Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £22.99 (£29.99 for Deluxe Edition)
Where To Get It: Steam

‘Satellite Reign is similar to Syndicate.’ I’ve been seeing this phrase a lot, unsurprising, because the game was billed as a spiritual successor to that second game, made by developers who worked on it, and it does, indeed, have similarities. But it’s not a terribly useful phrase. Let me try and do things a little better for you. For extra comparison, I’ve also written a Going Back on Syndicate.

The intro to the game is quite interesting, and quite fitting for a corporate overlord surveying the situation.

So, let’s go back to basics: Satellite Reign is a game where four corporate “Specialist Staff” (That’s a nice, corporate way of saying “Wetworks Operatives”, itself a nice way of saying “Professional Killers and Saboteurs”) are sent on various missions to ensure that your corporation is the one that gets to continue doing business. If you guessed this involves murder, assassination, property damage, and general mayhem, you would not only win an imaginary cookie, you’d also win a visit to [insert corp]’s wonderful Human Resources Department… Specifically the Attitude Adjustment centre, because you’ve quite clearly got the wrong idea about how the Glorious Corporation works.

It is, however, somewhat loadscreen heavy. Once the game actually begins, there’s less, but with my setup being less than optimal, three loading screens is a significant time investment once the game begins. And then the fun begins.

See all those dots in the minimap? People. Many of them more important than you realise at first.

Except… Once you leave the tutorial, the openness of the world works against you. The game, in a sense, resists being played. The camera refuses to move from a certain angle, despite tall buildings getting in the way, and you will be spending a fair amount of time paused in the mission control screen, poring over what you know of the map. It’s also pretty resource intensive, so it’s more important than usual to meet more than the minimum specs, or else you’re going to be waiting longer, and reacting more slowly to situations as they develop.

I have to admit, although I love me a good cyberpunk game (And, importantly, Satellite Reign remains cyberpunk until you get some serious kit. For all that you’re a rival corporation, and clones exist, you’re still only four folks), I’m not so fond of Satellite Reign. The game clearly colour codes and highlights the sorts of things you want to keep an eye on, the music is quite tense, and very fitting, but you’re in an information overload from the word go, and it’s difficult to filter that.

Do I go for ATMs? Do I rob a bank or three? Get researchers? Try and level up my agents by hacking, murdering, sabotaging and hijacking? I don’t knooooooooow!

Security is no joke, even at the beginning of the game. Most of the reason I prefer stealth.

I do like that there are multiple paths through a situation. For example, the first mission, you can sneak in the back door and avoid two thirds of the security, in and out if you’re quick enough. Or you can go in the back door, gun everyone down, and leave as you came in. Similarly, you can level your agents in interesting ways, and there’s leeway even within their roles. But personally, I’m feeling lost, torn between several directions, and while that sort of fits the mood of the game, it’s not really for me. It’s a game that seems to requires multiple losses to truly master, but, unlike a roguelike, which follows the same philosophy, losing isn’t a case of “straight back in”, but loading screens and the tutorial mission. Or reloading the save.

I also like that there’s a lot going on, in a sense. Civilians, police, drones, cars… They’re all constantly moving, making for a living tapestry, and the dystopian vision is quite clear every time you turn down a side road and see rubble, and the city’s dispossesed (Who you can take advantage of). Alas, I sadly don’t think this game is for me.

If you like open worlds with lots to do, skill options, are good at squad level micro play, and don’t mind a lot of info being thrown at you, then being left to your own devices, this is probably a good game for you. If you don’t feel that real time squad combat and stealthing is your thing, then you’re probably better off with something more focused.

The Mad Welshman sat on his corporate throne, head in his hands. The synthesised voices of his agents rang in his ears, and he thought very hard of the Bahamas HR Centre.

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Screwfly hate you. They love you, but at the same time, they hate you (Well, not really… But it seems that way when you play sometimes. ;D ). They want you a gibbering wreck on the floor, babbling about the dark between the stars, or, in the case of their first game, Zafehouse Diaries, about how the dead won’t stop moaning and scrabbling at the walls outside. Screwfly make Legit Hard Games. And I want to celebrate this, by talking about Deadnaut, and how the game supports the mood it wants to invoke.

You can create your own crew, but monitoring and equipping them from then on is up to skill *and* luck.

