HIGH Engrossing building/optimization. Crispy isometric graphics.

LOW Writing is uninspired. Save system is cumbersome, UI cruft abounds.

WTF Carrying a dozen tennis balls and 50 heatsinks in my inventory like a freak.

Is there anything lower and lazier for game reviewer to write than “It’s like X plus Y?” Has any stock phrase done as much damage to the reputation of game analysis? Yet I find myself reaching for this shoddy, motheaten platitude, both in trying to situate readers on Little Rocket Lab‘s ludological wavelength, and in justifying my own inability to click with this well-made title which could be (and probably has been) described by at least one reviewer as “Stardew Valley plus Factorio.”

That’s an appetizing cross-pollination, for sure. Factorio is an endless optimization mandala, with hooks that bite deep into the compulsion-prone folds of the old noodle, but its suite of pleasures is cerebral, not emotional. It’s brilliant, but private and unapproachable — like a famous theoretical mathematician at a faculty mixer. Stardew, meanwhile, is eminently approachable, brightly upholstered with cute characters, bucolic atmosphere, and a lush evocative soundtrack — but mechanically speaking, Stardew is not the plumpest pumpkin in the patch.

If asked to imagine what a Factorio/Stardew fusion would look like, what it would play like, Little Rocket Lab would match it nearly exactly. This is the story of Morgan, a young engineer who returns to her hometown of St. Ambroise, finds it in poor shape (well, in as poor shape as an idyllic small town in a cozy-coded videogame can be), and sets about reviving it through the healing power of industry. She also wants to finish building the rocket her engineer mother began long ago.

Story is front and center in Little Rocket Lab. The plot is laid over, threaded under, and wrapped around the factory-building gameplay, like so many looping conveyor belts ferrying Meaning and Significance hither and yon. This is not the thing to play for those who want to be left to their own devices. Everything in Little Rocket Lab gets built because it’s needed, either by the exigencies of the main quest or the ancillary needs of the townsfolk of St. Ambroise, all of whom have a name and one lightly endearing character trait, as mandated by the Games Writing Accords of 1823.

Vibe-wise, everything here is indisputably wholesome – which is to say it’s all cute, good-natured, sweet, flat, and boring. I do not, generally, like the wholesome gaming thing. At its absolute worst (looking at you, Plucky Squire) wholesome games can feel simplistic to the point of patronizing — but to be fair, Little Rocket Lab gets nowhere near that particular nadir. The idea of a factory building experience with more of a plot is a great concept worth exploring. But the plot is just too simplistic and unadventurous here, and it actively inhibited my long-term enjoyment. The Factory can not be had without the Fiction.

That said, the factory can be satisfying. For anybody who has played a certain game or any that followed in its wake, it’s all building business as usual here – and that’s fine. For those new to the genre, Little Rocket Lab does a great job of introducing the basics and, without lampshading every little nuance, points the way to its Greater Complexities so that advanced players can roll up their sleeves a bit further than they absolutely need to to progress in the main quest.

In other words, for as much as I personally found it an inhibitor on my enthusiasm for Little Rocket Lab, the narrative emphasis is what gives the game its own particular flavor. This is not a factory meant to grow endlessly, unfolding out fractally forever until it has more lines of conveyance than a human circulatory system. No, Morgan’s factory is tied directly into the town’s revitalization. In contrast with the average factory title in which the player is left alone to manifest their brain onto the environment, in Little Rocket Lab, the factory must learn to live in symbiotic peace with the town of St. Ambroise.

Honestly, maybe I was setting myself up for disappointment here. Generally, I like my mechanics-forward games to be nigh-storyless, and I like my story-driven games to be complimented by a suite of bantamweight systems. The fusing of the extremes – heavy duty complexity with unavoidable, long-form story – can work, but I don’t think it works for me in Little Rocket Lab.

So, I don’t see myself finishing it, but I can see a lot of people loving it. Beyond the bland writing and the burden it places on progress, there are only a couple of other notable flaws.

