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I think it was sunny out. Maybe it wasn’t. I was in the midst of playing Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter and my brow began to sweat. I was no longer concentrating on oafishly navigating my avatar through a post-apocalyptic rendition of an ice cavern. My mind was focused on Steamand its sales.

The Deft Hands Of Steam Making A Run With My Money

Earlier in the week I was sorting through my emails when I came across a notification from Steam that Thiefwas on sale for $10. I thought nothing of it. As I recently mentioned, Itake no pride in comparing how long my backlog is to others. I am no magpie, intent on hording speckled and asymmetrically shaped shinny objects to increase my ranks within society. And yet, moments after deleting the email, I began to think irrationally about purchasing Thief, a game which I’d heard was decent at best.

So be it, I began to rationalize to myself. I’ll simply speak to others about whether the game is worth paying $10 for. Most people I asked told me the game was enjoyable but not great; fun but inconsequential.

My answer was set: I was not to buy the game if I would likely forget I played it moments after finishing it.

I Am A Magpie

Five minutes later, I bought Thief. Not a big deal I told myself. It cost me $10, and it was decent, even inconsequential! I’ll simply set some time aside to play it at some point in the near future.

I Am A Zealot

Thief was a gateway into Steam. Last week I was a magpie: I was attracted to Steam sales and items on my wishlist that went on sale. I am now a zealot. My mind and body are honed, and I am constently thinking of the daily and / or weekly sales offered by Steam.

Perhaps I am simply being swept up by the novelty of being able to access games immediately through the digital distributions magic of Steam. Maybe in a week I’ll have calmed down, and can get back to playing games I actually want to play. Or maybe I’ll grow poor and weery, with eyes soar and fingers blistered from having spent so much money on so many games.

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Travel Back In Time With Conflicks

Being the resident dev on the blog, I might as well share a little bit of what Artifice Studio—The Company I work for—has in store for everyone in the near-ish future.

One of the main goals at our studio is to create games that have unique Universes. This is something you could definitely see with Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves. While the game was grounded in Canadian/Quebec history, the way it blended with our native folktales was distinct and I can confidently say there is no other game quite as Canadian as our own.

Now in comes Conflicks: Revolutionary Space Battles, yet again based in our history—the French Revolution— Instead of just taking this time period for face value, we added a little twist to the history. With our ancestors thrust into the depths of space, waging war amongst each other, who in their right mind wouldn't want to help King Henry the 8th expand his space empire? I know I do! Of course Greater Britain isn't the only faction in Conflicks, have a look at our story trailer for a better idea.

Along with creating unique Universes, we also like to blend game genres and create hybrids. For Sang-Froid we blended action-RPGs with a tower defense style game. We weren't the first to the party with this type of gameplay—Dungeon Defends and Orcs Must Die! both beat us to the punch—but if you go by what they say on the forums, we brought way more strategy to the mix in comparison to the other games in the genre.

With Conflicks, the goal is to blend a top-down real-time strategy with a physics based game. Picture a galactic game of marbles which sees the player flick (get it? Con-FLICKS) his/her units across space to do battle. You colonize planets and slam into other ships like bumper cars while hop-scotching across space shooting lasers everywhere. It's a ton of fun! Unlike in our first endeavor, Conflicks will include a multiplayer component (like every RTS needs to have) on top of what you can expect to be a very entertaining single player.

For more information on Conflicks, you can visit Artifice Studio's website where we've been keeping a dev blog. There you can learn more about the different factions and characters you will see in the game. Also don't forget to follow us on twitter either @artificestudioand while you're at it, show a little love to our own Twitter account @gamerbasement.

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Bastion: An immediately fun, compact experience

I recently purchased a new Asus laptop, and have since found myself suddenly capable of playing PC games, which both excites and scares me. As a personal anecdote, I take no pleasure in hoarding video games, and a strong, negative pit wells up in my stomach whenever I add to it. That said, certain games are either only available on PC, or have been graciously given to me for free by friends during one of their Steam sale spending sprees.

Bastionis one such title, having been given to me several months back. Now in a capable Asus carapace, Bastion's software soul can bring with it a certain giddy feeling of finally being able to play something which had only previously been a pipe dream.

An Isometric Kid

A dynamic narrator recounts to us what the player performs, while the Kid does so on-screen. This active narrative style, layered over an equally impressive score by Darren Korb, rolls around in my head as I smash and roll through the game’s shaping environment.

Bastion is decidedly simple, though it’s also immediately fun. While playing through the game’s opening hour, I couldn’t help but think back to SaGa Frontier 2, whose convoluted game design provides a nice contrast to Bastion.

