HIGH Tutorials that help me get better at Lumines.

LOW Visual overload can make it hard to focus.

WTF How is the soundtrack this good?

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi everyone, Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com.

I haven’t played a lot of Lumines, historically.

The remastered version from 2018 was my first intro to the series, and honestly… well, I didn’t really enjoy that first pass at it. It felt too loud, both audio and visually, and I couldn’t wrap my head around the horizontal puzzle style. Knowing that the people behind Tetris Effect were also behind Lumines, though, I wanted to give it another shot and see if this new entry was a better way to get into this franchise.

Mea culpa, Lumines — I was wrong about you. (At least in some ways.)

Lumines: Arise is a block dropping puzzle in conversation with Tetris, but rather than the classic tetrominos filling horizontal lines, it instead focuses on asking the player to create 2×2 blocks anywhere on a horizontal plane. Blocks drop from the top of the screen, and players need to move them around in order to create 2×2, 3×3, or larger, in order to score points. A “timeline” moves across the screen and erases any complete blocks it comes across, clearing more room for players to create more blocks, and so on. There is also a rare “chain block” that will allow all linked blocks of the same color to be erased from the timeline, even if they’re not in the shape of a square.

The big mechanical addition to this version is “burst”.

As players create blocks, a meter will fill at the top of the playfield. At any point, players will be able to activate the burst, which then stops blocks from falling for a few moments. If players can create a block during this burst period, it will cause blocks of the opposite color to fly above the screen. Players can continue and make more fly up. All of those blocks come rushing back down once the burst is over, then creating a large chunk of squares to combo with.

Gameplay is broken up into a couple of modes for Arise.

Journey takes players through sets of stages (four or five, normally) with increasing difficulty as things progress. Playlist mode allows players to combine their favorite stages together in a custom order to play, or just to watch if they want to take in the visuals and music. Lastly, there’s multiplayer, which consists of some solo leaderboard competition or battle modes.

I also will shout out the tutorials specifically as Arise tailors them to new players and gives small missions that make it easy to understand and learn not only how to play, but also how to grasp more advanced techniques. These tutorials made me better in a way other puzzle titles haven’t.

At this point in the review, it feels a little like burying the lead to only just now mention the visuals and the music.

Since each stage only has two colors players need to match, this mechanical simplicity allows for some creative and striking ways to keep the play field visually interesting, and the developers lean hard into delivering over-the-top sound and graphics, far above what you might expect for a puzzle title.

One in particular that I enjoyed was a food-themed level. Blocks started as red apples and green melons, but then changed to broccoli and tomatoes as I got further in, while classical string music played in the background. Another had orbs of fish and hermit crab shells that changed color to reflect the sun setting on the beach landscape behind the playfield while listening to slow, smooth pop vocals. The visuals and music combine masterfully to pull players into Arise on a level above just block-matching, and it eats up time in a way that hasn’t happened to me in a long while.

With that said, some of the levels do get overwhelming as previous versions of the game. However, there is a moment of pause and the music fades out between each song, giving a welcome break to catch your breath and reset before going into the next stage. There are also a wealth of accessibility options that allow players to adjust any of the visual stimuli including background effects, particle effects on the playfield, and so on. If it’s too much to take in visually, it can be turned down.

While my memories of playing it in the past weren’t great, the masterful music and visual presence combined in Lumines: Arise really turned me around on the series. It’s not one to miss!

For me, Lumines: Arise gets 8.5 blocks exploding into glitter out of 10.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Enhance and Monstars, Inc. and published by Enhance. It is currently available on PS5, PSVR2 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 6.5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. Around 1 hour was spent in multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E and contains Mild Fantasy Violence.  The blocks will explode into particles on screen, fantasy violence amounts to spiders and snakes that fight each other in the background (but these can be turned off in accessibility menus).

Colorblind Modes: There are multiple colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Sound is not needed to complete the game. Captions for character dialogue can be resized. The game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The controls are completely remappable.

The post Lumines Arise VIDEO Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Playful environments and cute co-op puzzles.

LOW Clunky movement and not enough puzzle variation.

WTF How did two bricks make me tear up like this?

Hi everyone! Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com!

With so many games that focus on offering hardcore action and explosions, I find myself occasionally searching for something a little more laid back. LEGO Voyagers is absolutely in that camp, and my wife and I had a great time in its meticulously crafted world — this is a co-op–only experience that focuses more on exploration than adrenaline, and it’s great.

Two LEGO brick friends are on an island together, dreaming of space travel because they live so close to a rocket launch site. After watching a rocket crash-land near the island, players control this pair of single-bricks as they solve puzzles and salvage the abandoned spaceship parts. Platforming and puzzles combine together in completely LEGO-fied world that will lead players through canyons, factories, forests, and more. 

These little bricks will jump, roll, and attach to larger LEGO pieces while on the hunt for the crashed rocket parts. While most of the puzzles they’ll need to solve to earn these pieces are simple, they’re effective in how they integrate into each level, and how they utilize multiplayer functions into the challenges.

For example, one puzzle had me control some platforms, flipping them between horizontal and vertical, while my wife had to use another by leveraging momentum. In other parts of the adventure there are vehicles that transport LEGOs to complete a puzzle. Working together with a partner to drive a truck (one steering, the other controlling speed) made for an enjoyable comedy of errors, and was ultimately satisfying when we finally got the truck where it needed to go. 

While my wife and I absolutely had a good time with LEGO Voyagers, there’s no denying that it’s a bit on the shallow end since many of the puzzles amount to repeating the same challenges — finding blocks to make a bridge, to complete a road, and so on.

Some of the puzzles feel a little misjudged, as well. Some took too long, some were too awkward, and some were both. The vehicle puzzles I just mentioned, while amusing, ended up also being annoying due to how long some of the sequences went on.

There were also some puzzles that were difficult thanks to their execution. In the factory, for example, I controlled a crane magnet that could pick up specific LEGOs. My wife had to pick up the correct piece with her character, wait for the me to pick it up and put them on a different conveyor belt so she could grab more LEGOs, and then I had to pick them all up again to go to a third location. Controlling all of those pieces plus my wife felt awkward and took much longer than it should have.

Ultimately, Voyagers lands in a weird place for me as far as recommending it goes, and also with who I would recommend it for. The simplicity and repetition of the experience means it’s hard to recommend to older players who might be looking for a little more meat on the bone. On the other hand, it might not be right for a younger audience due to the execution issues with some of the puzzles. Despite landing in this mixed middle ground, I did have an enjoyable time with my wife, and we walked away with fond memories of it, so for me Lego Voyagers gets 6.5 stuck together bricks out of 10.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Light Brick Studio and published by Annapurna Interactive. It is currently available on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 3 hours of play were spent playing the game, and the game was completed. The game must be played completely in multiplayer.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E. No specific disclosures here, just a couple of people roaming around as Lego bricks in a Lego world. Good for all ages!

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is no text in-game. Audio is not needed for gameplay. The game is fully accessible.

Controls: Controls are not remappable, and there is no control diagram. Players will move with the left stick, jump with A, attach and detach to blocks with X, and make noises with B (not required for gameplay completion).

The post LEGO Voyagers VIDEO Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Great voice acting and humorous writing.

LOW Clunky puzzle-solving between characters.

WTF How hard the devs go on Date’s ‘pervert’ character quirk.

TRANSCRIPT: Hi everyone! Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com!

The Somnium Files are a series of visual novels that put players in the role of Kaname Date. He’s part of an elite police force known as ABIS who take on criminal cases through a process called Psyncing. This technique has Date and his AI construct partner Aiba hop into the dreams of subjects to obtain clues the subject may be only subconsciously aware of. The catch is that they have only six minutes to find as much as they can in these dreams — otherwise they’ll cause massive damage resulting in the death of both Psyncer and subject.

In this third entry, Date is back at it again — but stay with me here, because it’s a wild start.

Players in No Sleep begin with teen idol Iris Sagan trapped in a UFO above a strange planet in a sexy bunny costume… for reasons. A reptilian alien with a lizard tail and a third eye reveals that she’s looking for those worthy to survive the “Great Reset” of Earth. Those who can complete something called the “Third Eye Games” will be deemed worthy, and Iris is one of the first to make the attempt. She is allowed one contact with Earth to help her succeed, and who better to help than Kaname Date?

No Sleep is a midquel that takes place between the first two Somnium titles, with this case focusing on how Iris was abducted and who’s behind the Third Eye Games.

As in the previous entries, players will use Date to investigate locations in Tokyo and talk with those around to gather information about the case. He’ll also go into people’s psyches to probe the unique mindscape of each subject, find clues and solve puzzles.

The writing and the characters still are still on point, as in the previous entry — Aiba is equal parts quippy, logical, and protective of Date. Iris is innocent and naive in a way that’s endearing. Date himself is a proud pervert, but also is willing to put everything on the line to protect those he cares about. While there are still a fair number of crude jokes which should be expected from the series at this point, the significantly shorter run time means there’s less time for that aspect to become grating, and fewer opportunities for the perv factor to take away from the story as a whole.

Where No Sleep largely differs from the rest of the series is the inclusion of the Third Eye Games, which amount to an elaborate escape room. Players will control iris to explore the room, find items and clues, and solve puzzles in order to escape. Sometimes items can be combined to create new things — a broken staff and a metallic idol make a hammer — and other objects will solve riddles of varying kinds. There are also narrative “tension scenes” where the music ramps up and players have to solve a puzzle within a time limit or else fail the escape.

While these escape room sections are an interesting angle, I didn’t ultimately feel like they paid off because they become a bit unruly as more of the cast get pulled into them. At first it’s just Iris, but then the sections split between multiple characters, with each having only a part of the answer a puzzle. For example, I would locate half of an answer to a puzzle with a first person, switch to another to find the second half, and then switch to yet another character to use those bits of information and actually solve the puzzle. Once it got this complicated, it felt more like friction than fun to find answers.

These puzzle rooms also fell flat for me in terms of story — there’s no development for anyone involved in these sections, as doing them doesn’t have any effect when we return to the visual novel side of things. It’s like they’re disconnected sidestory “time outs” that don’t touch the rest of the experience.

On another note, I have problems with some of the UI and mechanics.

The settings page for accessibility options (font size, volume, hints, etc) is microscopic on a television screen, and even worse playing the Switch in handheld mode. Also, No Sleep swapped between Japanese text and English text when I completed objectives (finishing a chapter, finding collectables, etc). Similarly, I think think there were localization issues as well, as there was some dialogue and phrasing that didn’t quite make sense.

No Sleep has its faults, but I can’t say that I was disappointed revisiting the series, even if trying something new didn’t end up working in its favor. Thankfully, the runtime is half the length of the other two, so it’s not as much of a commitment and the missteps are slightly more excusable as there’s less of them than there would be otherwise. Ultimately though, I would only recommend playing No Sleep if series fans have already been through the other two and are desperate for a fix.

