Chris Avellone’s characters have been around for decades. They have come alive; they have lived, changed, and died, even if they are still in circulation. You can play Planescape: Torment, Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, Prey, and several others. You can interact with his characters and bond with them. They will come alive when you play and engage with them, but the circumstances that kept them alive in popular culture are always changing.

This is the second part of our interview, where we delve into the life cycle of characters and how they endure in our imagination. In the first part, we saw how Annah from Planescape: Torment became emblematic of character complexity in CRPGs, influencing a generation of game designers, writers, and attentive DMs worldwide, beginning with my friend Max, who studied her lines.

In this second part, we’ll go over characters that come alive and yet never make it into the final game for a variety of reasons, all the minor characters that stand on the sidelines and never fully develop, and we consider, with a healthy dose of skepticism, the possibilities of character creation by AI models.

Worldwound Veterans

Avellone’s recent work credits (as per MobyGames) include Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Like most players, I was unaware of which characters were actually written by him, since there is no indication in the game itself, though he is included in the end credits. Apparently, his work was not used in the final version, but he was still acknowledged for his contribution.

On Wrath of the Righteous, I did a character summary, sample text, background etc. but the companion never saw the light of day. The companion was a “human” (but very long-lived 1001 years old) character that filled the Witch class role (which I believe was one of the new classes, so having a CNPC showcase that class for the player was a good idea), but she wasn’t a witch stereotype and even hated the word “witch.” She was previously serving as an infernal negotiator and contract drafter, had been there for ALL of the Worldwound crusades (so she could give a historical perspective on the current crusade), and had more of an all-business legal approach to most of her dealings with others. She had been at her job so long she had literally forgotten how to smile. She despised angels (hypocrites), tanar’ri (brutes), other races (annoying children), as well as most animals (including other humans) except for wasps, bees, and maggots. If you took the character Rebecca from Landman, aged her 20 years externally and 970-ish literally), that would be a good reference.

This is common practice in the games industry, where writers and designers get credit even for work that was not shipped in the game, and even if they don’t get paid properly for the work they did. Industry realities aside, this is how characters often die: on the page, before they become a set of game assets and files. It’s the spirit of what-might-have-been: anything that doesn’t make the cut and dies on the vine.

This isn’t Avellone’s first rodeo, but the good part is that even dead characters linger as ghosts haunting the writer’s mind. They seek to be part of a story somehow, and now this witchy non-witch will always haunt this abode of ours. Here at Blockhead, we welcome all characters, living and dead, but especially a legal spellcaster (not a “witch,” mind you) who likes only wasps, bees, and maggots. That’s the cincher.

Companions & Comrades

The games industry continues to be a difficult place for writers, even for a writer with Avellone’s experience. There is nothing left of his original work in the game, but at least he enjoyed collaborating with Alexander Mishulin and Andrey Tsvetkov for a while. Owlcat has expanded into a more corporate form since the game's release, which takes me back to my review of Kingmaker years ago for GameLuster.

I will say that the companion not seeing the light of day wasn’t all bad news: there had been other problems at that point because the executive producer at the time hadn’t been paying for work for several months (note that I had even kicked back money from the Kickstarter that was to go to me back to their company for the developers). So while some members of Owlcat were supportive (thanks, Andrey Tsvetkov), the end result was mostly a loss of time.

So aside from story reviews, feedback on companions and new plot additions, there shouldn’t be anything from me in the game I’m aware of. That said, I’m a big fan of Owlcat (Alexander Mishulin and Andrey especially), and I praise their success in the RPG space and wish them all the best in going ahead.

They did reach out again to see if I wanted to work with them again, but I mentioned my hesitations and recommended other writers they could try (who they didn’t contact, but I did want to give other writers a chance, since the industry is hurting nowadays).

Apart from these issues, I was more interested in learning how Avellone’s character writing continues to evolve since the early days when he made his name in RPG circles. What instincts created characters that endure and resonate? What new principles guide him now amid shifting team dynamics and design constraints?

So in character writing, there’s categories of characters: this is not a complete list, but they can be either basic NPCs, important NPCs, “town greeter” NPCs, merchant NPCs, companion NPCs (CNPCs), and a host of other categories. Of these all, companions can be the most difficult, and my design process for those I’ve summarized in a Pathfinder update you can find here.

There is no single purpose that fits all characters. Within all those categories, there are different approaches to character development. And with all of these contingencies and possibilities, the process leans on systems, classes, seasoning, lore and themes, but there are also regular characters with pragmatic purposes. Characters run the gamut from endlessly complex to flat, basic outlines that barely register.

Systemic Traits

Ultimately, characters must do something for the gameplay and the story at the same time. Some characters have a basic pragmatic purpose, such as merchants and shopkeepers, but they can still have something unique to them other than buying your junk. Obviously, companions have much more purpose tied to systemic features.

Systemic: Figure out what the character is there for. If it’s a merchant NPC, for example, you design them so players can access the store quickly (that’s why the PC is likely talking to them, not to hear their life story). For companions, you want a range of system advantages (and disadvantages) for the companion being in the party whether mage, thief, warrior, and so on – and they need to be systemically helpful and effective to the adventure, or else they’re going in the companion trash can. These system decisions also apply to having them support any new game system mechanics being introduced in the title – for example, is the character using a unique spell system or a brand new class that the game is trying out for the first time? Are you adding dual-wielding to the game, and you want a character to showcase a class that uses that art? These system decisions all factor in.

All of these special features usually lead to more individualized characters, with novel traits that bypass all the baggage of tropes and favourite races. There is an old story that Tolkien read passages from The Lord of the Rings to the group of writers Inklings, and one of them famously said during a reading: “Not another fucking elf!”

Class: Figure out what the character’s job is – a job is part of a character’s identity, and a “witch” profession has as big an impact on a character’s background as much as a “soldier” profession does.

Seasoning: This usually involves giving important characters a specific trait or specific item related to their personality. For Dak’kon in Torment, he had his karach blade that was representative of the chaos of his homeplane, but he also had a unique set of spells based on the religious text he carried with him.

Lore and Theme Purpose: How does this NPC relate to the theme of the game? It’s not necessary for every NPC, but it should always be asked for important NPCs. Is the character supposed to be representative of a certain faction or culture or point of view?

There’s a lot more elements beyond what I’ve listed here, but the Pathfinder update (esp. the example with Nok-Nok) might be helpful as well.

Annah was our focus in the first part of this interview, but this nod to Dak’kon also made me think that understated characters, who don’t share much of themselves, are often the most intriguing. Their reticence is enough to carry your interest. If they had a really convoluted backstory and were more open about it, they might lose the glow of mystery and untapped potential that they have with a more reticent personality.

Common Man

Finally, we come to the purpose of common characters, the interchangeable ones, the ones that appear often but have no significant role other than repeating their lines. We see them in every game, standing on corners, sitting in taverns, staring at nothing, moving in that way animated characters move, on a loop. But if they were not there, cities and places would feel less alive. If the Worldwound lawyer was stillborn, farmers and Dustmen are the opposite end: not special but essential for worldbuilding.

One thing I’ll add to this - there can be a temptation to make every single character in the world special. I’d argue that in an RPGs with hundreds upon hundreds of characters, you need to be careful with this, because you need the focus to be on certain events, a faction perspective or leader, and so on.

With this in mind, sometimes “run-of-the-mill” NPCs are actually serving a very important function by reinforcing some element of the culture they are in. As an example, if a farming village is being raided by bandits, you need some farmers to speak to it, and if you’re investigating the Mortuary in Sigil, you need some “baseline” Dustmen to provide the feel of the area, and so on. Even if these NPCs aren’t unique works of long-winded fraught personalities, they emphasize an area’s tone.

Even in KOTOR2, it was important for us to show that the people of the galaxy weren’t aware of the higher Light Side/Dark Side elements that were influencing the conflict and their lives… they quite understandably only saw the results of the war itself and the impact the Sith and Jedi conflict had on their lives. Showing the player that contrast, even in a simple way, can give the world more depth because it feels like something more grounded in human nature and “makes sense.”

Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords (KOTOR2 for short) was perhaps the most cerebral Star Wars game of all time. As Avellone points out, leaving these characters on the margins of the struggle between the Light Side/Dark Side of the Force is an elegant way of making them matter as common folk. Their lines and traits are not complex, but they still played a significant role in the story.

AI and Its Discontents

We have all seen the firestorm around Larian Studios and Swen Vincke’s comments on generative AI placeholders in concept art for the pre-production of their new Divinity game. The studio later clarified its position, but there’s now a faction within the gaming world that seems ready to pounce at any studio or developer who even hints at incorporating AI models in any way in their development.

Many gamers have the capacity for nuance, but not all of us. As an aficionado of nuance as much as character development, I asked Avellone: How do we preserve the uniquely human in character creation amid these tools? Are there qualities like lived contradiction, moral ambiguity, human messiness, or player-specific empathy traits that AI can’t touch, no matter how good the data it’s been trained on?

Or perhaps vast datasets could potentially free writers and creators to innovate by surfacing novel elements more quickly? Avellone took a pragmatic view that avoids both extremes of the debate.

As long as you view A.I. as a tool, it’s not an issue. I do think Larian’s use of A.I. is nowhere close to some companies I’ve worked with, ones who have completely replaced the concept art phase wholly with A.I. I just think Larian was a bigger target, which I don’t think is fair.

Also, the issue with A.I. becomes worse when the A.I. is unnecessarily intrusive and seems to be being forced upon you – my writing has been impacted by copilot because I’m fighting it so much when using Microsoft Word, I can’t shut down and ignore its functions fast enough. Its “ever present” nature in the program has been frustrating.

As for the uniquely human character aspects, I will say that A.I. has the ability to draw on the exact same sources I did in creating Annah in Torment. Her construction was based on tropes I’d seen in the campaign setting, D&D in general, love interests in a wider context, tiefling origins, etc. So if an A.I. “mimicked” and used those same tropes, I suppose it could make the attempt at creating a character, but I don’t know how successful that would be. I doubt it would choose Sheena Easton for her voice, which probably says a lot for the importance of the human factor in creation. : )

That intrusion is where writers feel the worst of AI encroachment. Microsoft Word and every other word processor and writing tool on the market are slowly becoming infested with these writing aids. Soon, it might be impossible to avoid AI in all major operating systems and devices. Writers and designers who resist the rising tide might find themselves replaced by writers and designers who will be willing to use these tools, or at least to get paid for using them.

They can never fully replace characters and their unique voices. They might clone and tweak voices; they might couple them with custom-built language models for fluid dialogue mechanics, and so on. Yet if players don’t find these characters engaging and compelling, they won’t be thinking about them over twenty years later, not in the way we find ourselves thinking about Avellone’s characters and Sheena Easton’s voice.

Reports of the Death of Characters have been greatly exaggerated. Like actors, who find their livelihood more threatened than ever, the few loyal practitioners of the craft of writing and creating compelling characters will go on. Some might eventually warm up to AI-made characters, but we know only the ineffable human spark can captivate and move us, just as other humans can make us feel something.

I thank Chris for his usual generosity of spirit in this interview.

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Chris Avellone thinks in character. Almost everything he writes is rooted in this thinking of how characters come to inhabit people’s minds. There are many great RPG writers, but few writers have embodied this character-driven ethos in their game design as much as Avellone did since his first 1990s credits as a designer and writer at Black Isle Studios. He was also a founding figure at Obsidian Entertainment, who shaped their game design philosophy as a creation process for unique characters and a willingness to take risks with those characters.

The past few years have been a whirlwind, but this interview is about the here and now of an industry beset with uncertainties and crises. As the world scrambles to adjust to a new technology and a new artificial reality, there is a core factor of game design that remains profoundly human. It is a factor that cannot be easily simulated or automated by the possibilities of training data models. That is the irreplaceable role of character.

This interview will be published in two parts, and this first part will be grounded in one character in particular: Annah-of-the Shadows, a tiefling thief in Planescape: Torment. Any reader unfamiliar with the world of Planescape in the overarching mythology of Dungeons & Dragons might feel lost, but even writers and players who spent years thinking about these worlds don’t understand them entirely.

The Setup

Avellone was kind enough to write a few thousand words in response to my questions, and I include the responses with some personal commentary to add my own perspective as a player and aficionado of character development. I began the interview with the story of a friend in Edmonton, Max Dickeson, who was born without sight. His perspective on Annah was one of the starting points for this interview.

