IGE's Ten Favorite Games of 2016

2016 is almost over, and that means it's time to look back at the games that stood out, that stuck with me for various reasons. I actually played quite a few more AAA games this year, due to finally getting a PS4, so this list does feature several non-indie picks, but that's only because they were just that good. 

So here's my ten favorite games of year, in no particular order, along with a few honorable mentions. 

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Hitman
Hitman is something rare and special: an honest-to-god comeback, a return-to-form that sets the bar for all future returns-to-form. From a game that made one question if IO had forgotten what made the series special, that altered many of the series' unique features in baffling ways, to a sleek game that pushes the Hitman series to new heights.

But even putting all that aside, Hitman is a triumph of game design, with sprawling clockwork sandboxes just waiting for you to poke and prod and manipulate, each one heavy with atmosphere and clever story vignettes, with so many ways to approach each mission that a single one can last you a dozen hours, and a huge amount of additional content that challenges your assassination prowess in new ways. This is the sequel I've been waiting a decade for.



Inside
At a glance, one might question what exactly makes Inside so special. Its visuals seem muted and dull, strip away everything and it's a game of mostly traversing right and solving environmental puzzles, it's a game where the only controls are move, jump, and grab. But Inside can't be fully appreciated at a glance; it must be played to understand its excellence.

Inside is a bleak crescendo of a cinematic platformer, every aspect building upon the other until its incredible finale. The animations, how the boy stumbles and struggles, how he looks with nervous glances or hunches over in tense fear. The aesthetic, rife with countless details and a cohesive palette that accentuates the game's depressing dystopian tone. The sound design, from the subtle heartbeat of a soundtrack to the boy's hurried breathing when stealth shifts to desperate pursuit. Everything coalesces to create an oppressive miasma of unease and tension, where you never feel safe, where every mistake is met with quick ruthless death, and its lean puzzle design is always driving you forward to more haunting imagery and more surreal discoveries.



The Last Guardian
I liked Ico, and I loved Shadow of the Colossus, so I had high expectations when I started The Last Guardian. And somehow, Ueda's vision was able to surpass them. This is an incredible journey of friendship told not through cutscenes or prose, but the medium's most unique element: interactivity. No doubt many great stories in gaming have been conveyed through audio logs and expert writing and compelling voice actors, but The Last Guardian tells the story of boy and beast through gameplay, through Trico's groundbreaking animations, through your petting and cleaning of feathers and removal of spears, through the desperate saves from certain death and the graceful leaps through this world's mysterious architecture.

From that foundation emerges a cinematic platformer that pushes boundaries on myriad fronts: playable set-pieces that rival Naughty Dog's work, tense platforming over vertigo-inducing heights, smart puzzles driven by cooperation, and an gripping ending that won't soon be forgotten



Titanfall 2
My eyes were opened to the joys of online multiplayer this year, first with Overwatch and Rocket League. then Battlefield 1 and Rainbow Six Siege. But I've played one shooter more than all of them, and that game was Titanfall 2. It's a demanding game, where quick reflexes and deft wall-running are your ultimate advantage, so it took a while for me to gain the skills to not get slaughtered. But with practice comes precision, and with precision comes some of the most intense and entertaining action I've enjoyed in a long time. There's nothing quite like wall-running past a missile salvo between warring titans, or sliding around a corner to cut down an incoming enemy, or grapple-hooking an ejecting pilot to deliver a killing mid-air blow. It's fast, furious, skillful, where a typical match can produce awesome emergent set-piece moments.

But those awesome set pieces aren't reserved to multiplayer, because Titanfall 2 also comes with one of coolest FPS campaigns in a while, a lean series of missions that shifts from one cool concept and encounter to the next, all wrapped in the stylish skillful parkour and combat that defines the series.



