Source: Review Copy
Price: £29.99
Where To Get It: Steam, Official Store

Battlefleet Gothic: Armada (or Armada, as it’s going to be referred to for the rest of the review) is an adaptation of Games Workshop’s spaceship battle tabletop game where, in the grim darkness of the future, there are only chiselled jawlines. It preloads, and this can, in some cases, take a while (2 minutes at best, 10 at the worst I’ve seen it), but once you’re in the game? It’s fairly entertaining!

As such, however, I want to get the bad out of the way first. The game does not tutorialise terribly well, as the campaign focuses on the Imperium of Man (As 90% of GW licensed properties in 40K have done), and so getting a handle on the other three factions currently in the game (Eldar, Ork, and Chaos) is a matter of experimentation rather than being shown. Occasionally, the camera will refuse to co-operate until you reselect a ship, for reasons I have yet to discover. And the multiplayer needs work, with some factions requiring more micromanagement using limited Tactical Cogitator time (Slowdown, basically), and matchmaking needing improvements. Thankfully, these are at least on the development roadmap.

Now to the good: The campaign is well presented, and teaches some skills as it goes along, such as boarding actions, auto engagement, and the fact that losing a mission is not, as in many strategy games, a game over, but more of a setback than anything else, so, while savescumming is do-able, and a valid way to play, it’s by no means necessary. Of course, being 40K, it’s both dark and silly at the same time, so the second campaign mission, involving Ork Freebootaz (Orc space pirates, basically) is introduced by a cutscene that begins with… Gretchin (Space goblins) being fired out of a large gun, and being surprisingly pumped about either impacting another ship at high speed, or missing and asphyxiating in the cold bleakness of space. That image alone… Is actually a pretty good summary of 40K. It also provides an excellent example of how defeat will make your job harder, as losing the convoy in this second mission adds more rebellious worlds in the area, as, unsurprisingly, people get unhappy when they’re starving.

Aurally, it’s a treat, with a lot of good voice acting, some suitably dramatic music, and some impactful sound effects that really make space fighting fun, and visually, it can be quite cool, although often, you’ll be too zoomed out to truly appreciate the majestic ships and barrelfuls of dakka, and the Tactical Cogitator filter… Slightly detracts. But as far as adaptations of Battlefleet Gothic go? It’s priced fairly for even the campaign, and, so long as you don’t mind using Skirmish to get a handle on the ships of non-Imperial factions, the multiplayer’s quite fun too.

The Mad Welshman checked the Holy Manual of Shooting Things Very Dead. The instructions were simple, and, once his visex had… What do you mean, the terminology’s all wrong?

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £14.99
Where To Get It: Steam, Official Site
Other Reviews: Early Access

Erik Johnson, one of the Misfits Attic team on Duskers, stated “When I created Duskers it was really around a feeling: of being alone in the dark, of isolation, of being surrounded by old gritty tech that could only give you a partial picture about what’s going on around you, like the motion sensor that goes off, but doesn’t tell you exactly what’s out there. I like the idea of needing to rely on that tech, and the claustrophobia and isolation that would cause.”

He’s not wrong, and Duskers is an interesting game that somewhat defies easy genre labelling. But hot-damn, am I grateful the difficulty is so customisable, because with all the options on, it’s tense, and death, or rather, being left without your drones, is quite easy.

Storywise, it’s simple: You are possibly the last human being left alive, and you want to both survive… And know why, how it happened. All you have is a small drone salvage ship, with a (mostly) full complement of drones, and your wits. Good luck with that!

What this means, however, is that you are controlling a variety of drones, none of which see overly clearly, through an easy to learn text interface and HUD. You can directly control the movement of a single drone with the arrow keys, but for everything else, it’s commands like “Navigate 2 r4” (Move drone 2 to room 4) or “Motion 1” (Use drone 1’s motion tracker, because another drone I brought along also has one), with some easter egg messages available using the “Run” command (For example: Run twirlygig)

Most of the time, this isn’t a problem, and the game is like a puzzle. But the older the ship, the larger the threats that loom, and the less time you have to react to them. And often, it presents you with tough and interesting decisions. For example, spacing threats is, especially with radiation turned off, an option… Once you’ve discovered them. And there are three and a half ways to discover a threat: Motion trackers, which don’t always work; Sensors, which require you to place them; Stealth, which doesn’t always work; And, of course, them discovering you. Which is bad. Very bad.

At the beginning of the game, you will have, at most, two and a half of these options. And maintaining all of them once you get them is asking for a “Reset”, which, on the one hand, keeps your objective progress and logs collected. On the other, it puts you back in the original ship, with starter drones, and the threats discovered remain as well.

