PC Review #150: Flat Heroes

Title: Flat Heroes

Developer: Parallel Circles

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux

Price: $14.99

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The wave of local multiplayer games have been washing onto the PC and consoles shores for quite some time now. From Nidhogg and Samurai Gunn to Push Me Pull You and Overcooked, there's no shortage of titles in that vein. A few offer modes and gameplay for the solo player - Towerfall Ascension and Inversus to name a few - but Flat Heroes offers the best of both worlds, a finely-tuned evasive platformer featuring a sizable amount of modes for both single and multiplayer.

Flat Heroes is one of those games where its polish and style is evident straight from the menu, as its clean minimalist screens smoothly shift between menus and level selections. The set-up is simple: an acrobatic square, in ever-shifting single-screen gauntlets, don't get hit. Of course, that last part often isn't so easy. For solo player, you start in Waves mode, distinct stages and boss fights that wrings smartly-designed challenges from the game's varied hazards. From screen-filling rectangles that threaten to crush you against the walls, to swarms of homing rockets and bubbles, to ricocheting triangles that streak across the screen in a frenetic hailstorm of color, each hazard is a new test of your platforming prowess. 

Thankfully, your square's agility is more than enough to handle Flat Heroes' dangerous onslaught. With simple hops, wall clinging, and air dashes, you can leap and tumble through levels with ease and precision. The controls are perfectly balanced to always make you feel in control, but with enough fluidity to feel reckless and tense as you just barely dodge over incoming swarms or outrun a laser grid.

Flat Heroes rewards your progress through Waves with new color palettes and more importantly new game modes that cleverly twist the core foundations precise evasion and agile movement. Battle is a geometric take on deathmatch where you dash through enemies, while Runner and Catch are Flat Heroes' versions of capture the flag (with a slight dual stick shooter angle as Runner lets you shoot projectiles). Each is a hectic rush of close calls and exploding squares, and can all be played against the AI if friends aren't around.

Flat Heroes's minimalist platforming is currently on Early Access, with more modes and levels planned in future updates. But as is, the game already shines, through its responsive agile gameplay and slickly-designed aesthetic. You can purchase Flat Heroes on Steam. 

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PC Review #149: Anarcute

Title: Anarcute

Developer: Anarteam

Platforms: PC, Xbox One

Price: $14.99

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A quick glance at Anarcute, and one might assume it's some kind of RTS or strategy game. How else can you control and direct such a large crowd of rambunctious rioters, especially when the two other games in development about protesting mobs - RIOT and Okhlos - hewn to the tactical design. But Anarcute isn't like that; in fact, it's a breezy arcade-y action game that feels like part puzzle game, part shooter.

The set-up is simple: evil world-dominating corporation, police force in the city streets, take down the bad guys. That last part is where Anarcute shines. Starting as a single animal protestor, moving through each level's streets allows you to gather up others and grow your one-fox/frog/giraffe/etc-protest into a dozens-strong mob. The tight maze-like stages and pre-set enemies gives Anarcute the sense of a fast-paced puzzler; you need to choose the best approach through the streets, deciding which enemy and hazards to tackle in the best order to build your mob while losing the least amount of protestors. There's even a slight stealth aspect, as you avoid enemy line of sight until you have a large enough group to take them on.

Loosing protestors is something you want to avoid, because the size of your mob is more than just a visual effect. Your mob acts essentially as a ship in a shoot-em-up, each individual acting as a point of health and being to able to carry items as ammo. Early levels may just have you facing single cops and lasers, once rooftop snipers, armored foes with area-of-effect attacks, and rockets enter the mix, Anarcute becomes an evasive shooter. Using your mob's dash to dodge attacks, unleashing hailstorms of debris, charging up your shockwave to gain some breathing room. The game's mechanical bosses put those skills to the test.

The size of your mob also enables powerful abilities, from being able to knock buildings like an unsteady jenga tower or blast enemies back with a stomp to temporary invincibility and buffed attacks. These abilities tie into both the puzzle aspect and the action, as building your mob up to defeat well-guarded areas is key, as is keeping your larger mob alive with well-timed dodges and use of your abilities. Tokens earned through the campaign also unlocks perks and upgrades that can add a fiery touch to your stomp or allow thrown objects to bounce into additional enemies, among others.

While Anarcute isn't the most taxing game in terms of difficulty, it has enough moving parts - keeping your mob alive, assimilating more protesters, avoiding enemies until your mob is big enough, using abilities, dodging, attacking, and so on - to make it a reasonable challenge. The aesthetic may be colorful, cartoon-y, and vibrant, but Anarcute is surprisingly involved and briskly-paced beneath its veneer of cute animals.

Anarcute is available on Steam, Humble Bundle, and Xbox One.

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PC Review #148: Expand

Title: Expand
Developers: Chris Johnson & Chris Larkin
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Price: $5.99
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There are only a few games that I've played that would merit the description of "hypnotic". SpaceChem and Factorio are on that list, watching your carefully crafting assembly line shift and spin and intersect and interact in perfectly synchronized loops. The artful combat of Dust, as you cleave the air with your blade and leave trails of mystic energy in your wake or twist it into screen-clearing vortexes. The lines of sound emanating from your footsteps in Dark Echo, as they criss-cross and ricochet in colored patterns through the darkness. And now Expand makes a excellent case for its inclusion.

Expand is at once both an exercise in simplicity and complexity. From a small palette of white, black, red, and pink merges a seamless flowing experience, a shifting world flowering from a central core, a maze of negative space. Expand's world is bound to the confines of the screen, instead morphing dynamically between levels and areas, A path may emerge in sync with your movement, or a black or red block might shove its way through the screen, or the screen may recede and retreat into corridors and openings. It's gorgeous to watch in motion, always a joy to wait in anticipation for a new level to reveal itself.

But despite its minimalist appearance, Expand isn't a calm game. In fact, it's one of timing and evasion, akin to a slower-paced Super Hexagon. Your pink square must brave five stages, each a seamless gauntlet of moving obstacles and complex patterns of deadly red hazards. These stages can be tackled in any order, introducing new mechanics and interesting twists on established elements as you progress. While all revolve around carefully dodging dangers and timing your movement with the level architecture, some lean more towards puzzles, challenging you to consider the link between your movement and how a level changes, or featuring buttons and switches to activate. Elaborate screen-shifting "bosses" are true tests of your evasive prowess.