For me, No Sleep for Kaname Date gets 7.5 character swaps out of 10.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Spike Chunsoft Co., Ltd. and is currently available on Switch/Switch 2 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the Switch. Approximately 14 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 M and contains Blood, Strong Language, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol, and Violence.  Lots of F*** throughout, and many curse words. One of the main characters is in a sexy bunny outfit the entire time, with no narrative reason. Date’s character flaw is how perverted he is, and that comes across loud and clear in jokes and some of the dialogue. Definitely not for younger players.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: Sound is not needed to complete the game. Captions for character dialogue can be resized, but not for all UI elements.

Remappable Controls: The controls are not remappable, and there is no control diagram. Players will use the left stick to move the character and make decisions for dialogue choices, right stick to move the camera, A to interact with items, Y to open the menu, X to open a mini map, L to check the log of dialogue, R to turn off and on the auto advance for dialogue. All of these buttons will also be used individually for quicktime events.

The post No Sleep For Kaname Date VIDEO Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Atmospheric. Exceptional pixel art.

LOW Minimal story and half-baked mechanics.

WTF Cow + wolf = giant monster bone bear?

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi everyone! Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com.

A distress signal sounds. A small response group led by a fierce warrior named Naut heads out to a space station inhabited by thousands of people, only to find it quiet and desolate — but not empty. They quickly discover that the residents have been turned into terrible monsters. With survival as the only option, this small band must fight the horde to stay alive, while ultimately trying to find out what happened.

Katanaut is a 2D action roguelike where players take on the role of Naut, a warrior with a knack for swords and an exterminator of monstrous creatures. Players will infiltrate the overrun space station, pick up special abilities and power ups, and fight bosses to get to the truth of what’s happening. As players go through each level and defeat enemies, they’ll uncover new things to unlock for future runs, like new weapons, guns, abilities, and passive upgrades. 

During play, there’s a lot of emphasis on movement and flow while balancing slicing with swords and shooting enemies. For example, the player’s gun only has a limited number of bullets, and gaining more requires players to get in close with melee, so each encounter becomes a bloody dance of shooting enemies from afar before diving headfirst into the horde to get ammo back.

In addition, there’s a wealth of active abilities that can boost Naut’s combat abilities, like a ball of eldritch lightning, summoning a small group of allies, or things like shield generation or damaging enemies if players dodge-roll through them. There’s plenty of variety overall to make each run feel unique in how players will interact with the environment and the horde they’re fighting through.

In terms of atmosphere, there’s an eerie and tense energy that Katanaut nails. Every cut paints the walls of the station in blood, and the environments become more and more grotesque as players near the core. There also seems to be a hint of mental manipulation – is Naut wanting to eliminate the threat and save the world, or is he trying to learn more and harness this power for himself? Is he being manipulated by this unknown power, or will he be strong enough to resist? Only time will tell as players run through again and again.

While this all seems like a recipe for success and Katanaut does give a strong first impression, that feeling, unfortunately, fades quickly.

My biggest issue with the experience is that the roguelike elements are here, but they aren’t quite on target. For example, while there are plenty of varied and interesting abilities, the guns feel too similar and boring. Sure, the damage of a given weapon can go up or down, but none felt that interesting, or even that different from one another, making guns overall seem like an afterthought.

Main melee weapons suffer from this as well, although this might be more of a pacing issue. Katanaut offers six main weapons, but I have yet to unlock more than one additional weapon after all the time I’ve spent with it, and that includes fully completing a run.

Speaking of pacing issues, it’s not limited to the main weapon unlocks. Looking at the campaign’s structure as a whole, progression from run to run feels so incremental that the time investment doesn’t feel worth it. Increasing health by one point, increasing stamina by five points, increasing katana damage by 5% — it all feels tiny, grindy and unsatisfying, and it makes the ultimate goal of reaching the end feel like an impossible slog that will take much, much longer than I want to spend with it.

These are all significant downsides, and the story was equally unsatisfying. Does a roguelike need to have a grand, overarching narrative to be good? No. But does it need to at least have some core of a story to motivate me for why I should care about going through this space station? I think so.

I wish I could say that the payoff was worth it, but after finishing a run, I got to see the credits for the game and then opened up an enhanced difficulty — and that was it! None of the story questions were answered! What was the villain’s motivation? Why create the monsters? If I beat the boss, why do I need to go back and do the same run again, but harder? This made the “ending” fall completely flat for me, and after that narrative letdown, I didn’t feel a lot of motivation to continue.

Katanaut looks good and has potential, and honestly, it’s getting better by the day. The developer has been dropping frequent updates that offer additions and enhancements that weren’t there when I first started playing, and the push and pull of going between melee and ranged during the action feels on point. However, there’s a lot of competition in the roguelike genre right now, and in order to succeed, Katanaut‘s going to need better handling of its story and adjustments to the grindy nature of the meta-progression. As it stands today, it didn’t land with me and I haven’t stuck with it, but that could change in the future with a few more patches and upgrades.

For me, Katanaut gets 6.5 otherworldly abominations out of ten.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Voidmaw. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 8.5 hours of play were spent playing the game, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB. Players will use all types of weapons (blades, guns, grenades, etc) to slice enemies to bloody pieces. Dead bodies and gore are shown in each level. There are a lot of otherworldly horrors comprised of fleshy tissue, blood, and teeth. While there is no salty language in the game, there’s plenty of disturbing imagery throughout.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is text in-game, and the text is resizable. Audio is not needed for gameplay. The game is fully accessible.

Controls: Controls are fully remappable.

The post Katanaut VIDEO Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

TRANSCRIPT:

GameCritics.com: Hello everyone, welcome back. This is Eugene Sax for GameCritics.com coming to you again with another interview. Since we’ve been kind of on a kick for interviews here lately. One in particular, so this was a game that was brought to my attention. It was an automation game, which is not a genre I’m most familiar with in the world, but definitely the visuals and the “vibe”. Haha, that’ll make sense in a minute for this game. Kind of kind of took me, hooked me really quick and kind of wanted to get into the game a little more. And I’ve had the pleasure of being able to go ahead and interview the developer here. So, my apologies, Manik?

Unwise (Manik Bhat): Yeah, you got her super close, Manik. But I’ve heard every pronunciation under the sun that sometimes I forget how to say it. So you’re spot on.

GC: All right, perfect. So yes, Manik Bhat, thank you so much for joining me here.

Unwise: Of course. No, thanks so much for inviting me. Excited to be here.

GC: Yeah, so why don’t we get started with the easy questions? So what got you into games and what got you into gaming as like a hobby?

Unwise: Yeah, I mean I I think my earliest memories I have are sitting next to my brother, watching him play Starcraft and M.A.X.: Mechanized Assault on the PC and Descent.

GC: Mhm.

Unwise: And so I fell in love with technology and games from that point onwards, and and played a lot of genres, but I always tended to go towards strategy, RTS, simulation games. And that’s why I’ve been, you know, about the story of, Future Vibe Check. I feel like there’s been this (emergence) of Buildy Crafty automation games over the past decade, and I love that. And another big part of my love since since pretty early life has been music. And I figured how about we combine both. Yeah. And that’s really the gen… how the genesis of Future Vibe Check happened.

GC: Gotcha. Okay. Very cool. ‘Cause yeah, like I said, I haven’t been the biggest into automation games kind of myself. So I definitely after I played yours took a deep dive in kind of some of the other big names out there just so I can get a little more familiar with it myself, and it sounds like from it’s mostly just the love of those games essentially is what kind of made Future Vibe Check and your love of music it sounds like too. Do you actually have like a background in music yourself or…?

Unwise: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like my the three biggest hobbies in my life that have sustained me have been music, video games and philos… like weird esoteric eastern philosophy. So, I’m like this is kind of a love letter to a younger version of myself of like what I would love if I was playing this when I was younger. So yeah, I played music all my life. So I I I own like a bunch of instruments. Play piano, guitar. I own a dejembe, a ukulele, a sitar, a banjo, bunch of random stuff. I can only really play guitar well. I would only say that. And I wish I could sing. I’m not I wish I was a vocalist. (I) can’t, Only my mom thinks I’m a good singer.

GC: Mhm.

Unwise: …and my wife. But it’s it it’s it’s something I wish I could do. But, this has been a way to reconnect with that early part of myself because I feel like after college, I didn’t really get time to play music at all. Yeah, because there’s no one to play with and it’s I was in a really small rinky dink apartment in New York, so I had none of my instruments with me. So, this was a way to kind of reconnect with my musical past in a way.

GC: Gotcha. Yeah. I also grew up playing music as well. I only had trumpet, as far as the instrument that I actually played a lot of. Dabbled a little bit in guitar there near the end of high school, beginning of college, but I never really threw myself into it. And I kind of wish I did ’cause that would have been a good skill to have. But always have liked all kinds of different kind of music as well. So I completely get the music thing behind it. So I guess tell me what in what was the inspiration for wanting to get into game development? Was it just that love for all of these things and the thought of, hey, what can I do to put them all together or was there something else that triggered that desire?

Unwise: Yeah. Yeah, I think it was a few things. I felt like so I was at a you know a change in my career path. I’d spent a decade in healthcare startups. So I had built a healthcare startup for nearly a decade. Went through that entire journey and kind of very gratefully and luckily that journey went well. So I was kind of confronted with this path of what I want to do next. And for me the big driving force in my mind was I want to build something that a younger version of myself would have loved. And it’s like games were the answer. And it was a completely different creative direction for me to learn something new, try something new, and just combine the things that I spent most of my time with outside of work, which was games and music. So that was one big, you know, area that I wanted to explore was giving something back. The second big thing was I felt like I I I would spend so much time in these building games and crafting and automation games, but that investment never translated to the real world. Like I would build these massive factories and like it would be cool. It’d be awesome. Love those games. But I’m like, okay, music is so universal. Imagine if what you built and spent so much time investing in could be experienced in the real world and could be shared with others in the real world. And music I felt was like the closest connection point for that where I spent 50 hours making this crazy composition and factory and Future Vibe Check. Well, now I can hear it and you know, share with others. The third big thing I was really interested in was how do kind of I I’ve I’ve been a bit worried about what happens in the next 10-15 years to human creativity when it’s so easy to make stuff with AI. And I feel like most people are not going to spend time learning music theory or reading a piece of sheet music or even learning a DAH — a desktop audio workstation like others. So like imagine if there’s a new way to play with music in a new musical notation system in a game format. And that’s a big driving force for me too, which is hey now you can like visualize rhythm, you can visualize pitch, you can do all these things. So that those are the probably the three big pillars that that made me want to start this thing.

GC: Gotcha. Yeah. Very cool, and that’s very kind of obvious from the kind of design that you do it. like you have so many tools that make it very easy to kind of get into that just from starting up. It’s a little slow to start, but that could just be my lack of knowledge in the game. But…

Unwise: No, no, you’re right. I mean, like the it’s it’s so the the toughest part of this game has been tutorialization and flow.

GC: Mhm.

