There’s a tabletop game on Kickstarter at the moment right now called ‘Secret Hitler‘, a game based around advancing your teams agenda without knowing exactly who else is on your team. Also one player is secretly Hitler. One of the selling points is how intense and paranoid the players get not knowing who they can trust and who’s going to stab them in the back.

Very secret Hitler.

I’ve backed this one because I love this kind of thing in my games. In the six months we’re waiting to secretly be Hitler I’ve got another ten games with clever traitor mechanics to make your friends hate you.

10. Heroes Wanted

Wait, traitor mechanic in ‘Heroes Wanted’, that brightly coloured and whacky superhero romp? Well…technically not. But let’s not forget that the game gives you points for punching out the other player’s hero if you’re bored smacking around the bad guy’s minions and this can be the most shocking and offensive betrayal of them all. You’re in this together, every nutty superhero is there for the same reason and having Cyborg Insect turn around and uppercut you for a couple of extra points is downright hurtful.

9. Coup

‘Coup’, along with list contender ‘Spyfall’, is a game that tests your ability to bullshit your friends and family. You get two cards with characters on them and each character gives you an ability you can use to screw over another player. On your turn you declare what action your going to take without revealing your cards – hence the potential for bullshit. Other players can call you out at this point, but there are steep penalties for being wrong. Cue the shifty eyes and long lasting grudges.

8. Shadows Over Camelot

A hefty chunk of my game collection is made up of Days of Wonder games because they always look so darn pretty. ‘Shadows Over Camelot’ certainly looks very pretty, which is misleading because it’s downright evil. Evil captured in a couple of stacks of cards and a bundle of miniatures. The players take on the role of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table as they protect the land from a ridiculous number of threats. Sir Lancelot is being a prick, the Black Knight is running around, the Grail is being corrupted, Excalibur is literally floating away down a river, there are 2 flavours of invading armies, an army of catapults outside the castle and a fucking dragon. You don’t have the resources or the strength to deal with all of this, so you have to work together to hold the darkness back until you have enough points to declare yourself winner. It’s downright frustrating.

Oh, and one of your number might be a traitor. Might be. So not only are you side-eyeing everyone trying to work out who is working against the team, the sense of paranoia might be for naught. Damn this game.

7. Game of Thrones

If there’s one thing Fantasy Flight does well with their licensed properties is that they capture the tone of the source material. In their board game adaptation of ‘Game of Thrones’ they put each player in charge of one of the six major houses of Westeros shortly after the death of King Baratheon and leaves them to battle it out for control. Politics plays as much a role as strategic thinking, so expect to enter into shaky alliances and short term agreements over military support to get an edge. But as they said in South Park, much of ‘Game of Thrones’ involves walking through gardens and talking about betrayal. You all know that these alliances aren’t going to hold up…it’s just down to who makes the first move.

6. Betrayal at House on the Hill

It’s right there in the title! This is a horror movie compendium in a board game box. Players are a group of explorers checking out the big, creepy house on, well, the hill and at some point one of the team will be revealed to be a traitor who has lured you to your doom. Who is the traitor? Why have they done it? It might be you and you won’t know until the right set of random events line up. The betrayal can come in many forms including zombies, demons, werewolves, aliens and more. My personal favourite was when an alien infection was being transmitted from person to person without knowing who had it, The Thing style. I was given the task of creating the cure by the survivors, who did not suspect I’d already been infected. Although developing the cure went against the goal of my game, I played along until I had the cure…then I gave the cure to my dog and sent him running! Mwahahahaha!

5. Kremlin

‘Kremlin’ takes the expression playing politics to a much more literal level. Russian politics is portrayed as rife with backstabbing, accusations and shipping people out to prison camps, and players lurk in the shadows pulling the strings. The crux of the game is not revealing who you secretly control during the shuffle of characters through the Politburo. You might invest all your time building one character up through the ranks at great personal risk and sacrifice only for an opponent to step up at the last moment and take all the reward. It’s a crafty game to say the least.

4. One Night Ultimate Werewolf

There’s more than a couple of ‘Werewolf’ style games on the market and they’re consistently popular, but few give you the capacity to mess with your friends like ‘One Night Ultimate Werewolf’. Everyone gets a secret role that places them on the side of the werewolves or the innocent villages, each of whom has their own set of instructions that involves sneaking a look at other roles, swapping roles around or trying to take the fall for the real villains. It’s a short, intense game that piles lies upon lies and breeds distrust.

3. Battlestar Galactica

Goddamn Cylons. For those not familiar with the source material, Cylons are evolved artificial intelligence creations of man who have decided that they’d rather run the show. They can perfectly replicate human bodies, and often the undercover Cylon agents won’t know that they’re Cylons themselves. In the board game every player takes on a character from the rebooted show, and will receive a secret card to indicate whether they are a jolly human or an evil Cylon sent to prevent the remaining members of the human race from surviving. Just to mix things up, everyone gets a second card halfway through the game, which may inform them that they were playing the wrong side from the beginning. Either way, someone at the table is a traitor not just to you but the entire human race.

2. The Resistance

Each player in this game is a member of a resistance group and trying to overthrow the government, so it could be said that everyone is a traitor from the beginning. But…some of the people in this resistance are government operatives and are out to be betray the traitors! During the game the players set up missions and vote on whether or not they go ahead, with every move and every word coming under intense scrutiny. There’s no dice rolling, no drawing cards…just careful plotting and deep suspicion.

1. Dead of Winter

Now, if you want a genuinely paranoid experience try putting yourself in a survival situation with your friends where there isn’t enough food to go around. And zombies are outside. Each player gets a small band of survivors during a zombie outbreak and you’re all holed up together to wait out the winter. You’ll need to risk the undead and the weather to scavenge supplies from the nearby town so you’ve got enough food, weapons, fuel and whatnot to survive week to week. That’s the main goal. Every player will also have their own secret goal to complete, one that may not go along with the goals of the group as a whole. Raised voices are expected when there’s a flu outbreak in the colony and someone’s suspected of hoarding medicine because they’re secretly a hypochondriac, or maybe someone has been holding out on the food because they think they’re going to be kicked out to fend for themselves. You may all be working towards the one goal of survival, but you won’t trust each other.

‘Rayman’ is a bit of an oddity. He’s never achieved ‘icon’ status or been hailed as a console mascot and would be largely unrecognisable to non-gamers, yet he’s been appearing in games for over a decade with dozens of titles to his name. He had been a best selling character for years, but it’s the two most recent releases – Origins and Legends – that have been the most acclaimed. Perhaps he’s just spread out over to many systems and genres to make a decisive mark on the industry. Regardless of the reason, Rayman Legends can be downloaded pretty cheaply and you’d be a fool not to.

It’s a platforming game in the most basic sense. You run, jump and hit. That said it’s as good as the genre gets. It’s startling that the Mario series is still considered the be-all, end-all of platforming when there’s competition like this around, and they’ve left the business of designing levels to the players. Up to four people can play as different versions of Rayman (whatever he is, weird limbless thing), Teensies, Globox and viking warrior Barbara or her sisters. You work through five worlds of different themes to defeat the evil wizard and safe the people.

Two major things to note. Firstly, there’s a butt-load of levels, challenge versions of levels, hidden stages, bonus levels, a soccer mini-game and even remastered levels from the previous game in the series. In total you’re looking at 200+ levels. It’s a lot of content, and you rarely find and save all the Teensies on a first run through so there’s a reason to replay them.

Secondly, and more impressively, almost every level feels unique. Some have a set concept, like a castle sinking into quicksand or escaping rapidly growing spiked tendrils. There’s no player fatigue through repetition here – you’ll want to keep playing just to see what the next level is going to throw at you. If you know anything about the game already you’d have heard about the awesome music levels at the end of each world, frantic platforming challenges timed against well know songs. Check out this Mariachi version of ‘Eye of the Tiger’…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Tl2oQ57ggk

This is without a doubt one of the best platforming games you’ll play, and it’s achieved without any overarching motif like Fez or Braid. It’s especially good as a family game, and it doesn’t dole out harsh penalties to less experienced players. It looks great, it sounds great and it plays great.

Ah, 2016. So much to look forward to. For one thing, we’re looking forward to chilling out and playing some of the weird and wonderful games heading our way over the next few months.