Expand isn't a long game, but it is a consistently surprising and engaging one. Come for the hypnotic nature of its art and unfolding world, but stay for the challenge and clever level design.

Expand is available on Steam, Humble, and itch.io.

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PC Review #147: House of the Dying Sun

Title: House of the Dying Sun
Developer: Marauder Interactive
Platforms: PC
Price: $19.99
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For a long time, years in fact, this game went by another name: Enemy Starfighter. A simpler name, without the "epic sci-fi opera" style of its current title, but perhaps a more apt description. House of the Dying Sun is all about destroying your enemies from the sleek low-poly cockpit of your Interceptor starfighter, a lean adrenaline rush of arcade-y space combat and fleet tactics

House of the Dying Sun's lean style is practically a breath of fresh air compared to the sprawling sims and strategy games often found in the space genre. A few lines of text tell you that your emperor is dead, the murderous traitors that usurped him rule now, and you are a loyal warrior exacting swift and brutal vengeance upon them and their people. That's all the narrative and motivation needed to drop you into combat scenarios, from assassinating lords in the blinding glow of an adjacent sun or destroying supply caches within a claustrophobic asteroid field.

From the mission map, you choose which of the game's 14 scenarios to tackle, each one divided between three difficulties that add more enemies and smarter AI tactics to outfight and outplan. Each mission features bonus objectives, and most reward you with new weapons or additional fighters and frigates to your personal fleet. The missions are never that long, and always imbued with the tension as you fear the inevitable announcement and countdown of the traitor flagship, a massively powerful brute of a  vessel that can wipe out your entire fleet. The looming threat of the flagship adds to the sense that you're a small loyalist rebellion against the much more powerful forces that overthrew your emperor.

No map to travel, no trading or hangars to buy a better fleet, no smaller jobs to build up your reputation. House of the Dying Sun understands that its strongest aspect is its combat, and streamlines the space shooter formula to make sure you're back into the interstellar dogfights as fast as possible.. And what wonderful combat that is. Warping into your chosen scenario, you can order your fleet from a tactical view, telling fighters to attack or defend, moving frigates around the map, while also being able to jump into the cockpit of any fighters you have. Once behind the flashy console cockpit, fleet-wide tactics take a backseat to the action, as you unleash homing missile and torpedoes, kinetic autocannons and flechette spreadshot. Holding a button lets you shift drift forward, maintaining velocity while rotating around, allowing for deft maneuvers and precise strafing runs.

But while House of the Dying Sun's combat nails the tight controls and dogfighting action, it wouldn't be nearly as satisfying without its stellar sound design. Personally, I argue the audio makes the game. The muted rumble and thuds of your weapons. The rasp of your oxygen mask. The tinny chatter of your wingmen, The mechanical whir when you reload or switch weapons. The sound design draws you into the combat, gives every action an immersive and atmospheric reaction. You feel powerful, you feel like a master pilot behind the cockpit among fellow warriors.

House of the Dying Sun is currently on Early Access; however, the main campaign and core features are finished and polished. An mode against escalating waves of enemies is planned for future updates. You can purchase the game on Steam and directly from the developer's site.

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PC Review #146: Mu Cartographer

Title: Mu Cartographer
Developer: Titouan Millet
Platforms: PC, Mac
Price: $5
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Lumino City. Papers Please. The Room. Deadnaut. Disparate genres, atmosphere, stories, and gameplay, all linked by a singular concept: tactile interactivity. More than merely pressing buttons on your controller or keys on your keyboard, they present you with dials to turn, switches to flip, panels to activate, turning the means of interacting with the world into a puzzle in itself. Mu Cartographer is perhaps the epitome of that idea, where learning how to discover alien secrets and landscapes is as much a part of the game as the discovery and exploration.

Mu Cartographer doesn't explain much. A mysterious device, a form of scanning console, with a slice of landscape in the center. The two sides of the game - the flat digital panel of dials, meters, switches and the circular window into a mysterious world - are inexorably linked; interacting with the console is your means to explore, and exploring gradually unlocks new means to interact.

But first you have to understand how to use the device at hand. You'll undoubtedly start with cautious inquisitive interactions, dragging and clicking each button and dial to see what it manipulates and how changing them affects the manipulation, and gradually what is a cluster of odd symbols and icons becomes something you understand. How one dial lets you zoom in and out, or move your central porthole across the land, or rotate the world, or perhaps even alter the environment itself.

With each twist and press and drag, the landscape shifts, dropping into steep canyons or impossibly jagged peaks, vast plains or rugged terrain, colors and hues shifting from grayscale to the blooming reds and yellows and greens and blues akin to infrared imagery. The world mutates with the satisfying fluidity that brings to mind clouds in the wind or a disturbed pool of water or the cross-sections of an MRI.

Seeing how your actions influence the land is enjoyable on its own, and endlessly gorgeous, but Mu Cartographer isn't merely an interesting piece of interactive art. There are secrets to be found, signs of civilizations amid the vast landscape, and perhaps by mastering the console, you'll be able to uncover more than just how to make the world look pretty...

Mu Cartographer is at once a gorgeous piece of digital art, a tactile puzzle to learn and master, and an an alien enigma to explore and discover. You can purchase the game on itch.io.

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PC Review #145: Exanima

Title: Exanima
Developer: Bare Mettle Entertainment
Platforms: PC
Price: $14.99
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I've been watching Game of Thrones recently, and one of the many things the show does so well is nailing that brutal, heavy, messy medieval combat. Not many games do, but Exanima isn't like many other games. A low-fantasy dungeon crawler, it uses the wonders of physics to turn melee combat into a gorgeous slugfest of glancing blows, crushing strikes, and smart positioning.

Exanima is in an interesting position, being both a full-fledged game on its own while also being a kind of proof of concept for the developer's much larger RPG Sui Generis. Divided between a linear dungeon crawler and combat-focused arena mode, Exanima revolves around its innovative physics-driven combat system that adds heft and weight to every swing.