Deadnaut is not a game I’m good at, and I don’t think I’m meant to be good at it. The game, in a sense, resists it. But this is one of the rare cases where I find myself more immersed in the experience because of obtuseness, not less. Why?

Because in Deadnaut, I’m a Lieutennant Gorman, watching my own maladjusted crew of misfits and criminals attempt to board supposedly long dead alien ships that, you guessed it, aren’t long dead after all. Not for me the experience of directly seeing what’s happening through amazing Commander Vision. Oh no. That would imply we’re valued, and have the technology. No, we, the characters (And, by extension, the player’s unnamed and invisible character) are the dregs, the people Humanity would rather throw in a meat grinder. So we have three screens we can switch between. And, bad commander that I am, I’d rather get fucked than micro manage anything.

Pictured: Me suffering because I was weapons-free in a heavily damaged hulk.

The three “screens” are pretty simple in theory: The left shows the team, their equipment, their stats, their quirks and flaws, and their health, mental and physical. Being a Gorman, I don’t really look at that too much in missions, and panic when the suit-breach alarms are going off. The right shows information we’ve gathered, giving me clues as to the threats we’re experiencing, the ship and crew logs we’re salvaging, and the security/power status of the ship we’re entering. I only look at this between missions, even though it could give me early warning that no, our guns won’t work in this situation.

The middle screen, for me, is where it’s at. The buttons sometimes bewilder me, but I know enough to push NET to see the Watchers, automated, roaming antivirus programs gone wrong, as they go about their not-so-merry business of Keeping Things As They Were (to my detriment); LOC , which lets me see how damaged an area is, and occasionally, when the situation demands it, PWR, which lets me see if a turret I’ve noticed is powered up or not. I know enough, being a greedy corporate scumbag, to turn the signal booster dial to SIGnal, and leave it there, even if it dooms my crew because I can’t see what’s happening (VISual) and can’t give them orders (AUDio). The more signal I have, the more KnowledgeBux we get from looting these rotting hulks, and the better I can equip my poor, doomed squad for the future.

Hell, sometimes, I’m nice enough to resurrect one, if I can afford to do so. So, as you might have guessed from this description, there’s a lot to take in, and not a lot of it is in easy reach, having to switch between screens to see things, having to, god forbid, split the group so we can keep the Watchers from resetting that turret that almost chewed the squad up when they opened the door, or use the special abilities of the Shield and Sensor suits to scan ahead, plan, and protect team-mates from the dangerous conditions created by nigh-destroyed rooms (Because our vacuum suits are cheap, and don’t protect against space worth a damn.) This is a game where, if you’re good, you can micro, switching between screens to gauge threats in a safe moment, pair up team-mates efficiently (This one hates this one, don’t keep them close. This one hates open spaces, try and keep them in small rooms. This one doesn’t like open spaces, use them as a rearguard)

This screen may not make much sense… Until you realise I’m being screwed around with by ancient space-ghosts.

But this game, in a sense, doesn’t want you to do that. Watchers and Signal Dampers can mess up your visuals (Leaving you nothing but static) and audio (Leaving you unable to even warn your team of nearby threats, or tell them to get the fuck out of there right now before it collapses). Your guns are useful, but also damage the ship, so sometimes, you will have to order your squad not to use their weapons… And it won’t always help, either, because sometimes the enemy has guns. And sonic shockwaves. And plasma bursts. Melee weapons exist, but I’ve never seen them used very well. And the game’s controls don’t help either, there are very few hotkeys, so nearly everything is “Click shield person, right click this person we want to shield” or the like.

Despite that, I love the game. Why? Because, with its flaws, it makes me feel like a Gorman, and, on a good day, like a Corporal Hicks. The game, through its flaws and hateful moments, creates exactly the feel it’s aiming for: That moment where everything is going wrong, and you have to act and oh god someone’s dead what the hell do I oh god another beep beep beep BEEEEEEEEEEEEE-

I have precisely one criticism of this game: I’d like to actually read logs, instead of being unable to look at any screens the moment I either win (By completing a set number of missions), or lose (By all my squad dying before extraction.) I know the logs, just like the diaries of Zafehouse Diaries, are also procedurally generated, and so lose their lustre if you look at them too closely, but I still want to see. I want to see what I missed, why I failed. I want to reread the last communications. I want to know.