10. Hitman Holiday

One that has only managed to make the list because of a delayed release, this crowd sourced game of malice and suspicion is now on the way. The world’s greatest hitmen have converged on a holiday resort to relax soak up the sun and partake in a world murder championship. Everyone has their own assassin and another player they have to eliminate – but they also have to avoid being taken out themselves. We’re looking forward to the mind games that may ensue.

9. The Irrational Game

Professor of Psychology and Behavioural Economics Dan Ariely has turned his study into this original brain scratcher. Players compete by guessing the answer to behaviour related scenarios, such as how much more a person will eat from an endless soup bowl compared to a regular one, with psychological explanations to go with the correct answers. I’m looking forward to taking this one into the classroom.

8. Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The Four Horsemen are coming and everyone at the table is going to die before the end of the game. In order to win you want to be the last one standing. Each round you draw cards you can use to defend yourself and divert attention onto other players when the Horsemen appear in the deck. Playing pesticide can slow down Pestilence, a celebrity chef flogging butter can slow down Famine and a flower child can stand up to War. Lots of topical cards and backstabbing – should be fun!

7. Marvel Legendary: Secret War Vol. 2

This would be much higher on the list if it wasn’t an expansion pack because we LOVE Marvel Legendary, the deck building game that lets you form your own team of Marvel characters to battle villains. We’ve already got the core game and a bunch of expansions and are officially out of storage space for game components but we cannot resist adding more heroes and foes to the game.

6. Kill Doctor Lucky

I’ve been a fan of Cluedo since I was a child, though these days we tend more towards the more complex Mystery Express. Kill Doctor Lucky is the logical reversal of the concept, setting players the task of killing the titular doctor by using the best weapon and room to make your move. Other players will try to upset your murder attempts, giving them an opportunity to take a winning shot. Timing and observation will be key.

5. Scoundrel Society and Ninja Camp

These little games get paired together because they’re arriving from the same publisher at the same time, and anything from the creators of Heroes Wanted is worth attention. Everyone is a con-artist and thief in Scoundrel Society, proving their skill by stealing from each other. You need to balance you haul against how much suspicion is on you, as the most suspicious being arrested at the end, leaving everyone else to compare their take and declare a winner. Ninja Camp pits you against each other as ninja animals completing their training by playing Ninja Skill Cards to navigate a series of traps and obstacles. It looks like bright, silly fun!

4. Secret Hitler

We try not to double up on game styles in our collection and although it’s similar to Coup and Ultimate Werewolf we couldn’t help getting in line for Secret Hitler. Every player is either a Liberal or a Fascist. The Liberals are stronger in number but the Fascists know who else is in their camp, and everyone is working to push through their agendas. Also, one player is secretly Hitler, known to the Fascists while the Liberals try to uncover them.

3. The Networks

Here’s a cool setting for modern players – working as a television executive. You earn points by bargaining for and purchasing television shows, actors and advertisers. Matching the right stars to the right genre shows will make them more effective, and you’ll have to meet certain requisites to get the right shows. It looks like a cool and unique strategy game.

2. Pandemonium

Horror games have been topping the charts lately and Pandemonium looks to be an absolute ripper. At a glance it looks similar to the massive hit Zombicide in terms of mechanics, but has a very different visual design. Making a point of not being another zombie game, the line up of heroes and monsters is freaking amazing, with a massive number of demented miniatures being included, with plenty of references to classic films like The Thing, Re-Animator, The Shining and Halloween. It looks like a cool take on the horror game genre.

1. A Study in Emerald

Ok, so this isn’t a new game but it’s been unavailable essentially since release and this 2nd edition features new artwork and streamlined rules so I’m counting it. Also, I’ve been dying to get it. Neil Gaiman is one of the best authors of the modern age, producing amazing works in novel, comic, television and children’s book forms. Years ago he wrote a short story emulating the style of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ stories set in a world where the Lovecraftian Old Ones have conquered the world. I won’t say any more because it’s got some great twists and turns (and takes about 10 minutes to read), but this board game is based on that short story. Gaiman, Holmes, Lovecraft mixed together in a strategic murder mystery game? Sold and sold.

Home consoles are all well and good but for the best graphics, groundbreaking design and the latest hits you have to hit the arcade…or so it was, 20 years ago. Prior to the Playstation generation the home system just couldn’t compete and the best games of the day were in the arcades. Many coins were sacrificed to these pioneers of one of the biggest entertainment industries in history. We all remember the Street Fighters, the Daytonas and the Jousts. Many franchises made the jump to home consoles and continued their legacy, some became cultural icons…some faded into obscurity. You may well remember playing these gems back in the day, or might be of the younger set and learning about them new. Enjoy.

Cabal

A predecessor of the light gun fad that still holds down the fort in arcades worldwide, Cabal put players in control of commandos taking down enemy bases. Unlike most action games in the side-scrolling era, Cabal put us behind the characters and had them move on a fixed horizontal axis. You could take cover for defence and freely aim your targeting reticle around the screen using a trackball. The game was praised for it’s unique design and challenge, and it visually stood out in the market with characters dodge-rolling back and forth while buildings crumbled. Home console ports were not well received, nor was the Western themed follow up and the game disappeared.

Primal Rage

Coming on the tail of Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat we had this claymation style game that incorporated the bright, cartoon style of one and the violence and gore of the other. Set in a post-apocalyptic world the combat takes place between giant monsters who represent hunger, death, decay and so forth. Giant reptilian and primate beats knock the crap out of each other until the losers heart explodes or a horrific finishing move is executed. It was unique, looked like a Ray Harryhausen effects reel and appealed to gamers of the era. The sequel was cancelled at the last moment (although test cabinets did appear in California), and home console ports cut a lot of content to make the transition. Lots of merchandise was created, including a novel to tie up the story, but it’s popularity was short lived.

Marble Madness

Another classic game controlled with a trackball. A massive hit when it was released in 1984, it sold thousands of cabinets and was often the highest earning game in the arcade. You used the trackball to guide a marble through a series of tracks, avoiding physics based obstacles and enemies and making sure you reach the ‘goal’ space before the time runs out. Although it had great presentation, introducing stereo sound to arcades, and was entirely unique the small number of tracks left it with little replayability. In spite of its popularity it fell off the charts after only a few weeks. Most ports were well recieved and played well in spite of missing the trackball, but the planned sequel never eventuated and it was left as a nostalgic memory.

Midnight Resistance

Run and guns were all the rage in the late 80s, and this game cashed in when it was released out of Japan in 1989. Focusing on a pair of mercenary brothers whose family have been kidnapped by ‘King Crimson’. They embark on a rescue mission through waves and waves of foes utilising a range of different firearms. Each level was punctuated by boss battles, and in between levels players could spend collected keys to buy special weapons. The Contra franchise on home consoles are more fondly remembered, Midnight Resistance was a bright, colourful game with imaginative level and enemy design, even if it got a bit bonkers at the end. When it did jump onto the home systems the Sega port suffered for the lack of a rotatable joystick, but the Amiga versions were well received.

Growl

Just as popular as the run and gun games were the scrolling beat ’em ups. Towards the tail end of the trend and at the beginning of the environmental fad (the peak of which came with Captain Planet) came Growl, a scrolling slugfest about a team of rangers taking on a gang of animal poachers. The gameplay was pretty formula with the gimmick of rescuing animals who would then pitch in and kill some villains for you. For a group of rangers out to protect wildlife they do have a hilarious disregard for human life, sending severed limbs flying after laying into unarmed gang members using rocket launchers.

After Burner

If there’s one thing that drew a crowd in 1987 arcades, it’s an awesome cabinet. After Burner often came equipped in a large model cockpit that you’d use to steer your fighter jet through stages of shooting down enemy jets. Clearly inspired by the movie Top Gun, this was more style of substance but between the sweet graphics and awesome soundtrack it was worth the coins. A sequel got released the same year but was largely a revision rather than a new game. Sega flaunted the brand from time to time, but the series pretty much faded along with arcades.

Fighting Vipers

After Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat the arcades were awash with competition. Every company and their dog had their own tournament fighting game, often a knock off from the popular titles. On the back of groundbreaking 3D fighter Virtua Fighter came the more colourful and campy Fighting Vipers, one of the more fun entries in the genre. Featuring fast combos, over-the-top characters and a unique armour system made this one of the more playable fighters of the mid-90s. A sequel did come out but the market was well and truly saturated by this point, and a Sonic based version was released, but the industry had moved on.

