Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £30.99 (Soundtrack £3.99)
Where To Get It: Steam

The game has the following CWs: Mentions of suicide, sexual abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, parental abuse, and human experimentation.

Hrm. Hrm, and other thoughtful noises.

Abyss of the Escape is a visual novel/escape room game, in which five girls are trapped, seemingly alone, in the ruins of FOUNDATION, an underground home for humanity after the surface basically got fucked. And shit’s not going well for them, not helped by certain things along the way, and the secrets and traumas each person has. It’s interesting, dark stuff.

It’s such a shame then, that it’s timeline implementation is awkward, and many of its puzzles are obtuse, some downright frustrating in their lack of information. I had to rely on hints for a fair few puzzles, and a few, in particular, I would not have found the solutions to without either pixel hunting, or looking the solution up. All I will say about that, if you play it, is that two numbers you haven’t lit up are hidden inside another, single digit number. It must also be said that some of the puzzles feel out of place for the situation.

Huh, big barrier in the garbage room? What purpose did that serve, except to arbitrarily separate the two characters involved for a dual viewpoint puzzle? Making tea? Good Doctor, I understand that you don’t want to let your daughter near your best tea, but an entire puzzle about tea making is only going to interest the tea fanatics. Who will then get turned off by the puzzle lock on the crucial ingredient. Although the last puzzle of that scene did fit the character of the Doctor.

And these two faults kind of taint the whole experience, which is a shame, because there’s some legitimately good writing in there, including the main twist. The rather heavily foreshadowed main twist.

Aesthetically, it works. Clear UX, some good illustrations, solid music, some good VA, and overall, as noted, good writing, because a good twist is foreshadowed, but even heavy foreshadowing works if it doesn’t quite make sense until the twist.

But yes, the awkward implementation of the timeline, some obtuse and sometimes arbitrary puzzles, they bring the game from legitimately good and interesting, to a cautious recommendation with heavy qualifications.

Timelines, VN devs. I’ll stress this and stress this until it sinks in. Timelines. They make our lives easier.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £24.99 (Expansion Scenario: £5.99)
Where To Get It: Steam

I just keep finding cheerily dystopian games with guitars in, don’t I? Well, this one’s particularly cheery in its corporate dystopia, and is a metroidvania style deal in which your abilities allow you to explore the world more, see interesting beasties, and get yourself wrecked by them, so it’s not like I can complain. All I can do is eat the monsters that look rich. Or, more accurately, drain their mineral contents so I can make sweet, sweet traversal items and upgrades.

And, just like a metroidvania, there’s a fair amount of being lost, because, apart from shortcut points, you’re basically relying on muscle memory and a few upgrades to work out what’s what, and where.

So, first things first, the humour. Oh god, the humour’s on point, and it’s clear which rich asshole(s) Kindred corp’s head are inspired by. They shall not be named, for they are also namesearching rich assholes. But it’s pretty obvious, and oh boy are they smug, clueless jerks who’d rather throw money and people at a problem than use resources efficiently.

That’s our job, apparently.

Aesthetically, the game is pretty clear, with a clear, unobtrusive UX, cool alien designs that make the beasties in question instantly recognisable (along with other features, equally clear), and a broken world that feels awe inspiring at times to travel in. Musically, well, it’s good, it’s frontier western guitars, and yup, dystopian future with space-trucker guitars again!

This is not a bad thing. This is, in fact, a good thing. Equally good is the world. The pufferbirds are very satisfying indeed to feed to the grinding maws, to punt, and to generally bully, the creatures are, overall, well designed, big glowy weak points and all, and they feel like they belong in this screwed up, shattered world. Which, like your journey, is one big, long WHOOPS.

But it’s an enjoyable whoops that controls well, has some good acting (and some delightfully godawful adverts), a dystopian story that nonetheless made me laugh, and an ending that I saw coming a few hundred parsecs away, but still delighted me in the details. I found some of the later stuff and some of the bosses a bit of a drag, mainly because said boss fights were multistage, but also relied on maneuverability with limited healing, but overall, I found it well paced, and likable enough that I wanted to 100% complete before hitting that lever to take me back home.

And after I do, what I’ve found will totally be used safely for the betterment of mankind. Right?

Oh. Yeah. Comedic hellscape.

WHOOPS.

This review sponsored by CAMPING CUBICLE, the portable office cube with a coffee maker in-built, so you can feel like an office drone even in the farthest reaches of space, as you should!

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £10.29
Where To Get It: Steam

Aesthetic can only take you so far. And when that “so far” involves forgetting to tutorialise at all… Ah, that’s not so good, is it? So, suffice to say, Warp Drive on gamepad (generally a good way of playing Future Racers like this) has gotten off to a rocky start. On keyboard, it’s more sensible. But still…

R2 (Lower right bumper) is what you use to accelerate, just an FYI. So you don’t have the frustration of trying to find that most important of controls, because W on keyboard would make you think forward on the d-pad or stick.

So yes, Warp Drive, a future racing game in which you drive drone like hovercars around a track, fulfilling the race objectives in a tournament, and… Wait a second…

Bad impression number 2: No solo tracks, no individual time trials, no challenges. Just a tournament.

Beyond these two crits, and that your earliest time trial requires a faster boost and solid racing (I get so sick of seeing that in future racers), it’s… Actually alright. But it’s mostly aesthetics. The gameplay’s relatively simple, there is only a benefit to taking on the higher classes of cars, and, if you’ve got your boosts and warps down, your handling up, and any decentish skill, you’ll, uhhh…

Bad impression number 3: We know there’s a hard corner that would need drift… But I’m in a high handling enough car that it’s not actually a hard corner, ta.

