I’ll be updating this post as I play new demos. As always, there are a lot of fun new demos to try.
Star Birds
From Kurzgesagt, creators of some of my favorite educational videos. It’s a chill logistics puzzle game, where you mine asteroids to gather resources that you send to other asteroids to mine more resources.
Xenopurge
Control a squad of cloned marines as they clear out alien hives. You can’t control the marines directly; you just give them orders and they attempt to follow them. Can get hectic at times. Wish it was easier to have them move in teams.
Cleared Hot
An old-school helicopter action game that feels right out of the 90s. The controls feel a little sluggish, but I think that might be on purpose.
Ratatan
Anyone who played Patapon back on the PSP knows how this game works. It’s the same rhythm-strategy game, but with roguelike elements where you upgrade your chorus between runs.
Mars Attracts
A theme park game set in the Mars Attacks! universe, where you abduct humans and put them in exhibits for other Martians to view.
TerraTech Legion
A bullet heaven game with the vehicle building of TerraTech. I love bullet heaven games and TerraTech, so this is an easy wishlist addition.
Dawn Apart
Voxel-based building game. I like the aesthetic, but I have a hard time figuring out exactly where some of my resources were disappearing to.
Ground of Aces
Build airstrips for the RAF during WWII. I enjoyed the bit I played, even though I was extremely inefficient.
Generation Exile
A city-builder with a focus on sustainability. Something about it just doesn’t click for me; I prefer something like Terraformers instead, which has a lot more depth. It’s also very yellow.
Time for the first Next Fest of 2025! There were a lot of demos I was interested in playing this time around, and while I didn’t get through all of them, I found a bunch of new games to wishlist.
I’m posting this late because I continued playing demos until well after the fest ended, and I completely forgot to publish along the way.
Badlands Crew
I’ve coincidentally been playing a bit of Bomber Crew lately, after watching Masters of the Air (great show). Badlands Crew is the third in the series (after Space Crew), and it’s ultimately the same solid foundation with a lot more customization. Badlands Crew is basically a Mad Max game, and unlike Bomber and Space, you build your “battle wagon” from individual pieces so you can completely customize its layout. You also direct your wagon over a world map, setting speed and steering around obstacles. There’s also much more gear to outfit your crew.
Cinemaster: Cinema Simulator
I enjoy the occasional simulator game, and this one sounded interesting to me. Ultimately, it was a bit dull, with a lot of waiting around at the start.
Scaling Up
A cute little farming game about ranching snakes. Can’t do a lot in the demo, but it seems like it’s pretty chill.
Icaria
An automation and base-building game where you program drones using a visual programming language. I just wasn’t really interested in the programming part. (I do enough of that during the day.)
Night is Coming
A survival city-builder with some RTS elements. I enjoyed the short time I played it, though the game crashed when I tried to take a screenshot.
River Towns
A cross between Dorfromantik and Tetris. Score points for placing various shaped pieces next to each other, for surrounding dead trees, and for building on both sides of the river to create bridges. The rules are pretty simple (at least in the demo), but it’s a nice chill puzzle game.
Tiny Connections
Basically Mini Metro or Mini Motorways, but using water and electricity instead of rails or roads. Plays very similarly, but doesn’t have the rushed feel of Metro and Motorways.
Machine Mind
A little bit like TerraTech, with some base building and bot management. I liked it, though I felt like it needed a better tutorial; I missed some important things and felt a little hamstrung.
Kingdom’s Deck
A city-builder where you choose between cards during the day to build structures and hire units, then fight back waves of enemies at night. Easy to play, interesting loop. I just wish the key to bring up the console didn’t match Steam’s default screenshot shortcut.
Outworld Station
A factory-builder with some combat. Plays really well, though moving long distances can sometimes be a pain.
9 Kings
A card-based battler. Very simple to play and a lot of fun. Has some Balatro vibes.
Final Outpost
A city builder with nightly zombie defense. Simple graphics, but they work well. Easy to play.
Wizdom Academy
Build your own Hogwarts, hiring teachers and enrolling students for a variety of courses, while fending off the occasional goblin invasion. Neat concept, and the graphics are pretty good, though the interface feels a little off at times.
Solarpunk
Pretty standard survival game, but a great aesthetic. The demo only runs through the basics, but gives you a set of power generation and automation tools toward the end to give you a taste of the full game. Seems like the sort of thing I enjoy, so I’ll probably pick it up at some point.
Drop Duchy
A cross between Tetris and a city-builder. Not sure I’ve seen anything quite like it.
Wheel World
An adventure game in a world where cycling is life. There’s racing and exploration, but overall seems pretty chill. Definitely needs to be played with a controller, though, so this might be a good Steam Deck game.
Wanderstop
A game all about taking time to relax and make some tea. Looks great and has a good message.
Dagger Directive
An old-school first-person shooter that reminds me a bit of classic military FPS games, back before they all got boring.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tactical Takedown
A turn-based strategy game with little standee miniatures. Each turtle plays differently, though the levels tend to feel a little repetitive.
Settler’s Domain
A simple city-builder. A little too simple, I think.
Fumes
A vehicular combat game that looks and feels like something from the 90s or early 2000s. Feels fantastic and I really enjoyed it. There are miniboss and boss fights and huge vehicles you drive up onto.
Do No Harm
Like Papers, Please, but you’re a doctor in a village balancing the humors of villagers with medicine, and there’s some Lovecraftian stuff going down.
The King Is Watching
A city builder where only the buildings under your gaze are active. You have to balance production with recruitment, moving buildings around so you can have what you need active at any point in time. The gaze mechanic adds a dimension that increases the pressure without making the game feel impossible. Also, your advisor is a cute goose named Gustav with a giant pair of glasses. (I’m assuming a goose and not a duck based on the name and my wife’s opinion.)
Star Crafter
A crafting game where you build planets. A little boring right now.
Hyper Empire
Advertises itself as a 4X game you can finish in about 40 minutes, but it’s not really. Feels like a mobile game, where you just click through turns, clicking buttons to make numbers go up. I guess technically the bones of a 4X game are there, but it’s got no soul.
Cardalaxy
An empire-building game where you play planets to gain resources to improve other planets in your hand. Easy to play, but the graphics are a little rough. I also didn’t really understand what I was supposed to be doing… I like the concept, though, and if the rough edges get smoothed out, I think this could be a lot of fun.
Skin Deep
A game where you sneak around spaceships and neutralize pirates in order to save their crew of cats. Story as old as time.
High Seas, High Profits!
A medieval trading game, where you can build a trade empire over time. Love the clean interface and the style, but it didn’t really hook me.
Autarkis
A bit of a puzzle game, but there’s not really much of a puzzle; just repeating the same steps over and over. I found it a bit boring.
Whisper of the House
It’s essentially Unpacking, but instead of unpacking a single person’s house over their lifetime, you’re decorating a bunch of other townspeople’s homes. Pretty chill.
Breathedge 2
Seems about like the first game, with the same weird humor and chaotic world to float around in.
HistoriCity Florence
Rebuild Florence after the Black Death. It’s a pretty chill city builder.
Monster Train 2
I didn’t play a lot of Monster Train, but it was pretty good. The sequel seems like more of the same.
Factory Planner
It’s Satisfactory as a card game. Which honestly isn’t too bad.
Lost Skies
Solid worldbuilding with a lot of lore, exploration with a glider and grappling hook, and base building elements. The combination is great, but I can’t help but feel like something feels just a bit off; though I can’t put my finger on it. And as a solo player, I’m not sure how a big sky battle would play out in the full game.
Survival Machine
Build a mobile base on a giant machine and fend off zombies. Starts out a little too slow for my liking, and I’m not sure how well it plays solo long-term. An interesting idea, though.
Cubic Odyssey
Obviously a Minecraft clone, but it’s sci-fi and has speeders, spaceships, and travel between planets. I enjoyed my time with the demo.
Mech Havoc
A solid action game where you can drive tanks or mechs through a level and shoot things. Style looks good, and it’s fun to play.
Curation
Currently, it’s a very bare-bones museum building game. The basics are here, but it’s mostly just a sandbox right now.
Today being the last day of 2024, I decided I’d write something looking back on the year. I’ve been wanting to do this sort of thing in past years, but 2024 was particularly interesting. I’m also planning to do a separate “looking ahead” for 2025, since I have a few goals and anxiety about the coming year.
Life
My life isn’t exciting. Since the pandemic, my wife and I haven’t really done any travelling, and we tend to stick to our routines. This year changed some things, though.