Using the mouse, you control the angle and speed of your swings, feints, and parries. A fast step forward can add extra power to your attack or evade an enemy's blow to open them up for a counter. With the double-click of the left mouse, you can bring your weapon down in a devastating downward strike that could end a fight in seconds, while the Alt key performs a piercing thrust. Every animation is defined by physics and momentum and your own movement, from careful jabs to whistling hammer swings that can knock your foe to the ground.

All of that combines to deliver combat unlike any other. The clang of blade and blade, the scrape of a steel sword against stone when you miss a swing, the thuds of heavy blows against shields, the physicality of armored foes pushing and striking at each other, the screams and wet impacts when you rend flesh. Strategies such as closing the distance so your long sword-wielding enemy doesn't have the distance to swing effectively, or staying to the side of an enemy so you can slash at the unshielded part of his body.

Glancing blows, stumbles, weapons rebounding off shields and walls, and other physics-driven maneuvers makes Exanima's clashes feel messy and unpredictable and desperate, less like trading attacks in a fighting game and more like steel-edged street fight. You can hone your skills in the arena mode, hiring NPC combatants, engaging in fist fights and multi-enemy elimination rounds, and gaining money to buy better weapons and armor. Or you can embark into the dim torch-lit dungeons and face skeletons and hulking beasts lurking behind closed doors and dark shadows.

Exanima is still in Early Access, and recently received an update that added a massive new area to the dungeon crawler section and improved movement, animations, and other gameplay aspects. Future plans include dual wielding, outdoors regions, a more extensive skill system, among other additions.

Exanima is available on Steam and GOG,

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PC Review #144: Enter The Gungeon

Title: Enter The Gungeon

Developer: Dodge Roll

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4

Price: $14.99

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Perhaps the most apt and concise description for Enter The Gungeon would be the lovechild of The Binding of Isaac and Nuclear Throne. The crazy weapons, stacking items, weird enemies, and random loot of the former, the fast-paced, hectic, evasion-heavy action of the latter. But on the other hand, that label is a disservice to Enter The Gungeon. While it certainly has the DNA of those other titles, the game most certainly has an identity and style all its own.

The Gungeon awaits. A mysterious temple, where many venture to seek out the ultimate treasure, a gun that destroy their past, where lead cults and ballistic inhabitants thrive, an ecosystem in its own right. As one of four heroes -the Convict, the Marine, and so on - you descend into the randomly generated depths, armed with only a mediocre starting loadout and your skills to survive.

Skill is perhaps the most crucical aspect that elevates Enter The Gungeon above other entries in the action roguelite/shooter subgenre. When loot pickups fail you, when you're having bad run, when you're low on heath or getting surrounded by bullets and enemies, you can always rely on the dodge roll. With precise timing and leaping at the right angle, you can dodge anything, from masses of bullets to screen-slicing lasers. Combined with limited ammo and the need to reload, Enter The Gungeon is easily the most skillful game of its ilk.

But dodging will only get you so far. And thankfully, as you might expect from its title pun and its firearm-themed stages, Enter The Gungeon offers a vast and varied selection of weapons and items to find. While the basic AK-47s and sawed-off shotguns and machine pistols feel satisfying to use, they can't compare to weird wacky weapons you'll find in chests or buy from shopkeepers. One gun fires an egg bullet that unleashes tiny homing baby bullets. Another throws out globs of oil that you can ignite when the gun switches to fireballs upon reload. Other guns freeze, poison, set aflame, convert to your side, electrify. And more still throw off t-shirts and bees and junk mail and other exceedingly silly ammunition. Each weapon feels unique, some designed for specific situations while others are room-clearing monsters that can end a boss in seconds.

Items, both active and passive, only add to that variety. Much like Isaac, the stat increases and weapon buffs can stack in myriad ways, from swapping out your dodge roll for a jetpack to increasing your movement speed to more unique effects such as linking bullets with chain lightning and causing ice shrapnel to shred the room when you get damaged.

As you progress, you'll encounter NPCs hidden in the dungeons, trapped in cages, waiting to freed. Once rescued, they'll show up in levels or back in the hub area, opening new shops where you buy items and weapons to add to the randomized loot pool or shortcuts or offering side challenges for money and rewards.

But more than the weapons and the items and the dodge roll, it's the little touches and environmental details that make Gungeon's combat so satisfying. The way dead enemies and debris can flung aganst the walls by the force of explosions. How book pages flutter and drift across the floor as you fight in a library, How oil stains the ground and leaves scorches marks in carpets once a fire dies down. Your reflection in pools of water. The puffs of smoke and particles from bullets hitting the walls and barriers. 

Enter The Gungeon takes the best elements of the subgenre - the fierce combat, the thrill of uncovering new weapons and discovering powerful synergies between items, the sense of mastery and progression - and blends it all together in a single polished package. You can find the game on Steam, Humble, GMG, GOG, and PS4.

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PC Review #142: HyperRogue

Title: HyperRogue
Developer: Zeno Rogue
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, Android
Price: $2.99, Free
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Roguelikes have taken us from the ASCII depths to sci-fi battlefields and all manner of worlds and time in between. HyperRogue drops you into a new land, a non-Euclidean space where the rules are always changing and one wrong move can be your last.

HyperRogue is more puzzle game than pure roguelike; it's actually quite reminiscent of chess. Much like how in chess, you carefully move pieces across the board and must always be cognizant of the dreaded check, HyperRogue is a game of carefully planned steps as you avoid being cornered with no way to escape. You're a fragile being, only able to take a single hit, and you enemies are equally thin-skinned. Instead success and survival revolves around not getting surrounded and trapped by encroaching beasts. You can't even make a move if that move places you in immediate danger, so movement and exploration becomes a puzzle of positioning.

But while HyperRogue's combat may be simple but surprisingly tactical, its world is anything but simple. The landscape spreads out in a circular plane of interlocking tiles, extending outwards from the red-brick crossroads. But this is no normal space; it's a place of distorted distances and looping paths that extend into infinity and straight lines that somehow never intersect, a non-Euclidean world of adjacent biomes where retracing your steps is a trying task

Undying sand worms roam the parched desert, forcing you to flee rather than fight. Walls shift with each step in the living caves. Each step erases the floor behind you in the land of eternal motion. Enter the mirror world, and you'll be accompanied by clones of yourself. Each new land you discover has its own unique quirks and inhabitants, from one where safe crossing relies on avoiding dangerous tiles through minesweeper-style rules, to the oceans where pirates and sharks lurk.

