From the first to the ninth of May, the first festival of Russian video games in the history of the store is taking place on Steam. I, as a person who sincerely supports Russian game development and loves our amazing projects like Pathfinder: WoTR, Atomic Heart, Pathologic, Life and Suffering of Sir Brante etc.d., decided to look at demo versions of unreleased domestic indie games and tell you about them.
In a word, despite my immense love for our developers, this does not mean that I will praise the bad or ignore the flaws of the good, nothing like that. Therefore, for such a simple matter as watching demos, I want to introduce the same simple rating system. I’ll brazenly steal Stopgeym’s four-point grading system, I’ll just mark them with numbers, it seems to me that it perfectly shows how I feel about the project. I experimented with three points, but it turned out that two points is somehow too sad, and three is too cool, so something in between is really needed. In any case, assessments are needed here as something like a result, do not take them seriously, the most important thing in our business is to figure out what is right here and what is wrong; assessments are secondary.
Oh, and one more detail: all horror films will be skipped because I’m pissed off, I don’t like horror films and I’m afraid of the dark, and I also sleep with my mother . And there won’t be a new part of Choice of Life, because there’s nothing to tell there, it’s a story-centric game that you can’t complete to the end, I hope this reason is exhaustive.
(In addition: I played The Parasites, but before playing, like a sucker, I forgot to turn on the recording, so there are no footage(. I’ll briefly say that this is just a crude survival game like The Forest, I don’t recommend playing it, there’s nothing to do there, sorry it’s so crumpled, I only have a screenshot, which I’ll put in the positivator. I don’t want to play this game again, but without footage it’s not the same at all, you won’t even look at the game).
P.S. I know that a blog on a similar topic has already been published on SG, so what can I say, I didn’t manage to be the first (I somehow don’t want to throw my work in the trash. Here I analyze all the demos in detail, if you like less text, are not interested in reading about all the demos (well, most) or you don’t like the way I write and the fact that I skip horror films, then read Michael Rilperson.
ONE WAY HOME.
And although I said that I wouldn’t play horror games, I still played One Way Home. Based on the screenshots, this game was perceived as horror in the same way that The Last of Us is perceived . Well, that is, I thought that I wouldn’t be scared by the word at all, and then I was slightly mistaken.
The half-hour demo tells us the story of a twelve-year-old boy who is left alone when the zombie apocalypse begins. Well, he says. There is no story as such in the demo and, as I understand it, there won’t be any in the game either, because what the game shows is not a plot, but simply events without a bit of drama or meaning. Throughout the demo, the boy gets to school, where, as he learned, there should be some kind of evacuation point. He reaches his destination, and there are zombies all around – the destination, apparently, is no longer there. At the end we have a little parody of Sarah’s death from The Last of Us with a cop saying "but it’s a child" and then "yes sir" and that’s the end of the demo. I swear I didn’t miss anything, plot-wise that’s all we have. It seems to me that the game could use at least some drama. Even if it comes later, the goal of the demo is to hook a potential player, so the plot didn’t hook me.
The gameplay is a 3D platformer with a fixed camera. Drawing analogies, I associate the game with some kind of mixture of Little Nightmares and Limbo . I don’t particularly like platformers, but even so I can say that here he is normal. I won’t praise it, but I won’t scold it either, there are platforming elements here and they work, they don’t even infuriate.
There is also one interesting mechanic here, which I hope will be used in different situations in the future. At a minimum, I have never seen a character run and fall because he tripped over an object that was lying on the floor. Here’s a very simple puzzle based on this:. You need to run at speed to the slowly closing door, but there are boxes lying around, so you should remove them in advance in order to run without stumbling. I wouldn’t say that there is something brilliant here, but I would note that it is something unusual.
