This game is extremely fun. I’ve already sunk plenty of hours into it and am nowhere near being done. The strategy engine is deep, the story is compelling, and the artwork is wonderful. Apparently, Heads Will Roll was produced by a husband-and-wife team with no prior game development experience. What an impressive first effort. I will admit to being a little disappointed when I encountered one of the game’s many endings because I thought the story was only just getting started. I was expecting a lengthy strategy game with light visual novel elements. It’s acutally more accurate to call this game a visual novel but with fairly deep strategy elements. With that being said, there’s a huge amount of content to explore in the game’s relatively brief story because the depth is in all of the branching plotlines and optional quests. You’ll only see a small portion of the content in one playthrough. Because you’ll be replaying the game anyway to see all of the content — and probably restarting a few times when you see that your initial character builds won’t be successful — I highly recommend playing on the Heads Will Roll difficulty level. You’ll die a lot at first, but you’ll eventually have a much more powerful character than you could have built in a single playthrough on the standard difficulty level. A lower-difficulty story mode is also available for those who don’t care so much about the strategy portion of the game. I’m looking forward to playing the DLC and will eagerly buy future chapters or a sequel. Also, please release the Mac version of HWR: Downfall on GOG!
You know how Stardew Valley took everything that was great about the Harvest Moon series and amped it up to 11? Well, STONKS-9800 is basically that for the old NES game Wall Street Kid. If you know, you know. The financial engine is surprisingly deep. By the time you figure out how to game it, you’ll probably have seen nearly all of the content anyway. There are a million things to do in this game. Just to name a few, you can start a company, attend board meetings, initiate takeover bids, visit a local arcade, take part in secret poker tournaments, play pachinko and go fishing. Don’t be put off by the fact that the game is still in early access; it’s still being updated regularly. There’s no story mode yet, and there’s no conclusion to the romance with Amy. Otherwise, it’s basically a finished game with enough content for several very enjoyable days. The game’s artwork and aesthetic are absolutely wonderful. Special thanks to the developer, who uploaded the Mac version to GOG immediately when I asked. Will definitely play again when/if the game hits version 1.0.
