Unturned

There are more zombie games on Steam than there are zombies in any single one of those games. I’m barely kidding. The zombie survival genre is… well, basically a zombie by this point, coming back to life every once in a while through cheap knockoffs that can barely be called games. Those are the titles that enrage the Jim Sterlings of this world in how TOO identical they are, having been built from the same resources.

After an hour or two in the game, you should be fully
clothed, armed, and very dangerous.
You better be prepared, the maps are pretty big.
See those mountains way far in the diatcnce here?
You can go there. You can even swim across.
And this is only a medium-sized map!

Unturned has the most basic concept of them all: Your place has been struck by "something" that turned everyone else into zombies. You’ve been unaffected by the virus. You have to survive by gathering resources, building a fort, learning skills and fending off zombies. Also, you start the game entirely nekkid, with very limited inventory space. Not that nudity matters much considering your character is blocky like a Minecraft protagonist.

Nelson Sexton, of Smartly Dressed Games, published the first version of Unturned in 2014, and the title was in Early Access until July 7^th, 2017, where its full version was made available. Have I mentioned that Sexton was only 16 when he released the first version? This guy’s going to go far in life. Unturned is already hailed as one of the better zombie survival games out there… which sadly also means that it single-handedly spawned a whole wave of cheap imitators. But let’s be fair and criticize this game on its own merits, not on what it’s led to, shall we?

Two words come to me when I start playing Unturned: Complete freedom. You’re given the choice to play alone or make a server with friends. If you’re a team guy, you can get yourself into a multiplayer game. The gameplay hardly changes between the two, it’s always the same concept: Survive. You’re dropped, naked, in the map you’ve selected, and you must get clothes, weapons, and so on. The concept is very simple and you’re free to explore the map to your liking. There are large areas of nature, small inhabited areas, and lots of water.

Clockwork Tales: Of Glass And Ink (Part 2)

Throughout Part 1 of this review, we met Evangeline Glass, and we saw her father figure Ambrose Ink kidnapped by some evil Barber (that’s the villain’s name, he’s not actually a barber), so we investigated the outside of the Inn we started in, ended up in a zeppelin, landed in a castle backyard, got caught, escaped easily, and found our way to the basement. There lies the Tremor Machine used by Barber to cause earthquakes in the region. Our protagonist has managed to do all this without ever applying violence to any actual humans!

Okay, I can buy a giant mechanical spider, but a large
machine right over lava? C'm'on.

She’s like a child-friendly Black Widow! And on top of that, Evangeline is a female protagonist who isn’t sexualized in any way! Sure, we may see her once or twice, and she is attractive, but it’s never alluded to nor does it ever become a point of discussion from other characters!

We are now in the underground area beneath Barber’s castle, right above the magma. Sheesh, you have to wonder how the Hell he was able to build that thing so deep into the Earth! And of course, the bridge to the Tremor Machine has been removed so that Barber can work on it undisturbed, so we have to find a way towards it. Should be easy, we just have to explore that room with various robotic body parts, or maybe the room with that giant machine and a cell, from which we can see Ambrose Ink peeking…

Oh hey, I found him! Well, that was easy.

Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink (Part 1)

For the record: 275 games.

Anyone who’s been on Steam for a long time has amassed a large collection of games. Summer and winter mega-sales, Humble Bundles and the like, this all leads to massive piles of games that are sitting in place in one’s computer, with many of these games never played… or played for all of 30 minutes and then dropped quickly. And yet, we all started there: As young and naïve Steam users, who knew that the selection of games on the platform was humongous, but could only buy a few at the start.

Do you remember your first Steam games? I remember mine. Aside from downloading a lot of free MMORPGs (a move I regret now since I played only two and soon uninstalled every other one) and a lot of free and free-to-play titles, the first games I actually remember buying were Undertale and Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink. It’s a weird combo, huh? Well I added 15$ to my Steam Wallet because Undertale costs 9.99$ in the U.S. but costs 10.99$ in Canada, goddamn stupid exchange rates, and I had to spend those last 4 dollars on something… but I digress. So yeah, I looked at the selection of games and took the first thing that would cost approximately what I had left. Undertale review? Yeah, no, not today, sorry. It would be a gigantic review, I’d need a special occasion for it. Like an anniversary, maybe. (Hint, hint.) Today, I need something smaller. So, Clockwork Tales it is.