In addition to platforming, there is absolutely clumsy stealth, in which opponents located outside the screen can easily set you on fire, this, of course, needs to be seriously fixed, because these hide-and-seek games with zombies hidden outside the screen are simply unplayable. Also, I didn’t understand the essence of the mechanics with the ax at all. At first, I actually wanted to drop the game at the moment with the ax, because I didn’t understand how to chop with it if every time I press a button I get hit before the character reacts to pressing, but then I realized that the character can hit with an ax from a medium distance, so it’s not scary. The scary thing is different; guys, you are absolutely serious about giving the player an unbreakable weapon in a horror game? I was really scared at some moments, either I’m a coward, or the developers know how to scare – I don’t know that, but I know for sure that you also need to do something with the ax and you can’t just give it to the player.
And finally, I’ll say that your game is a laggy piece of code. The game is made in Anril and this is noticeable, because in the wrong hands it turns into a performance degenerator. During the chase, my PC could not cope with the game, producing 15-20 frames. This is just a disgrace, you riveted a game using visual programming? Why are the zombie hordes in Days Gone just ultra-gentle on my computer compared to your fifteen green bobbleheads from the asset store??
My rating – 1. Let’s start gesturing right away. I don’t know what audience this project is intended for, however, the game is bad not because of that, but because of the terrible optimization coupled with this. I really don’t understand why I would play a storyless, poorly made platformer. I am in no way trying to offend the developers, they did a great job. Rather, I don’t understand why they chose to make a three-dimensional platformer in such development conditions; I don’t believe that a team of two people can do it. In any case, optimization problems are crucial; if there is a person who will be in love with your project, then these 15-20 fps will scare him away.
Rekesh Gaal.
Next on the list is a diabloid with an incomprehensible name Rekesh Gaal. Everything according to GOST: top view, clicker gameplay, dark fantasy atmosphere and deep build structure. Let’s go in order.
The game starts in the dungeon. The blinded main character is granted sight by some ghost, and then pure gameplay ensues. I didn’t understand one thing, is this an endless roguelike or if you die the game literally ends only in the demo version? The fact is that after your death you say goodbye to all progress and you just have to start over. I played Rekesh for about an hour precisely because I was stifled by this complete erasure of progress, which is why every time I literally leveled up from scratch, which is not particularly fun.
The gameplay formula is as follows: we walk around the dungeon, click on opponents, farm experience and pour skill points into one of two leveling branches – then the cycle simply becomes more complicated. For one level we are given two such points and we have the right to distribute them between pumping up our attributes and skills. The attribute branch is basic strength, agility, endurance, etc.d. with added knowledge of the elements. As we level up our attributes, different weapons become available to us for equipment, and in addition to this, in the attribute tree somewhere at the bottom there are other passive skills that become available for leveling up under certain parameters of these attributes. The skill line is almost completely locked, which will open after release.
Even though I call the gameplay clicky, the difficulty is definitely there. We can’t just run into a crowd of opponents and start poking, otherwise we’ll just die. We also cannot run away from our opponents, because if we have not cleared the location, then additional enemies will join our pursuers. We need to enter the rooms carefully, because if they are large, they are most likely filled with opponents, which means we need to think about planning how we will maneuver between all these gentlemen.
I don’t think it’s possible to talk about this game for a long time, so I’ll give it a rating right away. 2. The gameplay here is unremarkable, this is an absolutely ordinary diabloid, I didn’t find anything new for the genre here. If you’re a Path of Exile fan or have played many hours of Diablo, you’ll probably enjoy Rekesh when it comes out, but I don’t think you should expect anything out of the ordinary from it.
Underquest.
Underquest is a roguelike with auto-battler elements that really pleasantly surprised me. I must say that before playing Underquest, I played another game of the festival, which bought me with its cover, but in all respects managed to disappoint me – Multitales. Here it’s exactly the opposite, Underquest looks, I won’t say that it’s poor, but it doesn’t look like it was made for a PC, but rather for mobile phones. But it plays, however, amazingly!
We are told the story of one young man who, through the dungeons at the beginning of events, reaches the underground tavern “Dragon Cup”. Along the way, he finds a charismatic talking chest named Meltsifer, who will now travel with our hero. Meltsifer is a guest of the “Dragon Cup”, who fled from there due to disagreements with the tavernkeeper. The protagonist, whose name, as it turns out by this point, is Tristan, introduces himself to this very tavernkeeper of the “Dragon Cup” and we find out that the main character was sent by the Sparkling Order. Our task is to clear the dungeon, in the depths of which there is a magical artifact, the Dragon Heart, stolen by the “outcasts” (local monsters). And so our journey begins.
