Dirk's Blog Thing

Yesterday we attempted to play Robinson Crusoe.

Wow, this is a complex game. We were two hours into reading the manual (none of us were familiar with the game) before we started actually playing. I generally tend to dislike games that take this long to learn. You can hardly concentrate after having the manual read at you for two hours, lots of things don't make any sense at first, and only towards the end it all starts to come together. Having a dozen different kind of tokens, cards, etc doesn't help. Sure they're named consistently in the manual, but you can never remember which ones are which when you don't yet know what they're good for. Us calling all tokens "Schnupsi" or "Schnubbel" of course doesn't help.

So, with that said, for all its complexity it feels the game is very well thought through and designed. There's a lot of little helpers on the board to remind you of things like the order of phases you play through, etc. So there's that.

Thematically the game is of the survival genre. You spend actions to hunt, gather, build, research, discover etc. Various scenarios have different objectives to achieve. Plenty of adventure cards offer extra rewards in exchange for bad things potentially happening later. Every turn there's a sort of crisis card which someone has to deal with, or everyone will suffer consequences. Each player has a different character, with different special abilities. The game plays cooperatively, though I don't know whether there a scenarios that have a traitor in them.

We didn't finish our game - my friends were going on about having to "go to bed" and having "work tomorrow" so we couldn't play into the AMs.
We'll probably retry though next chance we get.

So let me tell you about my experiences playing this. I've played for about 7 hours and just got what I'm pretty sure is the Good Ending. And I'm not so much disappointed in this game as angry. It could've been such a good game, if it wasn't for all the bugs and strange behavior breaking it.

First things first, what is it anyway? Mechanically, I guess it's an action adventure. You fight opponents, attacking them by clicking on them. You also use special abilities, try to block attacks at the right moment, some special moves triggering when you successfully chain attacks, etc. Fighting looks kinda cool (especially once you unlock abilites) and is quite hectic.
Now, storywise is where it gets interesting. The setting is, you're playing a retired adventurer / scoundrel who decides to join the rebellion when he finds out about the atrocities the Emperor (who used to be a good guy) had commanded. During cut-scenes, you get to choose how to continue. Thing is, your choices will inevitably lead to you losing the game. The first playthroughs are about finding out which choices are wrong, and in the process finding four fundamental truths that will help you uncover the right way to go. You will need all four before you even get the choices required to get the Good Ending. Before that, after each loss you will get a bit of a reward, and then the game will rewind and restart, giving you more options, and also frequently reminding you of any truths you've uncovered that might be relevant to the situation.
I really like that concept! Also, the story is real cute and often funny. Same goes for the characters. I guess that's why I'm so angry at the game being stupid and breaking so much.
BTW, each playthrough is around an hour give or take, depends of course on how quick you're going, how much exploring you're doing, and how often you're diverting from the main path to collect items. I played through it seven times to collect all truths and find the Good Ending. When you consider that there are 24 (?) non-Good endings, I only got 6 of those ...

So. Things that irk me (please keep in mind that I played a few hours, not hundreds):

• On one occasion textures didn't load. I tried to continue the game, because quitting would've meant re-doing the entire level.
• I had to restart a level three times, repeatedly going through the same lengthy dialogue, because one fight kept bugging out. First time, after the fight my character only moved in slow-motion and I couldn't do anything about it. Second time an opponent fell part way through the floor. I could still see it, but not attack. So the encounter never ended.
• Every time you encounter enemies, you're locked in an arena area until the fighting ends. So imagine my surprise when I ran into a single opponent outside such an arena, without an actual encounter even triggering.
• Enemies' path finding frequently sucks, they get stuck around corners, they don't activate when they spawn too far from you.
• Enemies announce their attacks with an exclamation mark above them. You better click on them then to counter, or else they'll hit hard. Also, such a hit will stun you for a bit. Also also, multiple opponents might attack in such a way at the same time, and you can only counter one at a time. Also also also, you're a melee fighter, so you'll pretty much always be right in the middle of them.
• You have different swords (like, Ice Sword, and Fire Sword). Their abilities are activated though, they use up energy, and the energy by far doesn't last the entire fight. It took me a while to learn to just quickly light them up right before hitting an opponent and disabling them right after.
• Once you've collected all available upgrades for your Swords and Gauntlet, all pickups will be health ones. Which is utterly stupid considering your Swords use Energy, which you could find pickups for before you maxed out all your stuff. Now it only auto-regenerates at such a slow rate that you'd need to leave your game running for maybe half an hour to max it out. Or you use one of the gem slots in your gauntlet for a gem that restores 5% sword energy on enemy kill. So much for choosing your favorite setup among 7 available gems for your gauntlet.
• BTW, pickups frequently spawn in spots you can't get to. Health and Energy pickups will often be thrown directly at you, so you can't really choose to use one of your swords to regain health because there were a lot of energy pickups. Nope, you'll pick up the energy despite being full already.
• Oh, the combat. It's so weird. You struggle a lot early on, but when you unlock the various swords (I used the Ice Sword pretty much all the time) and some abilities, the fights get easier. The game throws more opponents at you at a time to offset your new-found tricks, but it's not enough. The game gets easier the more you play.
• Why did it take me just 7 playthroughs to get to the Good Ending? I deliberately made some poor choices I thought. Do I care enough to go through all the other options just to find all the bad endings?
• Last but not least, the controls. Ugh. Mouse+RMB to move, RMB to attack. I so wish I could've moved with WASD and used the mouse to point in the direction I wanted to attack. 7 hours into the game I still used LMB trying to move somewhere.

