Since I seem to be playing games and then feeling too lazy to review them, here’s a master-post of short and sweet reviews! The overall theme of this round seems to be point-and-click games, with one exception. What can I say? I like games where I can happily hold a drink in one hand and play the game with the other.
All links on titles go to their respective Steam store pages. After the title, I’ve provided links I could find for the developer and producer (if there is one) in that order.
In no particular order …
Oxenfree | Night School Studio
Right off the bat, I think Oxenfree is one of the best games that I have ever played. It’s not perfect, but it’s very close to it. I really enjoyed the themes this game used in its narrative and the execution is very stylish. It uses mechanics that I haven’t seen in a game thus far, which made it exciting. The replay value is VERY good and the way the developers encouraged players to start a new game was one that had me speechless for a few minutes. I can’t go too much into that last bit without giving away some spoilers, but here’s a general overview of the story:
Our protagonist is a girl named Alex, going on a weekend getaway with a bunch of friends—including her new stepbrother, Jonas. The teens have decided to go to a local historic landmark and hang out on the beach, drinking beer and enjoying campfires. The cool thing about this island is that it served as a radio communications hub back in the day and some kids say that if you walk around with a radio, you can find hidden signals that contain secret messages. Being the adventurous type, you decide to try it out for yourself. Needless to say, the results are nothing short of disastrous.
You have to walk around the island, picking up clues and trying to help your friends, stuck in a tormented world of the supernatural and timey-wimey mind-blowy-ness. All the while, Alex has to overcome grief and forge (or break) friendships with everyone present. It is a great story full of multiple layers of possibility and intrigue, with so much to do. I really liked this one and can’t recommend it enough!
The Banner Saga (+ The Banner Saga 2) | Stoic + Versus Evil
I decided to pick this up after seeing it pop up in my Steam queue relentlessly for months. Initially, I wasn’t sure if it was up my alley. After all, its combat system is one of strategy, using a tile system similar to things like XCOM or Transistor. Since I am not very good at those two games in particular, I was initially hesitant. Still, I took the plunge and I was not disappointed.
The story of The Banner Saga is one that we’ve all heard before: people have to flee their homes and fight for their lives while facing the potential end of the world. Despite it being a very old narrative, I really liked how this was presented. You get to play, for a time, as two different groups of people, both wandering and trying to survive while carrying out their own missions. The setting is beautiful, a Viking-esque land inhabited by humans and varl—giant people with horns—as well as other creatures and races (that don’t appear until the sequel). While fighting for your lives, you are faced with tough decisions of leadership while trying to keep everyone alive (a la Oregon Trail).
One aspect that I enjoyed was the way the game introduced consequences. While you can play without some consequences in Easy mode, playing the game at least once at the Normal setting is highly recommended. Heroes who fall in battle do not die, but they are injured and require rest to recover. Resting uses up food supplies and eats up precious time. Supplies are hard to come by, since you don’t know when you’ll be able to find a market that sells them or a random event that will grant them to you. Buying supplies in the market requires “renown,” a resource earned through battle and significant actions. Every part of your survival is interdependent on something essential. Your heroes cannot fight at full strength while injured, but you might have to choose between travelling without rest to avoid danger or letting some of your caravan die of starvation as you selfishly heal your band of badasses.
And if all of that wasn’t enough, the choices you make in one game carry over to the next. Did a character accidentally fall off of a cliff and die? Too bad, he’s dead forever.
I didn’t mean to do it!
The art style is gorgeous and the soundtrack sets the tone and atmosphere perfectly. All in all, this is definitely something to look into. Currently, two out of three games are released and I can’t wait for the third game to arrive and answer all of my burning questions.
Beholder | Warm Lamp Games + Alawar Premium
Lately, it seems like a recurring theme for me is games that involve reconnaissance and dystopic voyeurism. Beholder places you in the role of an apartment building landlord/superintendent that has to keep a watchful eye on all of his tenants and report any violations of the law, which is constantly changing, to the government. Requiring excellent stealth and observation, you have to put up security cameras in all of the units (don’t worry, you have a skeleton key) and keep a close eye on everything that everyone is doing. Fail to report something significant and your ass is on the line. Oh, you also have to make sure that your family is alright. You earn a meager salary in this position, so you have to wisely choose what you spend money on. Never know when your young, innocent daughter is going to catch sick and almost die.
In the end, you can either be a hero of the law or an ally of the resistance. The fate of your building, your family, and you is entirely in the hands of the state. All you have to do is cooperate … or not.
Goetia | Sushee + Square Enix
Let’s take a momentary pause from dystopia and take an excursion into point-and-click puzzle horror. In Goetia your character has returned from beyond the grave to solve some mysteries and check out her childhood home, years after her death. The large mansion has been abandoned, to her confusion, and she struggles to piece together the “past” that she missed out on. The mansion has seen war, familial death, but it has also experienced the supernatural. Your own ghostly presence aside, the protagonist uncovers some arcane happenings and, through puzzle-solving, must gain access to the rest of the house to figure out just what went so horribly wrong.
The gameplay itself is simple enough: as a ghost, you are capable of passing through almost all surfaces. The floors and ceilings of the house don’t block your adventures, for the most part. You’ll find that spells left by one of the home’s past inhabitants has rendered some areas blocked off, preventing even incorporeal beings such as yourself from passing through.
