Steam – Diabolical Plots

GAME REVIEW: Chains

Chains is a color-matching app-style game released by 2DEngine.com. At first glance, it looks like other color matching app-style games like Bejeweled and Candy Crush. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, mind you, but Candy Crush already does what it does so well that most people don’t need another Candy Crush.

The concept is similar, to link up adjacent like-colored objects to clear them out. But Chains goes above and beyond by giving a much more varied level design and with different objectives. In some levels the objective is simply to reach a certain level of matches, or to reach a certain level of matches without losing more than x off the side of the screen. Still others require an extended chain of more than X balls to pass the level, to exactly match two pails full of balls that each have a “weight” value, or to make exact change with numbered balls. My personal favorite is a level where the balls are flowing in a river through a partial obstructed streambed and you have to make matches to keep the stream clear. Fast paced twitchy fun.

Visuals
What you’d expect for a color-matching game.

Audio
Good instrumental museum.

Challenge
Some of the levels are pretty challenging, trying to keep up with the high pace of matching.

Story
None

Session Time
None of the fast-paced levels take more than a few minutes. You only lose your progress within the level, probably just a few minutes.

Playability
Very easy to pick up–click on a colored ball and drag across nearby ones. Release button to clear or right-click to cancel. Easy peasy.

Replayability
Depends on how “record” oriented you are. If you like to try to beat records could replay for that, I guess.

Originality
Not super original, being more of the color-matching variety. But I thought they did as good a job with level variety as they could.

Playtime
It took about 2 hours to play through the 20 levels.

Overall
Fun game, of the app variety, does a better job with level style variety than most color matching games. $5 on Steam.

Game Review: Gone Home

written by David Steffen

Gone Home is a first person story exploration game released by The Fullbright Company (which has now been rebranded to be simply called “Fullbright” in August 2013.

2014-10-08_00004 June 7th, 1995. 1:15am You’ve been traveling Europe for a year. While you were gone your family inherited a house from your weird Uncle Oscar and your parents and younger sister Sam have moved in. You arrive at the new house, expecting a warm welcome from you family, but no one’s there. Why? You explore the house as you try to find out what has happened and where everyone is. You are completely unfamiliar with the house, so you don’t know anything about the layout, how rooms are arranged or anything. The game keeps a handy auto-map to help you keep track of where you’ve been. From time to time you discover a clue that points you to look in a particular part of the house, and the auto-map very handily marks the spot for you.

One thing that set this game apart from me is a storyline with a homosexual character who seems like a real person, not something I see too often.

Visuals
A lot of work obviously went into the visuals to make it look really nice and to give the environment ample details. I don’t know if other people experienced this, but my computer was actually a little laggy on the display–seemed like it took a little more resources than a game of this kind really needs.

Audio
Superb voice acting–I felt like I was listening to the journal entries of a real person.

Challenge
Not challenging. If you like exploration and gradual reveal of story, you should like this game, but apart from exploring as thoroughly as possible–some notes might trigger the marking of secret spots on the map or other extra clues so if you missed the note you might have trouble. I found the important notes without any undue effort, they weren’t hidden or anything.

Story
I really enjoyed the story on this one, and tying it into the exploration of the big house was the main appeal.

Session Time
You can save at any time, so easy to set down.

Playability
Easy to play.

Replayability
Not really.

Originality
Not high on originality, but not every game has to be. I appreciated the gay storyline, that did set it apart.

Playtime
It took me about 2 hours to finish the game.

Overall
The list price on Steam is $20. I enjoyed the game, but given the short playtime and low challenge I thought this was somewhat too much. I’d recommend catching it on sale if you can.

