Kameru: A Frog Refuge and Strange Horticulture

Two games whose themes didn't hook me in.

Kameru: A Frog Refuge

In this management game you are making a frog refuge by putting frog furniture around to attract frogs which you can then tame with food and photograph. To get more food you also need to make the dry "wetlands" more wet to attract and capture all sorts of bugs. Yuck. Despite the cute art I really could not bring myself to like this one.

Strange Horticulture

This strange game has you inheriting an odd plant shop and selling/giving plants to people who wander in, but they're after specific ones and you start with nothing ID'ed - just a book of clues. Giving the wrong thing too many times will shatter your mind because... evil plants? Anyway, then you need to spend time doing the puzzle to put your mind back together to continue - all while the visitor patiently waits for their order. Super odd, and lots of reading. Not one for me.

Deathloop and 112 Operator

Games of repetition.

Deathloop

This stealth FPS (though not necessarily stealth later on) is set in a repeating day and your job is to break the loop while everyone else is out to kill you! Dying enough times or surviving the day simply resets it and with four locations to explore which change based on the four time slots, you'll be pretty familiar with the maps after a few go arounds as you slowly piece together the clues and knowledge to access "locked" zones, areas containers and shortcuts (a lot of which can be found just by exploration). Nice game play and an interesting story with an opt-in PvP mode of a slightly repetitive nature. Still worth checking out if you like first person stealthers though. 

112 Operator

In this emergency services management game you are given command of a number of units in a number of sectors on your map (based on the world map which is pretty cool so you can actually play in your own real life area) and must dictate which emergencies need attending to by the fire brigade, ambulance, police or any combination of the three. On top of this you are on the call center that needs to advise and assist people in trouble / or not so much trouble as there are some "waste of time" ones. This is in addition to managing the funds to maintain your emergency services staff and while the game is all about helping and saving people, the actual goal is to try get promoted to handle larger and large pieces of the map. Gets repetitive very fast. 

Bear and Breakfast

Scavenging trash to make things.

This quirky game has you play as a bear who gets roped into setting up bed and breakfast motels in the forest for humans. You'll understandably start with nothing and must go foraging through the woods for conveniently appearing stacks of timber and literal garbage that you can repurpose to turn into beds and furniture for your guests, who conveniently litter some more. Smaller junk "treasures" can be traded to the local racoon for more things or blueprints of things to improve your hotel.

While the exploration part is fine (though I wish there was a way to speed up conversations) the managing of guests and having to actually make rooms, doors and the works with the particular view provided isn't great. The game also has a hard time starting up for some reason, so now I've just discarded it. Maybe a happy bear can make use and recycle it into a toilet or something (yes you need to build those too). If you just want a game where you can play as a bear, Lumbearjack beats this easily.

Surviving the Cat of Salem Islets too?

Catching up on some epic freebies.

Surviving the Aftermath

A post apocalyptic game that focuses on two different maps - the first is your home map where you construct your base which includes things like tents and outhouses for your dirty survivors and remember to actively tell them where to harvest things because by god, they morons. Your lumber camp might be sitting idle once they've deforested the nearby area and if you don't tell them to go find more trees "here" it simply will go unused. Once you build a gate you can send your specialists (hero characters who you occasionally can recruit - you start with two) to the world map to do quests, fight bandits, and salvage... science? Yes. That's a thing. With enough science you can pay for crowbars or something. Note that your home map can and will still be attacked by bandits, plagues and stink clouds regardless of what's happening beyond. Very management heavy and lost my interest after one session.

Cat Quest II

Is exactly like the first game, except now you can two player it (or play two characters) as a cat and dog adventurer. It's just as cute and just as grindy as the first so for the same reasons I've given up on it.

Islets

An action platforming game with some pretty decent art that tasks you with reconnecting a bunch of floating islands. Alas it features the same problem most of these types of games have for me which is if you leave a screen and come back, all the enemies respawn. When you add that backtracking is almost mandatory, that just gets an immediate thumbs down from me.

