A Long Journey to an Uncertain End
Not looking good, Captain. That holo-influencer you sent Matias to guard has been “upstaged”. Putting a former drag queen before every camera in the verse? Not the best idea. And the anti-sentience rally we sent Aylah to… that’s a riot now. Not saying it’s entirely her fault the audio drones were hacked but, you know. Probably didn’t help.
On top of that Truly and Denny are nowhere to be found. Any chance of keeping a low profile is out the airlock. Now there’s an incoming message from… your ex?
All in all, a quieter day than most.
A Long Journey to an Uncertain End is a narrative focused Space Opera that’ll have you flying around the universe assembling an unruly crew from an eclectic cast of characters and taking any job you can to keep one step ahead of your abusive Ex. The twist: you’re not just piloting a ship… you are the ship.
Supplies don’t come for free in the verse, doubly so for outlawed sentient spaceships. Every planet, moon and space station is a valuable source of jobs and their precious rewards. Assign crew tasks based on their skills, and help their decisions along the way. If everything pays off you’ll have what you need to escape, and if not…well, you can call in those favors you’ve been saving.
A Long Journey to an Uncertain End presents a unique vision of the future, a universe of inclusivity and diversity tainted by uncertainty and fear. Build a family within your crew. Every crew member has their own story, every planet its own history, and even your own adventure remains unfinished.
Sentient ships have been outlawed for centuries. With the help of your holo-companion C.O.R.G.I. and your (mostly) loyal crew, you managed to evade capture. Now there’s an entire galaxy between you and freedom.
So…where to next, Captain?
Features:
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Fly across a unique galaxy, from the dust-bitten badlands of the Rim, to the techno-industrial megacities of the Core…and Beyond.
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Recruit an eclectic crew from a diverse cast of characters with their own stories and varied skill sets.
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Explore planets, moons and space stations as you put distance between you and your abusive ex. Match your crew to jobs and decide their actions along the way. If all else fails, you can always rely on a favor or two.
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Manage your resources to keep your crew happy. Boosting between worlds can take its toll, as can failing at jobs. A happy crew is a productive crew… most of the time.
Read More: Best Resource Management LGBTQ Games.
RESIGNED
INTRO
They say quitting is the easy part. Clearly they don’t know anything. Your boss hates you, the calls keep coming through as do your food deliveries. Respond to emergency calls, control police cars, firetrucks, helicopters, ambulances and more.
STORY
Sick of your job as a Emergency Call Operator, you quit. Well, you try to quit. Unfortunately, your boss’s name is Chris and thus, insults you and makes you work your two week notice from home. Now, you have to balance your diet, your sleep and your work for the next two weeks from home. Good luck.
GAMEPLAY
Control police cars, helicopters, firetrucks, ambulances and more from your laptop. Solve emergency situations, save people and stop criminals whilst also maintaining a good sleep schedule & diet, looking after your finances and communicate with your soon to be ex boss through email.
Read More: Best Resource Management 3D Games.
Harmonium
A cute, post-apocalyptic game. Mostly text-based but with a pleasant story-book design. But wait a minute – should cute and post-apocalyptic go together? It works like a children’s cautionary tale: it won’t give you nightmares but may touch your ideas about the future.
I enjoyed the story. There is a steady progression to the main character and plot with freedom to ‘explore’; but you’ll need to bring some imagination as much of exploration is done through text narration. The game makes a good distraction for an evening or two. And after you’ve finished all your quests and character development, you can choose to think about how it compares to our own world – or not.
– Real player with 9.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Resource Management Singleplayer Games.
Alright, I’ll go ahead and give this one a positive - IF it sounds interesting to you. If you don’t like a lot of reading, choose-your-own adventure style, you’ll become bored. That is the meat of this game is the great writing.