Unwise: …And it’s so hard to get right ’cause some players get it so quickly. Some players are like, “This is this is so handholdy. What the heck?” and trying to strike that right balance is something that I’m still trying to figure out what’s the right way to balance the some of the game design to get to the aha moment faster. So, you’re not alone there. I don’t think we’ve solved it just yet. I have another update actually coming out in a week or two that I I think gets a lot closer to what I think the ideal state is for that early game. But yeah, because it’s like it’s automation mechanics which are already a bit complicated and now there’s music on top and there’s node based composition. It’s like there’s a lot of systems and there’s a base defense system. It’s like what the heck? There’s a lot going on. So finding the right, you know, a smooth entry point is probably the toughest and and the UX and UI of all of that is the toughest challenge we face, before we move towards a release date.

GC: Yeah. Gotcha. Very cool. Yeah, I’m think like the there was a part of the tutorial that I got a little stuck on. And I was able to do some of the other stuff because in the demo you give multiple kind of… I guess tutorial missions I’ll call it that you’re able to do. But like I’m interested in kind of the design behind it. This kind of goes into my next question as far as like what went into the music and sound design for this game especially with a lot of automation. So it is about that kind of flow state. You have the place where you’re pulling the resources from. You’re then refining the resources then using those to make something else. But the kind of interesting thing about this is because it is music based and music has its own kind of tempo to it. Like you have to do it on specific beats and everything like that. So one in particular I was getting stuck on was trying to get the correct set of beats to come through. And maybe I was just trying to do something a little too… little too advanced at the moment because I had like I had two going on just like a like a one measure type of rhythm and then another one trying to do like a two and a half or something like that. So maybe it was just me doing it. But kind of tell me a little bit more about what went into kind of how you program for that because I can imagine trying to combine those two together was a bit of a bit of a tough bit of a tough thing there.

Unwise: Yeah. No, it’s it’s definitely, you know, the systems in the game and and this is like me being biased being the creator of this, but it’s like automation games in itself are tough to build because of scalability and and all the systems. And so that was kind of one big area of problem, which is how do you build all these automation systems, conveyor belts, management, crafting, all these different loops. But the the the first big layer was the procedural music system itself and getting that pretty robust. And a lot of that is is is built and not even shared with the player yet in the game because I’m just building the UI to expose some of these parameters to the player. But the procedial music system in the background allows you to like play anything and sound decently correct in the right Key, Scale, Mode… Manages chord progressions, progression rates, you know, you know, tritone substitutions. it goes pretty deep in in music theory in the background. So that was one big, you know, big piece of engineering that had to be done that I feel pretty happy about where it’s at now. Relying on a lot of powerful I I’m stepping and then using the foundation of other people who’ve built some amazing systems. So there’s a lot of open source code there. Excited to share more of the code base and and doing some random dev blogs about it as well. But then the the way we got to where we are game design wise was a lot of iteration. There are versions of the game where we first looked at how music is currently produced on a linear timeline. So we had items on belts that moved along the game map and then got played at an endpoint and everything was super linear. And the problem with that was it made it really hard for players to change music on the fly which kind of defeated the purpose of the game. So then we explored and I happened upon node-based composition systems. And what those are is basically sounds are played via a grid. And being in a game environment, you have so much opportunity to encode cool music information like pitch and rhythm visually in a game world. And it works really well with a grid. So once we started going down the path of node-based composition, it opened up a lot of doors because it played well with the spatial reasoning and logistics puzzles that already exist in these automation games where now not only are you trying to optimize your production, but the way you optimize your production is linked to the music you’re creating. And the music you’re creating is really linked to the decisions you’re making in terms of placement and your operating model in the game world. And that’s a game where you have to optimize okay, do I move these nodes here to get closer, but do I really want to do that to sacrifice maybe some the rhythm that I really want? And the goal behind all those systems is how do we maintain the efficiency loop of automation, but how do we also incentivize the subjective experience of music play and playfulness of music creativity at the same time? So that was a big big unlock from a game design perspective of layering node based, grid-based composition on top of the commonplace mechanics and automation games like crafting and belt logistics systems and and and so on and so forth. The other big one that we have which is I’m excited about is this concept of gener… karma generation rates. So, I don’t know if you’ve gotten this far yet, but in the game when you play an item, you have this loop of crafting items. The better item you create, the more reward you get, and the reward value decreases based on how many resource gatherers are kind of consuming that value from your, you know, music network. Okay.

GC: Yeah.

Unwise: The other big variable playing with is, okay, so now you have a rate of how much you’re making every measure, every minute. That rate is linked to the damage of your towers.

GC: Mhmm.

Unwise: …And so now you have this light loop, strategic loop of, okay, so I’m managing these node networks that are growing to capture resources. That sense, but now I need to be super efficient because the more efficient I am, the more damage I’m doing.

GC: Mhm.

Unwise: So there are a ton of ways to play the game. And that’s kind of the beauty of these types of automation games is you can take it at your own pace and you can beat the game and be super inefficient with a bunch of spaghetti factories everywhere or you can be really efficient. But the other big part of what we’ve been focused on is how do we flip the narrative on the head of is this game endless growth at all costs? Or maybe the answer is how do you actually achieve a balance of your production and your consumption of the resources and the music you produced. You can’t overengineer, you can’t undergener. And I’m really excited about that because it’s not just, you know, number go up for production, but it kind of reinforces some of these spiritual themes we have going on in the game of, well, maybe the answer is actually a healthy balance. Maybe the answer is, hey, we need to make sure that what we consume produces to the level we expect it to. And endless growth at all costs might not be the ultimate solution for what we’re trying to achieve, in the game, let alone the world. So, I’m pretty excited about how players interact with these systems that are all interconnected. You can’t grow and gather resources without subtracting a level of your reward resource. you can’t defend without subtracting a level of your rate. And so you have to balance all of these while you’re managing the music you want to produce and hear at the same time.

GC: Okay. Gotcha. So, and you you you set me up perfectly for my next question. Like the combat behind it. I didn’t get enough into the demo quite yet to get to the point where I could start doing combat. Like it was just introduced and I have vibe stealers around kind of messing… Well, I say messing with my stuff, but it seems like really they’re just like picking up some of the like initial resources and then just kind of walking around with them, but they aren’t necessarily like stopping anything. It’s like a very light element as far as what’s going into it. So, I mean, do do players have to interact with that combat at all or could they just let the vibe stealers kind of run rampant and still be able to get to, I guess, whatever the end state is?

Unwise: Yeah. So, we’re… like player choice is really important to me. So, at release, one, players can turn off the entire vibe stealer loop if they want. So, they have that option.

GC: Yeah.

Unwise: The second layer is the vibe stealers are never going to stop your base outright. They’re just going to mess with your production, make you slightly more inefficient. And so, you could choose to just harmonize with them and just build around them like, “Hey, you know, five stealers, go have your items. It’s fine, and you’re just chilling and I’ll just overproduce a bit more and it’s all good. Yeah. Or you can choose to actually, you know, fight them, combat them. Right now we have those, you know, vibe stealers that kind of float and they’re actually, fun fact, they’re animated based on a sine wave, which is kind of similar to the bass wave of a yeah of a synth that you’re going to you can actually make a synth in the game, which is like my favorite feature. So all a lot of the animations use sine wave fun, but anyway, so they they they steal your items, they go back. The other vibe stealer we have is a power stealer. So it goes in and actually like dis, depowers cells in your base. Okay, and then the third one we’re playing around with is one that just turns off your factories for a brief moment in time and then turns like messes with your production a bit if you have some rates going.

GC: Mhm.

Unwise: So nothing outright as in terms of I will destroy your base.

GC: Yeah.

Unwise: Right. Because I think that’s too much pressure in in kind of fights against some of the mechanics of the game. I wanted the vibes dealers to be here is one, you know, for me, I was like, I like tower defense games. Like, oh, it would be so cool if your music drives tower defense. And that was one thing I just ran with it. It’s probably the least formed version part of the game so far, but it’s like my white white whale, where I’m like, I want this to work and it’s going to work. But it just needs a lot more development and polish for it to really come to life. Sure. But that’s the idea. Here’s a light pressure mechanic for people to play with more music and and and and optimize different things. So yeah, in in a way kind of like exactly like you said, you could just harmonize with it and not really interact with it. But if you want to be the most efficient, then maybe you should. Exactly. A most efficiently like I’m going to line up in a beat of percussion right at their spawn point and right when they pop out of their spawn point, they’re just dead like that. You could do that.

GC: Yeah. Very cool. So, I guess kind of piggybacking off of that again, kind of weaving in a lot of these things together, which thank you for setting me up so perfectly for this. So, like as I’m looking into a lot of the other automation games, kind of preparing to be able to talk with you and be a little more knowledgeable about the genre and that… yeah, is there actually an end state to Future Vibe Check? Like I’m thinking in a lot of other cases like there’s the Factorios, there is your Satisfactory which I guess that kind of occupies a slightly different space by comparison because that’s I think it kind of goes on to puzzle game at least a little bit. But then like Dyson Sphere or Satisfactory or something like that. I feel as though those actually have a somewhat defined end state where Future Vibe Check it almost seems like kind of like music itself. There’s not like the music and the factory is never done. It is just abandoned. Kind of in that like creative like fine art space. Is that true or is there actually going to be like an end state that players can interact with?

Unwise: There is going to be an end state. You’re going to… So, one is you’re going to be able to there’s quite a few more unlocks that are that are planned and already built but not in the demo like effects management, reverb, echo, flanging, high pass, low pass filters, things like that. There’s more modification of synth instruments, more modification of progression and discrete melodies, sound recording, vocal recording, autotune. So there’s like a whole set of progression around that narrative of unlocking your chakras.

GC: Mhm.

Unwise: There’s a bit of a narrative. The narrative is very early right now, as you can tell. I just give a little bit of snippets of what the characters kind of feel like to get feed… honestly feedback on the alpha, what people like about the characters or don’t like about the characters.

GC: Yeah.

Unwise: Just to guide the direction of the narrative going forward. But the end state is going to be you will have your musical factory, but the vibe you’re producing does have a purpose that will be narratively explained. And at the end of the game, you’re going to have a a version of your factory unlocked that you previously could not access and a version of music theory that you previously could not access. And so one way to think about that is, you know, we’re so used to seeing music theory in the lens of there’s 12 pitches to play with and and keys and scales, but there’s other forms of music theory that have a lot more crayons in the crayon box, like 22, 23 plus pitches. And so part of the endgame is you’re powering this factory, you’re making your synths. Now you’ve unlocked all your chakras and you now have the ability to make music in a completely different way than we’re exposed to. So that’s kind of that’ll be kind of narratively explained as well, but that’s going to be kind of the end game. You’re breaking free from the confines of music theory into a new way to think about music music theory at the end game.

GC: Okay, gotcha. And that that’s good to hear because like I at least just as a personal some of the games where it is just like you just make your own fun that I kind I end up bouncing off of it eventually. Like I’ll put in like a couple hours into it, but I… I always use the analogy like I need, I treat games like I need Lego sets. Like I need a set that gives me instructions. if you just give me a big box of Legos, like I’ll build like a very symmetrical like square house, but that’s like that’s all I can go for because then it’s like okay, like where where am I going forward with this? Like I need like some type of goal if that makes sense.