All of the buttons on this right screen provide potentially useful information. It is not a good idea to check it mid-battle.

But if you want a good example of a game that accurately creates the feel of being the inept (or life saving) commander giving orders from afar in a sci-fi action horror, then Deadnaut is pretty bloody close. You can even, if you’re feeling particularly sadistic, make your friends in the game as crew members (Although I’m not sure how many people you know who have the drawback of fucking up radio reception randomly wherever they are, as an example), and forever voyage with those instead of procedurally generated crew.

Me? I like the procession of badly mismatched crew. Makes me feel better on those rare occasions I win. There’s even the promise that some Deadnauts can be given parole from their forever deadly duties. I have yet to see it. One day, I may be a Good Commander, and have that happen.

Hahaha no. They’re all screwed, every time. Because I am Gorman, and I love to panic. I’m an asshole that way.

Deadnaut is available on Steam for £6.99. I have also recorded some LP type footage of it here.

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Source: Review Copy
Price: £1.59
Where To Get It: Steam

Energy Balance is, at its core, a game for math puzzle fans, and that’s about it. If you don’t like rearranging numbers to fit arbitrary goals in the name of mathematics (Okay, there’s something about fixing an engine so an alien and their robo-cat can get home) without hints, and you don’t like the idea of not being able to save your progress, then this game is not for you. Because that is, in essence, the entirety of the game. 12 configurations of numbers to arrange into their “true” forms, 12 static cutscenes, for a quid and a bit. Which makes it somewhat hard to review, beyond the statement I gave at the beginning. So let’s talk about aliens and robot cats for a bit.

If memory serves, I had only two numbers the wrong way round. >:C

Aliens, it seems, are similar to us, in that we don’t like to RTFM (Read The Fucking Manual), and that they give responsibility of driving powerful, deadly machines to people, then promptly forget about refreshers unless they fuck up. They’re prone to navel gazing, and talking to their robot cats. Robot cats, in the meantime, are often anthropomorphised by aliens in much the same way we do our cats, while being… Well, cats. One thing I didn’t know beforehand about aliens, however, is that their engines, navigation systems, weapons, et al, are all run on the same idiot proof UI that requires them to solve a math puzzle, thus showing basic competency in some of the skills they need to pilot the bloody things safely. Also they apparently enjoy war for nebulous, fallacious reasons like “honour” and “glory”, like some of us do.

I can confirm, as a human being, that these systems can be muddled through without much critical thought and brute forced without catastrophic systems damage. I can also confirm that it is more enjoyable to do so with your own music, as the aliens’ system apparently doesn’t have volume control, only an on-off switch. We are, thankfully, superior to these aliens in some respects, it seems. Mathematically inclined human beings who play games may find this simple, as proven by my friend, who quite helpfully informed me after ten minutes of brute forcing that I could switch two numbers around to finish the calibrations I was engaged in… Which was correct. I can also confirm that these engines will only tell you when you have correctly mathed up a solution to individual rows or columns, as opposed to the whole thing, which will mislead and frustrate those who aren’t mathematically inclined.

Robot cat is pleased you can math. They’d be more pleased if we weren’t drifting with broken systems.

Completing the 12 main configs nets you 3 more, and another static cutscene. Yaaay. I would, however, reiterate that this game is for the mathematics puzzle inclined, and probably not for anyone who doesn’t like doing that sort of puzzle over and over, smug in the knowledge that they can math better than the rest of us. It also serves as a reminder that, despite popular perception, puzzle games are not “casual” games. Learning this lesson will only cost you £1.59 , although alternatives with hints exist out there for those of us who don’t feel hinting ruins a puzzle.

Meow (Cautious)

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Source: Early Access backer
Price: base price £14.99 (Sale going on right now)
Where To Get It: Steam Page , Official Site

Start with two, maybe get four. Stun *all* the guards.

Even as a member of the awesome technological rebellion that is Invisible, Incorporated, I feel sorry for the security. One poor soul has been tazed for the third time in a row, and is no doubt thinking he might want to seek out a medical professional for what is obviously narcolepsy. I can’t feel too sorry, however, as the IT department of this particular company seems to want to eat my babies. This is just one of a large set of feelings I have for Invisible Inc, the latest offering from the creators of Mark of the Ninja, Klei Entertainment. Most of these feelings are positive.

