As for early access: So far the game offers the first chapter with roughly twelve hours of gameplay and is pretty stable already. The only bug I encountered was some chopped off music at a certain scene. The devs want community feedback on how to continue development on the last stretch. If you don't plan to get involved, you might consider waiting for full release. How to best describe this game: It is to Elder Scrolls what Necromunda Hired Gun is to Doom. It's obvious where the game got its inspiration from, but it brings enough own content to have its own identity and brings new ideas to the table. The lore is set in grimdark early British mythology, with king Arthur and druids and all. You start as the classic clean slate prisoner, as there are no classes and you level up skills by doing. The skill tree has been streamlined, and you only have two schools of magic now. To make up for that, the actual combat was improved from the classic TES "step forward to hit the enemy, step back to avoid getting hit back" formula. You now have a sidestep, some time-related cantrips and can pull off some neat combos. It still is somewhat clunky, but already an improved experience compared to the original. So far the characters and quests range from unremarkable to intriguing. The choices are advertised to matter, whether that actually happens remains to be seen in 1.0. The wyrdness as both a story and a game mechanic is not entirely new, but still well-integrated. Graphics are passable. The sound is pretty great though, eery druidic chants or horns with lots of bass. Clubbing an unarmored enemy head gives. satisfying THONK, so that's neat. In conclusion so far very promising, will continue to monitor.
Early Access out of the way, should you get it now? There is plenty of content already, so you won't be bored until the 10-15 hour mark. There still are plenty of bugs, but none gamebreaking. The game is mostly missing side content, as the main quest is already implemented. Overall this game is a farming sim with a focus on exploration in the tropical Caribbean-like setting and tourism. You are able to explore different islands and earn money by making the archipelago a tourist spot and selling your wares to tourists. You can build crops, tend to animals and build a farm, but can also automate it later on in order to fully concentrate on exploration. There is a survival element to it, as you have to manage food, drink and sleep. Apart from that you have other farming sim classics like mines, fishing minigames, a town with townsfolk, and festivals. The main difference is the availability of other islands that you can travel to, explore for riches and free from pirate control via combat. The artstyle is cutesy and uses lots of warm colours. The music is fitting for the setting, but won't stick in your head. My only gripes are the astounding size of the maps (getting from your farm to the town on foot will take four or five ingame hours) and the somewhat shallow social system. Conversation with villagers is deeper than just talking to them once a day, as you have multiple answer options and have to pick the right option for friendships to deepen. But with not even 15 villagers the huge main island feels pretty barren, and there's not much you can actually do with them yet. If you want a game focusing on the social sim, try out World's Dawn instead, or maybe wait until this game comes out of early access. Overall it's a great game if you're looking for a chill farming and islandhopping experience. I haven't been this excited for an early access farming sim since Portia.
My personal regrettable purchase of 2020 over on Steam. This is a story sequel to XCOM 2, but an entirely different genre. This is probably best described as a puzzle game with some tactical elements and RPG mechanics. The gameplay loop consists of your team breaching a room or otherwise closed-off area, entering bullet time, and solving a turn-based puzzle of killing the baddies and clearing the room. Rinse and repeat in the next room. The gameplay is not terrible, but it's sadly not exactly good either, and it gets repetetive really fast. Unfortunately this is the strongest point of the game. The story starts with a promising concept (baddies from XCOM 2 leave, leaving hybrids and the problem of integrating them behind) but falls flat in the execution with a completely predictable "baddies want to kill all nonhumans, let's stop them with the power of friendship" narrative. The characters are now center of the story (so there now is no permadeath), terribly one-dimensional because they are exclusively defined by two or three character traits each, and especially the dialogue is just cringy. It's clear that someone tried to recreate colonial marines from Aliens, but didn't understand their social dynamic and just created Mean Girls with guns. Graphics and Music are par for the XCOM course. Not special either way. Overall don't bother unless you are really a fan of the series, or are in a serious slump. For everyone else, the gameplay itself can be fairly enjoyable if you manage to shoot the game for five bucks or less.
I described The Coma Recut as an at times clunky throwback to Clock Tower. The Coma 2 improved all the clunky bits and polished the game formula. It's still a 2D survival horror game, but instead of one school you now explore different areas of town. You can't fight enemies, but you get more opportunities to distract them or slow them down. You also have different light sources that make them feasible to use. While there still is a permanent sense of danger, it's less claustrophobic as you are able and expected to cover a lot more ground. Every area now has optional objectives that influence later progression. You still have to mainly rely on your sense of hearing to avoid the big bad, but it's being supported by some new enemy types. Visual assets are still neatly hand-drawn and feel alive. The music is everything between eery and calming, although it won't stick in your head after putting it down. The story is a direct continuation from a certain end of The Coma Recut with a former side character picking up the role of protagonist. Both old and new characters make an appearance. All in all it's a pretty good story, although it gets a bit zany at times. Like in the first game there are multiple endings and you'll play through the game at least twice. The only cons I can come up with are the single fairly easy difficulty setting and the monetisation/DLC packaging. In my first playthrough I only died twice, and eight different protagonist skins (most of them lorebreaking) at two bucks a pop seems a bit overkill. A good indie survival horror game overall, and a fantastic improvement on the first entry.