Max is a highly competent DM running 5E campaigns in his own homebrew universe. A few years ago, when we first started hanging out, he asked about my top RPGs, and I mentioned Planescape: Torment first. He’d never played it, but he’d read a document online with all of Annah-of-the-Shadows’ lines and content. Max studied this closely because he’d heard she was one of the most memorable characters in RPG history.​

My first question to Avellone was: “What makes Annah endure?” She appeared long before explicit discourse on representation or strong female characters in games. Yet she’s always felt psychologically real, emotionally alive: abrasive, vulnerable, human. How did he begin to build that complexity? What guided her voice, her bond with the Nameless One, her place in that world? Was there a conscious push against tropes, or did her depth emerge organically?

How Annah Came Alive

Avellone tells the story of Annah’s creation as a multifaceted and complex process, less motivated by one single approach or factor. There is no shortcut to character complexity, and engaging with that complexity from many angles and perspectives was a necessary step in creating a character like Annah.

Her creation came both organically and from pushing against tropes, but it also included embracing some tropes. Also, I had help from Annah herself.

To explain, one thing that happens as a writer is once you establish what you believe to be the foundation for a character, that character starts writing their own story based on that foundation… and often, the character can get away from you. Ravel, also from Torment, definitely did and became far more important to the plot over time.

Annah was no exception – once you know someone’s background and their personality traits, skills, and so on, they’ll start making story decisions for themselves.

Method actors have a similar process that allows the emergence of the characters on their own terms, rather than the actor’s terms. Writing is different from acting in many ways, but there is an overlap in how actors enact their characters and how writers develop theirs. The feeling for what would be out of character becomes intuitive, not something that can fit into a simple scheme or algorithm.

Rogue’s Gallery

Annah is one of the several companions that The Nameless One, the player character, can recruit and interact with as they progress through the game. Companions are never isolated in a room with the player; they exist in relationships with other companions as much as with the player character. The companions for Planescape: Torment remain one of the blueprints for companion design in Western RPGs.

Now another thing that builds upon a companion character’s own “voice” and autonomy is if there’s also other similarly-detailed characters in the party, say in even an atypical D&D party like Torment, the other companions will act as sounding boards for each other… and then their reactions to each other can also start making story decisions. So over time, even through companion exchanges, Annah developed more and more detail, just like the other characters.

In terms of how Annah came to “be,” I’ll start with a pragmatic answer. Usually the example I’ve used for this breakdown in the past has been Morte in Torment (and the answer was, “hey we needed a mimir [a Planescape encyclopedia shaped like a skull, it’s part of the franchise] to explain everything, but we wanted it to have a personality, and someone you could relate to if you were a stranger to the universe, oh, and since you get him early on, having him be able to tank and soak up damage is good,” and so on), but the same step-follows-step process was true for Annah as well.

The relationships between the characters are not accidental or superfluous; they are essential for each character to develop and serve their purpose in the story. Morte’s role as a mimir is not only an exposition device but also an engine for character development. Morte and Annah have a particularly prickly relationship that drives the story to something more lifelike, bickering as true friends do.

System Flock

Planescape: Torment was based on the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition ruleset, which differs radically from subsequent editions, featuring the now-obsolete THAC0 system. The narrative focus of Torment also entailed tweaks, such as highlighting exotic races and simplifying class progression, but retained core mechanics like THAC0, proficiencies, and saving throws. Avellone confirms how some system constraints contributed to character development:

We started with some system constraints:

- In general, you want companions that represent a range of personalities, races, representatives of castes/factions important to the game, and so on. As such, we knew we had “human,” githzerai, “mimir,” tanar’ri, etc. so whoever we made needed to complement the existing structure and give everyone a chance to shine.

- We wanted a tiefling in the party because tieflings are a big part of Planescape.

- We wanted a thief to represent the skills of that class.

- In addition, the very nature of designing a “companion” come with a list of traits to be considered (which I’ll elaborate on later).

Tieflings have since become much more popular in D&D, appearing in prominent roles in Baldur’s Gate III, and in a sense revitalising the possibilities of character design and development. Arguably the most popular companion, Karlach is a tiefling barbarian who is quite different from Annah in several ways, while also reflecting the same principles of how characters come alive and captivate players.

Love Stories

How players will actually engage with characters is unpredictable because players are unpredictable humans. Avellone notes how Annah’s temperament could have alienated players (and perhaps did alienate some players), but she still manages to come out on top as the most popular and most memorable companion and love interest. She might be the only romanceable character to ever nibble the player.

…we drilled down into the narrative aspects:

- We wanted another love interest – the “Betty” to Fall-From-Grace’s “Veronica,” even though those high-level Archie definitions don’t quite fit for either one. Fall-From-Grace seemingly has everything going for her (she doesn’t) and Annah is the opposite: it seems like she has nothing going for her (which also isn’t true).

- Annah provided a perspective on the slums of Sigil and also a tie to the major NPC Pharod beyond Pharod simply being a scheming NPC and made him something more than just a quest objective. Also, it was intended for the player to see (in her) her foster father’s manipulations, and the pain of being manipulated/leveraged that places on someone who has no one else in the world to call family.

And that is where her complexity really shines: when you understand she’s just a lost girl, caught up in an underworld beyond her control, and yes, she comes across as an abrasive, difficult individual, yet she becomes your most loyal friend. Of course, that involves putting up with her rough edges and daddy issues to a degree. In a word, true love, or at least what can be understood as true love in the world of Torment.

Inner Life

The secret ingredient is inner life. Characters cannot live in the service of the player and other companions; they must have their own thing going on as well. And in a world like Torment, they must, of course, be tormented by something: by feelings of inadequacy, a lack of belonging, orphanhood, and so on. Annah’s inner life springs from a place of empathy in Avellone’s character development process.

- … we wanted each companion in the party to be wrestling with something that had deeply wounded them emotionally. For Annah, it came from feeling outside of the world, someone who Pharod viewed as a tool to be cast away as needed, so she had to (indirectly) communicate that pain.

- Annah also utilizes a classic trope arc and it’s (1) two characters meet with evident hostility, (2) this hostility causes various dramas and conflicts, (3) the two characters bond, either over respect or affection or both, and (4) this one is key: you bonding with Annah causes her to be willing to fight to defend you… even to death. This hostility-to-life-loyal-kinship is something I happen to like in most media, as it’s usually a reward for the protagonist (you, the player) being loyal, just, sacrificing, caring… basically, all the heroic elements we strive for, except in the game, you can clearly see what the reward is in the end when you confront the Transcendent One. This is an arc that hits me strongly, so I wanted to include one into the game – and Annah was one of the representations of it.

Loyalty is perhaps one of the most persistent and flexible themes across literature, religion, politics, and popular culture in general. It sits right at the intersection of emotion, morality, and social order, standing out as a core value in social contexts. Annah’s loyalty to the player character, “even to death,” is tested in the final act.

Avellone’s thoughts and memories on this soon-to-be 30-year-old game and its cast of characters are especially valuable because they help us reclaim what we love in games as something more than killing-time entertainment, as more than an assemblage of words that could be generated by any NPC language model.

“What can change the nature of a man?” is a question that resonates and sits with us for years, even decades. In the second part of this interview, we’ll discuss how, once characters come alive, they must also, in their own way, change, live, and die.

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Death Howl

A soulslike deck builder is a clash of genres fit to befuddle even the hardiest gamer. Death Howl reminds me of a now-mythic indie game that was never released and will probably never be released: Eitr. The visuals are not exactly as intricate, but there is a similar aesthetic of grimdark pagan pixel art. It’s a cool twist on pagan aesthetic, and the gameplay is basic but fun.

Death Howl is available to try the demo on Steam.

Roadwarden

After I played the demo of Roadwarden, I went on to buy the game full price because I just loved the ambience and worldbuilding. It’s a chill and casual adventure with RPG elements and great writing. It’s like if The Witcher was more low-fantasy and had a pixelated 2D interface and art style instead of a third-person hack-and-slash ARPG. The universes feels similarly dark and unforgiving, full of beasts and monsters.

Roadwarden is available to try the demo on Steam.

Space Wreck

Over the last ten years, there’s been a race to create the next Fallout. Some developers tried to imitate the exact post-apocalyptic RPG format with mixed results, such as Atom and Encased. Then there are unique worlds such as Underrail and Colony Ship, with similar mechanics. Space Wreck feels less like a copy-and-paste clone and more like an original take and less focused on combat, which is entirely optional.

Space Wreck is available to try the demo on Steam.

Void Pyramid

Void Pyramid must have the worst sound effects I’ve ever heard in a game. And it might have one of the worst colour palettes of all time. But still, it’s kind of cool and weird and original. This is a full short game, and it’s like a classic Nintendo JRPG had a weird mutant baby with Fallout. Points for originality, but you might want to turn down your volume or just mute the game if you are sensitive to odd noises.

Void Pyramid is available for free on Steam.

Twisted Tower

I played this demo over a while ago, and I don’t remember much, but it felt like a less self-serious BioShock. I’m not sure if the shooting and combat mechanics will appeal to hardcore fans. I’m not the biggest BioShock fan; I prefer System Shock myself, and that’s mostly for the story and worldbuilding, less for the shooting. I’m not sure Twisted Tower will do well against other BioShock-like titles, but I hope the studio will find some success, if only because they let you wield a gumball machine gun.

Twisted Towers is available to try the demo on Steam.

Moonring

Sometimes you have to wonder what’s the catch. You get a free game and not only it’s not total crap, it’s actually pretty good and original even when it’s directly inspired by a game such as Ultima. The appeal is not the minimalistic style, but it does make the game more unique. The dialogue mechanics are also more developed and original than expected. If there’s one free game you should get right now, this is it.

Moonring is available for free on Steam.

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The worst thing about Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is that it could be even better; it could have more to explore; other POIs to find and NPCs to converse with; and even other challenges and quests to pursue by the endgame. Warhorse gave players so much, only to keep us wanting more. This was a deliberate setup for the expansions and DLC content released in the past few months.

I took over two months to complete the main storyline and optional content for the first time. When the hardcore mode came out, I was ready for a second run. As I rode Pebbles from village to village, I found other things to fixate on: the quiet NPCs in taverns as they sit and stare into nothingness; the lack of reactivity to certain actions and features; the occasional glitches or sound sync issues; and so on.

Warhorse are now established open world creators, rivalling Rockstar, Bethesda, and CD Projekt, and to some degree improving upon the formula and cutting down some fluff. Except for the writing, which can be almost biblical, full of chattering NPCs and long-winded ramblings. Yet the immersion factor remains unparalleled, even through major frustration with shortcomings, flaws, and issues.

This review will tackle both the base game content and the expansions. I missed the chance to cover the game on release, and so I decided to wait until all the expansions had been released, along with other patches and new content. This is also the most polished version of the game, with several bugs fixed and kinks ironed out. The main takeaway is the immersion factor, which was also the standout in the original KCD.

Min-Maxed Immersion

The soft reset early in the game severely impairs your skills, and you lose all your gear. It’s an effective way to make you struggle before you become OP in the second half of the game. There are also a few other moments where you have your gear taken from you, and a short period of starvation during a siege. This is a way to balance the difficulty without making it overwhelmingly harder to play, but I was so overpowered by the endgame on both runs that it really didn’t matter.

Both the original and the sequel have this common issue: it’s easy to become OP by grinding and levelling early on, which also removes the challenge of varied builds and allows the player to become a god-like master of all. Some players enjoy this playing curve because it rewards the efforts they put into it, but it still feels too gamey in an RPG striving for realism. This was also my main issue with the original KCD in 2018.

And yet the immersion… What a game to get lost in; what an adventure to walk into the woods and find your way around without a quest marker. The hardcore mode is the proper way to play, even if it takes much longer to complete that way. The journey is the destination; the exploration is its own reward. Fast travel takes away the heart of an open world where there are always rewards for being attentive and thorough.

The expansions bolster the open world exploration, with the radiant quests in Legacy of the Forge leading to expeditions to find stolen goods, and Voyta sending you around the map for his insane missions for Brushes with Death. Then, for the final expansion, you get to wander around the Sedletz monastery in a constrained quest, without weapons and unable to get out before you unravel the mystery.

Smooth Riding

The greatest improvement here is the horse riding path-finding, which means you don’t have to hold down the button to keep riding to your destination. I even hope they will eventually update the original to add this feature, as it would make riding around much more palatable on hardcore mode. Finding your way around is not easy, but after a while it’s like getting to know a city as you adjust to its streets and avenues.

