little obtuse. There are maps, but it’s a case of finding a safe spot to look at your inventory, and memorising.

Still, overall, I find Ghost of a Tale more charming than frustrating, and, despite being intimidating looking in the early game, it’s a cool game that emphasises exploration and trickery over violence, and a pretty accessible one at that. Worth a go!

Top of the world, ma! (No, really, highest point in the game’s rather large map, apparently)

The Mad Welshman is not ashamed to admit the Rat-Guard scared him. It just means they’re doing their job well, is all!

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £7.19 (£3.99 for soundtrack)
Where To Get It: Steam

Triplicity is, on your very first glance, a strange combination. Okay, so there’s a deckbuilding, small scale card game battler… But why the block puzzles, friend? It still somewhat confuses, but, thankfully, both elements improve over time, so Triplicity… Turns out alright.

The blocks have been conquered, and soon, I shall face my polygonal opponent, and hear their twinkly lamentations…

The artistic direction in the game is pretty solid, overall. Minimalist, but solid. Soft, ambient music, low poly worlds that are nonetheless bright and use their colour well (with one minor exception: Green/Yellow blocks, or more accurately, the markers of where they’re meant to go, are hard to distinguish, so a colour-blind pass may be useful.) The cards are reminiscent, artwise, of early editions of Magic: The Gathering, relatively muted colour schemes, but using a similar 5 colour scheme for it’s theming. The similarity ends with that and the attack/defence stat.

Playwise, it’s similarly simple and approachable. Block moving puzzles make a prelude to card battles, where the first turn is chosen randomly, and there are three fields, three energy per turn, and cards have a max energy cost of three. Some cards have special abilities, but for the most part, you’re tactically considering where to put your cards for maximum offence and defence as players react to each other (or player and CPU, as is the case with story and practice mode.) Defeat still earns a card for your library, while winning earns three. Take a wild stab at how many block puzzles have to be solved before fighting a card battle in the single player mode.

I could really go for some Twiglies right about now…

With a multiplayer mode, and a practice mode where you can try your wits versus the AI, Triplicity is, honestly, not a bad game. It’s approachable, accessible, and when my only niggle with it is “Wait, if the cards are the focus, what’s all this block malarkey”, I can’t help but give a pair of gentle thumbs up.

The Mad Welshman finds simplicity both pleasing and frustrating. You may be able to tell.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £7.19 (With extra pack, £9.29. Extra pack £3.99)
Where To Get It: Steam

Assault Gunners HD is a game with problems. And it’s perhaps unfortunate that these problems are so pervasive. Still, let’s back up a bit and talk about what the game is.

The laser is a frankly silly weapon when it comes to crowd control. And there’s always a crowd…

Assault Gunners was originally a PS Vita download-only title, reminiscent in both story (Self replicating robots gone bad on a colony) and feel of Armoured Core (Well, it tries. We’ll get to that.) And now, it’s come to Steam, in a HD edition that… Well, doesn’t exactly impress.

On the one hand, the game does some things better than some of its ported brethren. Actual sound, graphics, and keybinding options. Playable keybinds, so no, controller isn’t mandatory with this one. The mechs and enemies look alright, and the music and sound, while a little generic at times, similarly, are alright. Finally, with the exception of one menu element not being terribly clear, subtitles not happening in cutscenes, and the in-mission subtitles being in the top right (IE – where you’d rarely look), the UI and menus are relatively clear. Cluttered, but clear.

But these are, unfortunately, small potatoes compared to things that don’t go so well. There is little sense of impact, even with the missiles, which, in a missile heavy map, are going to obscure your vision, there’s so many smoke trails. You fire at a thing, it goes boom and dies. That’s it. I had originally intended to say the game is slow as hell, but no, that’s just the first body/legs. Once you get, for example, the BUNNY armour, boosting becomes fine, movement becomes fairly good, and with better legs, it gets better. But, funnily enough, this segues well into the next big problem with Assault Gunners HD… Balance.

Pictured: Slapping a ton of good stuff on, consequence free.

…Or, more accurately, lack thereof. By the time I had gotten to the first big enemy, rather than the hordes of small, not very smart, and weak enemies that give it more of a musou feel than that of an Armored Core game, I already had a Laser V (Best I’ve seen so far), level 5 in all the types of armours I know of, the best horizontal missile rack, stamina boost… I had a lot of good things, and, unlike Armoured Core, where its inspiration obviously comes from, there’s no disincentive (beyond the pickup magnet powerup) against just slamming all of them in and calling it a day. Oh no, its a grasshopper me- oh, it died before it managed to complete an entire loop of shooting? Oh, well, we’ll just be sad about the gunships we sent in as backup you obviously didn’t need, then.