Exploring and understanding each of HyperRogue's biomes is a satisfying and challenging task, forcing you to adapt, observe, plan each step to avoid or flank enemies or maneuver around some hazard or element in a level. While your driving goal is to collect treasure and locate the fabled Orb of Yendor, your immediate task is always to plan each move, study the world, learn its intricacies.

HyperRogue is available as both a freeware download and paid game; the paid version is the definite version, gets the latest updates first, as well as additional worlds not found in the free version. You can buy HyperRogue on Steam, itch.io, and on Android. The free version can be downloaded here.

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PC Review #141: SuperHOT

Title: SuperHOT
Developer: SuperHOT Team
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Price: $24.99
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I have fond memories of the original SuperHOT prototype. The 7DFPS jam entry was short, but so unique and stylish, and just begged to be built upon. And now three years and one successful Kickstarter later, SuperHOT is back, bigger and more beautiful than ever before, but still retaining the elegant gameplay that made the concept so much fun.

SuperHOT revolves around a simple singular mechanic: time only moves when you move. (Actually that's false; time creeps past at a glacial pace when you're still). This one idea turns what, at full speed, is a furious first-person shooter with bullets and death closing in from every angle, into a strategic game of precision, planning, and action movie-tier feats.

In fact, SuperHOT is best compared to Hotline Miami. You die in one hit, combat is a mix of guns and melee, guns have limited ammo, and spent weapons become thrown items to stun enemies with. But while Hotline Miami was an exercise in excess, with its pounding synth, gruesome kills, and flurries of room-clearing violence, SuperHOT is its mirror opposite. It's a game of minimalism and restraint, more time spent side-stepping bullets and planning your next move than attacking. Those methodical minutes-long sequences of time-slowed action only last mere seconds in real time.

Methodical is the most apt word to describe SuperHOT's pacing. Every moment is one of careful movement, since every step by you means danger is one step closer. Every variable needs to be considered. How many bullets do you have left in your gun? Do you have time and space to evade the bullets headed your way? Can you stun that enemy and close the distance soon enough to grab his fallen weapon?

With all those elements in play and time at your control, the combat in SuperHOT becomes the stuff of Hollywood magic or scenes that are usually only reserved for scripted moments and set pieces, especially when viewed at full speed. You snatch a gun out of the air and spin around to kill the enemies approaching from behind. Point blank shots are negated by a katana slicing the bullet in half. Weaving between bullets with effortlessly ease. And it's all presented in a minimalist crystalline aesthetic, where enemies shatter upon impact and the red trails of gun shots hang in the air.

You fight enemies in back alleys and parking garages, in building lobbies and warehouses; each level is a vignette, dropping you into a scenario already in play. The ambush. The deal gone sideways. The bar brawl. At first, these levels seem unconnected and random, but soon a story emerges. SuperHOT's narrative is surprisingly intriguing, a cyberpunk tale told through chatrooms and an enigmatic computer interface, reminiscent of recent games like Pony Island.

Once you complete the main campaign in a few hours, a vast selection of additional content unlocks. The Endless arenas and Challenges are where the bulk of your SuperHOT time will be spent. Each Challenge modifies the gameplay in unique ways that force you adapt new tactics for every level. KatanaOnly restricts your arsenal to merely a sword. TimeStop makes time freeze completely when you don't move, but you can only fire each gun once. SpeedRun tests your efficiency at maximizing each action.

SuperHOT takes the time-stopping gameplay that so intrigued people three years ago and improves upon it in every way. You can purchase the game on Steam, Humble, GMG, and GOG. The developers have plans to add more content and experiment with new ideas and concepts in the future.

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PC Review #140: Devil Daggers

Title: Devil Daggers
Developer: Sorath
Platforms: PC
Price: $4.99
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In the beginning, there's only silence. Your ember-veined hand, a hovering dagger, a single platform suspended in an endless black abyss. But don't be fooled by that initial calm. Devil Daggers soon becomes a cacophonous onslaught of eldritch horrors and the strafing, rocket-jumping action of classic Doom and Quake.

Break down Devil Daggers - mechanics, controls, visuals, sound, and so on - and in isolation, its gameplay is quite simple. You essentially have two weapons, a rapid-fire stream of daggers and a powerful spread-shot. Level design amounts to a single bare arena without walls or barriers of any kind. You die in one hit. There are no pool of equipment and perks to unlock, no other modes to play, no story. It's pure arena combat, against relentless odds.

But Devil Daggers doesn't need those extraneous elements to deliver. Your moveset is deeper than it first seems, allowing for rocket dagger jumping, double jumping, and other advanced means of evasion. There may even be some special dagger-enhancing powers that emerge if you survive long enough. That simple game design doesn't hurt Devil Daggers, instead giving it laser focus. Without needing to worry about ammo or health or juggling an inventory, the focus shifts to evasion and environmental awareness. It's a game of constant movement, of maximizing every split-second of safety to calculate a route through incoming foes.

And what foes the game has to offer. Tentacle-tipped towers that vomit forth swarms of skulls. Hulking arachnoid beasts with too many furiously twitching legs. Spinal cord serpents that twist and coil through the air. Crafted in a rough old-school aesthetic and fluid animations, Devil Daggers' bestiary is one of bone and flesh and appendages. Demonic things that fill the air with an oppressive symphony of roars, rattles, distorted shrieks and skittering legs, wet flesh and echoing moans. Each creature sounds unique, alerting you to when and where a new threat enters the arena even if your attention is elsewhere. The incredible sound design is that key aspect that completely elevates Devil Daggers' atmosphere, truly making it feel like you're facing something otherworldly.

But even as your skills grow more honed, and your attempts grow longer, eventually death will come, and the addictive drive to ascend the leaderboards begins. In a smart touch, a replay of the best attempts are saved, meaning you can watch the runs of the top scores and see their tactics and tricks.

Devil Daggers costs $4.99 and is available on the developer's site and Steam.

