Cozy Grove and Clone Drone in the Danger Zone

Two games starting with C that get old quick.

Cozy Grove

This game has you play as a spirit scout sent alone to a small island that is haunted by spirits! But no, it's not a horror. The silly bear spirits all need help and its pretty cool that as you do help them remember who they are which adds more color to their section of the island, and expands the island to unlock more spirits to help. It's got easy controls and cute graphics but THE WORST collect and deliver quest system I've seen. You'll need to scrounge the place to find things that only SEQUENTIALLY SPAWN. Need three branches? You need to find the first one somewhere before the second one EVEN SPAWNS. That's just absolute shit and a complete waste of time. Not recommended.

Clone Drone in the Danger Zone

This voxel arena battler has you fighting robots using swords and bows with the main catch being that all weapons are vorpal - any piece hit of you or your enemies is easily chopped! You also get to upgrade after each match but one death and you get to start from the beginning again. The robot commentators are intentionally annoying and occasionally funny but the repetitiveness of the actual play isn't great.

Friday Night Survival

Has it really been a whole year since I posted about our Friday night game sessions? It's a case of out with the old and in with the new: we finished 40K: Martyr, got tired of the long loads of 40K: Space Marine 2 and got a bit tired out with Helldivers 2, which has a pretty good run!

We did try Elden Ring: Nightreign where and beat the first tri-wolf boss (and I soloed the sleepy flying ooze) but it runs too poorly on DL's machine so that's been put on the back burner for now. 

Mechwarrior 5: Clans has pulled majority of the time for us with good gameplay and an interesting story on top of the usual optional customization of everyone's mechs. We've won it now, including the Ghost Bear and Tukayid DLC expansions because it was that much fun! Definitely recommended for co-op sessions, but solo might feel a bit grindy and long.

We've also sailed on Void Crew which is a pretty neat "fly your customized spaceship through an array of roguelike challenges that include enemy ships and multiple space walks into space ruins for salvage". It's also a bit repetitive and I think there are only three bosses currently but we might go back into that in a bit. It's lack of story lets it down.

Green Hell is what we're hitting hard at the moment. Nice graphics, easy enough controls, and a story to boot have sucked us into this jungle survival game that includes hostile natives, deadly jaguars, and cool lessons on why not to drink untreated river water. It's not a style in our usual wheelhouse, but its very fun so far. Again though, seems it would be a drag in single player but three person co-op is just fun. For a tiny sized game it's got a pretty big map, so lets see how long it keeps us lost in the jungle!

Zoeti and Zero Hour

Two games starting with "Z"?

Zoeti

This well illustrated single player fantasy game is a card battler at its core. Your character has a deck of combat cards which you can add to or improve using after combat currency and... that's it. It's not as dark as Darkest Dungeon nor as co-operative / multiplayer as Across the Obelisk which kinda puts it behind BOTH those games for me. Not recommended, despite the pretty art. 

Zero Hour

This tactical FPS has you play as a form of special armed force of the law to take down hostile folk, rescue VIPs, disable bombs and everything else in that wheelhouse all while moving awkwardly. This includes trying to arrest people (by calling out) and then getting penalized when they actually do surrender (1 in 10) but raise their weapon to do so (so I shoot them right?). Sigh. 

Good graphics and decent AI, including AI buddies if you have no co-op buddies to play with. It's very "realistic" with damage though so expect to be one shot by some random guy hiding under a bed with an AK47... through a window. If this sounds like your jam and you don't mind long loading times, you should also look up SWAT 4 (20 year old game which should be cheaper now) which has many similar concepts to this and in some respects might be better (except for said loading times).

Gravity Circuit and Scourgebringer

Two pixel platform games with problems.

Gravity Circuit

Playing as a defender of the planet has never been so cumbersome. While your character in this game has a lot of moves and even a hook that can attach to the roof to swing from he still feels super clunky and the bad controls don't help which will no doubt lead to many "falling off the bottom of the screen to your death" ends, except in the parts you are allowed to fall off the bottom of the screen to progress (wtf, I hate inconsistency). To top it off the graphics are terrible, like back in the early internet flashing gifs and scrolling banner terrible. Not recommended.