Gradually we are given various intrigues. Either some blacksmith hates the Order for some reason, or some unknown woman says that the key that unlocks the exit from the underground kingdom – the Subkingdom – is not with the queen, and the whole lore revolves around the fact that the entire civilization is underground. Also, the dialogue and characters are great. Although they look like Funko Pop toys, they have their own distinct characteristics and their conversations are fun to read.
The gameplay of the game is also unusual. I would say that at some points it is similar to the gameplay of Loop Hero . We have 4 slots on the character: for a sword, a shield, a breastplate and a helmet, and the inventory is divided into 12 cells, if they are all filled, then the items will simply begin to disappear when collected. The character automatically hits one of the enemies, but if we press on this enemy, the cooldown between our attacks will decrease. And the main feature of the game is the inventory. When we hit opponents, they gradually drop elemental segments, there are only three of them: cold, fire and earth. These segments, when combined, give some kind of spell, a la Magicka . There are very few combinations and I hope that in the release version there will still be more of them due to an increase in the elements or due to the ability to combine some spells with other spells, in general, I want this mechanic, but I want it in even greater quantities.
Fighting with the boss.
Wandering through the dungeons, we will encounter several types of rooms. In some, we will be given two random pieces of armor, in others, two random pieces of weapons, in others, just a chest without battles awaits us. The remaining two rooms belong to the characters. According to the classics, a merchant from whom, for money, we can purchase items from an assortment of three items in size. And a blacksmith, from whom we can improve elements of armor and weapons. But this is not the only way to improve.
First, let’s go back a little, where does the money come from?? When we beat monsters, they can drop all sorts of rubbish that ends up in our inventory. When you click on this junk, it disappears and the main thing here is, if your inventory is full, keep an eye on this junk, because it can prevent you from picking up a really important thing. We can also feed our fellow chest armor and weapons, for which he gives us money. But this should only be done if your inventory is filled to capacity with important things, because if we have weapons or armor of the same level, roughly speaking, duplicates, then when they are combined we will get the next level of the same weapon. This is such a fun game with inventory.
This is very good! I would even say excellent, so my rating is 4! In addition to the intriguing plot, which is something you don’t expect from a game that looks like this, there is also an exciting gameplay that, despite the fact that this is an auto-battler, keeps you constantly moving! Connect the elements here, throw a bomb here, throw out this crap now, especially the gameplay makes you active in the battle with the boss, when you try to figure out what to press and what to connect with lightning speed and immediately execute it. I even added the game to my wishlist, which I didn’t expect from myself at all. I wish the developers success in their business!
Iron Meat.
And the first game today that is truly without any rough edges in all aspects is Iron Meat. It already looks just like a finished product: without bugs, lags, with clear visuals, in which there are no stubs. In other words, at least take it right now and release it, except for the incompleteness. Before us is the real successor to the Contra series of games . The authors are not at all shy about their object of inspiration and adapt everything from the classics, right down to animations. I don’t think there’s much to say here, but I’ll try to describe it
The plot, or rather, what can be called this word, begins with the fact that in some laboratory on some space station a monster came out, changing everything around him, and everything that he changed obeys him. From the space station, through a teleport, this creature comes to Earth and begins its fun. We play as a brave no-name who can look like an anime girl, it doesn’t matter. Then we have only meat, guts, dismemberment and various opponents.
Like https://queenvegascasino.uk/login/ I said.
I shoot a living flying machine that is trying to kill me.
We shoot at our opponents, trying to dodge the fact that they shoot back at us, or their bodies, which also cause damage. In addition, sometimes drones fly over us, by destroying which you can pick up weapons, and weapons also drop out of some mobs. The weapons here are varied, they can be upgraded, and given that you lose them after death, you obviously won’t be able to see everything in one playthrough of the demo.