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PC Review #139: Firewatch

Title: Firewatch
Developer: Campo Santo
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Price: $19.99
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There's something almost magical about the woods. Leave home, turn off the highway, stop in the lot of some larger park or in a roadside clearing for a trail, venture onto a path, and the civilization that was so close suddenly seems so distant. It's just you and the woodlands, and there's a sense of mystery and awe around every bend, over every hill, atop each peak and outlook. Even if you've walked the same trail before, it can feel new and just as compelling. I've played a lot of open world games, traversed a lot of digital forests, and none have captured that atmosphere as well as Firewatch. The engaging intimate story almost feels like a wonderful extra, wrapped up in the game's gorgeous setting and feeling of discovery and exploration.

In Firewatch, you fill the shoes of Henry, a man devastated by a crumbled relationship, escaping to a lookout tower watching out over Wyoming's Shoshone National Forest. It's a lonely solitary job of putting out smoldering campfires and dealing with reckless teenagers, or it would be if not for the friendly voice from your walkie-talkie. Delilah is another lookout in the tower on an adjacent peak in the hazy distance, and your only companion. She's there to guide you through your early fire-watching days, to help point out slivers of smoke in your region of the forest, to chat about life and family and other well-acted dIscussions. Much like Telltale's games and other narrative adventure, you can choose dialogue choices to develop your relationship with Delilah, and saying nothing is almost always an option.

From your tower, you grab your pack and your radio, and venture into the park. The environment isn't the largest open world in gaming, but it's sprawling enough that you need to use a trail map and compass to orient yourself, use landmarks and marked supply caches to find your way to locations. Later on, you gain new tools and items that let you explore previously inaccessible areas, such as climbing rope to rappel down steep slopes.

Days pass, sometimes weeks, and gradually Firewatch becomes something more than a game of hiking through a national forest and chatting with Delilah. A mystery emerges, and an ever-present atmosphere of tension settles over the vibrant wilderness. As with any of these story-heavy games, the less you know about the twists and turns of the story, the better the experience, but I will say that Firewatch is suspenseful. That atmosphere certainly contributes to the feeling of exploration, discovery, and isolation that Firewatch nails so well. Familiar trails once traveled might not feel so inviting later in the game. Plot developments can frame certain actions and areas in new lights.

My stint as a lookout lasted around five hours, each one compelling and interesting. The hard cuts between days and weeks lets the game present its moments of calm, of mystery, of downtime and conversation at a measured meticulous pace and keep the story moving along without filler.

Firewatch offers both natural beauty to explore and engaging banter to enjoy, a mystery to unravel and a mature story. Between Oxenfree last month and now Campo Santo's debut title, 2016 has been already proved to be a wonderful year for narrative adventures. You can find Firewatch on Steam and PS4.

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PC Review #138: Oxenfree

Title: Oxenfree
Developer: Night School Studios
Platforms: PC, Mac, Xbox One
Price: $19.99
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A group of teenagers. A weird crazy adventure. Otherworldly happenings. From E,T, and The Goonies to more recently Super 8, it's a story told quite a few times in film. Oxenfree continues that tradition, telling the story of five friends, a mysterious island, and malevolent forces.

Oxenfree is a narrative-driven adventure game about Alex, a teenager still suffering from a great loss, and a group of other seniors spending the night on Edwards Island: step-brother Jonas, friend Ren, quiet Nona, and "mean-girl" Clarissa. It's a long-honored tradition in the community, hanging out on the beach, by the bonfire, drinking. But emotional turmoil and burgeoning relationships all bubble beneath the fun and small talk, and it's your dialogue choices that can make or break friendships, build or shatter trust, among more life-threatening consequences.

The bonfire drinking and games of truth or slap soon morph into a life-and-death struggle to escape the island when insidious supernatural forces are awakened. The story of Oxenfree is best experienced as blind as possible, so I won't delve into the specifics, but it's a gripping tale of coming-of-age and supernatural horror.

You won't find puzzles in Oxenfree, besides using Alex's radio to tune into different frequencies, nor moments of fast-paced action. Oxenfree is a game about atmospheric exploration and dialogue, and it absolutely excels. The landscape of Edwards Island is one of quaint shops, of colorful forests tinged brown and yellow from the autumn weather, of sheer sea-side cliffs and dank caves, of abandoned buildings holding chilling secrets. The place is as much as character in Oxenfree as Alex and the other teens, and a joy to explore.

And every moment of exploration is accompanied by some of the most natural likable dialogue I've heard in a game. Natural not just in tone and cadence, but in execution. Oxenfree evolves the choice-driven narrative genre popularized by Telltale by adopting a walk-and-talk pacing, letting you choose dialogue while on the move or in the midst of other actions. From trying to rationalize terrifying occurrences to making jokes and revealing hurtful secrets, the choices never feel like the mechanical good/bad/neutral options of other games, but natural responses to the situations.

Those situations are tinged with menace and unnerving horror. Oxenfree never resorts to jump scares or gore to be scary; instead it builds an atmosphere of dread and unease, through weird scenarios, excellent sound design, and visual aberrations that morph and contort the soft inviting aesthetic. Like a Stephen King novel or Poltergeist, the horror comes from seeing these normal characters you're invested in facing cruel ruthless evil.

Oxenfree's story ranges from four to seven hours, varying based on how much you explore the island and its secrets. While I typically play these choice-driven narrative games only once, I'm compelled to play Oxenfree again. It was a story I didn't want to end, with characters I liked, and I'm excited to dive in again and see how the story can change with different choices.

Oxenfree is available on Steam, Humble, and Xbox One. A PS4 version is releasing later this year.

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PC Review #136: Sublevel Zero

Title: Sublevel Zero
Developer: SIGTRAP Games
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Price:  $14.99
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The six-degrees of freedom subgenre of shooters had an illustrious start thanks to the Descent franchise, but in recent years, the genre has laid relatively dormant, not yet rising anew like the space sim and CRPG outside of minor titles such as NeonXSZ and Kromaia. But while the Kickstarter success of Descent Underground offers some competitive 6DOF action, Sublevel Zero blends the genre with the looming tension of a roguelike, to stellar results.

The story merely serves as a framework for the action. Reality has been crumbling for centuries, parts of the universe vanishing from existence and appearing elsewhere or not at all. The secrets to discovering why space-time has been torn asunder and saving the ravaged universe rests inside a mysterious facility.