Unwise: 100%. And that’s why how I think about it is like that player ’cause I’m actually more like that player too. The idea is that core mode will be here’s the progression, here are the goals to get you to point A to point B and by point B you have accomplished a lot. You’ll have a full functioning music composition with your own custom synths, your own effects. You’ll understand how they work. You’ll have an efficient way of building harmonies and you’re going to understand new forms of music theory. And then, but the players that actually like just tinkering have the creative mode where there’s no progression. And there’s actually some crazy stuff people have built.

GC: Yeah.

Unwise: In that mode that I like, there’s one person, a couple people in (the Discord)… KingofDranovis and Saronin. Shout out. And it was funny because like one of them was like I encountered a bug and I’m like oh weird. I can understand how the bug worked and I loaded their save and I see this like 60 splitters in like weird probability generation. I’m like this is like I understand why there’s a bug now. Like I did not plan for (that)… Yeah. But that stuff excites me because I I do think there’s going to be some cool stuff.

GC: Yeah. And I I do want to get back to like the the kind of community aspect of that here in a second, but I did see kind of look through some of the devlogs and that before we got started that yeah, you just introduced the like community saves where you can upload to the cloud and then someone else can then bring it down and kind of listen to the music and I think that is so appropriate for this type of style of game and I do want to come back to that in a second. Sticking with the game itself though, yeah, so we know it there’s part of your love for automation games. We know there is your love for music. Tell tell me more about the religious kind of side of it or the it it’s like a you said it was like eastern like Hinduism I believe I kind of was gathering from some of your other things or maybe a little more focused but…

Unwise: Yeah no it pulls from a lot of different things. I didn’t want to be you know overtly tied to a specific religious faith. Sure. ‘Cause I’m not that way. I I think I I pull different things that I found meaning in my life that have been useful. And and the whole idea behind that was one I feel like in an increasingly confusing world having some tentpoles of how to understand it is helpful.

GC: Mhm.

Unwise: And for me personally I found some of these the tra… some of the the concepts in these traditions from both east and west and the wisdom found there to be very helpful in maneuvering through my own life. And I always felt that gaming games didn’t really tap into that in any way, either from the artistic style or the symbology or the the narrative or the characters. So, I wanted to find a way to see how do I bring like this weird cyberpunk aesthetic and sprinkle it with some of this eastern wisdom that could be helpful or at least spark some curiosity in someone to explore more.

GC: Yeah.

Unwise: And so that’s kind of the the goal, is exposing some of these concepts, whether it be the concepts of karma or the concepts of achieving some form of enlightenment or finding ways to reduce your level of ego to maneuver through the world more effectively, without suffering. I I wanted to play with those ideas and see how can I include those because I think they are actually quite well juxtaposed to the core idea of an automation game which is growth and and so I wanted to find some level of dichotomy between growth and balance which I think is a you know common phrase used in a lot (of religions).

GC: Yeah.

Unwise: So that’s that’s kind of the for for me personally I I usually follow the philosophical tradition called Advita Vidanta which is a from a kind of an offshoot of Hinduism which is kind of a a non material view of the world. So you see more of a reflection of that specific philosophical (thought) in the game. So, it it’s kind of a it’s pulled from a lot of different things that I enjoy from these traditions and ideally by the end narrative, there’s a consistent thread of point A to point B of where you started and and where you end, and yeah, I’m curious what what you thought of the character so far. Did what what made sense to you, what didn’t make sense to you? I’m cur… curious from a player’s perspective.

GC: Yeah. And I do like I was able to get the like the ideas of that kind of balance pretty quickly and it makes sense now as far as the growth aspect that you were trying to focus on there especially with the automation ’cause of course you know you start humble beginnings you have your one belt your one resource manager your one item that then starts the music for whatever it is but then of course you you get more resources you build more you refine you make it more efficient or you you just sprawl out. But in any case, it’s still that like growth and balance at the same time because you need to make sure all the resources are constantly flowing in a way that will still power your factory. So, I did get that, like it makes sense. I’m starting to connect the dots a little bit there. I definitely love the aesthetic to it. As far as like I’m in the same vein, like I have kind of peeked at a bunch of different like world religions and that kind of stuff just from a curiosity standpoint. Yeah. And especially like thinking to your point as far as games don’t really show that off very well, like a lot of them are like edutainment games, right? Like I’m thinking of one particular like Super Noah’s Ark which is like a a Doom clone essentially but it is just just Noah going through the ark, right? And I think a lot of them kind of go into that way or they go almost the complete opposite like Saturday morning super villain essentially like I’m thinking the Bayonettas of the world where it is yes you are fighting angels or devils or something like that but they are like so over the top. But Future Vibe Check does seem a little more grounded in a way. Yeah, exactly like you said like not necessarily for one individual religion but it is very easy to understand and it is more I guess realistic is the best way to say it. Like it’s not over the top. It is just like the everyday kind of thought. As far as the characters specifically like I’m seeing in your background here DJ Otter.

Unwise: DJ Otter!

GC: Yeah, that character is great. I love DJ Otter.

Unwise: That’s awesome. God has a lot of plans for him. He see he’s a little mischievous. You got to watch out for DJ Otter. He is. He is. You never know.

GC: And and I was kind of going to a couple of different videos kind of seeing like what else you’ve talked about with other people. And I stopped pretty quickly because I’m like, “No, I just want to kind of go in this as blind as I can.” But I wanted to kind of get an idea from you as far as like so there’s the Infinite which is kind of the like omnipresent just kind of like hey just let them let them do their thing and see what comes of it. You have your that kind of black spirally like I guess character with his own gravity and that and he kind of argues a little bit with DJ Otter like where did that I’m assuming there’s some inspiration behind that as far as maybe from a religious standpoint specifically.

Unwise: Yeah absolutely. So you know the DJ otter and the Conductor…

GC: Conductor, thank you.

Unwise:…are basically yeah yeah yeah they’re basically taking the form of something from the Buddhist concept of the Bodhisattva which is basically someone who has in their own mind achieved some level of enlightenment but has chosen to stay on the material world to teach others or serve others.

GC: Mhm.

Unwise: So they haven’t reached full enlightenment Buddhahood, but kind of one step below. And I’m I’m I’m oversimplifying it, but that’s kind of a core idea.

GC: Yeah.

Unwise: And so the idea behind there is that they have a bit of an antagonizing relationship because they both reach that level through different means and both are trying to teach us something to get to the next stage. But they both have their own issues in how the other teaches us. And so they are the spiritual concept of the Bodhisattva and this is why they’re a bit of a interesting you know relationship where DJ Otter is this more childlike mischievousness, playfulness… The Conductor is this more like intellectual form formulaic, you know, individual and character and personality trait. The Infinite is kind of, you know, here’s the level of I am seeing past the observer. The Infinite is basically… The Infinite is basically the representation of what consciousness is. One of the core things I’m trying to show in the game is you as the character, and this will be shown narratively… Part of the story is showing how all of these perspectives come from one single source which is kind of reality itself. The Infinite… the Infinite plays with that.

GC: Yeah.

Unwise: And so the end goal is you… all of these characters are actually the same person, and you the player are actually the same person as well.

GC: Ok, gotcha! So… I may be oversimplifying it a bit more but it’s almost like DJ Otter represents your street smarts as far as like… “Okay, I”ve gotten to this point, but I figured out how to kind of cheat this a little bit here, well I could do it this way…

Unwise: Gamed the system, yeah.

GC: But if I do it this way I can get to the same place just a little easier. Where the conductor is a little more by the book — let’s do step one, step two, step three, in order. Do not deviate. And then the Infinite is, I guess for lack of a better term… “Ya know, I’m just vibing here. I’m just seeing everything.”

Unwise: Yeah, the Infinite is mostly like I’m laughing and taking joy at the dramatic play in front of me. And yeah, that’s a good… And Street Smarts is a good way to put it. And the Conductor’s pissed because he’s like “I worked so hard for this! DJ Otter just comes in doing whatever he wants and gets to the same point? It makes no sense!”

GC: Well perfect, yeah so let’s talk about the like community side of things there too like I said I was looking at your devlogs for that and I did just see the where you can start pushing your factories up to the cloud so that way people can then download it and they can kind of listen to your music. I definitely need to go do that to see the expansive things that are coming from that. Have you ever thought of putting in like some type of multiplayer aspect to Future Vibe Check like kind of like a jam session type of mode or something like that?

Unwise: Yeah, that’s the dream. You know, I mean like right now is, you know, ability to share. Next is going to be MIDI support in and out so people can upload MIDI files and and export MIDI files of their factories. And that’ll come with a lot of cool stuff because then it’s all the, you know, the world of MIDI in at your fingertips in the game. Yeah, and then, you know, right now, mainly due to budget and and how we’re thinking about development…

GC: Sure.

Unwise: If we cross certain wish list thresholds by end of year, I will I’m going to I’d like to pull the trigger on let’s do multiplayer in creative mode. ‘Cause I think that, you know, the idea of go with your… get into a lobby with your friends and just make music together and goof off. It’s kind of cool. Yeah, and there’s something there that I’m really excited about. Architecturally, it it it would obviously anything multiplayer is super tough. And when you put something like audio in the mix, it’s even tougher. Yeah, but I I from how we built parts of the game, totally doable. It just will take time and effort and work and and and I’m hopeful that the game will, you know, find its audience and and and get some folks to make some cool music on it and share it. If that goes well, then it’s like, okay, let’s go do multiplayer and creative mode show, which should be super exciting, but it’s not planned yet.

GC: Okay, gotcha. Because yeah, like thinking about that exactly like we just said there, like you’re optimizing putting in MIDI files so you can either upload them into Future Vibe Check and then be able to use them or even download them out from Future Vibe Check. It almost seems like this goes from being a automation game about music to then probably what is kind of your point is now also a music creation tool that you can then link up with any of the other things outside and like create music from a game and then like modify that outside something with a little more in-depth like very specific just music tools or anything like that. And that is a… like I I like my brain just opened up of like “Oh the possibilities!”

Unwise: 100%. And that’s that’s goes back to like that third pillar of the musical notation system is you know there’s other cool things I’ve done in the game where obviously the grid represents rhythm. The colors of the notes represents pitch but then like the speed of the wind represents tempo. There’s a dayight cycle that’s tied to progression. There’s other you know weird things I’m doing there to like translate music theory to visual. And I haven’t even started really marketing or showing the game off in kind of where music producers and folks live.

GC: Yeah.

Unwise: Yeah. That’s one of the big goals is getting folks from the music creation community to get in and and see what they can make in creative mode. Mostly because also, you know, most people are used to making music on here’s a track that goes from A to B. And what’s powerful about Future Vibe Check is it’s node-based composition which is completely new way to make music. You can do like probabilities of rhythms and send things to a signal emitter. So that opens up composition possibilities by a lot. And other people have done node-based music, but I have yet to see someone do node-based music with procedural systems. And so I think that’s a first and I think opens up a lot of doors for music production.