Scourgebringer

Unlike the above, the protagonist here has excellent mobility, easy controls and a decent tutorial to teach you all of them. She's also 1/4th the size making her super tiny on the screen! The main loop of this rogue-like game is to move through randomly generated rooms and kill everything inside (you're locked in until they die) until you find the boss/exit to the next floor. There's also adaptive difficulty that means if you suck enemies will be removed from rooms and if you're good enemies will be added which means it should always be at a level where you eventually die. Not my cup of tea.

River City Girls, Keylocker, and Crypt of the Necrodancer

A trio of girl power games.

River City Girls

This side scrolling beat em up which plays a lot like the old Double Dragon game (complete with 2 player capability) has the best art, animation and music of this trio (despite the next two games supposedly having a "music" focus. You play as one of two female school students who set out to go on a quest to free their boyfriends. There is actually currency to collect and shops where you can spend it to upgrade skills or buy consumables. Unfortunately there is so much fighting due to the leave / return to area respawn that it gets tiring quickly. 
 
Keylocker

On a planet where music is banned, you must escape from prison for being a "musician". This is a really strange one with huge maps of its painful neon pixel art style to explore and then turn based combat with some guitar hero and timing elements - like pressing "Z" at the apex of your attack will do more damage, and perfect timing when an enemy attacks lets you evade completely. I just couldn't get into it.

Crypt of the Necrodancer

This dungeon crawler has you traversing through seizure inducing disco floors where you (and the enemies) move to the beat. Learning how the groovy bad guys "dance" is key to beating them without getting hurt and moving in time gives you some bonuses that you lose if you ignore the pulse. You also can't wait around too much as when the song ends, you drop down to the next level down where harder things await. To top it off, this is a Roguelike so expect to lose pretty much everything when you die, except for maybe the people that you can save to expand the services in your lobby. I am surprised that this turned out to be the weakest of this trio.

Sky Racket and Backpack Hero

Games that embrace the retro pixel art style.

Sky Racket

After randomly getting jet packs and the titular "sky rackets" a pair of kids take flight to fight the WTF enemies which include cat sandwiches and giant bananas in what feels very much like Breakout albeit with horizontal layout instead of vertical. The idea is that you can whack enemy fire (and a few other things) with your sky racket to destroy the blocks and enemies that get in your way. The problem is that after getting used to being able to whack back enemy bullets, you're introduced to enemy bullets that can't be whacked back and soon after get to your first bullet hell type boss, where only 1 out of every 10 of his shots are "returnable". Not recommended.

Backpack Hero

In this game you play as a pack rat going on adventures with a magic backpack that starts out in a 3x3 configuration and gains space as you level up fighting and looting your way through each map. Deciding what to bring with the limited space is only half the battle, as packing things properly gives lots of bonuses. Put this thing beside a weapon makes the weapon more do damage. This thing diagonally beside armor gives more armor. This other thing you want to keep away from weapons but on the top row of the pack for "reasons". Enemies can also "give" you things like goo or fire which will eat up space or disable your gear. 

Cool concept, but two things turned me off it: firstly there are many occasions where there's lots of loot and you have loads of space but you can ONLY pick up 2 things!? And secondly the pack and its contents return to level 1 on your next dungeon run which absolutely sucks. Not recommended.

Across the Obelisk and Mortal Shell

Games that expect you to die a lot.

Across the Obelisk

This cooperative fantasy rogue like has you control a group of heroes as they quest across a multi-path map and run into loads of combat that plays out like Darkest Dungeon - albeit with a merrier colour scheme and more humor, and action card decks per hero which eat up a variable number of "action points" to use (if you get lucky enough / built your deck well enough to draw them in the first place). Team wipes are guaranteed as that's the only time you get to upgrade things with currency you earned from the previous run. The result is a whole lot of repetition and not a whole lot of fun. Check points were invented for a reason!

Mortal Shell

This grim fantasy action RPG has you play as a thing that can take control of specific corpses ("shells") and plays a lot like Dark Souls, except there's a lot more bad guys in a lot less space making combat tricky and slow. The shells each have their own perks that you unlock as you get "familiar" with them. That is a cool system actually, as it covers consumables as well. Use a poison shroom the first time and you'll probably die (and lose your "tar"/exp/souls) but use it the next time and it makes you immune from poison. The third time and poison immunity lasts longer and so on.