Finding that secret won't be easy. Throughout cramped technological tunnels and lava-lit caverns where it's easy to lose your bearings to cavernous crystalline quarries, mechanical threats lurk at every turn. Enemies range from drifting slow-firing drones to wall-crawling tanks, and you can't take any lightly. Permadeath looms over every new room and every unknown corner, so each encounter must be tackled like it could be your last. An aggressive offense is the best defense here: deftly weaving between projectiles, boosting past enemies to spin around and unleash a storm of energy as they're turning to lock onto you,

Agility and speed will only get you so far in Sublevel Zero, and a vast arsenal awaits you. Autocannons and miniguns that fire out bullets at a lightning pace. Railguns, flamethrowers, devastating shredder shotguns. Grenades and homing rockets. Each weapons has unique stats - Marksman class being more accurate, Relentless having better firing rates and damage - and by combining two weapons, you can create a new weapon that inherits those two. This simple crafting system expands your array of weapons even more, unlocking powerful firepower like the ion beam, plasmacaster, homing missile swarm, magnetic explosives, and more.

Each weapon feels powerful and satisfying to use, tearing through the levels in overwhelming streaks of colorful energy. You never know what weapons you might come across, so improvising with what you have on head is key to survival. One minute, you might be a sniper taking out enemies from a distance with a railgun; later, you'll be softening up drones with lasers before boosting in to finish them off with a shredder blast.

But all those weapons wouldn't matter if Sublevel Zero's movement was as fun and responsive it is. Thrusting down its serpentine tunnels or flipping around a junction or retreating from a relentless ground of enemies is always satisfying and you always feel in control.

Sublevel Zero combines the claustrophobic tunnels and hectic action of Descent with the looming tension and unpredictable nature of the roguelite, each playthrough delivering reckless flights down tight corridors and relentless firepower. You can purchase Sublevel Zero on Steam, Humble, and GOG.

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PC Review #135: Flywrench

Title: Flywrench
Developer: Messhof
Platforms: PC, Mac
Price: $9.99
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Almost two years ago, I wrote about the allure of difficulty, how the looming challenge of roguelikes and hard-as-nails platformers offer a unique kind of satisfaction by demanding the utmost focus and skills from the player. How each failure sharpens your skills until you finally pull off that white-knuckle, honed-to-perfection finish. Flywrench encapsulates that perfectly, in a stylish psychedelic package.

In each stage, you guide a rectangle through claustrophobic gauntlets of gates, projectiles, rotating barriers, and more. Your default movement is a simple floating descent; flapping and flipping round out your moveset. While you only have three movements, they compliment each other, letting you pull of acrobatic evasive maneuvers with ease. You're always in control, especially once you master the feeling and physics of the movement. Learning how to time your flaps and flipping or the amount of upward movement you'll gain from each flap, and maintaining your momentum are all crucial to weave between the tricky array of hazards that Flywrench throws at you,

But evasion isn't the only thing you have to worry about. Each movement is color-coded - default being white, flapping is red, and flipping green - and you can only pass through same-colored barriers. This adds a slight puzzle element to Flywrench's precision flapping, as you figure out the best route through each level, when it's best to flap, flip, or float, when you need to act to build momentum or bleed off speed to fly around a corner at the perfect angle.

You might not reach the finish on your first attempt, nor your second or third or perhaps even your thirtieth. But Flywrench throws you right back to the start a split-second after each failure and like with the best in the genre, soon your losses start to feel less like losses and more like learning. With each reckless collision with a wall, you learn to slow down a second earlier to gracefully reverse direction and keep moving. Each crash into a spinning barrier trains you to flap earlier or later to better maintain control, or to flip now to ricochet at just the right angle to careen through a narrow passage a hair's-breadth from danger. Each loss improves your mastery over the controls, until perhaps you can enter a level for the first time, study the hectic arrangement of lines and color, and pull it off in a single flowing maneuver.

The aesthetic and music certainly make tackling Flywrench's challenges much more enjoyable. The game is pure spectacle of color and motion, as you leave a fluid trail of red and green and white in your wake, distorting the background with each movement. The soundtrack, with music from artists like Daedelus, Dntel, and Goodnight Cody, perfectly complements the arcade action. You might even find yourself flapping and flipping to the beat.

Rounding out its sizable selection of 170 levels with time trials, leaderboards, and even a level editor to craft your own gauntlets, Flywrench offers hours of content for the fans of the genre. Tight responsive controls, a colorfully minimalist aesthetic, and a rapid-fire pace that demands honed skills makes for an always tough but satisfying arcade experience.

You can purchase Flywrench on Steam.
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The game is currently on sale for $6.49 (35% off) during the Steam Winter Sale.

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PC Review #134: Devouring Stars

Title: Devouring Stars
Developer: Nerial
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, IOS Universal
Price: $9,99 (Steam), $4.99 (IOS)
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You've waged war on land, air, and sea. And more than a few real time strategy and tactical games take place in space. But in Devouring Stars, your conflicts don't just occur among the cosmos. Here, the cosmos are your weapons, as you wield the stars themselves in a war between celestial forces.

As a cosmic being far beyond mortal comprehension, you challenge the might of other cosmic factions among the nebula clouds and black abyss. Devouring Stars's gameplay is relatively simple: gather resources to strengthen your units, capture the enemy's portal, and escape the stage. But simple doesn't mean easy, and there's an array of mechanics and complexities that make Devouring Stars stand out.

While it may be an RTS, the game strips back the complex base and building systems of other titles in the genre in favor of a more minimalist approach. Stars act as resources for both you and your enemies, and there's only a finite amount on each battlefield, forcing you to assess the stage and decide when and where to gather cosmic energy.

Each star gathered makes your units stronger, but strength isn't always enough to emerge victorious. Before each mission, you're able to select a small group of units to bring into battle, compared to the typical RTS method of spawning units during battle. This challenges you to consider what strategy you plan on using and choosing which units best suit your plan of attack. While that mechanic may seem limiting, Devouring Stars' units are more versatile than they may first seem.