Oxenfree
The narrative adventure has seen a renaissance since Telltale revitalized it with The Walking Dead way back in 2012. From Dontnod's Life Is Strange to the historical 1979 Revolution, their influence has been undeniable. But while they may be the originator, Oxenfree is the innovator. Harkening back to the Spielbergian adventures of the 80s, this tale of friends on an island where dark forces lurk pushes the genre forward in wonderful ways. Its walk-and-talk mechanic allows for the kind of pacing that Telltale games and their ilk could never do, letting you make tough dialogue choices without breaking away from regular gameplay. And that dialogue is so natural, flows so smoothly, with interjections and interruptions and whatnot, a far cry from the turn-based style of conversation seen in everything from Mass Effect to Fables. Finally Night School found a clever way to do a New Game Plus within the confines of a narrative adventure, giving you another reason to revisit these likeable characters and atmospheric locales.



SuperHOT
It's the most innovative shooter I've played in years. No really, clever joke aside, it is. SuperHOT takes the one hit kills and limited ammo and encroaching enemies on all sides of Hotline Miami, and makes it a pseudo-turn-based action puzzler through its core time-moves-when-you-move mechanic. That simple idea changes everything. It's a game of minimalism and restraint, more time spent side-stepping bullets and planning your next move than attacking. Those methodical minutes-long sequences of time-slowed action only last mere seconds in real time. Every moment is one of careful movement, since every step by you means danger is one step closer. 

The combat in SuperHOT is the stuff of Hollywood magic, scenes that are usually only reserved for scripted moments and set pieces. You snatch a gun out of the air and spin around to kill the enemies approaching from behind. Point blank shots are negated by a katana slicing the bullet in half. You weave between bullets with effortless ease. It's a low-poly dance through a rain of crystalline shards and it never gets old



Stephen’s Sausage Roll
2016 was the year of the puzzler. The Witness, Obduction, SHENZHEN I/O, Recursed, Sethian, Thoth, and more, this year was one with quality puzzle games of all kinds. But none impressed or stumped me as much as Stephen's Sausage Roll. It may not seem like much, a Sokoban-style puzzler with a low-fi aesthetic, but that's where the genius of the games lies. Stephen's Sausage Roll is an ever growing puzzle box of new mechanics, mechanics that were always there, hidden in plain sight through level design alone.

Your basic toolset of rotation and fork is so versatile, allowing for puzzles so satisfyingly diverse and tricky, it is astounding to think back to how the early puzzles were only about rotating and pushing sausages with your fork. This is an ingenious work of level design and clever puzzles that should not be missed.



House of the Dying Sun
At one point, House of the Dying Sun was a bigger game, an ambitious sprawling Mount-and-Blade-style campaign with procedural factions and an open map. But instead the finished game is a lean collection of hand-crafted missions, polished and distilled to focus on one thing: combat. Combat is House of the Dying Sun's core element, each mission dropping you into a volatile situation and asking you to seamlessly manage both intense dogfighting from your interceptor cockpit and fleet tactics from the macro RTS view. No map to travel, no trading or hangars to buy a better fleet, no smaller jobs to build up your reputation, just relentless combat where positioning and expert flight is key to survival.

But it would remiss to not single out House of the Dying Sun's stellar sound design. The audio makes the game. The muted rumble and thuds of your weapons. The rasp of your oxygen mask. The tinny chatter of your wingmen, The mechanical whir when you reload or switch weapons. The sound design draws you into the combat, gives every action an immersive and atmospheric reaction



Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
You know a game is going to be good when a demo shifts your expectations from "Huh, seems interesting" to "I need to keep playing, please release already". In an ideal world, Shadow Tactics will be for real-time Commandos-style tactics what Divinity was for CRPGs. Polished to a mirror sheen, this is a game of weaving through vision cones, of carefully planning out precisely timed distractions and executions, of managing all your of team's special skills and abilities to overcome seemingly impossible odds. A single mission can last 2-3 hours, as you plan and study and observe and act and react and quick-save like a madman. This is one of the best stealth games of 2016, and the best Commandos-like in a long time.



Imbroglio
Michael Brough's games have often hinged on the dichotomy of simple on the outside and surprisingly deep within, a lo-fi aesthetic contrasted by challenging strategy. His latest game Imbroglio is no different; it plays like a distant cousin of his previous roguelike 868-Hack, with a focus on positioning and smart use of your abilities, but expanded exponentially and offering surprising complexity.

