Artist Life Simulator
Very interesting theme, art, and interface. I like the auto-pause, and you can study the time before hitting the start on an event. The concepts hit home and stay with you. The Emotionarium and gameplay have interesting descriptions that make you contemplate how you might use the game concepts in real life. For example, working out unwanted emotional conditions by putting them into the product of your work is something that works regardless of what you do for a living.
I am having difficulty finding ways to consistently create passion to sustain painting and the job hunt has not been reliable, but this has not detracted from the beauty of the game.
– Real player with 21.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Alternate History Choices Matter Games.
This review will be on constant up throughout this game development. Currently the development team is incredibly responsive. Both on the forum and the email. Anytime I spotted a bug I post it forum and email my save, they will kill it in hours.
This game CS inspired without being clone. One does give tutorial which is currently little rough..but least will tell you how mechanics functions as you naturally play the game. But it will still keep you in the dark how to response to threat. So this will be problem for the iron man mode down the line. One if you get bad luck of the draw currently in the game state you maybe not able to come back from it. This could end your run in less then five minutes. Which does need to be balance but it is early access. I would recommend by making place that heal easier to get.
– Real player with 18.0 hrs in game
Europa Universalis IV
I’m a divorced woman of color. Recently, my ex got our son Larry a video game called Europa Universalis for his 14th birthday. It seemed good for him, because it takes place in the distant past and he’s always been interested in history, so it seemed like a nice enough game, no graphic violence or anything, at least until I sat down and watched him play at it. I don’t know what sorts of racists made this game, but it’s basically a colonialism and genocide justification simulator. If you want to survive, you need to have access to money and soldiers, and the most (only) reliable way to ensure you have enough is to attack and conquer your weaker neighbors. If you don’t, you can be sure someone else will eventually come attack and conquer you.
– Real player with 4558.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Alternate History Historical Games.
So EU4 was a good game. Then they released the 450+ ‘bug fixes’. The entire game outside Europe has now been put back behind a new paywall unless you have the paradise DLC as it is now impossible to develop your provinces to spawn institutions as army tradition gives you impossibly high dev costs. I played one game and when I needed to dev an institution from a 1/1/1 grasslands province and starting cost is 120. That is only with 33 army tradition giving a 150% penalty. This was a custom nation and I had -20% dev cost. Good job paradox forcing everyone to buy your shittiest dlc in order to use any of the other DLC’s you have paid for. The game is now broken outside of Europe without the paradise dlc. You make me sick Paradox!
– Real player with 1819.5 hrs in game
Evil Democracy: 1932
Did it keep my engagement? Yes. Was it cool playing as different parties and trying to change the outcomes of historical elections? Also yes. Is this game worth its price? No. Does it feel like it’s properly out of early access? Also no.
If you’re interested, definitely get it on sale. I don’t feel like I wasted my money, but I might feel that if I got it at full price.
I would hope there’s more to come for this game. The concept is genuinely interesting, but I want to do more than sitting around hiring people and firing people, releasing a new newspaper every six… whatever turns are. The time in this game feels entirely out of sync with reality. Like each turn moves you to an alternate version of the same moment, and that’s not good. I mean, I can form a coalition government with some other parties when elections roll around, but it actually does nothing for my party. What’s the point of being chancellor if it doesn’t do anything down the road? The turn passes and there you are where you were a turn prior. You’ve presumably become the leader of the country, but because you didn’t occupy enough positions in the cabinet you’re just back out on the campaign trail.
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Alternate History Historical Games.
Introduction
Those five minutes are up and the average voter has made a very convincing case against democracy. We’ll get back to Churchill quotes in a moment, for now I must bring to the attention of my fellow gamers (and potential historians & political scientists) a title that manages to think outside the ballot box in spite of the inherent rigidity of its topics and simulated era. Evil Democracy: 1932 is the recent creation of the prolific developer and self-publisher, Hamsters Gaming. It’s their second project showcasing the word “evil”, after 2018’s Evil Bank Manager. You know what profession is despised almost as much as the “banksters”? Politicians.