So. Yeah. That's what I think about Stories. Lots of wasted potential.

I'm just going to gather my thoughts on the Spiel'16 convention here ... Keep on mind that this was the first time for me to visit such a convention ...

So. Yesterday's been pretty exhausting, but also a lot of fun. I got up at 3:00am, left home around 3:30 and drove to our meeting spot to meet with friends. We continued on to Essen, which took about 4 hours 15 minutes (close to 400km). We arrived way early because I'd insisted on leaving early to avoid bad traffic. Well, we arrived 2 hours before the convention opened. We walked to a bakery for some coffee / hot chocolate and breakfast, then returned to he entrance and waited to be let in.
Once inside (around 10:00am) we were overwhelmed by the sheer size of the thing. One of the first booths was from a game store and we were all just finding a dozen things we wanted to buy. We did not want to carry around our purchases all day though, so we decided to come back later. Opposite was a booth showing off a game called The Vampire, the Elf and the Cthulhu. We sat down for a demo game. In the end we weren't convinced though, in part because despite helpful people at the booths introducing you to the games, it's tough to learn new games in a crowded and noisy environment. In the end I think we'd figured it out, but mechanically we weren't convinced.
We did spend about an hour playing it though, and then realised that with the size of the convention, and us being there for a day only, we don't really have the time to playtest games.
So we continued through Hall 1 of the venue, stopping here and there, looking at games, checking prices at the many many sellers, buying stuff, etc. We left Hall 1 at around 12:30 or maybe it was 1:00pm? Anyway, continuing at this speed we wouldn't be able to even visit all the halls. So we did a sort of quicker run through of the other halls, and certainly missed out on a lot of stuff. Towards the late afternoon we decided to go back to playtest Mansions of Madness (pretty sure it was the new second edition). We had to wait for a bit to get a free table, but once there we sat down with someone at the booth to explain things to us. They had a timer at each table, and play time for this one was limited to an hour. The game can be described as a mix of Betrayal at House on the Hill (mechanically) and Arkham Horror (thematically). In fact, some of the game art looks quite like the latter on, and some of the same people were involved in both. So thematically it's players (as investigators) being confronted with varying Cthulhu related plots, mechanically by visiting an old mansion and discovering new rooms, items, events etc. Now the big difference is, that instead of a huge complex manual, the game has a helper app (apparently available for Android, Apple devices, Mac and Windows). The app conveys huge parts of the story, and, interestingly, varies it every time. There are difficulty settings, but it also personalises the events by using the names of the characters, and mixes up what's happening, and creates the layout of the mansion differently every time. I quite liked the idea, in particular because in Arkham Horror, when playing it for the first few times, you spend a lot of time looking through the manual and re-reading how encounters play out, etc. With this game though, you just let the app do the mathy and ruley things by tapping a few buttons. Attacking a monster in the mansion? Select the active monster in the app, hit attack, select attack type (e.g melee, ranged, magic), and it'll tell you what to do, and not in a neutral, manual-like fashion, but including flavor texts. I quite liked the idea of having an app, and we discussed this among ourselves during and after the game. Things I think are worth noting about the app:

• Despite being about as complex as Arkham Horror, the game is a lot easier to get into, because you just need to know a few basic mechanics (like how rolling dice works) and the app will tell you all you need to know when you need to know.