Imbroglio is many things. It's a roguelike, as you tactically use different skills and turn-based movement to outlast increasingly challenging groups of enemies. It's a card game, with each class having unique skills and limitations that define the kind of deck you can build. And it's a board game, as you use those cards to build the floor of the board itself, carefully considering synergy between abilities and your health and mana and where enemies will enter the arena. Imbroglio is the kind of simple-to-play yet surprisingly complex game that you'll often find on mobile, and one of the best roguelikes the platform has to offer.

Honorable Mentions:

Sethian
I've never played anything like Sethian. Essentially Arrival: The Game, it's a narrative adventure/linguistic puzzler that challenges you to learn how to read and communicate in an alien language. Wholly unique and very clever

N++
I'd place the physics-driven platforming and slick smooth controls of the original N up there with games like Super Meat Boy as one of the forefathers of the indie precision platformer, and N++ is the culmination of 12 years of refinement on that original game, with thousands of smartly-designed stages that wringe diverse platforming challenges from a simple moveset.

Devil Daggers
If DOOM was the modern update of the old-school shooter, Devil Daggers is the other side of the coin, distilling the genre to its leanest form. You, your weapon, an arena, a cacophonous onslaught of eldritch horrors, now survive. An oppressive symphony of distorted shrieks, skittering legs, guttural roars, echoing moans brings to life a bestiary of bone and flesh and too many appendages. Devil Daggers' sound design is some of the best you'll hear this year

Thumper
The most intense, most satisfying, and most draining test of reflexes since Super Hexagon, Thumper is equal parts simplicity and excess, easy-to-understand but challenging-to-master gameplay within a sensory overload of movement, color, and sound. If Super Hexagon was hypnotic in its shifting twisting geometric minimalism, then Thumper is 2001's mesmerizing mindfuck given metal life.

The Witness
Jonathan Blow's seven-years-in-the-making magnus opus is a puzzle game masterpiece, a vibrant Myst-like that wordlessly teaches you to understand its expansive repertoire of mechanics

DOOM
You are not a one-man army. You are a god of death, a bringer of ruin and slaughter to the forces of hell. They fear you and rightfully so, as you unleash unstoppable fury upon them through relentlessly fast first-person shooter action

PC Review #152: Thoth

Title: Thoth
Developer: Carlsen Games
Platforms: PC, Mac
Price: $9.99
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Your typical dual stick shooter is all about chaos. Victory comes from overwhelming non-stop firepower and evading waves and hordes like a madman. Erase your enemies from the screen as fast and fiercely as possible. From Geometry Wars and Assault Android Cactus to Binding of Isaac, relentless offense is the best defense. Not firing only gives your enemies time to surround and corner.

Thoth is nothing like that. Sure, you have an effective means of attack - a dual-stream of bullets - and can weave and dodge with ease, and there are fierce enemies that crowd the screen, but relentless firepower will only hasten your destruction.

Much like Carlsen's previous effort 140, Thoth is an exercise in minimalism. It's dual stick shooter distilled, from your single attack to the stark aesthetic and single-screen rectangular arenas. Your vessel is a mere circle, your enemies an array of other shapes. There are no upgrades or power-ups or loadouts or other complexities of the sort.

From this foundation, instead Thoth laser-focuses on the gameplay and exploring its mechanics. It's a game without a tutorial, where you learn through play rather than text. Your movement and shooting are the tools that teach you how enemies behave, and thus every new enemy and mechanic evokes a moment of tension, another unknown variable to master and overcome.

But once you do understand the varied actions of your geometric foes, you realize that Thoth is not exactly a shooter. It's a puzzler, and shooting and movement are how you solve these spatial conundrums. When to shoot, where you shoot from, which enemy you shoot at, in what order, all must be considered. Your circular ships moves faster when not firing, and each enemy requires sustained fire to drain them from existence, so positioning and timing are perhaps the most important aspects to assess while playing Thoth.

Positioning becomes much more critical when you realize that the arena itself is linked with the enemies you face. From changing the available space to swapping the barriers that divide the stage, killing an enemy can hinder rather than help if done at the wrong time and place. Mindlessly firing without considering your location will more than likely see your ship trapped and cornered. Across the game's 64 levels, you're constantly introduced to twists and elements, forcing you to adapt regularly and wringing surprising variety from a seemingly simple format.