Alas going is super slow especially at the start when you have no upgrades because of the packed environments and unforgiving combat. In Dark Souls you many more options of where to go and what to try where as here is mainly - run past these guys or fight well? Repeat because said guys are everywhere  and respawn when you "rest". With every direction feeling like a brick wall I still think there's a decent game in here somewhere, but I'm not patient enough to get to it.

Redacted Beholder

Weaker copies of already existing games.

Redacted

In a distant space prison, something's gone wrong and not only are the convicts loose - they've mutated into monsters! You play as a guard trying to reach the only escape shuttle on board, but good luck with that because this is an action roguelike in the style of Hades - and what your early guards die trying to unlock are meant to assist your later guards with better gear and skills. You have some choice when picking which way to go with the signs that indicate which currency you might find there but almost always there will be enemies. If you liked Hades then you might like this one too as it plays very similarly. If you haven't played Hades then go play that instead as it is much better.

Beholder

In this game you play as a humble servant to an authoritarian state in your role as landlord who must also spy on his tenants, and if you don't then you and your family will pay the price! *shakes fist* Well funny story. I couldn't seem to do the very first mission because the guy I was meant to spy on never appeared thus making me lose the game. Hmm, if you can't find a bug at the start of your game I don't have high hopes for testing in the later parts. Don't waste your time with this garbage, you can play a similar and better game in "Papers, Please".

Kill Knight and Wizard of Legend

Games about fighting in little rooms.

Kill Knight

You are a knight armed with a sword and guns who drops down into some randomly generated tiny arena to see how many monsters you can kill. Time your dodges, sword the baddies to get more ammo, and obliterate them with your ultimate skill once its charged up enough: basically the more you kill, the stronger you get. Alas it doesn't look like there's much else happening in this game which just expects you to button mash the boredom away. Not recommended.

Wizard of Legend

You are a wizard invited to the Chaos trials which consists of randomly generated areas that you need to get through to become a Wizard of Legend. In it you'll run into shops, mini bosses and of course - rooms that lock you in with a variety of bad guys that you have to beat to advance. There's more customization from the get go than Kill Knight, but the controls aren't very good (though to be fair, BOTH games recommend using a controller which I did not). Even if they were it would suffer from the same problem as Kill Knight though, which is repetitiveness. If you want a better version of both these games, play Hades instead.

Ghostwire: Tokyo, Lost Castle and Super Meat Boy Forever

Games that focus on DEATH!

Ghostwire: Tokyo

When supernatural entities take over Tokyo, its up to you to save everyone's souls! Despite an average story this one definitely got me hooked, as wandering around the deserted streets is super immersive and exploration and stealth game play is rewarded.

Despite dealing with ghosts and yokai there aren't many scary sections at all which might be a negative but I really enjoyed it. The expansion mode of the Spider's Thread is more roguelike where they do expect you to die a lot though, and becomes repetitive. Way better than the prelude though.

Lost Castle

Speaking of roguelike - this is the entire premise for Lost Castle. You get a randomly generated adventurer to see how far you get into the demon's castle, die, and unlock some mild boons for your next randomly generated adventurer. Got old quick with the below average graphics and the inability to spell "Altar" but at least there was no platforming.

Super Meat Boy Forever

This sequel to the punishing original is just as gory but turned me off right away as a lot of control has been taken away from the player to be an "auto runner" type where your controls are only along the lines of jump, jump twice to attack or duck. You need to hit a "change direction pillow" to go the other way. Clearly designed for a mobile device this button mashing iteration is just not for me.

Rogue Legacy

Expect to die a lot!

In this side scrolling, platforming action game you play as an adventurer (and subsequent heirs) who delves into a horrible castle to try rid it of the evil dwelling within. Getting killed still gives you the collected gold for you to build up a castle of your own, right next door that can improve your heirs by giving them better stuff from the get go etc.

I do like that each heir is their own person, complete with their own class, strengths and clever pitfalls like can't see in color, or everything is dark, or everything being inverted.

