Waiting for Duviri: The Eigth Ebb

This time it's all ship and ocean themed games!

Call of the Sea

How can a Lovecraft inspired game not be horror? This first person puzzler certainly rocks that boat, and is pretty good to boot. Decent voice acting and gorgeous colored art helps usher you along from one puzzle to the next as the story takes you along for the ride. I have to say this has one of the strongest starting quest hooks I've come across in awhile but it lost me once I reached the trial and error puzzles.

Submerged: Hidden Depths

A pair of siblings work to "save" a flooded city being claimed by black tentacles, by making the tentacles ... not black? Despite the premise and the watery wasteland setting this is a very chillaxed exploration game with no chance of failure. Even the Assassin's Creed level of parkouring that takes place is all automatically handled by your regular controls which is a good change of pace. A little annoying that completing the main goal of an area returns you to the main hub though, meaning you might have to repeat it for any missed collectibles.

Maneater

In this game you are a shark out to eat stuff to get bigger and cause chaos in general. Nice graphics, decent controls and a cool mechanism that eating things both heals you and nets you a type of currency to evolve and become a stronger shark are quickly overshadowed by the annoyingly large grind present in this single player game. Since you start out small you need to be careful around the bigger carnivores in the water but gaining mass to challenge said enemies takes a long while. Quests can help, but when the quest is kill x catfish, but specifically catfish in this area and not the other catfish all over the place, that kinda pisses me off. Not recommended.

World of Warships

This popular multiplayer game is all about collecting and upgrading all manner of ships from around the world's history and then pitting them in missions against others which includes team elimination or area control. Small, fast maneuverable ships have less turrets and less hitpoints while the lumbering battleships bring lots of firepower and HP. There is no respawn when you die. You can either continue to watch as an observer or return to your dock and play another ship out to battle (as your destroyed one is locked for the duration of the match I think). Despite a mode of coop vs AI, the game quickly pushes you into the direction of PvP which is not something I'm interested in. The cash shop messages are also annoying.

Kerbal Space Program

On to ships of the space faring variety - this highly rated game failed immediately for me because as one can imagine, running a space program isn't all fun and games if you want to get anywhere. There's a heavy dose of reading, an unfriendly but functional interface (that might be by design) and my nemesis: math! The steep learning curve is to the moon! Blergh.

The Captain

This is the best old school point and click adventure game I've come across. In it, you must captain your space ship to find special macguffins and make it back to Earth in time to use said macguffins to win a war. Yes there is a timer, and you definitely start in a galaxy FAR FAR away with many potential stops on the way. And that is the beauty of it - everything is optional with each stop even having multiple potential outcomes. I basically sacrificed everything and everyone for the mission, and it let me. Best of all the puzzles are easy, even with the "future tech" terms. The weakest part of the game is the combat, but you don't need to fight a single thing to win the game. Highly recommended!