Although...it may be a misnomer to say you kill enemies in this game. Enough bullets, and your colorful foes become structures of negative space, empty portholes into endless abyss beyond the arena, that pursue you even more aggressively. It's yet another puzzle piece to consider while dodging and weaving. Thoth's otherworldly droning soundtrack complements the imagery of that cold void wonderfully,

Much like the abyss hidden behind its minimal aesthetic, Thoth's distilled approach to the dual-stick genre hides a unique action puzzler behind the veneer of hectic shooter. You can purchase Thoth on Steam and Humble.

PC Review #151: Clustertruck

Title: Clustertruck

Developer: Landfall Games

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4

Price: $14.99

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Clustertruck is an exercise in simplicity. Strip everything away, and you're left with a frantic game of first person platforming across a dynamically shifting path. It's how developer Landfall Games builds upon that foundation that Clustertruck truly impresses, delivering a chaotic rush of aerial acrobatics, insane wrecks, and unpredictable levels.

In this self-described "truckformer", every stage begins the same way: you, on top of a truck, amid a convoy of similar trucks driving forward. For a split second, all is calm...and then Clustertruck's brand of chaos ensues. Drivers weave and crash, trucks tumble and jackknife and barrel onwards with reckless abandon. Somewhere up ahead lies your goal, and you must navigate these high-speed pile-ups to reach it. That alone would be a satisfying challenge, as you leap off trucks in mid-air, wall-jump off siding, and truck-surf through the chaos. The dynamic nature of the convoys makes success a matter of a keen eye and fast reflexes, as you use any truck-based surface to maintain your forward momentum.

But Clustertruck's levels aren't asphalt straightaways. Across themed worlds that range from steampunk to sci-fi, these levels are mad gauntlets of hazards and chasms and multi-tiered environments. Massive hammers smash trucks into the void. Lasers and barriers force you to evade with precision. Huge drops send you plummeting to roadways far below, aligning your descent to land atop more trucks. Gravity wells send trucks and yourself flying across levels, long soaring seconds of airtime that often challenge you to leap from truck to truck.

It's this variety in dangers, terrain, and level design that turns Clustertruck's already-intense style of first-person traversal into a wild test of platforming prowess. Every level and region introduces something new, be it a shift in how levels are designed or some new obstacle, sometimes for only a single stage.

Death is frequent but rarely frustrating, since instant restarts and relatively short stages let you quickly get into a flow of "try again and improve" on even the most hectic levels. But once you've survived the game's 90 levels, what other challenges could await a truckformer-ing master? Speedrunning and earning points by pulling off tricky maneuvers is one avenue, but more importantly is the collection of skills and abilities waiting to be unlocked, that completely change your approach to your levels.

Slow-motion alone grants you more precision and air control to deftly dodge and stick landings, the grappling hook lets you latch onto trucks and the scenery to zip forward, and unlocks like the jetpack and double jump drastically increase the distances you can leap. Additional unlocks turn the game into a truck-filled version of SuperHOT where time is linked to your movement or add additional explosions and danger for a score multiplier.

It's choosing your loadout of unlocks that flip Clustertruck on its head. Leaping from truck to truck is crazy enough, but hooking on a truck as it tumbles through the air then slowing time to leap off the truck with perfect precision to reach the end of a level is another level of satisfaction. It combines the fast-paced traversal with an element of experimentation that changes how you look at the level architecture and truck placement. Trucks in mid-air are grapple anchor points, a tunnel lets you bounce a truck spawn pellet down the track, and so on.

Clustertruck takes such a simple premise and just wrings every possibility from it, as truck-surfing evolves into daring leaps over missiles as those trucks fly across huge gaps. If the developer's levels are this insane, one can only imagine what kind of gauntlets the community will create through the in-game editor.

Clustertruck is available on Steam, GOG, and the Playstation Store. The game is coming to Xbox One soon.

PC Review #150: Flat Heroes

Title: Flat Heroes

Developer: Parallel Circles

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux

Price: $14.99

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The wave of local multiplayer games have been washing onto the PC and consoles shores for quite some time now. From Nidhogg and Samurai Gunn to Push Me Pull You and Overcooked, there's no shortage of titles in that vein. A few offer modes and gameplay for the solo player - Towerfall Ascension and Inversus to name a few - but Flat Heroes offers the best of both worlds, a finely-tuned evasive platformer featuring a sizable amount of modes for both single and multiplayer.