The main problem with both the original and the sequel continues to be the constant transition animations, which can get repetitive and sometimes annoying. Having to wait for an animation to finish before you proceed with the next action can take some patience. The immersion is undeniable; you really feel like you are in that place when you have to open doors, get off your horse, and so on. But you’re also in a hurry.

There are other minor issues and niggling annoyances, but overall the game design is solid, with just a few crashes and freezes. The issues I had were due to corrupt drivers, so players might want to DDU their drivers for a clean slate when that occurs. Compared to other open world games, and even to the original at launch, KCD II is among the most polished experiences I’ve had over the years.

Morality Clauses

Perhaps the most impactful sequence in the main questline is when Henry manages to sneak into Markvart von Aulitz’s private quarters in the Praguer enemy camp, which is optional, and several players reported missing this encounter. The hour of our death: how does a man stand in the face of certain death? Von Aulitz is a compelling villain, and Henry’s choice decides his fate and affects the endings substantially.

Both the sequel and the original hinge on Henry’s relationship with his parents and their morality. The entire causality of Henry’s saga rests on seeking revenge for the senseless slaughter of his parents. He becomes a superhero-like figure in order to find the men who killed his parents, and in the process kills many other men. I don’t think you could be a pacifist in KCD II even if you tried. As such, the ending might be disappointing if you don’t play as a very good boy.

The test of a great open world game is in the side quests and stories. Several are excellent, but the thieves’ guild quests in Kuttenberg felt undercooked. Some side quests felt like copy-and-paste fetch quests, though a few are fun in a cyclical way. The side quests in Legacy of the Forge are more fun than in Brushes with Death and Mysteria Ecclesiae. In the end, you are left wanting more side quests with more meat in them, but the “radiant” quests can keep you going for a while.

The graphics and art direction are stunning, but a lot of players miss some church interiors, which were astounding in the original. There are only a few small chapels in the sequel. Of course, it makes sense that not every church should be open to the public, but at least one or two could be, so we hope there will still be more side content patches in the future. Probably not, but we can hope.

Lesser Weevils

The release was stable, and the game is mostly solid, but the first patch introduced the Goatskin bug, which I had a major issue with, having to wait at least a week for a fix. A lot of players were stuck, unable to complete the quest and progress with the main questline. Then, with the release of Mysteria Ecclesiae, the bedroom display items in Legacy of the Forge disappeared; we lost items that we invested time to acquire. These were the most egregious bugs that really detract from the overall experience.

Overall, the game is more playable, cozy and immersive than the original, particularly with the horse riding pathfinding. Players shouldn’t have to press a button to ride a horse; there should be a solid system that allows the player to simply enjoy the ride. This makes the constant back-and-forth between villages and locations much more engaging, and it’s the best alternative for fast travel.

That said, I wish NPCs would just walk out of your way when you are riding slowly in a big city. This was possible even in a game like the first Red Dead Redemption, so there is no reason why it wouldn’t be possible today. The NPCs could have funny reactions to the horse as they step aside, run, or jump away. And the horse could also veer if they don’t move away, rather than just brushing past them as they complain.

The crafting and blacksmithing could also be a bit more fleshed out. There are too many items that seem like parts for crafting, but there’s nothing to do with them. A lot of items and food you pick up, like spices, don’t amount to anything, and you can’t consume them in any way. You learn recipes, but they can’t be made. And finally, the reputation system could use an overhaul; a lot of the time, it seems quite buggy.

I also experienced some random crashes in the first few months, which were usually driver failure. I had to DDU my drivers quite a few times since February, but it has been more stable in the last few months. There are a few odd glitches here and there, but for the most part this is as solid as an open world game can get, and that is quite an accomplishment for Warhorse.

Mutt Lover Simulator

All that said, my favourite activity is feeding Mutt and petting him. Sometimes I don’t even play anymore, I just hunt or wander around the inns and butchers buying meat to feed Mutt and pet him. Then I quit the game. Well done, Warhorse: you’ve created the world’s most intricate, most realistic and overwrought medieval mutt petting simulator. That is no mean feat. No other open world will ever match KCD II on this.

It seems like Warhorse are now sitting on a sizeable war chest and ready to take their games to the next level. Whatever their next game is, they will build on this formula and make it bigger, more immersive. Ideally, they will min-max their talents and avoid stretching themselves thin into other genres. There are enough fantasy games. Give us some human, historical messiness, instead of more good-and-evil grandeur.

Best things in life are the small ones. Taking in a sunset and the afterglow. Having a warm meal after coming in from the cold and rain. Feeling cozy and organizing your little world. Having a loyal boy following you around. Cutting down bandits in the woods. Finding something out of the way and noticing something others might not. This is what KCD will always do better than other games in this crowded open world.

Disclosure: Kingdom Come: Deliverance II was reviewed on PC with a Steam copy purchased by the reviewer, over the course of 350 hours of play time. All screenshots attached were captured during the review process.

Rating: 9.0 / Essential.

The Good

• Immersive like a time travel machine;

• Compelling realism and detail;

• Engaging horse riding;

• Side content rewards exploration;

• Polished gameplay with few major bugs;

• Strong reactivity and morality system;

• Mutt.

The Bad

• Dialogue can be verbose and redundant;

• Grinding leads to overpowered builds;

• Repetitive transition animations disrupt flow;

• Some quest-breaking bugs (now patched);

• Crafting is somewhat limited and underused;

• Could use more NPC diversity, POIs, side quests.

Gallery

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is available on Steam, GOG, Epic, Xbox, and PlayStation. More information on the official website.

The Steam Next Fest is over by now, but I managed to try out some demos. Several are still available to play, and others had a short window of availability. At this point in the renaissance of demos, some are almost like full games, except for certain time limits. Some of these demos are so fun and engaging you could play them for enough time over and over that they might as well be full games.

Who needs to pay full price for all those broken AAA games on pre-order when you have free demos that give you more and only ask for a wishlist?

The Legend of Khiimori

I love games that move away from established cultures that have already been given enough attention in games, such as medieval Europe. Some of my favourite games are incidentally set in medieval Europe or inspired by the tropes of medieval Europe, but I still think developers should try to do other things. The Legend of Khiimori takes place in 13th-century Mongolia, allowing you to play as a horse rider and courier. This is a beefy demo with a time counter, but lots of content to explore. The game will enter Early Access next year, so it will be in a rough state but still playable.

The Legend of Khiimori is available to try the demo on Steam.

Cairn

Cairn is utterly relaxing, beautiful, and at the same time stressful as hell. One false move and you can fall, then you might even double-fall as your body rolls down the rocks back to where you started. You’ll have to wait until your unconscious body wakes up so you can patch yourself up and try all over again. It’s humbling and cozy, and at the same time vertiginously terrifying if you’re even slightly afraid of heights.

Cairn is available to try the demo on Steam.

Bladesong

I always knew that the dialogue system in Disco Elysium would change the way many games design their dialogue systems. Bladesong is not exactly a Disco-like, but it incorporates some of its dialogue design with skill checks and a scroll-like bar. The heart of the game is the blacksmithing game, where you adjust all the possible attributes for a blade and add a hilt. Customers come and go, with different personalities, as you explore the location in your free time. Great worldbuilding.

Bladesong is available to try the demo on Steam.

Clean Up Earth

If you hate a mess but love the feeling of cleaning it up, here’s the game for you. You get a futuristic garbage-sucking gun to point it at all the mess in beaches and deserts until you can get it all sparkling. The levels literally sparkle once you’ve sucked out every piece of garbage. And if you miss one little piece, you’ll be stuck looking for it before the map gives you a three-star rating so you can move on to the next map. On the way, you can upgrade your gun and get some other add-ons.

Clean Up Earth is available to try the demo on Steam.

Duskpunk

The Disco-like is not a genre; it’s more like a school of game design. The genre here is Victorian steampunk RPG, which has a long tradition all the way back to Arcanum. But Duskpunk isn’t isometric; it’s a map-based exploration adventure with dice-based dialogue mechanics. The writing is bare but effective, with no heavy lore dumps. You just have to survive in this London-like city, and eventually learn about your past.

Duskpunk is available to try the demo on Steam.

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In my preview last year, The Alters felt handcrafted for a cinematic experience exploring the relationships between you and the alters. The cinematic elements are not that prominent, but I was not ready for how much work these relationships would be to maintain while the planet’s sun was about to fry us all alive. Sure, we’re always on the verge of collapse from radiation storms and just hoping to make it through the day alive, but have you considered that you hurt this alter’s fee-fees today?

11 bit studios developers know how to put the player through the meat grinder of constant frustration and bare survival. But the people you depend on to survive in this game are also the ones you sometimes want to strangle, just like real family. If you are the type who tries to make everybody happy, you will probably go insane in The Alters. No matter what you do for them, you will not make them happy.

If that is not enough to discourage you, the survival gameplay will keep you racing against time through a torrent of challenges and busywork, evading weird gelatinous anomalies, and trying to find the specific spots for mining structures. All so you can mine the Rapidium required to create more needy alters who will ask for more things while talking about their feelings. And here I thought rolling through a hostile planet would be hard, but playing shrink for a crew of therapy bros is a reimagining of hell.

Space Whac-A-Mole

To be fair, I enjoy the base building, the mini-games (especially beer pong) and some in-game movies are funny. I also enjoyed some crafting, but a lot feels unbalanced, with some items taking such a long time to build, while the base modules are implemented instantly. This just doesn’t seem realistic for survival technology on a hostile planet, and it clashes with the overall attempt at realism in the setting.

When you come upon an anomaly, you have to use a device the scientist called a “luminator” to blast their core, which is a big ball bouncing inside the gelatinous blob. It’s like a pinball game, but you have to follow the ball with your cursor to disintegrate them. It’s supposed to be a fun gameplay element, but it falls flat and feels like ‘pop-a-mole’. It’s just not fun having to blast several when you’re low on batteries. And if they are everywhere all the time, they can’t really be called anomalies.

Overall, the gameplay feels uneven. There is not much to do in the evenings and during radiation storms, and working inside is too slow after shifts. You can talk to your alters sometimes, but most of the time they don’t have interesting things to say, and the dialogue feels way too slow. They will go on about their life story, but they sound so petty, considering we will all die if we don’t focus on the tasks required to survive. They don’t seem to take that constant threat seriously.

Faux Physics

There were also a few niggling issues with controls, performance, and general ease of use. Some mechanics are not explained very well, and finding the right spot to mine a deep deposit can take longer than it should. Especially when you are constantly evading the anomalies and running out of batteries. The physics of the planet itself feels too gamey, and that gamification diminishes the realism in the setting.

Moving around the base is also a bit of a hassle, especially when you have to talk to an alter. Why is that they can just send me voice messages, but I have to find them physically in the base to talk to them every time a new conversation cue pops up? You have to go up or down the elevators, walk through the modules to find them, get close enough to the NPC hitbox just to start a new conversation so they can whine at you.

The planet levels can be tricky to navigate, with a bit of interesting vertical design, but the fact that you cannot jump or jetpack really hampers the exploration with a hook-based gamey mechanic. This also makes the level design feel flattened, full of invisible walls and on-rails rather than open-ended, lacking cool things to discover. There seems to be only laid-out routes already in place for you to follow; you are not here to find your own path.

Lifeless Everyman

I really tried my best to care, but I don’t think Jan Dolski is a compelling character, and the alters felt even more one-dimensional and flat, sometimes a caricature, especially the scientist. And the corporation’s side characters are also quite annoying, especially Lucas, always going on about his grandma all the time. Sorry, I do not care. And stop asking for more and more Rapidium; stop being so greedy. It’s like these people don’t see I am trying to get away from an apocalyptic sun over here.

If the alters need to talk, they should wait until the end of the day to bring it up, when there’s not much to do since you can’t go outside, and work is too slow. Instead, the alters ask to talk when you are right in the middle of a dangerous errand outside, and they just get in the way. If there is no food ready to eat, they have no agency to go to the kitchen and cook for themselves. They have the nerve ask you to cook for them while you’re out there fighting for your life; they act worse than helpless children.

And honestly, I tried my best to be tolerant of their flaws, to be polite to them, to hear them out at first. I really, really tried. I spent resources and time to craft crap they asked for. And they still act spoiled and whiny after that. I’d understand if all the issues I had were just because I was selecting the worst possible dialogue options, but I tried my very best to hear them out, help them out, and work with them. And what do I get? More whining, more complaints, more interruptions and poor attitude.