Game Review: Actual Sunshine

written by David Steffen

A ctual Sunshine is an RPG-styled story of depression released by Will O’Neill in April 2014. It follows the life of young single overweight

professional who is struggling with depression. He lives alone, is unsatisfied at his corporate job. Every day is a struggle, trying to get through the day of work, trying to connect with women, trying to do something with his life instead of just sinking into video games to avoid trying to do something with his life. As the game goes on, Evan experiences good days, bad days, changes at work, failed interactions with women, and more. Evan expresses his stories about depression by making up fake scenarios in his head conveyed in text, imagining he was a celebrity being interviewed on a TV show about his depression, talking to an imaginary therapist, etc.

An in-game note suggests that the game is at least somewhat autobiographical, which makes it a little awkward to criticize it. It’s not that I doubt the authenticity of the story, or the difficulty of living with depression. I don’t suffer from depression, but I have close family and friends who do, and some who have given up hope and committed suicide. It is a horrible thing to go through, which is misunderstood by so many. I heartily approve of something which helps spread the conversation about depression so that those who haven’t been through it can understand some small part of what the depressed are going through.

But, and this is a big but for me, this is not a game. Yes, you have control, but as far as I could tell there was no branching of the storyline, nothing that I would do that would make any difference in the outcome. Maybe that’s meant to be a meta-statement about how you don’t have control of your life when you’re depressed? I don’t know, but if you put something up on Steam and charge $5 for it, I want to have some effect on it. To me it was kind of like buying a book online that’s advertised as a novel and only finding out after buying it that it’s a cookbook. It’s not that cookbooks are inherently bad, and the shape of a cookbook is similar to a novel, but I’d be pretty annoyed to find it full of nothing but recipes.

RPGLook If you’re interested in the idea of a game that simulates the experience of depression, I recommend instead playing Depression Quest (which I’ll review next week). Depression Quest is interactive, and lets you see the choices of your actions trying to cope with depression–you do have an effect and there are choices you can make that will end better or worse than others. It is also free to play with donations accepted, so if you’re not sure what you’ll think about such a game–I suggest you give that one a try and give a donation if you thought the experience was valuable.

Visuals
Typical for the era of RPG the RPGMaker.

Audio
Not a lot of audio that I noticed, but one redeeming factor was a sequence where the protagonist imagines he’s a celebrity being interviewed on TV about his depression and his answers are all humorous-like off-the-cuff comments like you’d expect to hear from an actor talking about their life, but instead are actually dark comments about his depression but made quite creepy by the laugh line audio overlaid on it.

Challenge
No challenge. It’s just going through the motions to pass through the game.

Story
Things happen, and things change in the protagonist’s life, but I think it would be charitable to call those things a story. It’s more of a slice of life than a story to me. The imaginary asides in text about the imaginary tales of Evan’s life I did not find as enthralling as the game seemed to think they should be.

Session Time
Can save at any time you’re not in the middle of a cut sequence, so usually pretty easy to pick up and put down at will.

Playability
Nothing to it.

Replayability
None.

Originality
I admit, it’s the first time I’ve seen a game based around the experience of depression. There’s probably a reason for that–it’s not an easy thing to base a game around. (I’ve since played Depression Quest, so the other is technically the 2nd game on the subject I’ve played)

Playtime
It took me an hour to play through the game–and that was with me exploring everything I could find to explore.

Overall
The list price on Steam is $5. I would not recommend it. If you find the idea of a game experience describing depression appealing, I suggest trying Depression Quest instead.

GAME REVIEW: Papers, Please

written by David Steffen

Congratulations. The October labor lottery is complete. Your name was pulled. For immediate placement, report to the The Ministry of Admission at Grestin Border Checkpoint. An apartment will be provided for you and your family in East Grestin. Expect a Class-8 dwelling.

Papers, Please was released by Lucas Pope in August 2013, a first person multiple ending pattern-matching ethical conundrum game. This is just another one of those games about immigration documentation processing. Exciting, right? Actually, hear me out. I was skeptical, too, but the game came highly recommended. The game is billed as a “dystopian document thriller”.

