2023 ā Some Game of the Year
It occurs to me that a lot of games I played this year were in early access. Either wayā¦
Sons of the forest (early access)
This is one of those games I wouldnāt have played otherwise, but now I have I donāt regret doing so.
What on the surface seems to be a horror survival game, seem to be more like a camping and off-grid living simulator, log homes, nature trekking, caving, and hiking included, now with wacky characters showing up and being uncomfortable to be aroundā¦ that arenāt myself. Still, Iām theyāre very fun to hit with implements.
The sequel to The Forest, now expanded with the āSons ofā Prefix, my friends and I were playing the game during early access, with many plot details not complete. Not that I was paying much attention to that. Unlike my friends, I didnāt play The Forest, but from watching Mandaloreās video, Iā¦ know some things?
The plot of the game is not the point for me. Going camping in the woods, exploring the gorgeous forest, and the creepy caves to find cool new gadgets, like a ziplineā¦ or a shotgun, or a slightly better axe, working together to construct a log cabin on the lake, and then to construct a zipline system from said cabin, all the way to the top of the mountain, is absolutely the point for me. The game should be out of early access soon, so Iām looking forward to playing it again when itās āfeature completeā.
Pseudoregalia
If thereās one thing I was reminded of this year, is that I like 3D platformers. And there is many separate reasons why.
Enjoying the exploration of the wonderful little worlds these games take place in. Or enjoying the mechanics of scamping around a 3D space as effectively as possible.
Pseudoregalia firmly is in the latter category. It is firmly for the fans of movement and traversal.
The game is laid out in a āsearch actionā type of progression, where the items you find in the game add to your options for movement. Not long after you start the game and get past the āopening sequenceā, and obtaining your slide, and slide jump, your options open up more than you realise at first, but once you know, you find out that sequence breaking using pure movement tech is a part of the game. You really wanna find out what you can get away with.
When I say that the game fits firmly in the āabout traversalā side of 3D platformers, itās also because the exploration is kinda weak, as each area in the world is fairly simplistic and rather samey, while keeping to their theme. Getting lost is easy as thereās not a lot differentiating between most rooms, short of the odd monument. A map would be a small fix for this (and is in the works), but doesnāt solve the issue of the world design itself. Doesnāt make the world any less of a challenge to traverse, however. Itās āera-appropriateā look is sort of grey-box design in a way.
There is combat, but it is easily the weakest part of the game. With how agile your character is, youād think sheād be capable of brining the pain, but combat is basic, limited mainly to a 3 hit combo, with your other techniques usually used in solving puzzles in the environment. Not even your downward spike you use to high jump is viable, as you just take damage on impact. As a result, combat is infrequent and thereās only a couple of boss encounters.
What you have to understand is for what you get for about 5 bucks, it is actually impressive how much fun this is. I donāt mind getting lost as it means more time with the game. I would call this my top contender for favourite game this year, if only there was more. And all my criticism is because I care about more than most. I want it to do well, and thanks to the barrier of entry being so cheap, I think it has.
In short, this gameās pretty goat butt- sorry, pretty good, but itās kind of short. Still, not bad for 5 bucks, for the one complete game on this list! And there is pants if you want, but why would you?
Iām of course not referring to the objectively superior professional outfitā¦ yes, even better than nothing at all. So good itāll give you Covid, yeag!
Volcanoids (early access)
This gameās premise is pretty ingenious, and technically impressive. Itās an open world survival crafting game, with a mobile base!
That said, youāre not there to live off the land and make your own, youāre there on a mission to retake the island from some robots gone wrong, that have been causing the volcano on the island to do a little trolling pretty regularly. So, its laser focused on getting you geared up to take on this threat, rather than living there.
To give you an idea of what kind of operation youāll have in the late game, youāll be automating not just processing of resources, but ammo, guns, health, armour, and repair equipment filling dispensers in your staging room, youāll have mining drones going out to collect nearby ores, gun drones where you can use any of your weapons and deploy them in the field or anywhere on the map, and a really versatile support drone that has cover, health and armour regen, a tesla coil to shoot down projectiles, and a storage area you can put loot in to send back to the drill ship.
Ah yes, the drill ship. Your mobile base is mobile in the sense that you can set up in various locations. To do this, your mobile base can tunnel underground, and pop up in set locations, even into caves. You must do this to avoid the periodic eruptions of the islandās volcano. (Or if youāre out in the open, go hide in one of the many structures.) You can just sit there buried to do some basic prep, and fixes to the internals of your ship, but the modules you install into the slots of your ship require you to be deployed somewhere to function. So, thereās a difference between being safe and finding somewhere safe to get some work doneā¦ or having enough defences to protect yourself while you do.