Planet Consciousness

How could someone decide to abandon the mission and go by himself into the wilderness of a hostile planet with radioactive storms? How does that make sense? Just because I opted for a humane choice to help keep them alive. He was the first alter I created, and I liked him at first. He was always unruly, but to actually abandon the mission and go at it alone in the middle of this wasteland? It makes no sense.

Less is more. Considering what they go through to be created with Rapidium, the alters would be more impactful as characters if they were less self-absorbed and more interested in their connection with the planet. The game could have had a deeper insight into the ideas that only come up in the third act, when I was already sick of them all. The planet itself is a more interesting character than the alters.

And that is something Polish science fiction has always excelled at: conceiving intelligent alien life as planetary more than species-based. Solaris is a unique science fiction novel/film because the ‘visitors’ from the ocean were less self-absorbed in how they showed their inner life. They were more invested in something bigger than themselves, whereas the alters sound too bound up in their branched quantum timelines; the character development feels less organic as a consequence.

Unresponsive Systems

A day-one patch should address most of the issues I had, but still, some players might want to wait out a while if they prefer to play a polished build. During my playthrough, there were significant crashes, frame rate dips, as well as bugs and several minor issues in functionality and user experience. Some areas seem to experience more issues than others, and optimization is all over the place.

For some reason, the game sometimes takes several minutes to load in the beginning. At first, I thought it was just setting up for the first time, but every time I restart the game, it loads again. I’m not sure what’s going under the hood with the ‘preparing shaders’ and whatnot, but other more resource-intensive games don’t take this long to load, so this just seems like poor optimization.

When the game works, it works fine, and the gameplay loop is solid, but sometimes the interruption bubbles from alters never stopped. I gave them jobs, but they didn’t seem to be doing them. The “crunch” overtime switch in Assignments didn’t seem effective; my alters seemed unproductive most of the time, focused on other things. When I needed something done urgently, I felt like I had to do it myself because it would take them longer to do it.

Universe of Oz

I was really looking forward to The Alters, but it frustrated me more than it engaged me. My past reviews and previews show my record as a fan of 11 bit studios since This War of Mine, and my preview was enthusiastic. There is a core of great ideas here that could improve in the execution; questions of free will and determinism, and what our choices can do. But these ideas are reduced to a Wizard of Oz drama, where the alters were like the Tin Woodman and such, all there to help me “become a better person”.

I hoped there would be more exploration and mystery in a space survival game, but most of the time I felt stuck having pointless conversations rather than actually being able to do what needs to be done to survive. We get these survival systems and this cool base, and then it feels like we are not allowed to play with them because of constant interruptions, uncollaborative systems, and whiny alters. The potential of the gameplay gets watered down in this stream of petty issues and complaints.

When life is hard and uncomfortable, people bear down and take it. You don’t have the time or the energy to open up to people when you’re living rough. You don’t have the luxury of sharing your feelings, making yourself the centre of the universe. You wake up, do your job, and find ways to cope. You don’t make it everybody’s business to care about every little thing that hurts in your head. You man up and move on. Especially when you are facing solar annihilation with a crew of unhinged alter egomaniacs.

PS: I wrote most of this review after an event halfway through the storyline. It was a frustrating experience, which prompted this rather negative review, alongside the process wrapping my head around the game’s systems. I have cooled off since then, and I see now that I became too involved with the player character and the cast of alters. In retrospect, while I stand by the criticism, the game is not bad, though also not quite great. If you tend to become too involved in a story and lash out at the characters, you might want to play this in small doses to avoid the frustration. You have to be able to separate your work life and your personal life with the alters. There are multiple endings and variations to explore once you have a handle on it.

Disclosure: The Alters was reviewed on PC with a Steam key provided by the developer over the course of 50 hours of play time. All screenshots attached were captured during the review process.

Rating: 6.5 / Serviceable.

The Good

• Cool modular base building;

• Engaging worldbuilding;

• Stunning alien landscapes;

• Compelling narrative hook;

• Potential for a deeper engagement with the alien planet.

The Bad

• Too many interruptions from alters;

• Too much therapy busywork;

• Anomalies all the time everywhere;

• Unbalanced crafting and base building;

• Performance and optimization issues;

• Inconsistent character development;

• The alters are mostly assholes, lunatics, or whiners.

Gallery

The Alters will release on June 13 on Steam, GOG, Epic, PlayStation, and Xbox. More information on the official website.

So I download a lot of demos and eventually get around to trying them out in this feature format. I published the first roundup feature in the late summer with some really cool demos, some of which are now released, or at least out in Early Access. One of them, Lucky Tower Ultimate, I had the chance to preview as well. This is the second batch, some still unreleased, and I look forward to checking out the full release.

Lorn's Lure

Lorn’s Lure is amazing if you have no sense of vertigo at all; if you do even slightly, you might find yourself in a constant state of low-key agony as you try to climb surfaces in this dystopian platformer climbing simulator. You play as an android who left his home colony and finds himself exploring this vast post-industrial landscape with climbing gear. You get a lot of chances, even if you fall to your death over and over.

Lorn’s Lure is available on Steam.

Rue Valley

Rue Valley feels like a mix of Disco Elysium, Groundhog Day, and something David Lynch thought of while in the bathroom. The player character is a regular Joe who has to do therapy sessions in a remote location while plagued by the banality of everyday thoughts. Then you have an exploration of the subconscious, where you develop your memories to improve or impair your mental health. So just like real life.

Rue Valley is available to try on Steam.

Arco

Arco means ‘bow’ in Spanish and Portuguese, and it’s a cool title for a game where you play as a native Mexican archer in a fantasy RPG universe. The pixel art is excellent, the gameplay is simple and fun, the soundtrack is soothing, and the storytelling is engaging. I’ve often thought fantasy should try to incorporate other civilizations and periods rather than the usual European high fantasy fare. This is yet another amazing indie game that slipped through the cracks this year and deserves more attention.

Arco is available on Steam.

Kill The Shadow

Pixel art could improve a lot of bland photorealistic games these days. A Disco-like detective game like Kill the Shadow is much more engaging in this art style. You play as Detective Lucas, who finds himself in a post-collapse society after a strange apocalyptic event that goes unexplained. Then you have to figure out who killed the boss’ dog, which is a fairly layered case. The dialogue is clever, and the investigation mechanics are compelling, though maybe not as introspective as Disco Elysium.

Kill the Shadow is available to try on Steam.

Europa

I tend to dislike Zelda-like games just because I like to antagonize Nintendo, but Europa looks quite stunning. Some described it as Zelda meets Studio Ghibli. The demo let me climb on the back of a turtle for a bit, and I enjoyed that more than anything I ever did in Breath of the Wild. It feels like a more ecologically mindful take on the science-fantasy action-adventure.

Europa is available on Steam and Nintendo Switch.

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This War of Mine was one of the earliest indie games in the 2010s to break into the mainstream with a more elevated idea of what games could do, alongside a few other classics such as Papers, Please and Journey. Over the last decade, there were several DLC expansions, some of which were made for charity. This War of Mine: Forget Celebrations is both a 10th anniversary and a charity DLC. This is a game that keeps on giving and giving, never to be relegated to the dustbin of gaming history.

11 bit studios have had an excellent year as a developer and as a publisher. They have published indie gems such as INDIKA and The Invincible, then released a sequel to the seminal survival city-builder, Frostpunk 2. They were also due to release The Alters, which I previewed, but it has since been delayed to 2025, which makes sense. This War of Mine: Forget Celebrations is their capstone release of 2024, solidifying their legacy.

Katia’s Book Materials

This is a story DLC and there are no new mechanics or features. This War of Mine, the base game, perfected the survival gameplay cycle of base-building by day and scavenging by night while someone stays home to guard it. You start with almost nothing and build yourself up with all the junk you can scavenge bit by bit. Along the way, you will have to endure some hardships and home invasions.

The only new element in this DLC is that you must collect Katia’s book materials spread throughout the area. There are markers on the map to help you localize them and then search through levels until they are found. It adds an interesting dimension to scavenging, a purpose to look forward to more than making it to the next day alive. And of course, you get to see Katia’s story from a different perspective.

Fight or Flight

Anyone who would play This War of Mine only for the action and combat gameplay is probably playing the wrong game for them. There are, of course, instances where you either fight or run off, but I find the best players tend to favour going in and coming out unnoticed, or at least not spotted. The stealth gameplay is not flawless either, but it is consistent and well-designed to suit the game.

Sometimes it feels like the characters are not that responsive, but that depends on their current status: hunger, fatigue, misery… all of this can cause your scavengers to go slower and to react slower, which is consistent with survival gameplay in general. It encourages you to be careful and take only calculated risks.

Prepper Mindset

It feels wholesome to revisit these characters ten years later and finding they are still alive in this never-ending war. Katia is in particularly rough shape, having been injured by a missile, but she’s hanging in there and writing. Marin and Pavle are still kicking, and continue to be valuable characters for survival in general. In this aspect, nothing changed, but the story feels more involving this time around.

The days come and go, and you go on collecting book materials, interacting with people, defending yourself and others, if you can and must. Survival is serious business, and the enduring appeal of This War of Mine is in never cheapening it, gamifying it beyond the functional and pragmatic. You are not out here to thrive in the post-apocalyptic wasteland like a warlord; you are at best prepared and ready.

The Legacy of This War of Mine

Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine, Syria, and so on and on… War is a light that never goes out. It may cool down for a few years or decades, but then it comes back in full strength. And this might be only the beginning. The next eight years will be determined by a nefarious technofeudalist coalition, and will likely entail the advent of fully automated wars, with drones, androids, and a myriad of violent bots.

The war of This War of Mine might be a legacy war by comparison, but it remains the best case for how games might treat the subject of war more respectfully to those caught up in it. The consequences of violence must be felt, and the player must feel responsible for people. At the end of the day, there is nothing special about making hard choices to survive, and the best we can hope for is to make it out in one piece.

Disclosure: This War of Mine: Forget Celebrations was reviewed on PC with a Steam key provided by the developer over the course of 6 hours of play time. All screenshots attached were captured during the review process.

Rating: 10 / Masterpiece.

The Good

• Compelling survival gameplay;

• Strong, layered characters;

• Choices have consequences;

• Strong writing and dialogue;

• Elevated meditation on war.

The Bad

• Some minor resolution issues on modern systems.

Gallery

This War of Mine: Forget Celebrations is available on Steam. More information available on the official website.

I tried the demo of Lucky Tower Ultimate a few months ago and got hooked for a week. Yes, hooked on a demo. Now the Early Access version is here, and I got the chance to preview it properly, leading to an even longer obsession. I didn’t know until a few days ago that this used to be a Flash browser game a long time ago. I tried the browser version, but it’s just too clunky. This PC reboot is insanely good.

Studio Seufz has a long history as a developer and as an animation studio, and the animations in Lucky Tower Ultimate are full of interesting details. AMC Games, the publisher, is also the publisher of another great indie game that featured here last year: The Fabulous Fear Machine. This weird indie spirit is part of the satirical cartoon take on the dungeon crawler hero as a bumbling hero called Von Wanst.

The Art of Stupid Deaths

The gameplay is intuitive and easy; the combat is button-mashing fun for the most part. What’s actually difficult is how the challenges in each level can be unpredictable, and opening the wrong door can literally kill you. Enemy and event variety is great, and the game manages to keep surprising you with every new run. It’s this roguelite loop that keeps you addicted, as you die and die but keep going: just one more run.

Dying in stupid ways is all part of the fun of Lucky Tower Ultimate. I made a short video of my experience with the demo and the many varieties of stupid deaths that you might also experience when you play. Winning the fights and descending the tower is ultimately the goal, but why rush when you can have so much fun watching your hero get sliced, diced, decapitated, impaled, crushed, hammered flat, etc. etc. etc.

The Ambiguity of Evil

There is also plenty of situational humour in the interactions. Say you kill a monster and then throw it down the gaps: Von Wanst will say a quick prayer, “Sorry for killing you.” It’s these little bits of narrative and character development that keep you interested in the larger storyline, as silly as it is. You end up feeling like you want to help this poor idiot leave the tower and stop dying a thousand gruesome deaths.

Evelius is your antagonist, a green goblin-shrimp creature wearing a blue cloak who watches over Von Wanst as he runs down the stairs. Sometimes he helps, sometimes he hinders you, and sometimes he just wastes your time. Sometimes you’re doing amazing, with lots of cool gear, and Evelius just takes it all away and then you’re back in your heart boxers, punching the monsters until you get a new weapon.