The UI, while okay, is not as full-featured or intuitive as it should be. More annoyingly, players can only save by going to sleep at the end of each in-game day – not cool. Time ticks away at a Stardew-like clip, which is not 1:1 with real life time or anything, but it does mean that the minimum play session will be about 20 minutes long, and any unforeseen interruptions can mean losing progress – and progress in a factory builder is everything. Frankly this Save-Only-When-You-End-The-Day system is annoying in any life sim, and I think it is a genre legacy mechanic that the devs brought over without scrutiny. They have said they’ll be taking a look at this system in future patches, but as of the time of writing, it’s still an issue.

So, this is not an overwhelming amount of criticism. For players who want the deepiest, crunchiest, most byzantine and flexible factory builder out there without any distractions, Little Rocket Lab will disappoint. But for people who have tried the big names in this genre and found them daunting or chilly, and who are still looking for their entry point into the conveyor-belt and throughput analysis lifestyle, Little Rocket Lab may be the one.

It’s a really good game that I personally didn’t like very much, but I think — and kind of hope — I’m in the minority.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Teenage Astronauts and published by No More Robots. It is available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the game, and it was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is not yet rated by the ESRB. It’s a “cozy” game, so there is little to nothing objectionable here. The town itself has issues, and there are allusions to death, unhappiness, and other “mature” problems, but it’s all done with a light touch and with an inevitable wholesome spin. The mechanical complexity will be the main barrier to younger players’ enjoyment here.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: All of the dialogue is text-based, but it cannot be resized. All of many factory-building considerations are conveyed visually as well as audibly. The experience is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game supports both keyboard + mouse and controller, and both are fully remappable.

The post Little Rocket Lab Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

When I played Slay the Spire and Into the Breach for the first time, I knew each one would exert major influence, and that many devs to come would offer their own spin on the mechanics canonized in these titles. What I didn’t expect, however, was that developers would take these two very different games and fuse them together. However, the Tactical Roguelite Deckbuilder is here to stay.

Starless Abyss is the first title from Amsterdam-based Konafa Games. It’s an interesting, maximalist, messy take on this young sub-genre, larded with systems and ideas and quirks, all held together by a viscous peritoneum of star-encrusted Lovecraftian cosmic pulp.

The Starless story, so far, has not grabbed me, but for context — players assume the role of a starship pilot who’s been shunted into another dimension, in the hopes that they can save the galaxy from encroaching monstrous cosmic entities. They do this by proceeding through a series of encounters (events, shops, and combat) in the hopes of beating back the Outer Gods and their rogues gallery of degenerate invertebrates.

Combat is the main course here, and while the easy shorthand would be to say “Into the Breach with a deck,” that doesn’t quite encompass the unique flavor imparted by the many concepts and mechanics laid on top, tucked underneath, and squeezed into all the little gaps of that framework. To jump to a more terrestrial metaphor, what we have here in Starless Abyss is some good ol’ fashioned Lasagna Game Design, with many layers to consider during each encounter.

The setup will be familiar to those who know the genre — enemies position themselves and telegraph an attack, then the player takes their turn before the attacks land. Players control a squad of three spaceships which can all move once, but all other actions are dictated by cards drawn from a single shared deck and played from a shared hand. Any ship can use as many cards as desired, as long as the player has energy to use them.

Each ship has multiple stats – health, shield, movement points, a heat gauge, artifact slots for specialized buffs, and sometimes innate special properties, once the player buys or finds better ships than the basic beater. A ship called the Brawler, for instance, gets a bonus to all damage, but reduces the maximum range of all attacks to two hexes.

The field of battle, a hex grid, presents additional considerations, like debris fields that cost extra movement to enter, but provide a damage reduction to any ship within them. When a corporeal (as opposed to a phantasmal) enemy is killed, it leaves a massive smear of starbeast offal where it dies, blocking line of sight.

There’s also a strong board game influence here. Throughout the run, players acquire “D.I.C.E.,” which are dice used during non-combat events. Unlike Spire, where the outcome of an event is simply a matter of clicking on the choice desired, Starless Abyss choices can fail — playing a high enough D.I.C.E. (D.I.E.?) will guarantee success, but lower-value D.I.C.E. will only yield a 50% chance of gaining the desired result.