You must choose from a list of events to initiate to progress to the next week and they’re all a few paragraphs of what your character is doing. You pick one of those choices, a few paragraphs of the result of your choice play out based on your stats, and then you receive rewards but mostly it’s to progress the week because you put characters in your house to passively generate resources. Resources are what is used to upgrade your furniture and sometimes spent on events. The game is pretty straight-forward about what does what and how to progress the story. There’s not a lot of things you have to keep in mind. There is a finite number of weeks before you must complete the game. Full disclosure, I have not done so yet, however the time limit does not seem too short that you’ll feel the need to hustle. It’s okay to fail events occasionally.
– Real player with 7.5 hrs in game
Hexia
This is a game that relies heavily on luck. You can very easily get a random event that completely ruins you seconds into your game. You might end up starting a new game over and over before you make it through the first ‘story’ goal. And yet, it’s very much worth playing.
Once you get that little bit of good luck mixed with frugal resource management, you can make it through the first twenty or thirty tiles and clear the first couple of challenges. Learn your limits – don’t overspend or expand too fast. You’ll learn what impact each event choice has, which upgrades work best for your kingdom.
– Real player with 14.4 hrs in game
Had fun in the short time I’ve played and quickly figured out how to keep a 0 loss of people.
I would love to see it expand more than 100 tiles but even at 90 it became slow to move across the screen when zoomed out. Some kind of option to speed up the cursor would be needed to expand more I guess.
More levels of 100 tiles but with harder conditions would be nice if expanding to more tiles is not feasible.
The text sections are a little long and some repeat through the game, so I did as another reviewer had done and skipped through the text to find the main points.
– Real player with 3.5 hrs in game
Amazing Superhero Squad
Сompleted the game with all endings . Stunning art, that you can admire in the gallery after the game, an interesting plot. Funny references in tasks :)
Overall - a good game
– Real player with 25.5 hrs in game
Read the guide at the beginning, very useful information!) I really liked the art and the study of the world. I can’t say that the game has revealed its full potential in terms of gameplay, but you can get stuck for a couple of hours. We are waiting for the continuation of the story!
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
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
The Great Plague Exodus
Had the opportunity to play this game on stream. For an early beta, I think it’s absolutely wonderful! It gives off Oregon Trails and text-based adventure vibes, which I absolutely love. The fact that it’s historical fiction is a bonus, too! The only thing I would like to mention is that sometimes the options during random events show as blank text boxes, and the drop-down menu for the entertainment doesn’t always show the options. These are all easy fixes, and didn’t really affect the game play for me as I find random/blind choices to add to the experience (just a personal opinion, I know you need to make educated decisions in a game like this).
– Real player with 1.8 hrs in game
Great initial concept game, a little buggy but can get a few enjoyable plays, difficulty is reasonably easy but with no way of changing this.
Good game that could be made into something really special, so much potential for more content, more freedom of movement (currently you travel the country on a linear track). kudos to the sound and artwork design, very nicely done.
The game is a touch buggy, but these are not game ending in most cases.
Look forwards to seeing how this game develops
– Real player with 1.8 hrs in game
Silk Roads: Caravan Kings
Here’s the deal, even if this game is not the most polished thing I have ever played, it shows potential. I mean the developer shows potential. It’s kind of like Oregon Trail, if you’ve ever played that. The thing that impressed me the most about this game however is the developer(s). They are willing to listen to a LOT of feedback. It’s very encouraging to have a developer who does this, especially in this day and age. While its not a huge grand strategy game like Hearts of Iron or an amazing role-playing game like Crusader Kings, it definitely deserves a place.
– Real player with 6.6 hrs in game
In any game there comes that particular crossroad point of is there enough to keep me interested or do i go back to the old faithful ones. Four hours of game time in i think i have hit that crossroads. I am now wondering if there is more to it or have i had my fill. I had this game on my wishlist, and part of my decision to purchase was based on its pricing.
I like the map set up, and the game icons are simple and to the point - which is a good thing. I concur about other reviewers statements about character development - the cat, the lute and the fishing rod. However, once the initial surprise of receipt is over, the actions around them seem disconnected and grindy. To be fair, the not wanting to disappoint my customers aspect of my gaming personality means I have not ventured too far to the East, as I want to meet my contract obligations.
