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Tried a few game demos so far, thought I'd write up my thoughts on them. Potion Craft is an alchemy shop simulator, where you mix various reagents to create potions to sell to customers. Potions are created by navigating a 2D map of effects, where each ingredient takes you on a certain path - and by path, I mean that literally. Some go in sine or triangle waves, some do zigzags or lightning bolts, some go in spirals, and many more much weirder ways. Actually making the potions involve clicking and dragging various alchemy tools and ingredients around in a way that's reminiscent of Cooking Mama. You want your potion to end up in a spot with an active effect, such as healing or poison - and the closer you are to being dead center, the more potent the potion, with the highest potency requiring a very precise alignment with the effect. Complicating matters is the fact that there are zones in the alchemy map where no potion can cross, meaning you sometimes have to make detours to get to the desired endpoint. There are dozens of ingredients with wildly varying paths and costs, so striking a balance between effectiveness and controlling expenses ties together the alchemy and business sim aspects nicely. Once you've concocted the perfect potion once, you can then save by assigning it a slot in your alchemy book, ready to mix it again instantly so long as you have the components. The business side of things is straightforward: every day, you have a stream of visitors, mostly customers but also including other characters, who all have their own requests. You can freely mix potions as you go, so you can just make them on demand if you wish. Most of your reagents you get for free from your garden every day, but you have no direct control over what grows (at least not in the demo), so purchasing from visiting vendors is another option. The demo has enough content for an enjoyable hour or two of playtime, with indications that there are many more systems to come - ways to combine potion effects, some kind of alchemy machine in the basement which is disabled in the demo, a calendar where certain days are important (the vendors appear to be actual characters so I expect this to be a HM / SV like mechanic for birthdays and festivals), and so on. The art is done in a charming animated woodcut / manuscript style, and the whole presentation is cozy. Encountered no bugs. Will probably be a day one purchase for me assuming the price is reasonable (15 - 20$ I'd say.) Slipways is hard to categorize - it's a sort of space empire / trade route / puzzle kind of game. You're the new governor of an unsettled star cluster, with a 25 year term and a mandate to develop the cluster as best you can in that timeframe. You take a cabinet of 3 (out of 5) races, which grant you access to certain technologies, abilities, and perks. Then you're presented with a fresh cluster, centered on your entry wormhole, where all you can see are unidentified sensor blips. By launching probes you can reveal the blips in an area, which can turn out to be planets, asteroids, or just nothing. The core of the game comes from settling planets and linking them together via trade routes, such that each planet is exporting something another planet needs, and having its own needs fulfilled in turn. The more import and export links a planet has, the greater its output and required input, and also development level (tax income and score) and happiness. However, most planets have several options for development - for example a terran type world could be developed as either a hive world requiring food and generating population, a farm world requiring machinery and yielding food, and something else I forget. Technology is mostly acquired by building research labs and supplying them with pop and certain resources, sort of like a planet you can build. Every action you take requires a certain amount of cash and months out of your 25 year term, so the puzzle aspect comes from managing your (turn based) time, and figuring out effective ways to link your planets together based on their positioning and what techs and racial bonuses you have. Speaking of time management - the game will let you undo every action, with the exception of ones that revealed new information to you (such as shooting out probes or linking up to goody huts with random rewards) forming a hard stop on the undo chain. So, you have some wiggle room when trying to puzzle out the perfect way to link your empire together. The racial bonuses are pretty diverse, with effects like 'not needing food' and 'can strap a rocket engine to a planet and move it around' in the pot. The game is intended to take about an hour per playthrough, which was pretty accurate for the two I did. Also no bugs. A fresh new take on several concepts I like, I'd put it in the same category as Potion Craft as far as purchasing goes. I'm still going through some more demos, should have a writeup on Almighty: Kill Your Gods by the end of the event, and maybe Winter Survival Simulator too.
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Feb 7, 2021 07:13
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 18:43 |
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