Death Howl
Grid-based deckbuilder fighting game with exploration and crafting
Published by the studio behind Frostpunk and This War of Mine comes Death Howl, a point and click pixel art game about grief.
The writing is good, but the cardplay isn’t. This is a deckbuilder, and while it’s not uncommon for starting cards to be weak (as you defeat monsters in this game, they drop loot you can use to craft newer, better cards), my actual complaint is that the act of playing cards feels bad. It’s not snappy, and and card costs are slow to update when conditions change. Clicking on a card to play it causes it to disappear, which has led me to think that I discarded it, or to forget the particulars of complex cars.
A warning proclaims that the demo does not represent the final product, and I hope that’s true. There are good bones here, but there’s a lot more polish needed. In more than one fight, I could not tell how much health a creature had because it was occluded by some unseen object, perhaps another enemy? It would be nice if there was a way to undo movement, so I could play around with card ranges (they are strictly straight-line).
A creature appears to have backwards F health.
When you die, you are asked to restart the fight. In my case, I started a big fight with low health, and no obvious way to heal (Edit: healing later became clear), forcing myself into a loop where even perfect play was rewarded in perpetual defeat. The ideal strategy seems to be hiding in a corner and poking enemies a little at a time. It doesn’t feel good!
In general, buffs and debuffs are hard to notice when they occur, though the health panel helpfully shows off lingering effects. One enemy, an owl, seems to apply status effects, but it’s very difficult to tell what they do. Seemingly, they add dead cards to your deck, but some improvements to legibility could be had.
There’s meat on these bones, but my verdict is wait and see.
Update: I’ve been informed that the backwards F is a stylized 7. Play it some more, I can see that it’s a very difficult game that may appeal to fans of Souls-like games. The deckbuilding components don’t feel smooth, and I think I would be more frustrated with it than anything else.
MotionRec
A puzzle platformer where you record a few seconds of movement and then play them back.
It really wants you to play on a controller, and the glyphs it uses (ZR!) are very specific. Playing keyboard and mouse took a little bit of guesswork but was mostly intuitive.
The music and graphics are both fairly charming, though some overlapping text and dark areas make it seem a little jankier than it deserves.
Brilliant concept, wonderfully executed!
The levels are simple in their design, and give you the tools to solve them with repeated loops or with brand new ones, and — my favorite bit — the QOL features: click record instead of play? No worries! Release it and your old recording is preserved!
If I have one nit, it’s that if there is a replay icon, it sometimes “lies” in the preview if there’s a wall or other obstacle in the way.
This is an indie game from the days of VVVVVV, simple concept and pure delight!
Dispatch
I’m a big fan of actor Jeffrey Wright, and have been eyeing this since it was announced. You play as a forcibly retired superhero acting as a dispatcher for
It’s funny! The voice acting is solid, and the Telltale-like dialogue options go fast. It’s a fun setting, and seems to trust the players without spelling everything out. Subtitles are disabled by default, which is unfortunate, as I had a hard time understanding one character’s accent at times. But, easily enableable, whoo!
The sound design is solid, though a couple effects seemed slightly off from the corresponding animation, timing-wise. One part of the demo seemed to force my hand (a hero I hadn’t assigned was patrolling anyway), but it was a good bit.
The characters are fun, even if a lot of them are sort of dickish. The superhero designs deviate pleasantly from the standards. One is a Magick rip-off, another is Dazzler-lite, and others seem to pay homage to some lesser-known heroes (hard to be wholly unique in THIS space), but there’s a lot of freshness in the designs as well.
The resolution mechanic is a bouncing ball that pinballs around the overlap between the job’s requirements and the stats of the heroes you assigned to the job. Plus, they can level up!
Honestly, the game is a delight. I was grinning through most of the demo. The hacking minigame is delightfully stressful, and the writing is extremely fun. Being the dispatcher is hectic, and it boxes you into a pleasant corner. I was already keeping my eye on this one, but it’s a for sure buy when it comes out!
Breachway
Breachway is an early access sci-fi deckbuilder. The writing is solid, the tutorialization grand, and the dekcbuilding mechanics have some novel quirks (a cooldown pile where cards rest for a few turns before getting shuffled into your deck makes deck management becomes both harder and more important).
You can also allocate ship power between energy (card play) and damage, which is a mechanic I always liked from the old TIE Fighter games.
The tutoralizing is very thorough here, with each mission introducing a new mechanic. But boy howdy are there a lot of mechanics! This is one where I’d really have to sit and stew for everything to settle in. Props to the developers, they did a great job of stripping things away and adding them in one by one.
The iconography is good, but boy is there a lot of it!
Ultimately, this is a text-heavy deckbuilder that reminds me of a mix of FTL and The Expanse. It’s good, and while I was overwhelmed at first, I felt like I understood how to play by the time I got to the first boss fight.
I don’t know that I’ll return to this one, but I definitely see the appeal of the way that ship customization ties into the available cards. Fogpiercer does something similar (but as a train). There’s a lot to love here, and I think it will find an audience that loves it (among my many sins, one is that I bounced off of FTL. If you lived FTL, perhaps you’ll like this as well.)
Find it in early access on Steam
Knights in Tight Spaces
I haven’t played the original Fights in Tight Spaces (forgive me), but this seems to be a fantasy reflavor of the same idea. I’ve heard much praise about the original, and despite my misgivings about generic fantasy settings, I’m willing to give this one a go.
From the jump, I like two things. First is that it gives the option of Fighter, Cleric, Rogue. While these are still very much the default D&D classes (yawn), I’m happy to not be restricted solely to fighter. Cleric is where it’s at.
Second, I’m pleased that the game offers between No Tutorial, Full Tutorial, or Only Changes From Fights In Tight Spaces. That’s a great option that also knows the audience!
The art is stlylized and pretty, aside from places with low contrast:
Similarly, it cna be hard to tell my party members apart when they’re all shades of green and blue. I promise I’m not colorblind, stop asking!
Come on, those are very similar colors!
The tutorialization is very good here, walking me through each turn in a logical order. I will say, I didn’t expect this game to have a plot.
I don’t think it’s for me, but I see the appeal. It’s basically Into the Breach, but with deckbuilding, and if that ain’t a hell of a pitch, I don’t know what is.