– Real player with 9.2 hrs in game
Hypnospace Outlaw
In writing this review and reading it back, I find myself struggling to write about it enough to get across my sheer admiration without spoiling the whole thing to prospective customers. I apologise in advance. Suffice it to be known that I recommend Hypnospace Outlaw in the fullest extent my enthusiasm can avail. At the risk of sounding like a fanboy, it is perhaps one of the greatest pieces of fiction I’ve ever consumed. I hope to explain why.
Whenever I think about this game and the experiences it gave me, there’s a dull aching sensation in my chest. I experienced something truly wonderful and moving. I was immersed completely and, ironic considering the active hours of Sleeptime Computing, often burned my candle far too low, ravenously trying to see what else the game had for me.
– Real player with 34.2 hrs in game
A satirical homage to 90s internet on the surface, but so much more underneath that.
Hypnospace Outlaw is a game that connected with me on a deeper level than I ever would have anticipated. While it may seem like a fairly lighthearted comedy at first (and it IS a comedy; there are several moments where I laughed out loud at the absurdity), it is so much deeper than that. Where Hypnospace Outlaw excels, in my opinion, is the world that it creates while you explore the depths of this alternate-reality version of the web.
– Real player with 27.8 hrs in game
Not Tonight 2
Immigration Enforcement Case #112: You are under arrest. Unless your friends can cross a broken America, retrieve your identifying documents and stay out of trouble… this is the end of the American dream for you.
In an alternative broken America, where capitalism and political greed have taken center stage, your friend has gone missing. Snatched during a protest, Eduardo Suarez has been seized by the authorities, and now sits ready for processing in the Miami gulag.
Not Tonight 2 is an American document-checking road trip, fusing a time-pressure RPG with a politically charged, dark comedy where every decision matters. Will Eduardo’s friends Malik, Kevin and Mari manage to locate and deliver his documents to Miami in time, or is this the end of the American dream?
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Three branching stories, written by a team of POC authors
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Make your way across America, making terrifying decisions along the way
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Work the doors of clubs, churches, race tracks, casinos, and cults
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Check IDS, while completing a variety of silly, poignant minigames
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Rhythm games, word association, serving burgers, assessing religion, checking chickens, and more
Not Tonight
If you liked papers please you’re gonna love this game. Its the same concept of looking at papers and deciding whether they should pass, but as difficult as papers please was. (sorry my review will contain a lot of comparisons with papers please) Instead of working at one place you will work in many beautiful and interesting stations each with an interesting manager/boss. Each station will have different working requirements, some have 3 lines you will have to watch and let people through from and from as much as i’ve played you can get up to 4 sheets to check which creates a really hard game, and you will even have to check things like contraband and dress code. The game will guilt you into letting people in, you will also be bribed, there’s a resistance you could support and you can sell drugs/candy (still not sure) for extra cash.
– Real player with 31.5 hrs in game
Survive a oppressive world in this enjoyable Papers, Please-esque
Developed by PanicBarn, Not Tonight took place in an alternate history; a Post-Brexit United Kingdom specifically where citizens that are of European heritage (known as Euros) are constantly being oppressed by the government. You play as citizen #112, another ‘filthy Euro’ just waiting to be deported to your original country. Your goal is simple: avoid your inevitable fate, any means necessary.
Gameplay
As mentioned before, the game overall structure is similar to the much more well-known Papers, Please. In other words, a lot of micromanagement gameplay. As #112, you’ll be working as a bouncer for a multitude of different locales, ranging from nightclubs to drinking pubs to the London Wall itself. Your job is to supervise the entrance and decide whether the customers are allowed to enter or not. Or whether they deserved it or not.
– Real player with 28.9 hrs in game
Espiocracy
Disclaimer: Trailer & screenshots are early work in progress
GRAND ESPIONAGE STRATEGY
Choose one of 102 countries and guide character-driven national intelligence agency through rough seas of the Cold War. From Soviet KGB and American CIA, up to Israeli Mossad and British MI6, expect different approaches to grand strategy gameplay.