The Coma Recut is a definitive edition of The Coma: Cutting Class, which was a mobile release. Even in the Recut edition the game was not able to entirely shake its mobile roots, so the gameplay is fairly simple and at times clunky. It's a 2D survival horror game. The graphics are drawn by hand and feel surprisingly vibrant because of it. The sound is fine, pretty minimalistic but not offensively bad. The gameplay loop consists of avoiding or escaping the enemy while trying to make your way through a nightmare version of a school. In true survival horror fashion there are puzzles involved and combat is outright not an option. The game forces you to rely on your hearing to notice when the enemy is approaching, and then avoid her. Unfortunately there is some backtracking involved which pads out the game time. The enemy challenge grows over time though, forcing you to adapt your strategy somewhat. The story is pretty good. It serves as an introduction into a greater universe that the devs continued to flesh out in a later title. There are several different endings, but they rely on you making decisions regarding optional objectives in the mid part of the game. This means that in order to see every ending you need to tread through the lengthy end-game section several times. If you liked the first Clock Tower, this is a K-Horror version of it with a more fleshed out story. Nice for about five hours of horror experience, but it slightly overstays its welcome with the ending hunting. The devs did develop their formula in the Coma 2 and there is a Back To School edition which includes both entries, get that one if you are interested.
Got a free key with my AMD processor last December. It's hard to believe the game was made by the same studio that made two of my favourite games, F:NV and PoE. It has almost none of the soul. Graphics and sound out of the way, they're both passable. Some interesting colour choices were made, but otherwise they're not particularly memorable either way. The engine is okayish, although the shooting needs some getting used to. Difficulty is determined through equipment and health numbers, not actual AI cleverness. My first gripe is the fact that it's not an RPG as much as it's a FPS with a story and some RPG elements. Think Fallout 4, give or take a few aspects. If that's all you want, the game's a 4/5. My main issue with the game is its ABYSMAL writing. No idea who hired that writing team, but they make their colleagues responsible for the yearly slop at Ubisoft look like little Shakespeares. The quest design starts off meh at first, and then devolves into typical fetch and bring quests around the halfway mark. The overarching theme of the main plot is KOTOR levels of good vs bad with basically zero middle ground or alternative paths. The characters are a travesty. Every single one has no real personality other than "holds up spork" levels of "qUiRkY"ness, because that's easy to write and there are people who still believe that to be comedy gold to this day. It works in Borderlands because it doesn't take itself seriously. TOW does, however, so it absolutely doesn't work. There are characters in free to play browsergames that have better writing. If you can look past the writing, this game is okay to play while in a slump. Crank up the difficulty and it's even challenging up until you get your first lasrifle about five hours in. In any case, do not buy at full price. Wait til mid to late 2022 when the complete edition drops to $30/30€.
I have no idea how this game completely flew under my radar until a week ago. The game is a decent retro brawl game, but the real meat of the game lies within the story of a group of friends and what they make of this autumn of their final year. The story itself is fairly grounded and will not sweep you off your feet with outlandishness, you don't save the world or become a crime lord. You're the leader of a school gang, but the focus on the story is on something much more existential and nerve-racking: Being a directionless high school senior who slowly realizes he won't be able to keep this carelessness up for long. For that reason it's more like a haiku, the strength and emotional depth of the scenes comes from resonating with you. While you most likely weren't a gang member or directionless in school, most of the events will ring familiar with you in some way. The gameplay is decent. Fights become quite fun once you get the hang of it. Otherwise it's a retro 2,5D action/adventure style game with some retro-esque lack of quality of life. There's no quick travel. There's not even a tutorial or manual explaining basic functions, and sadly the game didn't take off as much so there's little online help. This leads new players to feel overwhelmed and directionless for the first hour or two - weird, almost as if that were a recurring motif. Graphics are well done pixel art with lots of warm autumn colours. All characters look distinguishably different. Music is amazing. Lots of guitar tunes and sometimes some slight hip hop beats of the mid to late 80s, where the game is also set in. The tunes will ring in your ear for some time and do make you feel weirdly nostalgic. The only caveat is the abrupt conclusion of the story around what feels like the halfway mark and wrapping up of plot points into one ending. I get that this game was made by one guy and time/funds probably became an issue, so maybe this gets fixed in a definitive edition. Conclusion: Play this.
- Played on Vers. 1.0 - Story: The setting is the vampire society of 2019-ish NYC, which you get introduced to while you progress in the story. You are a fledgling vampire thrown into cold water by unorthodox means. You struggle to survive and come to terms with your new existence, while trying to find out about your unusual circumstances. To this end you are able to interact with several characters, and your choices will affect how they react to you and how the story will progress. This will have potentially fatal consequences down the line. Your time is limited, so you can't enlist help of (or even meet) all of them. Gameplay: It's an indie visual novel, not an actual game. If VNs just aren't for you, this one won't be either. Unfortunately this is partly due to the current absence of standard quality-of-life tools like an auto-mode or skip-function. The game itself is heavily choice-based, where your decisions matter. Not only can situations take vastly different turns, the game also autosaves after every choice, so you as the player can't savescum. The story itself is fairly short with 4-5 hours, but the meat and bones of this game come from the replayability. At the start you choose from three clans with different skillsets to use during choices, as well as meet several vampires you can add to your coterie. Each vampire has an own substory which you can influence into at least two different conclusions. In order to check out the different clans and every possible companion story, you're looking at 3-4 playthroughs. About double when you're an absolute completionist. Graphics/Sound: Fitting but unremarkable music and sound, the art style fits and the images are slightly animated, but nothing to write home about. No voiced lines. This is where you really notice that it's an indie game. Nothing outright screams bad though. Bottom line: If you like V:TM or story heavy games and don't mind VNs, you're definitely getting your money's worth.
