Steam Pack 18

Time for a few more quick reviews of Steam games!

(P.S. With Google+ shutting down in a few days, be sure to join my Discord server, it could become something fun!)

EM: Shader Attack

Where's the cool futuristic warrior from the Header image??

I’ve been a fan of brick breaker games for a while now. You know the genre: Arkanoid, countless variations… All you need is a ball, a paddle, a few power-ups and a large selection of bricks placed into various designs. Grab your controller and break away.

EM: Shader Attack, developed by Live Jumb DT and published by Dagestan Technology on September 29^th, 2016, is no different in that regard. Actually, it’s about as simple as Arkanoid-type games can get. Ten levels, with a possibility of 150 different map designs for bricks. No story, no concept out of the ordinary. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Breaking bricks, all the time!

The power-ups are the usual stuff you find in this kind of game: Extra lives, extra balls (as in, one more ball on the screen to break bricks), make your ball more destructive, increase the size of the paddle… It’s all fine and good. One improvement is the EM gauge, which fills up gradually as you break bricks (and can be filled up much quicker with some power-ups). It can then be activated with a click of the left mouse button, summoning five additional balls and turning all the bricks into blue TRON-like blocks. It doesn’t last very long, so be ready to catch your ball when the EM effect ends. It also creates a shield at the bottom of the screen, so your balls are safe for the duration of the effect.

Breaking bricks... breaking hearts? Oh nu!

Let's break some words.

Each level features a different styling of brick, by the way; a few of them have lights rather than precise bricks, one has bricks sporting various numbers/letters/symbols, so on. And you can adjust the brightness of the game in order to tone down the light and background effects of the game. I personally found that on low brightness, the game is faster, while it’s slower on higher brightness and background effects. Probably due to all the particles. Each level also has a musical track of its own, that’s nice.

The last improvement made on the formula is that, instead of having to destroy every brick, a bar fills at the bottom with each broken cube and you move to the next level when it’s full. It was always one of the greatest weaknesses of brick breakers, frequently you had to break every last brick, making each level longer and more boring than it needed to be, when you were down to a handful of bricks sparsed around the area.

It's even better when all the things go kablooey.

It’s an okay game, although I'm not sure it's worth the 4$ price tag. It’s decent, offers a nice set of designs and level maps, there’s some creativity in there. It’s a shame that the game ends at Level 10, it ends way too quickly. I would have loved to have more. A “keep playing” mode would have been nice, since you can get through these 10 levels in roughly 6-7 minutes. Also, when the brightness is increased, sometimes the particle effects as well as the backgrounds can get very distracting.

If only I could find that old game I played, long ago, that was a brick breaker with gnomes…

Monster Loves You!

"You must choose... but choose wisely."

I bought this game expecting an experience in which you take care of a little monster of your own. I wasn’t entirely wrong, but I wasn’t quite right either - and I certainly wasn't disappointed. Developed by Radial Games and Dejobaan Games, and published by Radial Games on March 18^th, 2013, this game is actually an adventure in which you are the hero. Or, rather, you are a monster in a community of monsters living in peace, mostly hidden from humans, and you make all the decisions for your little Monsterling as it grows into a proud adult monster.

Ooh! Ferocious!

The system is easy to understand: There are five main traits a monster can have. Bravery, Cleverness, Ferocity, Honesty and Kindness can each be increased over time as you go about on adventures, or go through life experiences. You go through four stages of life: Baby, child, teenager and adult… though there is a fifth stage, that of Elder, which not all monsters reach. The very first decisions taken as a baby, shortly after birth, greatly help in defining the type of monster you become. Starting with childhood, each stage of life comes with a variety of different situations and happenings of monster life that your creature can experience.

At least the housing's nice in Monster Town.

Depending on your choices, any of the five stats mentioned earlier may increase… or, if you make the wrong choice, decrease. Over this is added a sixth stat, Respect, which is gained by doing notable things for other monsters or the community as a whole. As you can imagine, being highly respected in monster society is a plus. You can usually guess which option will increase which stat during a situation, but be aware that, much like in real life, the other monsters may not respond as you expect them to.

On my first game, I fled into the wilderness.
Dunno what that says about me.

This game is best when played repeatedly, as the knowledge of the various situations can help the player in picking what they feel is right at that moment. On my first playthrough, my monster ran away into the forest when the time for death was coming, instead of following the ritual of the community. That’s when I learned that this was one of FOURTEEN possible endings. Five of them involve your monster dying naturally at the end of adulthood, dissolving into the Spawning Vat that gives birth to new monsters – each of these five involves one stat maxed above all the others. As a child, teenager or adult, your monster will actually rarely get to meet humans, though some of these encounters can be very interesting (not to mention the ones that reference famous fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel).

How can we mess with the Little Red Riding Hood?

If, however, your monster’s stats were raised pretty evenly, you might ascend to the ranks of Elder. In that position, most of your activities will involve the high spheres of monsterkind, and you’ll be part of the council. Also, half of the situations presented may involve you actually going down into the human cities and interacting with them. As a result, it’s possible, through these new interactions, to improve both monsters and humans’ opinion of each other… or make them worse, if you’re feeling particularly devilish. Each possible ending of the game is an achievement, so if you want to find them all, both your shoulder angel and devil get a turn at choosing the path the story takes. There’s even an ending where your monster becomes a neurosurgeon among humans! …Good luck getting that one, though.

