In this issue you will find Slavic Gothic, a vampire psychotherapist simulator, one of the best JRPGs, a sad clone of VA-11 Hall-A, a horror thriller about the horrors of the First World War, a card RPG where the main character has already died, and other interesting games.
Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure tells how a provincial misfit named Gemma travels outside her town and discovers a wondrous new world that needs help – it’s ruled by fear and a strange “static” force. So Gemma needs to defeat not just another villain, but the timelessness itself.
There are battles, communication, world exploration and adventure, but there is no inventory, crafting and pumping. Everything is built on interaction with the world and active objects. The thing is that all objects are mapped on one “grid”, and our movement automatically moves the objects located on the same line. Using this mechanics, we solve tasks like “How to move the sword closer to the monster” or “How to move yourself behind an obstacle”.
These are just the simplest examples. The further you go, the more complex and interesting it gets. And all this is complemented by special challenges, interesting characters and gorgeous visuals. In general, it is not surprising that Arranger collected a lot of awards and rave reviews from critics.
What’s interesting: a continuation of the famous JRPG series and one of the best story-driven RPGs of recent years.
Trails Through Daybreak marks the beginning of a new arc of The Legend of Heroes. It was released in Japan three years ago and is only now making its way to the West. The new arc is set in the Republic of Calvard, where we are told a new story with new characters who are largely just discovering the structure of the local universe. Therefore, for newcomers, Trails Through Daybreak is probably the best option to join The Legend of Heroes.
Everything is wrapped around the search for artifacts and devices that can bring a lot of evil if they fall into the wrong hands. At the same time, in almost every chapter important plot characters are brutally killed. The villains are the mafia, which united under its roof the most notorious maniacs and murderers. And this time we play not for a soldier or a servant of the law, but for a semi-legal private investigator, who is asked for help by girls with big eyes.
The story hooks you from the first scenes, and later on it pleases you with meetings with charismatic characters, long dialogues and cut-scenes, interesting plot and side quests, wonderful voice acting and music. And all this is multiplied by a more perfect technical execution and a great picture – Calvard is a local piece of France, and this is conveyed in the design and graphics.
Gameplay innovations are also pleasing. In many tasks you have to make a choice, which moves the arrow of your moral compass in the direction of chaos, order or neutrality, which affects the ending and relationships with characters. And battles have become more dynamic – for the first time we were allowed to fight in real time, being able to switch to the more familiar turn-based combat at any time.
There are still a lot of fun details in the game, including the ability to listen to the radio news and weather forecast, make gifts to companions and go to the movies with girls. At the same time, everything is well-balanced in terms of pumping and battles – it’s always interesting to play. In general, The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak is a great gift for all fans of not only this series, but also of the genre in general.
What is interesting: a very beautiful and melancholic visual novel about love, friendship, grief and tears in the rain.
It seems to tell an ordinary school story, in which a high school student named Mark falls in love, breaks up, makes new friends, communicates with old ones, makes plans and so on and so forth. During breaks, he learns to play the piano (but only in his own imagination). And we participate in fun mini-games and make decisions that affect the ending.
In general, everything is familiar. But to all this there is mysticism, connected with false memories and deja vu effect. More importantly, the authors work well with music, sounds and words – manipulating them, they can easily bring you out of depression, drive you into it again, make you cry or sincerely smile. The artwork is excellent, too.
In Until Then you will see that dynamically changing white letters on a black background can cause stronger feelings than a tricked-out trailer. And you’ll meet a lot of interesting characters. For example, Mark is friends with a girl who calls herself a pluviophile – a pathological lover of rain. Consequently, there’s a lot of rain and related melancholy scenes.
Finally, thanks to the change of angles and the game with sound, the authors achieve a stunning effect of presence. And in addition to this comes the opportunity to sit for a long time in local social networks, to communicate there and like posts, which can affect the subsequent dialogues and relationships.
What’s interesting: a heartbreaking simulator of hookah player in the spirit of VA-11 Hall-A.Play
In Hookah Haze, we not only prepare the actual hookah for the clients, but also act as a therapist (well, or vest) for them at the same time. The clients are exclusively beautiful waifu (three in number), and the hookah maker himself can be mistaken for a girl because of his long hair, although the authors explicitly say (and the dialogues are clear) – it’s 25-year-old Toru, who usually tends to deny his own desires and put others above himself, but this time he decided to realize a dream and went to this job.
