Steam Pack 7

As you all know, I use Steam Packs as a way to quickly review some of the titles I wouldn’t spend 2,000 words discussing, and this includes a lot of cheaper games… as well as free games. I own quite a number of free games. Not that this is a bad thing, on the contrary. Free games are usually shorter or simpler than any titles on Steam you might pay for – and, as a result, those are bound to make their way onto these lists. At the same time, they still showcase great talent from young developers, and sometimes can be a lot more interesting than they seem at first. (Which isn't to say that they're all good, obviously - free games vary in quality just as much as games you can pay for.)

This time around, I want to do something a little different. Only free games! Yes, I know winter is coming, and the Winter Sale will happen on Steam soon-ish, but that’s a story for another day. Today, I want to check through my collection and take out four free games that I’ve never played, and see whether I want to keep them or not.

I guess another word for today’s four games is “ambiance”. Each game brings its own ambiance, a somewhat creepy tone, which works well in the world presented in each of them.

I am also at these crossroads of Steam where I might run out of space if I download more games, so you can probably imagine that I wish to get rid of some games in my collection; and what better way but to play through a few and see whether I want to keep them? The Steam Packs are surprisingly useful for this. Well then, let’s not waste any time!

The Desolate Hope

One of Scott Cawthon’s games before he worked on Five Nights at Freddy’s, The Desolate Hope contains many elements that call to mind his greatest success as a developer. This game has robots, unexpected story twists, an explosion of various genres, mini-games, a gathering quest, and some really cool designs.

Brought to you by the power of informative subtitles.

In the future, even coffee machines have far too much
intelligence for what should be required. I thought we
were done adding stupid pointless shit to stuff just to
attract "the tech-obsessed millenials"?

On the unmanned station Lun Infinus, on an uninhabited planet, live various robots (named Derelicts) who have been tasked with creating simulations exploring possible future homes for mankind, were the Earth to ever become uninhabitable. Sadly, it seems that humans pulled the plug on the program and stopped sending samples long ago, causing the place to fall into disrepair. A virus has apparently taken over the simulations led by the four Derelicts around Lun Infinus (there’s a fifth one, but it's frozen… nothing to see there, we swear). A coffee machine, named Coffee, plugged itself into the main computer and sought out an A.I. that originally existed to play a preinstalled game on the machine. This is Digital Counterpart 9 (AKA D-Co 9), and Coffee gave it its own body for the surprise quest of ridding the station from that nasty virus. Yep, if you ever wanted a game where you control a coffee machine on legs, this is it.

I mean, it's in the game, that doesn't mean it has any
relevance... right?

In a simulation, the D-CO9-powered coffee machine has
the powers to jump and shoot at stuff, yet it is incapable
of making for itself a body less silly than that of a
coffee machine.

And so, D-Co 9’s task is to free the large robots from the virus, by entering their simulation, collecting data, and fighting impressive bosses in JRPG-style fights. That’s during the day; at night, the simulations are unavailable, so D-Co 9 can go outside and explore the planet, gathering stuff that the simulation robots are fond of. Apparently, being in operation for a long time has given them odd quirks, such as a desire for collecting human memorabilia… Which makes them more inclined to help you when you bring them some, and it also increases their level when the time comes to battle bosses. Don't ask me how that works, I don't know.

The sun is rising. Make sure you collect your six items for
the night, only two at a time. Oh, and once that's done, make
sure you got o the very end of this empty, boring field, just
in case you can find something there.

Trial-and-error? I don't think it's the time for that.

There are JRPG-style battles, there’s a lot of platforming and exploration required in the simulations (in which D-Co 9, in Coffee’s body, is able to jump and shoot bullets). There are also terminals that bring the character into a small dungeon-crawling mini-game, from which D-Co 9 can gain new abilities and bonuses when the time comes to face the virus.

Oh, and did I mention that you only have 15 day/night cycles to complete the mission before the station definitively shuts down?

