Operation: VICUS
There is only you, the chosen one who rules over the village. You have to find out what the strange notes are about, where do they come from and what do they want to tell you? Besides, with your actions you will strengthen or weaken your relationship with your inhabitants. Make tough decisions that will haunt you longer than you might think. Expand your village to accommodate more inhabitants and explore new things in the laboratory, be it weapons, buildings and much more. However, you’ll have to stay alert, because you’ll be haunted by insidious beasts that would love to destroy your village. So you must train your troops and lead them into battle!
Build your village
With the help of your mines, the ores extracted from there will be processed by your blacksmith and in combination with the wood of the forester, great things can be built, such as new habitable houses, attractions for the inhabitants or yet barracks and defensive guns. With the help of your laboratory you can improve your buildings and make them more robust or you can have new, better buildings researched, which you can then use in your village!
Satisfaction
If you want to work your way forward, it is of great importance to take care of your villagers. You need to monitor their happiness, either the overall happiness of your village or the happiness of the individual citizens. If the villagers are in a bad mood, you need to get to the bottom of it and, if necessary, fix the problems that cause it using the Satisfaction menu or the information provided by the individual citizens. But if you neglect their feelings, you have to expect deterioration in your production and further problems!
Day management
The daily schedule of the villagers is determined by you alone. You can determine the schedule of each citizen: You can make them work longer hours to boost your production, give them more free time or alternatively let them decide what they want to do. However, you must never forget that your actions affect the mood of each citizen, and their moods add up to determine the satisfaction level of your village. So make sure that the inhabitants have nothing to complain about!
Low Poly Artstyle
Dive into the world of the unique Low Poly Artstyle and experience relaxed atmospheres in the morning or mysterious mood in the evening. The interplay between the cartoon-like animations and the beautiful low poly look creates beautiful moments. The music, reminiscent of No Mans Sky in places, creates a great ambience with its style that always fits the situation.
Combat and defense
Upgrade your town with barracks and guns to defend against the invaders! Upgrade your barracks to get better and stronger troops. Decide which strategy you want to follow, fight with weaker but more troops or less but stronger? And better to finish everything in close combat or to finish the enemy from a distance? Or both? You decide and lead your warriors into battle and decide still in battle which targets your troops should attack and how many of your soldiers should pursue this target!
Story
Find out what the strange notes are all about! Make tough decisions and try to understand what this village is all about!
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Per Aspera
It’s rare for a city builder / logistics game to have a good story, but this one sure does. Through monologue and dialogue options we follow the self-discovery and existential ruminations of the player character, an AI tasked with terraforming Mars. The planet visuals are beautiful. It’s incredible to zoom in and look at the contoured terrain and watch it change as it fills in with water and plant life.
Gameplay is less elaborate than most city builders and the logistics are not even close to the level of complexity of something like a Factorio style game. Managing the interconnected temperature and atmospheric composition is interesting. The end result is a casual, relaxing builder with a memorable story.
– Real player with 95.2 hrs in game
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===SUMMARY===
This is my favorite game of 2021. I like simulation games as a group, and this is a beautiful installment of this growing genera. I love what simulations teach me, being spoon fed facts off a list. I love that (having played Per Aspera) I know the landscape of Mars better. I know some of the names, sure, but grokking the SCALE, the oddness, sparking my curiosity about Noctis Labyrinthus, just from working on the planet is priceless. I became familiar with Mars in a way that Surviving Mars never did (though I played that a lot too).
– Real player with 68.7 hrs in game
Coffee Noir - Business Detective Game
The idea was good, the delivery is kind of disappointing.
The music and artwork are the strongest points of the production. It looks very pleasant and it’s nice to have in the background.
Gameplay is problematic. Tasks are easy (I played on normal), negotiations not always make sense, but it’s not bad. The worse were the clues, the whole detective system is quite bad. A lot of text and updates that are repetitive. The clues supposed to have the logic in connecting them, but it took me a while to understand, that some clues are going to be obviously connected to stuff that we already knew. I didn’t feel like it’s a challenge, more like a blind guess.
– Real player with 30.4 hrs in game
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Coffee Noir doesn’t try to be anything more than what it is - a neo noir game with supporting business sim mechanics. No pointless time-wasting side activities to be found here. The story is at the front and center of everything. Moreover, the game’s fully voiced from start to finish, making for a more immersive experience. The game might not have much to offer in terms of replay value. But if you’re willing, you can walk away having learned a thing or two about the art of negotiating.
– Real player with 25.8 hrs in game
Sliding Blocks
FANTASTIC until it chokes at level 37 in master mode. Bummer.
– Real player with 45.9 hrs in game
In short: It’s a perfectly functional, if pretty cheaply-made puzzle game with zero variety, but a lot of content. I’m enjoying myself and the pricing is very fair.
In long: The game has one mechanic and one mechanic only: After 10 tutorial levels there will always be a 6x6 grid on which 2- and 3-tile blocks are arranged so they block the exit. Grabbing them with the mouse allows you to slide them along their length-axis. You need to cleverly slide them back and forth until you’ve moved the target block (always on the third row from the top) to the right edge of the grid so you can slide it out of the exit. There is an undo button which comes in very handy on later levels. There is no time limit (and indeed no time keeping even), but there is a target number of moves on each level which seems to be based on the optimal solution (as I’ve never managed to beat it). Based on your performance you’ll be awarded 1-3 stars, but the game is thankfully very generous in this evaluation. The following move-counts all gave me the full 3 stars: 11/10, 17/15 and 25/21 while 29/24 only awarded me 2 stars. With this leeway it’s fairly easy to 3-star every level.
– Real player with 18.0 hrs in game