Calamity in Caelondia

The game’s story, at least in its opening hour, feels largely inconsequential. As I explore the game’s intimate surroundings, I find myself coming across petrified townsfolk and charms of various sorts, each hinting at there being some important meaning to the calamity which has affected the Kid’s world and home.

Most of my time so far has been spent collecting new weapons, exploring their merits against various ghoulish enemies, and rolling through fragile fences, piles of stone and dragon-like statues. The entire experience is all very ho-hum. Yet to the game’s credit, I feel its designers intelligently put just enough game into this game to make it feel compact, straightforward and focused. And in the end, I feel Bastion is better for it.

The End

My thoughts surrounding Bastion at this point in time seem to focus near exclusively on how well understood the game is as, well, a game. DeveloperSupergiant Games have managed to hook me with a vibrant art direction, an impressive score, a dynamic narrator; but they managed to infuse these ancillary qualities with hellishly addictive combat. It is its gameplay that I feel is the true merit of Bastion.

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Surviving The Forest

Have you ever wanted to play Minecraft but found it wasn't terrifying enough? Well look no further because The Forest is just that! Now as I said last week, because of the glory that is the Steam sale I've recently acquired a lot of early access games I've had my eye on, one of which was The Forest.

The Forest is an open world survival horror game where the main baddies are a tribe of savage albino cannibals who would like nothing more than to eat a delicious slice of Long Pig—which while we're on the topic is the nickname I gave the main character. Now the game's story is pretty simple: you're traveling on a plane with what appears to be your son, but due to some unknown circumstances, it rips in half and crashes in the middle of a forest. You wake up in the flaming tail end long enough to see your "son" getting carted off by this weird albino native before you slip back into unconsciousness, you wake up again shortly after and that's where the game begins.

The game itself is a lot of fun and it has a ton of cool mechanics that help your overall survival while not being tedious or boring and without dulling down the gameplay. The Forest has a lot in common with Minecraft and Don't Starve; you spend a lot of your time foraging and collecting supplies to eat, make weapons, and to build your shelter. A lot of the early game is spent collecting things and exploring, while also trying to stay hidden from the packs of albinos who patrol the forest looking for food, which is you. The stealth aspect of the game is really fun too and reminiscent of the Amnesia titles.

In the same vein as Don't Starve and Minecraft, your goal is survival and the game doesn't make it easy on you. Between the weather affecting your stamina and well-being, the constant need to forage and hunt for food while balancing out the creation of your shelter and eventual base, then throw in the occasional cannibal pack attacking you, the game becomes pretty difficult. It also has a similar crafting system to the aforementioned games, utilizing whatever you can find to create makeshift weapons and even explosives.

The natives themselves are really well-designed; they're this perfect mix of creepy and unsettling but at the same time, you're always in such close proximity you learn a lot about them, like how to avoid them, their routines and once you find the village you can see their goings-on. The weird part is once you've fought enough of them you can take their bodies and create these weird burning effigies to ward off others. The reason I find it weird is that you have to chop up the corpses to do so, so do they find you frightening or are they just accepting you as one of their own?

Now as I said before this is an early access game and it's still in its alpha phase, so it's nowhere near the finished product but all that said, the game is still a lot of fun. I find myself constantly establishing goals like building a base and then creating gardens for renewable food, going and setting up traps to catch even more food and so on and so forth and it really instills a sense of accomplishment as you fulfill them.

I'll be the first to admit I'm a little biased when it comes to most survival games as when I was a kid I loved the genre of survival books like Hatchet and Brian's Winter along with shows like Survivorman, so this game was right in my wheelhouse. Saying that, I think this is gonna be a game that's definitely worth looking into but with that being said the game itself in its current state is pretty glitchy. On the other hand, it's being regularly updated and through an interesting ticker on the main screen you'll always be aware of when the newest patch will be ready. If you like the survival horror or just a good open world game, The Forest is worth a look and at the current price, there's no reason not to.

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Shut Up And Take My Pocket Change

Being the cheap Indian that I am, I picked up a bunch of games from the Steam sale. Here’s a quick look at what games I think were worth it.

Alan Wake

Why it’s worth it: The game’s narrative is fairly well done, and it’s a pretty creepy game. Unless you get spooked out easily, there’s no reason not to pick this one up. It’s a fairly straightforward game so far, and as such it’s easy to play through this game in a few sittings.

Guacamelee!
Why it’s worth it: It was $2.99, and after Sean praised the game I really wanted to play it. The game starts out fairly simple but keeps on adding small, interesting mechanics. And it cost me $2.99. As Sean mentioned, Guacamelee! mixes two worlds together to create some basic but fun puzzles. It’s very easy to play quick sessions but you’ll find yourself playing hours. It was also $2.99.