Toru prepares tobacco blends based on the customers’ wishes (and their tastes can change every day), adds or changes coals, and then carefully watches the girls’ reactions. He also posts pictures on social networking sites, responds to the girls’ messages (or not) and, of course, has live conversations with three cute waifu. What’s so heartbreaking about this?
The thing is, Toru is terminally ill. And he was given this job by a doctor who almost literally asked him what his last wish would be. And Toru likes to smoke hookah and socialize with people, looking at fish in the aquarium. Against this backdrop, the girls’ personal hangups and problems seem like nothing. One has PTSD and family problems, the other is constantly being chased by someone, and she wants everyone to love her and pay attention to her and gets offended when they don’t.
Nevertheless, gradually we get sympathy, experiment with flavors, tobacco blends, change the music and color design of the hookah shop, make decisions that affect the finale, and hope that in the end we discover a happy ending not only for each girl, but also for Toru. Is it possible, will it be possible to pass the game without crying at the end? You will find out for yourself.
Many people have heard about the situation around Dark and Darker. It’s a South Korean fantasy extraction shooter, where you need to traverse a dungeon and successfully escape with your loot without getting punched in the face by other players. It had an extremely dashing launch on Steam last year. But then other South Koreans accused the developers of stealing intellectual property. There were long trials, the game was removed from Steam, recently brought back. But even after the return to Dark and Darker there were claims, this time from gamers who were upset by aggressive monetization.
So, now Dark and Darker has a clone. The gameplay and the essence of Dungeonborne is almost the same: we choose a class, and then alone or in threes with friends we clean the dungeon, fight with monsters and other players and try to escape through the portal before the Blood Moon rises over the location and all the loot is not taken away.
There are still plenty of flaws and balance problems – I’m sure many people will hate druids for the rest of their lives. There are also not enough maps, enemy options, equipment and content in general. But the game has just been released in Early Access.
But in Dungeonborne you don’t have to overpay – the local store sells only “cosmetics” for money. And in general the game looks more accessible – in any case, it’s easier to escape through portals. Although even here there were situations when you, loaded with loot up to your elven ears, run around the castle, over which the Blood Moon has almost risen, and shout: “Half a kingdom for the portal!”. And in response there is silence – or the laughter of comrades who escaped in time…
We used to say that there are not many games about the First World War. But in fact, they are becoming more and more. Another example is “pixelated” survival horror Conscript, dedicated to the infamous Battle of Verdun. It was one of the largest and bloodiest military operations, which killed almost a million people in less than a year.
That’s why you don’t need zombies, demons from hell and other mysticism (like in Amnesia: The Bunker) to convey the horrors of that war. It is enough to show people dying from gas and explosions, maimed, crucified on barbed wire. And add to this the crowds of aggressive rats attacking the protagonist and not only.
For him, a simple French soldier, the horror of the situation is all the stronger because he serves together with his brother, who is seriously wounded in the first minutes of the game. And further on it is felt that he does everything and fights not for the sake of his country, but for his brother. And for the sake of his own life too, because he regularly hears that he will get a bullet in the back of his head if he doesn’t go to the front line.
In gameplay it’s almost Resident Evil – we fight, solve puzzles, look for items needed for puzzles, collect scarce ammo, first aid kits and materials for creating consumables in the field. In rare shelters we save, spending ink on it. There we also move things from the inventory to the warehouse, trade and improve weapons for parts.
The theme of the game among other things is reflected in the fact that periodically we put up barbed wire, destroy rat nests with grenades and take out entire enemy trenches with found artillery shells. As a result, we got not a classic horror, but quite fascinating harsh survival, where, in addition to all of the above, there was also a place for nostalgia in the home and poignant drama.
We play as a space criminal (race and article are chosen at the start), who must establish relationships with other convicts, join one of the gangs and survive in the main space prison. You also need to constantly collect resources to craft anything and everything, including food. The hero has a parameter of satiety and hope, which depends on his optimism, mood and level of hygiene. So you need to organize your cell – put there a normal toilet and shower, hang shelves for mood-supporting items like a soft toy of your daughter.
It is not easy to survive and keep yourself clean. At first, we eat mostly scraps and rat meat, and fight against or alongside rats. In turn-based battles our partners for a long time will be exactly fighting rodents, for which you can set up an infirmary right in the cell. It will not be possible to quickly accumulate the sum to hire other convicts.
It is not easy to defeat those who are higher in the gang hierarchy. In these and many other aspects Space Prison is a detailed, deep and very harsh game. But the more interesting.