I’m still wrapping my head around the way Starless Abyss’s multiple systems mesh, but I can detect sweet, nourishing tactical density here. Mechanics aside, this project has obviously been made with love. The visuals are just great, with blocky, saturated, chunky pixels barrel-aged in a very fine bowling alley carpet color palette featuring blossoms of purple, eructations of neon green, and powder-white nebulae foliating against violet-black expanses speckled with stars and tentacles.

There’s too much in Starless Abyss for me to render a verdict at this early stage, but I can safely say that anyone who vibes with this sub-genre should be paying attention to this thing. It’s an Abyss worth gazing into.

Buy Starless Abyss – PC

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HIGH Selling 100 cola products and getting Captain Cola to visit the zoo.

LOW Having a hundred tasks to keep track of.

WTF Filling the pizzas with chili to sell more colas…

These days, zoos definitely don’t have the same great reputation that they used to. Most of us born in the ’80s used to take regular trips to see the animals, but it’s just as common to hear zoos described as “places that keep creatures in chains” as it is to hear them billed as “educational experiences based around wildlife”.

Let’s Build a Zoo finds itself in the middle of this moral conundrum, but at heart it’s an isometric, menu-based management sim, heavily inspired by titles like Theme Park or Two Point Hospital. Players will build a zoo, get customers in, take care of the animals, decorate everything, and try not to go out of business.

Successfully stocking the exhibits is done in two ways, either by adopting them from all over the world or doing trades with other zoos. As a gameplay feature it feels underdeveloped — it seems largely meant to keep growth at a slow pace and to prevent the player from getting all the animals as soon as they start. Put a pause on those zebras, players will usually start with rabbits, pigs, geese, and so on.

The interface is the mouse-driven variety common to the genre with a few keyboard shortcuts thrown in. Unfortunately, something doesn’t feel quite right. It is especially noticeable when doing things like laying down paths to direct customer traffic — one would expect to simply drag and drop tiles and right-click to delete, but it instead requires a slightly more complicated series of clicks.

The interface itself also feels lacking in a larger sense. For example, to get a list of the Zoo’s staff, it’s unintuitively required to click on the entry gate, yet there is no obvious button that one would expect on screen to prompt it.

Aside from small quibbles like this, everything else about Let’s Build a Zoo works great and the pacing is well done. It’s easy to get lost in the larger mechanics of getting animals and putting down shops, and just as easy to dip into smaller things like regulating the amount of salt to put in the chips or sugar in the cotton candy. There are many fine details as well, like every animal having its own name, seeing VIPs visiting the zoo, and there’s even DNA splicing to create the perfect hybrid between any two animals to really draw the crowds. A pig/snake (pigake?) combo, anyone?

Also interesting is a morality system — apparently it’s possible to be good or evil. For example, getting animals on the black market nets the player evil points. Accumulating these unlocks things like factories that will pollute the environment but net the zoo quite a bit of money. Remain on the good side by reporting the black marketeers and not euthanizing extra animals, and other features can be unlocked, like a recycling plant to keep the environment clean.

Overall, the juxtapositions between handling moral choices and trying to build a successful business make for entertaining gameplay. This balance also helps keep thingse more interesting than the average entry in the crowded management sim genre.

Graphically, there’s not much to note about Let’s Build a Zoo, since it uses basic 2D pixel graphics with the usual isometric view — it could easily pass as a mobile game to be played on a tablet.

Let’s Build a Zoo is an interesting take on a genre that has been done to death, taking the complicated business of running a zoo and doing something with it that is thought-provoking and still manages to keep the player entertained. Definitely recommended.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Springloaded and published by No More Robots.It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 4 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: The game had not been rated by the ESRB at the time of review, but it doesn’t seem to contain anything that I would think needs a warning. There is non-graphic animal death, of course, but it can still be recommended to a wide audience.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game does not feature spoken dialogue, and the interface (and text) can be resized. Audio is not necessary to play the game. In my view, the game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The game is controlled exclusively via the mouse with some additional keyboard shortcuts that can be remapped if one wants to.