The game is difficult. Even taking into account the fact that we are given 16 lives at the average level of difficulty, both missions presented made me sweat and by the end I got to the end with exactly zero lives, if I got there at all. Next, I think the game will be even more difficult. In a word, the complexity of the game is also given by the number and variety of opponents, which, as I understand, are generally different for each level with a minimum of repetitions. Between running through regular enemies on the level, we are also greeted by several mini-bosses, which in the second mission already made us tense, they are certainly unique to each level. Yes, even everyday opponents, with their inconvenient placement, forced us to diligently try to somehow get around them or find a position from which they could be safely shot. In general, everything is just fine here for hardcore players!
This asshole didn’t even let me shoot him in this place, because he shoots through obstacles, and I can’t do that, I have to find the moment when he doesn’t shoot, but his teeth are open.
Flying creatures seem harmless, but in reality they are difficult to hit, and they fly straight at you and kill you with one push.
My rating – 4. I don’t see the point in going on and on here, this is an ordinary stupid retro shoot ‘em up that doesn’t require a lot of convolutions and can be fun. I’m not a fan of this genre, but I understand why people like it and I know that this game will have its fans. I haven’t tried playing in co-op, but I think it’s doubly fun, that’s why this game is probably worth a try even for non-connoisseurs. One problem – your friend should be available at arm’s length.
Vasilisa and Baba Yaga.
We only have a half-hour demo from Vasilisa and Baba Yaga, and the game itself, apparently, will be short, nevertheless, we can also say a few words about it. There are things here that I liked and that I didn’t like.
In one unnamed Russian village lived one merchant family: husband, wife and daughter Vasilisa. There was grief in the family – the wife died and the father and daughter were left alone. After a while, the father finally married another woman, left the family on his merchant business and left his daughter alone with her stepmother. The stepmother did not like her stepdaughter and decided to get rid of the girl in the simplest way – she kicked her out of the house and told her not to come until the girl brought Baba Yaga’s fire. The further story of Vasilisa’s journey will take place in the scenery of Russian folklore.
The main feature of the game is its unusual setting. There are well-stylized visuals here, and music with chants in Russian, and the voice-over of the narrator interspersed with outdated words and expressions, moreover, the subtitles differ from the voice-over, and meanwhile the narrator also somehow distorts the sounds, as if posing as some serf peasant of the early 19th century unfamiliar with literacy; This is how he once heard a word somewhere, and pronounces it that way, without assigning a corresponding letter to each sound. Among other things, I was especially pleased with the visualization of folklore in the game!
At the beginning of the game, Vasilisa remembers that her mother gave her a doll before her death with the words: “feed her and she will help you.”. The doll in the game will act as something like a guardian, who will scare away the mermaid and try to prevent the mermaids from turning the boat over. This doll allows Vasilisa to dive deeper and deeper into these forests, filled with various mythical creatures.
Just like Vasilisa, we will also play for the doll. What, by the way, is the whole gameplay?? We move the stick to the right and wait for something interesting to happen to us, while looking at the night views. And the following may happen to us: we may meet some interesting, non-dangerous creatures, perhaps the narrator will say something about this, or we may also meet aggressive monsters – in this case, the narrator will tell us how to fight them or we will be given control of a doll and then a clumsy battle will begin. Alternatively, in addition to encountering monsters, we can simply stumble upon a puzzle, like the coral maze in the demo.
And one more game I’ll put 3. I won’t add the game to the wishlist, but, nevertheless, I understand why you should play it and it’s even fun. This game is a little attraction with nicely rendered creatures from East Slavic folklore. It relaxes and immerses you in a slightly dark fairy tale.
Song of the Spear.
Song of the Spear looks very strange. Here we have something like fantasy based on East Slavic folklore, which at the same time tries to look like Ancient Rus’. The key word here is "trying". Either a Viking who looks like a dwarf will be passed off as some Boris Kozhedub of the warrior class, or an ordinary knight Proclus Nikitich looks like he escaped from a Western European fantasy. The style is not respected even at the level of the era; Here we have something like Ancient Rus’, that is, the early Middle Ages, but at the same time there is a Sagittarius unit that does not fit into this picture at all. (By the way, there was another game in the genre of East Slavic fantasy that did not follow the style, you can read about it here.)
