January hit me hard like a truck. It was a constant flow of work, and then piling in even more work. Add to that the dreadful hold PATH OF EXILE 2 has over me, and my gaming time was cut to pieces, either taken by farming this time-sink or enjoying my slow burn through ACE ATTORNEY TRILOGY. But! No slump lasts forever, no amount of work is insurmountable to finish, and as I am digging myself out of my obligations I finally found more time to do what I like. That is, checking out demos of promising-looking games to hopefully recommend for you some titles to add to your watchlist. This weekend was bountiful because all three titles I tried were absolute bangers. Let's see what they are!
LOCATOR
Loved this one. It's a clever idea executed well, despite some technical issues I had within the demo. Have you ever heard of GeoGuessr? If not, it's a game about finding locations on the globe based on context clues of your surroundings. Read the signs, watch the streets, and the shops, and deduce where you are! There are tournaments, championships, and professional players of the game, so it's a pretty big bit of entertainment. LOCATOR takes the very core concept and translates it into an adventure on an alien planet. You must follow the footsteps of a lost scientist, tracking her down by following the logbook and photos, which gives you an idea of where they could've been on the map.
It's superbly fun, to my mild surprise! Great narrative hooks you in, the alien environs are well crafted and spotting stuff is far from trivial. While it starts pretty obvious and easy, the difficulty escalates with great pace, forcing you to be much more observant and connect the clues and bits of information to nail the locations proper. Turned out to be quite an experience, because I couldn't put it down until I ran out of the demo - now I am looking forward with great interest to the full version! If you want a fresh puzzle mystery game, look no further.
DECK OF HAUNTS
I do fondly remember DUNGEON KEEPER. Who doesn't? What an innovative idea it was, back in the day, to play as the 'bad guys' and develop your very own nasty dungeon full of surprises for the intrepid heroes to stumble into. The franchise was long on a shelf until EA - the lord of evil - repurposed it in 2014 as a nightmarish, microtransaction hellscape mobile game. A tragic fate for any franchise, but the only one that Electronic Arts has for them in store. And so, it is a delight to see a sort of spiritual successor in DECK OF HAUNTS.
It's not the same, not by a long shot even. But it has the same vibe. You're playing a haunted mansion that keeps on expanding and protecting its vile heart from those pesky humans. You'll use your deck of cards to scare them, drive them insane, move them around, and off them in a brutal fashion to feed yourself on their essence. It's a pretty light deck-builder, a bit of a roguelite it seems, but everything is crafted with great attention to the atmosphere. It's properly spooky! The tension in the gameplay is well maintained, too, as it always feels that you're skimming on the very edge of your resources to get your win.
There are some balance issues that I do hope to see addressed in the full release. For example due to the core mechanics of the game - that is, people moving from room to room - the big rooms which are more expensive have no real use over the tiny rooms. You can just cram a lot of small rooms for cheap to make a proper little stopgap nightmare for the exploring humans. It would be great to see the bigger rooms having some increased advantages to compensate. Nonetheless, playing through the demo was a lot of fun and the title holds great potential to be a quirky, well-made title in a unique, forgotten subgenre.
THE VIGILANTE DIARIES
I was so angry when the demo was over because I was so goddamn hooked. It's a riveting experience, a great story unfolding in a very engaging way. The thing is that... There's nothing inherently innovative about the game as far as I can say. It's a visual novel with a lot of player choices driving the narrative, but it's not exactly a fresh concept now, is it? Still, as I said before, sometimes you don't have to aim to discover completely new ground to make a fantastic game. And the folks at Out of the Blue Games - who were also responsible for pretty brilliant CALL OF THE SEA (which I definitely should review!) - really know their way around a narrative and atmosphere-building.
Everything here happens through your diary. You're a vigilante, taking your form of justice to the streets but... What kind of Vigilante are you going to be? What are your values, and what forms your principles? Are you a clever sleuth, cold-blooded murder machine, or a deranged maniac with a propensity for instant violence? You will be able to craft yourself through the story, each decision impacting who you are, what your relationships are, and of course - what options will be available for you in future encounters. It is a very simple game to drive, but the hook, the pleasure, and the joy lay in the unfolding story and the very tangible feeling that you're very much in control over its meanders.
In short - I absolutely cannot wait to get my hands on the full release, just hoping that the whole character-building prologue from the demo will carry over! Not that I would mind redoing it again, maybe making some different calls but... Would be great to see what the character I made so far can get himself into.
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