The game boasts that it has 2 animated cutscenes, and I must admit, when I first saw that boast, I was leery of the release product (I’ve been following it since it debuted on Early Access), but my fears were put to rest within minutes. You see, the atmosphere in this game doesn’t depend on cutscenes. It depends on emergent stories, and I’m happy to report that what’s under the hood matches the aesthetic and themes of the game really well. So let’s go into that.

Sometimes, it can go horribly, disastrously wrong. And by god, it’s entertaining!

Invisible, Inc, despite its name, is not about a Syndicate like corporation, smashing all before it with soulless, mind controlled soldiers. It’s cyberpunk as all get out, and II are the little people, fighting back against the corporations that sought to stamp them out… And almost succeeded. The game’s premise is that the few free members of Invisible Inc are on the run, and have 72 hours (3 days) to, if not win their fight against such entities as Sankaku, the droid centric Japanese corporation, or the German arms supremos, [insert], at least kick them where it hurts. And all we have for that is the means to quietly slip into corporate buildings, a friendly, but limited AI, and not very much else. While options open up the more you play the game (characters who are better at killing, characters who can disable machinery, more hacking options), and you will get more powerful if you play your cards right, at the beginning, you’re up against it, and the clock is ticking.

Gameplay wise, it’s turn based, squad level strategy with some RPG elements. Two to four agents infiltrate a building, either beat down, hack, or avoid security measures, and try to both rob the place blind (Your finances and levelling up are dependent on this) and complete their objectives. And it’s pretty intuitive. There is a tutorial that gives you most of the basics, and the rest is quite helpfully shown in tooltips, in one of the three vision modes you can quickly switch between. And here’s where it gets fun.

Tactical View, where the necessity of hacking that one camera drone becomes so very clear.

See, Klei thought their design through, and it shows. It’s isometric, but not only can you rotate the view, you can switch to “tactical” view, which reduces the clutter, or “Incognita Mode”, which is where all the hacking takes place. It’s a risk reward game, where rushing will, done well, ensure the steadily creeping Alarm Level of the building won’t screw you over at a critical moment… And, done badly, will quickly and efficiently see you cut down, your cause lost. But there are very few moments where I’ve put down my keyboard and muttered “That was bullshit”, and, on reflection, most of those were definitely my fault. Like the time I went for a safe that I knew would take more to get to than the three turns it would take for the guard to wake up… And neatly trapped myself, with no backup because I split my agents too often. Or the time I hacked a camera drone, and realised afterward that it had nowhere to go.

Stacking the deck either way, allowing you to fine tune your experience, are Rewinds and Expert Mode checkboxes. Rewind modes are your “Oh sod, I didn’t mean to do that” button, allowing you to turn back time… But they’re a limited resource, adding a layer of tactical depth that remains intuitive. Meanwhile, expert mode restricts you in challenging ways, like adding a turn timer (Oops, now you can’t just sit back and think about it, because there’s ten seconds left to do something aaaaaaaaa-nuuuuu!), or making enemies harder. At its base level, though, the game encourages stealth over violence. Killing most guards will not only up the security level, it’ll cost you money, and that cost… Can quickly ramp up. Add to that that ammo is not always a guaranteed find, and… Well, it’s better to be dodgy, or sneaky, than to be violent, is all I’m saying… And I love it.

Do not do this unless you are confident each agent can handle things.

You’ll love it too, if you like turn based strategy and cyberpunk, or roguelikes and cyberpunk (As the levels are procedurally generated). If you’re not the patient type, however, or strategically minded… Don’t say I didn’t warn you when I say this game definitely wants you to think really carefully about whether you want to hack that Daemon protected safe open, or try and knock out that guard.

Invisible Inc released on the 12^th of May. A camera droid is watching me write this review, and it’s creeping me out a little.

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Source: Bought with my own cashmoneys
Price: £9.99
Where To Get It: Steam Page, Desura, Company Site

The Mercury… A poor, doomed, possibly sabotaged ship. Let’s roll out…

Log – Discovered near burnt fragments of Convoy #1 by Convoy #2.