P.O.W.

An early entry in the beat ’em up genre, P.O.W. featured 2 player action in a war time setting, marking it as different than the gang themed games that were popular at the time. With a heavy reliance on pick ups and weapons to take out the hordes of enemies rather than martial arts, you Rambo your way through bases, jungles and the like in order to make your eventual escape. With enemies arriving on helicopters, motorbikes and jeeps it was every part the 1980s action film in game form. After a piss-poor single player NES conversation the franchise of shelved.

Rolling Thunder

Meet Albatross, a secret agent member of the World Crime Police Organization, tasked with saving New York and a female agent from evil organisation Geldra. It was James Bond by way of Japan, sending you down a series of multi-leveled corridors and warehouses to shoot weirdly hooded henchmen. It was bold and colourful, and the anime style was something we hadn’t seen much of at the time. It was fast paced, has smooth graphics and was barrels of fun. Over the course of two sequels the franchise sadly disappeared.

Aliens

Four years before the legendary Aliens vs Predator beat ’em up arcade game made our lives that extra bit special a shoot ’em up based on the film was released. Playing as either a blonde Ripley or Hicks the players chased down Newt through waves of alien foes and boss fights. The game had solid graphics and would jump from side scrolling to over the shoulder shooting sections, vehicles and elevator sections and cool pick-ups like the power loader. It played fast and loose with the design of the creatures, with alien heads flying around with bat wings but some of the imaginative boss monsters returned in Aliens vs Predator years later. Cabinets only turned up from time to time but it was damn good game.

Ok, so I’m about to go on a road trip so let’s see if there’s a decent time waster in the App Store…

Candy Crush knock-off, Clash of Clans knock-off, Clash of Clans knock-off, Clash of Clans knock-off…wait…WHAT THE LIVING HELL IS THAT DOING HERE.

A week or so ago the line up of new releases on the App Store on my iPhone included ‘I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream’, a classic point and click psychological horror from the 90s. There’s two reasons this came as a surprise. Firstly, it’s not an obscure title but it’s hardly in high demand. There’s going to few gamers who aren’t from the era who’ll know it, and even then it was never a best seller. The second reason is that it goes above and beyond the content restrictions that normally get Apps a ‘No Rating’ classification that prevents sale in the App Store. This game is seriously dark.

Some context. Controversial sci-fi writer in Harlen Ellison penned and published the short story of the same name in 1967 where is was held in high acclaim. It was set on in the future after the US, Russia and China had each built a supercomputer to co-ordinate their wars. The US computer became sentient, absorbed the other two computers and wiped out the human race. He kept a group of five humans alive to experiment on and torture, and the story focuses on them living through the hell created for them.

The game of the same name was released in 1995 and builds on the premise laid out in the story. The player takes control of each of the five characters in turn and solves their individual scenario before trying to take over the computer, AM, himself. We have Gorrister, tormented with grief over the institutionalisation of his wife. Ellen is a successfully engineer fraught with anxiety and fear of the colour yellow due to a past trauma. Benny is a soldier who killed his troops for failing to meet expectations, now physically and mentally mutilated by AM and starved for years. Nimdok in an elderly man with amnesia whose past is tied to Nazi concentration camps. Finally there is Ted, a con man who AM has made intensely paranoid. They get trapped in a range of areas such as a pyramid filled with disused electronics, a medieval castle and a stone age village sacrificing their people to AM.

If you’ve played any 90s point and click adventure you know how the gameplay works. You use a set of commands to move around the area, collecting items and talking to people to solve puzzles to progress in the story. The touch controls have been well implemented and the game plays well on the smaller device. Compared to the Lucasarts games some of the puzzles can be downright illogical, so don’t feel bad if you have to find the solution online. For the most part enough critical thinking will get you through, but the story takes some odd turns. This adaptation has brought the game across really nicely but we have encountered some animation glitches, such as the animation doubling up or freezing, leaving characters standing still while their actions play out invisibly. Subtitles are also a problem, with some sticking on the first line while the audio plays out. If you’re playing without the audio, you’re screwed. One more issue – the voice of the computer is provided by author Harlen Ellison and although it’s treated as a major selling point it is not a good fit. He’s not menacing and doesn’t sell the twisted philosophy of the character. Compared to other evil AI like HAL9000 and GLADOS it’s pretty poor. 

Now to the darkness of the game. Amid AM’s psychological torture scenarios we get people impaled on meat hooks, living hearts eaten by talking jackals, senseless medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners, cannibalism of children, imprisoned with rapists and so forth. This game is very, very dark and challenges players with some confronting situations. Even without the puppy murdering deleted scene it’s amazing this has found its way onto the iTunes store.

Overall it’s an intriguing premise with a well executed story that will be of interest to players who enjoy the mind games the Silent Hill series used to offer. One more issue – the voice of the computer is provided by author Harlen Ellison and although it’s treated as a major selling point it is not a good fit. He’s not menacing and doesn’t sell the twisted philosophy of the character. Compared to other evil AI like HAL9000 and GLADOS it’s pretty poor. 

It’s been 700 years since Cthulhu and the Old Ones crossed the dimensional portal to Earth and took control of the world. The Elder Gods have become royalty, each ruling a major nation through fear and madness. For most people this is their world, and they go about their lives knowing that even if they did object to their other-wordly ruling class, they couldn’t possibly stand up to them. Until now. The invention of dynamite has given people a chance and the Restorationists, lead by Sherlock Holmes, seek to inspire people to rise up by assassinating members of the royal families. Standing in their way are the Loyalists, crazed cultists and powerful figures, such as Moriarty, who want to maintain the social order they benefit from.

This barmy and brilliant set-up comes from the mind of Neil Gaiman, the best author working today (according to me) in his short story of the same name. Martin Wallace designed this game set in the world Gaiman envisioned, and it was successfully Kickstarted in 2013. Since then it’s been largely off the market, but in high demand. To start out gaming in 2016 we’ve been lucky to get our hands on the 2nd edition, a streamlined version of the game with new artwork.

Gameplay is built on the mechanics of deck building, hand management and area control. The board is split into nine cities around the world, each city containing a random deck of cards that includes a Royal family member. Players have a deck of cards that determine the actions they available to them, influence cubes and agents. By playing particular cards you can place influence cubes on cities, where if you have the most units you can claim a new card for your deck and possible place more agents. Having more agents in an area gives you the option of performing an assassination either on a royal (if their card has been exposed) or a rival agent.

Each player will secretly be assigned to either the Loyalists or the Restorationists, which will determine what actions they will take to score points for their team. There are scoring tracks for each team and one for individual players. The game comes to an close when any one of the scoring tracks reaches the end (or a Restorationist is exposed), whereby the players on the team with highest score will have that score added to their individual total, and the player with the lowest score receives a penalty for everyone on their team. In addition the greater the difference between the scores of the two teams shortens the individual score track, potentially bring the game to an early close.

This complicated scoring system takes a bit of time to get your head around, and we made a slight adjustment as to how they are represented on the physical board to reduce the amount of mucking around during the game. Aside from that hurdle the game is complex without being difficult to get the hang of. The mish-mash of styles works well and allows the players to work through their strategy with enough subterfuge to hide their agenda. Having a decently sized deck with random selection added to each game means that you usually can’t play the same way twice.

With so many ways to end the game, and more ways to score points for the team tracks than the individual track, it’s often the case that the game finishes after only 2 or 3 major plays, such as a assassinations of Royals. This can be frustrating for players setting up a long play who don’t get the chance to implement it. Overall the game feels like it ends abruptly, usually just when people are starting to get a good deck going. In future games we may be using the individual track as the end game indicator to stretch the game out.

The new art work is certainly very nice. Heaps of detail has been included in the design and the portraits of the characters look very cool. The monsters themselves are nicely visualised, given the vague descriptions in Lovecraft’s original works, and will be instantly familiar to anyone who enjoys the mythology.

In spite of some mix-ups with scoring and wanting to stretch out the game, this has been plenty of fun and we’ll be playing it more in the future. The unusual strategies needed to succeed make it feel unique. The mishmash of Lovecraft and Doyle’s works is certainly a lot of fun, combining two very popularly board game source materials to good effect.