The post Let’s Build A Zoo Second Opinion appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Plenty of options for customizing and tweaking.

LOW Menus aren’t very intuitive.

WTF I dressed the stray dog up as a lion.

Let’s Build a Zoo is a game that embraces being a game. What I mean by this is that it forgoes the pomp and circumstance and extra fluff other titles might add to give a sense of ‘realism’, and instead gets straight to the mechanics and gameplay. Starting a file lets the player choose a preset avatar, name their zoo, and then it puts them to work building their vision in less than a minute.

The visuals use a bright and charming modernized 16-bit, top-down art style. Animations are fluid, and the graphics are well-utilized to sculpt distinguishing details for the hundreds of animals in the game. Colors are vibrant, and each object has enough attention to detail so that buildings and even smaller animals are fairly easy to tell apart.

Players begin with a single square plot of land that gives enough room for a few enclosures and shops. As things progress, more options become available, including buying neighboring land plots to expand the zoo or getting new baby animals which can produce new variants or be traded with other zoos for totally new species to display.

A major tool for progression is the research center. This can be built early on and generates points over time that can be put toward new shops, toys for animals, or facilities that open up other options for structuring the zoo. A simple quest system which involves getting quests from NPCs based on certain criteria (time or animals, etc.) can be used as a guide for advancing the campaign.

Income is a major focus of the game’s design, as it drives how much the player is able to do at any given time. This is reinforced by a daily report showing income, and a weekly report which covers a more in-depth look at the costs incurred from the previous seven days and any remaining profits. Money is spent on building structures, buying animals from the shelter, hiring employees, and various other choices.

These options are also tied into Let’s Build a Zoo‘s morality system, which connects to some decisions including upgrades found through research or random events offered through zoo visitors. For example, an illicit animal seller may pop up and offer their services. The player can report them for good karma, or deal with them at the expense of incurring bad karma. Other karma-relevant factors include donating to local causes or slaughtering animals to sell their remains for extra cash. Gaining more karma in one direction tends to offer more “good” or “evil” options, so consciously choosing one path seems like the optimal choice.

Another great inclusion is the DNA research. Players can research animals and figure out optimal pairings to create new varieties, and can even research genomes to the point that animals can be combined into adorably horrible hybrids — elephant-headed snakes and rabbit-capybaras will help attract more customers to the zoo!

Let’s Build a Zoo is an entertaining little title that will be an enjoyable sim for any fan of the management genre. All the details and options afforded to the player show clear thought and care, and thanks to this quality, it’s quite easy to lose track of time while creating an ideal zoo full of cute crocodile-giraffe hybrids.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Springloaded and published by No More Robots. This game is available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 5 hours of play was devoted to the single-player modes. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is Not Rated. The game contains simple, cartoonish graphics. The game contains dark humor involving animals, including pixelated blood and death.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. The mouse is used for general navigation. Left-click is for making selections. Right click opens up a pause menu. ‘Esc’ key exits menus.

The post Let’s Build A Zoo Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The authenticity in capturing the time period.

LOW Using Switch controls for a game clearly designed for PC.

WTF Growing to hate a fictional teenager.

Since I started reviewing games, there’s been a recurring joke in my house – I’ll load up a review game and then tell my partner that I’ve “clocked in”. Sometimes I’ll claim that I’ve “worked all morning” if I’ve been playing a review copy.

I found this very amusing because my partner currently works from home, whilst I have recently left my job and have yet to start my third year at university. Of course, I know it’s just a hobby for me, but early on with Hypnospace Outlaw it sure felt like work…

Hypnospace Outlaw sees the player in the role of an enforcer of Hypnospace, a parody version of 1999’s early internet. As an enforcer, the player is required to locate instances of rules violations, including things like viruses and cyberbullying. To do this, the player must browse Hypnospace zones populated with faux user-created pages such as Teentopia or Goodtime Valley.

