This was on sale on Steam and just got a major update, so I broke my rule and bought it. After playing quite a bit over the weekend, I would say don’t do that, at least not just yet. It definitely needs more time in the oven - the signalling is a bit wonky/buggy and the UI is needlessly opaque in a few places. It has promise, but I’m not sure it will replace ETS/ATS for me. The economy side is a bit more interesting, but - at least at the moment - the driving side is less so. Derail Valley is a better game at this point, even if the economy is overly punishing if you ask me.
Vanishing of Ethan Carter had a very PNW vibe, too- heck, I found a dam up on Hwy 20 in Washington that was very reminiscent of the dam in that game. That developer is Polish.
Vessels is a srtory driven short student project, a 1-2 hour dialogue adventure.
It is on sale for another 19 hours at a cheap $2.
You start inside an airlock and the crew of your ship is contemplating to dump you into space.
You have no memory or knowledge about any specifics. Then they decide you are too much of a risk. You die.
You learned a couple of things though and end up in death loops that allow you to use that knowledge. First to prevent your execution, then to learn more about the whole situation.
The Game was released a year ago. Apparently the devs won an IGF award for best student project but couldn’t get any press afterwards.
There are some story-structural bugs which is quite annoying in a story based game but I found the experience very enjoyable. I definitely recommend giving it a try.
No, I think I heard about it once but forgot about it. I didn’t realize it was made by the same dev from Milk Maid of the Milky Way, so I’ll have to check that out! Thanks for the rec.
I think that’s a good summary of the game’s story conclusion.
I choose to let the main character just leave town and go back to the ‘city’ and her programming job, and which I was sure was the correct choice (reflecting something I’m sure about my internal psychology) until I saw that ending play out, and with the few cues offered did in the end feel like the ‘wrong’ choice, more or less. But this is the 80s, she’s in the start of the consumer computing industry, she’s been offered a huge stock position… I think this is why these sort of games with narratives like this have that heart-string tugging effect on me as it feels clear that you can’t really go back home, however much you want. Leave everything for a lumberjack she had a steak dinner with, or shack up with a lady that watches movies all day long in an RV? For some people, of a certain age or character, maybe. But give up all her education and accumulated seniority? Even if you wanted to it feels irresponsible. The town doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere, and the drop out lifestyle of the hippies passing through felt like the ethos you’d have to embrace to want to stay, rather than be forced to, by circumstances, stay, which is the normal dynamic for rural America.
But the game’s relatively tame emotional center felt appropriate for the setting, I think. If the protagonist were younger, maybe life changing decisions on the fly would feel right. But middle aged management level character? The emotional bar feels set about right.
I did think the game was based on the dev’s going back home to… I guess the rural Netherlands somewhere, and recognizing that they can’t go back now. I think the ending chicken’s out a bit here, so I’m not sure there’s a consistent narrative other than, as the game specifically says, life being at a crossroads. However her life was so easy going and tame that these crossroads felt entirely of her own choosing.
It also felt that the Devs had run out of budget on VO near the end, I think. These relationship vignettes felt wanting more time to cook. Maybe that’s one reason throwing everything overboard for a ship passing in the night felt a bit too much.
Haha, well your top ending choice definitely wasn’t mine, though I can see the argument for it. I chafed too much at her oblivious boss asking her to save his ass multiple times while she’s on vacation. That guy was going to continue to take advantage of her.
Thinking about it, the big “wrap-up” scene at the diner was probably the biggest misfire to me, even compared to the tepid endings. It just needed to have an extra notch of drama. I think you’re probably right that there were likely production issues by the end. The amount of VO they produced and the quality of it was impressive for a small team, so I’m sure they were stretched thin at some point.
But you and I are aficionados of Life Is Strange, so that’s gotta color our perception of where the story could go, even if clearly Lake is not trying to be quite as dramatic.