Convoy Leader’s Log, Who Damn Knows: I have picked up a new ally on this war torn world. He calls himself Friendly Fire, because he claims he has a bad habit of destroying his allies by accident. I refuse to believe a man can be so unlucky.

Convoy has been described as Mad Max meets FTL, and, in a sense, it’s quite right. It’s a procedural action strategy title where you’re trying to obtain four replacement spaceship parts on a largely inhospitable world. The world is split between three factions (The TORVAK corporation, Raiders, and the Privateers) and all three factions, for various reasons, are likely to try and destroy your convoy along the road. Don’t give them the satisfaction.

The game controls fairly simply, almost entirely with clicks of the mouse, and it looks similar in terms of visual style to FTL (So, it looks spritey, and pretty good overall). The music is interesting, but… It definitely has some minor problems at release. For example, a thing that appears to be happening quite often is items sticking to the shop screen, along with a touch of slowdown every now and again…

Not pictured: All the DEATH waiting.

But enough about visual bugs, which I’m sure will be fixed, let’s talk about the game itself. Difficulty wise, the main elements are to do with your need for fuel, and the trials and tribulations of combat. Combat is a case of moving your escort vehicles around, targeting enemies as you go, and sometimes (only sometimes), forcing your opponents to ram into one of the obstacles of your running battles, such as pylons, sudden outcroppings, random wreckages, and, in some rare cases, canyons and buildings. Of course, there’s more to it than that, as your MCV, while immobile, has special abilities. The absolute beginning one, for example, is an EMP cannon. Fires once every reload, stuns opponents, destroys shields, and is bloody useful for the aforementioned enemy crashings and burnings.

Your first fights are rarely overly tough, but they do grind your health and armour down, and you’ll need to be pretty savvy. Within the first ten minutes of my second game, I had already spent most of my money on my first gun, and was down to around half the fuel I’d started with. Seeing as fuel can only be replenished by events that reward you with fuel, or by buying it from camps using the game’s scrap currency, it’s always a bit of a worry. No, fights don’t always reward you with fuel. One of the more horrifying events of the game actually comes from fuel loss, where you have a bleak choice. Wait for someone to help… Or render some of your crew down for biofuels. I went for that choice, and I still feel like a monster for doing so.

Ooooh, so *close*! I could have saved me a lot of time there!

Still, fuel isn’t an insurmountable problem, and soon enough, you’re riding high, with a full convoy. You beat the somewhat difficult final boss, and… You’ve maybe unlocked a vehicle or two. Orrrr… You’re nearly out of fuel and scrap, your escorts are all destroyed, and all that’s really left is hoping you’re going to luck into enough scrap for a vehicle/fuel, and silently wishing the next combat event, at least, is quick (A criticism is that, sadly, it’s not quick very often. I’m staring at my MCV, slowly getting torn to shreds by a single TORVAK raider I can do nothing about… Not. Good.) . In fact, a single game on normal takes somewhere between half an hour (If you’re unlucky) and three hours (For a safe win).

If you’re playing on Normal difficulty or above, it’s usually the latter, the game is somewhat punishing. This isn’t to say that the game is low on replay value, however. There are quite a few events, and there’s a small selection of different sidequests, some of which are somewhat amusing to find. Case in point, the Insult Fighting event, a fond reference to Monkey Island, or, similarly, the Modern Major General reference (both of which I got at the beginning of my third run, giving me a nice comfortable start of an extra vehicle and some cash)

Sure, I had resources, but before I could hit a camp, I lost the escort. It took me ten minutes to die.

There’ve been quite a few runs since then, but my overall opinion is this: If you liked FTL, you’ll be okay with this. It feels a little less balanced, more chance ridden than FTL was, and some of the events are inconsistent in tone (You can shoot pretty much anybody in an event, but it honestly feels like kicking puppies in many of them), whereas the combat is still interesting, and, with a little more polish, it could be good. As is, though, seeing your convoy painfully get disassembled is a frustrating experience. While I would say it’s worth the money, time and enjoyment wise… Play Easy difficulty first, don’t tackle Normal and Hard until you’ve unlocked some better vehicles. And let’s hope they make death a little less lingering.

Convoy, by Convoy Games, released on the 21st of April. The Mercury keeps crashing on Omek Prime, and many men have died due to this temporal horror.

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