Going with nature

Into the breach by Subset Games

Riding the edge. One slip and everything can come crumbling down around you. If you’re not careful, this game will cut you as you stumble. You’ll love it for it all the more.

Into the breach is a wonderful exercise in carefully managed design synergy between all aspects of the game coming together to make the game what it is. The game is a tactical grid based game where the player has 3 mechs to control and use spatially controlling moves to render the enemy inactive or harmless to the best of their abilities.

There’s a lot of intricate aspects to this game that leave the possibilities of what types of situations you can get into wide open. Lets dissect this game a little because I have my surgeons gloves on and I love doing this. This game is by no means perfect, but it does so much right that it’d be a shame for me to just talk about it without gleaning a couple lessons from it.

The first thing that I always like in tactical games like this is the usage of low numbers. When every point of damage has a large impact, each move is weighed heavily. This is because the lee way for mistakes is very low. Taking a stray hit will only increase the burden, it’s impossible not to feel the impact. With a game like this, I feel like that was a very smart choice since everything is weaved around these small numbers creating a very tight experience that couldn’t be replicated had the numbers on everything been raised.

I also really enjoyed the usage of creating tiles that have to be carefully worked around. This creates problems for the player since they can’t use their moves as they please without collateral damage. What ends up happening, is that these moves become constraints for the player. Any artist will tell you constraints are the soil of creativity and the same can be said for this aspect of the game. The fact that the usage of moves is limited spatially requires the player to come up with creative solutions for the spatial problems they define. I say problems they define due to the fact that if the player is willing to take damage, things change and shift fluidly. Lovely.

Unfortunately this game has a few issues, the major one being how the progression of the game is handled. The way the game works is there are 4 islands (around 4-5) levels in each and one final battle for the player to partake in. Each time, they get rewards and ways to augment their fighters and thats about it. Which is fine, its fun, but seeing as how the randomness is used in maps and items gotten, I suspect that it was meant to sustain interest in a way that it currently doesn’t. The problem is that the game is so tightly designed, that the randomness feels like its straining against its own design groundwork. In the sense that the game wants to provide new spatial challenges, but due to the low amount of space to work with (8x8 tiles and restrictions on how far moves can be pushed) situations never end up feeling fresh. You get a consistent experience that is never quite the same, yes, but it has a strong sense of dejavu ingrained into it.

FUCKING AMAZING UI. Seriously, good job. I’ve been working on a 7x5 tile based game for the past year and the ui is the hardest part of it so I have much respect for what’s been pulled off here.

Overall, Into the breach is a wonderful game that’s a wonderful showcase of very considered design. However, the game feels like it sags underneath its own weight of trying to encompass randomness and longevity into its design. 8/10

Orb by Droqen

Every time I think I have a grasp on creepy, something comes up and fucking dunks my shitty rutted thinking and shows me the light. Orb happened to be one of those games.

It’s a basic platformer, you move left and right and can jump around. What makes this game so interesting though, are these orbs that you can find hanging around the place. If you pick one up, you can jump about one tile higher. However, when you grab one a little spirit appears. Laughing at you. Then it disappears. Not entirely, you can track in via little tiles that light up as it gets closer to those tiles, but you have no other way of knowing where it is.

What this ends up doing is creating a sense of tensions that had be gritting my teeth as I went through this game. I knew I was always being followed, sometimes I saw the tiles light up. But I never knew where the danger was exactly, so I always was left with a vague sense of impending doom. I hated it. I loved it.

This game didn’t have any sound, which I don’t really ever like. I enjoy having the developer giving a direction of the atmosphere in all aspects, but thats my personal choice. On the games page, it encourages using your own music to play the game so that’s just a part of the experience that didn’t click with me.

The art style does add a sense of gloominess to it I really enjoyed. It just felt mouldy and ancient. Which was perfect.

The intro was also very interesting. It created a level structure very quickly that I adjusted to instantly. Very soon after that, the game throws that all out the window. I believe this also helped add to the feeling of the game feeling “Wrong” somehow.

Great experience, worth checking out 7/10

Calm Time by Ivan Zanotti and RevoLab games

Calm time is amazing. Period. I wish this game came up more in horror game conversations because it does something I don’t see many other horror experiences embrace, and I’ll be talking about that a bit.

Ahh this game does so much right! You are hosting a dinner party, chatting it up and having a good time. Yadda etc and so forth, you start killing party members. The lights cut out. The grounds are plunged into darkness and you must hunt down all those that try running away. Perfect.

What I love so much about this game is how it forces an unsettling feeling on you, not because of the atmosphere (it helps) but because of how the juxtaposition of one goal (helping make the party more lovely) to another (kill all those who are running away) create a extreme feelings in the player as they settle into both of these roles willingly one after the other.

Using the two to compare each other in the context of each other heightens the insanity of the mindset the game puts you in. Wonderful.

This game isn’t without its problems mind you (no game is because duh) such as hunting down the last few party members being a little difficult and throwing off the rhythm if you aren’t able to get lucky on your hunts. 

I also, personally, have mixed feelings about the way the ghost was used. I’m not sure if the game would have been better with or without it. But I feel conflicted and I just felt that was worth saying.

Overall, calm time is a game that will forever stick out in my mind as one of the most inventive horror games I’ve ever played. It stuck its execution with flair 8/10

Zineth by ArcaneKids

An oldie but a goodie. Zineth is a game all about flow and manages to do it all with a sense of style that it, to this day, has claimed all for itself.

This game is a bit of an oddity, meaning that the goals for the game are very loose. I’ve played this game multiple times over the years and I have never quite gotten what I was meant to do. It’s never stopped me from playing for long periods at a time.

It’s all about the flow. All I’ve ever wanted from this game was to never be stopped, to never hit a wall, to never slow down. That means finding your groove and wall jumping, grinding, and flying through the sky to infinite speed.

Thats something really important this game has going for it, technically the speed limit is infinite. this creates a sense of always being able to go a little bit fast if you were just a little bit more smooth with your movement. It’s a really fun reward cycle.

Unfortunately, I think that the looseness of the game structure is always what makes me leave it. I run out of self driven things to do and I quit. It’s a sandbox more than anything else, which is fine, it just means that I lose interest when I’m not giving my interest.

The game also has a few moments where the controls are a little finicky, however those happened to be when speed was very low. It's apparent this game was tuned to make speed feel good, not being stuck at rest.

The art style was a little mindblowing too when I first played this. The game is popping with color! I think it might be a little too saturated for my own tastes but it's still refreshing none the less.

This was a fun game but the lack of structure makes it fall a little flat 7/10

Going with nature

Is the acorn or the oak tree the beginning?

Something I feel that it would be very beneficial for game developers to learn is the art of cycles. Where one thing leads into another which leads into itself. A never ending loop of motion.

This is the art of the seasons. This is the art of the moon and sun. This is the art of the clouds, fires, waters, and mountains.

Designing in this way creates a sense of nature. Of awe. Making a game in line with the processes of natural processes cultivates this.

How is this done?

I don't know.

It's very difficult. It takes a great deal of observation and self awareness.

You must be able to look at your game honestly and I don't know many people willing to call their games shit if they are shit.

You must broaden your horizons, take in what is useful and throw away what is not.

Most importantly, you must learn to express yourself honestly. Not in the act of creating the game, that's not important. You must learn to express yourself while playing your games. To feel the game fully. You must feel the motion the game you are making gives you.

If you feel nothing, you are not inline with nature. You are nature and can only be aligned with nature.