WOODS Part I
Everything happened so fast… And even if people could have seen it coming, what could they have actually done? David was one of the ‘lucky’ ones. Far from the chaos, yet he felt the impact all the same. Now, trying to understand everything that happened, he found himself returning to a place that called to him.
A place that offered the best possible chance for his survival… The Woods.
In spite of everything, David is determined to survive.
So with his trusty ax he spends his days chopping and preparing wood -
Keeping the fire stocked to stay warm and fend off from the creatures of the night -
And to help clear his mind and relax, even play his guitar -
However, don’t get too comfortable. When Winter ends he will find himself having to fend for himself all the more with fishing, trapping, and hunting.
But in the end, will this be enough?
Welcome to the Woods. In the first Part of Woods you have the seemingly easy task of simply keeping a fire going, and protecting yourself from the cold in winter. Chop wood, feed the fire, and survive. A simple task at first, but once Winter wanes, the challenge is increased as David will have to learn to fish, make traps to catch small animals, and eventually learn to hunt to survive. Along the way, learn about Davids story from his past and why he must survive.
In the Woods there are no heroes. Just you, the elements, and the will to survive.
Read More: Best Mystery VR Games.
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
Read More: Best Mystery Base Building Games.
===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
Fantasy Blacksmith
Original Review before bug fixes (Scroll down to see edited notes):
Now…where to begin. Well, first question that may be asked, is this game fun? Short answer yes, long answer no with a but. This game does something rather unique that hasn’t been done before (as far as I know), it allows you to play as a sword smith in a fantasy world where your goal isn’t to slay the big bad overlord or to plunder deep dungeons so that you may retire on a pile of “phat loot”, but to become the “best” blacksmith (sword smith as you only make swords) in the land. You can design your swords from various parts, choose which materials to use and then forge them into mighty swords from myth and legend. Sounds cool, is cool, BUT and it is a big but and I cannot lie…
– Real player with 50.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Mystery Simulation Games.
Last Edited: 3/19/2019 for Patch 1.0.3 (see bottom of review for updates)
A game with quite a bit of potential despite getting delayed multiple times with no notice at all to the customers waiting (including release day, coming out over 5 hours late without any word) but if you are not a fan of Early Access games with a lot of bugs I would suggest waiting until a lot more work is done on this.
Current issues I have encountered:
Physics are more of a suggestion than a law in the world of Fantasy Blacksmith. The first thing that happened after I started playing was picking up the Thermometer, testing the current temp of the bronze ingot in the forge, “placing” them next to me, and getting catapulted across the room.
– Real player with 40.2 hrs in game
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!
Pale Roots
You have sixteen weeks before the town ends.
Each week is comprised of your work at a local market, and buying what you need to survive.
The cost of dinner is always fluctuating with disaster.
Purchase food, bribe your boss, even saving the game has a price.
The narrative:
A local cult has slain the tree with pale roots. Tragedy and disease consume the town as an abominable new tree grows. You exist among a dwindling population, forced to survive sixteen dark and strenuous weeks.
Product features
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Earn money depending on your performance at work.
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Spend money to survive.
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Speak with many crazy characters as the town succumbs to tragedy.
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Keep your family alive.
Ashwalkers
Updated for Steam Nominations 2021
As mostly first person shooters player, i sometimes enjoy switching to less intense indie games. Ashwalkers would be one of those.
For me this game became liked a moment i saw it on store. Mostly because of character design and story setting, which is surprisingly similar to one i’ve wrote a couple of years ago. So far this is the closest thing to what could be called “dream game”.
As the gameplay is not challenging, it requires player to calculate their movements since “survival” part is taking an action. Game itself is user friendly, player just need to get used to visual narrative and simple controls.
– Real player with 5.4 hrs in game
For those looking for a game akin to the choose your own adventure books of old, Ashwalkers is phenomenal. Decisions require careful thought be put into them, and the game rewards reading into the choices and texts. Some of the choices endgame that determine the endings felt a bit arbitrary, but after having at least gone down the three main endings (that each have at least 12 permutations) twice I can say I had a fun time for the price of the game.
That game while short does its best to make the time spent feel much longer than it is between the unique art style of both the world and its inhabitants, and the survival mechanics of the game which help add a needed sense of weight to the smaller choices. I had fun carefully deliberating on if I wanted to risk losing one resources for another I was in desperate need of. On repeat runs however this meter watching quickly begin to feel monotonous.
– Real player with 5.4 hrs in game
Western Sigil
Western Sigil is a tower defense game in which you take on the role of the sheriff’s son, tasked with maintaining peace in the town of Wadeville. Idyll will not last too long since a dangerous plague has broken into the city walls and your mission is to find its source and stop the rot from spreading.