• It'll also keep score for you (e.g. how much life a monster has left).


• Updates to the app mean potential for new variants of stories, or entirely new stories, to be introduced continuously.


• The app is required to play. If you want to play, you'll need someone with a tablet (phone's too small to be really useful) or a notebook, PC, something. The battery ran low on the tablet while we were playing, if it runs out, game over.


• You really need to hand the tablet around so each player can use it. Alternatively, find a solution where everyone can see and use it simultaneously. In my case, I'm thinking my wall mounted TV (which is hooked up to my PC anyway) + Windows version of the App (free on Steam) + wireless mouse / keyboard to hand around + placing the table in front of the TV in such a way that everyone can easily read stuff off it. Works for me, might not work for everyone.


• Especially with Android, you might run into problems with market fragmentation. Don't have a tablet with recent Android version? App might not be available. Or the developer might at some point in the future stop supporting the app for your version of Android. Who knows?


• More sinister (and I can't tell how likely that is), this app solution might introduce a sort of planned obsolescence. A few years down the line, the app might be pulled from stores (this is totally an option for the Google Play Store, iTunes store, and Steam) because the publisher thinks it's time for you to buy his latest game. They could also make the app stop supporting the base game and require you to buy physical addons. Less sinister, but how about advertising your latest game in the app?


• Minor gripe: We're playing a physical board game. Don't make me do minigames on the tablet.

All in all I want to keep playing it, and I feel you just have to figure out how to best deal with using the app for it. Friend of mine already decided to get this game for Christmas. Looking forward to playing.

Anyway. We finished the game (losing) and decided to leave the convention half an hour before closing (7:00pm, as opposed to 6:00pm like I thought I'd read somewhere) so we could be the rush to the exits. Found the car and headed back home. I'd thought finding the way back to the autobahn from the convention area wouldn't be hard, but as it turns out the road Waze wanted me to go was actually blocked so we wasted a bit of time trying to find a different way. Another good 4 hours of driving. Got home around 11:00pm and went to bed around midnight.

We've already decided we're going again next year, but next time we'll get hotel rooms and stay for a minimum of two days, possibly the entire four days. It might also be a good idea to plan ahead: Plan your walking route through the exhibition halls so you miss less stuff. Walk the entire thing on day 1, then return the next day to the booths you want to playtest at. Buy stuff on the last day you're there, towards the end of the day (so you don't have to carry stuff all day). best deals might be towards the end of the show, when exhibitors realise they'll have to haul back everything they're not selling. Make lists of stuff you want to playtest / buy by taking photos of the games, and of the booth numbers printed on labels at every booth. Those labels have hall number, rows and numbers to make them locate easy.

Random bit of information, I lost 2kg between yesterday and today. Didn't eat much, walked around all day. Also, sore shoulders from backpack filled with White Wizard Gaming booth.

So I bought Stasis a few days ago. I'd been looking forward to its release ever since I heard of it. It doesn't quite live up to my expectations though, unfortunately.

To give you an idea, Stasis is an Indie Isometric Science Fiction Horror Adventure Game. The protagonist wakes by from stasis on an unfamiliar space ship that obviously is severely damaged. Thing is, the last thing he remembers is going into stasis next to his wife and kid in order to start their vacation. The goal of the game is survival, finding out wtf is going on, and finding your family.


Now, I really like the setting of the game. You soon find out that the space ship you're on is owned by a big corporation conducting illegal experiments (DNA manipulation and cloning) on humans, on this very ship. They're totally ruthless, and collect stasis pods anywhere they can get them in order to use their contents for their experiments. Naturally the protagonist is frantically trying to find his family.

Unfortunately, that's all I really like about this game. Graphically, it's okay. The setting is visualised well enough, but it does look 10+ years old. IMO that's acceptable for a small independent developer though.

What most irks me is how far fetched some of the puzzles are. Early in the game, you need to fake a leak on a tank. Having only very few items, I decided to try to use a glass shard on my character, thinking he'd cut himself for a few drops of blood. Well, what he did was thrusting the shard into his intestines, killing himself.
Killing yourself is ridiculously easy in the game.