In April, we visited my brother and his wife in California. They wanted us to come out and said it’d be a good time to visit. Looking back, I should have known something was up with how hard my family was pushing for us to visit them. When we got out there, they gave us a short tour of their place and ended in the kitchen, where they had a peg board up with a bunch of sonogram photos. I imagine I had a weird, slack-jawed look on my face as my brain was processing it. I think I made some awkward jokes (as I do). But that’s how I found out they were pregnant. I’m just amazed my mom was able to keep it a secret.
The baby was born in September, and my parents went out to spend Christmas with them. Apparently my mom is planning to fly back out in February and essentially be a live-in nanny as their leave ends and they have to go back to work.
Personal Projects
I typically have some project I’m working on outside of work. I was working on a third-person roguelike mech shooter in Unity for a while, but when Unity changed its pricing policy back in 2023, I stopped work on that. (They walked back a lot of those changes, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.) This year, I started a new project in Godot, and while there’s been a bit of a learning curve (and I have a lot more to learn), I’m slowly getting the hang of things. It sucks that I don’t have all the tools I was using in Unity to work with (especially since I paid a lot for some of them expecting to get a lot out of them), but it’s nice to get back to some of the basics.
So since I’ve been enjoying “bullet heaven” shooters recently, I decided I’d try making one myself, with a few city-builder twists. Right now, the idea is that you gather resources and build a mobile space station that’s constantly under attack, and you have to balance a variety of resources (power generation, ammunition, heat, propulsion) while under attack. I have these pictures in my head of a battle station with guns firing in all directions at dozens of enemies. Not sure how it’s going to play out as I get things going. Right now, I’m just trying to get some of the basics working.
Work
Either late last year or early this year, the company I work for – American Auto Shield (AAS) – was acquired by CarShield, the auto warranty company with all the ads. There was always a relationship between the two companies: AAS basically “creates” the warranty plans and CarShield would sell them. The acquisition has been pretty rough.
In March, AAS decided to pause 401K contributions until the end of the year to make the books look better for the new owner, since the spring-summer driving season leads to a lot of warranty claims. Around the same time, we were required to clock in and out, which just seemed ridiculous for salaried employees. I saw it as disrespectful. This peeved me at the time and I started passively looking for a new job.
Then last month (November), the new employee handbook comes out with a bunch of new changes. My PTO time was cut from 22 days each year to 12. It no longer accrues, but is given out on your work anniversary, which for me is the end of July, so I’ll have basically no PTO time until then (since I spent most of it for the holidays). They’re also cutting the 401K match by 1%, which is basically just a pay cut.
So now I’m actively looking for a new job. I’m trying to be a little picky, but the software development landscape has changed a lot since the last time I was looking. I don’t want to work for a “big” company – Microsoft, Amazon, Google, etc. – and they seem to be hiring the most. Not sure where I’ll end up, but one of my goals for next year is to make a move.
Politics
The source of most of my anxiety right now is around politics. To say I was disappointed by the election results this year is an understatement. I know Harris wasn’t a lot of people’s “favorite” candidate, but it seemed like it’d be an easy win; sure, Harris wasn’t as vociferous about certain issues as I’d like, but she was still a better option given the opposition. That Trump won the popular vote just astounds me.
I won’t speculate as to why things went the way they did (there are plenty of different reasons and I’ve read plenty of opinions), but all the bullshit Trump touted during the campaign has me anxious about how bad things are going to get over the next few years: tariffs and the usual deregulation nonsense are probably the biggest ones, but there’s also the Project 2025 stuff. Republicans getting control of all three branches has me incredibly worried about where the country is headed.
As pleased as I am to see the “can I change my vote” posts floating around social media, it doesn’t really change anything. The damage that’s coming over the next four years will take decades to undo, if ever. I’m frustrated that people don’t understand American politics well enough for the country to get any better. I’ve basically given up hope at this point when it comes to politics. I’ll still vote, I’ll still anxiously watch results, but I have no faith that anything will improve.
Looking Ahead
I hate to end on a sour note, but that’s how 2024 has ultimately felt: like the situation around the world is bad and steadily getting worse. I’m fortunate enough that things are good within my bubble, and I’m certainly thankful for that. I think I’m going to have to insulate myself a bit over the next few years just to survive without going insane. I still hope that things don’t end up as bad as I fear, but that’s only because it seems like the only option I have. I’m just not getting my hopes up very high.
Legend 🌟 A personal favorite. (Not necessarily for everyone.) ✔️ Beat the game. (🏆 if I got all the achievements) 👍 Recommended if you haven’t played it. 👎 Avoid it. It’s terrible.
PC
Baldur’s Gate 3 🌟 Finally got around to playing this in January. Really enjoying it.
Destiny 2 Continued Season of the Wish into 2024, and I started winding down on my playtime. Played Final Shape and the first “Episode”, Echoes through the middle of the year. Final Shape was a great conclusion to the “Light and Dark Saga”, and Echoes was a good kickoff for the next big story arc. The second episode, Revenant, also had some fun new mechanics and some good gear, but Bungie decided not to make the new weapons craftable. Once I heard they were doing the same for the next episode, I pretty much stopped playing. I might stop in from time to time to play the story, but I’m done with the grind.
Star Citizen 👎 I tried playing this toward the end of 2023, and was able to play a bit more in January. I want to be interested, but so far I’ve found the game extremely boring. It wants to be an MMO where you wander around cities and interact with various shopkeepers, but I just want to fly my ship. In about 2-3 hours of play time, I only managed to fly a ship for maybe 10-20 minutes. To make matters worse, performance is terrible and it’s plagued with bugs. Hopefully it turns around at some point and turns into a real game.
The Universim 👍 Universim had it’s 1.0 release this year and I hopped back in. If you enjoyed the early god games that established the genre like Populous and Black and White, then The Universim is a great game in that vein. It has a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor and spans from the stone-age to a multi-planet civilization with terraforming and trade between planets. It’s expansive but works incredibly well.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor 👍 I’ve found that I love the “bullet heaven” genre, and Survivor is a great entry into the genre. I’ve played a little of Deep Rock Galactic and like what’s there, but it’s multiplayer-focused and I’m mainly a solo gamer. Survivor gives me a fun single-player experience in that world, with some unique additions to the genre, like maps you can alter by digging through the rock. Other than that, it follows all the typical parts of the formula: meta-progression, different classes, weapon upgrades, etc.
Forever Skies 👍 A survival game where the world is covered in toxic dust and your home is an airship you use to explore abandoned towers. I like the exploration focus and lack of combat; there are things that attack you and you can kill, but they’re just territorial critters and not hunting you or anything. It’s a little bare-bones right now, but it’s still in Early Access, so I hope it gets nicely fleshed out as it grows.
Lightyear Frontier 👍 A chill farming and exploration game whose hook is that all your farming is done in a mech. I love everything about this game: the “pop-pop-pop” sounds when rapid-fire planting seeds; how the animals react to your mech stomping around; the way your mech moves and operates; and just the general art style. It’s a lovely world and the theme is generally about restoring nature, which is a pleasant change from many other games. There’s little I don’t like here.
Balatro 👍 A poker roguelike deckbuilder that is so much more than the sum of its parts.
Laysara Summit Kingdom
Underspace Spiritual successor to Freelancer and checks all the boxes.
Manor Lords
Pioneers of Pagonia
The Invincible 👍🏆 Picked this one up on sale since I enjoyed the Next Fest demo. It’s ultimately a walking simulator (a genre I don’t think I’ve ever seriously played), but I love the story and presentation.
Stardeus Another one I enjoyed during a Next Fest, picked up on sale.
The Riftbreaker 👍🏆 Played the new “Heart of the Swamp” expansion and collected the new set of achievements. Still love this game.
Spring Falls👍🏆 A lovely little puzzle game about managing water and making flowers bloom. Picked up during the Steam Summer Sale. It’s short (about an hour), but has some really tough puzzles.
Bloons TD 6 I don’t think I’ve ever played the Bloons tower defense series, but judging from the “6” at the end, it must be popular. It’s monkeys popping balloons, which sounds like a euphemism, so I’m sure it’s some sort of inside joke. It’s obviously designed as a free-to-play mobile game, with a variety of things you can pay real-world cash to unlock early or just to acquire in-game currency. It’s a solid tower defense game, but I don’t like the “freemium” feel.
Dungeon Warfare 2 Started playing this for the first time after finishing all the achievements in Dungeon Warfare. It’s a lot of the same gameplay (which is great), with some new randomization elements thrown in that I’m not sure I completely enjoy. Still a great game, but I wish it was a little more straightforward like the first game.
The Room Series 👍🏆🏆🏆🏆 I’ve played The Room in the past (I think on mobile) and I loved it. During Steam’s summer sale, the entire series was available cheap and I decided to pick it up and play through them all. They’re all fantastic games, providing a few hours of puzzle solving each. There’s a spooky story running through them that adds to the atmosphere.