– Real player with 4.3 hrs in game
Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind
It’s an excellent game. Surprisingly engrossing graphics, quite a lot of fun to manage your clan, etc. The negatives are… Difficult to cover without some spoilers though. So I’m giving it a thumbs up because as a stand alone it’s a masterpiece. As a successor to KoDP it has definitely gone a bit off the rails. Spoilers to follow so stop reading now.
Yes it’s an amazing game. A couple things to be aware of though, which made KoDP a standout for it’s time but which Six Ages has given up on: unlike KoDP where you were expected to follow the path your ancestors set or you were punished severely, in this one you’re supposed to be “good” using today’s moral compass instead. Seriously. You can’t kill off other tribes, they’re super easy to ally with, it’s almost impossible to lose heros (compared to the original,) you’re supposed to jump on board with everything that’d be attractive to modern sensibilities (slavery is bad, yeah help enemies consistently, etc.) That’s a pretty big departure from the original where if you spit on your clans history you’d consistently be wrecked for it, so yeah. Important to know: Your ancestors were all idiots and the gods actually support going full hippy rather than doing whatever backwards crap those apes cared about. I tried KoDP like that the first time and was shocked how punishing the game was towards applying modern morality to the game. I was dissappointed that all I had to do to be this game on its hardest difficulty was to just disregard literally everything I’d learned about the lore and the world from the original. As long as you’ve never played the original, this is a nonissue; it’s only if you’ve gotten to experience the alternative, where you’re having to make judgements based on how their culture would likely interpret and react to events, that you realize how much actual depth that removes from gameplay.
– Real player with 152.9 hrs in game
A number of your clan’s children have gone missing while foraging. Your people are anxious for their return. What do you do?
** consult the clan’s spirits
consult a god
immediately send out a search party **
King of Dragon Pass 1.9
Six Ages is a great game. It is basically a streamlined version of King of Dragon Pass with various new systems and all new stories and events. You have to manage your clan, make sure people are fed and happy, please the gods, explore lands close and distant, negotiate with other clans, practice magic, fight, etc. etc. I have heard people compare it to the Banner Saga, which I have not played yet, but I think the gameplay is fairly different. In Six Ages, you do all of the actions above by picking options in the various screens and events, not by e.g. positioning armies or walking around places. There are many, many events, which are beautifully painted scenes with text, where you have to make interesting choices that will effect the management of your clan and the world. There is really no other game quite like it; the genre is unique.
– Real player with 132.1 hrs in game
Tavernier
This is a good indie management game with decent replay value for a low price. You are given
proprietorship of a tavern, and you have 52 weeks to figure out what evil is happening in town, and to make necessary adjustments to your tavern in order to put a stop to this evil before the 52 weeks end. You will want to decide what factions you want your tavern to appeal to (folks, guards, rogues, wanderers, mages, etc.) by having your tavern bard play music that appeals to them, changing tavern decorations, changing menu items, and other changes. You will also be given a randomized moral decision every week that will increase and/or decrease certain attributes of your tavern (percentage of your customers that belong to different factions, how much gold you have, whether you choose to have a “cool” or “pro” tavern alignment, the customer tipping rate, total number of customers, etc.).
– Real player with 12.7 hrs in game
Short Review:
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Simple, rough art that suits the game
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Tavern management + story element + timed goal
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Achievements for different challenges make great replay
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Unexpected and humorous
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Overall fun!
Full Review:
I’ll keep this simple. Here’s a list of reasons why I’ve really enjoyed this game:
– It’s fun!
– The art is simple and has a rough style, but I like it. It suits the game.
– There’s a tavern management aspect (you have to decide wisely how to spend your money, based on what your goals are), and there are also choices to make each “week” of the game that have different outcomes. There’s also a story element with a goal you need to accomplish within 52 weeks. So the gameplay is simple but challenging with a nice mix of things. And some of the Steam achievements are quite difficult to get.
– Real player with 6.8 hrs in game