Hammered Flat

Lucky Tower Ultimate will be in Early Access “for less than a year,” starting when they launched months ago. I have not experienced a single bug or game breaking moment so far, though sometimes I don’t fully understand how I died and just assume I did something wrong. The game feels polished and not at all like a usual Early Access game, so I look forward to patches with new content and more gruesome deaths.

I can’t stop playing it when I need to unwind and just enjoy relentless failure and a million gruesome deaths. It’s almost like therapy for a guy who can’t really afford therapy. I love this genre of silly cartoonish ultraviolent action roguelike loop with fun companions to engage with as you go down the tower. Sometimes I just rush through the doors and levels to try to descend the tower as soon as possible, but then you miss out on the fun interactions between Von Wanst and the companions.

Not to mention all the surprises that break the sameness of the loop; every run has a unique flavour. So just enjoy dying. It’s ridiculously fun to die in the Tower. Just watch out for the screaming, wall-breaking monster with a huge hammer. Seriously. I hate that fucking thing.

Disclosure: Lucky Tower Ultimate was previewed on PC with a Steam key provided by the developer. The game is currently available in Early Access on Steam. More information available on the official website.

Many years ago, I read this story by Bruce Sterling titled “Swarm”. The ending was one of those moments when I realized just how different aliens would be if they existed. “Swarm” and The Invincible conceptualize just how strange collective alien life could become in different planetary environments and evolutionary conditions. I have never read the novel by Stanisław Lem, but now it’s on my to-read list.

This is the debut title of Starward Industries; one more Polish developer to feature in this newsletter. Anyone who has followed my work knows of my fondness for Polish developers, whose mature gaming culture is a breath of fresh air in an industry so dominated by North American and Japanese companies. The Invincible feels fresh and hard to pin down in ways that few other studios could match.

Spacewalking Sim

This is a walking simulator for the most part, but it does feature some bits of more involved and interactive gameplay than just walking around and interacting with hitboxes. Interactions with the retrofuturistic technology can be compelling, and there is even a little rover you get to drive around. It’s not supposed to be technically challenging, but it feels more immersive than your usual walking sim.

The puzzles are not that difficult either, but there is something challenging about building up to where you are supposed to go in between level transitions. The interactions with objects and machines add little bits of storytelling through visual cues that drive the story forward, regardless of whether you are a bit lost or not. And just walking around the levels is enough to put you on the right path.

Immersion Devices

Several of the interactions only start once you go through a certain cutscene or dialogue. Sometimes you have to wait until an animation completes before you interact with an object, jump down a rock ledge, and so on. It makes the process of moving quickly between interactions and unlocking the transitions somewhat dull, especially on a second playthrough.

The immersion factor in all the diegetic devices such as mapping gizmos and trackers is what keeps you going. The gameplay itself might seem unremarkable, but the way the developers integrated these devices into the story is part of what keeps the discovery process engaging and immersive. Bit by bit, you unravel the story of this swarm-like nanotech ‘species’ as it tries to fight against the threat humans pose to it.

Deep Atmosphere

The Firewatch narrative style works well for the stranded-on-a-desert-planet scenario; the back-and-forth on a comms line with an overseer in the ship giving Yasna advice as she hurtles from one interaction to the other. When you finally interact with a live character towards the end, it’s like the buildup made the encounter with another human stranger and more interesting. Especially since the human is a bit deranged.

Yasna’s voice acting is thoroughly competent. The soundtrack is haunting, like a classic science fiction film. The atmosphere and art direction often make you just stand and look around you as you explore the planet slowly. The level design feels handcrafted and nothing about the planet seems random or lifeless. Everything in the levels matters, and paying attention to the details pays off.

From Solaris to The Invincible

There might not be a lot of replay value in games like The Invincible. Once you get what you are supposed to get in the endgame, you will find that everything that builds up to it makes sense. You could revisit the game after playing it and consider what you didn’t know in your first playthrough, but otherwise there is not much of an incentive. This is true of walking sims in general, but it might be truer of a game like this.

I didn’t have the opportunity to review the game when it came out, but I picked it up in a sale and did not regret it. We need more AA games with distinctive settings and immersive storytelling grounded in classics, if not direct adaptations of neglected science fiction authors such as Stanisław Lem, who broke into the mainstream for the first time in 1972 with Tarkovsky’s Solaris. The Invincible will not reach the same cultural status, but it’s a worthy beginning for the medium.

Disclosure: The Invincible was reviewed on PC with a Steam copy purchased by the reviewer, over the course of about 12 hours of play time. All screenshots attached were captured during the review process.

Rating: 7.5 / Decent.

The Good

• Excellent immersion design;

• Clever, layered storyline;

• Wonderful ambience;

• Great character development and acting.

The Bad

• Some hiccups with gameplay flow;

• Not much replay value;

• Minor performance issues.

Gallery

The Invincible is available on Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, PlayStation, and Xbox. More information is available on the official website.

December 2019: I had recently arrived in Canada to start a PhD program. My first term had a heavy course load, but I managed to get those As. So as a reward for my hard work, I bought myself a monitor to play Disco Elysium on my old laptop. It was a cold, lonely winter as the pandemic started, but the game kept me warm inside. It was like having someone tell you: hey man, yes, you right there—you matter.

In the Disco Elysium subreddit, a fan going by the handle u/rTacoDaddy made the following prediction about a year ago: “The sequel to Disco Elysium will be a hundred thousand stories with a hundred thousand creators.”

Last Friday, when three studios made up of former Disco Elysium developers popped up on the map, teacher and game developer Joachim Despland-Lichtert said on X: “let a thousand discos bloom”. As I did some research on all this, I wrote a feature for DualShockers to discuss the rise of the Disco-like as a subgenre of dialogue-heavy RPGs and adventure games, tying into the promise of a thousand Discos.

XXX Nightshift by Dark Math Games might be the first of the newly announced to make it to release, but a release date is yet to be announced. However, I have covered a couple of other Disco-like games here on Blockhead.

Sovereign Syndicate

Sovereign Syndicate is a steampunk fantasy Disco-like with decent writing and compelling characters.

Clam Man 2: Headliner

Then there’s Clam Man 2, where you play as a clam man who takes up stand-up comedy and goes on wacky adventures.

The Thought Cabinet

Disco Elysium is not only a game in the sense that it stays with you for a long time. You may not even replay it often, but it stays with you. Even if you don’t see it in the news, you think back to it frequently. It just has that haunting quality where the characters and the writing of the skills sit with you, in your gut, like an old relative. It’s like having a dialogue with yourself and learning how to accept yourself.

This old interview with Robert Kurvitz on the development of the Thought Cabinet feature was very popular at the time, and it’s still relevant on this fifth anniversary.

This Game Design Thinking video also delves into the unique concept behind the RPG system in Disco Elysium and how it works in tandem with the peerless dialogue.

Finally, Robert Kurvitz also delivered a Game Camp France lecture this year on the importance of worldbuilding, which is perhaps the most complex element in Disco Elysium, and possibly the most original and integral to the game’s legacy.

It has been a privilege to follow Disco Elysium from the very beginning, when it was still known as No Truce with the Furies; when it was still a rumour going around RPG websites, and no one knew much about it. Then it came and it changed the gaming medium in a way that we are still only beginning to understand. It was only natural that it would become its own subgenre, and we will see what the future holds for it.

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Frostpunk was probably the most tense survival game I have ever reviewed under time constraints. It was for a small website, and we had to hit embargo. I needed all the cold blood I could muster to make it through to the ending, even on the easiest difficulty. It was no different with my review of Frostpunk 2, which I started playing just four days ago. I completed the main storyline in about 18 hours, and I am now deep into the Utopia Builder mode while planning a harder run of the Story mode.

I’m usually skeptical of sequels for strategy games; they tend to only vaguely improve on the game mechanics, or to make them virtually the same game with maybe better graphics and a few more bells and whistles. Frostpunk 2 feels instead like a complete remake of the game mechanics and an expansion of its worldbuilding, though not without some rough spots in terms of user experience and a cluttered UI scheme.

The symmetrical circular design of Frostpunk has been retired for a sprawling, dynamic, free-form hex city-builder. This will be a welcome innovation to those who, like me, tend to get hung up on symmetrical buildings and schemes, even when it gets in the way of more effective gameplay. Frostpunk 2 embraces the disorderly, the sprawling and spreading of settlements, ideologies, and the clashes of factions.

Frostbreakers First

The tutorial level is a good way to introduce the new mechanic of frostbreaking, which adds a more game-y quality to the level exploration. The hex format mechanic grounds the gameplay in a more realistic sense of the engineering complexities of perpetually low temperatures. The frozen ground must be broken before you can build, which takes some workforce, and it will often define how your city grows.

The evolution of single buildings to cluttered districts also makes sense in this design. It allows better planning to separate housing districts from industrial and extraction districts, avoiding the rising of Squalor, which impacts the quality of living in the city. Some buildings and extraction types increase Squalor more than others, and some factions prefer them over others.

Asymmetrical Sprawl

I like how the game has been designed for a less OCD approach to city-building where symmetry doesn’t matter, but it can be frustrating to work through several alerts in the UI. As the time goes by, you get more announcements which are superimposed over the screen even when there is already a UI interaction pop-up on top. It made the experience of working through issues a bit annoying.

One thing that consistently annoyed me was that I couldn’t turn off the autosave, which would often freeze the game for a few seconds. Sometimes it happened in the middle of the most tense gameplay moments. The version I played didn’t include Quicksave and Quickload, so I was stuck with Autosave and manual saves. The final release version will include Quicksave/Quickload, according to the review notes.

Faction Friction

The transition from Captain to Steward gives room to all the shenanigans of party politics. Try to please everybody and you will go insane. In my first run, I tried like an idiot to please all the factions but ended up having to expel the Pilgrims as they were just acting like assholes because their laws were unpopular. Now, I would try to play one against the other; they will keep bitching no matter what I do.

The Legacy of New London is a consistent campaign, with plenty of difficult spots. Tensions at a catastrophic level and low trust will cause your people to keep deposing you from the Steward role if you don’t learn to address their wants and needs. Once you learn how to play their buttons and avoid their antics, it’s easy enough to survive, though not without many casualties.

Rough Spots

I had one crash in the Story mode, but otherwise the game runs solid, though the Autosave feature often freezes all input for a few seconds, as already mentioned. I also noticed some placeholder text in some parts, but the version I played was consistently playable and engaging, and I was able to understand all mechanics and their details. The graphic details are carefully designed so that the worldbuilding makes sense.

The Utopia Builder mode will take longer to explore, but it was enough to see how it will add more replay value to the game, and how it will be a popular mode with existing fans of the series. There is also plenty of replay value in the difficulty modes, though I am not masochistic enough to play harder modes when there might still be some bugs and issues in the release version; best to hold on for some patches.

Winter Homelands

Frostpunk 2 surpasses the original title in many ways, as a more mechanically complex and challenging survival city-builder with broader possibilities of exploration and faction engagement. Factions are layered and designed to have compelling conflicts that push the story forward. The gameplay is fluid and engaging, even when you get frustrated with the challenges and the complexity of city management.

11 bit studios has become a powerful force in indie publishing and remains a consistently competent developer with a solid lineup of titles and series. Frostpunk 2 will cement their reputation as one of the most original and thoughtful indie developers in the survival genre. In order to survive the ravages and hailstorms of volcanic winter, you will have to harness the indomitable summer of the human will.

Disclosure: Frostpunk 2 was reviewed on PC with a Steam key provided by the developer over the course of 25 hours of play time. All screenshots attached were captured during the review process.

Rating: 9.0 / Essential.

The Good

• New mechanics and design;

• More depth in gameplay;

• Wider scope and range of settlements;

• Engaging factions and choices;

• New mode for replay value.

The Bad

• Nagging UI issues.

Gallery

Frostpunk 2 will release on Sep. 20 on Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, Xbox, and PlayStation. More information on the official website.

But there are many cool games that slip through the cracks. Some of these came out briefly on gaming media, but most outlets don’t write much about them. I’m hoping to use this different article format to comment briefly on indie games, mainly short previews of alpha builds and demos. These demos usually don’t have enough to cover a full preview, but enough to feature in a roundup of cool new titles.

Neural Dominion

I received a key to try out the pre-alpha build of Neural Dominion from the publisher Camlann Games, and since the demo included only a tutorial level, I decided to hold off on a full preview. Apart from some odd sound design choices, I found it a cool mix of cyberpunk tropes in a 4X environment and classic Final Fantasy-like turn-based tactics. The single-player campaign is not yet available; I’ll write up a preview when the game is updated.