You are also capable of “possessing” objects, allowing you to move things around. The caveat of this is that material objects, of course, can’t pass through solid matter. No matter how hard you try, you will not be able to get that book to drop down a floor unless there is a convenient hole (which there occasionally are).
I haven’t finished this one quite yet, but I was having some difficulty with the puzzles. There are many clues left around for you, but they aren’t exactly obvious. My advice? Play the game when you are alert and can easily remember things.
Orwell | Osmotic Studios + Surprise Attack
Back to the dystopia!
As the name suggests, Orwell takes place in a society where the private lives of citizens are about as private as living in a fish tank. With just a few clicks of a mouse, employees of the Orwell program have access to chat logs, phone calls, emails—practically anything. The aim? Stop terrorism.
Sounds all fine and dandy, right?
Wrong.
It may seem all straightforward, but as you delve into solving what seems to be a simple act of terrorism, you uncover huge plots and, unfortunately, wind up in the middle of it. Seems like this always happens, doesn’t it? You find yourself being forced to investigate people who seem to have little to no involvement with the actual attack itself other than perhaps knowing somebody who may or may not have been behind it. Since your higher-ups expect information, you aren’t at liberty to provide context for the snippets of emails you report. You are free to omit information, but the way the authorities interpret what you’ve given them is almost entirely out of your control.
Recently, the game developers have announced that they will be releasing the second “season” of the game, which I’m sure will have some more interesting developments. It would be nice to see a wider variety of characters with even more moral grey areas. I recommend this one to anyone who likes games like Replica, but it definitely has a completely different flavour to it.
Replica | Somi
Speaking of Replica, I decided to pick it up after seeing people compare it to Orwell in reviews on Orwell‘s Steam page. From what they said, Replica seemed to do this kind of thing “better.” So, I took the plunge.
Similarly to A Normal Lost Phone, you are tasked with uncovering information inside a stranger’s smartphone. What’s different is the circumstances. In Replica, you are being held prisoner in a state-run facility that’s hell-bent on stopping any and all transgressions towards the ideals of the state under the guise of protecting everyone. In your hand, you hold the phone of the person in the cell beside yours. You are told that this person is a potential terrorist and that your mission is to uncover evidence of their activities by scouring their phone for information. You have to dig through their social media pages, photo albums, contacts list, text messages—everything.
Replica has a total of 12 possible endings based on what you choose to do. Some are over quickly, such as choosing not to answer any calls or waiting 5 minutes before unlocking the phone. Others require careful planning and execution. Nevertheless, all of them proved to be equally satisfying and it was fun figuring out what I had to do next in order to unlock everything. Ending “progress” is recorded via the symbols at the top of the phone screen. You’ll notice that in my screenshot, most of them were coloured in. At the start, each of those icons is grey or white and as you achieve them, they become coloured in. It’s a fun little way of keeping track of how many there are, even if the images themselves don’t seem to give you a hint of what needs to be done. There’s even a fun easter egg that gives a nudge to one of my favourite games (I won’t tell you which one!)
If I had to choose between Orwell and Replica, I would say that Replica is a better choice for people wanting a more concise, fulfilling experience.
Night in the Woods | Infinite Fall + Finji
Now for something completely different!
Night in the Woods is about the return of Mae Borowski after she has dropped out of college. She returns to her sleepy little town, moves back in with her parents, and is left in some kind of limbo. She hangs out with her old friends, has a few band practices with them, but there’s just something missing.
The town itself barely has any life left to it. Many of my peers who recommended this game had a lot of personal connections to this aspect of the story. They, too, grew up in industry towns that saw a rush of activity and then a sad, dwindling loss of vitality as the production the town thrived on becomes unnecessary. In the case of Possum Springs, they once boasted a great mining industry. Now? The mine lies on one side of town, abandoned and sealed off from the town.
Mae had her taste of something “bigger” than this town, but she chose to come back after just not “feeling” college. She finds that her friends have changed, people she once knew have moved on. It’s a strange feeling, trying to reconnect with people who seem to have grown up without you. For Mae, she finds herself attempting to connect by adhering to things they did in the past—the kind of stupid stuff teenagers do for fun. That sort of thing. Unfortunately, most of the people she knew aren’t really interested in such meaningless activities.
Aside from all of this existential crisis and emotion, there is something really strange going on in the town. Every night, there is bound to be something that goes wrong. As if this will provide some kind of meaning in Mae’s life, she decides to investigate it. And, well, it definitely changes her.
There are a number of ways the game can unfold based on who you decide to forcefully spend time with and I think it’s definitely a game best enjoyed multiple times. After all, there is so much to do throughout the course of the game that you can’t possibly do EVERYTHING. After all, Mae can only be in one place at one time.
I love the art style and music of the game as well as the writing. Mae isn’t really someone I can connect with, being a little bit more of an edge-lord than I am. Some may even call her a hooligan. However, I think that the path she walks is one that we’ve all sort of gone down at some point in our lives and that’s enough to help me grow to like her. The writing does a wonderful job of capturing the spirit of each character without relying on voice acting to carry the emotions across to the player.
This game isn’t exactly what I’d call beautiful, but it’s some kind of lovely.
I’ve got a few more games up my sleeve, so I may do another master-review like this in the future. Did you like this format? Let me know in the comments!
juliameadows 