This concept is sold brilliantly. Upon starting, the player is presented with a desktop page with icons which are familiar to anyone who uses a computer in real life, but stylised in a way to match the time period. All the navigation within Hypnospace Outlaw is done through this interface, including the game’s settings. With a tutorial in the form of cheesy and dull videos similar to those found in the orientation of any low-paying job, it all helps the player to become immersed in their position as a Hypnospace enforcer.

The cases start simple, the first involving the misuse of a cartoon character. Enforcing this one is straightforward, requiring simple browsing through zones and pages, clicking on any copyright infringement spotted. It is safe to say that this did not require much brainpower, and felt like a chore.

However, the cases get more complicated and increasing familiarity with Hypnospace’s interface is a must for progress, requiring the detective work of pinpointing connections between pages and making relevant searches. Successfully figuring this out always felt satisfying and logical.

For example, in one case the player is tasked with tracking illegal shock images due to a virus. After receiving an email that appears to be malicious, the player can use this information to search the title of the email in Hypnospace to find instances of the virus. From here, one of the results leads the player to a page that gives descriptions of those who have been victims of the software, but not their names. Using the knowledge that the player has accrued up to this point, these descriptions can be used to track down who these people are and the pages which feature these images.

However, sometimes navigating through cases (whether easy or difficult) was problematic and caused me to question Outlaw’s suitability for the Switch. This is often the case with games originally designed with a keyboard and mouse in mind – here, the joycon sticks and on-screen keyboard are functional, but lack the intuitiveness that using a PC would bring. 

Otherwise, Hypnospace Outlaw was a joy because of its authenticity. I might be giving away my age here, but as someone who experienced the period being emulated firsthand, I felt nostalgic. The fake pages look accurately amateurish, with messy writing and garish color schemes, and are littered with pixelated images of people with bad haircuts. There were also instances of music parodies from the time, like pastiches of Linkin Park and Kid Rock. I felt I was being transported back to my younger days. 

Hypnospace also offers a sense of people coming to grips with this new-at-the-time way of connecting, and the excitement of being part of a growing online community. This is a credit to the strong writing, as it all rings true.

In this respect, Hypnospace Outlaw moved from being a task-based game to a voyeuristic experience as I peered into the lives of these people. However, as I continued my role as an enforcer, the game brought me to instances of the underlying toxicity – things like a teenage girl harassed by multiple boys, instances of bullying, or a culture war breaking out due to a cartoon image.

It would be easy to dismiss Hypnospace Outlaw as an outright nostalgia piece, but these instances of toxicity are valid as reflections of contemporary social media and communication. For example, as the player makes their way through the narrative, a conspiracy starts to grow. The developers play on 1999’s fear of Y2k here, but at the same time seem to be warning against the unchecked power held by those who develop these platforms, as we now see with the influence of Facebook or Google. 

Hypnospace Outlaw is a fascinating experience that I wholeheartedly recommend. It is well-written and authentic, and while the early going may feel like completing chores, it soon tests the player’s detective skills. With cases that are satisfying to solve and a story that also applies to the internet as we know it today, it’s a must-play.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Tendershoot and published by No More Robots. It is currently available on XBO, PS4, Switch, and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch. Approximately 7 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood, Drug Reference, Suggestive Themes and Violence. Hynospace Outlaw contains violent images, like pictures of guns. There are references to a fictitious drug called T-Nubs, and their effects on a user. There is one particular instance of violence at a certain point, but this is not depicted to the player — instead, they learn about it after the fact. Most of the adult material found in Hypnospace Outlaw is only hinted at and not depicted in a graphic way.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options. Players with eyesight issues may have some problems reading text,  as it’s not always displayed neatly, or in colors that have sufficient background contrast. However, there is the option for the “Hypnospace helper” to read aloud all the text in the game by pressing Y, with the option to have the game also caption this.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Due to its desktop design and structure, this game is fully playable for those who are Deaf.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Hypnospace Outlaw Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Intricate, polished systems. Excellent style and worldbuilding.

LOW Enemies whose troops abuse the “Taunt” ability.

WTF Why are Slay the Spire and Monster Train fans not talking about this?