Woo! Respect! That's probably important.

Monster Loves You? I love this one! It’s cute, it’s nice, it’s surprisingly deeper than it looks at first glance, and it offers a lot of possibilities. If you plan to play it only once, the game is short and sweet, but it’s that kind of game that is best played a few times in order to get at least a few of the endings. There’s a pretty large selection of events that your monster can go through, though it may feel a little repetitive at times. However, overall, it’s pretty good. The art is nice, and the music’s alright. I love to see how the story unravels depending on the stats you’ve raised, and how that impacts the story. A definite recommendation, even with the 10$ price tag.

Rituals

Not sure whether I should call this one a walking simulator, as it feels more like a puzzle game, but all you do half the time is move around and interact with objects. Oh well.

Follow the arrows on the ground.

Rituals is the creation of Tymon Zgainski, and it was published by Mudvark on May 27^th, 2015. Your unseen character seems to be an office worker in a giant tower built on three foundations. One day after work, that character takes the elevator and falls to the lowest level, and finds himself in a strange earthly area. Unsure of whether it’s some kind of dream, he visits around, and starts to unravel a strange conspiracy involving the grand building he was working in, and apparently Gaia, the spirit of Planet Earth itself…

Ah, finally some lighting.

I hesitated to call this a walking simulator because you’re not entirely free of movement; you click arrows on the screen to move around. At the same time, it still feels a lot like you’re mostly just walking around and interacting with items. It’s closer to a puzzle game, I’d say. Moving around with the arrows is slow and more than a bit annoying, in my opinion, as it forces the character to stop every few steps to make a decision. Admittedly, this at least allows the unseen protagonist to grab items nearby with ease and use them.

There isn't a single other person here.
Why is there a pot boiling over a fire?

The puzzles themselves aren’t exactly going to reinvent the wheel, they tend to be things you may have seen before. If you find a shovel, a seed, a watering can and a perfect place for a tree that will grow at an unnatural quick speed, there aren’t twenty solutions here. If a monster must be bypassed, you’ll find some way to get rid of the threat – look around for weapons, or perhaps pick up ingredients, mix them together in that pot boiling over a fire in that deserted village… okay… then poison a steak with that mixture and take it to that beast. None of the base ideas for these puzzles are exactly new, but they can be confusing to complete due to the layout of each chapter.

The world is looking a little pale.

The game ends as you gain access to the main control room of the building harnessing Gaia’s power, and you have the option of turning the machine off, or boost its power to the maximum. There’s one achievement for each, so you’re encouraged to play the game more than once to get both.

I wasn’t wowed by this one, in case my description didn’t make that clear. I mean, it’s not terrible, I’ve seen far worse, and as far as puzzle games go, it’s pretty decent and forces the player to look around and find solutions. It’s also quite stylish. However, I’m still not sure clicking arrows to move around was such a good idea, and I keep feeling like most of the stuff here has been done before. It’s alright at best. Passing grade, I suppose. You can purchase it on Steam for about 5$.

Turbo Pug

Just run from left to right. Keep running, and jump to avoid the obstacles. Sounds easy enough.

Just a pup on its morning stroll.

Developed by Space Cat Studios, SnowFlame, and Back to the Future Gaming, and released by the latter on November 9^th, 2015, Turbo Pug is about a cute little pug running with all of its might to the right. And jumping to avoid obstacles on the way, of course. Man, the great wilderness is dangerous. Bottomless pits, uncertain platforms, rows of spikes, dangling skeletons, buzzsaws… Y’know, the usual sights in nature.

This is an arcade game in the purest sense of the term. The pixelated aesthetic and the chiptune music are clear indications of that, but also, it’s ungodly difficult. If this game required a quarter after every death, you would quickly get through ten bucks. Of note, the level is randomly generated, so you can never quite prepare for what’s coming next. Get good, that’s all I can say! Learn the timing, jump in time, avoid the spikes, survive as long as possible!

Still got three pups to collect. I got kitten pup, pumpkin pup...
Super pup, Christmas pup... Oh! Antarctic pup!

Welp - Antarctic pup sucks.

I… am not too good at this one. I think I aimed to get to 10,000 points (which, in this game, is pretty much nothing), and I still haven’t gotten to it. This is tough! The very fast-paced gameplay means you can’t ever lose focus. Even as the field changes, as new hazards appear, as rain begins to fall… keep your focus!

As you play, you might unlock new skins or characters – there are puppies and kittens that don’t do anything all that different from the main pug, but there are others with abilities. Do you want a Super Pug that can double jump? Perhaps you’d like a pug with a rainbow coming out of its ass? No wait! Penguin is where it’s at! (The penguin can barely jump and is terribly slow. It’s a joke option.) How about a cat that can hover?

All pups in various shapes and sizes. And spikes.
And blood... Oh gawd!

It’s said that deceptively simple games like this one can become stupidly addictive. This one didn’t quite hook me, but it is okay for a few minutes at a time. It has a nice retro aesthetic and feels very much like the sort of game you can play for a moment or two. However, if you want to get good at it, you’ll have to train for a while! The game only costs roughly 1$.

See you next time with another Steam Pack.