I don’t need to buy XCOM 2.

There are so many reasons not to. I got 3 new games for Christmas and I haven’t finished any of them. I haven’t even played one of them yet. Not to mention the games on my Steam wishlist. And the semester has just started, I’m going to be busy. It’s the first day available and you know that it’s going to start dropping in price before long. Give the developers a chance to iron out those glitches. I’d have to clear about 25% of my files from the laptop before I could even download it.

…

…

**Buys XCOM 2**

Ok, I’m a pushover. I first played an XCOM game 21 years ago, the original UFO: Enemy Unknown and it held a place in my top 10 all time games ever list right up until the surprisingly well designed reboot of the series in 2012. After the many mediocre and failed attempts to update UFO: Enemy Unknown and Terror From the Deep I’d never have thought we’d get the series back on that level. When this more refined sequel turned up on Steam I couldn’t wait to check it out.

For the first time since…ever…the story has taken a different turn. It turns out we lost the first game and the human race surrendered to the aliens. Jump ahead 20 years and aliens and humans life side by side in a somewhat totalitarian yet peaceful society. The few people who remained loyal to XCOM’s mission went into hiding and now strike back from the shadows. The aliens are hiding something and by building a resistance force can take the planet back. You command the effort from the Avenger, a flying central command where you plan your strategy, manage resources and research and oversee ground missions.

The controls are simple easy to follow without restricting the gameplay. The research possibilities are very different from previous games so seasoned players will have a lot of new content to discover and play with. Hunting UFOs seems to be out the window, having already been greatly reduced in the reboot. Instead you spend your overworld time picking which supply store to investigate while creating a rebellion communication network.

When hitting the ground in combat situations you remain at the disadvantage and will need to plan carefully to bring your team back in one piece. Once again we have four classes of troops but with some adjustments. Snipers and grenadiers are about the same, but support troops have been buddied up with drones that can be used for attacking, defending, hacking and healing. Rangers also have a funky upgrade, being able to unlock the ability to move unseen through the mission area and take down enemies with melee weapons. Swords seemed an odd addition to the game when they turned up in the early screenshots, but they’re awesome! It’s satisfying to see a soldier sprint towards an enemy and take them out in one swing. With the greater range of environments and procedurally generated maps you can expect much more variation in gameplay.

A big change to the combat is the ‘concealed’ function. When most missions start your team will be hidden from the enemies. You can move around, avoiding the eyelines and security monitors of the aliens, in order to set up the squad where they’ll do the most good before choosing to attack. Using the rangers to get the drop on a few stragglers is highly satisfying.

It’s also as challenging as the series is known for, with soldiers often coming back dead or wounded. You do get attached to your best troopers and will have to work hard to keep them moving up the ranks, but there is a reason I modeled mine after the Suicide Squad. Customization has been given a huge boost, something the reboot lacked (until the expansion pack) with plenty of hair styles, colours, patterns, tattoos, scars and accessories to kit them out with. It’s fun giving your team a unique look.

Totally makes sense to send Harley Quinn after aliens.

In terms of design it is the aliens who are the most striking. The developers didn’t exactly make them cuddly before, but now they’re downright horrifying. The generic looking sectoids are bloody creepy this time around, having been spliced with human DNA. Seeing the snakemen from the original game return is pretty cool as well, and they’ve got some surprising moves under their scaley belts.

This is a damn good game. The type of game you start planning your week around playing. We’re still early days in the story based campaign and we’re looking forward to seeing how it unfolds. This is made by a company who have listened to the players and delivered what they wanted.

Do you know what always kicks ass? Awesome and classy thieves. Danny Ocean, Lupin III, Catwoman, Robin Hood, Sly Cooper…these characters bleed coolness. When we read the premise of ‘Scoundrel Society’ on Kickstarter we instantly backed it. Every player gets a randomly assigned oldy time thief with their own ‘Grift’ special move and ‘Knack’ passive ability. In the middle of the table is the ‘mark’, the person or locale you’re competing to take the most loot from, and the deck of items you can swipe.

Every round consists of each player choosing an action card from their hand (everyone has the same set of five) and playing it face down. They are revealed at the same time and resolved. If you’re the only one to play an action of that type your action is more effective. The actions allow you to steal from the mark or other players and add them to your ‘controlled loot’, or move your loot to your stash. Once an item is in the stash it is safe from the other players, but many offer bonuses that only work when they’re in your hand.

Every item of loot has a ‘value’ and ‘suspicion’ rating. At the end of the game the player or players with the highest suspicion score gets nicked by the cops and is out of the competition. Out of those still standing the one with the highest value takes home the honour of being the best thief. As you can imagine the highest value items of loot also have the highest suspicion. You get a balancing act where you want to collect the highest value or most useful items but can’t afford to draw too much suspicion as the end of the game can come about at an unexpected point.

The other mind tickling mechanic is the careful use of action cards. Everyone has the same five, and once they’re played they’re in the discard pile until you’ve used them all and can collect them back up. You’ll have to keep an eye on everyone else’s moves and the loot they have in front of them to gauge when you play your cards. This is a game that requires a crafty disposition to succeed in.

Being part of Action Phase Games (best known for the excellent ‘Heroes Wanted’) new series of ‘Little Box Big Fun’ games, it has a straightforward presentation. The design isn’t flash but it’s easy to pick up and play, with a huge range of loot items that are all completely unique. From a copper coin to the Ark of the Covenant, every piece of loot has it’s own unique value in the game. The wooden finger print and top hat tokens to signify suspicion and player turn add to the simple charm that belies a complex strategic game. If you’re looking for some fun ribbing and backstabbing, this is a cool little addition to your collection.

Next – the 2nd ‘Little Box, Big Fun’ game ‘Ninja Camp’.

SUPERHOTSUPERHOTSUPE…sorry, that’s kind of required. This one landed on our radar about two years ago when a free browser demo appeared online. We were instantly taken in by the mechanic for this FPS – time only moves when you do. If you stop walking and look around you can see your enemies frozen mid-step, their bullets slowly gliding through the air giving you time to work out your next move. It was fun but with limited content it was little more than a fun diversion.

Now the full version of the game has appeared on Steam for a reasonable price, so we checked it out. The basic time freeze mechanic is still there and largely untouched. At a later point of the game you unlocked Hotswitching, the ability to hop into another’s body. This destroys the weapon they were carrying, requiring some clever moves like throwing an object into their face so they drop their gun, then hopping across and grabbing their weapon out of the air. Melee weapons have also been introduced, with swords being especially fun.

Presentation remains as minimalist as before, with stark white environments populated by faceless red antagonists. There are good details and dressing around the place and the appearance makes it unique. Sound effects add a lot of the experience, dragging out and speeding up as per the characters movement.

What the full game really adds to the experience is the story. You begin on a computer getting messages from a friend (being able to hit any key to add your pre-set dialogue is fun, you can pretend you’re typing quickly), and they send you the Superhot game. You play as a character playing it on a VR headset, getting drawn further into the mystery of Superhot. We won’t say too much, because we’re still getting our heads around, but it’s surreal, engaging and breaks the fourth wall in an interesting way.

If you want a game with artistic merit and some fresh ideas, this will be worth your time.

We’ve already played and fallen in love with two games from Action Phase Games – Heroes Wanted and Scoundrel Society. This week we’re jumping into the second entry in their series of ‘Small Box, Big Fun’ games: Ninja Camp.

This is a bright and colourful game whose family friendly design belies the diabolical challenge of this game. Everyone gets a ‘ninja clan’ that they will play as, each one a different animal. Amusingly enough they’ve gone with animals types not usually associated with martial arts, leading to the clans of flying squirrels, polar bears, puppies, platypuses and more. You also have a little team of ‘Ninjeeples’, awesome little Meeples in a range of wicked kung-fu moves. The rest of the game is made up of cards, each one featuring a particular ninja move.

During the rest of the set up the cards are laid out in a grid in the middle of the table and players take turns to place three of their Ninjeeples on the grid. You also begin with two basic moves – Evade and Sprint. On your turn, you select one of the cards and play it, then apply the action to one of the Ninjeeples. For example, Sprint moves a Ninjeeple in a straight line until they reach the edge of the grid or another obstacle. The turn ends by picking up the card your Ninjeeple moved off, adding it to your hand.