Nowhere Prophet is a roguelike deckbuilder that pays great attention not only to its combat systems, but also to thematic concepts, narrative and worldbuilding. Such broad focus is rare in the genre, but the effort put towards polishing each aspect results in an exceptional experience.

In a post-apocalyptic world, a character hears the voice of a satellite falling from orbit. Before it expires, the AI implores them to travel to the Vault — an ancient crypt full of secrets that lies across rusted wastelands and the territories of warring factions. Driven by this summons, they start on their journey while gathering followers and defining their legacy along the way.

Mechanically, Nowhere Prophet starts the player with one (of eight total) characters and a small number of followers. The goal is to travel through a series of maps and reach the Vault at the end. Each map is dotted with various locations connected by multiple routes, and as they travel, the player encounters numerous situations that require either combat or narrative decision-making.

The deckbuilding combat is superb. When battles occur, the main character has a life bar and slots for equipment — guns, shielding, drones and more — and they’re placed on the left side of the screen. Adversaries are on the right, and the middle section is a battlefield divided into slots where cards, or ‘followers’ go.  

Each side starts with a small pool of energy used for summoning followers or performing actions, and this pool both refreshes and grows each turn, allowing for more moves and more powerful summons as matches progress. Each follower has stats for attack and health, and many have abilities like shielding the player from damage, sniping from the rear lines, trampling over enemies to deliver overkill damage, self-repair and so on.

As in any deckbuilder, the key is in assembling the correct array of cards — a good mix of low-cost for the start of a match, some high-cost/high-power for knockout punches later, some utility, and of course, not too many in the deck or else the ones that are needed won’t come up in time.

Nowhere Prophet follows most others in this respect, except that when followers are defeated in battle, they become ‘wounded’. They can be healed at certain locations for a cost, but these places are few and far between. Without healing they can still enter battle, but if they’re downed one more time, they’re killed and removed from the player’s deck. Playing conservatively means constantly rotating wounded followers out and changing the makeup of a deck. Playing recklessly means losing followers permanently, and possibly weakening a deck past viability if replacements can’t be found.

While there are several high-quality deckbuilders available (Slay the Spire, Meteorfall, etc.) few make much effort towards creating a world or even a narrative past ‘beat the boss’. In contrast, Nowhere Prophet employs a sizable amount of narrative in small, bite-sized chunks before each battle and at decision points that paint evocative snapshots of a wasted land populated by people struggling to survive.

Between map points, the player might come across a group of stragglers — ignore them, give them aid, or suspect them of being an ambush? When given work by a local ruler, is it wiser to follow unsavory orders, or to choose a course of action that might earn their ire instead?   

These situations aren’t just window-dressing, though — by making choices, the player will not only earn resources or followers (or perhaps get into an unexpected fight) but also be awarded three kinds of ‘personality’ points that accumulate during a campaign and affect the actions that can be taken when meeting new people, or when offered opportunities in towns or elsewhere. These steer the course of the story and paint the player’s character as one sort of leader or another. Branching story paths and an honest-to-goodness narrative aren’t common in deckbuilers, so not only is Nowhere Prophet notable for attempting it, they deserve high praise for nailing it.

The gameplay is tightly-constructed, the narrative elements add a layer not often seen in deckbuilders, and both halves are wrapped in a fantastic, semi-abstract art style that recalls elements of cyberpunk, collapsed civilizations and Indian theming with bright strokes, chunky colors and bold lines. Visually, conceptually, and in its gameplay, Nowhere Prophet is gorgeous.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Sharkbomb Studios and published by No More Robots. It is currently available on PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed with the starting character. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Blood, Violence, and Use of Tobacco. This is a cardgame at its core, so tagging it with ‘blood’ and ‘violence’ seems a little silly. There’s hardly any animation, so it’s not graphic or gory in any sense.  I think one character may have a cigarette in their mouth, as far as ‘tobacco’ goes. Some of the text situations involve slavery and the overall tone is a bit bleak and serious so I guess the T is appropriate, but more on theming than anything visual.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played the entire game on mute and had no issues. Text cannot be resized or altered, but all information is presented via text or icons onscreen and there are no audio cues necessary for play. It’s fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Nowhere Prophet Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Dynamic characters and decisions.