Satisfactory 👍🌟🏆 Satisfactory is one of my all-time favorite games. I had a blast playing it in Early Access, and it finally released version 1.0 this year. I beat the game and unlocked all the achievements in about a month, spending most of my free time playing. I’m hoping for some DLC at some point, but even after finishing the game and completing all the achievements, I was still building factories and optimizing things. Fantastic game.
Starcom: Unknown Space 👍🌟🏆 A great space adventure game with shipbuilding and combat. It’s essentially a retelling of Starcom: Nexus, but with a lot of improvements. Looks great, fun to play, and an interesting world to explore.
InfraSpace 🏆 A decent city/factory-building game that essentially boils down to a better version of SimCity. Featuers some excellent road management tools, but it’s poorly optimized. And I find cars hold up traffic so they can cross three lanes on a superhighway to take an exit disturbingly realistic.
Parkasaurus Ultimately a very lightweight dinosaur theme park game, like a casual version of Jurassic World Evolution. Very easy to play.
Star Trucker Played during a Next Fest and decided to buy it at release. It’s just a trucking simulator in space, but I love all the details.
Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster 🏆 I loved the Dark Forces series, so when I saw the remaster in a Humble Bundle, I picked it up and immediately played through the whole thing. There are some minor issues with the graphics and some of the levels have some annoying design, but it’s a fun classic from the Doom clone era.
Cyberpunk 2077👍🌟🏆 I came back to Cyberpunk after picking up the Phantom Liberty DLC on sale. I never finished the game years ago when I first bought it; got sidetracked by side quests and other games. After finishing the DLC, I decided I’d work on seeing all the different endings and finishing the achievements so I could call the game “done”. Love the game and I’m glad I pushed myself to see all the endings.
Medieval Dynasty At the end of the year, I picked up Medieval Dynasty and started playing them again. I’d played both on Game Pass but I’ve been waiting for a sale to pick them up on Steam. Still enjoying them both.
Caves of Qud
Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord Like with Medieval Dynasty, I had played this on Game Pass and picked it up on sale on Steam. I still really enjoy spearing enemies with a couched lance in combat.
Achievement Hunting
I continued my habit from last year of trying to 100% games in my backlog, and did pretty well again this year. I’ve listed these games separately, since they’re mostly older games. I didn’t manage to finish all of them, since some had some really grindy achievements that I gave up on.
100% Achievement Count: 24 My goal is typically to 100% finish one game a month, but starting the year with that goal, along with finding some short-ish games that were easy to complete let me double that objective this year. I probably won’t be able to manage this again next year.
Settlement Survival 🏆 Started the year off with a city-builder, surprising no one. Tried to get all the achievements by the end of January, but several were based on random events and took forever to finish. (Took an extra 80 hours of mostly idling to get the last two or three achievements.) Achievements aside, it’s a fun survival city-builder with some great mechanics.
Rise of Industry 🏆 After Settlement Survivor, this was my next “100%” target. It’s a great little industry-building game that’s pretty easy to play with tweakable difficulty. Achievements were pretty easy to accomplish, aside from a few that were a little buggy and took some grinding.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker 👍 I hadn’t played this since the Early Access phase, but it’s still as fun as it used to be. I especially like the “Open Shift” mode that lets me disassemble spaceships without worrying about oxygen depletion or time limits; I can play the game as the puzzle game I love without the pressure to get things done quickly. Though I’ve still killed myself plenty of times by burning myself to death or smacking objects into my helmet.
Planet: TD 👎🏆 I think I acquired this through a Humble Bundle a while back. I love tower defense games, but this one is a bit basic. There are also some design problems; choices were made that directly oppose the tower defense design. For instance, it’s often more viable to sell and rebuild a tower for a better chance at a higher-level tower instead of just upgrading (“I could spend $1000 to upgrade this tower to level 2, or I could sell and rebuild it for $500 for a chance at a level 4 tower!”).
Defense Grid: The Awakening Playing Planet TD had me itching to play a better tower defense game, so I decided to go back to an oldie; the original Defense Grid from way back in 2008. I’ve owned it for a while but hadn’t played very far, and getting back into it reminded me why: it has a very odd control scheme that I do not like. Your cursor is locked to the center of the screen and movements move your entire view (probably meant to be played with a controller). Regardless, it’s actually a solid tower defense game.
Snowtopia 👎🏆 Got Snowtopia in February’s Humble Choice and decided to give it a try. It was on my wishlist at one point, but I removed it because of bad reviews. After playing it, I’ve found the reviews are justified: it’s buggy and has a lot of performance issues. It’s actually disappointing, though… There’s an awesome game in here that just feels unfinished.
Sentinel An “interactive audio” tower defense game where you’re a program defending against viruses. There are various audio effects as your towers fire and enemies die that play into the soundtrack. The graphics are clean, the soundtrack is decent (if you’re in to electronic music), and it’s relatively easy to play. I don’t like some of the gameplay elements and the levels are pretty unforgiving (especially the bonus levels). I gave up before hitting 100% completion because some of the bonus levels are ridiculous unless you learn their trick and execute near-perfectly.
The Turing Test 👍🏆 A solid first-person puzzle game with an interesting story and well-designed puzzles.
The Talos Principle 🏆 A decent puzzle game that has a few terribly-designed mechanics and late-game puzzles that cause frustration. The “playback” mechanic literally requires you to sit and wait for 20-30 seconds (sometimes longer) to give yourself time to work with it; late-game puzzles often rely on just-barely-line-of-sight. It’d be an easy recommend if a third of the game was cut. As it stands, it outlives its welcome and becomes frustrating instead of fun.
Orbitalis 🏆 A puzzle game about gravitational forces. It’s pretty but doesn’t run very well (30FPS max), and I prefer my puzzle games to be more deterministic.
10000000 🏆 A match-3 game with some roguelike progression. The achievements aren’t too bad, though the endgame ones are very luck-based.
Megaquarium 👍🏆 A pleasant little aquarium building game. Not too difficult, and the graphics are pretty simple, but it’s very easy to play and a lot of fun. Plus I love all the fishies.
Lumencraft A fun action tower defense game where you mine resources and defend against waves of bugs. I played this way back in Early Access, but hadn’t touched it since release. It hasn’t changed much, and it’s still a solid game. Some achievements are really grindy, though (“Defeat 1,000,000 bugs”).
Strike Suit Zero A game I’ve owned for a long time. Decided to play the “Director’s Cut” to get all the achievements. Still a great game, though the very last mission is a bit of a pain.
Automachef 👎 A factory game about using machines to make food. It starts out interesting but gets tedious fast, and once they introduce their programming language, I completely lost interest. I’m a software developer, but I don’t want to deal with assembly-style bullshit in my games.
When Ski Lifts Go Wrong It’s like Bridge Constructor, but you’re typically building ski lifts. Though also sometimes ramps and bridges. It’s a fine physics puzzle game, but not really anything special. (If you’ve played one physics puzzle game, you’ve pretty much played them all…)
Artificial Defense A tower defense game with a lot of manual shooting. I don’t mind player-activated abilities in tower defense games, but I feel like they should be an emergency option – proper use of towers should be the priority. Artificial Defense is the opposite, where your player abilities are the primary way to deal with creeps.
Puzzle Agent 2 🏆 One I played and finished a while back, but missed 2 achievements. I’ve always wanted to come back and finish it, and finally took the time to do so. It’s a little dated at this point, but still a solid puzzle game.
Sheltered 👍🏆 Another old one that I was only one achievement from completing. Had to spend a few more hours in it to get that last achievement. Still a great game. The reviews seem to indicate the sequel was unfinished, which is a shame.
Dungeon Warfare👍🏆 I think I played this on iPad a long time ago. It’s a fantastic tower defense game focused on building traps to kill waves of adventurers entering your dungeon. You can build fun combos and the physics-based unit movement can lead to some hilarious outcomes.
Demos
Oddsparks: An Automation Adventure (Demo) It’s essentially Pikmin with factory-building. An odd combination, but it’s adorable.
Stellar Settlers (Demo) It’s a bit of a puzzly outpost-builder. Interested to see how it turns out.
Stormgate (Beta) Looks and feels a lot like StarCraft, and that’s a good thing. But it feels off in a way I can’t quite put my finger on.
Gods Against Machines (Demo) A kind of “reverse city-builder” where you’re a god of nature attempting to destroy the cities of an invading robotic force. It’s basically Spirit Island if it was an RTS-style video game. I enjoyed the demo, even though it’s pretty simple and involves a lot of clicking. Would make an excellent mobile game on a touch interface.
