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

I like me some Metroidvanias. I do love me some lo-fi pixels. And so, Grizzland immediately caught my interest, because it is, essentially, a short Metroidvania, with lo-fi pixels, that still has encounters, boss fights, and challenge.

Maybe a little too much challenge at some times… But what the hey, checkpoints are mostly reasonable, so I’m not too irritable with that.

In any case, Grizzland’s premise starts out simple. It’s a fantastic world into which you’ve somehow teleported, except… Not all is as clear cut as it seems, from the very first journal you find. Wait, landed? Computer? Buddy, I’m swinging a sword and there are magicians with giant triangles comin’ at me, what is this gobbledegook?

Well, it quickly turns out that someone did land here, destroying the trees as they went toward the centre of the world, and, considering there’s only 5 of them, and they’re sentient? Well, that’s deep trouble indeed… Away we gooooo (to save the day)

Now, one thing that should be made clear is that enemy routines, combined with the fact that very little can be slain in one swing, make combat more difficult than you’d expect. Whether it’s the bats, who wake up, and mercilessly chase you, but retreat on the first blow far enough that you may have difficulty getting the three hits you need in before they hit you, or enemies which revenge fire when hit, it’s something to consider about the game’s difficulty.

Happily, I can say I’ve enjoyed my time with Grizzland. The world is basic, but the journals, some of its stranger (1-bit) enemies help bring some oddity, as do the secrets, which are sometimes… Quite amusing. As the first you find states: Not everything has to make sense.

So yes, overall, there’s a solid attention to a consistent style, there’s some good chiptunes and sound effects, and, as a short Metroidvania, it can still pretty easily eat up an hour or four of your life (more if you’re looking for eeeeeverything. Which I am.) Reasonably priced to boot, I would definitely recommend Grizzland.

The Mad Welshman would probably also go on a quest of sword swinging if he found people uprooting trees. He’s very pro tree.

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Source: Free because I had both games on release 😛
Price: £6.99 (or £17.98 for both this and 60 Parsecs)
Where To Get It: Steam

I had, in the past, quite enjoyed 60 Parsecs, the 50s themed science fiction sequel to this game, so, when I’d heard 60 Seconds was getting a remaster of sorts, I thought: Good golly, I can have a jolly old time with a quite literal nuclear family, radiation sickness, marauders, and all!

And, as I expected, I’ve been having a mostly good time with the remaster or 60 Seconds. After all, I came in with the expectation I wouldn’t survive for a long time, just build up an interesting collection of events before the family’s inevitable demise. In retrospect, I maybe should have gotten more soup. More soup is important.

RIP the nuclear family, who never had enough rich, nutritios tomato soup that claims to last for 763 years (It probably wouldn’t. But it would at least survive long enough for us to eat it.)

In any case, 60 seconds is a game of two parts, both of which you can play separately for practice. In the first, you’re rushing around your home, with 60 seconds to get as much as you can for your shelter, including family members, and then… The days go by. You go on expeditions, try to deal with problems, and keep your family hale and hearty, because if everyone’s too sick to go out, or dead, or starved… Well, you didn’t survive. Your eventual goal is to be rescued by the military, but, partly because events are random, and you’ll never know quite what you need for your particular run, and partly because the military is slow as heck to get things going, it is, as you might guess, unsurprisingly difficult.

Now, one thing that remains slightly jarring about 60 Seconds Reatomized is the difference in styles. For the majority of the game, it’s 2D and cartoonish, wonderfully so. But for the actual gathering of supplies, it’s 3D, and, not gonna lie, I would have enjoyed the style being consistent, as it is in 60 Parsecs, more. But I respect that they stuck with that decision, at the very least. It is, overall, aesthetically pleasing, with everything except the collection being very clear (the 3D portion is, as part of that gripe, less so), the music sticking to that 50s style, and fitting sound effects that warn you what type of event is coming, or when someone comes back, about five to ten seconds before you see it for yourself, and the writing remains amusing for many of the events.

If I had any other gripes, it would be that the tutorial is very slow paced, but that, honestly, is a one time thing, so it is a minor gripe. Otherwise… Well, I expected exactly what I got, considering I’d reviewed the sequel beforehand: A fun, easy to learn, but difficult to master survival game, with adjustable difficulty (always nice), and solid writing and aesthetics. If you enjoyed 60 Parsecs, and hadn’t gotten 60 Seconds, the Reatomized is a good purchase… If you don’t already have it.

The Mad Welshman would, also, probably not survive a nuclear apocalypse. His mutated bones, however, would probably have a whale of a time.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £5.79
Where To Get It: Steam

Cats are glorious creatures. Ask any cat owner. Said cat owners will also confirm that they are clowns, doofuses, malevolent little gits… Cats have quite the range. And it’s gratifying to see a cat in a mech suit as the protagonist of Gato Roboto, a game which… Well, it’s very, very similar to early Metroid games, with a 1-bit art style (Pixels in black or white), and…

…It’s got a speedrun timer. This is… A mixed sign, I’ve found. And lo and behold, this is borne out. A game you can complete quickly, it nonetheless has some challenges that are both mandatory… And going to annoy the hell out of the player who doesn’t know the tricks. You good at screw attack chaining, m’folk? No? Well… There’s an entire section with that. And a boss fight that seriously outstays its god-damn welcome. Which, funnily enough, is a good segue into some other problems.

Boss cutscenes skippable? No sirree. You screw up that boss, you get to hit Z through the whole damn thing all over again. And it is always Z, because keys are not rebindable. And that boss has a lotta hitpoints for a god-damn mouse in a robot suit.

