Game-related ramblings.

Month: February 2013

Roguelike Highlights: Caves Of Qud

Readers who are unfamiliar with roguelikes may wish to read my introduction first. Also, please remember that you can click on all images for larger versions.

I first tried Caves of Qud many years ago, but I didn’t really get into it at the time. I saw it mentioned somewhere on the internet recently and decided to give it another go, and this time I really got sucked in. My posts have been late because I’ve been playing it instead. I can safely say it’s the most I’ve enjoyed a roguelike in a long time.

It’s tempting to describe Caves of Qud as a “post-apocalyptic sci-fi survival roguelike”, but that description doesn’t really do it justice. In most post-apocalyptic settings, the cataclysm is a fairly recent event, with survivors eking out an existance in the aftermath. In Caves of Qud, however, a thousand years or so have passed since mankind wielded its ancient, wondrous technological marvels and enjoyed dominion over the Earth. Various societies have risen since, but the jungles of Qud remain wild, inhabited by all manner of strange, mutated flora and fauna, and sheltering ancient treasures in the massive chrome caverns beneath the surface. Apparently drawing inspiration from the pen-and-paper role-playing game Gamma World (which I’d never heard of until now), Caves of Qud casts you as an adventurer seeking fame and fortune by exploring Qud and recovering these ancient relics.

Indie Time: Thirty Flights Of Loving

Remember that you may always click on images for larger versions.

After finishing Gravity Bone I immediately purchased the sequel, Thirty Flights of Loving, because I wanted to see where Blendo Games took things next. And because everyone else was making quite a fuss about it. Turns out that Thirty Flights of Loving is a rather loose sequel that doesn’t have many obvious connections, story-wise, to the first game. Having said that, playing it is quite the experience. Even more so than Gravity Bone, Thirty Flights of Loving is unlike anything else you have played, and for that alone it is well worth your attention.

Indie Time: Gravity Bone

There’s been quite a lot of talk amongst game-playing types recently about Thirty Flights of Loving, a very short but allegedly very excellent game that does a lot of interesting stuff with storytelling. But what really caught my attention was the fact that it’s the sequel to Gravity Bone (look for the link at the bottom of that page), a game I’d read about many years ago but never got around to trying. I was also delighted to discover that both titles are brought to us by Blendo Games, a developer I became familiar with when trying out the rather relaxing Flotilla.

Clearly, it was time to correct my earlier negligence and play through Gravity Bone.

Indie Time: Corrypt

Now that I’ve finished playing Dishonored (for now, anyway), I started up another big-budget game. But I won’t be able to post about it. Fortunately, I have a backlog of shorter indie games I’ve been meaning to write about. First up is Corrypt, which was making noises in the indie scene a few weeks ago.

Corrypt is a puzzle game. You move your character around the screen one square at a time, pushing boxes around, like you’ve done in many other such games. This time you will also pull boxes, which might seem like a minor detail but was actually a big enough change to keep me stumped in quite a few puzzles. At these times I appreciated being able to explore other parts of the world and try my hand at a different puzzle for a change. Soon I was making good progress, and enjoying the rather strange visuals and excellent music.

If that was all Corrypt was, it would still be worth a look. But it soon became apparent that Corrypt is much, much more.

Final Thoughts On Dishonored

After posting my initial impressions of Dishonored, I’ve gone back and finished the game, so I’m now qualified to comment on it as a whole. While my first post spent a lot of time comparing the game to the Thief series, after playing further that sense of similarity disappeared. Dishonored is still clearly an homage to the Thief games, but it has its own character that shone through. And it’s absolutely worth experiencing.

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