Next Fests I always love trying out new things during Steam’s Next Fest events, and this year was no different: February June
Board Games
Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game A fun two-player deckbuilder. I played Empire and managed to kill off a lot of Rebel heroes (Millenium Falcon, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Chewbacca), while the Empire heroes came out late in the game and I managed to get enough to secure a win. Poor Chewie.
War Chest A tactical strategy game played with some hefty poker chips. Lots of variation to this, but I think the suggested starting teams are lopsided.
Picky Pixie A wallet game that plays like a very lightweight Mysterium.
Space Base One of my wife’s favorites because she routinely crushes me. We’ve played a half-dozen times and I have yet to win.
Dorfromantik👍 Plays just like the digital game, but faster and at a smaller scale. Great co-op.
League of the Lexicon👍 A trivia game all about etymology. If you enjoy learning about words, this is the game for you.
Among the Stars: Revival
Thunder Road: Vendetta Like playing Mad Max in board game form.
Canvas: Finishing Touches The final expansion for Canvas. All the expansions do a good job of adding to the base game with optional complexity.
Evolution: Another World
Picky Eaters👍
Patchwork Doodle
Flamecraft👍 First played Flamecraft when visiting my brother in San Francisco in April. My wife and I enjoyed it so much, we bought it for ourselves.
Drop Drive A pick-up-and-deliver game where the game map is created by literally dropping a bunch of components on a hemispherical sun, sending them flying out in random directions. Pretty easy to play, with a lot of options to shake things up every game.
Apiary👍 A worker placement game about space bees. Very well themed and fun to play.
A Message From the Stars👍 A cooperative word deduction game, and one of my favorite new games. One player plays an alien that has sent a message to Earth, and the other players play a team of scientists attempting to decipher the alien message.
Wyrmspan👍 Wingspan with dragons. There are a handful of additions that make the game a little more challenging and interactive.
Through the Desert
Rialto
Scoville
New Dawn
Switchbacks
Onitama👍 A chess-like martial arts strategy game. You’re only able to choose from two moves on your turn, which change over the course of the game. Feels a lot like chess on a smaller, more tactical scale. Also easier to play, with essentially four pawns and a king.
Cosmic Run: Rapid Fire
Clank! A Deck-Building Adventure
Small World
Dead Men Tell No Tales
Spirit Island👍 I love the theming of this game, and on our second game, my wife and I managed a win by terrorizing the invaders enough to leave the island.
CATAN Starfarers Found community-created rules for a two-player variant to play with my wife (the game only supports 3-4 players), and they worked out really well. The little spaceship used to determine your “rolls” and capabilities is a little gimmicky but fun.
Earth👍
Ark Nova
Great Western Trail: New Zealand We got the New Zealand version of Great Western Trail because it has sheepies.
Marvel Champions
Splendor Duel👍
Perspectives A deduction game where each player gets a set of photos and have to describe what they see to everyone else.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars A Pandemic-system game where you play a hero from the Clone Wars era of Star Wars and face a villain. Obviously plays a lot like Pandemic, but you have various cards you can use to help.
Ticket to Ride (10th Anniversary)
Gravwell
Marvel Dice Masters: Age of Ultron 👎 I expected this to be Marvel Quarriors (it’s designed by the same people), but it’s somehow worse.
Chai
Galactic Strike Force
Azul👍
Teotihuacan: City of Gods Got the “deluxe master set” on Kickstarter and played for the first time. Being a euro game, there are a lot of different things to do that keep things fun and interesting.
Darkrock Ventures
Project L👍 Tetris as a board game is still fantastic.
Android: Netrunner
Cosmic Run: Regeneration
Chronicles of Crime
Don’t Go In There
Potion Explosion
Patchwork
Votes for Women👍 My wife and I love “non-fiction” board games; stuff like Wingspan and Cascadia that are firmly based in science or history. Votes for Women plays out the Suffrage movement like a game of Risk, with the Suffragist and Opposition players vying for support in the 48 states to pass the 19th Amendment. The Opposition player can win by making sure the amendment never comes to the Senate, or by winning 13 states in the voting. The Suffragist player can only win by bringing the amendment to the Senate and winning 36 states. The game plays out over three eras, with the Opposition entrenched at the start but the Suffragist movement gaining steam as time passes. Once voting starts, any state with 4 “support” is immediately won by that player. For all the remaining states, there’s a roll-off to determine who wins. When my wife and I played, I played the Opposition and she played the Suffragists. She felt she had a responsibility to win, and the game came down to the roll-off, which felt very intense (like watching election results). In the end, she won: 38 to 10.
The Quacks of Quedlinburg I’ve had my eye on Quacks for a while, and it turned out to be a great purchase. There’s bag-building and a lot of chance involved, but it never feels like you’re overly penalized for pressing your luck and busting.
Star Realms: Rise of Empire A legacy version of Star Realms, with a few new factions that work with the base game.
Xtronaut: The Game of Solar System Exploration
The Castles of Burgundy👍 Bought the “Special Edition” on Gamefound on their second print run. This edition has some great upgrades, and the gameplay is a lot of fun.
Rebirth👍 Easy-to-play tile-laying game. At two players, it’s generally friendly but there can be some heavy competition for certain areas of the map. Has some interesting tie-breaking rules, which worked in my wife’s favor on our first play.
Decorum👍 My wife and I love Decorum, and we took some time to play a few more of the two-player campaign this year.
Azul Mini Picked this up as a “travel” version of the “full” game, which we still have. Plays just like the big version, but with smaller components that hold the tiles securely. I could definitely see playing this on a plane or train.
Build a multi-level drilling station on an alien planet to harvest an exotic new energy source. You have daily export quotas to meet that increase as you perform better. Overall not a bad game, though some of the logistics handling is a little annoying. Workers need to travel from place to place, but you can’t control where they sleep, so someone may be sleeping a long way from where they work. (And it doesn’t appear to sort itself out on its own.) With a few quality-of-life updates, this could be a fun little management game, though the ever-increasing quotas could put a damper on some of the management aspects if they don’t cap out.
Tower Factory
As I started playing this demo, I realized I had played it before. (Apparently before I started blogging about these demos, since I can’t find a previous mention of it.) It’s a tower defense game where you have to harvest and process resources to build your towers. It’s a little slow starting out, but as you unlock upgrades, you can do more. It’s built a bit too heavily on that meta-progression (the demo level is basically impossible to complete until you’ve unlocked several upgrades), but it’s a decent little tower defense game.
Microtopia
A management game where you manage a colony of microscopic robotic “ants”. You set up trails and assign ants to them to perform certain tasks, which is a little annoying until you get the hang of it. There are some rough edges, but I love the theming.
Beyond Astra
A strategy game where you build structures on planets and command ground and space forces. Looks good and seems interesting, though the controls felt a little unwieldy; moving from space to ground could cause some weird camera shifts. Ground combat was largely pretty boring, but space combat is pretty good.
Wild Planet
A pretty basic survival game with a minimal aesthetic. Pretty rough in its current state.
Space Tales
It’s essentially StarCraft, except with a retro-futuristic style. The design aesthetic is all over the place, and the interface is so huge it makes it difficult to play (though that may just be a scaling issue with my widescreen monitor). What’s here seems pretty good, but it needs some polish and maybe a little restraint when it comes to the various styles they’re mashing together.
Knights in Tight Spaces
A sequel to Fights in Tight Spaces, Knights swaps the spy thriller style for a fantasy setting. Plays about the same, but with a significantly expanded set of abilities, as well as giving you a party to control.
refarm
Essentially a clicker game with farming.
Planet Scanner
Scan planets for your corporate overlord, earning a fraction of their value, which you can use to pay for rent, food, water, and upgrades. A lot like Hardspace: Shipbreaker but more laid back.
Stellar Outpost Commander
A base building game where you construct base facilities and provide weapons and equipment for pilots that are autonomous. You don’t directly control the pilot ships, but provide attack and scout orders with bounties to entice the pilots to complete them. In return, the pilots spend their credits at your station, which you can use to hire new pilots and issue new bounties. It’s an interesting approach and something I was tinkering with in one of my game projects in the past. It’s not a terrible game, but needs a lot of polish.
Warspace 2
I didn’t play this one long because I didn’t like the control style, and the tutorial seemed to bug out at a certain point where I couldn’t progress. Looks like it could be fun with some updates.
Owl Force
Like Star Fox and Everspace had a cute little owl baby. What I played in the demo seems pretty basic, but it was a fun little space shooter. Controls are pretty good, and the graphics look great.
I loved Airborne Kingdom, and this is more of that with some additional combat and defense mechanics.