Sigh… Anyway, yes, it’s alright, it handles alright, the tracks are good, with interesting shortcuts, and, as mentioned, most of it’s in the colourful aesthetics, the worlds that are detailed and cartoonish, but not distracting from the track itself, and a soundtrack by the great funkster, Hideki Naganuma. Don’t worry if you don’t know the name, looking up his music is a very pleasant exercise if you’re into funky beats.

Oh, wait, bad impression 4: No option to turn off the flashy pink warp animations. Y’know, the epilepsy risk ones the game doesn’t warn you about.

But beyond that, with the good and the bad impressions mixing, it comes out… Well, okay. Its visuals grabbed me, its music got the blood pumping, but the game… Well, I felt lukewarm about the actual game part.

It’s some good popcorn if you’re into racing games. But I really get the impression it could have ended up with a lot more character than it did. And there’s stuff it really could have fixed.

I’m kinda sad that the game ain’t nothin’ like a funky beat.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £6.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Leak Elite is the kind of game I’d normally like a lot. It has a storyline about a group of hackers, who aren’t after some evil corporation, just leaking emails, fucking with people, enjoying the process. It has strategy puzzle elements. It would normally be extremely my jam.

But it doesn’t tutorialise well. Beyond the absolute basics, it tells you… Nothing. Ah, okay, I’m meant to block the spawn of a follower using this deallocation, wot removes a tile. This is the first time I’m doing it, game… How?

I didn’t actually work out how. I knew it had something to do with patience, with waiting for patrol paths, so the spawn got blocked… But the security requirement was tight, so I ended up with no clue what to do.

Which is a shame, because its lo-fi aesthetic is pretty good. Its tunes are pretty chill. Its chat logs are… Well, they are indeed believable for a group like this, even down to the casual ableist slur.

But when two of the beginning server nodes, including the important one, are rough af to deal with? Well, that’s a bad sign, and, not being able to complete what’s effectively the tutorial mission, I bowed out.

Sorry, Leak Elite. You are, in fact, too Elite for me. Maybe hardcore strategy puzzle fans will get it better than I did. Maybe not. We’ll have to see.

(EDIT: Since the release of this review, the developer has changed security requirements for some of the levels, and clarified the final part of the first mission. So yes, if you have problems, let the developer know, and please give your feedback constructively.)

Leak Elite, as it turns out, was too 1337 for my n00b ass.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £21.99 (Soundtrack £6.99)
Where To Get It: Steam

If there’s one thing we can be sad about with Hardspace: Shipbreaker, it’s that we can’t huck segments of the ship, especially kersplodey ones, at Corporate. Then again, I can imagine we aren’t the first cutter to be disgruntled and think about that, so they might have giant cannons for just such an eventuality.

Anyway, yes, Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a game about dismantling spaceships in a dystopian hellscape where you are a clone whose processable (not furnaceable) worth is approximately $8. Armed with substandard tools you can improve (and later buy) thanks to completing work orders, and slowly, ever so slowly reducing a billion in debt, you cut up ships and yeet the various portions into the right trash receptacles for recycling, for your corporate masters.

You’re also a clone without a union, so no, diving into one of the three processing areas is a no-go, I’m afraid. You can, to be fair, set your number of clones between infinite, 30 total til game over, and none. Don’t pick none, you will die at least once learning the ropes.

It’s actually pretty relaxing, although there are motion sickness warnings for six degrees of freedom movement and the odd thing that’s moving while you’re looking at something that’s not. And with only a few tools, it’s pretty easy to learn the ropes. Cutting tool in focused mode for getting rid of cutting points or smaller metal plates you just want off to get the sodding airlock already, line cutter for when you’ve got metal things connected you don’t want. Grapple tool, its tether, and force push for moving stuff to the right receptacle and picking up even most things that are nailed down, visor to see the harder to see stuff to shove in the barge or destroy, and demo charges for when you can’t cut the bastard (nanocarbon or cut guard), but you want the damn thing gone. Simple!

…Except a friend just told me I can get rid of cut guards with a charged force push. Fuck my life.

The aesthetic is pretty cool, although glitch effects annoy the hell out of me, as does a resetting windowed mode, the UX is pretty clear, the music… Well, it’s space trucker guitars, I have no problem with space trucker guitars for, essentially, working yourself for the company store. The three base ship designs and their variations are pretty cool, each with their own challenges (sod you, Javelin, and your backasswards way of building a ship. I hate ensuring your individual toroids don’t snatch up the core of the ship, or drag the whole thing into the wrong station, and you are my nemesis), so… Yeah, I’m liking it on the aesthetic front.

But I also love me some worldbuilding, and, through collecting data boxes, we see just how shit a company Lynx is… And the mystery behind the AI nodes hiding in the Ghost Ships you encounter later on. It’s really not much of a spoiler to say “Someone done fucked up their if-whiles”…

Shipbreaker is pretty far along from the looks of things, and I’d love to see multiplayer, but as it is? Granular difficulty’s fun, the world’s fun, the game modes are fun, and if you’re into just chilling out for an hour or two with some mild swearing, a session of Shipbreaker is a good way to do it.

(EDIT: Well, ain’t my timing great. I published this, then found out the story update is hitting soon. Ah well, enjoy the story, I’m certain it’s suitably dystopian!)

Taaake me hoooome, hyperspace roooaaaads…

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