Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

I am a "classic" subscriber to Humble Choice. This means I get to choose ten from a selection of about a dozen Humble Choice games for a monthly fee of $11.99.  This is a pretty good deal considering the standard subscription rate is $14.99 for three games and $19.99 for nine games. The only trouble is that I have to stay subscribed or I lose this classic plan forever. It feels like I am trapped with a set of golden handcuffs.  I am on the classic plan because I was previously a subscriber to Humble Monthly the precursor to Humble Choice. In Humble monthly there was a smaller number of games every month but you had no choice you just got to keep the random six or seven games they gave out every month. Even though I rarely played more than one or two of the games every month (and often went months without playing any of them) I loved Humble Monthly. The list of new games came out on the first Friday of every month and it was always special learning which new games I had gotten...

"A Story About My Uncle" and "Inside" are both puzzle / platformer games set in weird quirky worlds that are beautifully imagined. Inside is a 2D game with a dark almost monochrome aesthetic while Uncle is 3D and wildly colourful. I recommend both but Inside was a more enjoyable experience for me overall.  The thing about this type of game is that there is very delicate balance to be struck between offering the right level of challenge and frustrating the player to the point where they quit. This is made all the more difficult by the range of player abilities in both puzzle solving and precision jumping. However there are plenty things a developer can do to make things better or to make things worse. The position of checkpoints is huge. Never put a tricky challenge at the end of a long boring section. Good visual clues are also ideal so that the player always know what they are supposed to go even if it is not obvious how they are going to get there. Inside get s...

I do love finishing games even when they are relatively casual indie games like Broforce. I highly recommend the game by the way. It is an action platformer with a couple of twists. Twist 1 is that you play as a random selection of "Bros" (translate: thinly disguised action heroes from 80's movies), You never know which character you will get next and they all have very different weapons and skills. The second twist is that the terrain is completely destructible. Altogether this adds quite a bit of strategy to the usual shooty carnage. A major bonus is that the game is very co-op friendly and it is a complete blast in co-op. Now what game will I try next? Another indie game will be quick to pick up but I have a few AAA titles in my queue that I also want to try. Deus Ex Mankind Divided is tempting.

To be more specific I don't like the combination of permadeath and random chance that is a hallmark of all true rogue-likes. It has taken me a while to admit this because serious gamers are supposed to like rogue-likes and respect the many classics of the genre.  I know that permadeath is supposed to make a game more engrossing by increasing the stakes. I know that it makes your achievements seem more worthwhile when you finally do overcome the game's challenges.  I also know that randomness makes a game interesting. It means you never know what to expect. Randomness is one of the things which differentiates a game from a puzzle.  However when you combine randomness and permadeath you condemn yourself to the bitter despair of losing many hours of effort due to a random toss of the dice. In most true rogue-likes a pointless unavoidable death is almost certain. You may die nine times out of ten. More likely you will die ninety nine times out of a hundred but the ...

At first Hotline Miami gripped me. This is not surprising as it is one of those rare indie classics that receive universal praise and mega sales. As many others have pointed out the gameplay is superb. You must kill all your enemies without getting hit once. You will get hit over and over and have to reload many times but the rapid pace of the game means you don't care. It is a perfect addictive blend of quick fire tactics and precise control. The atmosphere is even better than superb. Ugly blurry graphics and a sublimely dissonant soundtrack really nail the retro 1980's drug fuelled gangster vibe for me. Surprisingly the thing which increasingly disappointed me was the story. At first I didn't expect the game to have a story at all or perhaps to have a very wierd one. As I play through the game however it is slowly becoming clear that there is a fairly mundane story hidden behind the frantic killing. Knowing that I wouldn't have the patience to hunt down all the...