It’s a shame really, because the designs and aesthetic are a charm, and a fair amount of the actual areas are fairly well designed. The sound is good, even if the music didn’t really grab me. The animations are lovely. But the third encounter with a certain asshole who also has robot suits (plural), in particular, annoys me. Not because it has a bundle of hitpoints, although that helps. Not because it’s easy to assume it’s a screw-attack exam, rather than a dodge exam. No. Because that bundle of hitpoints is best whittled down (at first) with… An item you get, not via the usual method, but technically a “bonus” item from collecting all secret 1-bit palette changes from the first two areas, and knowing where a tight collision hitbox ends. Argh.

Still, once that hurdle’s over, it’s an okay Metroidvania, taking cheeky nods from the original Metroid and Metroid Fusion, keeping the progression area-linear (Essentially, you go through each area once to complete it, then again to get everything you possibly can find now the area blockages are removed.) The story isn’t bad, but yes, the game has enough annoyances that it took me a frustratingly long time to get to enjoy it.

The Mad Welshman is eternally salty that house rules and budget disallow a cat of his own. He loves them so.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £5.99
Where To Get It: Steam
Other Reviews: Release

Right now, Cliff Empire is a frustrating experience. Not because it doesn’t have a good idea. Not because it doesn’t have a good aesthetic (futurist and clean.) No, it’s simply because its tutorial… Does not actually teach very well. Or, more accurately, it doesn’t keep up very well with how it is currently balanced.

Example: You are asked to build one matter generator. Then you’re asked to build a whole bunch of stuff that uses matter. Congratulations, your matter economy is now borked. If you, yourself, fix that, well… Did you know the power economy is, in the early game, heavily weighted toward building a lot of power surplus during the day, then disabling buildings and using batteries constructed by power surplus for the night? No? Oh. Well now you do. Some other things are more obvious, such as needing enough food and water to keep your colonist fed. But some needs are… Irritating.

Oh, yes… Premise. Earth has been blasted by radioactive war, leaving a lot of the fallout. Some folks escaped to an orbital station (which is doing just fine, by the by. Bastards), while the ones who remained, out of some weird altruism (that I don’t think those station folk are owed) built giant cliffs to rise above the radioactive fog that now covers the Earth.

Fun fact: They don’t always fill your needs. Perhaps the survivors on Earth had a sense of humour. In any case, there are three modes of play: Sandbox (currently preferred), Default (In which raiders don’t appear to come, but you have to fill those needs), and Tower Defense, which I haven’t even touched because… Come the hell on, I don’t need powering missile stations and shit on top of the hot mess that is currently “Just keeping folks alive.”

Because yes, you will have trouble balancing needs. Colonists come in groups of 15 (needing Uranium to land, something you will have to trade for in the early game because you don’t know how much is in your particular cliff top), but housing comes in… 13, with the options for more if you spend the money. The money you won’t have until you build a trading station.

While we’re on the subject, let’s talk about the UI. Most of the time, the UI is just fine. But currently, the trading UI is clear as mud. It specifically wants you to enter numbers in the more than columns and less than columns as needed (Once you’ve put in a number, entering 0 for less than, or a number higher than you think you can feasibly reach for more than, is needed.) Buuuut guess how the columns, and the rows are differentiated? Answer: Not at all. It’s a big black space that, honestly, confused me for far longer than it should have.

Overall, Cliff Empire has an interesting premise (Even if I feel antipathy toward the orbital station survivors, considering their likely background), and it doesn’t need much more work, aesthetically speaking (Music is fine and calming, buildings are clear and futurist, UI… Needs some scaling options, and the aforementioned Trading UI thing.) But the balancing seems to need work, considering that nearly every building past the first few has some sort of roadblock or bottleneck associated with it.

The Mad Welshman will not allow the rich to get to the orbital stations. His knife and fork are at the ready…

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £5.79
Where to Get It: Steam

Time loops. A poorly understood phenomenon, with many potential dangers. Do folks remember their time looping? Is it really ethical to kick off a time loop? Why would you kick off a time loop? And, let’s be fair here… Why Monday?

Such is the story behind Alt Frequencies, in which a dystopian government has ensured it’s always Monday. Why? That’s… Not terribly clear. Something about controlling the masses by always having the same things to deal with? Nonetheless, a small resistance has worked out that it is, in fact, always Monday, and are asking you to fight, with the power of recording and sending radio clips.

Alt-Frequencies is, on the accessibility front, mostly good. It’s audio based, but with closed captioning and screen reading, it’s visually very clear, and so, it’s relatively easy to play: So long as you remembered your keybinds. Because it doesn’t prompt you with them. So if you, say, started the game without looking at the keybinds, well… That mandatory tutorial is suddenly a little more frustrating.

But where it, alas, becomes more frustrating is that it is not always very clear what has progressed things, and that, when it progresses… Well, it goes so quickly, that its plot beats don’t really land. Or end up contradicting themselves. Oh look, the journalist on the mainstream news station suddenly thinks those not affected by the memory aspect of the time loop are terrorists. Were they gotten to, since they remember the loop? Not clear. And no, it’s not really explained why the government are doing this. So…

All this, is, honestly, a shame. It’s a good idea, mixed with some good accessibility features that are baked in, and yet… It doesn’t stick the landing, and there’s not a whole lot else I can say beyond that. The voice acting varies from solid to slightly hammy, and some characters are well written (The obnoxious Talk.FM, guy, for example, is exactly as obnoxious as intended), but when the core writing isn’t so solid? Well, that makes it less enjoyable.

Fans of experimental idea may like this one, but, unfortunately, it bounced off me, and I can’t really recommend it.

The Mad Welshman wasn’t sure what was more infuriating about reviewing this: Avoiding heavy spoilers, or trying to list the plot threads that just suddenly cut off in his head while doing so…

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