Organ Trail
Why it’s worth it: You get more out of this game when you name the characters after people you know. Long story short, you’re trying to survive a zombie apocalypse, which is a new, unheard concept. Anyway, naming the characters after people you know just made it a funny experience, and the gun mechanic forces you to time your shots. Campeau’s take on the game is spot-on and more in-depth.

Poker Night at the Inventory 2
Why it’s worth it: You’ll get a good amount of laughs from the great dialog. Once again, Campeau just loves to steal the spotlight and wrote about this game already. The character selection is great; I personally love Ash from the Evil Dead franchise. Another great Telltale Games title.

Spoiler alert:

Sang-Froid – Tales of Werewolves
Why it’s worth it: Innovative ideas and reasonably hard.  You’ll find a very interesting game that splits itself in two phases. You learn from your mistakes, and the game is hard but in no way cheap. It was $1.49 on Steam though, which is fairly cheap, but the good kind of cheap.

Urban Trial Freestyle
Why it’s worth it: It’s 99 cents and very simple. It literally paid itself off after 5 minutes. For those who don’t know, it’s similar to the “Trials” games, meaning that it’s a 2.5D bike physics game. So far I’ve put in about an hour and I’m having a ton of fun. Replaying levels to get 5 stars is still enjoyable.

So, what have you picked up from Steam?

*Note: None of these images are proper representations of the games I am talking about.

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Building A Better Tomorrow

This past week saw the Steam Summer Sale come and go. Last year was the first full year I was really into PC gaming and that Summer Sale ruined me: I think I bought anywhere between 25-50 games (most of which I have yet to play even). I'm happy to say that my wallet isn't crying this year. I bought a mere handful of games which include Risk of Rain, Stronghold HD, Shadowrun Returns and Banished.

All those games peaked my interest enough to warrant a purchase, but none more so than Banished. I had a hankering for some city building and Banished looks to scratch that itch the new SimCity couldn't.

Castaways

The premise of Banished is that you are a group of nomads that got exorcised from their home town. Tired of wandering aimlessly, they decide everyone at their old town was stupid, and to start their own town...with strippers and blackjack...wait, what!? It's a simple concept that exists solely to set up the game (there are no strippers or blackjack).

There are a handful of tutorials that do well to bring you up to speed with the basics of Banished. When you start a new game, there are a few settings you can modify before it procedurally generates the terrain you will play with. The settings I mentioned are simple things like if you want to have the terrain more mountainous (which is a pain as you lose a lot of building area); how severe you want the weather to be (it gets cold in Winter); the difficulty setting, which determines how many people/structures you start off with. There’s even a setting that allows players to select whether to have disasters on or off. It's a pretty flexible system.

Sim Village

I've always been a fan of SimCity, but the latest one just didn't do it for me. The developers changed it quite a bit—made the maps smaller for the purpose of the added multiplayer—and it didn't instill the same feeling I got while playing SimCity 2000.

Banished on the other hand is just solid city building mixed with a little bit of a survival game. In SimCity, you have a population of thousands upon thousands with a massive city budget and all kinds of utilities to think of. In Banished, you start off with a group of villagers. Everyone has a name and a part to play. You assign jobs to everyone, if there is no work currently for that profession, swap them to something else. There is a lot of micromanagement if you want to delve in.

Villagers move into houses and have babies. They also grow old and die in the same house. People can die for whatever reason too—mostly due to old age mind you—and this is where the survival-game aspect comes into play. There are seasons to worry about...well only one: Winter. You have to keep the fire wood stocked up, and make sure everyone has clothing and a house to live in, or they will start dropping like flies.

Freak accidents do happen as well. So far 2 people have died from randomness: One woman died in labor, and someone else got crushed by a rock in the quarry. You set up cemeteries so that their loved ones aren't too sad when people die.

Keeping track of your villagers' happiness (along with their health) is also a part of the game. For the most part they are pretty simple. As long as they have a balanced diet (don't just have one source of food basically) their health will be fine. If it dips, you can always build a clinic. For happiness, it starts off easy; give them a place to live and something to do. If they start getting restless you can build a tavern and get someone to brew ale.

A large part of the game is resource management. You can set up all kinds of buildings to have a replenishing source of materials: Foresters can be placed to cut down and plant new trees; build a Mine to get iron and coal; Farmers plant seeds and grow crop; Herdsman keep track of live stock; etc.

The most interesting (and probably most annoying) part about the latter 2 professions I mentioned is that you can't just grow whatever, you need to have the appropriate seeds (same goes for the herding, you need to have at least 2 animals to get more). You start the game with no animals and a few seeds and in order to increase your repertoire you need to set up a trading post along the river. Once built, a merchant will boat in and trade with you. This is a really cool feature, but the annoying part is you have no control over what the merchant brings in, so if you want to grow wheat (for the beer!) or raise sheep for wool, you have to wait till someone brings it...which can take a looooooong while. I should mention that if someone does bring seeds, he is therefore a seed merchant and you can place a special order with him if he didn't bring what you wanted/needed, but he charges extra for the service.