Galaxy Too Far
Looks to be a factory-builder like Factorio or Dyson Sphere Program. It looks fine, but the UI and structure naming is really obtuse; hopefully that can be fixed before release.
Heat Death
A fun little survival crafting game where your home base is a train. It’s pretty basic right now, but I’m interested to see how it turns out. There’s supposed to be combat in the final game, but the demo doesn’t feature any (even though you get to build a gun).
Ark of Charon
I love city builders where you live on the back of some giant creature. Ark of Charon has you building on the back of a World Tree sapling, which you name when creating a new game. (My sapling was named Petunia.) When your sapling is stopped at a location on the world map, it burrows underground and you can harvest resources from the environment. While your sapling is travelling between locations, you can build with your stockpiled resources and fend off enemy creatures. I enjoy the style (the animation is great) and the gameplay, but it needs a better tutorial and some UI upgrades. Looking forward to playing it once it’s had some more polish.
Heart of the Machine
An interesting 4X game where you play a newly-sentient AI trying to take over the world. A really interesting take on the genre, where you can play as a benevolent robot overlord or as Skynet or somewhere in between. I’ll likely pick this up when it releases.
The Alters
I’ve been interested in The Alters since I saw the teaser trailer a while back. The demo has me excited to play the full game; I love the base building, the exploration and resource gathering, and the whole process of creating “Alters”. Really looking forward to this one.
Beyond These Stars
I loved Before We Leave, and Beyond These Stars seems like an evolution of that game. The adjacency bonuses are more complex and the new terraforming system adds an entire new dimension to how you manage your city. And you get to talk to the space whale!
Usurper
Chess and deckbuilding.
Caravan SandWitch
An exploration game like Sable. Great art style.
The Observer
Puzzle game like Orwell or Papers, Please. Demo is pretty simple and introduces the underlying mystery of the game.
Eden Crafters
A cross between Planet Crafter and Satisfactory.
First Dwarf
It’s Lightyear Frontier except with combat and tower defense. And you’re a dwarf with a little dragon friend.
Thank Goodness You’re Here
A funny little adventure game. Like playing a weird British cartoon.
Citadelum
A Roman city-builder. I’ve played a bunch of these, but this one looks pretty solid.
Simple Trains
Not a bad game, but pretty much a straight rip-off of Mini Metro.
Honeycomb: The Word Beyond
A survival game with an ecological angle. Pretty, but I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to be doing in the demo, though. Needs a much better tutorial.
Creeper World IXE
I love the Creeper World series, and IXE mixes things up a bit more with some new mechanics. The game plays more like Particle Fleet, with ships you build and move around, and the levels are like an ant farm rather than the typical top-down style of games past.
Creatures of Ava
An adventure game where you’re attempting to save the creatures of Ava by teleporting them to your space ark. There’s a focus on saving the creatures and the world instead of just killing baddies that are in your way.
Kaiserpunk
A city-builder and combat game. Something about it feels a little off; could just be a bad tutorial, but the production chains didn’t seem sufficient to meet needs (you need a ton of plywood). Neat idea; I’m just not sure about the execution.
REKA
A game where you play a young witch under the tutelage of the great Baba Jaga. You build a hut on the back of a giant chicken-legged platform, which serves as a mobile home base. Seems like a unique survival adventure game.
Tactical Breach Wizards
An XCOM-like tactical game in a modern world where magic exists. There are Navy Seers, Witch Cops, and Traffic Warlocks. There’s a lot of storytelling handled through dialogue between characters just before breaches. A lot of fun and the dialogues had a lot of humor that had me laughing throughout the demo.
Time Is Honey
A cute clicker game about beekeeping. If these types of games weren’t so boring, I’d be more into it.
Teeny Tiny Trains
A puzzle game with those wooden train toys I played with as a child. Cute and pretty easy to play.
Drill Core
A mix of mining and tower defense with meta-progression to unlock new abilities and buildings. I enjoyed the demo, looking forward to more.
Republic of Pirates
A pirate city-builder with ship construction and combat. Another one that’ll go on my wishlist.
Another Next Fest is underway, so here’s my latest set of demo impressions. I’m adding a 👍 next to my favorites. I’ve found a lot of demos I plan to try this time around.
Lightyear Frontier
I’ve been looking forward to this mech farming game for a while. It’s a peaceful open-world farming game with a focus on harmonizing with the environment. It’s very pretty but overall a little more basic than I was expecting. I also love that you can trip your mech; it’ll just roll around on the ground and you have to exit to flip it upright.
Star Trucker 👍
I was honestly a little surprised with how much I enjoyed this one. It’s essentially a trucker game like Euro Truck Simulator, but with power management and EVAs for repairs. The docking reminds me of Kerbal Space Program. I honestly wish Star Citizen was more like this.
Summer House
A peaceful little game where you build houses. A lot like Townscaper.
Dystopika
A dystopian city-builder toy that’s even more like Townscaper. Could make some nice wallpapers.
Breachway 👍
A roguelike deckbuilding adventure game. Solid mechanics and looks good. I’m looking forward to trying the full game.
Synergy
An interesting city-builder with a focus on finding balance with the environment. I love the aesthetic, but find some of the controls a little annoying. I was struggling with figuring out how to “prune” plants (maybe it’s a mechanic that unlocks later?) when the demo crashed on me.
Thrive: Heavy Lies the Crown
There’s the core of a good city-builder here, but there are several mechanics that make things annoying to manage. For instance, wood is used for construction, firewood, and planks, but you can only have one logging camp, which limits the rate you can produce this vital resource. I also had a building burn down because it was outside the radius of a well, so my villagers just decided to let it burn. If things like that get cleaned up, this could be a pretty solid game.
Final Factory
A space factory and defense game.
Underspace 👍
Freelancer with some cosmic horror thrown in. I loved what little I played of the demo. I love the aesthetic, the atmosphere, and the gameplay. Some of the voice work could be cleaned up a bit, but I’ll definitely pick this up once it releases into early access.
Solar Expanse
A solar system exploration game. Seems pretty chill; I might try out the full game on release.
Shapez 2 👍
I loved the original Shapez, and the sequel brings the same gameplay into 3D. Looks great and plays great, at a scale that surprised me.
Ouros
Basically a puzzle game about Bézier curves. Pretty chill and easy to play.
Orc Warchief: Strategy City Builder
Seems like a pretty basic city builder at the moment. There’s apparently some sort of combat mechanic where you send your orcs to fight other armies (there’s a combat demo after finishing the demo), but it came down to numbers, which was a bit disappointing.
News Tower 👍
I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect with this one, but I really enjoyed it. From building and managing the tower where all my employees work to managing which stories my reporters were working on, the entire experience is great. Well polished and a lot of fun. I think naming my newspaper “Print Is Dead” added to my enjoyment a bit.
Pacific Drive
A survival game where your car is the focus. There’s an interesting world that’s been built for the game, and the upgrade trees for the car look really deep. There are a lot of survival games that I hate, but I’m cautiously optimistic about this one.
Millenia
A Civilization-style game. The demo only lasts 60 turns, which only gets through the early eras in the game. Some of the concepts seem interesting, like special ages that have specific requirements and special effects. The “Age of Blood” requires killing 6 enemy armies and leads to an age where all nations are at war. I’ve always enjoyed the various Civ games, so I’d like to dig into this one at some point.
Reus 2
A planet-building god game. Similar to the first game. Cute and pretty easy to play.
Balatro 👍
A roguelike deckbuilding poker game. Empower your deck with jokers that provide special abilities, tarot cards that alter your deck, planet cards that improve hand values, and vouchers that provide passive bonuses. A really unique blend that works really well and is a lot of fun to play.
MULLET MAD JACK
This game looks amazing in motion, with a retro-cyberpunk anime style. A lot of fun to just run through levels killing everything as fast as possible. There’s also a lot of social commentary in here, too, from the robot billionaires that control the world to the livestream of your runs pumping dopamine into your system and extending your life. It’s not all that subtle.
Children of the Sun
Telekinetically bend your single rifle bullet to take out cult members. It’s a stylistic shooting puzzle game.
Harold Halibut 👍
An adventure game where you play as the titular Harold, unraveling a mystery aboard the Fedora 1, a spaceship crash-landed at the bottom of the ocean on an alien world. The art is amazing; the characters and environments are all hand-built and animated with stop motion. I might have to buy this one just to support the art.
TerraTech Worlds
I loved the original TerraTech, but based on the demo, I’m not sure how I feel about Worlds. It’s slower to start and some of the environmental effects are overly powerful early-game, like trees that shoot lightning and can instantly destroy your tech.
Tribes 3: Ascend
I want to like it, but the skiing feels too floaty and I find it practically impossible to hit anything that’s moving. Maybe it’s just latency, but with players (and the flag) jumping around so much, it’s difficult to have much fun.
