You Are Not the Hero - Alpha Impressions

It is not everyday I see a new game that makes me want to play it now, let alone makes me want to pledge to Kickstarter. I've only ever supported 2 Kickstarter games. Sometimes when I'm not playing games I visit Steam's Greenlight section to see what developers are working on in the indie world. The title alone is what drew me to check out this game. Which is good because these days most RPGs have pretty much the same premise. You and a merry band of heroes go on an altruistic quest to save the world. We've seen it all before, except this is not what this game is about.

In You Are Not the Hero you play a young woman, named Petula who is an NPC. That's right, you play a non-playable character. You're in your house sleeping and a bunch of heroes come in and ransack your place stealing all your items while they go on their quest. Unfortunately, they've stolen your family heirloom necklace and you want it back.

You aren't here to save the world, or to vanquish evil. All you want is your necklace back from those thieving scavenger 'heroes' who think that because they're going to save the world it gives them the right to break into your home and steal your personal belongings. The concept is so logical it's funny, refreshing and a nice change of pace from all the other clique shenanigans that most RPGs are known for. It's not even complete but definitely keep a look out for this unique RPG experience.

As you go through your own adventure albeit not as grandiose as the heroes you're chasing you will have to do mundane tasks such as rescue villagers, light torches and build bridges. All the while interacting with the other NCPs and their inane requests. Each chapter has a set of requirements for Petula to master and you're even able to retry previously completed chapters anytime in your journey to get a better score. So replayability is high and doesn't require you to play through the game from the start. I tried the demo and overall thought it was pretty good for a pre-alpha build and I'm looking forward to this game's development.

This game is currently in the pre-alpha stage of development.

Try the pre-alpha demo
Back this title on Kickstarter
Vote for this game on Steam Greenlight

Unholy Heights - Bringing Together an Unholy Alliance of Management Sim and RPG

At first glance I wasn't sure what to make of this game but I tried it because I'm secretly a fan of management sims. The premise looks simple. You're the devil and you own an apartment complex. Various monsters need a place to live so they fill in vacancies in your building. Every now and then a hero or 2 comes along wanting to vanquish the devil. So you can ask your residents to fight intruders. Now that we have a general idea about what this game is about.

To add another layer you have the management aspect in which you have to buy items for your monsters to keep them happy. You also have control over the rent they pay and if your residents are happy their stats will raise making them stronger and of course your status among the monster races will rise allowing you to recruit higher tier monsters for your kingdom / building. Your main goal is to get as many tenants as possible and to make a profit. Further emphasizing that goal is that the heroes who come searching for a fight never actually try to kill the Devil. They usually just end up robbing you and killing the tenants who were foolish enough to get in their way.

When you aren't getting robbed by 'heroes' and residents aren't skipping out on the rent you might see love blossom among your monsters as they find a mate, move them in and have little monster children.You can even buy them items such as erotic cakes to help them out a bit. Now it's not all sunshine and rainbows as it's very difficult to make all the monster classes like the Devil. Your popularity between the different monster classes influences the types of creatures willing to rent a room. Some hate living near other monster classes, or dislike it when you let other residents die and of course if you don't give them a comfortable place to live. In all the devil has a tough job in juggling his residents and vanquishing heroes business so there's no shortage of things to and can be a bit of a challenge trying to please everyone.

Gameplay: (^__^) - This game is pretty casual, easy to play, tough to master. The mechanics are fairly simple and that's a good thing as you will no doubt learn different strategies on how to handle hoards of people coming to disrupt your peaceful apartment and tenants who have all sorts of quirky demands. The user interface is straightforward as well. I do wish there was more you can do in terms of monsters not getting along with each other. It seems like they just mention how they don't like other types but that doesn't prevent them from fighting on the same side. I don't know, I just guess it was a missed opportunity for more conflict.

Graphics: ^__^ - The developer kept it simple and it works. But it's nice that in your one screen you can get changing weather which a few of your monsters will have an affinity to certain weather types. The game's interface tells you everything you need to know. But for a one screen game it doesn't get boring.

Sound: ^__^ - The music is good. Although the sound effect of certain actions, like monster mating can get a bit annoying. But stuff like thunder and lightning weather sound solid.

