It’s like a week after the Humble Choice dropped even as I write this, closer to two by the time it gets posted. Fell behind a bit, but you should still be able to grab it by the time this post goes live, so what’s in the box?
Hipster Walking Simulator: True Colors is the third installment in the Hipster Walking Simulator series. These games have good voice acting, pretty good animation and character design, and reasonably engaging plots, but there’s so little actual gameplay that the ideal way to experience them is on YouTube. Even then, I’ve usually got other shows I would rather be watching (I’m still not done with TNG, just for starters), but I don’t know why I would ever want it in my Steam library even if I did decide I wanted to watch them.
Scorn is an atmospheric, non-linear survival horror game. They really emphasize the maze-like nature of the world and the importance of paying attention to small details, which is good in theory, but also means they really need to get the execution right in order to avoid frustration. How Long To Beat says it’s only six hours, though, so I’ll give it a try. This is exactly the road I went down with Industria, but ultimately the time investment is low enough that I can afford to take this risk.
Destroy All Humans 2 is the sequel to a game that was already wearing out its welcome by the time the credits rolled on the first one. I like the concept, but there’s way too much emphasis on specific story missions, with the open world being vestigial. There’s hardly any side content and what there is are mostly very gameplay-heavy challenges that focus on mastery of the meh mechanics and never let me go on an open world rampage. I can, of course, just decide to go on that rampage of my own initiative, and that’s enough that I don’t feel completely disappointed with the game, but I’d much rather have side missions for things like “blow up every building to completely raze this location to the ground” (y’know, destroy all the humans) rather than “blow up X buildings in Y minutes.” I still have in my ideas file “Destroy All Humans But Better” as something I might try to make someday if I ever get the funds to go into video games. This would not be an entry-level project but it does seem like it’s doable on an indie budget. Anyway, if Destroy All Humans left me desperate for a sequel I wouldn’t have walked away from it thinking “eh, gimme $50k and I could do better.”
Beacon Pines is a choose-your-own-adventure sort of game where you are reading a book and also making decisions about the protagonist of that book? Not sure how it all adds up and the mechanics sound thin enough that I don’t care to find out.
There Is No Light advertises themselves on their 25-hour play length, which is immediately a mistake because I am way less likely to take a chance on 25 hours as compared to Scorn’s 5. Their other advertisements are their pixel art (good, not great) and that they have a combat system. They’re very proud of this combat system, but they don’t really tell me anything about it in their pitch. Basically the only thing I’ve learned about this game is that its creators are bad at marketing, and I’m not taking a risk on 25 hours for that.
Children of Silentown is a game about a little kid who is scared of the woods and uses point-and-click adventure mechanics, which are the mechanics you add to a visual novel when you want to pretend you’re a video game but don’t have the first idea how to add actual gameplay. Adventure games still sometimes rescue themselves based on their story (and the best ones are basically just visual novels that allow you to explore locations freely, which I think is usually an unambiguous improvement to them), but I’m not taking a chance on it for a game I’ve never heard of.
Oaken describes itself as having a “Roguelite, hero-oriented campaign with deck management.” Now in their defense, they have a pretty cool art style and if I hadn’t already played Slay the Spire I might’ve given this one a look, but I have already played Slay the Spire and I don’t want a game that tries to be longer.
Snowtopia is a ski resort tycoon game. I often grab tycoon games just for a lark and hey, I liked Two Point Campus decently, but I do feel like ski resorts are finally getting over the threshold where I just don’t care. Tycoon games are rarely well-balanced and usually end up being either too easy or too hard. A too-easy tycoon game is still fun as long as I like the thing I’m building, but I don’t ski and I don’t care to.
That means my only pickup is Scorn, and meanwhile a bunch of games developed unfortunate technical difficulties this month. Grime I spent a while trying to troubleshoot before giving up because, ultimately, while it’s a perfectly good Metroidvania and I would like to play the second half of it, I don’t want it so badly that I’ll slog through any more troubleshooting for it. In Between the Stars I was just starting to get invested in the game’s setting and plot when I ran into a bug that killed the whole save and which has been outstanding for four years. That leaves me with exactly 150 games in the backlog, including the pretty short Scorn.
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