Each card will give you a new action to select for your next turn and comes with a point value with the higher points going to the less useful or more difficult to accomplish moves. Stealth, for example, allows a range of moves and gives you the ability to pick up two actions, but has zero points attached. The grid also features traps, which removes points and walls that can’t be passed. As the game progresses more impassable (without the Leap action) gaps between the cards and few spaces not already occupied by opponents, making them impassable, fill the play area making it more difficult to move. When you can’t play an action, or the special move your Ninja Clan grants you, you’re out of the match. When everyone is eliminated the game ends and the player with the most points wins.

What begins as a pretty simple and goofy game turns into a serious strategic challenge after about one round. Options for actions to play dry up, and if you’re not thinking a few moves ahead you’re going to find yourself stuck in a corner before long. You need to thinking of both points and usefulness when choosing the cards to aim for. It may start as a friendly competition but by the end all players will grab the chance to knock each other into the traps or pin them into a corner.

It’s a short, action packed game that we absolutely love. When you’re looking for a fun way to bridge half an hour between longer running games without it feeling like a filler game, this is perfect. Fast, colourful and very exciting.

Ohboy ohboy ohboy!!! Yes, I know that Day of the Tentacle is out and it’s a perfect candidate and I love it but the remastered release price is a bit steep for a game I can finish in my sleep. If you haven’t played Tentacle, you should. But today we’ve got something cheaper, more obscure and TONNES of fun.

War of the Monsters came out on the PS2 some 15 years ago and, having a small run without reprinting, it went unnoticed by the larger gaming community. Outside of its small cult following it’s been all but forgotten. But now it’s on the PSN and only costs a couple of bucks during the Easter sale. It hasn’t been remastered in any way, so the controls feel a touch slow and the graphics are dated, but it holds up incredibly well.

The premise is this: aliens have attacked the Earth in a fleet of flying saucers and amid the ensuring battle their radioactive fuel winds up all over the place. What it comes into contact with mutates into giant, rampaging monsters. You begin by choosing your monster, the selection including homages to Godzilla, King Kong, Mazinger Z, the giant insect movies of the 50s, golems, lava monsters, dragons, retro robots, aliens and what is basically an eyeball in electricity. Along with 1-3 opponents you get dropped into a city environment to beat each into the ground. You have a couple of special moves, can climb the environment and pick up cars, rubble and whatever else to hurl across the map or use as melee weapons. By playing through the campaign mode you can unlock new fighters, skins and maps by facing down some impressively gigantic boss encounters.

Pretty much everything in the areas can be destroyed, making the game feel incredibly dynamic. Throwing your foes into a skyscraper will cause it to crumble, knocking down anyone who happens to be climbing it, creating more rubble to use as weapons. During a long enough fight an entire city can get completely leveled. On top of that each map has unique features, such as the holiday resort with a volcano that can be triggered by body slamming a particular crater and the Tokyo area featuring a tsunami (wait…). There a distinctive buildings and items that can be weaponised, making the Vegas based area especially colourful to smash up.

Although the controls can feel a touch slow to respond compared to what we’re useful, it is perfectly serviceable. You can leap long distances and destroy the world around you in an immensely satisfying way. Many games of this ilk don’t succeed in making the player feel like a powerful, giant monster rampaging through a city.

If you’ve long hoped for a great Godzilla game, or a good remake of Rampage, you’ve got it right here. Hopefully one day a sequel will emerge.

Nothing like a recognisable brand to move a board game off the shelves, one of the reasons this became a hard to find set following Christmas ’15. We’ve given it a couple of plays lately and we can say this for certain: the cake is not a lie.

Stylistically based on the cult video game series Portal, this takes the setting, in-jokes and design of the world without touching on the story. Every player works for Aperture Laboratory and competes to have the most cake in the testing area at the end of the game. The testing area is made up of 15 testing chambers that interlock to form 3 rows with the left end being the ‘new’ testing chambers and the right being the ‘old’. During each turn the players can use special items they’ve collected and move their test subjects through the chambers before selecting an ‘old’ chamber to Activate and then Recycle. This means the player with the most test subjects in the chamber scores the bonus items (test subjects, cake, item cards, Companion Cubes, turrets) pictured in the chamber before the chamber is destroyed along with everything on it and rebuilt at the ‘new’ end.

Essentially the play area is on a constantly moving conveyer belt. Test subjects are reusable so if they get ‘recycled’ on an Activated test chamber they go back into your hand to put back into the game at a later point, putting you in the mindset of a callous scientist. Cake, on the other hand, remains permanently destroyed making them a valuable resource. Once a piece gets placed in the laboratory you have to protect it by having test subjects carry them away from the ‘old’ chambers and keep them away from other player’s test subjects. If all 8 pieces of one player’s cake pieces get incinerated or they have no test subjects in the laboratory the game immediately ends and the player with the most cake in the lab wins.

It’s a game that keeps you on your toes as you need to be managing the number of test subjects in the lab, moving them into the chambers that give you the bonuses you need, protecting your cake, and taking the chances to incinerate opponent’s cake pieces. On top of that, there are the items that you can deploy to add more cake, move pieces around, move the Companion Cube (renders bonuses inactive) or move the turret (kills test subjects) and attack opponents. In addition each item, when deployed, adds a new rule that immediately takes effect. This can change the mechanics of movement, collecting bonuses and so forth. PLUS you can spend the item cards to use the Portal Gun, moving the two portals around the lab to facilitate quick movement.

With so many factors at work there is the potential for the game to be frustrating. It rewards the players for their ability to adapt to the constantly changing play area and random new rules being introduced and dropped (sometimes in the space of a turn). Long term strategists will not enjoy the game for this reason, and most tabletop enthusiasts like that aspect of gaming. It’s not so much luck based, but rethinking your plan every time your turn comes up. The more players involved (up to four) the less chance there is of any planned move coming to fruition. We recommend two players going head to head.

Then there’s the mechanic of Recycling test chambers, which involves physically detaching a jigsaw piece section of the board and reattaching it to the other end. It can be fiddly and while the designers have done their best to make it work there’s rarely a perfect fit between the pieces. Over time the game is going to show rapid wear and tear. Plus, if you’re playing in a small area you must constantly slide the laboratory space up the table to make room for the adjustments. This can be an annoyance.

Design wise the game is a treat for fans of the series. The test subject pieces and cake slices are well crafted, and the Companion Cube and turret minis are of fantastic quality. Everything is based on the video games, which were always incredibly well designed. The test chambers themselves are based around an optical illusion, which is a fun idea. The only thing that would make the design perfect would be GLADOS mini rather than a cardboard standee. For a fan of the series this would be worth the price of the game.

So it’s not a great game, but it’s got some fun mechanics. The rapid pace and changing circumstances make it unique and those tired of drawn out strategy games may find it a fun, brain tickling challenge. Fans of the game will enjoy the references and overall design as well. Even the packaging is done in a funky retro style. We recommend it as something different for 2 player matches.

It’s been a couple of weeks without any board game reviews, but that’s because we just brought in a haul of new titles and have been slowly working through them all! To mark the return of the series: ‘Colt Express’.

I have this base assumption when I see a game with intricate design or 3D game elements – that the look of the game was more important to the designers than the game mechanics. Simplicity tends to bring out the really clever mechanics with high replay value (a prominant example being ‘Love Letter’), whilst big eye-catching games run on a gimmick. When I saw the model train carriages complete with decorative cacti and boulders I couldn’t see much of a game going on. Luckily, in this case, making an assumption made an ass of me. This game has surprisingly simple and enjoyable mechanics with enough random elements to ensure it never plays out the same way twice.

All players take on the persona of an Old West bandit and compete to steal the most loot during the train highjack. Everyone has their own deck of action cards, from which they draw a hand, and bullet cards. During the planning phase every player takes it in turn to place an action card face up in a central pile.Action cards allow your character to move through carriages, climb onto the roof or back into the train, punch a rival, shoot at a rival, loot the carriage or move the marshall. Once everyone has played the required amount of cards the pile is flipped and the actions occur in the order in which they were played. 