If a ship is cleared of enemies, it can be commandeered, sometimes allowing for greater Scrap storage (The currency of the game, and the only means of keeping your upgrades active for more than a few missions at a time), more ship upgrade slots (Which give you more responses to situations), a few ship specific upgrades (Such as the Military Ship’s cannon, which will kill everything in a room… At the cost of permanently opening it to space), and better fuel storage (Allowing you to travel further without jumping to another system.) There’s also a lot of options, and all of them have a help command that explains their function. It makes for a lot of choices when you get a good run going, and it’s interesting to see the developers do a lot with a little.

However, that doesn’t mean the game is perfect. I’ve often said no game is, and there are things that could possibly be worked on. The reset option takes a lot of the sting out of failing a boarding, losing nearly everything, and that’s a good thing… But it, along with the procedural nature of the universe, means the game slows down a fair bit when you get to the third or fourth sets of objectives in the various disaster questlines, due to needing specific tools or places. Right now, for example, I have to find a specific class of ship, with at least the “pry” or “teleport” tools, preferably a turret and some mines, and destroy all threats within it without turning the ship’s power on. Even if the ship is found, that’s a fair bit of setup, and you can only visit a ship once.

Similarly, there is no colour blind support for this game, as, while most of the drone colour schemes are thought out nicely, some make the drones unplayable, perhaps even to folks who see colour better than I do. Dark brown on black, for example, is a terrible idea, and dark red on black, similarly, isn’t great. Thankfully, those are relatively rare, but it would be nice if they’d vanish entirely in a later patch, for the sake of everyone’s eyeballs.

But, while you may be thinking that graphically, this doesn’t look like a whole lot for £14.99, there’s a lot under the hood, and I find myself coming back to it, wanting to know… What red button did they push? Was it machinery out of control? A super AI? A galactic war? Maybe they found something that somehow killed us all on its lonesome? What’s the real secret?

So if you like procedurally generated games, mysteries, puzzles, and a little bit of existential horror, perhaps give this one a go. It seems barebones at first, but there’s definitely some interesting things being done with this game, such as allowing you to continue the story even if you “died.” And, when you think the mystery’s been solved with this one, try a clean save, see if it’s any different. I ruled out Grey Goo, for example, let me know if you did too!

The Mad Welshman sighed as Abby’s microphone picked up the telltale synthetic drone… Checking his shipscan, he grinned. The room was worthless, and bordered on an airlock. “NOT THE BEES”, he cried with glee as he violently flipped the “LOCK OVERRIDE” switch.

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Source: Birthday Gift
Price: £14.99 (£18.99 with Soundtrack)
Where To Get It: GOG, Steam
Other Reviews: Release

StarCrawlers, by Juggernaut Games, is the latest in a few games this year and last that’s exploring the ol’ step based RPG formula that we know and love, and… Honestly? I’ve never been more scared of those galactic punching bags, Space Pirates, even if… I don’t think that’s entirely intentional at this stage. More on that later on.

If you’ve played more recent step-based RPGs (So named because they involve taking single “steps”, rather than smooth first person movement) like Legend of Grimrock, and older step-based games like the Might and Magic series (A heavy inspiration), then you’ll know what to expect with StarCrawlers: You go into dungeons, occasionally solving simple puzzles, but mostly using your party to beat the stuffing out of various beasties and achieve their objectives with the power of TEAMWORK. The kind of teamwork that RPG heroes do, that is… Maximizing the amount of pain they can lay onto a group.

There seems to be more on the way, but the basic gameplay is already there: You kill things for XP (Although not as much as you’ll get for doing the job overall), and loot things in order to make your pretty numbers go up, and occasionally take on story missions that seem to hint at Shenanigans (Capitalised because these are Space Opera Villain Shenanigans, the kind that results in the death of worlds, rather than banana custard over somebody’s face), and allow you to pick your side between various players in a sci-fi universe (From the UFP, Corporate Overlords, to people like the Workers’ Collective, essentially one of the few unions left around in the far future, it seems.) In between said story missions, you’ll do procedurally generated dungeons, with the puzzles and encounters being based on the tileset and objective. Mines, for example, have Radiant Ore, which, as far as I’m aware, only an Engineer can deal with, while Corporate Offices are the Hackers’ main playground. Similarly, protecting a scientist means exactly that, with no sweet reward if he dies before you leave, while one of the few mission types that doesn’t involve pissing someone off involves doing them a favour while fighting off animal or robot type enemies.