I’ll start with what makes me least happy. The game has no plot: there is no main character, no events, no characters, there is only a villain in the guise of Koshchei, who creates unrest in our Russian land. You can argue with me, because on the map on which we move there are events in which we are given a choice whether to do a bad deed or a good one. But these rare events on the map are nothing, just a drop from what you want to see in such a game.
The gameplay here is familiar to many; before us is another game that adapts the gameplay of Heroes of Might and Magic in its own way . At the very beginning of the game we are given a warrior, a knight and a monk, whom we will control on the battlefield. To buy a new fighter you need a lot of money, to cure a fighter you need a lot of money. In addition to money, there is another currency in the game, which is needed for the construction of buildings in the city, but in the demo this currency does not work. Between battles we move around points on the map. In other words, Song of the Spear takes a lot from different games: here we have the tactics of Heroes with their own specifics, movement around the map and rare choices from Blood Feud (I can’t remember anything else like it) and character mortality from Darkest Dungeon .
The point of the demo is to complete all the orders that can be found on the notice board in a small settlement in the middle of the map. Orders are to exterminate a crowd of monsters that is located in one of three areas on the map closed by the fog of war. And having entered this area, we will no longer be able to leave, all the points along which we move will no longer show us what we will find if we go there – the icons will be replaced with question marks. Having reached the end of this labyrinth and eliminating the crowd of monsters, we dispel the fog of war and can leave this zone.
I would rate the tactical component as “below average”. Firstly, the worst decision made by the developers is to make only squares strictly adjacent to the unit possible for interaction around the unit. That is, we can pass, hit and use abilities exclusively vertically and horizontally, it won’t work obliquely. If you see that the ability says “around the character,” then this “around” is limited to four cells: two horizontally and two vertically. It even gets funny! The knight’s abilities are to pull and dash towards the enemy, and they work strictly in four directions, that is, it will be impossible to pull the enemy if he is not looking at you in a straight line! Because of this, the skill turns into almost unnecessary, because it is just a pull and dash, there is no special damage there!
Another nonsense, which is not even in hardcore Darkest Dungeon. If your character dies, then he dies for good, which is understandable, the only thing that is not clear is how you should get out of a situation when you have no damage dealers. But the problem is real, because in the settlement you cannot buy them at all, so we find out that we only have two melee fighters for the entire demo and if they die it is impossible to continue playing. If you want other fighters, pay. Okay, I would be happy if I could at least pay, but in our settlement we have a Sagittarius and a Witch to choose from. I don’t understand this, why not just add some caravan with volunteers who you can take into your team for free. Even if they were weak, they would be at least some, and not Game Over on the screen. By the way, you can’t save in the game, so you’ll have to start the entire adventure all over again.
I think a fair assessment for this game would be – 2. It’s clear that the developers are trying to make something good, but I can’t recommend playing it, although you can try it, maybe you’ll like it. The game lacks a clear visual style, there is no plot, and there are problems with the tactical component. In general, for tactical gameplay, I would rather play the same Heroes or Songs of Conquest, the early access of which I recently reviewed; and for the plot and moral choices, I would rather replay Blood Feud . Why else play this game, I don’t know, sorry.
Pathogen X.
Pathogen X took me less than a quarter of an hour, and there were games at the festival that took me more time, but at the same time I decided not to talk about them. Don’t think that out of these 15 minutes of gameplay I will now sit down and squeeze out a fifteen-minute review, and I’ll even immediately say a rating – 3 points, commendable, I liked this shooter!
