I bought this based on how much I’ve liked the previous games by Klei Entertainment and the good things I’ve read about it. I don’t think I’ve ever tried a turn-based stealth game either. Unfortunately it didn’t quite sink in for me that this is really a kind of rogue-like game and my personal gaming history has taught me that I simply don’t have the perseverance for this type of gaming experience. When I make gains in a game, I prefer to keep them instead of trying and failing over and over again. Invisible, Inc. really does play like that which is why I shelved it in short order.
So this game was free on Ubisoft’s platform for a month recently so I took the chance to snag it. I’ve actually had this on my Steam wishlist for a while now, ever since Tom Chick named it as his game of the year a couple of years back. As is the norm for Chick, this was an unconventional choice and he was duly lambasted for it but I remember being intrigued as he called it the best CarPG ever made. What I didn’t realize is that in additional to its RPG elements, this is also more akin to an MMO than any single-player game. It’s an online-only game that requires you to log onto the servers and you’re constantly sharing the game world with other players. Playing it was certainly a novel experience for me.
Broken Age is easily the most high profile adventure game in years due to its massive KickStarter game and Tim Schafer’s name. I don’t consider myself a fan of the genre and I’ve never even played the famous Grim Fandango, but I have to admit that getting people like Elijah Wood and Wil Wheaton to do your voicework can still get my attention. Seems to me however that it’s just a way to make your game a lot more expensive than it needs to be.
I had Elite Dangerous on my Steam wishlist for ages but it never dropped in price enough and many people complained that it’s pretty but rather boring. In the meantime, this little gem is both cheap and widely praised, including by Broken Forum’s space game aficionado, I decided to give it a whirl. It was basically made by only two guys working out of a garage.
80 Days is an amazingly innovative game by the same people who were responsible for the videogame adaptation of Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! Inkle specializes in narrative game like these and if how much I liked this one is any indication, I have a feeling that I will be buying many more games from them.
For a very long time, Games Workshop refused to allow anyone to make video games based on their licensed properties. But now that they’ve jumped on the digital bandwagon the floodgates are totally open and there’s been all sorts of adaptations, some of them of dubious quality by rather small companies. This is one of the lower budget adaptations for their Battle for Armageddon boardgame by Slitherine, a company known for its hex-based wargames. I wouldn’t say this is low quality but it does have rather low production values, including spelling errors scattered around which are somehow still even after multiple patches.
As I’ve mentioned plenty of times elsewhere, I grew up with gamebooks as a kid and I’m still fascinated by how they could be adapted to digital media. The Fighting Fantasy books were never my personal favorite series but I was always impressed by the incredible variety of genres they included. It’s not a big surprised that I preferred the non-fantasy books to the all too common fantasy ones. This computer adaptation of the standalone Sorcery! books unfortunately is fantasy but they’re pretty much the only ones available so far. Since I never played these books back in the day and I am intrigued by how well they pulled off the adaptation, so this was one of the main reasons why I plonked for that narrative bundle a while back.