Legend 🌟 A personal favorite. (Not necessarily for everyone.) ✔️ Beat the game. (🏆 if I got all the achievements) 👍 Recommended if you haven’t played it. 👎 Avoid it. It’s terrible.
PC
I played a lot of older games this year in an attempt to earn all their achievements. I think I did pretty well; I finished all achievements in 14 games.
Against the Storm👍🌟
The Riftbreaker👍✔️🏆 Bought the DLC toward the end of Steam’s winter sale. I still love Riftbreaker’s gameplay. Came back to the latest DLC after the Autumn sale and my opinion hasn’t changed: great action gameplay with base building.
Oxygen Not Included
Destiny 2 Season of the Seraph was a great end to The Witch Queen expansion that bid farewell to an old friend and set things up nicely for Lightfall. Lightfall was… Not great. Strand was a bit rough at the outset and the story revolved too much around the new power. The story left a lot of gaps open which was unsatisfying. The Season of Defiance was fine (nothing special), but the new exotic quest was fun and reintroduced a long-lost character. Season of the Deep helped with a lot of the story gaps Lightfall left open. The seasonal “Deep Dive” event was fantastic, introducing some “roguelike” features to make runs more interesting. Season of the Witch was another solid season, with an interesting story and fun activities. The roguelike features were used in the “Altars of Summoning” activity via the “Deck Of Whispers”, a set of cards with special effects that you could set up ahead of time and was drawn from for each encounter. Season of the Wish has an interesting story involving the Ahamkara, but thus far, the activities aren’t as interesting as those in Deep and Witch. This season is going to be stretching until June 2024, so hopefully it picks up some steam.
High on Life
Clanfolk
Arcade Paradise
Marvel’s Midnight Suns I like the card-battling combat, but hate most of the “RPG” stuff. Especially the “relationship” thing. Just makes the game take longer than it needs.
Patron ✔️🏆 Patron’s not bad, it’s just not that great.
GridMiner✔️🏆 A little space station building puzzle game I got at the end of last year. Good for a few hours of puzzle solving.
Creeper World 3: Arc Eternal I’ve always enjoyed the Creeper World series; each entry has been a solid tower defense game. I finished Creeper World 4 at the end of 2022 and decided to finish Creeper World 3 (which I had barely started). I’ve been working to finish out the achievements, but some of them are very grindy (build 10000 of something or collect 500 things).
Juno: New Origins I already owned Simple Rockets 2 in Early Access, and the name changed to Juno at launch. It’s an expansive game that’s as creative as Kerbal Space Program but more flexible and runs a lot better.
Siege Survival: Gloria Victis An interesting survival game where you take on the role of survivors during a medieval city siege. Manage food, water, and defenses for yourself and the bastion during the day, sneak into the city to scavenge by night. Pretty difficult.
Surviving the Aftermath 🏆 Came back to this one to finish out some new achievements. Picked up the DLCs on sale to get it back to 100%. Still a solid survival city builder.
Endzone: A World Apart 🏆 Like Surviving the Aftermath, I came back to this game to finish out achievements.
Nebuchadnezzar A old-school 2D city builder centered around the history of Mesopotamia. There’s historical context given before every campaign mission which I really enjoy. The campaign itself slowly introduces new mechanics over time.
Star Survivor A Vampire Survivors-like where you control a starship and slowly upgrade it over time. There’s a deck-building mechanic where your upgrades are drawn from a deck that you can upgrade over time. There’s also a campaign where you move across a map and finish with a boss fight. Your weapons are slotted in different quadrants on your ship which encourages some planning and requires positioning and aiming to hit targets. Plays OK on Steam Deck after some tinkering with controls, but I’m hoping for an update that gives it better controller support.
Phantom Brigade 👍 A tactical mech combat game. The “prediction engine” that shows you enemy movements and attacks allows you to play much more aggressively than similar games like XCOM or Battletech. There were many battles where careful planning let me finish off missions without a scratch, having my team dart in and out of cover just in time to dodge shots. After each round and after the battle, you can watch a replay of the action.
Mount & Blade II: Warband Been wanting to play this since I heard it was coming to Game Pass. I always loved Mount & Blade, and this one is more of the same. I had a slow start since I wasn’t entirely sure what to do early on. Once I became a mercenary for my preferred faction, things started getting interesting.
Strange Horticulture Bought during the Steam Puzzle Fest. It’s a weird one, but a lot of fun.
Jurassic World: Evolution 👍✔️🏆🌟 I’ve owned Jurassic World for a while, and with Jurassic World: Evolution 2 just released, I decided it was time to go back and finish the first one. It’s a solid dinosaur theme park game, with an actual campaign and objectives to complete. I’ve really enjoyed it.
Jurassic World: Evolution 2 👍✔️🏆🌟 As soon as I finished Jurassic World: Evolution, I went straight into playing Evolution 2. It’s much improved over the original, with some more detailed mechanics that make more sense. It’s much easier to have dinosaurs cohabitate now, and the addition of lagoons for sea dinos is great. I bought the big expansions (Biosyn and Malta) during a sale to finish out the achievements, and they both add some interesting new mechanics for the few missions they add.
Cliff Empire✔️🏆
Daemon X Machina Been watching it for a while, and it finally went on sale with a deep enough discount for me to bite. It’s like Armored Core Lite, with some decent customization and buildcrafting. Weird story that I didn’t care about, but the combat was fun. There’s a combat mechanic in the game I never really used because I didn’t feel I needed to. Getting the achievements is really grindy, but I enjoy the gameplay enough that it’s kept me hooked.
Superliminal A puzzle game in the vein of Portal, but is based around perception instead of portals. If you like Portal, you’d probably enjoy this one. It’s not a very difficult game, but it does require some out-of-the-box thinking in some areas.
Honey, I Joined A Cult ✔️🏆 Got this through May’s Humble Choice. Similar to Prison Architect, but it tends to work more like building a shopping mall: you have a bunch of rooms that “followers” come to and your cult members run, which produces income and influence, which you use to buy and research things. It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not sure it’s as fleshed out as it could be. There’s also a bunch of minor but annoying little bugs.
Banished ✔️🏆 Another oldie that I returned to in a quest for achievements. Still a great game, though the rough edges are a little more obvious since the genre has evolved so much. When things are going wrong, it’s often impossible to figure out why, and things can go wrong very quickly.
Before We Leave 👍✔️🌟🏆 Yet another game I came back to for achievements. I had forgotten how much I loved this game. While I had forgotten practically all the nuances of how to squeeze the most out of my towns, a lot of it came back pretty quickly. It’s also a relatively forgiving game, and the updates since the last time I played have smoothed out a few of the rough edges (for instance, it’s possible to remove Astrobaleenium now instead of having it permanently ruin an island). Great game, and it’s renewed my excitement for the sequel, Beyond These Stars.
Beyond Sol ✔️🏆 Another for achievements. I like a lot of what Beyond Sol tries to do, but unfortunately it gets boring pretty quickly.
Framed Collection 👍✔️🏆 I’ve played Framed on my iPad in the past but had never played Framed 2. It’s a unique puzzle game where you rearrange comic book-like frames to alter the story and allow the protagonist to escape.
Per Aspera 👍✔️🏆 Per Aspera has had several expansions since the last time I played, expanding the options available once Mars has oceans and adding new objectives for housing colonists. The DLCs also nicely close out some side storylines, which is nice.
Satisfactory Came back after Christmas to open the advent calendar. I need to rebuild a few factories due to updated recipes…
Death Must Die A bullet heaven game with some inspiration from Hades.
Dorf Romantik A cozy puzzle city-builder.
Dwarf Fortress The great granddaddy of survival city builders. I’ve wanted to play for a long time, but was turned off by the ASCII graphics and keyboard-only interface. The Steam version is much improved, but I’ve got a lot of learning to do before I really understand what I’m doing…
Songs of Conquest Picked up during the Steam Winter Sale. A great turn-based strategy game in the vein of Heroes of Might and Magic 3.
Solar Settlers A space exploration card game I’ve had my eye on for a while. A solid card game with very simple graphics.
A Little To The Left An organization puzzle game.
The Entropy Centre A puzzly FPS like Portal, just with a time-rewinding gun instead of a portal gun.
Trombone Champ Toot!
Board Games
Calico A cute game about making quilts and having cats curl up on them.
Habitats Build habitats for animals in your preserve while competing with other players for animals, environments, and amenities. Pretty easy to play.