There’s quite a cast of characters, too, with eight being playable off the bat, and at least one unlockable through the first story mission, each with their own uses, quirks, and mechanics. The Prototype (A stupidly advanced killer robot with some programming issues, and the aforementioned unlockable), for example, is all about massive damage, but with the caveat that if you use their powers too much, they’ll malfunction, and odd things will happen, eventually leading to them being out of the fight. So far, of course, this is reading more like a feature list than a critical review, but it’s important to get across how complex the game is under the hood, before examining how accessible it is, and whether that complexity is good or bad.

Funnily enough, it’s fairly easy to get into, as the first few story missions are balanced around a single character, two at most, and it’s entirely possible to either get three out of the nine or so characters in your party (Four can be taken on any one mission), or two well kitted ones by the time you hit the Aurora Starliner (The third story mission, and the one where the game’s story starts kicking off.) There are also multiple saves, skill respecs (There aren’t, currently, enough skill points to achieve all of more than a single tree, out of three per character), and each character’s role is well explained, even if their quirks may take a little getting used to. Also helping is that characters are not, strictly speaking, gendered (Male or female is fine), although their characters seem firmly fixed at the present time (And are likely to remain so): The Void Psyker is a bit monkeycheese, because it turns out messing with the dark between the stars messes with your perception of reality, the Smuggler is morally grey, the Prototype is torn between being violent braggart and friendly, poetry creating nice person…

…The writing, as a result, is okay. It’s not going to win any awards, except perhaps Good Use of Archetypes/Stereotypes. But the combat is accessible, the tilesets are pretty nice, with some variation between them (Grimy starship, Nice starship, and various Plot Starships, as one example of the subsets), and their own little quirks (Including, in some missions, faction loot, which, if you take it, will worsen your relationship with… Very possibly the very person who hired you.) So far, it’s seeming like it’s well worth the money if you like step-based RPGs, with some cool stuff. And yet, as I often say, no game is perfect, and definitely no game that’s still in development. So what do you have to watch out for right now if you buy it while it’s still being made?

Balance. As I’ve mentioned, this is a complex game under the hood, and while it tutorialises quite well, new things get introduced, and then have to be fine tuned. A good example of this would be the aforementioned Space Pirates. Yes, I did get there.

I don’t take Space Pirate missions anymore. At least, not until they’ve been through the balance grinder… Because that “Normal: For Level 3” or the like? It Lies. Space Pirates come in groups of 1… to 5. And there’s rarely just one group. They have pretty average hit points for humans, and pretty average damage for humans… But they’re the only human group right now that I know of, that can start with a full group… Nearly everything else is monsters or some variety of robot, mostly individually weaker than the party. Space Pirates, on the other hand, are only “below par” because they don’t have the wide ability grouping that the party does… And this actually makes them more dangerous. They take time to whittle down, and all that time, the only thing they’re going to be doing is a constant stream of damage, damage that, of course, whittles you down. As I mentioned… There’s rarely one group, and nearly all of my sadquits (I can’t really call them ragequits, because I wasn’t angry, just resigned) have been through either missions involving them, or missions involving Corporate Officers (Who have at least twice the normal human HP, and can summon other monsters.)

The latter set of encounters, by the way, was my fault. This game already has the beginnings of a faction system, and, as it turns out, pissing off Chimera Biopharm (Think the Umbrella Corporation) was a bad idea. Because the very next mission after I’d hit the “Okay, we want you dead now” threshold (Something like -60 Reputation), I’d decided to raid Chimera… And they welcomed me with a series of encounters that rapidly picked my party apart, even turning up in some missions only slightly related to them because… Well, they really wanted me dead!

So, right now, StarCrawlers is in a place that interests me critically, but I’ll freely admit isn’t for everybody: The midgame so far (About Level 5) currently feels a little grindy, and is about where the missions started blending into one another for me (Mainly because I had to do more of them to get to those aforementioned Story Missions), and I’ll happily admit that I have yet to get to the current “endgame”, the full levelling of my characters, because sooner or later, I run into one of those balancing issues, and it kills my interest in that save.

Do I think the game has promise? Yes, it’s pretty damn clear that Juggernaut knows their RPGs, and knows how to put them together. They’ve shown, over previous updates, that they do know they have to balance things, and I’m as confident as I can be that they can get that mix right. Similarly, a lot of effort has gone into both accessibility and environment, and even the placeholder designs for newer enemies such as Security Turrets shows that mix of wanting to give an impression of the final design, while concentrating on how they work. Do I think it’s worth a gamble of £15? Yes. But the usual Early Access caveat applies: Be Aware It’s Still In Development. It may only start to seem obvious after your twentieth or so mission, which hints at why I feel this game has promise, but it will happen.