By combining two units, you can create a single, more powerful unit. These celestial warriors not only gain increased stats that could boost their movement or their efficiency at absorbing stars, but also have unique abilities that can turn the tide of battle. Your merged units can do everything from teleporting short distances to freezing opponents in their tracks, to unleashing powerful ranged attacks or achieve damaging critical hits.

Devouring Stars may lack the bombastic spectacle of other real time strategy games like Planetary Annihilation and Supreme Commander, but what it lacks in bombast, it makes up for in beauty. Battles in Devouring Stars are dances of swirling particles and flashing color as stars and galaxies become weapons of the gods. It's always satisfying to watch.

Devouring Stars is available on Steam, and recently released on IOS. You can learn more about the game here.

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PC Review #132: Galak-Z

Title: Galak-Z
Developer: 17 Bit Games
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux. PS4
Price: $19.99
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I had been anticipating Galak-Z for a while. The fluid combat, the bright flashy visuals, mech mode, roguelike elements...all signs pointed towards a fast-paced frenetic dual-stick shooter with screen-filling missile barrages. And Galak-Z definitely has all those things and more, but what I wasn't expecting was a deliberately-paced shooter with a focus on stealth and cautious exploration. It was a welcome surprise.

As ace pilot Atak, you alone must take on the might of the Empire. But while you may be outnumbered, you aren't outmatched; your fighter is an agile weapon, able to strafe and reverse direction with ease. Part of the challenge and fun of Galak-Z is mastering its movement, learning to handle momentum and thrust, how to dodge over bullets and circle around enemies.

Modulating your thrust is crucial, because despite its frenetic appearance, Galak-Z actually has a large focus on stealth. Reminiscent of Mark of the Ninja, enemy light of sight is visually represented on screen, and the sound of engines displayed as a circle around your ship. Enemies will investigate suspicious sounds, become alerted if they catch a glimpse of you. You only have a few health and shield points, and enemies attack relentlessly, so hiding and flanking and attacking when you have the advantage is key to surviving.

But when combat does finally erupt, it does so in a spectacle of swooping missiles, colorful explosions, flaring thrusters and neon bullets. Galak-Z certainly doesn't disappoint in the action department. Weaving between lasers, unleashing a flurry of missiles, then boosting out of sight to flank your enemies is always satisfying. Mods and blueprints found through each stage can upgrade your ship with extensive array of bullet types, shot speed and range, and enhancements like immunity to lava.

Sometimes your arsenal isn't enough and Galak-Z features emergent gameplay elements that allow for more strategic depth. Enemy factions fight each other, so leading a fleet of Empire ships into a nest of space bugs is always a viable tactic. The environments are filled with hazards that can be used against enemies, from lava pools and drifting debris to alien growths that unleash shield-draining spores. Choosing where you fight can be just as important as how you fight.

But no element is Galak-Z is as stylish as its seamless mech transformations, At the press of a button, your ship shifts into a sword and shield-wielding robot that can slash through a squadron, or grapple an enemy and fling it into an asteroid. Fluidly switching between ship and mech mode, along with stealth and environmental hazards and your arsenal, lets you turn the tides against the game's challenging enemies and bosses.

The PC version of Galak-Z features a new Arcade mode, to complement its original roguelike structure. The threat of permadeath looms over every encounter in Galak-Z, but Arcade mode lets you save your progress and restart stages without losing all your upgrades.

Galak-Z is available on Steam, as well as PS4

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PC Review #131: Mushroom 11

Title: Mushroom 11
Developer: Untame
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Price: $14.99
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We're all quite familiar with the standard platformer formula nowadays. Run around, jump over gaps, possibly some wall-jumping, dashes, and other maneuvers. But how would a platformer work if your character lacked limbs? Or had no concrete form at all? Mushroom 11 is a challenging physics-based puzzle platformer that turns the typical genre gameplay on its head by putting you in control of an amorphous fungus that can mold and shift into any shape.

The world is ruined. Humanity is absent, perhaps extinct or long gone, leaving only dilapidated cityscapes and overgown environments in its wake. But life continues, from weird insects to your character: a green fungus that absorbs other organisms and is nearly impossible to destroy. In fact, destruction is your means of movement. Using the mouse, you can erase parts of the fungus and it'll regrow those sections elsewhere on its form; through careful erasure, the fungus can flow through chapters with speed and agility by continuously growing in a certain direction.

But Mushroom 11's unique control scheme is used for far more than movement through destruction. You have no defined shape, able to mold into any form, and can be divided into multiple parts that can all act independently. Split in half to hold down a button with one part while moving the other through a now-open gate. Carefully shave off parts to extend into a tower to bridge a gap. Mold around ledges. Clamber up walls and across ceilings. One of the most important aspects of a good platformer is satisfying movement, and it never got old experimenting with and mastering Mushroom 11's free-form traversal.

However, traversing the chapters is only part of Mushroom 11's challenge. Each section is rife with hazards and physics puzzles. From fireball-flinging organisms and lava to fungus-melting acid and challenging bosses, you need to carefully move around these dangers, considering how each erasure will affect your mushroom's form, weight, and balance. Later chapters will have you molding the mushroom into the shape of gear, shifting its weight around to stay within a speeding minecart, forming ramps for rolling objects, completing circuits, and much more.

Each chapter introduces new mechanics and dangers, always exploring new uses of the mushroom's amorphous design. The unique gameplay was Mushroom 11's initial hook, but discovering what new hazards and puzzle elements the developers would introduce next was what keep me intrigued throughout my six-hour playthrough.

Mushroom 11 isn't just enjoyable to play, but also offers a atmospheric apocalyptic world to admire, an array of ruined cities, otherworldly environments, and faded graffiti that hint at the fate of mankind. The mushroom itself is always fun to watch, as it instantly reforms, or its insides pulse and rumble, or absorbed organisms dissolve into splashes of color within its green body. Each chapter features a ticking clock, offering replay value for fans of speed-running, and hard-to-reach insects that challenge the limits of your mushroom molding skills.

Mushroom 11 is available on Steam, Humble, and GOG. IOS and Android versions are expected to release next year.

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PC Review #130: Cryptark

Title: Cryptark
Developer: Alientrap
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Price: $12.99
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Massive derelict space ships drift through the black abyss, filled with valuable alien technology to pilfer. But the ultimate prize is the mysterious Cryptark and its advanced cargo. To find the titular vessel, you'll need to scour intel from other ships. It won't be easy.