NOTHING UNITES HUMANS LIKE A COMMON ENEMY
Recruit cowboys, Indians, National Guard soldiers, Mexicans or even bandits - everyone, regardless of their political views, wants the end of the ugly plague.
Or Do they?
BE SMART
Strategically deploy your forces on the map and set up turrets. Hire new members and gain experience to develop your units. Throw away their rusty guns and gear them up with new weapons to make your team even more powerful. Set ambushes to weaken your foes and find out who’s the cause of the overwhelming havoc.
APPROACH BEASTS OF ALL POSSIBLE LEGENDS AND TALES
Fight orcs, demons, skeletons, goblins, trolls, forest creatures and even animals like wolves or bears. The variety of monsters you will encounter in-game is a good material for a separate bestiary book, a weird one, that is.
FEELS LIKE A MAGIC
The task is made difficult by the fact that there was some kind of strange magic involved in all this. To remove the unfortunate spell, you must find all the mysterious sigils and close the portal leading to another dimension, the very home of awful creatures disrupting the peace in Wadeville.
FEATURES:
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Protect your lands in this unique tower defense & resource management game sprinkled with a spicy pinch of strategy.
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Get in the ranks with cowboys, Indians, soldiers, local Mexicans or bandits.
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Distribute the units on the map properly - their location determines their strength.
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Hire new members to boost your performance on the battlefield.
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Gain experience and develop your units by equipping them with new, shiny weapons.
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Set ambushes and place standard and premium turrets to protect every single acre of Wadeville.
The Sealed Ampoule
An interesting variation on mystery dungeons.
The Sealed Ampoule is the newest game from CAVYHOUSE games and it is just as beautiful and strange as their other titles. Fans of mystery dungeons won’t find a ton of challenge here but it is a nice pared down experience, it’s pared down in that there is only the one dungeon and look of it doesn’t really change save for the ever shifting background colours, also while you do always start at the first floor your levels don’t reset and you accrue experience and stat upgrades that help each subsequent run. In another deviation from the usual mystery dungeon, there are no upgradeable weapons or clothing instead you upgrade the dungeon itself and your skillset. The characters are charming and while the story is simple it’s nice to solve a mystery.
– Real player with 70.7 hrs in game
Like the other Cavyhouse games, this is a very aesthetic, weird and experimental game. If you played Forget me Not? It’s about twice as long and grindy. Still worth playing if you’ve liked other Cavyhouse games.
If you’ve not played something by Cavyhouse before… this would be a good starting point, as it’s the first one timewise? If you’re just looking for a roguelike, and have played a bunch of those this likely won’t be super interesting to you though. it’s fairly low stakes (die = resources lost and that’s about it), but there’s also not like weapon/armor upgrades. there’s just skills and upgrading the dungeon itself. And loot is all recovery items, tools or materials. If you want a very relaxed, and less complicated roguelike though? This may actually be a perfect fit for you.
– Real player with 57.8 hrs in game
Uncle Nook’s Monster Emporium
Waking up in your Hotel room, you notice something. You see a small motionless doll. Her face is forever stuck screaming in terror. When you get closer, you see sharp teeth in her mouth and a knife in her hands. You push her away and run! You only have one chance to escape from this Nightmare!
Explore your way through a procedurally generated haunted mansion. Watch out for monsters and deadly traps that block your way. Only with creativity and persistence will you make it out alive!
Key Features
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Single Player
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32 Randomized Rooms
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3 A.I. Monsters
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31 Relics
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13 Weapons
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1 Boss Fight
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2 Endings
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Readable Notes and Hints
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Unique Puzzles
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And more…
Heartbeat: Regret
I would not recommend this game as a horror game. I feel like it has a lot of potential as a horror game but due to the frustration of movement. The game losses any sort of suspense and is replaced by frustration. Some people have mentioned that the lack of a tutorial was an added challenge; I didn’t find this to be true for myself. However I did find a lot of difficultly reading the text. As well as finding the tempo for the movement difficult especially at slower tempos.
The text being hard to read is not a huge problem as the text is read out loud and I got used to it over time. Though for people that are better at spelling than me I’m sure this is even less of an issue if it is an issue at all. Though for the issue of movement the tempo is very hard to find. I died severely times just trying to move around the areas and spent a bunch of time sitting in one spot just waiting for the heartbeat to go down. This made it very frustrating when most of my time is either spent sitting around waiting to be able to move without dying or trying to get back to a point that was right before I got killed just to march into death again. For as long as it takes to move around the areas you just lose anything that makes it scary. Honestly the most scary thing about it was how I was about to pick up my keyboard and chuck it across the room in frustration.
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game
An extremely unique idea! Never thought I would have typing horror and rythm in the same game! I love it! A little bit of trouble with instructions and knowing what to a couple times, but the incredible sound design makes up for it. I’ll be playing this for a while I can already tell
– Real player with 1.1 hrs in game