Item searches have been a staple of puzzle games for a while. I remember, long ago, reviewing a game like that for the blog. What was it called again? Sunnyville? Yeah. It’s a sub-genre that offers its own challenges, but it’s usually pretty bland if it’s all there is to do in a game. I’ve always felt that the Item Search sub-genre worked better when put within a story context, with some additional puzzles. On this, Clockwork Tales delivers, offering various puzzles with a few Item Search screens. Also, this story takes place in a steampunk world with plenty of world-building, so it could be interesting.

We open as our protagonist Evangeline Glass arrives in the calm mountain town of Hochwald. A letter from her mentor, Professor Ambrose Ink, asked her to go there. Glass, Ink… odd family names, no?

RollerCoaster Tycoon

(Title card coming... whenever I can...)

Even though it’s a genre I don’t play as much, I quite enjoy games in which you build your own enterprise. When it comes to simulations and tycoons, there are games for just about every stype of enterprise out there. Amusement parks, in particular, seem to be a pretty popular theme for those, probably because it’s so easy to personalize your own park and make your own roller coasters.

In the first year of this blog, I reviewed Thrillville: Off The Rails DS, which offered some level of freedom in building your own park... but not that much. Today’s game is the OG Amusement Park Maker, with 100% customization! But it’s also pretty tricky. Being slightly closer to reality means having so many more elements to keep track of, resulting in a game that is very, very complex. Want to feel like an actual amusement park manager? Want to know the deception of never being able to build your dream roller coaster because you have to focus on literally everything else?

Thus, Hasbro Interactive, MicroProse and Chris Sawyer brought to us Roller Coaster Tycoon, which is sadly less about making awesome, epic roller coasters than it is about managing parks. But hey, it’s a part of the package. The game is sold on Steam for 5.99$ USD with all the original expansion packs, making it quite cheap for a “Deluxe” edition. Then again, the game IS many years old (it was originally released for home computers in… 1999. Wow, I wasn’t expecting this game to be that old).

There’s not much of a plot here: You’re an amusement park manager. You just got that very big piece of land, usually with raised areas and trees and other things in the way, but not a lot of rides just yet. Build attractions, make your own park, add roller coasters, and reach the goal you’ve been given!

Goat Simulator

When it comes to game-making, if a development element becomes popular, you can tell that you’re going to see more and more games using it. This ranges from styles to genres to game development softwares to gameplay elements and, even, experiments with physics. There’s a reason why so many goddamn games are trying to be the next Call of Duty. That’s also why so many games on Steam are made on the Unity engine – it has a free version out, so anyone could download it and start making games. Hence why Steam’s store is filled with Unity games, ranging from “great” or “amazing” to “so memorably shitty that everyone makes fun of them”. One trend, which is still going om, is ragdoll physics.

Simply said, ragdoll physics turn every character that gets hit into a wriggling messy mass that can barely move by itself, and overreacts to any other kind of stimuli such as being pushed away, carried around… or blown up. And of course, the term comes from ragdolls, boneless puppetlike toys whose limbs can be twisted in all directions. Games utilizing these physics for an effect will have almost every character capable of bending arms, legs, even the head in all the most unrealistic ways possible. Joint stiffness? Motion ranges? What’s that? Who cares, look at that guy, he looks like some sort of Eldritch monster forgot how its human body was supposed to work, and it’s twisting every limb like there’s no bones or muscles in that body! …that’s funny, right?

Even The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild made use
of ragdoll physics; although it usually means Link is about
to get hurt, badly. So, a darker example than most.

Point being, like every overused mechanic that has gained popularity in game development, it’s become a part of the worse games out there, mostly because some developers thought it would be funny. Other games downplay the use of ragdoll physics, using them in some situations but not making them a core element. That’s the thing: ragdoll physics, by themselves, are not funny. Sure, you get a kick out of them the first time you see what they do, but the joke wears thin fast.

Today’s title was an in-house experiment by Coffee Stain Studios that was eventually developed as a full-fledged, “bad on purpose” game that intentionally screws around with physics. Released on April 1^st, 2014, Goat Simulator has since achieved sort of a cult status, attracting mass interest upon release for its silly premise. Like the Flappy Birds of this world, the mere premise sent the Internet into a frenzy, with people both clamoring and denouncing how stupid the idea is. There wasn’t much to do at first, but the game grew and gained more and more modes, and Coffee Stain Studios even released a bunch of DLC to stick their Bovidae protagonist in even more silly situations.

Come to think of it, maybe I should have used this as my April 1^st review this year instead of Starbomb. Oh well! Shall we get into this?