Flat Heroes is one of those games where its polish and style is evident straight from the menu, as its clean minimalist screens smoothly shift between menus and level selections. The set-up is simple: an acrobatic square, in ever-shifting single-screen gauntlets, don't get hit. Of course, that last part often isn't so easy. For solo player, you start in Waves mode, distinct stages and boss fights that wrings smartly-designed challenges from the game's varied hazards. From screen-filling rectangles that threaten to crush you against the walls, to swarms of homing rockets and bubbles, to ricocheting triangles that streak across the screen in a frenetic hailstorm of color, each hazard is a new test of your platforming prowess. 

Thankfully, your square's agility is more than enough to handle Flat Heroes' dangerous onslaught. With simple hops, wall clinging, and air dashes, you can leap and tumble through levels with ease and precision. The controls are perfectly balanced to always make you feel in control, but with enough fluidity to feel reckless and tense as you just barely dodge over incoming swarms or outrun a laser grid.

Flat Heroes rewards your progress through Waves with new color palettes and more importantly new game modes that cleverly twist the core foundations precise evasion and agile movement. Battle is a geometric take on deathmatch where you dash through enemies, while Runner and Catch are Flat Heroes' versions of capture the flag (with a slight dual stick shooter angle as Runner lets you shoot projectiles). Each is a hectic rush of close calls and exploding squares, and can all be played against the AI if friends aren't around.

Flat Heroes's minimalist platforming is currently on Early Access, with more modes and levels planned in future updates. But as is, the game already shines, through its responsive agile gameplay and slickly-designed aesthetic. You can purchase Flat Heroes on Steam. 

SitRep: Broforce (Post-Release)

Title: Broforce
Developer: Free Lives
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4
Price: $14.99
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It's been a few years since I last covered Broforce, so long that the game has since left Early Access and been expanded and updated in myriad ways. The most recent update grew the already diverse broster with three more heroes, building upon an already engaging foundation.

The quite fitting July 4th update introduced the fearsome trio of bros stylized after Bruce Lee, Dirty Harry, and Tank Girl. As usual, each adds their own unique strengths and attacks to your arsenal, from Lee's famous fighting skills to Tank Girl's own personal tank to obliterate mooks. Other post-release updates injected some electric action into the mix, with the combined power of Highlander and Mortal Kombat-alum Raiden.

You can test your skills with these new bros, and the rest of the game's line-up, in new single-character Tactical Missions, and unleash powerful perks with useful Supply Drops that can boost your abilities or distract aliens, among others.

Broforce is available on Steam, Humble, and the Playstation Store.

PC Review #148: Expand

Title: Expand
Developers: Chris Johnson & Chris Larkin
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Price: $5.99
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There are only a few games that I've played that would merit the description of "hypnotic". SpaceChem and Factorio are on that list, watching your carefully crafting assembly line shift and spin and intersect and interact in perfectly synchronized loops. The artful combat of Dust, as you cleave the air with your blade and leave trails of mystic energy in your wake or twist it into screen-clearing vortexes. The lines of sound emanating from your footsteps in Dark Echo, as they criss-cross and ricochet in colored patterns through the darkness. And now Expand makes a excellent case for its inclusion.

Expand is at once both an exercise in simplicity and complexity. From a small palette of white, black, red, and pink merges a seamless flowing experience, a shifting world flowering from a central core, a maze of negative space. Expand's world is bound to the confines of the screen, instead morphing dynamically between levels and areas, A path may emerge in sync with your movement, or a black or red block might shove its way through the screen, or the screen may recede and retreat into corridors and openings. It's gorgeous to watch in motion, always a joy to wait in anticipation for a new level to reveal itself.

But despite its minimalist appearance, Expand isn't a calm game. In fact, it's one of timing and evasion, akin to a slower-paced Super Hexagon. Your pink square must brave five stages, each a seamless gauntlet of moving obstacles and complex patterns of deadly red hazards. These stages can be tackled in any order, introducing new mechanics and interesting twists on established elements as you progress. While all revolve around carefully dodging dangers and timing your movement with the level architecture, some lean more towards puzzles, challenging you to consider the link between your movement and how a level changes, or featuring buttons and switches to activate. Elaborate screen-shifting "bosses" are true tests of your evasive prowess.