LOW Keeping track of which petitioner is which.

WTF Deaths that are spoilers.

When first laying eyes on Yes, Your Grace, I immediately thought of the popular mobile game Reigns, as they both take place in a fictional medieval world that mirrors our own — think Game of Thrones or a low-magic fantasy universe. Also like Reigns, the primary mechanic of Yes, Your Grace is sitting on a throne and listening to the pleas of petitioners, balancing the resources of gold, supplies, and happiness to ensure the survival of my kingdom.

Where does it differ? Well, have I mentioned that while managing my kingdom I was also trying to build an army to defend against a barbarian invasion? And let’s not forget the rival lords whom I must make alliances with. Oh, and what about my daughter — should I marry her off, or put her happiness first? Yes, Your Grace is a game about making choices, but every decision is more complicated than making a meter rise or fall, and the consequences are never obvious at first.

When play begins, petitioners and family members will line up in the throne room or ask for a private audience. At first the requests seem minor or inconsequential, but eventually I had to turn down far more than I wished to because of limited resources. At the end of the game I was extremely thankful for some decisions I made, while bitterly regretting others.

For instance, my soldiers captured a barbarian who was raiding villages. My general brought him to me, and when I elected to throw him in the dungeons, he mocked me for not having the backbone to kill him, but eventually a noble came and wanted to make an example of him. If I had executed him on the spot back then, I wouldn’t have had access to the noble’s troops later on when I needed them. By the end of the campaign I was crossing my fingers at every choice, hoping things would work out and I wouldn’t find myself hanging from the gallows thanks to some unforeseen turn of events.

I did far more than sit on my throne, though. Each week found me speaking to agents and members of my family about their concerns, practicing swordsmanship with my daughter, helping another with her ever-growing menagerie of pets, and comforting my wife. Each of these interactions played a part in the larger whole — it’s a spiderweb of decisions, and I feel as though someone would have to replay Yes, Your Grace a multitude of times to see how every choice impacts the other. Additionally, these interactions add a level of emotional impact — there was always something at stake, and it gave me something to fight for.

Besides being an intricate decision-making simulation, Yes, Your Grace uses a variety of other systems, such as managing resources and my people’s happiness, plus, I gathered a general, a witch, and a hunter over the course of the campaign. Each of them could bring aid on quests or in battle, be envoys to villages and towns, and perform investigations. Finally, when battles occurred, they could assist me in battle.

While Yes, Your Grace does a great job of building up its systems and giving me reason to play, by the end of the game I was juggling so many requests and consequences that it was as a task unto itself to track them in the game’s journal. Also, some important story components felt somewhat non-intuitive — they were more like making progress by process of elimination or just waiting for things to fall into my lap.

Also, I’m not sure whether certain outcomes were based entirely on player choice or not… No spoilers here, but while specific things have to happen to keep the story moving, I might have liked more “game over” screens that gave me a chance to skip back to where I made a poor choice.

As a fan of character-driven stories and making choices in games, Yes, Your Grace stood out as one of the best I’d played in a long time — even after the credits rolled, I still felt regret over some decisions and joy for others. The creators did a fantastic job weaving their interconnected stories together and deliver more emotion and intrigue than most triple-A studios manage. I’ll be thinking about this one for a long time to come.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Brave At Night and published by No More Robots. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game has not been rated by the ESRB. It has written depictions of execution including burning at the stake, and being killed by monsters. Prostitution and drunkenness are all mentioned, though they happen offscreen. There are some pixel art depictions of blood and violence.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Playing a good portion of the game without sound, I did not encounter any gameplay difficulties. All dialogue must be read and there are no necessary audio cues. I’d say this one is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. There is no control diagram. The controls function in a point-and-click style. The mouse is used to select all options throughout the game, from movement to character choices and menu navigation. 

— Nikki Waln

Disclosures: This game is developed by Brave At Night and published by No More Robots. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on PC. Approximately 5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game has not been rated by the ESRB. gimme your take on it. anything to look out for? any examples of risque content?