Town of Salem II

The worst of this lot for me. Basically a digital version of the Mafia or One Night Werewolf party games where a group of players are trying to reach their randomly given, secret winning conditions by eliminating other players through voting (or murder!). They could be townsfolk trying to execute the secret witch coven and vice versa or perhaps you're of the jester faction and you win if you can get yourself executed? Some odd design decisions here killed this one for me - the first is "go to youtube to see a tutorial". Really? But the second one really sucks and that is the "waiting to have fun". Not enough players? Guess you'll have to wait. Got killed early? Guess you have to wait. Or quit, join another game and wait for enough players. I hate idling. Still, I guess there's a market for these sort of games as this one even has the audacity to have a cash shop!

Shapez and Recipe for Disaster

Surprise engine builders.

Recipe for Disaster

This might sound like a cooking game, but in reality it is a decoration / micro management one where you design your restaurant to be most appealing to the public, order the required ingredients for the dishes your hired staff know about, and assign these staff duties like wait this table and that table but not that table and also cook the lobster while cleaning the toilet. All while balancing the budget! Bleh. Definitely not my kind of game.

Shapez

Unlike the above, there is no budget in this almost idle harvesting game. In it you must construct conveyor belts to transport the required shapes needed by your factory per level. At the start it's easy - get some squares or circles but later on when it asks for half a square with a fourth semi circle and a fourth triangle all of different colors that's going to trip you up as each function needs another machine. One to rotate the shape so the next machine does the right thing, one to cut, one to join, probably more than one to color (because colors need to be harvested and mixed too). It can be a tricky and massive puzzle, or it can just be annoying. Guess which one it was for me? Not recommended.

Suboptimal Six

Six games from Epic that didn't do it for me.

Prison Architect - features art like the Escapists but this time instead of working out escapes, you must manage facility construction and management. Trying to mix these two worlds together is just an absolute fail.

theHunter: Call of the Wild - in this first person shooter you go into well rendered reservations and kill defenseless animals which boasts awesome graphics, good voice overs and pretty decent systems. If you enjoy spending hours following tracks and getting absolutely lost in huge wilderness zones then this might be for you. Definitely not for me though. In my simulations I kinda like prey that fights back.

Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair - an improvement from the last game since most of the levels are now of the fixed 2D platforming variety removing the terrible camera issue. It even has a better story, where you must rescue a "beetalion" of bees who act as a shield to help you when you attempt the titular impossible lair (or if you are that good, you are free to attempt it with zero shields). Might interest the younger generation but otherwise its just a standard platformer.

Relicta - an interesting story which quickly degrades into first person box puzzling. What absolute shit. Not recommended to anyone.

Gods will Fall - another interesting premise where you get a handful of random vikings to try defeat ten or so gods, with the quirk that your heroes only enter dungeons one at a time and if they fail they are stuck in there until one of their compatriots wins the level. That's not too bad. Unfortunately said dungeons are really long, and shitty camera angles and instadeath falls just make it feel like an absolute chore. If it was 11 immediate boss fights that would have improved this game immensely, but for some reason developers love grind.

Mages of Mystralia - another game that suffers from grind AND respawning enemies. Otherwise it's a pretty light Diablo style game where you fight goblins as an apprentice mage. Oddly enough, none of your abilities have any range which is a bit odd as you basically have to bash your enemies on the head with your wand. Maybe later on you can actually shoot stuff but the devs want you to grind for that privilege. Stupid game design and not recommended.

Some Epic Misses

Games I got from Epic's freebies that I didn't get into.

Aven Colony

A space colony builder and management game where all your structures must be connected by -roads- tubes, and all your people kept happy and fed and zzzzzz... Obviously not my type of game, but the graphics and controls are ok so it might interest the builder types among you.

Guild of Dungeoneering

A card based game where you build a dungeoneering guild and send adventurers to -their deaths- collect gold from the dungeons which you also build based on a random deck of cards. Also outside of combat (again card based), you can't really control your adventurer. Instead you need to spawn gold to lure them places. While I like the funny songs that get played the rest of the game doesn't really do it for me.

That's actually a good hand.

KID A MNESIA EXHIBITION

Not a game, an experience. A trippy Radiohead experience... which is also garbage. Stay away.

Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragonkeep (Wonderlands One-Shot Adventure)

While I did enjoy this Borderlands II DLC and can vouch that it will have funny moments in there, I think you will be doing yourself a disservice if played as it stands here - alone. The opening cinematic basically spoils Borderlands II for you, and robs you of all the other interactions you have with the characters outside the DLC. Your call.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free X

Continuing freebies from last time... the one in bold is the best of this set.