In the meantime, I’m going to keep plugging away until release. The game definitely seems worth that.

The Mad Welshman drew the powers of the Dark to him, and giggled. He had such sights to show!

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Last week, the update I had been waiting for arrived for Master of Orion. Not updating AI. Not a balancing patch. Just bugs.

…Okay, firstly, that sentence sort of needs context. And secondly, robots and bad humans too. Specifically, the bugs are the Klackon, one of the beloved original races from the game, the robots are the Meklar, another series staple, and the bad humans, the Terran Khanate, are welcomed not only for their voice talent (Robert Englund, the face and voice behind Freddy Krueger, as the Khan; Sumalee Montano, the voice of Arcee, as his adjutant. Both add their years of acting experience to a game already chock full of Big Names), but a bit more tonal balance, and a possible subtle nod to the story within the original games. You see, the Orion Sector is, if the backstory is preserved, an experiment. And the varying alien races are the bacteria on the petri dish. And a common element in Space Opera is… Humans transplanted to other places, to evolve independently. Along with other races (For example, did you know the Darlok and Sakkra are technically related? Well, now you do!)

But while the Terran Khanate is a fascinating mirror of the Utopian ideal represented by the Human Republic, that’s not what we’re here to talk about today. We’re here to talk about how it feels to play my favourite faction, the Klackon Hive Mind.

Surprising nobody, the Klackon are not Good People. They don’t think like us, quite literally, and that creates a race that is, by our standards, automatically “Evil.” They don’t care about individual Klackon, except in terms of a loss of resources. They seem more human for a variety of reasons (Including, I suspect, the need to give a “human” face to all the factions, in terms of player experience), but, like the Meklar, have a different enough mindset that even the beginning narration has to acknowledge that their core priorities are inimical to everything in their way (Spread The Hive and Optimise The Universe, respectively.) Both the Meklar and the Klackon, it seems, are perfect for a game of MoO, which has the “problem” (if you see it that way) of an endgame where nearly any goal becomes possible once you’ve hit a certain point (Making the concept of end goals more a personal preference than anything else.)

But I just like the bugs more. Not only out of nostalgia (They were my first win in both of the first two Master of Orion games), but because I’m not so hot on the OS Memery that spews forth from the Meklar advisor (Your mileage may vary there, obviously.)

One of the things that some folks see as a problem is that the early game and end game for Master of Orion are very similar. You always start on the same kind of worlds (Terran Abundant, for the majority of races), and you often end with a massive superiority, and the universe before you. But it’s often the fun you have crafting your own narrative around this that helps. And with the Klackon, that’s nice and easy.

The Hive starts small. Confined. It longs for the stars, but the resources are not yet there. So it reaches, steadily. Small steps. This time, this Orion Sector, it gets a bit of luck. There are worlds nearby, and it isn’t bothered by anything except small fleets of Space Pirates, the flotsam of the universe as it expands.

While weaker than other races militarily, The Hive still has enough materiel to consume flotsam. And so it grows. It reaches three systems before an element of the Not-Hive is encountered. The Human Republic. Quickly, communication is established, and it is decided that eliminating the Not-Hive is a waste of resources. Gestures are made, using a tool of communication: The Embassy, where the Not-Hive is presented with The Hive’s action, in a manner the Not-Hive understands.

Meanwhile, expansion continues. Worlds produce until pollution becomes an impediment to production, and then The Hive focuses on curing the pollution. In short order, a fleet of ships to collectively defend The Hive is created. It is, for now, limited, again by resources, but as resources improve, and tools are discovered, they are quickly added to The Hive.

A world is protected by a lifeform that is dangerous to The Hive, but the system is valuable. The Hive waits. It deals with the threat when force is overwhelming, and quickly colonises the system. By this time, The Hive’s defense fleet is larger and more powerful than all but one Not-Hive being.

The Orion System holds that Not-Hive. Nothing else.

As time goes by, The Hive is improved. The Not-Hive also improves, and soon, there is something else. Something Almost-Hive. The only difference is that it is mechanical, electronic, and not made of plasm and living cells. It is more populous, and is the only direct competitor to The Hive.

At points, it even surpasses The Hive. The Hive knows this is a temporary state. Meanwhile, the Not-Hive connect to each other, connect their worlds, in much the same way The Hive does. In a way, they are becoming like The Hive.