Alas the part I hate most is that to go back into the evil castle costs you most of your unspent gold. That just seems like an unnecessary kick in the teeth to extend the grind, given that the castle upgrades later on do get quite pricey and often you will come back with not enough gold to do anything but lose most of it to re-enter the combat zone again.  

That singular bad and honestly cruel design decision is enough for me to say stay away from this game even if you like roguelikes.

The Last Stand: Aftermath

A well designed hamster wheel.

Following on from games that you need to "start from the beginning if you die" is this apocalyptic zombie survival game where you play as volunteers from a human stronghold who are sent out further and further afield in search of... anything really. These volunteers are all infected (so maybe "voluntold" instead of "volunteer") which means you are fighting a time limit on each run and as expected, the further distance you get away the worse things become.

However, these designers were clever in sprinkling story missions so that there is actually a plot to the game - even if it is experienced piece meal by different player characters. Also, when you collect knowledge you can unlock and improve skills for ALL the volunteers, current and future as well as incrementally better gear for them to start with and find.

Tip: Unlock knowledge & level boosting skills first.

This net gain per death does a decent job to keep my interest, even though it is grinding (bleh), as my initial people were struggling to get through the first area but now each of them are breezing through to area four which is appropriately titled "Hell". LOL.

It also helps that all the systems work well together. Crafting, Scavenging, Stealthing and Fighting are all good. You can be sneaky and throw things to distract mobs away, but it takes longer to do that (and your infection will worsen) instead of just going guns blazing... but might you need the ammo later? I do wish they'd just put extra gas in the back seat rather than ditching the can though.

All up it's a decent game, just not one I play in large chunks of time - basically one survivor per session. Worth a look if this sounds like your sort of thing.

Demon's Tilt and City of Brass

It's all about your score?

Demon's Tilt

This is a very odd multi tiered pinball game that makes use of pixel graphics and bit tune type music. Unlike conventional pinball, you get all sorts of odd stuff blocking the ball here - like flying eyeballs, fireballs from an evil mage and many more.

Since there are in built gutters (where you have no paddles) and the gap between your paddles is big enough for the ball you have the additional control of "tilting" the game, which basically just moves the ball over a little bit in the direction of your choosing. An odd one for sure, but since it's just about getting a high score its not one I stuck with for very long.

City of Brass

In this first person game your goal is to get through each randomly generated level of a cursed city as quickly and with as much treasure as possible while dealing with the many traps and undead within. Unfortunately the combat (which there is plenty) feels very off, and worse this is a roguelike which means if you die you get to start all the way from the first level again. The only thing you get to keep is a score to remember how well / poorly you did previously. Not my cup of tea at all.

Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free

As I've been enjoying a number of free stuff each week from Epic, I figured I'd check on the games in Steam which surely has lots of free stuff too, just not as advertised. I'm mainly using the Discovery Queue for this, but with a few filters: I'm not interested in anything PvP, anything about Sports, anything requiring VR, anything without English translation/subtitles, etc.

Anyway, I've found quite a lot so expect some short and sweet review batches of 10 as I make my way through them... starting right now! The one in bold is the best of this set.

Big Klondike: Solitaire. For vision impaired? Bleh.

Bridge of Dawn: Poor loading. Fox chasing rainbows in a valley for "points". Bleh.

Deep Night Detective: Pixel platformer where you play as spirit detective Spooky. Awesome music. Lots of reading. Dying (to gazillion other ghosts and monsters) means you need to do corpse run to get clothes, otherwise people you need to talk to can't see you. Lol :P

Destined to Die: One of those WTF games where you play as someone who "needs" to waste time on the computer (literally run the clock), over and over until you... don't kill yourself? What?

Eternal Cave Escape: Pixel platformer - miner with pickaxe that can assist in climbing against dirt walls. Lousy controls. Bleh.

Fights in Tight Spaces Prologue: Turn based, deck builder. Nice art. Interesting idea but, odd combo since you expect it to be fast and fluid. Also baddies get much less moves than you do.

Flower Girl: Nice tunes in this flower grid popper to "attack" cute female fairy demons? OH. It's one of THOSE H-games! Only one girl available in this freebie. Need to get the DLCs for more fairy demons "popping".