I liked what I went through, because it’s rare when you play demos that you understand what’s going on around you, usually they throw you into the action, give you a control layout and entertain yourself. Right away, from the context and conversations with the operator on the radio, it is clear that this is some kind of moment taken from the middle of the game to show us the shooter component. I can say for sure that the game will have some kind of plot. I have no idea about the level of its quality, but I have no doubt that it will be interesting to watch. For the first time in all my jumping through demos, I met excellent professional voice acting. I can say for sure that the “Napoleonic ambitions” of the local developers are much more adequate to their strengths than those of the developers of some One Way Home, who also strive to do something big, but it is clear that budgets and experience do not allow.
And now to the problems. I would gladly give all 4 points if there was good shooting here, but this is not entirely true. I completed the demo on the maximum difficulty level and what I felt was not difficulty, but pain and irritation. I never died, but for all the problems that happened to me, I blamed the game exclusively and I would have burned very badly if the developers had not made such a large amount of HP for the player. The main problem is fat. Seriously. To kill an ordinary enemy you need to drop two clips of a machine gun! Two! I think there should be more opponents and it shouldn’t all come down to fat. Well, you shoot three bullets in the head – death, but no, both in the head and in the body – two clips. This characteristic does not apply to shooters with guns and runners who quickly crawl up to you on all fours and hit you, they die much faster. Two more problems: opponents shoot at you even through walls, it is not written in their intellect that you should not shoot if there is an obstacle between the player and the mob (by the way, the bullets just take and fly through the walls, fortunately they do not cause damage, but this also needs to be recorded); The game does not always record a hit on the enemy.
On the good side, I can’t help but note the excellent graphics coupled with optimization, I thought the game would lag, but it flew. I had an experience when I launched a demo of some joker from a festival, and it lags like scum, despite the fact that the graphics in it are specially stylized for old shooters.
It’s been a while since the last time a single-player shooter of this type was released, I wish the developers good luck and look forward to the full release!
Major Bullet.
The Major Bullet demo is generally too short, lasting only 10 minutes, and I thought for a long time whether to talk about it or not. I’ll say a few words, because this game is not so bad that I wouldn’t say anything about it at all.
Before us is a very humorous platformer. Our main character, the bullet, is outlawed, because in Electropolis all weapons are banned. And in this world, various household items are humanized, including batteries, and ducks, and bullets like our main character. The plot promises to be interesting and can make you smile.
I’m not a fan of the platformer genre, but I’m a fan of interesting ideas, and this game has a pretty interesting idea that I haven’t seen anywhere before. Being a bullet, we can shoot ourselves. This is probably the most intriguing combat system we’ll look at today. We can shoot ourselves in different ways, for a special shot there are different abilities scattered around the map, in the demo we are only introduced to a powerful shot, thanks to which we open a heavy door.
You know, it’s strange, to evaluate something so small, you have to rely a lot on your imagination. I think I’ll bet 3, not because I found some flaws, but because I simply imagined a lot of cool things. The game has an interesting gameplay feature, a nice retro style and an amusingly bad plot. But 10 minutes is not enough for something that throws hooks in the interface and in the plot, they say, we will have even more fun.
King’s Blade.
I didn’t have enough skill to completely complete the King’s Blade demo, and I mean strictly the second level, for some reason I got through the first without any problems at all. However, in an hour of gameplay I have a lot to tell, although not much either.
King’s Blade is a classic beat ’em up with a side view. Again, there is no plot here as such, here we simply have locations unrelated to each other, in which we can build some kind of plot ourselves, based on the scenery in which we fight. So, for example, at the first level we beat up some robbers who for some reason decided to raid the fortress, knights sometimes help us in beating the villains. On the second level we move through the canyon, there’s basically nothing more to say here.
We are allowed to choose one of four characters, as I understand it, only in the demo version, because there will be more of them on release. Each character is truly unique and the gameplay for each one changes normally, I will praise that. For starters, management; we can: hit, dodge, shoot, jump and grab objects or small mobs. The difference in all these things between different characters is amazing. So, for example, instead of firing a barbarian, he simply waves his ax, while at the same time making a feast a couple of meters forward, and his dodge is putting up a shield. At the same time, the wizard uses fire spitting at a short distance as a shot, and as a dodge creates a tornado around himself, which also causes damage to enemies, in addition to knocking back. The deft thief will slide under the enemy when you press the dodge button, and she shoots arrows from her bow over a long distance.