GC: Gotcha. Yeah. And kind of going off of… some of the rest of the conversation as well, like where do you think Future Vibe Check fits in the automation game space? Like so I you think of InfiniFactory or like Space Chem or something kind of more the puzzly element versus a Factorio which is definitely more heavy on the automation side. It sounds like you like you’re kind of somewhere in the middle so to speak?

Unwise: I’d say that. Yeah, I’d say so. I I say we’re somewhere in the middle. I think the the goals are here’s a more accessible automation (game). And that means everything from controller support to, you know, ease of systems. Here’s a more immediate visceral automation game where you hear what you build. Mhm. And here’s an automation game with new puzzles to solve because of the spatial reasoning with node-based music, not just conveyor belts. And I feel like those are the three ways we’re differentiating. I think there are other ways like the narrative and the aesthetics. I feel like a lot of automation games sometimes feel to me like it’s it’s always like the sci-fi base or like the kind of the the planet in the desert and I wanted to find something that’s like super colorful like maybe almost too colorful. And and like I think that’s a differentiator is like here’s a super weird narrative with weird characters and a weird art style in this genre which is usually not that you know. So yeah.

GC: Gotcha. So, to the person who either doesn’t know a lot about, automation games or initially kind of bounce off of animation games, like say they look at Factorio or something like that or Dyson Sphere and they’re just like, “Oh, no, absolutely not.” Pitch them this game and why it would be better for the casuals. Or let me rephrase that, why it would be better for casual observers or people new to the genre and why you think this would be a good fit for them to give it a shot.

Unwise: Yeah, I I say automation games have something very unique about them where your actions and decisions lead to immediate improvement. And I think music has something very universal about it where your ability to create music is is divine and everyone enjoys that. I think the problem sometimes with automation games is it’s very hard to get to point B without a lot of time and effort. And you don’t see the fruits of your labor until very late in the game. In future vibe check, you see your fruits of your labor immediately. The second you create a music item, you hear what you make. And you don’t need to know any music theory to make something sound great. And so you can experience the beauty of music while also experiencing the beauty of solving some of the math and logistics in automation games in an environment that does not ask a tremendous amount of time or a tremendous amount of optimization to get there. So that’s kind of that would be my my pitch to the casual player.

GC: Gotcha. Okay. And that especially talking with you now like that I’m definitely looking more into it and I’m going to have to keep an eye on it and make sure to give it a look on full release and see what see what all I can start doing.

Unwise: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

GC: So, any other things that you would like to let people know about before like your full release comes out? I know right now your Steam page says that it’s coming soon. Demo is still available. So, everyone go download and give it a shot. But any other special things we should be looking out for other than what you’ve already told us?

Unwise: Yeah. Yeah. No, what I want to share with others is, you know, go check out the game and and make your own vibe and share it with the community. We have a new demo out and another up out soon and then a large update in about 2 months with MIDI support. And we hope for a release sometime March of next year if all goes well with the next few months of development. So that’s kind of timeline for release. But there’s also already a ton of cool music you can make in the game right now. And please join the Discord. We take feedback super seriously and it’s an awesome community that we’re building. So, we’d love to see you there.

GC: Perfect. Sounds great. I’ll definitely have to go ahead and hop in there myself. Manik, thank you so much for taking some time to talk with me here about your game. I’m really excited, looking forward to it. For everyone else who’s taking some time to watch this, thank you so much for joining us here. As we said, definitely give the demo a look. It is currently out on Steam, definitely some big updates coming here soon. And keep an eye on the GameCritics.com channel here for more trailers, more reviews, and more future interviews coming up here soon. Again, Manik, thank you so much.

Unwise: Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

The post VIDEO INTERVIEW: Unwise on Future Vibe Check appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

Eugene Sax sits down with Owl Machine to chat about their upcoming pacifist bullet-hell title, Key Fairy.

TRANSCRIPT:
GameCritics.com: Hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining me once again. This is Eugene Sax for GameCritics.com. Today we have something a little different. I initially was looking through a lot of the Summer Game Fest stuff, and one in particular kind of caught my eye when it was initially announced here. This was on the Frosty Game Showcase. And by all means correct me if I’m wrong. I’m pretty sure that’s where you guys were first coming up here. But it was initially with a streamercalled NoHandsNZ and they had praised this game and the developers as far as their accessibility items and their kind of openness for how they were addressing accessibility for this game. So, I wanted to go ahead and give it a look and this really quickly became a game that I am really excited about here as well. So reached out to them and they were both more than happy to sit down here with me a little bit to talk about their game Key Fairy. Tex, Tex Barnes and Niosis, thank you so much for joining me today!

Tex Barnes: Thanks for having us.

Niosis: Yeah, thank you so much for having us.

GC: Yeah, of course. So let’s go ahead and do the kind of easy easy questions here right off the top. We’ll go ahead either one of you who would like to start, can you go ahead and just give me a quick history from you both here? What is your background in games? What got you into gaming as a hobby? And kind of what are your roles here for Key Fairy?

Tex:Yeah. Do you want to start with that, Niosis?

Niosis: Yeah, sure. So I guess my history is that I got into like independent game development pretty early on. I’ve been actually into this since like high school. So like yeah, I got really enchanted with all the beautiful art that was coming out of the independent scene and like all of the kind of stranger approaches to game development. And ended up pursuing it from there. Yeah.

Tex: Yeah. I I didn’t make games until like five years ago and then I got really into the like micro rapid development game jam space.

GC: Mhm.

Tex: And then I really wanted to make tiny little focused experiences and then worked back backwards into making larger things.

Niosis: Yeah, we both kind of just like ended up turning going from like little small things to like slowly spiraling out to this.

GC: Very cool. Very cool. So if memory serves here from kind of what I’m seeing here on the game, Tex, you’re kind of the I guess kind of head for programming and then Niosis, you are kind of more of the art side of this game for Keyfairy. Is that correct?

Niosis: Yeah, that’s right.

GC: Right. Perfect. Excellent.

Tex: But with a studio of this size, we sort of just wiggle around in different roles.

Niosis: Yeah. Yeah, I mean like yeah, Tex does a whole bunch of the like you know graphics programming stuff and I do every now and then like do a bit of graph programming and other things. Yeah. So it kind of mixes and matches.

GC: Yeah. With a team of two that makes sense. You got to both of you got to wear a lot of hats, right?

Niosis: Yeah.

GC: Sounds good. Well, talk to me about Key Fairy, like what was the initial inspiration for it?

Niosis: Yeah. Oh, I was going to say like I feel like a lot of it came out of specifically the idea of trying to make a game that explores like the theme of non-violence and how you make a game that is like energetic and fun to play in a kind of action oriented way but that isn’t just about like reskinning violence. And like trying to, yeah, communicate pacifism through the response that your character has to violence itself.

GC: Mhm. Okay.

Tex: Yeah. It’s from taking stuff away, right? Like is bullet hells are a very action heavy genre and all about like shooting things. But if you actually play a shoot them up or a bullet hell, you just sort of hold down the attack button and then dodge. And so you can just entirely refocus the game around evasion and then you get all of this different story stuff that can come out of it because you’re now playing this character who’s constantly defensive and never really attacks.

Niosis: Yeah, there are plenty of bullet hells where like shooting is so default that you don’t even need to press a button for it. So if you’re not pressing a button for it, you can just skip it entirely. It was a little bit of it. Yeah.

GC: Gotcha. That kind of went into my immediate next question there as well. So, it sounds as far as like ’cause exactly like you said, bullet hells, I always think of it as, you know, lots of bullets on screen, you’re shooting at everything all the time. And it sounds like, and definitely correct me if I’m wrong, but kind of the idea as far as making it that pacifist style was kind of I guess trying to break that norm of bullet hells, like specifically making it with a pacifist focused. Is that right?

Tex: Yeah. Yeah, it’s I mean I think good games ask questions about genre and about like design and I think ultimately one of the big questions we’re asking is like do you need to be a character who’s constantly attacking? Does that actually add to the experience? And I think that’s what we’re sort of exploring in the in the game. But there is still a lot of like attacks on screen at points. It’s just not your attacks.

GC: Mhm. Yeah. There was a part in the demo where you’re facing a couple of I guess we’ll call them ranged characters ’cause I’m not sure their exact name, but like the witches that kind of shoot out little bullets at you and then one of the one of the giant cubes that just throws itself around in the arena. And that one I got stuck on that for quite a bit of time.

Tex: Yeah, it gets pretty hard. I mean like so a lot of pacifist games, a lot of non-violent games are really really cozy. It’s like you’ll play the Sims or something and it’s like you’re just chilling and that’s great and I like that experience, but I really like really fast play paced frenetic games and I struggle to get that experience without a character who’s just going through the world stabbing everything with their big sword.

GC: Speaking of the big sword, the one that you specifically call out, no, you don’t attack with it, it is a sword.

Niosis: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we were trying to come up with ideas for the game and early on we were like, “Oh, you know, be hilarious, right? Is you get a sword and then the sword it’s just for dashing.” Like, it’s just like, you know, you become a Dark Souls protagonist, but only the dodge roll part.

GC: It’s so good. I love it. And and it is such a unique way, too, cuz it is this like especially compared to like your main character, it feels like a massive sword and it’s only half a sword cuz it’s broken when you initially get it, right? And the entire point is like, hey, no, this is this is a sword. It gives you the option to move around more, but you don’t attack with it. You specifically do not attack with it.

Tex: Yeah. The whole focus is on movement. Like that’s the the the name of the game is just how can you move in more complicated and interesting ways? Because if you’re taking away the ability to attack, you need to replace it with something because otherwise it just feels like it’s less game. And I think we’ve replaced it with a more complicated movement system where you got a really floaty character and then you’ve got a grappling hook and then you’ve got a dash ability on top of that and it just becomes exponentially a really high skill ceiling for…

GC: Right. Yeah, 100% agreed. Like I know when I was starting it, I was kind of just using the grapple hook and hooking onto the environment as far as like any of the walls and just trying doing like the straight line kind of around, but definitely in some of the like the trailers and that that are on your guys’ Steam page easily like Yeah. hook onto the enemy and just swing around them. You can you can do that. Nothing stopping you except for you know your skill.

Tex: Yeah. I mean that’s why they drop stars. Initially, initially the idea was like maybe you just wait them out and then they calm down. But having them drop stars forces you to get really close to them. And so now you’re constantly trying to not get hit whilst getting as close as physically possible to the monsters so you can collect the stars that they drop before they despawn. Which weirdly makes it like in a lot of ways it makes it play harder than a traditional bullet hell where you’re constantly trying to like back away from everything and get into your little safe space.

GC: Mhm.

Tex: Yeah.

GC: Very nice. Perfect. So let I want to go into the art a little bit there as well because I first off love the art. I love the very like black and whitevery stark colors and then how when you get into combat it does kind of encroach in a little bit. What what was some of the inspiration from you Niosis as far as the art from this game and the world design?