Final Thoughts

If you like city builders and were disappointed with the latest SimCity, I would check out Banished. It's definitely on a smaller scale compared to SimCity, but it's done very well.

Overall I'm having a lot of fun with the game. I started a simple game so far (that I've put about 7 hours into) and once it starts getting boring, I'll take my new found knowledge into a new game with different settings and see what my villagers are made of!

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Poke Me In The Night

This week I'm gonna talk about Poker Night at the Inventory 2, one of my favorite telltale games. If you're unfamiliar with the Poker Night series here's some back story: The games always take place in a hidden back alley poker room and bar kept secret and known only to a certain group of high rollers and members. Each game contains a different cast of pop culture characters from various genres including movies, television, and gaming; all playing poker together and you tag along as the silent protagonist. One of the main reasons to play this game is because of the interactions between the characters. Telltale are amazing at writing interesting dialogue, quips and references, traits which come through nicely in Poker Night 2.

The game itself was a huge tie in with Borderlands 2 and Team Fortress 2, featuring unique unlocks for both games which obtained by slowly forcing the other characters to throw up items from their respective universes to sweeten the pot. The poker gameplay itself is nothing to write home about but you're opponents are nothing to laugh at, between Glad0s from Portal as the dealer, Ash from the Evil Dead franchise Sam from Sam and Max Claptrap the mascot from Borderlands and last but not least Brock "Fucking" Samson from one of my favorite shows, The Venture Bros. Sidenote: if you aren't all ready watching Venture Bros you should be, the show is amazing and one of the best written shows on television. 

As I said before, the main reason to play is the interactions between you and the other characters. There are a ton of unique reactions and stories that come out over the course of a hand, and I often find myself playing just to see what they have to say to each other. The characters themselves are well written and all voiced by their original actors so the game feels as if they all hopped out of their respective universe or live in the same crazy cross over universe only super nerds could dream into existence.

The game also allows you to unlock new card tables and chips and various other aesthetic options all themed around the various characters. If you are looking for a good time sink, I couldn't recommend any more highly. Poker Night 2 itself is worth hours of enjoyment and at a five dollar price tag it's more than worth it to pick it up or slap on your steam wishlist and wait for a summer sale to roll around. Which by the way may or may not be tomorrow...just something to keep in mind. 

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Dysentery For All

Oregon Trail was a classic game played by countless youths all over the world and was even the first video game many people experienced. Too bad it's absolute crap when you compare it to Organ Trail!

Organ Trail is a zombie survival game that came out as a mobile game in 2012 and was eventually greenlit by Steam users and released in 2013. I picked it up for cheap during one of the countless steam sales that have plagued my wallet and when I finally got around to playing it, I was surprised at how much fun it was and how much depth was in the game.

If you have played Oregon Trail before, there are a lot of similarities and the game is basically a homage to it; that and the Walking Dead series (take your pick: comic or show). When you start the game it gives you the option to name your party members—I usually named them after my friends to see how long me and my buddies could last in a theoretical zombie apocalypse—but if it's taught me anything they're all a bunch of filthy liars. I can't even remember how many times Adam has killed someone because he would get bitten and lie about it right to my digital face and then later on he'd turn and take someone down with him.

The game revolves around you and your fellow survivors piling into a station wagon and traveling across the U.S, collecting food, fuel, and other various supplies you need to survive in a hostile zombie wasteland. The game reminds me a lot of FTL because, as in FTL, random encounters will happen as you travel and give you the option to swap supplies with traders, or fight bandits/other survivors... Which brings me to the combat.

The combat is really fun. It uses a cover based system, so you spend a lot of time learning your opponent's movement patterns and then pick them off one by one.It really has a survival feel and with limited ammunition you really have to pick your battles and shots.

Every so often you'll reach a settlement. Settlements have merchants and bounty boards. You can fulfill bounties for cash and other necessary items as you pass through. They all vary in difficulty, so be sure you're ready, because you only have one life and when you die it's game over and you have to start right back at the beginning.

Overall, the game itself is solid. It's addictive as hell, has a ton of replay value and once you get the hang of it, you really start wanting to keep taking cracks at it, seeing the various outcomes and routs the game can take. The random encounters along the way really add depth to the game whether someone "turns" or dies from some disease or dysentery or is taken hostage by bandits and left to die.

This game is entirely worth your time and with a five dollar price tag it's worth every penny. Whether you're a fan of zombies or just survival games in general (the graphics make it literally playable on any pc out there). All in all, this is definitely a game any and every Steam gamer should have in his or her library.

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