Dear Future: Slow load. Creative photography game with low quality graphics? So, like a walking simulator but with no purpose. Not for me thanks.

Deathly Stillness: A very impressive zombie shooter made really quickly for teaching purposes. Check it out!

Appropriate zombie killing attire.

Eronoctosis Put Yourself together: Needs two players so... immediate fail.

House Builder First Job: Slow to load, and with only few available "jobs" without buying DLCs. Kind of interesting, as you need to build houses manually through the ages. I didn't make it past the very first clay house despite the unlockable skills that speed up repetitive tasks a little. Might interest builder types.

My Singing Monsters: An island management game with a focus on raising various singing monsters. While the singing is actually pretty cool, the management side which includes waiting for things to happen (make coin, build stuff, hatch monsters) is not for me.

Night in Riverager: A strange, hand drawn adventure with an interesting style but terrible animation. Also, having a fixed camera that can never be turned is fricking annoying.

P3TT: A puzzle game inspired by Portal. Since I hated Portal, I hate this one too.

SCORCH: A very stylized shooter with a stealth focus - it looks neat but the gunplay feels very lacking.

Slay the Dragon!: Beautiful kids action adventure game that can easily be won in an hour. Definitely worth a look, and don't forget to spam the immunity frames of the dodge roll. :P

UNBEATABLE [white label]: I don't play many rhythm adventure games... this probably being the first, and wow. Good art, good tunes, simple controls all get a thumbs up from me.  Ultimately still not my sort of thing but might be worth for you to check out!

Kingdom: Classic and New Lands

Nothing lasts...

Kingdom: New Lands

As monarch in a land filled with vagrants, it is up to you and your coin purse to put people to work on building a boat to escape and the defenses to survive each night against greedy monsters (known as "Greed") who want to rob you and your subjects of all their material goods.

While the controls are very simple there is actually quite a bit of gameplay that is unexplained which is a bit of a downer. There is also a good amount of idling at the start when you are still trying to get your capital flowing and the idea that you just need to keep running from the monsters kinda sucks. Still an interesting look into this series, I give it two and a half forests out of five.

Insight: Towers (built on rocks) are not as good as hiring a lot of archers and upgrading your walls. Also vagrant camps and trading posts only exist if they have trees around them, so don't go nuts with deforestation.

Just another day in the Kingdom...

Kingdom: Classic

As the king or queen in this minimalist side scroller, you are tasked with building and expanding a kingdom while keeping your subjects safe from greedy terrors at night. Indeed, unlike New Lands, your ultimate goal here is to destroy the greed portals - which is epic!

While most things work the same as New Lands, there are slight differences but all of them are easy enough to work around. It does require a good amount of patience though, as really there is a point of no return when you start attacking.

If you can't handle the counter attack, expect to be starting  again as it will be very hard to recover from that position. Still fun though! I give it three farms out of five.

Insight: Go slow when upgrading your camp as the daily tax chest money really dries up once you hit stone buildings. You need a literal army ready before you start attacking the greed.

Accountability: Railroaded Goals aren't for me

Three games that I quickly dropped!

Football Manager 2020

Do you like soccer so much that you wish you could be the manager of one of the teams rather than play on the field yourself? If so, this game is for you! In it you'll spend most of your time reading and replying to emails, managing funds, player recruitment, training regimes and developing on-paper strategies to use on the field.

Don't worry! You'll also get to watch all of your teams games and yell stuff from the sidelines. Honestly, that's just too much for me and it's much simpler if you were just a dude kicking a ball instead.

Railway Empire

Do you like model train sets? Then this game is for you! In it you get to build your own stations, tracks and plan train routes across the USA to supply various cities with goods and transportation. As part of the package you need to worry about how trains will pass each other, because having only one locomotive is too easy and not profitable enough to meet the time limit goals put upon you.

Also, no building game is complete without fund management! Yep. In addition to train sets I hope you like accounting! Does supplying out of the way cotton make more of a profit than supplying timber which is en route between two towns? But an over supply will drop the prices, hmm! Yeah. Not one for me either.

Rollercoaster Tycoon 3

Since building a railway is too complicated, how about roller coasters instead? Those are fun right!? Especially when you can custom make one and then actually get the camera to ride it (which is cool). It is a wee bit technical to get started here, but then you will soon realize that even theme parks require... accounting!