‘Colt Express’ is similar to ‘Robot Rally’ in that you plan your moves in advance and then have to sit on your hands while they play out for better or worse. How well you do in any given round is largely determined by how closely you keep track of the cards put out by other players, planning your moves so you’ll be in the right place at the right time to loot, throw a punch or fire a shot. If you make a mistake you could easily find yourself punching the air or moving into trouble that wasn’t there before. Random occurrences can throw a spanner in the works, such as tunnels that, for a round, allow people to play their cards face down, hiding their upcoming actions, or track switches that reverse order of play.

Getting in each other’s way is the biggest obstacle players face. Playing a punch card on someone forces them to drop their loot and get knocked back into an adjoining carriage, potentially ruining the rest of their turn. Shooting is easier but has less immediate consequence – the victim is given one of your six bullet cards to add to their action deck, essentially throwing a useless card into future hands to limit their planning. To encourage more gunplay, the player who has fired the most in the game gets a big ‘Most Wanted’ bonus on top of their loot. Then there’s the marshall who players can move through the train, forcing people to take bullets and escape onto the roof of the train. It’s not a game for easily frustrated players, as it’s not much fun seeing your plans fall about when someone else trips you up.

In spite of the element of planning involved, ‘Colt Express’ is a very fast paced game. You want to play your action cards quick to reduce the thinking time your opponents have, and then when the plans go into action it’s a matter of moving meeples and swapping tokens. An entire game can be completed in less than half an hour, leading to many replays and revenge is sought on trigger-happy foes. It takes a long time to punch out and assemble the components of the different train carriages when it’s fresh out of the box but the packaging is designed to keep them assembled and protected, meaning it’s easy and quick to set up subsequent matches.

‘Colt Express’ may not be an exceptionally in-depth in terms of strategy and planning but it is fast and one of the most fun games we’ve come across in the past year. They has been plenty of friendly rivalries born out of this Western themed free-for-all. Check it out if you get the chance.

Well, isn’t this exciting! I’ve never been sent a game to review before! Books, movies, comics, podcasts…never a game. And I love games! Let’s take a look at Anima: Gate of Memories!

The name actually did strike a chord with me. Anima was a Kickstarter project based on a paper RPG game. Having been successfully funded this digital adaptation promises fast paced combat and exploration of the fantasy world developed through the original game series. Unfortunately for people not already invested in the title there are quite a few frustrations that get in the way of the experience.

Everything starts well enough. The combat features visually impressive moves that bounce the enemies about (at least, they did at first…you get it all stripped down after the prologue). The main combat mechanic that distinguishes this from similar titles in the genre is the ability switch between the two characters with the click of a button. This is fun trick to pull if you’re in a corner, but the characters are almost identical so it doesn’t changes things up much. If the characters had different styles of combat, or differed greatly in their attributes, this might’ve been more interesting.

The central concept of the plot involves mystical demon type folks who are the living embodiment of magical books, and their keepers who are part of a mystical society. The beginning of the game is a huge infodump of backstory and plot. It feels like it’s aimed at the players already familiar with the lore rather than newbies. This can leave some feeling a bit lost.

Design and presentation is the game’s best feature. The world looks interesting and the characters are distinctive and well designed. The attacks are all have some cool particle effects so it feels like everything you’re doing packs a punch.

Unfortunately the camera is not a team player. Quite often during challenging combat sequences the camera will follow a pre-scripted zoom out to a dramatic angle making it almost impossible to distinguish your character from the mess of bad guys. In order to progress you have to mash buttons until the sequence comes to an end. It’s even worse when facing platforming sequences, leaving you to jump into space with fingers crossed or try to judge distances without having the camera in a spot that allows depth perception.

The Devil May Care approach to the gameplay and the anime aesthetic don’t do a great deal to endere the game to us, but that’s a personal choice. It’s neither a genre or a style that has ever appealed to this player. If you’re a fan you’ll get more out of Anima than we did. 

Whilst it has some good elements to it, this wasn’t our cup of tea. With more variation to the combat and a decent camera we may have happily skirted through it without paying the plot much attention, but as it is the frustrations outweigh the fun.

As previously mentioned, I was a fan of ‘Cluedo’ (known as ‘Clue’ in the USA) as a child, later moving on to ‘Mystery Express‘ as a more complex and engaging take on the format geared towards experienced gamers. Today we’ve got a recent Kickstarter that flips the classic ‘Cluedo’ on it’s head. You’re not competing to solve the murder…you’re competing to commit one!

‘Kill Doctor Lucky’ from Cheapass Games takes place in Lucky Mansion, the home to one Doctor Lucky. In every round Doctor Lucky moves from room to room along a prescribed path making his upcoming location predictable. The players take it in turn to move around the mansion and look for items to help in their mission or, if given the chance, attempt to murder the Doctor. As his name suggests the Doctor is exceptionally lucky and will manage to avoid most of the attacks, usually oblivious to what is happening around him.

On their turn the players can move to an adjoining room or further if they play a ‘Move’ card. Once they have moved they can search the current location by taking a card or, if Doctor Lucky is in the room, attempt a murder. Neither of these can be accomplished if another player (or the dog) have a direct line of sight from their location to yours, so careful forward planning is needed to make sure everything falls into place, as the mansion can be tricky to navigate on limited moves. The strength of an attack is determined by how many attacks the player has already made and any weapons they are utilising. Each weapon gets a bonus when used in a specific room, meaning even more careful planning and timing is needed to make the most of them. When an attack is made it’s up to other players to sacrifice their cards to increase Doctor Lucky’s luck so that they may deliver the successful attack.

An unusual twist to the game is the ability to change the order of play. When a character ends up in the same room as Doctor Lucky it immediately becomes their turn regardless of who was going to play next. This gives devious players the opening to skip over their opponents and mess up well laid plans by leaving their character in a room the Doctor is approaching. It is entirely possible to run several turns into each other by following the Doctor’s predicted path ahead of him, a particularly sneaky tactic that can get him into a prime murder location.

The game included many bonus features that have substantially extended the value of the game. After reaching a set Kickstarter goal they added a second floor plan to the back of the board, a more complex two-level building for more experienced players. There’s also a dog and optional cat token that can be used to add more strategy to the game. The dog prevents the room they’re in from being searched or have a murder attempt take place, whilst the cat acts as a blind to block line of sight. They’ve also included rules for ‘Escape From Lucky Mansion’, where the dead doctor rises from the dead and the last player left standing wins. These small touches are excellent ways of giving the game more replayability. 

MY GLORIOUS VICTORY

This is a super fun game that can be learned and played quickly. To succeed you need to be able to plan your moves far in advance and pay careful attention to where everyone else is going to end up. There’s a reasonable split between strategy and luck, as the person who wins will be relying on everyone else running out of cards at the right time. Delaying your action and adapting as fortunes change is essential. We found that the maximum player limit of eight detracted from the game as quite often one side of the table will be waiting a long time to do anything while the rest constantly move in Doctor Lucky’s path and skipping over them. 4-6 is an ideal number. The game can be played in about 20-30 minutes, which makes it good feature at game days and it’s easy to flip over the board for a variation replay. Worth checking out.

For those not part of the tabletop community, ‘Agricola’ is a multiple award winning competitive farming game with player success coming from resource management and worker placement. On each turn the players choose where in the market their workers will be sent in order to obtain resources in the forms of wood, rock, reed and a variety of farm animals. At the end of the game the farmer who has built the largest and most prosperous farm will have earned the most points and won the game.

Where the competitive aspect comes in is the limited resources available to players in each round of play. There will only be set numbers of animals and purchase options in the market, and if another player has already picked up the available horses then you are out of luck. Once you have a pair of animals of the same type they will start breeding and increasing your points, but you need to keep paddocks fenced, buildings upgraded and land bought to accomodate their growing number. In short, a successful player is one who will be able to identify and act on the best times to take each resource to maximise efficiency. This may not sound like a thrill ride, but the frequency in which circumstances can change means players are constantly rethinking their strategy. It’s a popular game for this reason.

This iOS version is just making it’s way on to the phone for handheld, on-the-go play. For new players the game may not appear immediately accessible as the layout and gameplay is not completely intuitive. Fortunately the app has an easy to follow tutorial mode that comes up automatically and does a reasonable job of taking you through the mechanics. The small screen size does make identifying the different market spaces and items problematic, but tapping on each will bring up a description to guide you along. It will only take a few games to have familiarised yourself with all the options so you can focus on your strategy.