So, before I’d reached 8 of the 20 missions in the base game (With a further 15 as DLC), I felt like a little tin god. Tin, because I never felt like it was earned, or even much of a decision. Fuck it, bunny armour and the best guns of their type on everyone! Extra target locks, extra health, shield regen, extra armour of all types, go wild, folks! And, since the mechs are used in every game mode (Edited in the Hangar menu), this then applied to the game’s wave based score attack mode, Inferno. Where scores of geometrically placed enemies died in droves to the fact that geometric placement is great for a piercing weapon, and I let myself die on Wave 18 because I felt the previous 17 waves had provided little entertainment or challenge.

This is *some* missiles. In a missile bot heavy map? This becomes “Good luck seeing anything.”

And that’s Assault Gunners HD… It’s fairly accessible, but, at the same time, I found myself having a relatively easy time, even on hard difficulty, and it had failed to entertain. Which is a shame, because there’s the kernel of a good idea here, and god knows, I wouldn’t mind an Armoured Core style game on PC, considering the lack of Armoured Core on PC, but this, for me, just wasn’t it.

The Mad Welshman consoles himself with a ride through some giant stompy robot games of the past.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £11.39
Where To Get It: Steam

How far would you go to save a loved one, or a family member? In a world of magic, such as My Lovely Daughter, the answer is mass murder. But it’s okay, honest, because they’re homunculi, things created to be used and killed. Right… Right?

I’m gonna go with “Nooooo” here. Somehow.

My Lovely Daughter is, described mechanically and reductively, a life-sim VN. You’re trying to earn enough money for upkeep (of the corpse of your daughter, and ensuring your homunculi don’t run away) by doing jobs for your fellow townsfolk (Because a pitchfork and torch up the strap often offends, and they have money) or selling them better materials (made from homunculus-daughters who have levelled up enough), in order to achieve the statistics needed for an ending (or the perfect ending, all of which are obtained by… Slaughtering homunculus-daughters to feed the stripped out soul of your daughter, and are essentially the Four Humours of greek medicine and their appropriate moods.)

Goodness me, there’s a lot of murder and tragedy hiding under that mechanical description, isn’t there? And this is part of why I’m so fond of My Lovely Daughter: It goes all in on the Gothic front. All of your homunculi daughters love you, in their own ways… But they’re often twisted by the emotion they represent (such as the Mud daughter’s attempts to seek attention) or the form they take (Don’t worry about your other daughters, kill ’em all, and we can play in the water together, daddy – Mermaid Daughter) , or indeed both (Poor Animal daughter… Already depressed, and people call her a freak for having a fox head on top of that. Rude!) The Alchemist Faust is, mysteriously, alive again after a spell of being dead, and… Well, the whole thing oozes of tragedy, well written tragedy, from that of Faust, whose ego drives him to force that soul back into his daughter’s body, again and again, to the homunculus-daughters (who are not all innocents, but are, in their way, the most blameless of the cast), and the townsfolk, outcasts all, each with their own secrets, their own stories to tell.

Oh, no, you must be confusing me with my daughter, I’m sure she shopper here t- ohwait.

So yes, I quite enjoy the writing. I also quite enjoy the art, being hand drawn sketches, reminiscent somewhat of woodcuts, with procedural stains of various types giving the impression of a run down, grimy world, a world of obsession that’s slowly winding down… And leads me to that eternal question: But is there anything you don’t like?

Well, yes. But not a lot. Mostly, the fact that everything can be discovered in a single night is sad, it’s true. The game loop being repetitive is not something I’m annoyed with, because on the one hand, the game loop becomes quicker the further you get into actively searching for those endings, and on the other, as mentioned, the game is relatively short. Are these, even in combination, enough to stop me from recommending My Lovely Daughter? No. I feel I’ve seen an interesting, bleak world, I’ve been allowed to play in it, to explore its gloomy environs, and gotten a good, tragic tale of gothic hubris into the bargain. I’ve easily understood how the game is to be played, and I appreciate how even the forced tutorial at the beginning is part of its storytelling. Like gothic horror? My Lovely Daughter is, I feel, pretty good.

Er… Yes. I will play with you in the water, my daughter. Certainly. Later. Yes.

Having confirmed that he would be a bad dad, The Mad Welshman returns to what he’s good at. Moustache twirling.

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