In other words, the characters differ not just visually and not in passive characteristics, but mechanically. The game has a problem with combinations, there are too few of them. The cool side: you can only learn about combo attacks on your own and only in direct combat, because if we hit the air and not the enemy, then the same animation will play. In addition, these combos are not recorded anywhere, so you won’t be able to simply view them either.
My rating for the demo: 4… On a thread… I really liked the game, and in co-op it will generally be amazing and I recommend playing it with a friend, but this may be a problem, because here again we only have local co-op. For me, the small number of combos offsets the abundance of completely different characters, of which there should be even more in the release version.
Union of Gnomes.
Card battler Union of Gnomes managed to please me. Firstly, the demo turned out to be extensive, I confess, I didn’t finish it enough, but I won’t delete it from my computer, I’ll play it some more; I played for over an hour and I think the demo could take another two or so. Secondly, the game doesn’t look clumsy at all, which is rare for demos of indie games, as I can judge from previous projects. The entire visual is made in the same style, I didn’t notice a single bug. Although there is still one problem: very often there is either no music, or it is too quiet and relaxing, but for some reason I am sure that battles should have a battle sound, and not this lulling quiet strumming.
There is a plot here. The developers took the fairy tale about Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and reworked it in a darker way, in addition, completely changing the whole essence. Snow White is our main villain here, who is capable of commanding not only animals, but also gnomes with her singing. So, she exploits the gnomes, and the local human kingdom, thanks to her powers, oppresses them and uses them. Dwarves are sent for re-education to Gnomontanomo, where they are taught to serve people. A certain gnome is given under our control, whom everyone around calls Boss, we, together with a bunch of other gnomes, escape from Gnomontanomo and begin our struggle against the oppression of small people.
The plot is not great, of course, but it motivates you to play through it and there is a desire to find out how the gnomes will free themselves from the villainess, how they will fight her if she makes her slaves out of them. I don’t think you should expect any interesting characters from this simple story; there are some funny gnomes in the demo, but I wouldn’t call them deep. You shouldn’t expect seriousness either, the whole plot is presented with humor, the game can even be given to children to play.
Gameplay-wise, this is an interesting CCG and a good card battler. We start playing in the gnome camp, where we can see what cards are in the game, build a deck of 10 cards, or look at one of the three leaders to reset his level or level him up. Leaving the camp, we find ourselves on a huge world map, on which only one province is available to us so far. Moving around the map is typical arcade style, there is a path with levels, we just follow this path forward, sometimes getting distracted by bonus levels. There aren’t enough stars just for completing levels (I’m kidding, developers, don’t!).
At the level we have a separate roadmap and mechanics with sausages. You see, when we collect a deck of cards, we must pay attention to how many sausages one card devours in one map move, because if our deck does not have enough sausages, then gradually move after move along this road map we will be cut off from hunger by one game card. At the beginning of the level we are given 100 sausages and 100 coins; you can buy sausages for coins on special cells, but there you can also replenish the health of our leader, and there you can upgrade some card from the deck.
At the bottom of the card it says how many sausages it eats per turn.
This is what the level roadmap looks like.
In battle, we take 5 random cards from the deck, which it is advisable to play all of them this turn, because anyway the whole hand goes to discard. When the entire deck is discarded, we shuffle the cards and again take 5 random ones from the deck on our turn. Our task is to reduce the opponents’ HP to 0 and not die, and we can also see what action the opponents will take at the beginning of their turn, be it increasing damage, creating armor, or throwing us interfering cards. Speaking of them! The developers came up with an interesting mechanic: in addition to gnomes in the deck, because of our opponents, we may end up with unplayable cards like a connected gnome, but there is a use for them, because there are other cards that use unplayable cards to perform some function, for example, 15 damage for each unplayable card in the hand. The game also features an interesting leveling up of the leader based on eight purely RPG characteristics.
chzh, Baldur’s Gate.