In this new rogue-lite shooter from Alientrap, you're a commissioned alien privateer, scavenging abandoned space hulks as your team closes in on the Cryptark. But while vessels may be abandoned, they certainly aren't empty. The security systems of these ships are still active and alien entities lurk within. The only way to disable a ship is to destroy its central core, and that's where you come in.

Piloting a heavily-armed mech suit, you must explore hazardous ship interiors, choosing which defenses to disable before launching your assault on the core. From shield generators and repair systems that fix destroyed systems to turrets and map jammers, these defenses can easily overwhelm you if they aren't dealt with. You don't have to destroy every system though; choosing which to prioritize and which order to disable them is the key to success in Cryptark.

The security systems aren't the only dangers. Mechanical organisms roam the vessels, ranging from massive sawblades to shielded Juggernauts that unleash powerful scatter shots. However, you're more than capable of matching enemy firepower with your own arsenal.

Your mech has four weapon slots, four items slots, and an extensive array of equipment to mix and match. Smart machine guns whose bullets can curve around corners, nuke rockets, slime mortars that unleash corrosive fluid, EMP shotguns, lightning guns, lasers, flamethrowers, shields, and much more. You can dual- or even quad-wield weapons too, unleashing a storm of lead to annihilate your enemies.

It's in the midst of that chaos that Cryptark shines. Your firepower feels heavy and powerful, and deftly evading projectiles, lasers, and charging enemies is just as satisfying. Visually, the action pops with vibrant colors and lighting, illuminating the dark interiors with explosions and flames and lasers.

The pre-assault planning is engaging too: weighing the cost of your equipment against the payout of the ship you're going to scavenge, molding your loadout to best deal with the defenses and enemies onboard, scanning ships to see which systems are present and deciding which to tackle first, from what entry point.

Cryptark is currently on Early Access, but it's easily one of the most polished and content-heavy Early Access releases I've played yet, on par with the gold standards like Prison Architect and Darkest Dungeon. The developers plan to expand the game with persistent upgrades, new mech suits and weapons, more enemies, systems, and ship designs, an expanded narrative, and even co-op.

You can purchase Cryptark on Steam, Humble, or directly from the game's site.

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PC Review #127: SOMA

Title: SOMA
Developer: Frictional Games
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4
Price: $29.99
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Amnesia: The Dark Descent is considered by many to be one of the scariest experiences the medium has to offer. The supernatural game forced the player to flee and hide from monstrosities whose mere visages tore at your character's sanity.

SOMA sheds that game's Lovecraftian trappings for a research station on the ocean floor, but the horror and the oppressive atmosphere remains, anchored by a compelling and thought-provoking story influenced by the works of Harlan Ellison and Philip K. Dick.

Soma puts you in the frightened and confused shoes of Simon, a man trapped in the sprawling underwater facility known as Pathos-II. Horrific things roam the dank dilapidated corridors, monstrous fusions of flesh and machine, and like Amnesia, hiding from and sneaking around these creatures is your only course of action.

Saying anything more specific about SOMA's engrossing narrative would do a disservice to its carefully-paced reveals. But rest assured, it's a journey filled with haunting moments, interesting sci-fi concepts, and compelling questions about humanity.

"Haunting" is probably the most apt way to describe SOMA's atmosphere. While there are enemies in the game, encounters are sparing, which, in turn, makes each one more memorable and unpredictable. The horror in SOMA comes less from its terrifying creatures and more from the atmosphere, the themes, the sound design and setting. Every moment is fraught with tension, enhanced by the music and the groaning of metal being crushed by the immense ocean pressure. The game is a slow-burn experience, letting the unnerving uneasy implications of grotesque sights and of your actions stew in your mind.

SOMA's sci-fi horror is spread across 8 to 10 hours of thought-provoking narrative, cautious exploration, puzzles, and desperate stealth around bio-mechanical monsters. If you're looking for a horror game that's focused on dread and vice-like tension and story rather than jump scares, or are interested in high-concept science fiction stories, SOMA is a must-play.

You can purchase SOMA on Steam, GOG, and PS4.

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PC Review #126: Vagante

Title: Vagante
Developer: Nuke Nine
Platforms: PC
Price: $14.99
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What games belong under the roguelike umbrella is a common discussion when the term comes up, but one can't deny the appeal of roguelike (or roguelite) platformers. Spelunky is easily the poster child of the subgenre, but it's an thriving genre, from Catacomb Kids and Rogue Legacy to Cavern Kings and 20XX. Vagante is another game to add to that list, with its RPG focus and challenging gameplay.

The premise of Vagante is simple. Choose a class, venture into the waiting mouth of a dark hazard-filled cave, and survive. Treasure, traps, monsters, and loot can be found within, if you have the skill to endure the challenges of the procedurally-generated levels.

While Catacomb Kids stands out with its interlocking systems and Rogue Legacy with its generational progress and hectic gameplay, Vagante excels at blending elements of the action RPG and the roguelite platformer. Each of the three classes - Knight, Mage, and Rogue - have their own unique skills as well as stats to upgrade, and each upgrade expands your moveset with new abilities and powers. The bow-wielding Rogue can cloak himself in shadows, the Mage unlocks new spells, the Knight can unlock falling stabs, and so on.

Loot found throughout the level or bought from shops allow you to equip new gear, some imbued with special passive abilites. From helms that make your strikes freeze enemies and heavy gauntlets that knock foes backwards to scrolls and potions that provide one-use magic attacks or stat buffs, Vagante provides many ways to fight enemies.

The action is fast-paced and challenging, as you jump over projectiles and time your strikes against bats, rats, ghouls, imposing dragons, and other beasts and bosses that await. Using traps like spike pits or arrow turrets to your advantage is a valid tactic too; sometimes fleeing to gather some health, swap out weapons, or use a scroll is the best option. If the dungeon prove too challenging for a lone adventurer, you can always fight alongside three other friends in 4-player local co-op.

Vagante is currently on Steam Early Acess, and the developers are working on implementing online multiplayer. You can purchase Vagante on Steam and Humble, and follow the game's development here.

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