Niosis: Yeah, well the art like I think the big inspirations come from like old tabletop role playing game art. Like if you look at original D&D, it’s all like Zines basically. Mhm. With this really stark kind of sketchy ink style as well as like you know old medieval woodblock paintings and fairy tale books and things like that. But also a little bit because like growing up I’ve been doing a lot of art and it’s all just been like ink traditional traditional ink art. And so when we were starting this game and we had two people we had to make this decision between like art that we could both make or just going really heavily on like a really stylized look. So I ended up becoming the dedicated artist. And yeah, it’s all just like things from my sketchbook that I find and then scan in. Was like the first chunk of the art was like literally just flicking through old sketchbooks and taking photos and editing it all up.

GC: Gotcha. Very cool. Because I know like from the and from the like Steam page and all that like everything is like all about like kind of a folklore and everything like that. Were you drawing inspiration from any type of folklore in particular or just kind of a mismatch or?

Niosis: Yeah, I mean not yet. But it’s basically Yeah, basically just been like the general storytelling style that that Folktale has. As well as like you know there’s a lot of things that that cut very close to real life fairy tales but we’ve also been trying to avoid like overt references as much as possible. Sure. And so like you know there was this moment where I really wanted Sleeping Beauty but then we ended up like reorientating you know so we’re trying to keep it agnostic in a way that feels a bit like timeless but also more rooted in like as well as like yeah rooted in like gothic fantasy and that kind of look of it.

GC: Okay, understood. And yeah, I think the the black and white kind of from starting is definitely a good way to invoke kind of the Gothic style as well, just ’cause that’s, you know, I mean, that is kind of traditional as far as the like color palette, I guess. But definitely like I’m thinking right near the end of your demo with facing off against some of the like the princesses and that definitely I can see how that kind of invokes like the kind of fairy tale aspect to it.

Niosis: Yeah. Yeah. I mean like fairy tales are all like this kind of interesting mix between spooky and whimsical, and I think you know like Tex brings the whimsical and I bring the spooky and it ends up like hitting the right niche.

Tex: I think a lot of people when they’re like oh fairy tales are actually a lot weirder than you think. What they mean is that like they’re a lot darker. But if you actually read a lot of like spoken word folklore it’s just bizarre. It’s so bizarrely written in in both that it’s darker and that just characters act in these strange ways and talk in these strange ways that isn’t really replicated in a lot of modern storytelling, and we’re trying to bring some of that energy.

GC: Gotcha. Yeah, that’s and that’s very cool. It definitely gives Key Fairy a very unique style and definitely its own like unique energy. I mean even just looking at the game, but yeah, actually sitting down and playing with it, I can definitely see that and that’s one of the things that stuck out to me with getting into it and why I really wanted to have this conversation. So, I think you knocked it out of the park with that.

Niosis:Thank you.

GC: But yeah, so I guess the let’s get into the little more of the meat and potatoes as far as kind of the reason why I wanted to have this conversation in the first place. So like I said at the top GameCritics.com we go out of our way to specifically like highlight any of the accessibility functions whether it is like for deaf and hard of hearing as far as like captions are concerned for any type of remappable controls or anything like that and with such a presence there as far as your openness to that accessibility I guess journey going through this game. Like I was reading a lot of your blog posts Tex about the accessibility function you wanted to add it in. But tell me a little more about it. Like what went into the planning for all of these accessibility options and how did you prioritize different ones over the other?

Tex: Yeah, so I think accessibility seems like a big scary thing if you’re developing especially because it’s something that’s not really taught at university or whatever. But it’s not that tricky. There’s the big place is GA game accessibility guidelines. There’s a there’s a website where a bunch of researchers have gathered a a big long list of all of the major things that you should be looking out for. There’s other stuff that’s not on the list and it’s worth asking around and play testing a lot, but those are the big things to keep an eye out on and categorize them based on the level of impact and difficulty to implement. So, a lot of the really hard things to implement also only impact an extremely small percentage of the population. But that doesn’t mean they’re not worth doing. It’s just a thing to think about. You’re… we’re trying to think about what’s going to have the biggest impact for our audience, but also what’s core to the experience that we’re making and what elements are outside of that core experience, but could be a sticking point for some players. That’s a big thing to keep track of. Like if if this game isn’t a puzzle game, if there was a puzzle that some players were getting stuck on, they should be able to skip it because that’s not core to the experience and they shouldn’t be hampered from the main experience by this like random off side thing or like a fishing minigame shouldn’t be preventing you from progression or whatever.

GC: Yeah.

Tex: So in the initial planning phase when we were designing the game, we thought about what the games weaknesses would be in terms of accessibility and what its strengths would be. Because there’s a lot of things that the actual design of it works in its favor. It’s pretty good for color blindness that the game’s all black and white. It’s pretty good for people who are hard of hearing that all of the writing is just written on the screen. But then we added a bunch of random effects to the text. So, we also need to provide the options to simplify the font. And it’s just it’s just making a lot of lists, to be honest. It’s something you should be able to have an eye for if you’ve spent enough time developing games, understanding what’s going to be easy and what’s going to be hard for you, yeah. But then you just compile a list and figure out what’s easy and what’s going to have the most impact.

Niosis: Yeah. I mean one thing like you’re talking about like prioritization a little part of it is yeah just having it in front of people and then every now and then someone will come to us and say like ah you know I want to be into this game but this thing is having I’m having trouble with this thing so like you know the the trees kind of sparkle in the background and that sometimes that’s too noisy for some people and so you know as soon as someone brings that up then that’s a pretty simple fix, and so like a lot of the changes have been like preemptive, but a lot of them have also been reactive to what we’re seeing in front of us. And just being like open to the feedback that like, yeah, there can be simple things that are not core to the experience that are just some side visual thing that we put in there for fun that doesn’t need to be there always or doesn’t need to be there at all and we can work around it, things like that, you know.

GC: Okay, very cool. So I I’m assuming one of those was probably at least as far as the feedback was concerned, one of the big ones from your blog post was the camera and how it initially was sitting to follow the player, but now it’s been switched to in 99% of cases to where it’s just static for the room, right?

Tex: Yeah. So, it we we initially had it be all static in all the rooms and then we wanted to have larger rooms and it made sense to have the follow camera and we sort of got too lost in the sauce. I got too lost in the sauce. Niosis kept being like you don’t need a follow camera in this room. I really like the follow camera ’cause it makes you super It makes it spooky. It gives it a horror game vibe in some of the rooms where you’ll enter a room and then a monster will just appear. But that experience isn’t actually core to the game. And so it’s pretty reasonable to add in an option at least that for almost all of the rooms, especially any room in which you have to do an engagement where a monster’s going to attack you, you should be able to lock that camera. Because it just gave people it gave some people motion sickness. Small percentage of people. And there’s no reason to prevent them from playing the game for their experience.

GC: Yeah. Especially with having the grapple hook and having movement be such a core thing, I can imagine that with a moving camera, you’re moving really fast if you’re like doing chain grapples and all that. Yeah, I could see how that could trigger some motion sickness for people.

Tex: There’s still some long tunnels where at this point it makes sense to keep the follow camera, but those are places where you’re just moving in a straight line and there’s nothing attacking you. And so I feel like that’s probably okay. But I might make it that the camera moves more linearly rather than sort of sliding around.

GC: Okay, understood. Gotcha. So kind of piggybacking off of some of the like accessibility options there, what was the specific idea behind like some of the color palettes? I know you went into a little more in depth on it on the blog post, but I’m thinking like I’ve seen a lot of games where if they do different modes for color blind, like they’ll specifically call out like, “Hey, here is this very specific type of color blindness versus this one versus this one,” ’cause I know there’s a couple of different versions of it, right? Most of the color palette options that you all have starts out black and white, which is probably pretty safe to kind of cover most, vision impairments or anything like that, but then they don’t necessarily have the specific like I guess quote scientific name for the color blind.

Tex: The color palettes aren’t really for color blindness ’cause as far as I’m aware, and we’ve play tested a fair amount, color blindness doesn’t impact your experience of the game. The the big issue with color blindness, this is actually a general design thing, if you’re making a game that isn’t black and white. The big issue with color blindness is if the only thing distinguishing two states or two objects is color. And so what you generally want to do isn’t just provide an option that swaps the colors. It’s put symbols on things, provide audio cues, provide a bunch of additional stuff that makes it clear that these are two separate objects. And so even if they look gray to a player or if they both look the same color to a player, they’ll be like, “Oh, this one’s got a triangle on it and this one’s got a square on it, so these are different.”

Niosis: Yeah, there’s a lot of different parts. Like we’re finding that there’s a lot of different information that you can communicate that isn’t just color, like shape and value and noise versus the opposite of noise, I guess. And then we’re having to like you work around, you know, we’re having to do that anyway. And so that’s becomes just like part of the development is making it visually clear regardless of the colors of it.

Tex: Yeah. The value of the pallets from an accessibility point though is eye strain actually. If you it’s easy to to get worn out essentially from just this really high contrast. And so we the the base pallets that we’ve provided reduce the contrast really heavily. So you can have it be like more gray or more like blues. But then it’s also just like a nice gameplay thing that you can unlock more pallets as you go along. And it makes it easier for me to play to be honest being able to change the palette every now and again ’cause I do get a little I’m going a little bit crazy.

Niosis: Yeah, an entire year worth of only black and white.

GC: Well, especially with how often you’re all looking at it day in day out doing the development for it, too. Like I I can imagine the eye train would be would be pretty intense.

Tex: Yeah. Whenever I look at a game that has like color, it blows my my mind.

GC: Well, very cool. Was there any other big I guess accessibility thing that either made it harder to develop the rest of it for or anything in particular that like oh I like the thing that comes to mind was when you were talking a little more about some of the stuff that you were borrowing from Celeste for instance and the like speed option that you implemented I know initially it’s for you know accessibility is like Hey, people, especially with a game being this fast, they may want to slow it down a little bit so that way they can more easily process and be able to follow along a little more, but then you even made the comment on your blog post as far as like, well, this is actually good for speedrunners as well. They could just boot it up to the max and they can just zip through anything. Was there any other similar stories like that when you’re programming in the accessibility stuff?

Tex: A little bit. So like the Celeste has become the sort of cornerstone for good accessibility design because they make they do a bunch of really smart things. Especially putting a warning before the assist mode being like this is our intentions as designers. These options specifically could break the flow of the game if you don’t need them. But if you do need them, they’re here. And so I think that’s really good. And we have had friends who are like, I had to stop playing the game initially, but now I can continue playing it because I could tweak it ever so slightly so it would just be just be manageable. So that’s great. But the other thing that I think weirdly changed the experience for some people was the the one-handed options. We provided some options so that you can play it with just a mouse or just a keyboard or just like one joystick essentially. So it’ll all be using the buttons on that side, which is really useful if somebody only has one hand that they can use to play it, but also it sort of makes the game a little bit… On mouse and keyboard, the mouse has a lot more fluidity of movement because it can go in any direction whereas the keyboard is pretty four directional. And so it sort of feels more fluid to play just with the mouse for some people, even if they don’t need to, which I thought was funny.