At the time of review the release of the game had just started in Australia so we couldn’t find any other online players to compete with. The AI players proved to be pretty easy to beat after a bit of practise, so as a solo adventure it’s very limited. Nonetheless the easy to play design of the app and the proven reliability of the original promises plenty of replay-ability once more players are on board.

Cast your mind back to the simple days of the iPhone 3 and 4…when everything was new and shiny and smart phones were becoming the norm…when indie developers were using this new platform and touchscreen control scheme to create new and innovative games…wasn’t there a real sense of potential? The games that came out then remain the biggest and most popular games on the system. Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Where’s the Water? and Cut the Rope remain some of the best selling games on smartphones. The reason why innovation and big hits like these have dried up in recent times is to do with money. As soon as companies found out that slapping Kate Upton’s boobs on a game and preying on addictive behaviour you can make people empty their pockets into a game that produces no satisfaction or, essentially, fun.

It’s a dark, bleak time for phone based games.

Except for Reigns.

This little gem will only set you back a few bucks and it’s unique, fun and weirdly funny. You begin as the king of a Ye Olde English kingdom and are presented with a deck of cards. Each cut will present you with a simple situation and two choices. Make you choice and you will reap the immediate and long effects, mostly on the four aspects of the kingdom. The church, the army, the people and the treasury have to be kept balanced. Agree to build more schools for the church and the church and people will be happy, but the treasury will take a hit. If any one aspect becomes completed depleted OR full you will be overthrown and die. Also if you lose a fight, get lost in the dungeon or pick one of the many poor choices ahead of you will die. This isn’t the end of the game though – you will immediately take control of the next king and face the next choice.

Throughout the game you will find new outcomes and combinations of choices that will add new cards to your deck. If you find the weird prophet, the witch, the princess or other characters a new set of decisions will be added, leading to more options.

It all sounds very serious, but it’s got an odd sense of humour. If you eat a blue mushroom everyone will turn into rabbits. On occasion the palace executioner will dressed up in a fake beard and red suit and start giving gifts to the children in the village…on other occasions he will be concerned that he’s a serial killer. It’s…weird.

We’ve had the game for about a week and gone through more than fifty kings, and we’re still working to find every outcome to the game. It’s deceptively simple to play yet complex in it’s outcomes. It’s brimming with personality and humour, and we’re going to keep playing it.

Here’s a funky title that turned up at Gen-Con recently…which is on the other side of the planet from us, but fortunately we got a backer copy from the Kickstarter campaign. What caught our attention were two things. You are in charge of a television network and have to pick the best shows to bring in viewers, a fun topic that fits into our geeky interests. Secondly, the designer’s company is called ‘Formal Ferret’ and their logo is a ferret wearing a tiny top hat and a boy tie. That shit matters people.

Sold!

We’ve had the chance to unbox it and play a couple of rounds, all of which I won, so this already gets a ringing endorsement. Up to five players take on a fictional television network with such shows as ‘Get to Know Your Colon’ and ‘What’s in My Pocket?’ along with an advertisement and a piss-poor celebrity to start them out. The shows you get at the beginning don’t bring in any viewers, and with the goal of the game being to have the most viewers this is a problem. Over the course of 5 seasons you have to decide how best to use your resources to achieve this goal.

Money is the primary resource you use to obtain new shows and celebrities, with your coffers being refilled by collecting and using ads. Developing a new show and adding it to your line-up is the most efficient way to increase your number of viewers, but each show has their own set of criteria. This includes an initial cost, ongoing maintenance costs, the inclusion of a star and/or advertisements. Stars cost money to obtain, but bring in more viewers while advertisements bring in money. The trick to the game is that there is a very limited number of each resource made available each season, so choosing when to invest in a show, star or ad is absolutely essential to success. In a unique twist there is no limit to the number of turns you can take during a season. Whenever a player has made all the moves they can or want they can ‘drop and budget’, with the first ones to do so getting the biggest cash rewards for going into the next season, making the option to stay in the round or drop out a strategic move. If you are the last one left in the season you can perform as many actions as you want before cashing in, including scooping up any and all free resources available.

Resource placement games can be complex affairs and are often difficult for a new player to jump right into, as you rarely get the opportunity to try every option in a single play through. ‘The Networks’, on the other hand, is a tightly crafted strategy game that proved immensely easy for new players to learn and be competitive from the get go. There’s enough random elements to prevent more experienced played from being able to predict the upcoming rounds, but not so many that it feels left to chance. With the resources in high demand and likely to be grabbed by a competitor before you get the chance, you’ll need to re-think your strategy on the fly from time to time.

The goofy artwork complements the simple design well and although the play board being three seperate parts isn’t ideal, it makes it easy to take in all the important information at a glance. Having all the shows reference existing shows is a nice touch and we had a good time working out what they all were based on, but this could lead to the show feeling aged before long. Perhaps in the next expansion they could include some classic shows to give it a more timeless appeal. That said, ‘Dexterous’ did win me the last game.

There are different sets of rules for one and two player games, but we’ve only played it with 5 players so we can’t comment on them.

It’s an easy game to learn and it’s fun to play. Can’t offer a better recommendation than that.

Also this.

Remember Limbo, that bleak, unsettling platformer that stubbornly refused to explain itself and was heartily enjoyed by all? It came from Playdead Studios, and they’ve returned with their follow up title, Inside. We’ve waited until we’ve fully played and processed the experience before commenting on it because we wanted to full experience and not just a taste-test.

From the outset it all feels familiar to those who endured Limbo. It’s hauntingly atmospheric, gut-punchingly twisted, features an innocent young protagonist and has simple yet well implemented gameplay mechanics. You play as an unidentified young boy who begins his adventure being chased through a forest by shadowy figures with torches and cars who are determined to murder you. There’s no explanation as to why, just the need to keep pushing forwards in a bid for survival. It’s a fantastic beginning to the game that brings with it a sense of urgency and fear as to sprint between the trees and cower in the shadows.

As the game progresses you traverse different environments, such as a farm, a city and later submerged office blocks and underground laboratories. Sometimes you’re piloting a submarine and sometimes you’re mind controlling some weird zombies that are often hanging around the place. Regardless of the situation the controls are restricted to movement, jump and grab and all the games puzzles and obstacles are overcome by layering together these actions with various environmental effects. Every screen of the game feels unique, and every situation requires a different approach, but the game is exceptionally good at teaching you the skills you’ll need so they can be applied in later puzzles. Without dialogue or text it is up to the player to work things out as they go, but it’s through brilliant design that you rarely feel at a loss for what you should be doing.

No, they save being at a loss for the story itself. Different aspects of the plot are introduced at different times but ultimately it’s up to the player to interpret what’s going on. There are strange, mindless figures around the place and they can be mind controlled through special helmets, and they seem to be used as cheap labour by the general populace, but how it all ties together is uncertain. There are also terrifying underwater creatures, shockwaves, flooding and lots of dead pigs. We’re not going to give anything away but the final half hour of the game is quite unlike anything we’ve played before and we’re no longer convinced that we, the players, were actually the ones in charge.

Playdead’s previous outing through existential horror had limited graphics and presentation, but more than made for it in style. Inside shows a massive upgrade in presentation and technology but retains a domineering style. Rather than straight up black and white or greyscale the game is features many extremely washed out colours, most notably the main character’s distinct red shirt. The background is filled with detail and often stretches into the distance. As noted before every area is unique, meaning a lot of time as gone into crafting this title.

This is a stand out from the indie market, and any gamer looking for a fresh, thought provoking experience needs to check it out.

Yesterday I found myself in the local outlet of that massive games retailer (you know the one) exchanging the new Lego Dimension’s ‘Harry Potter’ Team Pack. We’d bought it the previous day but the electronic tag for Harry wasn’t working. I was content tearing it up as Voldemort, but the kids were disappointed. So we took it back and even though it was bought at a different location, they held the last copy on the shelf for us and without checking the fault they made the exchange no problem. Top notch customer service.

And then…

“Would no like to pre-order the next sets being released before Christmas?”

Sweet Jesus on buttered toast, no. Pre-ordering is the second biggest scam run by games retailers, having us cough up for unreleased, unreviewed products. Gamers buy into it in droves and the number of pre-orders made become a selling point…even though it means literally nothing. Why do people pre-order? A few reasons…the hype, the Fear Of Missing Out, the ‘bonuses’ or maybe just to say they were into it first.