Yep. Decide what you charge at the gate, what you charge for the rides, what you charge for food, where the queue for each ride goes, how long the wait time for a ride is, how many maintenance crew and entertainers you can afford to pay, and of course - the careful placement of toilets. Yes, what good is a roller coaster without TOILETS!? Yep. That's about the point where I gave up.

Farming Simulator 19

Where farming is hard!

I never knew being a modern farmer was so difficult! Clearly the most enjoyable parts are driving all the big toys across the fields to either plow, sow, harvest, and such but throw in balancing the accounts and loans, deciding on what machines/fields to buy/rent - how many staff to hire and how to build up your farm can really do your head in!

Each machine has their own set of special controls too.

Good thing you can do jobs for your neighboring farmers to get some capital but geez, I am surprised at the level of complexity involved here. Obviously a management game at heart, this one isn't for me - but with good graphics, decent controls, and obviously being the "19th" game in the series - this game knows who its audience is.

If that is you, then go for it! For everyone else I give this 2 weeds out of 5.

Insight: Cruise mode is your friend.

Offworld Trading Company

The Earth is dying. Time to make a profit!

As an employee for one of the very different factions your job is to establish a trading post on a distant planet. In fact the start feels very much like Surviving Mars, only this game makes it easier, and is basically better all around.

The very informative tutorial lets you play with all the structures available, which aren't very many - but their positioning, and how you use them is key to controlling a monopoly on the planet. Yes, you will have competitors - all of whom are willing to dip into black market tactics to get the upper hand and maybe even buy you out!

Lots of information but all of it always available.

You must also manage trade through the markets which is easily done since it is always on screen. I am really impressed at how much information they get on their functional playing space in general, and all up - I think this game is definitely one worth trying if you like competitive sim games (you can play against AI or other players too).

Not one for me, but I enjoyed my time with it. I give it 3 pleasure domes out of 5!

Insight: Scout your starting location well while keeping in mind what your faction actually uses.

Surviving Mars

Requires micro management!

As something I got free from Epic Games I didn't know what this was till I loaded it, and I can safely say it is not my cup of tea.

With the objective of colonizing the red planet, you are in charge of everything from the budget, to where to land the build rocket, how to power your base, where to build your dome, how the power cables and pipes are connected to facilities, if said facilities turn off at night (because solar power only works during the day), which people to bring to your dome (based on age/traits/talents/defects), what place do they work (down to which shift) and ultimately how to send rockets back to Earth to make a profit.

Operation make Mars look like a junk pile: Commence!

Phew! There's a lot going on, but there's also a shit load of waiting, even with things sped up. Wait for research. Wait for build completion. Wait for rocket to arrive. Wait for colonists to have babies. So yep. Not for me.

Also, the second tutorial mission just doesn't work which doesn't give me much hope for the rest of the game. Anyway, if that sounds fun to you - go for it. Otherwise, send it off to Mars!

This is the Police

Who knew being a corrupt police chief could be so... boring? Guess that's where the donuts come in!

After an impressive animated opening with a unique, soft and semi abstract art style you quickly find yourself in the boots of an aging police chief who is on the way "out" - since the scumbag Mayor is forcing your retirement in 180 days. Alas future cut scenes are done in a more comic book style format, but it is still cool and the voice acting is pretty decent.

This is what you'll be staring at most of the time.

The mayor is far from the only scum bag though, as you have to deal with the mafia, serial killers and everything from pranksters to terrorists. If you guessed that this is a management game, then good work detective - you are right! The chief of police sends out other people to handle all the 911 calls. You must handle your staffs time and needs with what the city needs and wants... and more importantly what you need and want.

Want to make an easy 80k? Just send three of your officers to a trap and leave their bodies in the morgue. Yes, you can be a very dirty cop. For me there are two main problems with the game: 1 - too few song choices. In the 3rd "act" you get even less songs which makes it feel rushed or incomplete. 2 - The game is too long. 180 days of managing calls is very grindy, heavy on reading, and honestly not very compelling. Majority of them you will be zoning out on autopilot and possibly wishing for donuts.

It's not a bad game, but it's not a fantastic game which is a shame. I really think it could have been better than what it is. In its current form I give it 2 and a half side jobs out of 5. If you like management games, it might be worth a look - otherwise, it might be worth a skip.