Overall: ^__^ - I find this game fun and highly addictive. You'll spend hours playing this game trying to get that next powerful monster to take up a room, Attempting various hero quests challenges your monster's defenses. And expand your empire while trying to keep from getting robbed. It's nothing revolutionary in terms of gameplay but it is different, refreshing and mildly entertaining.

Buy It on: Steam

Saturday Morning RPG - Not Another Nostalgia Game!!

Don't let my title fool you. This game fascinated me at PAX East. I must have played it for an hour. I had no clue what it was about but I want to buy it. Sure everything about it makes me nostalgic for a childhood I haven't experienced in a while but that's exactly why you'd want to buy it. It was back in April when I started this review. Instead of writing a first impression pieceI knew the developer was releasing on PC so I kept tabs on the port development for the past 5 months. I don't have it on iOS and won't be getting an Ouya anytime soon so I was really excited when I saw this on Steam Greenlight.

For a while the developer went pretty much radio silent everywhere about progress and that made me apprehensive that this game would even be completed for PC release but if I've posted this review that means by some divine intervention this was finally released for PC. Even more miraculous is that I still decided to buy it after constant empty release date promises from the developer. If you are a developer reading this blog please know that gamers will love you more if you communicate with your audience. Contrast is being released a whole year after it was Greenlit on Steam but the fans didn't mind too much because the development team constantly responded and kept us that were interested in the loop.

Now onto the game.

The nostalgia aspect is bleeding through the ears in this title. From the moment you launch an episode you see an old analog TV with the blue tracking VCR screen. Then you're given a magical Trapper Keeper notebook and the list goes on and on. This game doesn't just make old video game and TV references from the 90s. It makes full blown life parodies of my childhood. A nice thing about this game is it doesn't sacrifice gameplay for comedy or parody.

There are about 4 to 5 episodes. Episode 1 was a little more than an hour. It has full controller support and you can switch between keyboard and 360 control on the fly. I noticed to get the controller buttons to show up in the menus you have to manually apply it in the settings. This is something you'll have to set each time you play or else the game thinks you're playing with a keyboard and during mini games in the fight sequence it becomes a guessing game of which button is bound to what key. It's not a game breaker, just a mild annoyance.

Now on to the fight sequences. This game uses a turn based fight system. Your character, Marty, has pretty weak basic attacks so I find myself normally charging up the multiplier before issuing an attack. That way you are bound to kill at least 1 enemy in a single shot. So what ends up happening is you'll just charge and spam special attacks, rinse and repeat. Thank goodness there's 3 ways to charge up. You've got a button masher charge, gauge based and auto-charge, which doesn't give as big a multiplier as the other two. This is great as button mashing can get very tiring in a short while.

Fighting becomes more of a tedious repetitive thing as you only have so many abilities available per match. There is a cheat menu if you pause during battle but considering purchasing cheats is disabled I'm guessing it was a leftover from the iOS version that someone forgot to edit out the PC version.

Each chapter's story is self contained and loosely has anything to do with the previous. Marty is mainly fighting the army of his nemesis Commander Hood but he faces various problems and dangers in each episode. The locations are just as varied as the missions. You'll be in a cave trying to stop a wedding in one episode to school then riding around town to stop the sinister plan of just about everything that threatens your home of Shadow Valley. This small town is prone to as much danger as Sunnydale (Buffy reference) and you're the only one capable of saving it.

Graphics: (^__^) - You know there's something to be said about a game that uses 8 bit characters with a rich and vibrant 3D rendered environment. Not exactly sure what but it's pretty damn beautiful. The developers did well to not go overboard with the retro style graphics. It sets it apart from all the other full blown retro parodies out there.

Controls: ^__^ - I enjoy playing a game with controller support but also can switch to keyboard on the fly. Now if the devs could fix the interface to automatically show gamepad buttons instead of keyboard controls in the menus I'd be set. Other than that the game responds beautifully and makes intuitive use of a simple layout.

Overall: (^__^) - Yes this game is a port but is was done well and I think this makes a better PC game than iOS any day. It just happened to be made for iOS first. What you've got in this neat package is a game full of 90s nostalgia, parodies, funny dialog, chock full of achievements and it has an Endless and Arena mode to add another level of gameplay after you're done with the main story. Giving you more reasons to go back after you've played through the main episodes.

Buy it Now: Desura, DRM Free
Vote for it on Steam Greenlight