2014-10-03_00002 You work for the government of Aristotska (a country reminiscient of Cold-War era soviet administration), screening people entering the country. Day one is straightforward, because you’ve been told to turn away anyone without an Aristotskan passport. But the government responds to public pressure by starting to allow others through. People start slipping through who don’t belong and the government responds by adding new kinds of documents that you have to check–often checking one document against another for consistent information, checking the sex of the person against the ID (with body scan as a secondary check), scanning for contraband, arresting wanted criminals, etc. You have to pay for food and heat for your family, medicine if your son gets sick, other expenses that you can’t always predict. You get paid for each person you process, but your pay gets docked for making mistakes. The rules change every day, and to support your family you have to be both fast and accurate.

That’s what you might call the main focus of the gameplay, but there are quite a few other elements. A revolutionary group is just starting to get their foundations, and because you hold a position of relative importance they want to pay you to make selective mistakes that favor their group. But the Aristotskan government inspector is watching your every move, so you’d better consider very carefully what kinds of requests you want to take. Meanwhile, there are violent attacks on the border which close the office early for the day and which you can help stop. People coming through the gate may make requests of you–helping a recruiter find workers, offering to buy or sell items. The most poignant are ethical choices where a man’s documentation is all valid, but before he leaves the booth he asks you to let his wife through–you soon find her passport has expired. Will you let her through to meet her husband or will you follow orders and turn her away?

2014-10-03_00003 There are some moments of levity in the game–mostly around one guy who is gleefully criminal. After a body scan turns up something suspicious, you ask him what it is, and his response is “Is drugs!” But much of the game is quite dark, thinking about what it must be like for all these people trying to cross from one country to another, and weighing the ethical decisions when you’re torn between doing what’s right and what’s legal according to the laws.

There are twenty different endings, depending on the choices you make. The easiest to reach happens when you run out of money–you are thrown in jail for the crime of debt. You can reach other endings depending on whether you support or reject the revolutionaries (and whether you get caught supporting the revolutionaries), and other choices.

There is so much going on in this game, plenty to keep you entertained. Just the core challenge of checking documents is hard enough with all the changing rules and time limit and penalty for mistakes, and then all the ethical choices and storyline branching makes it all the better.

Visuals
Simple 80’s era visuals, but adequate.

Audio
Music/audio that fits the visuals. I like the inarticulate garble the loudspeaker makes when you call the next person in line.

Challenge
This game is moderately challenging with a reasonable learning curve. The first day is easy–just need to check the country name. As the game goes on there are more things to check and more documents which can reveal discrepancy. I got significantly better with practice, but in the later levels it was still a challenge.

Story
Good story. The main objective of the game is to make sure that you and your family survive by processing enough immigrants and making few enough errors that you don’t get penalized. But there are other branches along the way that can lead to different endings. You can choose to support or resist revolutionaries at several points in the story, you can choose to let people through who engage your sympathies or if you will always stick to the policies.

Session Time
Pretty fast. The game auto-saves after each day. The clock is ticking on each day so if you’re not paused the time is slipping away every moment. Some of the days are cut especially short if there’s an attack on the border. You can get a day in with just a few minutes.

Playability
Easy to learn, hard to keep track of all the little details that change from day to day. If you make a little excess cash you can make your life easier by purchasing some booth upgrades that will give you shortcut keys to cut down on mouse interactions.

Replayability
Quite a bit of replay potential here. There are many different endings which you can reach by making particular choices. Each country in the region also has a special token that can be obtained by helping a person from that country, but the path to those are not always obvious either. Your save file lets you reload from any previous day and it keeps track of multiple different branches, so you can go back to day five and make different choices in that day and try to process more people and after you finish that day you can load from either branch.

Originality
Very, very original. I never would have thought that a game about processing immigration paperwork could be anything but extremely dull, but the game both provides challenge in the manner of attention to detail, but also various ethical conundrums.

Playtime
I’ve spent about 8 hours playing this game, I think I finished a full run through in 5-6 hours, then went back to replay some different paths.

Overall
The list price on Steam is $10. Very reasonable price. Great game. Easy buy.