I didn’t have as uncharitable a view of the boss as you did. He seemed to be pretty aware of how critical the player character was to the software’s success and was trying to reward her appropriately. For me, I appreciated that the game was very low stakes and didn’t choose to manufacture drama or crisis, any of the endings seemed valid to me (yeah, I checked them all out).
“A lo-fi game about photographing aliens so that your employers can turn them into toothpaste.”
Been out for a bit on Steam, but just launched on Switch, too.
Screenshots make it look like an early 3D game from the 90s. Yuck!
Didn’t you know that lo-fi 3D is the new pixel art??
(I agree, I’m not usually a fan. Good pixel art can be beautiful. I don’t think PS1-era 3D can look anything but ugly.)
I imagine flat-shaded polygons would look a lot cleaner than the pixelated textures they’ve got going on…
Yeah I recall seeing this a while back after playing their previous (and excellent) game Sagebrush. I’m quite intrigued by PC Gamer’s “It’s good… be prepared for Cellular Harvest to go some places.” While the game itself looks quite unusual and relaxing, that comment makes me wonder if there’s more going on here than meets the eye… Sagebrush did some really cool and unexpected stuff. The premise of Cellular Harvest (maybe tone?) reminds me a little of Journey to the Savage Planet too.
In a similar photographic vein, I bought Nuts last night which is currently discounted on Steam. Had my eye on this for a while:
On the lo-fi PS1-era 3D visuals and ‘non-traditional’ aesthetics in general: I love the explosion of all these weird and wonderful styles. I think Cruelty Squad showed me that even I have my limits (maybe?), but I’m still fascinated and excited by them. I saw this brilliant video by Jacob Geller recently and it sums it all up perfectly for me. I should put this in the video essays thread too.
And if you know me, you’ll probably know how I stumbled on this video! :)
(Also, props for dropping some World of Goo and Robocop music in there.)
NUTS looked interesting, and I tried it when it came out on iOS, but it was totally not suited to that platform (or, I guess, it’s one of the “iPad and a controller” iOS games, which I’m stodgily opposed to).
I can appreciate how the PS1-era 3D graphics can be evocative for certain experiences, particularly horror games or very glitchy, grungy games. To me, though, pixel art can be beautiful and this stuff just can’t (unless someone wants to show me one), so that limits its applicability and means that the best it can be is “appropriately gross.”
I was going to mention Chasing Static earlier as I think that looks fantastic, but that’s very much horror and glitchy/grungy, like Paratopic. While I haven’t played Anodyne 2, that’s always looked lovely to me, as did Commune Corvidae (though I think that’s probably swinging more towards the fidelity of PS2-era games like Shadow of the Colossus…).
An interesting thought exercise even if I have few good answers! :)
I am always excited about a new entry in the “build vehicles and then drive them to complete challenges” genre.
Oh, these are interesting examples! Nice to see Anodyne 2 being low-res and colorful, unlike all the muddy-brown Quake-like games in this style. Chasing Static looks like it has approached the style with a ton of care; it looks more Half Life than Silent Hill to me. Commune Corvidae really embraces the low screen resolution. Makes me realize that maybe The Short Hike fits into this classification and I might have to eat my words. (Not that I think Short Hike looks beautiful, exactly, but there’s no doubt it works.)
I’ve been toying with trying to get some friends on to Trailmakers. Have you played that?
Oh, I’d not thought about that one!
I have! I actually went on a little bit of a tear trying to find games in that genre in the summer. Trailmakers was really good. Terratech was underwhelming. Scrap Mechanic was very complicated. LogicBots was a good puzzler. I own Stormworks but have yet to try it.
Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts is also fantastic.
Invade the hated alien homeworld with your 1,000 soldiers (but only one at a time because you forgot to bring more than one gun).
The visuals are an homage to early Mac games, and the gameplay kind of captures that feel as well – it’s not obviously descended from anything and is at times arbitrarily cruel. I’ve had fun with this, and it deserves more players.
You piqued my curiosity, but this screen from the Steam page is what sold me:
-Tom