All this comes together to make a technically, and mechanically impressive and fun game. I love pulling up next to an enemy drill ship, assaulting their position, getting inside, and stealing, and breaking everything. And all the tools given to you make taking on the robotic threat a blast!
But not for long. In its current state there is, I would sayā¦ about 12 hours of content total. But development is ongoing, and an embiggening of the island is coming in the future. Still, the 12 hours of content, is still plenty of fun, and Iāve certainly gotten multiple runs out of it. Iād call it, this yearās Signal from Tolva in that regard.
I will mention that playing with overseas friends, with all the lag that entails, makes it very hard to land shotsā¦ like, worse than Iāve experienced in most other games. But the recently added Tesla weapons do honestly remedy that. Hopefully thatāll improve over time.
Lethal company (early access)
Chances are youāve played this one, and/or have seen enough to know what to make of itā¦ or are not interested despite (or in spite of) the saturation.
So, Iāll forego the explanation for this one and get to my opinion.
Itās a funny game, that is very early in its days. As such, I feel after 20 hours Iāve gotten everything out of the game I can currently, and Iām not really interested in playing more until thereās a lot more to it.
Meanwhile, Iāve recently been playing Zeekerrs previous game The Upturned. Been finding it very enjoyable.
Void crew (early access)
Image source: Massively Overpowered, also how did I not take any screenshots??
Yāknow, I ended last year playing a ship crewing game in PULSAR: the lost colony. Seems fitting I finish this year playing something similar.
However, this game is not as it seems on the surface. Itās not a game where a group of friends crew a ship and explore space. a game where a group of friends crew a ship, go out, do some missions, and come back and get rewards. Itās much more like Deep Rock Galactic in that sense. Each āpilgrimageā has a set beginning and end.
The loop is lots of fun, crews will be all doing their own thing, and as an engineer, if Iām not helping shoot stuff, or being the only scavenger available, I can take time to wander around the ship (getting lost if weāre using the big ship), tending to the ship systems, moving items out of the scoop and into storage, or the recycler, which involves tossing them down the corridor a lot of the time.
One part of the loop Iām iffy about is at the end of every mission, in order to maximise our alloy bonus, we usually run around the ship, scuttling everything we built and collected, ship modules, ammo, upgrades, and other bits and pieces, sending it to the fabricator to get recycled one by one. I find this part of the loop to be pretty tedious and I feel like it should get a rework at some point, maybe taking account of your assets, and the value you would have if you had recycled everything. Itās not like you keep anything you find between missions. They made it easier recently with their rework of the void jump, allowing a ship to sit in āwarpā, so that crews have time to prepare the next move, which at that stage is slowly chew through everything, and set the course for home.
Also, the loot in this gameā¦ Itās a random cosmetic lootbox system WITH DUPLICATES. At least itās not monetized at the moment, Iāmā¦ weary, but stillā¦ justā¦ no. And I cannot tell you how many crappy little visor gifs Iāve gottenā¦ again, in duplicates of. Just let me purchase what I want with a form of in-game currency, and/or add items to progression.
But at any rate, this is still super technically impressive at this stage of development. After some bad habits are ironed out, Iām excited to see where this game goes.
Inkbound (early access)
Iām not normally a fan of turn based games. Inkbound sets out to take everything I dislike about turn based games, and effectively makes them fair. I suppose this makes the fight one sided in a certain way, but that doesnāt make it any less challenging.
To validate my feelings about turn based games, I have recently been playing through the Hylics series again, and I had my first game of D&D. The takeaway from all that beingā¦ preparation is key.
Inkbound allows you to prepare on the fly, as youāre making your move. While youāre doing everything you can, that your energy and availability of your abilities can permit, you know what the enemy is going to do, and you can either dodge, or get ready to take it, perhaps even influence them in some way.
One thing you cannot predict is how your adventure will go. If it plays like rouge, smells like rogue, it must be likewiseā¦ like rogueā¦ a roguelike. ehem
The progression of your abilities, and the weird doodads youāll find are randomised each run. You find yourself having to tend with multiple varieties of your āabsolutely brokenā build. Oh but once you have one, itās very funny to, sayā¦ do absurd numbers of damage concurrent to how tanky you are, like the harder you are to kill, the easier it is to kill othersā¦ which does make sense overall, but in this contextā¦ it couldn't be closer to the truth. Or how about the various ways to do DoT, and just watching the enemy die on their own. Or my personal favourite, outright removing the movement cap and literally running circles around the enemyā¦ in a turn based game.
Also, it should be worth mentioning, in the antithesis of what Void Crew is doing, in more ways than one, the game started out having a premium currency to unlock cosmetics with, but they soon done way with that, and now you just earn the currency in gameā¦ as it should be. Itās unfortunate that it started that way, but Iām happy itās where itās at now. And theyāre still offering paid Cosmetic DLC packages. Infinitely better than a random lootbox with dupes!