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: REWRITE THIS. there are lots of examples on the site.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable. There is no control diagram. GIMME A CONTROL BREAKDOWN HERE.

The post Yes, Your Grace Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Double-backflipping over a train.

LOW Just how much speed do I need for the Firewatch jump?

WTF Skipping the trail and racing straight downhill, and still getting a win.

Descenders puts players in the role of a newcomer on the bottom rung of a professional stunt cycle league. After a brief training mission and the chance to sign with one of three different sponsors (each offering different cosmetic gear) it’s off to ride randomized downhill races, and nothing but!

The courses are randomly generated based on three criteria – degree of slope, number of curves, and number of stunt setups. Each one is represented by a bar on the level select screen, giving the player the chance to enter the event that best suits their mood. It also allows players to be somewhat strategic with their runs, as Descenders encourages risk-taking for the chance of gaining extra lives — vitally important as the biomes grow more complex and deadly.

At the start of each run, the player has a certain amount of health. Falling off their bike costs a point. Crashing at high speed or falling a great distance can cost two. The only way to regain health points is to complete ‘challenges’ that appear in each new stage of the event, but there’s a twist — instead of each course having its own challenge, the player is given criteria and allowed to decide which map would give them the best chance of meeting the challenge (or if they want to go after it at all!)

For example, a high-speed target of 65KPH is only possible on the steepest courses. Similarly, players will likely never manage to land two backflips if they don’t pick a track with plenty of stunt jumps. It’s another way the game allows players to feel like they’re making relevant decisions rather than having arbitrary obstacles thrown at them.

The player also has a ‘rep’ meter present at the bottom of the screen. Every time they accomplish something – a stunt, a skid, maintaining high speeds – the overall rep increases, letting them gradually improve their ranking. The caveat is that every time the player crashes, they lose one percent of their overall reputation. If a run ends with the player running out of lives before making it to the end, they lose five percent.

There are concrete penalties for sloppy gameplay – even though this is a roguelike, that score represents a rider’s career, and unless players are extremely good, it’s sometimes better to play it safe and attempt low-risk courses to build their score without risking a punishing loss of rep. Fail enough times in a row, and players will drop down in the rankings, forcing them to claw their way back up if they want to keep earning new unlocks.

The only place Descenders falters is with a bit of sloppiness in course randomization. While the constantly-refreshed runs do a great job of feeling unique despite the familiar turns and stunts, there are certain combinations that the game engine should know to avoid, but currently doesn’t.

For example, there are numerous stunts that can only be completed if the player has a certain amount of speed built up. If those stunts appear on a mellow-sloped course after a couple of hairpin turns, there’s no way for the player to possibly clear them. It’s frustrating, but not gamebreaking because of the other great innovation in Descenders – there’s never any penalty for going off-track.

Thanks to this large degree of freedom players can avoid any stunt they like, cut through any woods or go down any drop to pick up the course again a few turns later – or not, if they don’t feel like it. The track is merely a suggestion, and while its wooden ramps and mounds of earth make for great stunt opportunities, the game plays just as well if the player wants to ignore them completely and race freely downhill, slaloming between trees and boulders. There are even ‘trackless’ races that let the player chart their own course to the finish line.

Descenders is a yet another successful experiment in expanding roguelike concepts into new and different genres, along with tight controls, realistic physics, and easy-to-execute stunts. Randomized courses and great downhill play would have been more than enough to make it worth recommending, but the player choice of overworld maps and the risk-based scoring system raise it to another level. This is not to be missed for fans of the stunt biking experience. Rating: 8 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Ragesquid and published by No More Robots. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 12 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game was not rated by the ESRB, but I’d say it contains Mild Violence. Honestly, this should be pretty fine for even younger kids to play. Just make sure they understand that in real life you’re not getting back up from slamming into a tree at 40 miles an hour, and you should be fine.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are no significant audio cues I found, and I had no trouble playing the game with the sound off most of the time. it’s fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available in the options.

The post Descenders Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.