Neural Dominion is coming to Steam. More information on the publisher’s website.

Tiny Glade

I tried out the Tiny Glade demo after hearing about it for the first time a few days ago. This is probably the cutest city-builder I have ever played. It’s just such a cozy and delightful casual game that lets you build castles like miniature dioramas. The Steam demo includes a day/night cycle to show how the lighting changes the views. This chill sandbox game should be great to turn off your brain after working all day.

Tiny Glade releases Sep. 23 on Steam. More information on the official website.

Esoteric Ebb

The Disco-like is here to stay. Sovereign Syndicate was the first full release in this subgenre. Clam Man 2 is coming soon, according to the Steam page, and so is Esoteric Ebb, which is basically D&D meets Disco Elysium. The demo is a hoot and half. Humorous takes on D&D are probably more likely to be popular after Baldur’s Gate III, building on the legacy of Discworld and comic fantasy in general.

The demo is on Steam. More information on the official website.

Elroy and the Aliens

Elroy and the Aliens looks like every LucasArts game was put into a 2D blender and what came out was this cartoon adventure. The story feels like a direct nod to Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders. The main characters remind me of Guybrush and Elaine from Monkey Island. The hand-drawn art style made me think back to Day of the Tentacle and The Dig. It also features a hologram saying “you’re my only hope,” so it will probably be full of Star Wars references.

The demo is on Steam. More information on the official website.

Lucky Tower Ultimate

This might be the most famous of the bunch right now, rolling out into Early Access next month. The demo is outstanding, the game mechanics are original, the setting is hilarious. The whole point of the game is to see a dude that looks and acts like Donald Trump go through a bunch of horrible ordeals in a medieval dungeon. Slapstick satire with a lot of potential. The roguelite gameplay has a unique design, and the loop is fun from the get-go. I hope to try my luck with Lucky Tower Ultimate soon.

Lucky Tower Ultimate releases on Steam in Early Access on Sep. 13. More information on the official website.

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11 bit studios have come a long way since This War of Mine. They are now a consolidated publisher of top-shelf indie games with several acclaimed releases, such as The Thaumaturge, INDIKA, and The Invincible. As a developer, their last release was the seminal Frostpunk, which I reviewed very positively in 2018 for a defunct outlet. The Alters is currently slated to release in 2024, after Frostpunk 2.

There is a distinctive design in 11 bit studios games; not a template so much as a core set of design choices. Even with a different UI and art direction, you can feel the genes of this design culture in their games. The Alters feels like an 11 bit game, with all that entails in terms of survival gameplay mechanics, gripping narrative design, and unique worldbuilding. The demo (briefly available on Steam in June) left me hungry for more with its meaty blend of gameplay and narrative.

Social Survival Skills

Survival in 11 bit games is not a matter of carving your path alone in the jungle or the desert, hacking away through a resource extraction system. It is a social practice where the characters depend on each other to survive as a collective, not as only individuals. When players activate this mutual aid between characters, only then can they narrowly escape, or at least postpone their demise for a while.

The Alters starts out as one character trying to survive as a stranger in a strange land. By the end of the demo, it felt like the game was setting up for that kind of collaborative experience between the alters (clones) as they learn to work together to escape the alien planet before a star destroys it. Each alter you create will have a part to play; and if they can’t find a way to work together—they’re done for.

Cloning and Mad Science

Moon (2009) is one of my favourite science fiction films. Cloning as a trope is somewhat underused in science fiction; the possibilities are overwhelming. The branching life paths for cloning experiments are perhaps the most interesting narrative concept in The Alters that I could tell from the demo. The idea that a person’s choices in life could dictate who they become and that it can be accessed in DNA seems quite unrealistic, but it makes sense in a science fiction game.

As I was writing this preview, I wanted to remember what 11 bit games played like, as it had been a couple of years since I played them. It’s amazing how This War of Mine can still break my heart. It broke my heart even harder this time, with one of the child characters losing her father and weeping for days on end. Frostpunk does not have that kind of emotional reach, but it does give the player a similar feeling of tension.

Alter Superego

The demo did not feel like a Sims game or any kind of simulation, more like an adventure with survival elements. Those who hope for full-blown simulation systems with science fiction tropes and gizmos will be disappointed. The game seems handcrafted for the cinematic experience and the relationships between the alters. The survival and resource management elements are there to keep the tension, but they will likely not take precedence in terms of complex gameplay.

The Alters might be one of the most original science fiction games in a while. Having published The Invincible last year, 11 bit studios now put out their own take on the survival adventure in a remote planet, drawing from their own development culture style. Barring a catastrophic launch, which I find highly unlikely, this should be one of the highlights coming out in the remaining quarters of 2024.

Disclosure: The Alters was previewed on PC with the public Steam demo. The game is currently slated to release in 2024 on Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, PlayStation, and Xbox. More information is available on the official website.

Adventure is an old genre, one of the oldest in the book—and in PC games. We go places that few will venture to find and unearth their secrets. We solve enigmas and puzzles; we follow trails and clues. The places themselves speak to us, and the environmental narrative unfolds from this rich mélange of wonder and exploration. Riven is perhaps one of the richest and most challenging of these old school adventure games from the 90s, and it will now endure as a fully 3D remake, following Myst (2021).

Cyan Worlds is the oldest independent studio in the United States, surviving and thriving through several generations and iterations, and it will now find a new generation of players and adventure fans. In 2014, I bought a bundle on GOG with every iteration of Myst and tried to complete them, but found it difficult to navigate the levels. This 3D remake does not make the puzzle gameplay much easier, but the navigation between levels is fluid, and the level design is often astonishing.

Lost in the Myst

The puzzles themselves remain ingenious and compelling, and sometimes almost impossibly difficult to unravel unless you take the time to think hard and deep, decipher the number system, and pay attention to subtle details and hints. Once you do, however, everything makes sense, and all you have to do is follow the implicit logic, connecting the dots between interactions and places across different levels.

What remains frustrating is not knowing when to move on from a level. I kept asking myself: have I been able to do everything I can do in this level at this time? There is no way to know what remains to be done or what can still emerge if you do this or that. And so the player is frequently backtracking through the same level, trying to find a way or a cue to move on to the next one.

HD Pixel Hunt

As I said previously, the biggest improvement in this remake is the navigation in and between levels. The original was made to be functional in its navigation, not optimal, and this made backtracking a nightmare, unless the player memorized every nook and corner. Being able to see the levels and each interaction point more clearly in 3D helps a lot with the navigation, so players can connect the dots.

While the design is solid and consistent in that sense, I found the controls a bit too finicky sometimes. Finding the right spot to activate an interaction can be somewhat complicated sometimes. Pixel hunting has plagued adventure games since the 1970s, and here we are in 2024 still struggling to find the exact spot for the hitbox. Maybe if I look up and walk closer? No? Perhaps if I go around and turn back? And so on…

Linking Worlds

The concept of books as virtual worlds that can be interacted with and explored in first-person perspective has always been Cyan’s strongest selling point since Myst. The plot is somewhat convoluted, but players are not required to understand all the fine points of the backstory. Riven succeeds in dropping the player in medias res in a strange, mystical world and allowing them to explore without handholding.

The 3D cutscenes look decent, but some old school fans might not appreciate the switch from FMV cutscenes to 3D-rendered motion-capture graphics. In many other games with FMV cutscenes, it would be difficult to justify the switch. But it feels seamless for the most part, with a few kinks that players might nitpick. The rendering style may not be entirely photorealistic, but it fits the world of Myst and Riven.

Walking Sim Archetype

I experienced more than a fair share of frame rate dips and uneven performance, with several crashes. The settings offer plenty of customization, and most of it seems to work well, though it seems the game utilizes more resources than it should when idle. But all games could use more optimization in general. Cyan Worlds will be sure to keep patching the game in the following months for a more polished final version.

All great puzzle-adventure games live in the shadow of Myst and Riven: Dear Esther, What Remains of Edith Finch, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, and Return of the Obra Dinn. The mechanics change, the settings and characters change, but the feeling of exploring a unique world with its own rules and unique properties remains. Rather than relying on a dotted line or quest marker to advance the story, Riven trusts the player to explore and connect the dots on their own.

Disclosure: Riven was reviewed on PC with a Steam key provided by the developer over the course of over 10 hours of play time. All screenshots attached were captured during the review process.

Rating: 8.5 / Recommended.

The Good

• Challenging puzzles;

• Stunning level design;

• Excellent art direction;

• Compelling worldbuilding;

• Clever writing.

The Bad

• Uneven performance;

• Several crashes;

• Poor UI optimization.

Gallery

Riven is available on Steam and GOG. More information is available on the developer’s website.

The Vanishing of Ethan Carter was an indie phenomenon. Back in 2014, it was difficult to believe that a team of three developers could make something that amazing. Ten years later, their second game is now on Early Access, and again I find it hard to believe that a team of twelve developers can develop something of this calibre. Witchfire is a roguelite Souls-like shooter for a new generation, drawing from the archetypes of DOOM and Souls to start a new flame in these beaten genres.

Adrian Chmielarz, head of The Astronauts, said in an interview that Witchfire is “a first-person roguelite designed for those who don't like roguelites”. I like roguelites, but I don’t have time to play them like others do. I did review Slay the Spire for TechRaptor when it released, and more recently, Inkulinati here on Blockhead. I can appreciate the recursive challenge of the genre, even in the lack of time.

But, as with any genre, the only unforgivable evil is when developers deliberately choose sameness and predictability. I would not associate The Astronauts with stale ideas and poor execution. Witchfire feels fresh, though its uncompromising difficulty will be a dealbreaker for many players, especially for those who find the barrier of time investment nearly insurmountable.

DOOM and GLOOM

The first runs are ruthless and hopeless. Once you embrace the dying, it hurts less to lose witchfire and other resources you pick up along that run. What hurts most are the careless deaths, the sense of lost purpose, the hopelessness of being overtaken by all these demons and monsters, each with their specific and sophisticated killing methods. The enemy’s moves startle you and keep you on your toes.

Then, as it happens in Souls-like games, you get the pattern as the enemies telegraph their moves. Soon, you can anticipate an attack before it happens and try to avoid it. Sometimes you still miss it in the fray of combat, but for the most part, it’s easy to anticipate some basic enemy attacks. What’s hard is anticipating multiple enemies as they swarm you. When that happens, there is no shame in fleeing.

No Arc for Arcana

My main complaint is that the impediments to advance in the game sometimes make no sense. An example: one of the Arcana perks available to choose from in a run will give a faster heavy spell recharge. But in order to unlock Heavy Spells, players need to reach level 15. So what is the point in offering the perk to players under that level? Just to remind us that we have a long way to grind before we can use such perks?

And that’s what the game consists of for dozens of hours: grinding and grinding. The learning and the grinding curve are overwhelming; they make you paralyzed and afraid, but at the same time you keep coming back for more punishment, more stupid deaths, more frustration and awe as you piece together the lore. The world of Witchfire is just interesting enough to keep the player engaged in the lack of a proper narrative.

Ignis Maleficarum

I am all for witch-hunting grimdark fantasy, and I have a bone to pick with magic users. All I miss here is a more straightforward narrative built into this world that would give the players something else to do except grind their lives away. Not dialogue trees and character animation, but some quests that would give the learning curve more substance and a sense of progression.

I stand by my recommendation of the aesthetic power of Witchfire: it’s like the medieval witch-hunting treatise Malleus Maleficarum was made into a computer game with the most metal concept. This is a metal game. There are few games that are metal: System Shock, Kingdom Come: Deliverance… Witchfire. It’s a specific aesthetic style that just feels metal, as if the games were materialized metal music.

Fire Trails and Trials

I can’t speak for the future state of the game; this is a preview after dozens of hours grinding in mid-2024, with plenty still to do and unlock. I just can’t afford enough time and energy for an Early Access game this demanding, but I know some players will find the challenge and investment worthwhile. However, the game is still exclusively on Epic Games Store, which apparently is reason enough for a sizeable contingent of gaming audiences to avoid buying it.

Witchfire might be a niche shooter in a saturated market. It used to be that a niche game could not be very successful, but success has been redefined in the past years as indie games became more influential and mainstream. The long-term value of a niche game is to appeal to niche audiences with very specific demands. Fans of Witchfire demand as much punishment and death as possible before and after the full release.