As a concept for a game, it’s pretty clever and manages to mesh various genres together in a coherent result. It has a genuinely interesting storyline, endearing characters (as each Derelict has a different personality and it shines through their monologues), and a decent difficulty increase as time goes. There are, of course, various secrets, as Scott Cawthon likes to include in his titles, and the story moves into something more sinister as it progresses. It’s surprisingly deep for a free title.

Cawthon has made an entire career out of uncanny valley, even before
Five Nights at Freddy's. Just look at that thing!

Unfortunately, I have noticed two weaknesses in this game, two that seem to come back in a few of Cawthon’s creations. First, the game does have bright flashes, and as a result Desolate Hope discourages epileptic players from playing it. Oh, it’s not as bad as some other games I’ve played (looking at you, Beat Hazard). It also focuses quite a bit on the story, but when it comes to gameplay, it often feels as though not enough elements are explained to the player, or if they are explained, it’s in passing, and there isn’t a way to see these explanations again. If you don’t pay attention, you can miss critical details on how the gameplay works. Same problem for the JRPG battles, in which every Derelict has a myriad of attacks, but you can't study them much as the fast-paced battles leave little time for experimentation.

All in all, a decent game, I’ve yet to beat it, I will admit that it has a lot of content, though I can see why Desolate Hope wasn’t the big breakthrough its creator was hoping for. Still, as a precursor to FNAF, I'd say it's worth giving a try.

This is probably gonna rot in my library until all five
previous games have been played... so I'll be experiencing
it long after everything's been said about it.

BREAKING NEWS! Speaking of Five Nights at Freddy's... Yes, FNAF 6 has come out Monday December 5th, 2017 (so, 4 days before the publication of this review), disguised as a free so-called pizzeria tycoon game. For the record, I write these articles 3 to 6 weeks in advance, which makes it difficult for me to be truly up-to-date with news and releases. I rarely add stuff like this to my publications - but the stars aligned and a new Cawthon game was released on the week that I planned to review a previous Cawthon game. I felt it was worth mentioning. It's real, and it's free. No, really. It's not called FNAF 6, but it's FNAF 6.

Electric Highways

This experimental game is mostly a walking simulator. There’s little to do outside of walking around and activating switches. The CGI is very basic, in that it uses simple forms for its designs. The levels, however, can be surprisingly large.

Not shown: The gigantic outside area. And the loneliness.

There’s little story around here; it involves a musician who’s also a developer releasing their new project, a series of 10 trippy levels each with their own musical track, aiming for a different mood in each level. Speaking of, each world has an exit hidden behind a door with a symbol, and in order to pass that symbol door you need to find said symbol in the level. It’s usually found by flipping a switch somewhere. Yeah, flipping switches in a walking simulator. Big surprise, huh?

There’s about 30 minutes of gameplay, so it’s a pretty short game. The puzzles aren’t all that difficult, either. Sometimes you might find yourself searching for the switches, as the area can be fairly large, and there’s a slight bit of platforming required (as the player can jump and it’s needed to access some areas), but overall the main draw is the ambiance and graphics. The most notable one might be Level 6, in which the walls are invisible, appearing to be just like the background, meaning that the visible floors seem to vanish behind the backgrounds of the level, in a fairly impressive optical illusion.

The ambiance only serves to highlight one other element of these small worlds: Their emptiness. Outside of a few creepy appearances by ghosts that vanish instantly, these places contain not a soul. And the resulting feeling is one of sheer loneliness, no matter how far you get.

Before you ask, the walls and background meld together, so the path seems
to appear as you come closer to it, and disappear as you get away from it.
That's one of the most impressive examples of optical illusions I've seen
in a game in a while.

This level loops on itself. Run to the end? You're warped
back to the other end. And you can tell.
That was most likely intentional.

In the end, while it’s an impressive experiment in style, graphics and music (as the music seems to change depending on which area of a stage you’re in), in the end there really isn’t much content to be seen. Like I said, you’ll need about 30 minutes to play through this. Oh, it’s an interesting experience, but it’s short. Also, for some inexplicable reason, whenever the game’s window is closed, your keyboard configuration will change to English USA, which is annoying for people like me who have it set to anything else (such as French Canadian). No clue why the game does that. Sure, download the game, but be wary that it’s really short.

