Conglomerate 451 is a spiritual sequel to Darkest Dungeon set in a cyberpunk dystopia. The premise is you work for the government trying to regain control of sector 451 from the mobbed up megacorps that run it, and carry out this mission using an unlimited number of 3D-printed battle clones. On the upside, if you liked Darkest Dungeon, this is more of it, albeit played from a first person perspective. You pick out a team of clones from various classes, select the best four active skills for the team to complement each other (things like one character marking targets and another getting a damage bonus against marked targets), go on random missions to fill up victory completion bars, and between missions upgrade your base to better kit out your existing team, and print new characters with superior mutations. There are lots of gameplay improvements to the DD formula. Characters are less disposable in this than DD because they not only go up in levels but also have full skill trees to fill out with various bonuses, cybernetics to install, and dozens of slots to fill with artifact-equivalents. In combat you can choose from 6 enemy body parts to target, each with a different hit chance and possible debuff. Also distance is now a factor in combat. On the downside, while the locations and enemy animations look great, this game lacks the clear aesthetic vision of DD. Your characters models look generic, and for some reason all wear matching tron pajamas that look ridiculous. No long coats? Worse, DD's ancestor narration is replaced by a WACKY floating AI drone sidekick who LOVES making nails-on-chalkboard jokes INCESSANTLY! Thankfully the 1.1 patch lets you mute it at least. I'm still too early in the game to make balance judgments, except if anyone tells you the game's too easy due to impenetrable shields, they probably only played the tutorial mission. It's Darkest Dungeon with deeper gameplay but shallower world building. 3.5 stars.
Genesis Alpha One is a horror-flavored sci fi game about a crew of human clones on a growing space ship exploring a dangerous distant galaxy to find a new eden for humanity. It's a first person management game where you control the captain of a corporate-sponsored exploration ship, building it up piece-by-piece, cloning then assigning crew members to run stations independently, occasionally exploring the surfaces of planets to find new ship component blueprints, but mostly grabbing your gun and dealing with whatever threats invade your ship before they tear it apart. The Alpha One galaxy is thick with hostile lifeforms, and every time you bring resources onto your ship, there's a risk some kind of alien stowed away on it. When this happens, at least at the beginning, it's your job to check every nook and cranny of the ship to eliminate the intruders. This is where the horror elements come in, because like the Nostromo in the movie "Alien," every room in your ship has a dark cramped ductwork section underneath where the aliens love to hide out and lay eggs. The damage they do to the ship causes spooky steam leaks, vision obscuring life support failures, flame sprays, and other problems that make it even harder for you to spot them lunging for you in the dark. Let the problem get too bad and entire sections of the ship could literally explode and if you happen to be in one of them, you could be sucked out the hull and spin away into space. As much as I love the game, the downsides include the game being very dry, with your crew almost entirely lacking personalities, and the plot being minimal. When landing on a planet you're confined to a square area around your ship with clearly marked borders. And when aliens get onto your ship they oftentimes just pop into being without any animation of them jumping off the lander's hull or out of a load of ore. UE4 effects can't hid this game's indie origin. It's a wonderful exploration/horror game, and I recommend it!
Sky Cannoneer is a spiritual sequel to the classic arcade shooter/puzzler Rampart with the setting moved to islands in the sky. If there is one word to describe the game's cartoony aesthetic, it's "soft." Gameplay cycles through three timed phases. In the first phase, you place cannons inside your walls around a fort. In the second phase, you shoot at the enemy's fort to poke holes in their walls. In the third phase you attempt to fill the holes in your wall with random tetris shapes and surround additional forts for additional cannons, if possible. Any cannons that aren't completely surrounded by walls at the end of the build phase can't fire, and if all the enemy's cannons are off, their core becomes vulnerable and you can destroy it to win. Sky Cannoneer adds a few additional features to the Rampart gameplay, like fort types that increase firing speed or intercept incoming cannonballs, or cannons that fire cluster munitions. Also the game adds boss encounters where instead of breaking up the enemy's walls, you're splitting your shots between the enemy's core and some super weapon that will charge up if you don't hit certain targets in time. The main downside of the game at release is it's completely mouse-controlled, with the exception of the Q key acting as an alternate rotate button, but the devs are promising fully remappable controls in a future update. Replay value is also an issue as the game has no random or endless mode once you've 3-star completed all the campaign missions. It's also singleplayer-only at the moment. Like I said, it's Rampart. If you liked Rampart, you'll like this game. If they patch in some kind of arcade mode aftergame content, add a fifth star to my review.