This preview is exclusively of the version following the Ghost Galleon update.

Disclosure: Witchfire was previewed on PC with an Epic Games Store key provided by the developer. The game is currently in Early Access exclusively on Epic Games Store. More information is available on the official website.

INDIKA had my attention since the first time I saw it on Terminals a few months ago. In over thirty years of gaming, I had never played as a nun—that was unacceptable. If there was something missing in my life, this was it. I had to get a key to review this game. And I did. Then there was a fire in my building, and I was displaced for about two weeks. I was finally able to return home recently to finalize my review.

The developers seem to have released only one previous game: a VR action-adventure called Sacralith: The Archer’s Tale, which I’d never heard of. If I was not already sold on INDIKA, their “review commandments” convinced me: they are influenced by Yorgos Lanthimos, Ari Aster, and Darren Aronofsky for the cinematic storytelling, which explains the “disorienting threads” and “offbeat laughs,” in line with all the jarring, bizarre moments that punctuate the narrative.

8-bit Hyperrealism

There is no combat; just a few segments where the player has to use their gaming skills to advance the storyline. For the most part, you walk around and follow the level design where it leads. Along the way, there are a few puzzles to solve in order to progress between the levels, but there was only one that had me stumped for an hour. For the most part, this is an accessible cinematic game that most players should be able to complete with no issues.

The cinematic segments are intercut with short 2D vignettes that show Indika’s early life, and they all happen with a classic pixel art aesthetic and platforming mechanics. These vignettes would be in keeping with several Nintendo games in the 90s. It’s also an interesting way to reflect on gaming as a medium: from those bits of 8-bit graphics to the excellent photorealistic rendering of fabric physics in Indika’s headdress.

Cinematic Design

The level design is mesmerizing at times, but for some parts it is just serviceable. Usually, I get bored quickly playing games with on-rails design, where the game will not progress without following a specific path designed by the developers. But INDIKA maintained my interest consistently, even through some moments of exasperation at not knowing what to do or where to go. Maybe the disorientation made the experience more immersive as a whole; Indika herself being at a loss.

I also tried the game on my Steam Deck, and it had a great performance. There is not much to comment on the design other than that it is functional and serviceable. There were some moments where I thought the game had a cutting-edge quality in general, and some moments where the design felt almost invisible. The experience was closer to a long film, which can be said of many cinematic games.

Russian Weird Wave

At one point, I described INDIKA online as a Dostoevsky novel adapted by Hideo Kojima trying to channel the energy of Yorgos Lanthimos. By that, I mean that the themes of Christian Orthodox sin and redemption, crime and punishment, and so on, are indistinguishable from the offbeat style and non-sequiturs in Kojima’s games. The developers did not name Kojima as an influence, but all living game designers have been influenced by MGS.

The review package included an explicit acknowledgement of influence from the Greek Weird Wave godfather, Lanthimos, and that is the part that interested me the most in the narrative. Lanthimos and his frequent collaborator, Tony McNamara, are known for their unique and compelling heroines, as well as unsettling conclusions and generally puzzling storytelling pace and style. INDIKA benefits from this influence, though most gamers probably have never seen a Lanthimos film.

Super Indika Sis.

It has taken me longer than usual to conceive this review, not only due to the circumstances I mentioned earlier, but because INDIKA feels like an important game. The gaming industry and audiences have sorely needed better written protagonists who happen to be women for the past decades. We don’t care about ‘strong’ characters so much as rounded, fleshed-out, developed characters. And Indika is as rounded as it gets in the circumstances that surround her in the game.

It so happens that rather than staying in the present to find such characters, developers might need to go back in history more often. Even if it might deal with themes and settings, such as Christianity, which do not have a mass appeal. This can be said of other games and genres, but I look forward to the day when Russian nuns can be more emblematic of adventure puzzle-platformers than Italian plumbers. Down with Nintendo and Mario; in with Odd Meter and INDIKA.

Disclosure: INDIKA was reviewed on PC with a Steam key provided by the publisher over the course of over 10 hours of play time. All screenshots attached were captured during the review process.

Rating: 9.0 / Essential.

The Good

• Playing as a 19th-c. Russian nun;

• Cool platforming puzzles;

• Compelling themes and ideas;

• Cinematic oomph;

• Indika.

The Bad

• Disorientation in some levels;

• Minor graphic resolution issues.

Gallery

INDIKA is out on Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, Xbox, and PlayStation. More information is available on the official website.

Clam Man 2: Headliner is a Disco-like adventure game with RPG elements developed by Sideby Interactive. This solo studio is headed by Martin Hanses, a Finnish-Canadian indie developer and stand-up comedian. I previewed the public demo a while ago and enjoyed it quite a bit. You can read my preview below.

This interview with Martin started as an email conversation after my preview, and developed into something else. I get the feeling that it’s the beginning of a longer conversation about gaming, comedy, writing, and why we do the things we do, even when there is little return on our investments of time and energy. We will certainly resume this conversation as the game finds its way to release. Martin was gracious to write detailed answers to my questions, so I reproduce them verbatim here.

Why stand-up comedy? What makes this particular genre or entertainment form suitable for an adventure game with role-playing elements? How did you first conceive of this as a unique niche?

I’ve always been a fan myself - I even did standup back in Finland for a brief period of time. I’m pretty sure there’s still Eddie Izzard shows I can recite word for word, and I still procrastinate writing by watching stand-up online. Clam 2 actually started out as me trying to remake Fallout 2 in Unity, and when I realized I had something functional, I figured I’d rather make something of my own. I brainstormed a bit on what I wanted to do, and since I wanted to keep it simple, I decided to go all narrative and no combat. I’m not a great artist, so I decided to stick with the Clam universe since I can draw in that style, and I just enjoy writing comedy - it wasn’t any deeper than that.

As for what makes it suitable, nothing. It is arguably the worst kind of comedy you can try to write in a game. Trying to write what is inarguably a very verbal type of performance is an absolute pain, but through that I also realized early on that the actual jokes themselves aren’t what makes stand-up or comedy in a game the most interesting part. Comedy is all about subversion and surprise, so when the player expects a joke - and expects it to be funny - there’s very little you can do to deliver. The comedy shows in the game are essentially “boss fights” - that’s what my design doc says, anyway - and I found that players mostly just want to succeed at telling the joke, and that’s enough satisfaction in its own right. The funniest parts of telling jokes in Clam 2 is failing, (each joke is tied to an attribute and the player rolls a d20 + their modifier to succeed) because then the player has no idea what will happen. It’s also funny to me, because I can make the player say awful shit by having them fail the roll and giving them a clearly awful, stupid, or unfunny response, and the rest is just riffing on that. I try my best to tell players not to reload saves when they fail, because while the player character has an awful time on stage, the players themselves usually get the funniest outcomes when they bomb.

I have no clue if that’s a good idea. Some people seem to love it, some people seem to take it really personally when they fail. At the end of the day, it’s a weird fish RPG about making jokes. If you feel personally attacked by whatever side comes up on a twenty-sided dice, I don’t think RNG is your biggest problem.

Final note: making a comedy game is really fucking hard, because you’re setting yourself up for failure. I remember seeing a comedian make this point on some show online; if you tell others you’re funny, or others introduce you as a funny person, the immediate reaction from most people is scepticism. You think you’re funny? I’ll be the fucking judge of that. In that situation, there’s nothing you can do to make people laugh - you either confirm that you are in fact funny, or you confirm their suspicions. “Yeah, that was pretty funny” or “Huh. That wasn’t very funny.” There’s very little in-between on that spectrum. I try to not call it a comedy game for that reason - now it’s just “a narrative roleplaying game about a guy who hates his job and becomes a stand-up comedian.”

What is your process for writing the jokes in the game? How do you fit them into the dialogue options and give the player a sense of freedom at the same time?

It’s mostly riffing. I start off every dialogue with a general sense of what the player/NPC wants to achieve, and then I improvise from there. Some of the most fun I have when writing Clam 2 is when I have no idea what’s going to happen, and I just let the character voices take over. This means that usually one of the characters in any interaction is the oddball and the other plays it straight - the most fun ones for me are when the player is able to be funny, rather than the NPC. Another thing I enjoy doing is trying to make sure that even the basic questions/responses have something baked into them - you can flavor a lot of simple lines with minor throwaway jokes. For example, a character might mention that they’re doing prep work for something; if the player doesn’t want to continue the conversation, just saying “Let’s talk about something else.” is less interesting than “Prep? I’m sorry, I’m not interested in your education. Moving on.”

Writing jokes is tough since I’m a solo dev, and I work in a vacuum. It’s really rare that a joke I write into the game is funny as I’m writing it - it usually takes a couple months and a new playtest, at which time I’ve forgotten it, for me to find it funny again. Twitter helps sometimes - every once in a while I’ll post a joke and if people respond to it positively, it stays in.

I also particularly like giving the player at least one oddball response to interactions - I feel like that joke works on multiple layers. Firstly, the player might never pick that option and instead just chuckle at it, which is something I think a lot of great RPGs do. If you’re interacting with a baby, it’s just really funny to have an option along the lines of “You’re a fucking idiot. I bet you can’t even count to ten. I can.” Most people will never pick that option and just leave it on read, which is the first part of that joke. The second part is realizing that it’s a valid option that moves the conversation forward, making the player wonder what exactly happens if they choose it, and the final part is actually picking it and seeing whatever weird shit happens as a result. This is also why scope creep is a constant issue in the game - little throwaway lines that make me laugh often end up ballooning into long, weird tangents, sometimes even with quests you wouldn’t get any other way. For example, there’s a dice check in the game that, if you critically fail (5% chance), the narrator tells you that your eyes hurt and that you should see an optometrist. There’s like 4 people in the world that will ever see that joke/questline, but those are just the things that make choice-based games and narrative RPGs worth it.

Another note; I also try to imagine what a tabletop RPG player would do or say, and what they would do to try to break the game. There’s plenty of opportunity to argue with the GM/Narrator of the game, which in some cases might lead you to very different outcomes. There’s also a few options that are only available through either cheating or very serious planning - if anyone finds them, hats off. There’s at least one (intended) infinite money glitch in the game that has the narrator just tell you “Okay, you know what? You want to break this shit? Go ahead. See if I care.”

How will different comedy styles play into the comedian archetypes? It should be more difficult to explore some kinds of comedy than others, but how can you accommodate some of those different styles through the archetypes?

Originally, the four attributes in the game were Detection (observational comedy), Aquadynamics (physical comedy), Improv (absurdist/improv comedy), and Self-Awareness (self-deprecating or emotional comedy). Those worked for a while, but I found that there were a few more comedic archetypes I didn’t manage to cover with just those four, so now there’s also Assertion (angry/assertive comedy), Deadpan (self-explanatory), and Luck, which has no bearing on jokes but causes weird little random encounters and dialogue options throughout the game.

Those attributes also affect dialogue options - those are typically less about making jokes, and more about giving you a variety of outcomes and options depending on what kind of character you’ve built. A low self-awareness character, for example, might end up in situations where they just assume they’re better than everyone else - a high Detection character, on the other hand, might make observations on how NPCs speak or act, which in turn gives you access to additional paths through conversations and quests.

In the story, the player also encounters three comedians as part of the main cast - these comedians are supposed to represent particular types of comedy, with other ones being introduced as side characters. I’m hoping to cover most typical comedy styles, and do some general commentary on all of them, and the player collects jokes throughout the game they can work into their shows - all of which are connected to one particular attribute. Failing/Succeeding at telling these jokes have different outcomes, depending on that attribute; failing an Assertive joke, for example, might make you have an outburst on stage for people being too sensitive.

It’s funny, I’ve actually received messages and emails from people who have failed jokes and have taken offense at the route they receive - there’s one joke about science, which if you fail, deems that science is entirely unfunny and can not effectively be made fun of, and I received a long message from a player who told me how wrong I was.

How much reactivity and choice/consequence is possible in a game of this scale? Are there difficult checks that depend on lucky rolls to unlock specific content in the dialogue? Does this kind of content add more to the overall experience, or is it only extra?

Since there’s no combat I’ve definitely focused on reactivity more than anything else. It varies from little things - if a character mentions something early on in a dialogue and then do it again, they’ll tack on a “like I said” - to ways of entirely bypassing sections of dialogues and quests simply due to having the “right” stats. I want to make sure that the game is replayable, so in your first playthrough you’ll not even see half of the dialogue in the game, and new things always become available depending on your character build. A typical mid-sized dialogue can have anywhere between 5000-8000 words, and you’re probably only going to see about 2000-3000 in a playthrough.