Goblin Stone Demo: Made by a friend of mine, control a band of cute goblins to build a base and survive against the oppressive humans. I quite liked it even if not all the features are there yet. Try it out. :)

Slightly Darkest Dungeon combat wise too.

Recursive Hate: Single player shooter with two small maps where you must survive waves of giant spiders. Crawlers abound but as long as you can sprint and reload you might be fine. The tiny spider swarms are the worst/best. Very shallow but I kinda liked it.

Samurai Shampoo: Pixel roguelike dungeon crawler of repetitiveness. Bleh.

Ironcast

A steampunk match-three roguelike.

France and England are at war, but to make things fun they are fighting using steampunk mecha and as the pilot of one of these it is up to you to go on missions to take out enemy armor and ultimately the boss... via tile matching. Base tiles give you either ammo, energy, coolant or repair and filling up your reserves let you do various things on your turn such as fire, power up shields, run, etc.

Still a large element of luck as usual.

In between missions you can upgrade your mechs systems and gain abilities through exp points but if you die, prepare to start from (almost) scratch. Yes, its a roguelike but the further in the campaign you go the more campaign unlocks you receive meaning you can start with different pilots, mechs and upgraded stats. For such a simple game I had quite a lot of fun with this one and actually do recommend it for idle or non-gamers as it is super simple, yet quite addictive. I also quite like the France boss theme so I'm scoring: two and a half shields out of five.

Insight: You can chain diagonally and always kill enemies if you can for their salvage (unless you are going to lose). Also, its worth spending to upgrade so that you last longer through the campaign. Make it to the boss and you'll probably have enough to unlock some campaign stuff even if you do get killed!

Hades

Dying moves the game forward.

In this action roguelike, Zagreus, eager to run away from his hellish home will let nothing get in his way, not even death! Unlike most games death isn't a game over though - instead it is a set back which puts you right back at the start... however, thanks to a magic mirror you can actually make Zagreus stronger per attempt and then there's the absolute brilliant part... death actually advances the story. 

You've got a long climb ahead...

Being the son of Hades, being sent back to the start lets you meet more people / possibly even adversaries who you've fought/yet to fight, have more fantastic dialogue with everyone and generally get to know what is actually going on.

It's also clever in the way it works the randomness in like just as you get used to a boss it's suddenly switched out to a new person to throw you off, and the way the rooms are generated on your escape route. You can always pick what reward you are after when you choose the path, but if you've been dutifully doing your father's tasks you might have actually created rest chambers and the like to aid your escape.

While the game play does get repetitive in that you need to go through a to b to c, the genius design alleviates it to some degree making it a pretty enjoyable experience. I give it three Obols out of five.

Insight: It's worth working on the Minor Prophecies to boost your currency.

Sunless Sea

Likes the letter Z.

This roguelike game has you captaining a ship in top down fashion to explore the terrifying pitch black waters of the Unterzee and collect various currencies while evading or fighting the pirates and giant monsters that lurk those waters.  

Takes a bit of getting used to.

They do warn you that your first few captains may perish, but they can always pass something down to their successor to make future runs slightly easier but really death wasn't the problem for me: it was the slow movement.

Yes, the ocean is scary when there's something around. The other 70% of the time is just traversal and with such a slow pace this game commits the sin of having too much empty space without anything to do. The journal interface also took a bit to get used to but while clunky, its fine compared to the other problem. As such I can't recommend this and give it one and a half zeebats out of five.

Insight: In combat, try stay behind enemies so they can't shoot you.

Feels like Star Trek: Crying Suns Halycon 6

Going where TV shows have gone before...

Crying Suns

The Next Generation.

The Galactic Empire has mysteriously fallen, and it as a commander of an Imperial battleship that's just awoken from cryo, it's your duty to find out why. This roguelite has a really good tutorial, a very simple interface, and very addictive game play.

Hope you like the bridge. You'll be spending all your time on it.

It also features sharper pixels than Halcyon 6, and a better ship to ship combat system that has a bit or rock paper scissors thrown in the mix. Alas, you cannot control ground / away team combats and the game gets repetitive very quickly especially as you are basically starting from scratch every chapter. That feeling of no progression kinda kills it for me. Two frigates out of five.