The Hive is not amused, or bemused. The Hive knows that this is inevitable. However, all is not well in The Hive, as The Hive has discovered that there is now a Greater Hive: The Galactic Council. It is a strange Hive, a Hive that is Not-Hive, but can be led by those who both have the greatest numbers, and who talk most efficiently to the Not-Hive.

The Hive does not react when it finds its grip on this Greater Hive slipping to the Almost-Hive, these… Meklar. It merely notes that it has the resources for a goal that will allow it to thrive by another means: The destruction of the Orion Guardian, and the consumption of its technology, still beyond The Hive’s resources to achieve.

The Hive is not incorrect. The Hive is never incorrect. The Orion Guardian falls. A colony ship is sent, and The Hive grows. By this point, it cannot be stopped. It will allow the Not-Hive to live, as they no longer threaten The Hive. The Almost-Hive will soon come to the conclusion that it no longer threatens The Hive.

The Hive continues, as it always has. And always will.

This, in essence, remains the strength of a good 4X: That you can tell a story, with only a little nudging. What I just related to you was me basically steamrolling the AI as the Klackon. Said like that, it’s somewhat dull. But the story can be changed. Perhaps to the story of The Human Republic’s quest for Unification, where All Are Friends. The Terran Khanate’s rise to dominance over the Lesser Species. The Mrrshan’s rise to the title of Ultimate Hunter.

That’s the real magic. I just thought I’d share.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £14.99
Where To Get It: Steam

I didn’t really want to take a look at Soul Axiom before release, as it was a puzzle adventure, and game fatigue would possibly have made me forget this one was being released. I’m sort of glad I didn’t, and sort of frustrated. Oh, and it’s by a team of Welsh developers, specifically Wales Interactive. Let’s see how my countryfolk have done, eh?

Soul Axiom is a sequel of sorts to Master Reboot, an earlier game, but knowledge of what happened there isn’t strictly required, as the digital afterlife has gotten a 2.0 upgrade… One which has, as you might expect, gone horribly wrong. So it’s up to you to, er… Solve puzzles using contextual abilities like deleting/repairing things, blowing things up, and a sort of object-rewind feature. Also collecting PEMO data (Memory documents shaped like the creepiest banging cymbal monkey I’ve seen in a long time) and the eyes of G.O.D (Acronym deliberate for plot reasons) to expand the story. With them, you get a more complete picture of how exactly everything went wrong, and without them… It stays pretty confusing for three quarters of the game. Which is a problem.

Why is it a problem? Because I’m spending more time looking for monkeys than I am moving the story forward, and, while it’s possible to go back and get monkeys, I have one shot at it, because… One save.

So, nice things: It has pretty good colour blindness support for the actual puzzles. Thank the Holies, somebody listens when the word “Accessibility” is used. The soundtrack is fairly emotional, from the melancholy bells of the Lighthouse area to the beats of the aztec monkeyland (Although, as a Welshman, I’m confused. Why all the talk about food in the jungle song? I mean, they are saying “Bwyta”, aren’t they, Wales Interactive?) Once the story gets going, it’s okay, with a four character tragedy unfolding that affects the very concept of death itself. Dr. Davies, who discovered Deus Energy; Solomon, a politician and ex-soldier; Dana, a movie actress; and Anastasia Strazh, who had previously worked with Dr. Davies.

Of course, it’s balanced out by the bad in this case: The story is pretty hammy at times, and until you realise one of the characters is a movie star, their “Memories” will make absolutely zero sense. Many of the puzzles seem there for the sake of puzzles (The “Move the skulls to match colours” puzzle is possibly the most egregious so far), and that single save thing is a real git, considering there are three possible endings, one for three of the characters, and the trigger isn’t obvious as to which you’re going to get. The paths genuinely don’t have any differences I’ve noticed except for the end, although getting all three leads to something extra. Just as, y’know, collecting everything does.

This, in essence, is my core problem with Soul Axiom: Whether you think you do or not, not collecting everything is a lesser experience, while collecting everything… Sometimes requires either a guide, or doing everything to everything you can. For example, in the museum… Look up from time to time. Most people I know don’t do that so much. The game is often fun (With the possible exception of the drones in the War Zone. I hate timing puzzles with instafails), and death doesn’t seem to have much of a consequence except for achievements, but it’s constantly reminding you that it is a game, and a potentially interesting story suffers as a result.

I’d still say give it a go if you like first person puzzle games with FPS style movement, just be aware that… Well, the collectables might not be as optional as they first appear.

The Mad Welshman edited his memory of this article after writing it, but he keeps finding creepy cymbal monkeys in his apartment as a result. The IT Helpdesk at TMW has remained unhelpful in solving this problem.

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