Skill checks are crucial to the experience (d20 + modifier), and I do my best to try to stop people from reloading saves. The general design is always that ‘failure is a valid path forward’, and there’s a number of quests and interactions in the game that you can only have if you fail a dice roll. The point isn’t to win or lose - it’s to make sure that the player’s experience is as unique as possible, and always feels as fresh or entertaining as I can make it. If you succeed, great - your stats mattered and you conquered the situation. If you fail, well, now you’re going to have to do something completely different. Failure = content, I guess, and that seems to work for youtubers, at least. As for XP, Clam 2 works on a milestone system (level up at the start of each day) but certain interactions can give you buffs or penalties to certain stats, or provide you with a bit of cash, or even open up new narrative directions. Like I said, I’m doing my absolute best to make sure that every playthrough is as different as possible. I obviously can’t tell myself, but there are definitely moments when I’m playtesting and end up in a dialogue branch that I completely forgot existed, so that’s a good sign.

How do you deal with the ‘anxiety of influence’ as the developer of a Disco-like game? Sovereign Syndicate was compared with Disco Elysium, but some fans didn’t like it because there was less focus on the ideology choices. How can Clam Man 2: Headliner avoid those expectations?

I don’t think there’s any way around it - Clam 2 borrows a lot from Disco (the dialogue widget is the most obvious contender for that comparison) and I’ve made peace with the fact that I’ll probably get compared (infavorably) to one of the best written RPGs of all time. That said, I’m hoping the style of writing and the art is different enough to really set it apart from DE - it’s less serious, more jokey, and just way more casual. It’s all about managing expectations, I guess - if Clam 2 dealt with serious, political issues, I’d stand no chance, and it’s easier and more fun for me to instead let the player weirdly fantasize about tentacles doing the dishes or get run over by an evil car. Now that I think about it, neither one of those would have felt out of place in Disco. Shit.

Why a Clam Man? Why anthropomorphic marine life and sea creatures? Are thalassophiles kinky, like a furry fetish? Is there sex in the world of Clam Man? Would he be able to have sex with a curvy blobfish or a goth vampire squid?

That goes way back to Clam 1. We were making a platformer for fun and I drew a little clam person in a spacesuit. We loved the design because it was so stupid, so everything became fish-themed from then on. I also can’t draw for shit, so weird anthropomorphic fish people is weird enough for my style to not look completely awful.

I guess there is sex in the world of Clam Man, which is a sentence I never thought I’d type. I usually dislike romance options in games, since it usually boils down to ‘say the right thing and give gifts and now you receive love’, so there’s no planned romance in the game. That said, there’s plenty of making fun of romance options, along with rejection and a couple of sex jokes in there - I have to be sparse with them though. It’s pretty funny if a weird, beady-eyed little cartoon drawing suddenly starts talking about the clitoris in a particular context, but if I do it too often it gets stale real quick, and I dont think stale fish are very interesting sexually.

I’ve yet to see the thalassophiles find Clam 2, and I’m not sure if I hope they do. If I ever do a crowdfunding campaign to finish the game and let people design NPCs, I’ll know who requested a goth vampire squid. (For anyone reading this, please don’t message me about adding in goth vampire squids. I’ll cave under the pressure, and I really don’t want to have to explain that to my mom.)

This interview was a like-minded collaboration between an independent developer and an independent writer. If you enjoyed reading this and would like to support us, try out the Open Mic demo, then wishlist and follow Clam Man 2: Headliner on Steam.

I’ve often thought of medieval manuscripts as a kind of analogue technology: scribes could scrape the vellum or palimpsest to print something new, similar to how a hard drive could be formatted to install a new program or game. Vellum was an expensive material, and the space to print and illustrate was precious. Inkulinati gives off that aesthetic: like a palimpsest that monks would use and reuse many times for ink battles.

There is an old Latin phrase: audio, video, disco. I listen, I see, I learn. I took the time to learn the basic and intermediate lessons first, Hildegard’s Course for Beginners, all with double stars. And even playing on and off Easy/Normal, the Journey mode kept me challenged just enough. Inkulinati is fairly hard to learn, and harder to master, but still accessible for an average player with limited gaming time.

Roguelite Agency

Roguelites are supposed to be hard, but not too hard, hence lite. They don’t have to follow every design feature of the Berlin Interpretation. Inkulinati does not include random map generation, permadeath, grid-based movement, non-modality, and so on. The main draw is in its layered turn-based combat with a great use of environment and different objects to interact with.

Some turn-based combat games tend to turn into a puzzle more than a tactical challenge. The player has to find the exact same solution devised by the developers, and often in the exact same order. Inkulinati avoids that with a lot of variety in Beasts, Talents, and Hand Actions as you progress through the Journey. Your choices during certain events also shape the way you play and how you face the challenges.

Bestial Aesthetics

The overarching design and user experience are smooth: no crashes, freezes, glitches, or bugs. I know the game was in Early Access for a considerable time, which explains how polished the experience is. The time lapses between chapters in the battles could be a bit shorter; sometimes I felt impatient waiting for the beasts to wake up from their slumber after their turns end.

The deck-building elements are well-tested and solid. It feels a bit like Slay the Spire but in a more vertical design in the battles. Synergies are not quite as complex either, but I prefer the simplicity in this system; Slay the Spire can be very random because of the complexity of the synergies. Inkulinati has some RNG other than the hit damage QTE, which is possibly its weakest mechanic.

Farts and Exploding Puppies

The main story is a madcap adventure full of quirky characters and jokes. The game does not take itself seriously at all, which at first is fairly funny and interesting. In my second Journey run, however, I wish there was more depth to the plotline; maybe a bit of mystery and intrigue here and there. And while the Journey is different for every run, you still face some of the same Masters at the end of every map.

The visual design is stunning and sometimes hilarious. Rabbits farting and hares throwing exploding puppies; damn dirty apes terrorizing your beasts by throwing poison at them. And so on. It’s a dark, twisted bestiary drawn by drunk monks. The art style is unique but at the same time faithful to bestiaries and medieval marginalia in general. The mechanics go well together with the variety of levels and beasts.

Ink for Blood

Inkulinati will appeal to fans of turn-based tactics looking for a fun roguelite. Those looking for challenge will have plenty, but not as much as they would with a more rigorously difficult roguelike. If you take the time to think before each move and calculate its repercussions, you will definitely find Inkulinati engaging: like a layered, vertical chess. Except that your pawns like to fart at their adversaries.

It is also a perfect companion for two other games I love: Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Pentiment. Medieval-themed games have come a long way in the past decade, and these two games were at the forefront of a new approach to historical realism that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Inkulinati does not take itself seriously at all, but neither did the authors of bestiaries—at least that’s what medievalists say these days.

Disclosure: Inkulinati was reviewed on PC with a Steam key provided by the publisher over the course of 28 hours of play time. All screenshots attached were captured during the review process.

Rating: 8.5 / Recommended.

The Good

• Stunning visual design;

• Fun turn-based combat;

• Simple but effective synergies;

• Hilarious beast design;

• Decent replay value.

The Bad

• Thin campaign storyline;

• Sluggish chapter transitions.

Gallery

Inkulinati is available on Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation. More information is available on the developer website.

In my preview, I referred to The Thaumaturge as a lonely game for lonely men. Halfway in my playthrough, I had three salutors living in my head, including the Cossack warrior Upyr. As I chased the fourth salutor with an estranged childhood friend, we went on a pub crawl in the Warsaw city centre. The city is full of people and creatures whose stories you investigate to find clues and reach conclusions. You don’t slay monsters; you try to understand them and bring them into the fold.

The Thaumaturge may not be what some fans of Witcher games expect, but it is a compelling debut title by Fool’s Theory (their previous title, Seven, was a collaboration with IMGN.PRO). The game won’t break new ground in terms of gameplay, but this brand of hyper-historical fantasy is innovative and might appeal to aging fans, such as myself, who find ourselves bored by most fantasy.

Salute the Salutors

At one point, I thought I was playing on the Balanced (normal) difficulty, but after being stumped by a rather tough battle to capture the salutor Veles, I decided to lower the difficulty to save time. Then I realized I had been playing on Challenge (hard). On the one hand, there are a few tough battles, especially for salutors; on the other, the hard mode might not be hard enough for hardcore players. There is some incentive to min-max, but the game also allows players to balance the attributes.

I’ve always played Witcher for the stories, the dialogue, the quest design, more than any kind of gameplay challenge. This also goes for The Thaumaturge, where the battles feel like a filler that is expected to be there, but not quite essential. Once you understand the mechanics, most of the fighting is on autopilot: the salutors disable the adversaries’ skills and shields so you can cause damage through attacks and spells. The late game amps up the difficulty in a few fights, but it’s not that rough.

Flickering Souls

I noticed some flickering sometimes in the animation of the dialogue, but overall the game is fluid, and the cutscenes are well-made. You can move in the levels by holding down the mouse button or using WASD scheme; but sometimes the character gets stuck in a few corners. The level design is gorgeous and intricate; it’s full of nooks and corners worth exploring, with points of interests and bits of lore here and there.

The flickering seems to be tied to different eye lines in the animation of the dialogue. At one point, Wiktor kept flickering back and forth, looking to his right and then looking ahead, dividing his attention between NPCs. It didn’t happen all the time, but it was noticeable when it did happen. This should be solved with a few patches, but it was noticeable in the pre-release version I played.

Warsaw Sights

The setting and ambience of Warsaw and its buildings, environments, and NPCs look excellent in the isometric levels, which make it fun to explore the nooks and corners to find bits of lore, clues, and new quests. There are more than enough side quests to occupy you beyond the main quest, and plenty of collectibles with bits of history and storytelling. This is what the game does best: it brings an old city to life and makes it something worth knowing about.

To find clues, you have to snap your fingers and follow the glowing red thread around the levels. Sometimes you see red flickering lights and when you get close enough, you are able to interact with them to investigate. The text in these notes is somewhat verbose, but the writing is mostly interesting. This is how the game conveys the thaumaturge’s capacity to learn a person’s secrets without asking questions directly.

Polish Pokémon

Every time you catch a new salutor, Wiktor turns sweaty and looks tired. Then he has to meet with Rasputin, who can hypnotize him so he can stop sweating. In my view, this diminished the actual impact and value of catching a new salutor. Collecting them like Pokémon is not that fun, though I love their design. It would have been more compelling if the player had to work harder to take on each salutor. Perhaps even not being able to collect them all and having to make more hard choices.

At one point, two guys in the streets asked me if I preferred beer or vodka, and no matter what I said, they wanted me to fight them. It looks like Polish people like to fight as much as Irish people. There are quite a few moments like this where I wished I could reach a peaceful resolution, but the combat felt inevitable most of the time, other than a few crucial points in some quests with flexible dialogue options.

Standing on the Shoulders

At times The Thaumaturge felt like an isometric walking simulator with clues spread out in levels, so I just have to follow the thread to find them. The investigation sometimes felt less like putting together clues and more like collectathons. There are so many conclusions that they end up feeling underwhelming. The writing in all these conclusions often seemed more urgent than the quests were.

The endgame had a few surprises in terms of player choice and its consequences. My character was greedy for all the salutors he could get, and there was a very real consequence for his greed. It added enough to the story to make me want to play it through once again and make a different choice. This is what I felt after my first playthrough of The Witcher 1: the urge to go back and reconsider the moral dilemmas.

That said, The Thaumaturge is not The Witcher; it’s not designed to take you on the lonely path so you can hunt monsters for challenge and alchemy ingredients. Instead, it’s an urban, sophisticated take on the monster hunter who is able to absorb the monsters and their flaws; what players do with those monsters and flaws is up to them. I enjoyed it for what it is: a psychological and political thriller adventure with RPG elements, steeped in Polish and Slavic folklore.

Disclosure: The Thaumaturge was reviewed on PC with a Steam key provided by the publisher over the course of over 40 hours of play time. All screenshots attached were captured during the review process.

Rating: 8.5 / Recommended.

The Good

• Original dark fantasy universe;

• Cool monster design;

• Compelling, rich setting;

• Strong writing;

• Interesting characters and dialogue;

• Replay value of choices and consequences.

The Bad

• Uneven combat challenge;

• Clue collectathons can be tedious;

• A few flickering textures and models.

Gallery

The Thaumaturge is out on Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, Xbox, and PlayStation. More information is available on the developer website.