A Rain-Coast Gamer's Ramblings

(click here for my previous entry, here for notes on the awesome stuff I use to make the game playable)

First things first, I get the dwarves to set up a trade depot.  This thing takes up a massive amount of space, but can luckily be walked through.  Mine is made of limestone.  It’s a big, white, impossible-to-miss square.  Hopefully this means it will be more attractive to trade caravans. (not really, but one can hope…)

Meanwhile, those gems finally get cut, and I set the nitpicky bunch of oafs to encrusting some of the stone crafts and other finished goods I’d ordered earlier.  Finished Goods, aka ‘useless crap’ (no, I didn’t make that one up), are products you can order your dwarves to make which have literally no use except as a way of cleaning up all the stone you have lying around and as something to trade with caravans.

It is at this point, while I’m trying to sort out all the stone lying around, that I use a trick which is detailed here.  Garbage dump zones violate the laws of physics, in that you can pile an infinite amount of stuff in a 1x1 zone.  An easy way of cleaning stone off the floor is to create a Dump zone and command all the stone you don’t want around the place to be dumped.  Your dwarfs will take the stone and somehow stuff a potentially infinite amount of rocky material into a small space…

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Show Me The Games, a website for indie developers to sell their games, where there is no DRM and 100% of the sale money goes to the developer (crazy stuff, I know) is having a week-long sale!  Find all of the stuff on sale here.

I think I might get Space Pirates and Zombies, Darwinia, Defcon, or Revenge of the Titans.  If you didn’t know, these are some pretty big names in indie gaming.  I might have to buy all of them.

I need a job.

http://www.deconstructeam.com/games/gods-will-be-watching/

Ludum Dare is this crazy thing that indie developers do where they get together on the internet and create a game in one weekend.  This year has had over 2000 (yes, that’s the right number of zeros) entries.  The theme of this year’s Ludum Dare was minimalism.

Among the best games of this year’s Ludum Dare is a survival sim.  Named “Gods Will Be Watching”, this is a survival sim with only one screen, but with six characters (not including yourself), and a whole series of resources both literal and figurative to manage.  And it’s really really hard.

The story goes like this: your team of researchers was on a distant planet researching the Medusa virus when your ship is blown up and your research stolen.  Now you have to survive for 40 days before the next convoy passes by, and you’ll need to repair your radio by that time. Unfortunately, you’re stranded on a cold, desolate wasteland of a world. Will you die of cold?  Starvation?  Will the Medusa virus get you, or will everyone just go crazy and run off into the wilderness?

You have only 5 actions per day, and by day 10 you will feel like it’s not nearly enough.  Group morale has about the same level of importance as it does in Dwarf Fortress, except here everyone’s sober.  People dying or leaving can cause a chain reaction of quiet but devastating insanity.  Food stores drop at an alarming rate.  Anyone paralyzed by the Medusa virus will die in 3 days.  I’ve died twice to hypothermia because I forgot to kindle the fire.  The psychiatrist’s group therapy is incredibly helpful, but needs all 5 actions.

My favorite part of this game is how so much information is conveyed by the sparse graphics and animations.  Each character’s temperament is conveyed by their animations, and it changes based on mood; the soldier goes paranoid, staring into the wilderness with his gun at the ready, the psychiatrist huddles up and shivers, the doctor simply taps his foot and drags on his cigarette.

If I had to give any tips (which I won’t, since it is very easy to spoil this game), the first would be to talk as often as you can spare the action points.  It maintains morale, and can offer up some hints and tips.

If you want to play something atmospheric, thoughtful, twisted, desperate, and hard as all hell, play this.

periodicperspectives:

Get it.  Before it’s too late.  WEEKEND DEAL ONLY.