Niosis: Yeah. I mean, that’s the thing about like all accessibility settings is that, I think a lot of people miss the fact that, like disabilities aren’t something that exist outside of the context of the society that you live in. Like they exist within the world that you’re you’re in. and the the accessibility that exists within that. And as a result of that, accessibility settings and assistance can be useful to anyone like they don’t you don’t need like a special card to find them helpful to find them like enriching and fulfilling. Yeah, yeah. So I think we found that like it’s just useful to everyone this kind of stuff in different ways and for different people.

GC: Yeah. At the end of the day, it’s about just getting your game to as many people who are interested in it and don’t have any type of blockers that would stop them from enjoying the experience, right?

Niosis: Yeah. And like it’s just the case that like you know, every single person has their own needs and that like being able to tweak to those needs regardless of who you are is really valuable.

Tex: Yeah, that’s the big thing is is providing a bunch of sliders and toggles and and options so that it can be tailored to the person because everybody’s different.

GC: Yeah. Very cool. So, one of the last couple ones I have here. So, I know right now Key Fairy is still being developed. The demo is still available. So, everyone like go download it right now and go play it. It’s great. But what else do like what else do players have to look forward to as the game is being developed? Like is there going to be like a demo 2.0 or anything like that or…?

Niosis: We’re currently debating on the 2.0 like we are looking forward to NextFest coming up which will be our next big thing as we get nearer and nearer to a release date announcement. Yeah. So, that’s coming sometime eventually in the future.

Tex: Thich it is the thing that every demo takes time to make that you could otherwise be spending making the full game. And we’re getting quite close to the full game.

GC: Oo, that’s exciting!

Tex: We’ll have to see, keep your eyes peeled.

GC: Excellent. I love a little bit of mystery. Well, perfect. Last thing I have for you all. So with de with all your demo work and all of your game developing, everything, I’m assuming you’ve probably take some time to kind of relax and take a break. Are there any games in particular that you are all enjoying currently? And what stands out to them as far as being kind of your go-to, go-to game?

Tex: What have you been playing, Niosis?

Niosis: Well, I just recently finished all that is currently out for Abiotic Factor, which is a New Zealand game. It’s a lot of fun. It’s like I have never played Half Life, but apparently it’s like Half Life. But like if it was kind of immersive sim cross survival sandbox. And it’s a lot of fun. Good old crunchy gameplay.

GC: Excellent.

Tex: I’ve been playing 100,000 demos from Steam NextFest and the Summer Games Festival. There was so many demos from all of our cool, smart friends.

GC: Boy, ain’t that the truth.

Tex: And they’re very good.

GC: Yeah, very cool. Yeah, I know. Anytime the Steam NextFest comes up, I try to spend a little bit of time and do like try to do some demo recording as well and try to like play a whole bunch of demos and throw it out onto YouTube and tell people like, “Hey, go play these games. They look really good.” Key Fairy is no exception.

Niosis: That’s really nice to hear. Yeah, cuz there’s so much beautiful stuff out there, isn’t there?

Tex: There is.

GC: So much, and not nearly enough time to play and highlight them all. Well, perfect. Anything else either of you two would like to share with our lovely audience before I let you both go?

Niosis: Well, yes, there is actually. So there is this beautiful game that has been receiving absolutely no attention because Tex never mentions it, but Tex just released a game called Pogo Pogo and it’s very cute. And like…

Tex: I cold released a game right after we did the summer games festival with Key Fairy.

Niosis: If you’re looking for a second black and white game to play.

Tex: A much smaller worse game, that’s an option. Also, I’m going to shout out a game so it’s not all on me. I think people should play the demo for Building Relationships because I think it’s amazing. The game where you’re a house going on a date.

GC: Oh, I remember that one. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Tex: It’s really good.

GC: Well, perfect. So again, Niosis, Tex, thank you both so much for taking some time and talking about your game here. I am very look very much looking forward to full release. I’ve been kind of chomping at the bit waiting for some more. I’ve been hanging out in the Discord kind of waiting to see all the news or anything like that from it. So, I’m excited for a possible release date here coming up soon.

Tex: Ooh. Keep your eyes peeled and your ears peeled.

GC: Will do. And for everyone else as well, I will also go ahead and link some of the I’ll link the two blog post that I had mentioned before that Tex had wrote up as far as the accessibility journey and kind of going into more of a deep dive for that as well. A lot of good stuff on there. And again being so open about it like I think it is refreshing kind of seeing that seeing that openness through it as far as like what did that look like going from start to finish ’cause that’s not something that everyone takes the time to do. I think he even mentioned that in the blog post as well. It’s like some people only do it as far as like hey is it worth doing right as far as like a monetary standpoint but it’s not always the point. All righty. Well, we’ll go ahead and call it there. Thank you all so much for joining us here and definitely keep an eye out for any more future interviews, game trailers, and any more game reviews that we’ll have here on GameCritics.com. Tex, Niosis, again, thank you so much for joining me.

Niosis: Thank you so much for having us.

GC: All righty.

The post VIDEO INTERVIEW: Owl Machine On Key Fairy appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Beautiful game and intuitive mechanics.

LOW Not as unique as expected.

WTF The amount of grubs I’ve eaten.

Hi everyone! Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com.

As a member of the last bastion of society, the player has been selected to lead the forces of the Vault against the dark creatures of the dead world in which they live. Neither refusal nor failure are options — survival at all costs is the only choice. Box Dragon presents As We Descend — a wonderfully stylized and oppressive apocalypse currently in Early Access where each choice could be the difference between victory and watching humanity’s last light be extinguished.

As We Descend is a roguelike deckbuilder where players recruit a variety of units to fight against horrific monsters attacking the Vault in their attempts to put out the Lantern — it’s the last light in this world of darkness. Players will also explore the Vault to seek out important people who can help gather resources, upgrade units, offer items for sale or create artifacts with positive effects.

Combat in Descend is turn-based. Each unit has unique cards that are added to the player’s deck, and each turn, players have a set amount of resources to play as many cards as they can afford.

Players must also manage the positioning of their units in one of two areas — the guard zone or the support zone. Certain units get bonuses based on which zone they’re in, and units in the guard zone are usually the ones taking the most hits.

As enemies are attacked, a stagger meter starts to accumulate. When the meter is full, an enemy is staggered, which means it will be stunned and lose a turn, while also becoming vulnerable to critical strikes — a key tactic for interrupting powerful attacks.

Besides combat, players will have an opportunity to explore locations in the Vault. Actions like visiting the inn to restore health or training with a mentor to increase effectiveness both require a card to use, so planning when to do so is part of the overall strategy here.

In practice, As We Descend’s combat feels easy to pick up, but difficult to master because many of the cards seem basic — do X damage, apply X debuff, and so on. However, many cards also have secondary effects that activate if specific conditions are met.

For example, The Zealot usually attacks once, but additional strikes occur if an enemy has multiple debuffs. Guardsmen get bonus defense when in the guard zone, and have abilities that deal additional damage that’s upped by the amount of defense they have. There are a significant number of units that provide a wide set of options for each run, so players can expect to spend a good amount of time finding strategies and synergies.

Something I haven’t mentioned yet is that players can choose their type of Vault at the beginning of a run Currently, there are two different Vault styles, with a third being developed. Unfortunately, there’s not enough of a difference between them to make the choice significant. I hope the developers work on these Vaults a bit more to make them feel different in practice, and better tutorials on them would be welcome, too — some of the resources have important stats that factor into things, but are never actually explained.

Also, there were times when I made a decision early on, only to find out this one decision doomed my entire run. Since the outcome of a choice isn’t immediately apparent, it can feel like a lot of wasted time that can’t have been salvaged.

As stated at the start of this video, As We Descend is currently in Early Access, which means that there are some rough edges that come along with that. Even so, I’m extremely excited to see what else is in store. It’s off to a great start with an intuitive interface, a welcoming combat system and rewarding strategies for those who can master its nuances. With some balance changes, tweaks and additional updates, I’m hopeful that As We Descend could end up one of the best in the genre. 

For me, As We Descend gets 8 critical strikes out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by Box Dragon and published by Coffee Stain Publishing. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 6 hours of play were spent playing the game, and the multiple runs were completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB. Players will control multiple units with swords, spears, guns, and other weaponry to fight against monsters who will attack back with similar weapons. There is no blood in the combat. There isn’t any cursing in the texts between combat scenarios, but there are scenarios where players will be able to select things like “putting down an uprising”.

Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is text in-game, but the text is not resizable. Audio is not needed for gameplay. The game is fully accessible.

Controls: Controls are not currently remappable. Their controls menu says “no settings are here yet”. Players will use the mouse to be able to select different cards, dialogue selections, and selecting bonuses to gain after combat.

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HIGH Unique linking of many roguelike mechanics.

LOW None of them working together in harmony.

WTF Prisons give me damage boosts?

Hi everyone! Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com!

The mythical harvest maiden is rumored to grant the desires of anyone who can find her. However, her power has been weakened by a group of dark wardens. She pleads for aid in ridding the world of these dark wardens, and she will be sure to repay anyone capable of the deed.

From Ant Workshop Ltd. and Wales Interactive comes Into The Restless Ruins, where players will take on the challenge of aiding the harvest maiden by delving into an ever-changing labyrinth and fighting the minions of the dark wardens. 

In this roguelike deckbuilder, each run swaps between two modes — building and harvest.

In the building mode, players will use room cards to build pathways through a wide-open “labyrinth” space while searching for magical seals. Rooms can range in size and in orientation — some are straight hallways, others are large crossroads, some diagonal corridors, and so on. Each room has doorways that must be connected together in order to be able to travel between them. As more seals are found, more space will open up in the current labyrinth for more room cards to be placed, and eventually the player will make their way to the boss arena for that section. It doesn’t all happen in one go, though.

Once players have used all of their cards and built as much as they can, they start the harvest mode. This has the player controlling their character in a top-down isometric view of the dungeon they just built in Vampire Survivors-style combat. Players will move their character around, auto-attacking any enemies that come near them. Defeating these enemies grants players new room cards they can use in the building mode during the next round. 

The challenge in Restless Ruins comes in a couple of ways.

In harvest mode, players have a torch that both lights the area and also acts as a timer that lets them know how long they have to fight and gather more cards before darkness closes in. As the torch timer decreases, so does the area that players can see. Since there’s no minimap in harvest mode, players must memorize how they built the dungeon in order to navigate it effectively. If they don’t manage to make it back to the starting point in time, players will take constant damage until they either escape, restore their torch, or die in that harvest. 

In build mode, players need to manage how rooms are placed to effectively manage resources throughout the dungeon because some rooms offer abilities in harvest mode. For example, the armory room gives a temporary damage bonus, there’s a campfire that restores some of the torch timer, a magical grove that restores player health, and more. Proper placement in build mode allows players to take advantage of these things, and will then have a better shot of surviving during harvest mode.  

Taking all this into account, Restless Ruins tries to marry several different mechanics and gameplay styles to create something unique in the genre. I do think this blending leads to some struggles, though.

Building a path through the dungeons is a unique way to progress in each level, but the random elements of the rooms players draw doesn’t always lend itself to successful runs. In one particular attempt, I only had one campfire in my deck and never got another one, which meant that I rarely had any way to restore my torch in harvest mode. Without that needed light, it was near impossible for me to get very far before the torch would burn out and the darkness would start to kill me. 