Solid 4! This is not the best game I’ve played from the list, but I didn’t find any problems at all, this game will be on my wish list, I’m interested in this product. Only some mobility of the project can scare away; at some points the game looks like it should have been released not on Steam, but on Google Play, but somehow this doesn’t really scare me.
Tradesman: Deal to Dealer
And the cherry on top of this huge pile of demos is Tradesman: Deal to Dealer! New game from AZAMATIKA, author of such games as Peace Death, Gone Done, Draw Chilly. In general, his future game will also be okay with humor, it’s entirely about humor, well, there’s also some gameplay in the background, which is also very good. Let’s discuss.
I played it a little because it was hard to play the incomplete version, since already at the twentieth minute I realized that I would play through this as soon as it came out. I think because of this it should be said right away that my assessment is 3. Now let’s find out why.
Have you tried playing in Mount and Blade as a merchant who buys grain in villages and delivers it to industrial cities?? So, Tradesman is completely based on this mechanics, which it, among other things, deepens. We play as a merchant from the village of Domodedovo and our adventure begins with the fact that our grandfather gives us instructions to repair the shed; we can buy boards in Lesopilsk. We immediately learn that in Petusharovo there is a demand for grain, which our grandfather generously gives us.
Moving around the map occurs through battles with robbers, which can even be wild boars. In this humorous world, even animals talk and have not zero intelligence, which is why it’s both funny and doesn’t even break the immersion! On the contrary, you plunge even more into this abyss of a strange humorous world, in which the rooster will experience an existential crisis, and the boar will demand a payoff so as not to rob you.
The battles take place on their own, our task is only to occasionally use the hero’s abilities and hire mercenaries to suit the road we are going to follow. The hero’s abilities are related to his leveling up, they are divided into several branches, some are passive, some are active, there’s not much to talk about here. Our squad consists of 5 members, one of whom must be a horse, but horses here are not only horses. Each of the five automatically hits opponents.
Problem number one: you can’t see in advance what character skills are needed to hire certain warriors, so I found myself in unpleasant situations when I fired a mercenary, but I couldn’t hire new ones, because I don’t have a certain skill and now I have to go with an incomplete squad, and the enemies here are tough, so it’s better not to get into such situations at all.
Problem number two: there will always be fights. You cannot move from one point to another without fighting, because they are mandatory and there are at least two of them. This is too annoying, there should be some restrictions. In addition, the battles are not easy, so if you have driven yourself into a position where you cannot recruit new units, then the game is over for you, you need to start all over again. By “everything” I mean the whole game, and this is not a roguelike or a sucker, in which the point is rehearsal, no, here you just need to go through, say, three hours of the game again, speed up. I really hope that at release there will be a way to get out of this hopeless situation.
It is precisely because of the above problems that although I really want to, I can’t give it 4. But despite this, I’m really looking forward to the game because of the humorous narrative, because no matter what location you go to, you can expect something to entertain you here. The world here is filled with jokes and interesting situations.
Füh! When the idea of writing this article came to my mind, I thought this matter would be much easier, after all, demos, after all, and not full-fledged games. It never even occurred to me that I would just write a half-hour longread for a week, playing incomplete products and telling you about them. “Come in and out” has grown into this.
I would like to say a few words about the games that were not included here. Still, at the festival there were not 12 of them, but a little more. When I played, I noticed that there were games that I didn’t understand the point of existing, games that looked exactly like mobile phones and games that were too crude even for a demo. I came to the following conclusion: before releasing a game on Steam, it is better to answer the question “why play it?”?" because I noticed this is a common problem. If a game doesn’t have at least some kind of narrative, then it’s simply boring, so if the game has no plot, then people want a gameplay that they can’t find anywhere, and that’s rare. (Roboholic does not belong to any category, it is simply optimized ass, so I did not play a first-person shooter with an average frame rate of 40-60).
Thank you for reading, I hope from my stories you picked up a couple of games that you will follow, like me!
I’m wondering which previews you, Stopgame readers, like best, so a small survey, as a reward – my immense love. :3