Gaia Project
Point Salad
Canvas
Theomachy: The Warrior Gods I’ve owned this for a while and finally got around to playing it. It’s essentially Texas Hold’em where you play gods and bet your worshippers, with some deckbuilding and combat mechanics. We enjoyed it, but the god abilities can be extremely unbalanced.
Evolution I’ve owned this for a while; bought it after playing the digital version and enjoying it. Some of the rule adjustments for two players seemed to make things pretty unbalanced, though. I had an intelligent carnivore early on and was able to pretty easily pick off other creatures by disabling their abilities. Since the two-player rules limit you to two traits per creature, there was little to be done to stop that sort of attack.
Maglev Metro 👍 Great little engine builder where you build rail lines and transport passengers.
Earth 👍🌟 My board game of the year. An easy to understand tableau building game. There are lots of ways to score, and despite my wife and I playing very differently and striving for different objectives, our scores were only three points apart: she won 199-196.
Exploration 👎 I got Exploration a few years ago from a Kickstarter. I had heard it wasn’t very good, but rulebook updates improved it a bit. After playing, I can say that the initial rulebook is terrible: there are icons everywhere and the rulebook doesn’t even explain what they mean. The newer rulebooks available online were better, but still don’t fix what seems to be a broken game. The components are great, but the gameplay is sorely lacking.
Galaxy Trucker I’ve owned Galaxy Trucker for a long time, and after seeing the opportunity to get Fit to Print from a Kickstarter for a different game (Point City), my wife wanted to try the game before I purchased Fit to Print. We played further than I think I ever have in Galaxy Trucker: two rounds. It’s still a lot of fun, I just always feel satisfied after a single round. Anyway, great game.
City Hall Played for a final time before deciding to sell. It’s not a bad game, just not for me.
Cowboy Bebop: Space Serenade I’m always skeptical of games based on a popular IP, but this one had good reviews and I’ve always enjoyed Cowboy Bebop. It’s a deck-builder with character powers and “coop-etition” gameplay: you work together to take out bounties but want the most fame to win at the end. The game ends with a “boss fight” of sorts against Vicious. Quick, easy to play, and great art (mostly straight from the show).
Assembly A cooperative puzzle game with limited communication. A lot of fun. My wife and I barely managed to make it out alive.
Hero Realms Another game I’ve owned for a while. It’s basically a fantasy Star Realms with optional character classes. It’s fun, but it also plays almost exactly like Star Realms.
Tiny Epic Vikings I’ve heard this is basically a small version of Blood Rage. I haven’t played Blood Rage, but I enjoyed moving my tiny Viking ships and meeples around.
Tiny Epic Galaxies I’ve owned Tiny Epic Galaxies for a long time and never had the opportunity to play it. Finally played with my wife and it was a lot of fun. Very easy to play with a very light 4X style.
Fences: The Ranch My wife loves Fences; it’s basically a lighter version of Carcassonne with cute little farm animals. The Ranch adds a series of small expansions that can be combined to add some more depth to the game, and it definitely accomplishes that goal: the game is significantly improved with the extra options. I also liked that it came in a big box to contain the entire original game and organize things neatly.
Healing Blade: Defenders of Soma👍 Another game I’ve owned for years and never played. I think I held off for so long because I was worried I wouldn’t enjoy it, but it turns out it’s a pretty good asymmetrical card battler. One player plays “The Pestilence”, attacking villagers with diseases; the other player takes the role of “The Apothecary Healers”, defending the villagers from those diseases. There’s an educational aspect to the game: all the diseases and defenders are personified versions of actual diseases and medications. There are only a certain number of rounds, and early on, the defenders have an advantage because they can easily defeat any disease. But as defenders are used, they unlock resistances for the Pestilence player, which can be used to limit the Apothecary’s options. There’s a decent amount of depth and strategy, and it feels like the game accurately portrays the real-world battle against bacteria and drug resistance. I played Pestilence and ended up winning in the final round with a tetracycline-, cephalosporin-, and penicillin-resistant strain of syphilis.
Globetrotting A game about planning trips around the globe, with miniature globes you get to write on. It’s pretty fun and the components make it unique. There’s some competition for goals, but otherwise there’s little player interaction.
The Fox in The Forest
Hadrian’s Wall👍
Arkham Horror: The Card Game
Tiny Epic Dungeons
Fit To Print 👍 It’s like the spaceship-building part at the start of Galaxy Trucker, but that’s the entire game. It’s easy to play with some great artwork and funny headlines and ads. Played well at 2 and 4 players.
Deep Dive
Point City 👍 Backed this one on Kickstarter because I enjoyed Point Salad so much. Just like Salad, it’s a quick and easy-to-play city builder. Fun and colorful.
Compounded: The Peer-Reviewed Edition My wife bought me the original Compounded for my birthday (and crushed me when we played), and we always enjoyed it. You collect elements like Carbon and Oxygen to create compounds like water or carbon dioxide to score points. The Peer-Reviewed Edition cleans up a lot of the artwork and makes things a lot clearer. Unfortunately, it also uses some slightly altered rules so I need to play them back-to-back to determine which version I like better…
Moon 👍 A city-builder on the moon with wacky buildings (your city can have a taco truck). Great artwork. Another one that’s easy to play.
Roll For The Galaxy I love this one but my wife hadn’t played it, so we finally managed to get it to the table between all the new games. Still doesn’t disappoint.
Sanssouci 👍 From the designer of Azul (one of my wife’s favorite games), where you’re a designer planning the garden around the titular Sanssouci Palace. You select and lay tiles on your garden board and try to create a path for nobles at the top of each column to travel down.
Tiny Epic Pirates
Cascadia 👍
Patchwork (Halloween Edition) This is a tradition on our anniversary: we play the Patchwork Halloween Edition and my wife crushes me.
The Search for Planet X👍 An app-based deduction game. A lot of fun and pretty easy to play.
Jaipur A very fast-playing set-collection game where you’re competing to be invited to the maharaja’s court. It’s a great small-box two-player game.
Takenoko That little panda is adorable.
Magic Maze A hectic real-time heist game with no communication. Took us a few tries to get the hang of it.
Roll Player 👍 I’ve wanted this game for a while and picked it up on sale. A fun dice-rolling game where you’re building a tabletop RPG character. The randomness leads to some characters I’d never actually create or play, like my Orc Wizard craftsman, who lost to my wife’s Dragonkin Ranger hunter.
Great Western Trail👍 Another one I picked up on sale. I’d heard good things about this game years ago, but I’m not typically into the western theme. The gameplay is really solid, though, and I had a great time delivering my cows.
Tiny Epic Crimes Can be played competitively or cooperatively. Played cooperatively with my wife, and we won on a coin flip, having narrowed the murderer down to two options. The game felt slightly too short; another turn or two would have given us the evidence we needed to know for sure.
Lords of Waterdeep 👍 Been a long time since I’ve played this, but it was my wife’s first time. I remembered enjoying it, and a replay confirmed my recollection. Still a great game.
Project L 👍🌟 A board game where you get to play a lot of little games of Tetris. A lot of fun and very easy to play.
The Fox Experiment👍 Another great game from Elizabeth Hargrave. Breeding fox pups to create the friendliest pups. Naming the pups you create is a nice touch; I was always upset when the artificial third player blocked one of my pups so I couldn’t pick them.
Ceres A worker-placement game about mining the asteroid belt. There are a lot of different ways to earn points, which sometimes makes it difficult to know what to do next.
Space Base A game I’ve been interested in for a while. The first play annoyed me a bit; it was a little too random; unlucky rolls early in the game gave my wife an early lead which kind of snowballed. I want to try it again before I give up on it, but I wish there was some better roll mitigation.
Railroad Ink Played with my brother and his wife to make sure they enjoyed it before gifting it to them.
I’ve been playing Starfield practically non-stop since the early release on September 1st. After 200 hours, I feel like I’ve seen most of what Starfield offers, so it’s probably time for a review.
Here’s the short version: I love it.
Preparing for Launch
Let’s start with some assumptions and expectations I had going into the game:
First off, this is a Bethesda RPG. While Starfield is a new IP with its own style, there are definitely parts that feel like The Elder Scrolls or Fallout. Like those other games, there’s a big open world, plenty of places to explore, people to talk to, quests to complete. For me, those are all selling points. I also expected to spend most of the game over-encumbered.
The game Starfield keeps getting compared to is No Man’s Sky. I also love No Man’s Sky, but there are some valid criticisms that apply to both games. Those criticisms generally boil down to: space is big and boring. But if you find the journey itself exciting, then you’ll enjoy this type of game.
The live action teaser for Starfield did a great job of setting up my expectations: this is a game about exploration and discovery. If you’re expecting high action and excitement at every turn, this is not your game.