INNOVATIVE MECHANICS
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Espionage finally made as it should be
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Precise modelling of views & ideologies
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Direct links between causes and effects
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System of geopolitically active actors
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Emergent multipolar simulation
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Operation plans, campaigns, and opportunities
MEANINGFUL DECISIONS
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Prioritize grand scale and leave micro to your operatives
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Establish contacts, threaten, exploit, and trade
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Manipulate public opinion, support and establish political factions
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Launch coups and proxy wars, falsify casus belli
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Hunt spies and terrorists, protect internal stability
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Form alliances, prepare all-out attacks, break rules
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Advise country leader on critical decisions such as military interventions
DANGEROUS TIDES OF HISTORY
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Nuclear race: first atom bombs, thermonuclear revolution, mutually assured destruction
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Huge progress in technology, simulated in the game with Kuhn’s paradigm shifts
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After-war poverty, civil wars, controversial past
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Configurable balance between alternate history and determinism
Ostalgie: The Berlin Wall
It’s hard to really describe what makes this game so much fun.
Is it the ability to save the Warsaw Pact? Maybe, but that’s not quite it.
Is it the possibility of reforming the Eastern Bloc? Hm, perhaps…oh, no, got it!
It’s the ability to do both those things, while building an excessive number of TV towers and imagining that you’re broadcasting the amazing in-game soundtrack to every citizen of Europe, constantly, at 100 decibels, forever.
Seriously though, this is one of the best ‘small’ games I’ve played in a while now. It’s fairly short, spanning three ingame years, and although you can go longer, not much really happens after 1992, but what happens in those years is enthralling.
– Real player with 258.0 hrs in game
Reminds me of the old-school Paradox Interactive games. You want tooltips? Clear explanations of what is what? Too bad. Stare at a statistics screen for a while, you’ll figure it out.
There is a neat game here, but good luck surviving for even a year. It is very hard.
edit: Okay, I have played enough I can write a little more.
Did you play Crisis in the Kremlin? It was about leading the USSR through the time of political turmoil and reform when there were many factors that would eventually bring the country to its collapse into many autonomous states. In the game you had a lot of freedom to pursue your goal. You could become a liberal reformer, play as a hardline-communist or somewhere in-between with many other variations. However, you were the main actor. You could decide how you would play. The only real condition of the game was “don’t let the USSR collapse outright.”
– Real player with 250.2 hrs in game
Social Distancing Simulator
Social distancing is in full effect, but we all need to eat. Make your way through a supermarket with 120+ different product’s, avoid the other customers and make it through check out with everything on your shopping list. You might want to stock up on extra supplies while you can, They are working for a vaccine, but things are bound to get worse before they get better. Stay safe.
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5 Unique Endings!
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Unique Game Mechanics
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Satirical Story
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120+ Products
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575+ Buildings
The Temporal Invasion
This is a review of Cases 1-5 of this game, 6-10 have yet to be released. This is a pretty good game if you enjoy puzzling things out. Will definitely exercise your brain. There’s a variety of different things you will do to solve puzzles including but not limited to…
Googling
Reverse image searching
Deciphering morse code
Deciphering other kinds of code
Using your smart phone as a QR reader
Logical deduction
Scanning documents with UV light (in-game)
Manipulating photos' colors to find hidden messages (in-game)
– Real player with 36.7 hrs in game
The Temporal Invasion is a mystery puzzle game with a great story and very interesting puzzles.
If this review is too long for you, I suggest you to only read the first paragraph about the game’s content and the final verdict at the end.
What is happening in the game:
You are contacted by a mysterious person called Dr. Quantum and before you know it, you get pulled into a series of events beyond initial expectations. The story takes place in an alternate reality and it introduces elements such as time travel or alternate universes and combines them with real world events, locations and people, providing a one-of-a-kind experience.
– Real player with 15.6 hrs in game