Zero Punctuation sums it up nicely.

Online discussion has started turning against this trend, so let’s count down the ten biggest instances of gamers being burned by their pre-orders. Starting at number 10…

Fuck that, you know what number 1 is going to be. Let’s start there.

#1. No Man’s Sky

The game that has started the backswing against pre-orders. I have a colleague who spent so much time hyping up this release they booked days off work so they could play a marathon session on day one. They called the store to complain when the released got delayed (for some reason) before adversely defending the delay online. Following the amazing trailers and unbelievable (literally unbelievable, as it turned out) claims made by the developers gamers were intrigued…intrigued to the point that they put their money down before a single person had played the game and reported on the quality.

Perhaps if everyone had waited for the game to come out, seen it in action for themselves and read some user reviews they’d have known that the developers straight up lied about features of the game. Check out this comprehensive list of features gamers were promised and did not feature in the game. Developers Hello Games have unsurprisingly gone quiet. Kinda like a child who has been caught in a lie and are avoiding confronting it.

Perhaps the legacy of No Man’s Sky is being the game that broke the public’s trust. In that case: good. Now back to the beginning of the list.

#10. Marvel VS Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds

This hotly anticipated title was the follow-up to one of the best fighting games we’d ever seen. It sold millions of copies and garnered great reviews. On the whole it was a well received success. And then…only two or three months later this was announced:

Ultimate Marvel VS Capcom 3?! ULTIMATE Marvel VS Capcom 3?! What the hell people, I JUST bought Marvel VS Capcom 3 and you’re ALREADY releasing a better version? Apparently the initial game development was disrupted by the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, which makes it understandable that some characters and fine tuning had to be cut short. But releasing the updated version as a solo title at a cheaper prices definitely made people who rushed out to buy the original version feel more than a little ripped off. Is there something wrong with a DLC update?

#9. Dead Island

This one may have been higher on the list if it wasn’t mostly gamers own fault. Pre-orders went through the roof when the trailer for the game was premiered at E3. Didn’t see it? Add to the 15million plus views here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZqrG1bdGtg

That is a work of art. It’s the pinnacle of zombie game marketing. It’s seriously good, but eagle eyed gamers may have noticed there is absolutely 100% NO FOOTAGE OF THE GAME. And yet people rushed out to throw money at it, based on literally nothing. When it came out people were disappointed to find the game shallow, simple, repetitive, glitchy and dull. The zombies in a paradise setting gave it a bit of flavour but it soon gave way to grey cities and hours upon hours of trudging through sewers like every other zombie game ever. It sold enough to warrant two spin-offs and a sequel, again being promoted with a short movie rather than a trailer. At least they didn’t try to sell it using a bikini babe with her head and limbs torn off. Oh, wait.

Why would anyone want this?

#8. Aliens: Colonial Marines

Like No Man’s Sky this is a game sold on lies. The footage used to promote the game up until release was from a game build that in no way resembled the final product. The major difference was that it looked good while what they released was garbage. This came at the end of long development cycle where the original game got cancelled, the rights picked up by Sega who got Gearbox working on development. Gearbox secretly diverted resources away from the game and into Borderlands while still collecting from Sega, a scam revealed by a whistleblower. Ultimately Sega became a target of a class action lawsuit for misleading consumers, costing them $1.25 million. It was such a disappointment that players were wary of buying Alien: Isolation three years later.

At least we got this slice of fried gold out of the mess:

#7. Star Wars: Battlefront

Like Marvel VS Capcom this was a highly anticipated return to a major franchise. Even a bitter Star Wars hater like me loved Battlefront 2 and added this new entry to my wishlist. The game footage looked amazing and when it came out…it totally was amazing! Visuals and audio was of the highest possible standard, almost like footage of a Star Wars movie itself. Fun to play, amazing to look at…what’s the problem?

It’s as substantial as a dry fart. By the shining disc from your local retailing and stagger in amazement at the meagre 3 maps and 6 heroes and no single player to speak off. Repetition and boredom settled in fast. Of course if you cough up for the season pass you’re promised another 16 maps and 8 heroes. That’s right…if you paid full price for a pre-ordered copy you only got about 20% of the content and would have to pay almost that full amount again for the rest. That’s a straight up scam. The price of the base game has dropped substantially, but the added DLC still puts the full experience well above the average pricing for a new release. That’s not even counting the credits and upgrades that can be bought.

#6. Forza Motorsport 5

Launch titles are important, as it’s not the specs but the games that sell a new system. One of the big selling points for X-Box One was the latest in the bestselling, crowd pleasing racing franchise. The game looked great, really showcased the XBone’s potential. Top of the line graphics and great trailers. Enough for a motorsport enthusiast to get on the waiting list, pre-ordering not just the game but an entire new, unproven console to play it on. Like Battlefront though gamers quickly discovered a lack of content in the initial release. Critics noted that the series had shed some 300 cars, 20 locations and countless tracks from Forza Motorsport 4, giving the game very little in the way of variation. What it did have in the place of countless amounts of microtransactions and DLC. Seriously, why did we let this become the norm?

#5. Duke Nukem Forever

Why is it the longer a game takes to come and the more convoluted the development process the hype surrounding it increases rather than dies out? Duke Nukem 3D is about to celebrate it’s 20th anniversary – the sequel only came out a few years ago and was somehow still highly anticipated and made a bundle in pre-orders and day one sales. Annnnnnd it was bunk. A last minute effort that couldn’t decide if it was a parody or celebration of a bygone era. The writing was on the wall. After the bankruptcies, the rebuilding of the engines, the complete lack of direction and eventually it being handed over to another publisher people treated this release like the return of a conquering hero instead of a malformed, bearded exiled dictator crawling out of the bunker he’s been hiding in for eight years.

So yeah…maybe you should cancel those pre-orders on The Last Guardian and Shenmue III and wait to see if they’re worth the time and money first.

Stop making that face.

#4. Diablo 3 and Sim City

So let’s say you do pre-order a game. It comes out when expected AND it’s as good as you hoped. Super! Except…you can’t play it. Not that there’s something wrong with it, it’s that the developers and publishers didn’t provide enough server space to accommodate the day one players. Why would they? The number of players online is going to peak in those early days, no point buying the servers if they’re only being used for a week. Not that they’re in the right, forcing all players to be online whether they want to our not is the problem. The internet got up in arms because they wanted to play the game straight away and couldn’t. Of course, you don’t need to have the game right away, you could wait for reviews before paying.

But seriously, fuck that always-connected nonsense. If they pay for the game they should play the game.

#3. Watchdogs

This one is like the culmination of all the problems listed above in one title. We had pre-release ‘footage’ that turned out to be falsely representative of the final product and it was heavily tied in the release of a new console generation. The E3 trailer not only sold the game, it helped drum up interest in the new consoles about to become available. It’s a title that was used to sell expensive machines and it was a lie. Not only that, but they offered a dozen different pre-order versions each with different content, meaning those who wanted all parts of the game created for players you’d have to cough up for different versions and a whack of DLC.

This is bullshit.

And it all sold without anyone having played it or reviewed it or, as we found out, without seeing real, unaltered footage of the game. I’m glad my local store as a 7 day returns policy because that game went right back to the shelf.

#2. Batman: Arkham Knight

This one gets the top spot because it’s a personal gripe. As a console player I had no problems with how the game ran on release, and enjoyed it thoroughly. It was also the only franchise I routinely pre-ordered games from. My rule was that I would only pre-order games with physical bonuses, not digital, because it’s something that will last and can be resold. Like the nifty statue of Ezio we picked up with Assassin’s Creed 2 that sold on eBay for the full retail price of the game. I kept the items from the previous Arkham games because they’re damn cool and I love Batman stuff. So I put down money for this big-ass set:

Then a couple of weeks before release they cancelled the set. Report to your retailer for a refund. Oh, you want to get the other special edition with the Batman statue? Tough, they’re sold out. You may have been the players to invest most heavily in this release but now you get nothing to show for it. Sometimes pre-orders don’t even get you what you paid for.

Hopefully all this means that people will stop buying into this nonsense and stop throwing money at unfinished products based on weak promises and doctored footage. It’s turning the video games industry more towards money making than artistic and narrative endeavours rather than a happy medium.