Expand isn't a long game, but it is a consistently surprising and engaging one. Come for the hypnotic nature of its art and unfolding world, but stay for the challenge and clever level design.

Expand is available on Steam, Humble, and itch.io.

The Watchlist: Fulcrum

Title: Fulcrum

Developer: Phosfiend Systems

Platforms: PC, Mac

In-development

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A snowboarding game on an infinite mountainscape that evolves and changes as you ride it

If you've played Fract OSC, it's a game you can probably recognize in an instant. Its low-poly, vibrant, cyberpunk-esque landscape was a unique world to explore, especially when brought to musical life. So seeing Fulcrum, you might get flashbacks. The slick aesthetic remains, now with colder wintry palette, as the game revolves around first-person snowboarding rather than music-driven puzzles.

This isn't SSX or Snow. While you're grinding along rails, speeding through passes, and flipping through the air, Fulcrum promises a slower more exploration-driven experience, as you chase evasive lights through the world. Each region loops, letting you gain a lay of the land and master its secret areas and enjoy the architecture, before moving onto another area.

Steep drops through angular boulders. Neon-lit caves that would fit nicely in Fract's world. Serpentine rails around obsidian ruins. Fulcrum offers both skillful challenge on obstacle-strewn descents and zen-paced exploration, measured at your pace as you travel across the terrain. Fluid movement, big jumps, and wind-whistling speed opens up a moveset that you tackle any of Fulcrum's abstract slopes.

Fulcrum is currently in development, with no release date slated at the moment. You can learn more about the game on its Tumblr and TIGSource devlog.

SitRep: Rimworld

Title: Rimworld

Developer: Ludeon Studios

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux

Coming to Steam in July

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Three years ago when I wrote about Rimworld, it was still gathering backers on Kickstarter and seeking votes on Greenlight. So it's only appropriate that, when I come back to the game now, it's slated to come to Steam Early Access next month. Between then and now, Rimworld has evolved and expanded exponentially, growing into what is easily the closest we've gotten yet to a sci-fi Dwarf Fortress.

The basic idea of building a colony from scratch, and then expanding into a thriving settlement, remains the same, but it's grown and expanded in all directions. Colonists aren't just schedule-driven robots; they have emotions, and activities that bring them joy like sky gazing and mediation, and have opinions of each other.

Families extend from fathers and sisters and cousins and uncles, colonists can become couples and get married...and then divorced. Colonists are carpenters, or sculptors who past the time making artwork, or animal tamers with their favorite pets, or drunken narcissist, or doctors and hunters. They grow old, and their backs give out, or they fall ill with malaria, or they get badly burned in a raging fire and lose their legs (only to replace them with bionic prosthetics).

And all that happens in a dynamic world that doesn't wait for you to change and thrive. Predators and prey roam, both the animal kind and the human kind that raid your colony and perform devastating sieges. Time passes literally, seasons changing bringing downpours and feet of snow that has to be shovelled. With weather comes heatstroke and hypothermia and frostbite and spoiling food.

Thankfully with the right tech and gear, you can endure all of that, through clothing such as parkas or equipment like heaters. A vast arsenal lets you hunt roaming herds, and fend off attacks with mortars and rocket launchers. But even your best laid plans and tools might not prepare you for the long-lasing chill of a volcanic winter or the insanity-spreading psychic pulse of a crashed alien vessel. Survival in Rimworld is never easy.

Rimworld is expected to arrive on Steam Early Access in July, along with an new alpha update that adds a host of changes and, more importantly, a deep scenario creator that lets you edit everything from the traits your colonists might develop to what gear they start with and what random events might befall them.

You can purchase the alpha from the game's site and add Rimworld to your Steam wishlist here.