Into The Starfield
While I tried to keep my hope and excitement to a minimum before release, I found it difficult. I pre-ordered the premium edition so I could start playing early. I had the entire week off (by coincidence – I had to use up some vacation time), so I was ready to dig in. And what I got largely met my expectations.
Starfield drops you into the story right away, and like all Bethesda RPGs, you’re left to your own devices after a few short objectives. After arriving at the Lodge and officially joining Constellation, I explored New Atlantis and ended up joining the Vanguard, which was the first major questline that I spent time completing. I highly recommend joining the Vanguard early, as there’s a museum of sorts that details the background of the game (though biased from the United Colony’s perspective).
Breaking Ground
After spending some time in the Vanguard questline, I decided to work on building an outpost. I spent several hours exploring a few planets for a good area to start in, and eventually settled on an area with a decent mix of starting resources; I didn’t find exactly what I wanted, but I had spent hours trying to find a good spot and decided it was time to move on. The initial outpost building is pretty basic; I’ve only recently unlocked the skills needed to start expanding on my outposts, so it’ll be some time before I’ve learned what’s possible. For now, it’s at least handy to gather some of the rarer resources.
The time I spent exploring wasn’t wasted, however. The generated surfaces in Starfield vary from barren to lush, with various landmarks scattered around. Sometimes this makes planets appear overly populated, with abandoned outposts scattered around every planet and moon you land on. However, these landmarks provide a little fun while exploring random areas – you get the chance to fight off pirates, scour abandoned bases, or find unique planetary features. (You also get a little XP for every one you find.)
Grand Theft Spaceship
While exploring one area, I saw a ship land in the distance and approached to find a group of colonists. Out of curiosity, I approached the landing bay of their ship, picked the lock, then headed to the bridge and took off. I immediately felt guilty and reloaded, but I had a new goal: find a ship full of baddies and take it.
After another hour or two of exploring, a Va’ruun Zealot ship landed nearby; after killing the landing party, picking the lock on the landing bay, and fighting my way to the bridge, I had a fancy new ship to fly. I spent some time sprucing it up and giving it a new paint job, and this became my ship for the majority of the game. (I spent hundreds of thousands of credits on it, upgrading and customizing it as I leveled.)
My ship through the majority of my first playthrough.
I’ve boarded and taken several other ships this way, sometimes with the pilot taking off after I’ve boarded. One time, I boarded a ship, the pilot launched, and the ship was destroyed in space by security forces and I instantly died. I was amazed that whole sequence was even possible.
Finding a new ship relatively early is important in Starfield. The Frontier, while being a decent starter ship, is terrible at everything: it can’t carry much cargo, it’s weapons aren’t very good, and it has a starter grav drive and fuel tank. Luckily, there are several questlines that award ships. (Though by the time I got those rewards, I had already upgraded my stolen ship into exactly what I wanted.)
All Systems Go
Speaking of picking locks, I think some of the minigames in Starfield are the best they’ve ever been. The lockpicking minigame is more of a puzzle, where you’re given a set of picks and have to line them up with the gaps in the lock. The persuasion minigame gives you a set of statements you can make to the target to influence them, and you only succeed if you accumulate enough “points” with your statements. Other social skills can factor into the statements you have available, like you can use your “Manipulation” skills for easy points. It’s far better than the simple numeric checks in past games.
All Aboard
Aside from all the systems, the gameplay, and the quests, there are a lot of characters in Starfield that you interact with. I was enamored with the Constellation group and their joy of exploration. It’s one of the major reasons I love Starfield: it’s not always about action and excitement; sometimes it’s about the simple joy of discovery. This was true of No Man’s Sky, but in Starfield, you’ve got a crew with you that’s just as excited about it as you are.
My personal favorite member of Constellation is Vladimir Sall, who spends his time stargazing from The Eye. His piratey turns of phrase make me smile every time I hear them (even after hearing them over and over).
There are also plenty of random encounters throughout the game that are a joy to experience, from a pilot who sings sea shanties over comms to the Starfield equivalent of robocalls.
I’m also lucky enough to have my name be one that Vasco can greet, so I get to hear “Captain Shawn” occasionally as I return to my ship.
And since I’m a giant nerd, I love that several actors in the voice cast are from Star Trek. Armin Shimerman (Quark from DS9) as Water Stroud is great, but I especially love that Nana Visitor (Kira from DS9) and Tim Russ (Tuvok from Voyager) are my mom and dad.
Space Bugs
I hit this poor guy’s boost pack indoors.
There was a lot of talk of Starfield being Bethesda’s “most stable” and “most bug-free” game, and I can only think of a handful of bugs I’ve encountered in my entire time with the game. Maybe I’m just lucky, but aside from the odd physics hilarity (like bodies launching into the air), I haven’t experienced many problems. The one annoying bug I’m encountering now is an elevator in The Well in New Atlantis that has stopped working for me.
There are a handful of skill rank objectives that are poorly worded or misguiding, but once you figure out exactly what you need to do (or look it up online), they’re relatively easy to understand.
I think my only other complaint is with shipbuilding. I love how well it works, but I wish I had control over where doors were connected. While I love my ships, I hate that I have to design them a certain way to keep them navigable. If I try to add walkways to make things easily accessible, the game turns my ship into a maze of corridors.
Summary
Overall, I’ve been really happy with Starfield. Sure, there are some annoyances and minor bugs. But overall, it’s a great game. The main questlines are a lot of fun with some great stories. Some of the random side quests feel like they’re straight out of an episode of Star Trek. I can role play as Malcolm Reynolds or become a pirate.
There are really only a few things that I’d really like to see added to the game, and most of those things are ship parts: I’d like to see components that give us stairs to move between levels and ways to better control my internal ship layout. I also wish the player housing had something to make it worthwhile (like unlimited storage), and I wish I could fast-travel directly to my homes.
I also wish there was some way to re-spec my character. The end of the main questline lets you essentially “reset” the game and play again, but there doesn’t appear to be any way to change your character background. I wish there was a way to change my background and traits just to get access to some of the different dialog options.
But all my issues are relatively minor, so I’m hoping to see things expanded in patches and DLC. I’m excited to see how Starfield grows with both official and unofficial content, and if it’s anything like Skyrim, Starfield should have a long life ahead of it.
This Next Fest includes some demos for games I’ve eager to play, so without further ado…
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor
A Vampire Survivors-like in the Deep Rock Galactic universe. These games are all pretty similar, but I like the shorter levels in this one; makes it easier to pick up and play for a few minutes. Being able to mine through the level to create new paths keeps things interesting.
Foundry
A voxel factory-building game. Starts off pretty slow, and the demo doesn’t get very far. It’s got potential.
Terminator: Dark Fate – Defiance
A fairly standard tactical RTS in the Terminator universe. It’s not bad, but it didn’t really hook me.
Pioneers of Pagonia
It’s basically classic Settlers, down to the little border stones that your guards place to extend your borders. Settlers III is one of my favorite games, so I’m definitely looking forward to this one.
Sentry
It’s basically sci-fi themed Orcs Must Die! The demo is pretty basic, with only two levels and a handful of weapons and items to use. This is another one that has some potential.
The Crust
The Crust looks interesting; a mix of Surviving Mars, Factorio, and a little Frostpunk. There are surface and underground layers for construction, and a layer with points of interest around the moon that you can send expeditions to investigate. It’s a little clunky at the moment, but if it gets cleaned up a bit, I could see myself enjoying it.
Ascent of Ashes
A colony sim like RimWorld. It looks OK, but the demo performance was really bad… Once my colony got raided, the game turned to a slideshow.
Poems and Codes
I played a demo for Prose and Codes a while back and thoroughly enjoyed it. (I really need to buy that game…) Both Poems and Prose use public works, and 10% of sales go to support Project Gutenberg. Poems is a little nicer than Prose, with some extra information about the poets and links to Project Gutenberg to download works.
Last Train Home
An interesting historical strategy survival game where you lead your soldiers across war-torn Russia during World War I. There’s an overworld map where you maintain and upgrade your train, and send your troops out on missions to gather resources. The tactical combat is pretty good. I enjoyed it.
Celestial Empire
An Ancient Chinese city builder. It looks nice, but some things during the tutorial are unexplained and I had to figure out what I was supposed to do on my own.
Europa
A pleasant little adventure game. Controls are a little weird on mouse and keyboard; it’s probably better with a controller.
Gunhead
A fun shooter that reminds me a lot of MOTHERGUNSHIP.
Summary
I always find a few games I enjoy in the Next Fest events, and this one is no different. I’m really looking forward to Pioneers of Pagonia, and I’ll likely own Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor at some point because I love that type of game. I’m hoping The Crust improves because it’s certainly something I’d be into if they can improve some of the basics.