Fingerbones

Another short game, one that is completed in about 20 to 30 minutes, and it’s a horror-focused story. Once again, it seems to play mostly like a walking simulator, so there isn’t much gameplay; really, the entire point is to immerse the player into a setting and a plot. And, well… Jesus Christ. I wished I hadn’t played it.

Read what that paper says, then feel your face turn to an
expression of sheer disgust once you figure out the plot twist
and the reason this is called Fingerbones.

Don’t get me wrong, the set-up is made beautifully. You are a person walking around a house, typing passwords found on notes scattered around in order to access the next rooms. Through those notes, you also learn more about the character you are apparently portraying: The family father who owned the house you're exploring, and his growing obsession with survival and freedom after the end of the world. A man who seems detached, distant even, if not outright filled with contempt towards all humans, including his wife (who may have died in the cataclysm) and his daughter. And yet, a part of him won’t let him move on, to the point that he keeps their names as some of the passwords required to move down into the survivalist bunker below.

The upper room is bathed in yellow light emanating from the windows, while the following rooms are so dark you cannot progress except with a flashlight found early on. Some texts seem disconnected, others refer to existentialism and other forms of philosophy, and then some others seem innocuous (if creepy) at first until the big reveal. Said reveal also explains the free game’s title.

Everything is grey and drab now.
I want to go back to the light.

Yes, that's blood and tools on the table.
The person who made this game is sick.
I'm not even joking. Truly sick.

I won’t say what the ending is about. While it offers a decent experience in fear and terror (by increasing the player’s discomfort as information adds up, instead of resorting to stupid jump scares), it ultimately leads to worse revelations. Your curiosity brings you to the darkest of places. I don’t really recommend this one, to be honest. It touches on themes that I refuse to bring up on this blog, that’s how bad it gets. But hey… If you want to try it, I won’t stop you. The game is free. And it’s very easy to leave the game at any moment, as the Exit door is right there, where the walking character starts.

Those cries will be in my nightmares.

The Old Tree

The final free ambiance game for today, The Old Tree chronicles the birth and subsequent adventures of an alien, a cross between a green tomato and a half-octopus, as it makes its way around the depths of an old tree built like a hotel for various creatures, on its way to freedom. It’s a very short game, about ten minutes long, and focuses more on the experience it offers than on any form of challenge. In other words, it’s not very difficult.

So much grey. There was so much grey in today's games.

Mini-puzzle. Help the salt-shaker creature finish their
soup! Or else the steam will burn you.

The round squid moves around quite slowly, and stops anytime it meets an obstacle, which is an indication that you have to solve a quick puzzle using the mouse. It might just be tossing stuff out of a wardrobe, or it might be something more complex like calling down an elevator (yes, in an old tree), making a caterpillar go away, or scare a cat. Everything is done through clicking. It would be a lot simpler if most of the game didn’t happen in the darkness, where you struggle to see what’s surrounding your alien protagonist. Sometimes, you have no idea what to click on, because the darkness hides the important things.

Can you tell what's going on here?
This game could have been improved with some
way to lighten it up.

The creature is quite slow, but if you know what to do, this game will be beaten in 10 minutes. It ends as our protagonist finds itself on a tree branch, and takes flight thanks to a plant found there. A few puzzles require some smarts, like the one about closing valves in order to flood a room so that the squid can let itself float towards the ceiling, after which we open the valve that removes the water from the room. One or two puzzles take advantage of the squid’s ability to climb walls and ceilings.

All in all, not an unpleasant experience, it was actually quite fun, but the game’s very short length will probably make it only a one-time thing.

...Happy ending?
Not for me, I'm allergic to those fluffy plant things.
... ... ... ... ...ACHOO! Dammit!

And that’s it for today, four more games reviewed, I can move on to other Steam titles. Next Friday will be a good day for a swell battle. See you then!