Empire of Ember looks like a fantasy Battle Zone, which immediately grabs my attention. However, skimming the reviews, even the positive ones are saying it should not have been released yet!
Yep, I’m really enjoying Strange Horticulture too. Like you say, it unfolds in a pretty straightforward way but there’s always interesting things to figure out, and the world is evocative.
I played through Strange Horticulture over a couple of days. I liked the chill vibe. It’s basically a hidden object game chopped up into little pieces with a pretty (though sometimes clunky) UI. I was sad it has multiple endings, because I have no desire to play through it again. It reminded me a bit of Obra Dinn, but wasn’t nearly as good. Not sad I played it, but not unreservedly recommended either.
This just dropped from a developer whom I really enjoy. I LOVED their last game, Beast Agenda 2030. This one is a mix of stealth, combat and hacking, and so far it’s very fun.
Just a heads up that Cyber Cult City is one of those very early access games without most of its content and still at least a year out. From the Steam page:
“Basically the structure of the game is all there. All that is left is to add a lot more content and fix bugs.”
-Tom
Sure, but he’s brought through his previous two games through early access to release, and they were both really good, especially the last one, so I’ve little fear he’ll bring this to release as well. What I played felt pretty solid already.
That’s all good and well, but since you didn’t reveal that it’s an early access release, I thought I’d save others the disappointment if they click your link. Some of us care about that sort of thing, you know. :)
-Tom
Well apologies, I meant no deceit in not mentioning it wasn’t an early access title. I thought it was clear enough on the store page, but fair enough.
I have a mental block against buying and playing EA games so thanks for the heads up.
Confession Time:
My old brain sees EA and thinks Electronic Arts. So for the longest time I thought people were refusing to play their games!
Hidden Deep arrives into early access.
The wait is indeed long, I just noticed this got a decent content update late last year, but still seems a long way from 1.0
It’s an interactive story more than a game, and I’m pretty sure it was meant to be played around christmas, but I loved it.
I sort of liked the groove of Lake and think it’s probably slightly better than it ought to be. There’s nothing like these “going back to a home in flux” games (or maybe it’s a “you can’t ever go back home”) that kind of tugs my heart strings. It does make me wonder why “home” in indie games is always somewhere in the PNW. It’s ostensibly set in the 80s but you can’t really tell aside from some fetishized phone and video store stuff that (/sigh) doesn’t feel that strange to me, because… yea. It does tingle my certain unnamed game senses.
The devs seemed brave to make a driving game on a budget, and i appreciate the art direction. Having a fully fleshed out voice acting - some of which was really good - helps push this game over its main gameplay conceit’s (mail delivery) deep mediocrity (as the world is really just a big loop). They did try to make the world appealing but that can only last so long. But Giving Tree Protagonist narratives in these sorts of games start to feel a bit same-y after awhile. The game does give you a path to make your character a bitter, unhappy person that loafs watching TV all day, but i’m not sure why you’d make those choices when not doing so is not just effortless but also gives you more game to explore.
But as a Texan i do appreciate chilling out and driving around pretty areas. If anything, Lake maybe unintentionally captures that feeling of these micro-sized towns up on the slopes of mountains that feel always on the edge of sustainability; a pretty place to visit, but a hard place to live in.
Did you ever check out or hear of Embracelet, Enidigm? If not, might be worth a look.
I actually did end up playing the full game when it released on Game Pass recently, I liked the full experience. It’s definitely got aspects of tedium baked into it, and I could see a lot of people going ‘what the hell, is this a game?’ but as someone who likes to mix up my gaming with a large, deep RPG and then maybe a shooter and then a little indie, it fit the bill for me. I even tried out all the endings (it’s easy, you just make different choices at the very end, load the last checkpoint and pick another one) to see how things all worked out. I do think it’s worth a look if you’re into its sedate wavelength.
I assume (though I haven’t actually checked) that most of these games are developed by studios located in the PNW, so they’re writing what they know.
I think some of that was baked into the story, though its was gentler than is probably realistic.
Everything you said about Lake I agree with wholeheartedly, Enidigm. I actually played through Lake pretty compulsively, because it was just so easy to do. And I really appreciated the setting, the voice acting, and a lot of the storylines when they started. I don’t quite know why I felt let down by how it wrapped. Like, I don’t think it needs an action-packed thriller-style ending. Or a bout of Twin Peaks-ian weirdness. But I do think I wanted the game to ratchet up the emotions just a bit more? (It’s tricky because, though the character models and lip sync were decent for an indie game, the facial rigs clearly couldn’t show real gut-wrenching emotion.) I thought at one point that it might be in my top ten of the year. But the ending–while basically fine, and consistent with the rest of the game in many ways–seemed to reveal the relative paucity of what came before, despite all that it did well.
Glad I played it, and I’d like to see more games like it. I just hope they have a little bit more to say.
Oddly enough, I think the Lake devs are in the Netherlands. And the Life Is Strange guys are in France (a few of them recently helped found a studio in Montreal). What are the other examples?
I think there a kind of dark romanticism to the PNW for outsiders. Twin Peaks definitely plays a role in that. Lake is interesting for how, in my estimation, it has a bit more of a Klamath Fallsian, hardy western Oregon working class edge to it than a quirky Portlandian/Eugenian vibe (although its town is way smaller than any of those). The Dutch devs seemed to get that distinction.
Well there’s Oxenfree, though a little research tells me that Night School is based out of southern California. Same goes for the developers of What Remains of Edith Finch, Giant Sparrow is in Santa Monica. But there’s also Gone Home, whose developer The Fulbright Company was (pour one out) in Portland. That’s about all I can think of.
Oh yeah, all good examples. Definitely all playing with that Twin Peaks vibe. And probably a heavy dose of Stephen King, which is easily portable between Maine and Oregon/Wash.
Alan Wake takes place in the PNW, and I think that’s a Finnish developer?
I blame The X Files. Everyone knows it was filmed in the Pacific Northwest, well, until it was moved to LA.