Here's another example of a puzzle that I didn't like: There's a gas leak, and I'm convinced I'm supposed to blow it up. I've got a lighter, so I place it close to the leak. What you're supposed to do is go to a save place and use a stick to prod the lighter so that it ignites the gas. Thing is, the game requires you to do it from a certain place. If you prod it from the wrong position you'll die in the explosion, but being as close, just in a different position, prodding the lighter works without you getting killed. What's worse, once you plant the lighter nothing will happen, but if you go close to the leak again it'll suddenly explode, killing you! Why does it explode when you get close? Why doesn't it when you keep your distance? That doesn't make any sense!

Another puzzle is not a proper puzzle at all IMO: You arrive at a tube station. The tubes are used to transport stuff from one department to the other on the ship. There's several things wrong with this puzzle actually: First of all, you'll find a box addressed to <some department>, and below are three connected symbols - when I saw them I thought abstract floor plan. They're just two colours, forming what looks like rooms and connecting passages. Now close by is a terminal that let's you enter the intended destination, you have to choose from different symbols on three positions to get the correct one, i.e. the one showing on the box.

Seriously, WHY THE HELL would you have a process to input the target destination in such a complicated way? The transport boxes have the destination written on them in plain text, so why would the destination selector be encoded at all, and in such a weird way? What would actually make sense is a simple list of available destinations to select one from. So this is an example of a puzzle that's just there for the sake of itself.

The second reason this entire puzzle feels stupid, you find several boxes with different destinations. When you enter any of them though, the terminal will simply say "no destination set". What should happen, you should be able to enter the transport and be shipped to a wrong location. It might be a dead end, or, seeing how happily the game will kill you, you might end up crashing or being jettisoned into space.

Instead, the only destination the terminal actually accepts is the one you have to go to because of the plot. I was so angry when I realised I couldn't travel to the wrong destination ...

So that's a few reasons why I find the game disappointing. I'll probably still finish it because I want to know what's going to happen. But I'm in no hurry really...

The game I bought yesterday, which almost made me forget my bedtime, is called Human Resource Machine.

I'm in at least two minds with this.
Quick description, it's a puzzle game by the guys that did World of Goo. In it you play a guy / girl in an office, and you have to solve problems. These involve a conveyor belt labelled "IN" that has boxes with numbers / letters on them, and another conveyor belt marked "OUT". You're tasked with moving the boxes around, some should go from IN to OUT, some need to be discarded, some need to be combined, some might have to be reordered.
You have a list of commands at your disposal that you drag&drop into the right order to form a program. Since the boxes are random and change every time you (re)start a level, you need to find a general solution. Once you think you've got it right, you hit play and your guy / girl starts performing the actions. It all looks rather cute and adorable.

It starts out quite easy, with a very limited selection of commands available. Soon the problems become more complex, and an incentive is added to try and solve them in as few steps as possible, or with as few commands as possible.

Now, for the most part I'd say the game is a lot of fun. It doesn't teach you coding, but it gives you a general idea of the kind of thing that goes through a coder's head. Like, cutting a problem into little pieces that can then be individually solved, and generalizing the problem in such a way that your solution works all the time, and not just for a specific set of inputs.

Now what's difficult with this game IMO is the fact that the problems become more complex, but the tools you get don't keep up. When I quit and went to bed yesterday, I was thinking about how to do a fibonacci sequence. Thing is, you only have addition/substraction, increment/decrement 1, and a jump to, jump when 0, and jump when negative. Any if..then..else, or for/while loops you might need, you'll have to construct from those tools. Sure possible, but it's very fiddly. At this point, the game stops being about finding a solution to a problem, and instead becomes about trying to keep track of your own spaghetti code. (also, I want my recursion ffs!)

I do believe this is all intentional though. It wouldn't take much to introduce those concepts, but it'd make the game more abstract too. This way it stays closer to an assembler like complexity.

Then again, I haven't actually finished the game, so I'll see if they do introduce new things later on ...

I've posted about this pretty much everywhere else except for here ...

Project Eternity Kickstarter is intended as sort of a successor to the likes of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Planescape: Torment. And it's almost managed to get to its goal of $1.1mil within a friggin' day!

Awesome Artist:

http://patryk-garrett.deviantart.com/gallery/

Hmm. Galactic readiness 98%.
That was easy.

Also got a Human Vanguard at level 20. Seems like a waste of XP to continue playing a character once you reach level 20.

Had a Krogan team mate earlier. T'was fun watching him play. Headbutt of Doom!