Insight: You want to take the paths with more encounters, not less.

Halcyon 6

Deep Space Nine?

As commander of a precursor star base it is your duty to defend your space by building fleets to combat enemy threats and evacuate those who are too far to be saved. Strategy is key in getting the resources you need in a timely manner as the alien invaders won't wait around until you are ready for them.

Final Fantasy style with space ships!

That said, ironically most of this game is waiting for stuff to finish. Wait for research, wait for material, wait for construction, wait for travel time - all interspersed with Final Fantasy like, turn by turn combat - both in space and on the ground which I rather enjoy as they are bloody affairs.

The idea that your own star base isn't fully explored is good too - you'll need to clear rooms of debris (and occasionally scum) to make space for facilities, but in the end all the waiting and the blocky graphics simply couldn't hold my attention. One and a half Chuurls out of five.

Insight: Retreat is always a valid option.

Platform Fever 2: Stick to the Ascendant Cave Story

Ascendant

A relaxing rogue-like?

This action platformer sees you fight through randomly rooms of enemies and bosses until you finally ascend. Thankfully it plays pretty quickly and has a very handy map to help you out as any death means restarting from scratch.

Fortunately, the tutorial is really good and lets you practice the numerous abilities available to you. The knock back mechanic is the best though, as it lets you whack enemies into each other or into deadly spikes!

During the course of a run you will also be picking up currency and upgrades to help you out. Despite lacking in depth it is definitely fun and well animated, and worth a look if you are into this sort of thing. I give it two flies out of five.

Insight: Despite having less life to begin with, Theseus is the better choice of the initial two characters.

Stick it to the Man!

That's one way to get super powers...

What starts as an ordinary day in paper town all changes after getting you get hit on the head, waking to find a spaghetti arm that has the ability to grapple onto pins, read minds and influence people with stickers!

Just what stuff in there using your third hand...

I wasn't taken by the art style in this platform puzzler to start with but the well written and well voiced humor got me hooked right away. Nothing in it is overly challenging, though you might need some lateral thinking to solve some bits. I'm surprised I liked it as much as I did - highly recommended, I give it two and a half scary ghost girls out of five.

Insight: Always use green pins as soon as you find them to open up fast travel options.

Cave Story+

Has a pretty good story!

This fun adventure platformer is fantastic and easy for even platforming newbies to enjoy (provided you pick the correct difficulty) and spins a wonderful tale with complete world building. I found myself stuck an entire afternoon simply because I wanted to see how it ended, and like any decent game - there are multiple variations of that.

Some cute characters and some surprising plot!

Game design is also well done in that it introduces you to basic enemies who then slowly gain more abilities as you advance through the areas, and it helps that most are cutesy critters. Boss fights also use mechanics that you actually are being trained for from the mooks prior to their chambers. Definitely a must play, I give this five Curly Braces out of five.

Insight: If you jump and shoot down with a leveled up machine gun, it can act as an additional "booster" to keep you air borne longer.

Barony

A minecraft roguelike.

Tasked with delving deep into the nearby dungeon to free a cursed town from the evil within sounds super familiar, but you probably haven't seen it in blocky Minecraft vision before. That's exactly what this game is: and you can take up to three friends with you!

Surprisingly, there is a fantastic tutorial which shows just how deep this game goes. Melee weps have weaknesses, there are different types of ammo for long ranged weapons, you can throw things, cast a variety of spells, build turrets, mix potions, parry with a shield, sneak past enemies, command NPC allies, appraise gems to sell them for more money and so on.

That is a very bad looking situation...

And then you step into the main dungeon and get insta-killed by a boulder. Yep. The death traps aren't as dangerous as the many enemies lurking inside though and given its a rogue like, and death is final (less final if you are in co-op unless you all die), which means you then get to start again from the top! Strangely, even GTFO is more forgiving than that. :P

It's a game I'd probably get into if I found people willing to play it, but the graphics and style are just not going to cut it with my regular group. I give it 2.5 minotaurs out of 5.

Insight: Long corridors that loop onto themselves are great for lure-killing with throwing weapons. It's hard to miss if the enemy has no room to evade and each loop you can pick up your thrown weapons again (which are the only type to never break).