In a similar vein, harvest mode can feel boring if the right rooms aren’t drawn. Specifically, the player’s attack starts as a basic melee swing in front of them. If players don’t find a room that gives an additional secondary weapon or new basic weapon, that melee swing gets tiresome and probably won’t lead to many successful escapes during harvest mode.

Overall, this randomness leads to a sense of soft gating for Restless Ruins. It’s like I’m being forced to grind through failed runs in order to unlock new permanent upgrades to future runs in the hopes that someday I’ll see some of the other content.

These upgrades are unlocked in a number of ways. Some are earned from the player leveling up, and others are earned by achieving specific tasks in a single run — things like having ten cards in hand at once, starting the boss fight with an empty torch, and so on. There are also difficulty modifiers that alter the amount of EXP gained in a given run, but even so it remains a repetitive, fairly punishing experience.

The current grind-heavy system also leads to boss fights that end up being lackluster. Every time I got to a boss, I had spent so much time on harvest runs beforehand that I usually defeated them without breaking a sweat. It just isn’t satisfying to stand in front of a boss and watch their health bar drop to zero within a few seconds. Those kinds of wins don’t feel earned.

So where does all this leave Into the Restless Ruins?

I personally enjoy the combination of mechanics it’s putting together, but the reliance on RNG and the resulting soft gating to success has left a sour taste in my mouth. Diehard roguelike fans may enjoy the challenge of dungeon memorization and slow progression, but I wouldn’t recommend it to casual roguelike fans, or those new to the genre.

For me: Into the Restless Ruins gets 6 punishing curses out of 10.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Ant Workship Ltd and published by Wales Interactive. It is currently available on PC, PS5, XBX/S, and Switch. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 10.5 hours of play were spent playing the game, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E10+ and contains Fantasy Violence and Mild Blood. Players will use fantasy weapons like a sword, axe, magical staff, bow and arrow, etc. to fight fantasy creatures (bats, skeletons, shadow monsters, etc). Some will have pixelated blood splatter as they are killed.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is text in-game, but the text is not resizable. Audio is not needed for gameplay. (See video for examples.) The game is fully accessible.

Controls: Controls are fully remappable.

The post Into the Restless Ruins VIDEO Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Unique mech designs and interesting pilots.

LOW “Forced” grinding and reliance on random drops.

WTF Jumping spider mechs are terrifying.

TRANSCRIPT: Hi everyone! Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com.

The Axis forces have taken Europe, and their brutal tactics and technological superiority has them poised to conquer the world. However, a small group of resistance fighters have hidden themselves, gathered resources, and are now ready to fight back with powerful mech suits.

Grit and Valor: 1949 is a realtime roguelike tactics game where players control up to three mechs for the resistance army and fight against the Axis powers in an alternate World War II setting. Each mission will have players protecting their command vehicle while fighting multiple waves of enemy soldiers and mechs.

As players progress through the campaign, they’ll fight through four sections of Europe — the British Isles, Scandinavia, Western Europe, and a final conflict in New Germany. At the beginning of each section, players choose the mechs, their loadouts and the pilots they want to bring along, and each area takes between 30-60 minutes to complete, depending on luck and getting good drops throughout the mission.

At the start of combat, players will get notifications showing which direction the enemy will be coming from, letting them move their mechs around freely to get the best positioning before they strike. For example, fighting from a higher elevation or hiding behind cover grants damage and defense bonuses.

Mechs will auto-fire at the closest enemy within their range, so good positioning is half the battle. The other half of each battle hinges on correct use of Grit and Valor‘s rock-paper-scissors system, here called the weapon triangle.

There are three mech types, each with a weakness and a strength. Assault mechs are strong against Flame mechs, Flame mechs are strong against Blast mechs, and Blast mechs are good against Assault mechs. Naturally, mechs deal more damage to those they are strong against and take more damage from those they are weak to.

On top of this weapon triangle, each mech also has a unique pilot with a special ability that players can use at will — things like a self-heal on their own mech, calling in an airstrike, dropping mines, and so forth.

As a whole, the combat feels fluid and easily manageable. It’s easy to read elevations and every enemy type is clearly marked, so players can easily determine the best placements for their mechs. Players can also take as much time as they need to evaluate each battle , as the ability to pause is present.

After each wave, a supply drop will give players a bonus to choose from, and some encounters will have a some side objective that will award additional currency if the player completes it. These side quests can be things like defending specific buildings, destroying enemy buildings, or capturing supply points.

Between runs, players can upgrade their mechs or unlock new ones. They can also upgrade pilot abilities and buy armor for the mechs, and these things can be swapped freely between runs, so it gives players freedom to find the best combination that works for their playstyle.

In terms of permanence and progression, an aspect crucial to modern roguelikes, players can unlock general perks like enhanced cover, enhanced command vehicle abilities and movement, and discounts on shops throughout each run. These things stay unlocked from run to run, helping a player get a leg up over time, and the upgrades felt like they all came at the perfect time. For example, completing the British Isles unlocks a few upgrades, and since the next section immediately put me up against tougher mechs, it all lined up nicely.

In terms of atmosphere, Grit and Valor has it in spades.

The diselpunk setting got its hooks into me quickly and I was eager to fight off the fascist regime. Each of the mechs and pilots feel unique in styling and design — the worn-out blacksmith that grafts armor mid-fight to a mech, and rich jetpack pilot that can jump a mech across the battlefield were favorites. Interestingly, all of the Axis characters are partially robotic themselves, and I loved the sniper boss with the scope for an eye.

Unfortunately, each of the combat maps feels too similar to the next. Sure, one may be covered in snow and one might be more metallic and industrial, but there are no environmental hazards or special features on any map, so they all play identical to one another.

There’s also a lot of reliance on grinding and luck is required for good drops or inventory available in shops. After each run, players will get random mech parts (weapon, legs, engine, and so on) that will upgrade a mech for the next combat. While they help, it’s random how much they help. A weapon that enhances crit damage can swing anywhere from a 5% to 15% increase, so getting lucky plays a part in winning a run.

There’s also randomness in which mech will get an upgrade, as players can’t divide the loot as they see fit. One run had a single mech getting almost all of the upgrades, but since other two on my team didn’t get much and stayed weak for too long, that run was doomed.

Something else worth noting is that enemies seemed categorically stronger to the point that it felt impossible to win a run until I’d unlocked some things first. Whether upgrades were spaced out evenly or not, the first few runs felt like they were forced losses — annoying, and not a great look as far as roguelike design goes, but it didn’t stop me from continuing on.

Despite the rough edges and parts that need a bit of polish, I’m enjoying my time with Grit and Valor. The mechanics are solid and easy to pick up, and unlocking and trying new mechs and pilots is great. However, the repetition of the content and the slow progression means this war might wear down all but the most dedicated soldiers.

For me: Grit and Valor: 1949 gets 7 leaping mech suits out of 10.

Buy Grit and Valor:1949 — PC

Disclosures: This game is developed by Milky Tea Studios and published by Megabit Publishing. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 8 hours of play were spent playing the game, and the game was not completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T for Strong Violence. Players will be using flamethrowers, machine guns, and grenade launchers to attack and destroy enemy mechs and other units. Some are human soldier units, but there is no gore in the game.

Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is text in-game, but the text is not resizable. Audio is not needed for gameplay. The game is fully accessible.

Controls: Controls are fully remappable.

The post Grit and Valor: 1949 VIDEO Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Interesting visuals.

LOW The arena combat sections.

WTF Uploading your daughter’s consciousness into AI seems like a bad idea.

Hi everyone! Eugene Sax here with another review from GameCritics.com.

If a floating robot woke me up a thousand years in the future and told me I needed to use my father’s research to defeat a rogue AI in order to save the world, I’d be… concerned. Ironically, this wild nightmare scenario is exactly where players find Zoe, the star of Steel Seed, and Earth’s survival hangs in the balance.

Steel Seed is a stealth action-adventure where player control Zoe as she tries to restore a technology-ravaged Earth. With her drone friend Koby, they’ll sneak around the world to find pieces of her father’s research that will wake up the surviving humans who are currently in stasis and lead them back to prosperity. This tale of humanity versus robotics is a common one, and unfortunately, there wasn’t anything particularly interesting here to make it stand out.

In terms of gameplay, players will run, glide, and stealth their way around a robot army and titanic mechs eager to end humanity. They’ll mostly be platforming and using Koby to remotely trigger switches.

Combat can be handled a couple of different ways. If players can sneak up behind an enemy, they can perform a stealth attack that will kill most foes instantly. If players are caught in the open, Zoe has an electric sword and can defend herself if needed, though players don’t have a lot of health, so it’s better to stay in stealth when possible. Koby can chip in as needed by throwing mines or shooting energy blasts to deal damage or knock off enemies into an abyss.

This is a good, basic foundation, but the problem is neither stealth nor combat feel enjoyable.

For starters, the stealth is hard to engage with and it doesn’t make a lot of sense. If players are controlling Zoe, enemies aggro to Zoe, not to Koby, so it feels so strange to have an enemy staring directly at Koby, and yet they’re never alarmed. Also, most currency comes from defeating enemies, so players will have to stealth kill frequently instead of ever sneaking past to avoid combat. Players can control Koby and aggro enemies, but Koby drops so quickly that he doesn’t provide much assistance on his own outside of platforming.

As for the combat itself, Zoe isn’t as powerful and Steel Seed is punishing if players get caught out. Zoe dies in two or three hits from most enemies, and even after some damage, health, and special move upgrades, Zoe still feels underpowered, even against basic enemies. This is especially problematic in the later portions of the campaign when there’s often no stealth option and players must be in open combat from the start. Koby’s not much help, either — he uses a shared ammo pool for all of his powers that doesn’t refill over time, it’s possible to hit a money crunch and not have enough cash to load him back up for the next skirmish.

Aesthetically, I did enjoy exploring Steel Seed‘s world. From the lava filled foundry to the oil ocean beneath a titanic driller mech, there is some impressive screenshot material here and there’s a good amount of exploration and openness in each area without being overwhelming, but not so much that returning to find collectibles feels like a chore.

While it’s got some nice aspects, especially the visuals, Steel Seed feels like it never reaches its full potential because it can’t decide between being a stealth or combat experience, and ends up being great at neither.

For me, Steel Seed gets 5 titanic robot attacks out of 10.

Buy Steel Seed — PC

Disclosures: This game is developed by Storm in a Teacup and published by ESDigital Games. It is currently available on PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 10.5 hours of play were spent playing the game, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB. Players will use an energy blade to sneak up and attack robot enemies, as well as using their android partner to shoot energy bolts and mines at enemies as well. Enemies will attack the player with the same weapons. Defeated enemies will dissolve into particles, but there is no gore, and no foul language in the game. Zoe is in a tight-fitting suit, but no skin below the face is shown.

Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind modes.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There is text in-game, but the text is resizable. Audio is not needed for gameplay. The game is fully accessible.

Controls: Controls are fully remappable.

The post Steel Seed VIDEO Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.