I literally just stumbled into this. I know nothing about it, but it appears to be right up my alley, so I’ll have to look into it further.
Very positive review of The Fabulous Fear Machine here. I’ll be interested in your thoughts.
I haven’t talked myself into pulling the trigger just yet. I’ll report back if I do.
It sounded really good from the review, with the possible exception of the comment that time is always your most precious resource. I think of all the good games that I enjoyed noticeably less because it was basically you have X turns to accomplish this interesting thing.
When he mentions time, it sounds like he’s really talking about having a limited number of agents to send out on missions vs. everything you have to deal with.
We’ve got company coming in this week, but I’ll probably grab this some time today anyway
So I purchased, played the tutorial, started the first mission, and read the manual. This looks like it could be a keeper EXCEPT
There’s a timer at the top of the screen that isn’t explained anywhere. It could mean that missions are timed, or it could be for some other event. I’m waiting for an answer on the Steam forums to find out what it is and if it will affect my decision to play the game.
Which timer? There are two - one tracks the amount of time until your next payday, and the other (“the flame”) tracks how long until your maintenance costs increase, reducing all future paydays. In practice, I’ve found that timer isn’t really limiting past the beginning of a scenario. Once you get your fear economy rolling, money’s not a concern.
My thoughts: beautiful visual design, but the satire on conservative fear mongering never develops any bite, and the game doesn’t vary its mechanics enough to avoid eventual tedium.
I ended up getting a refund. Aside from the tedium, the decisions aren’t all that interesting and there is little replayability, if any
Shoot a monkey, I was hoping if I scooched the posts into their own thread, one of you would dig deeper than I did to discover either an interesting game or a fun satire. So far, no luck, huh?
I did enjoy the garish palette!
Unfortunately, this is a perfect example of style>substance.
Well bummer! I had high hopes for this one.
Thanks for the update, though.