PC Review #146: Mu Cartographer

Title: Mu Cartographer
Developer: Titouan Millet
Platforms: PC, Mac
Price: $5
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Lumino City. Papers Please. The Room. Deadnaut. Disparate genres, atmosphere, stories, and gameplay, all linked by a singular concept: tactile interactivity. More than merely pressing buttons on your controller or keys on your keyboard, they present you with dials to turn, switches to flip, panels to activate, turning the means of interacting with the world into a puzzle in itself. Mu Cartographer is perhaps the epitome of that idea, where learning how to discover alien secrets and landscapes is as much a part of the game as the discovery and exploration.

Mu Cartographer doesn't explain much. A mysterious device, a form of scanning console, with a slice of landscape in the center. The two sides of the game - the flat digital panel of dials, meters, switches and the circular window into a mysterious world - are inexorably linked; interacting with the console is your means to explore, and exploring gradually unlocks new means to interact.

But first you have to understand how to use the device at hand. You'll undoubtedly start with cautious inquisitive interactions, dragging and clicking each button and dial to see what it manipulates and how changing them affects the manipulation, and gradually what is a cluster of odd symbols and icons becomes something you understand. How one dial lets you zoom in and out, or move your central porthole across the land, or rotate the world, or perhaps even alter the environment itself.

With each twist and press and drag, the landscape shifts, dropping into steep canyons or impossibly jagged peaks, vast plains or rugged terrain, colors and hues shifting from grayscale to the blooming reds and yellows and greens and blues akin to infrared imagery. The world mutates with the satisfying fluidity that brings to mind clouds in the wind or a disturbed pool of water or the cross-sections of an MRI.

Seeing how your actions influence the land is enjoyable on its own, and endlessly gorgeous, but Mu Cartographer isn't merely an interesting piece of interactive art. There are secrets to be found, signs of civilizations amid the vast landscape, and perhaps by mastering the console, you'll be able to uncover more than just how to make the world look pretty...

Mu Cartographer is at once a gorgeous piece of digital art, a tactile puzzle to learn and master, and an an alien enigma to explore and discover. You can purchase the game on itch.io.

The Watchlist: Saurian

Title: Saurian
Developer: Urvogel Games
Platforms: PC, Mac
Releasing 2017
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Live as a dinosaur in a dynamic open world through intense, survival-based gameplay

Dinosaurs tend to show up in two forms in games: the monstrous enemies of Ark, Tomb Raiders, and Turok, or a playable faction in games like Dino D-day, Primal Carnage, and Orion. But Saurian is taking a different approach, doing what no game has done before: present dinosaurs through a completely realistic, scientifically-accurate lenses and let you survive as one in that world.

Informed by some of the field's leading paleontologists and most current discoveries, Saurian promises an accurate recreation of Dakota's Hell Creek 66 million years ago. This is a world in some ways familiar, thick with swamps and woodlands, and others ways alien to us, from the continent-spanning Interior Seaway and of course the thunderous footsteps of dinosaurs.

Saurian lets you play as a several different species, from the heavy-skulled Pachycephalosaurus and frilled Triceratops to everyone's favorite Tyrannosaurus. These aren't your movie monsters or even the big reptiles popularized by Jurassic Park, but feathered creatures living in a dynamic ecosystem, with movement based off the dev team's own emu.

Choosing a dinosaur drops you into a sprawling wilderness as a young hatchling in a world filled with hungry predators and elusive prey. As you survive, through maintaining your health and feeding, your dinosaur will grow into adult, find a mate, and breed. With age comes new challenges: a young tyrannosaurus may need to avoid the jaws of older males, but as an grown adult, you'll be able to act as the hunter. Each species will have unique skills, such as the sickle-clawed Dakotaraptor's ability to climb trees and pounce from above.

Saurian has been in development since 2013, and is expected to release in 2017, currently seeking funds on Kickstarter. Depending on stretch goals, future plans will include environmental dangers such as wildfires and floods, additional playable species, multiplayer, and a special mode that challenges you to survive after the fateful impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.

Saurian can be found on Kickstarter, and more details are available on the game's site.

The Watchlist: Copper Dreams

Title: Copper Dreams
Developer: Whalenought Studios
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Releasing 2017
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A cyberpunk, cybertactical party-based cRPG

Cyberpunk usually brings to mind the neon-lit streets of Blade Runner and the megacorp-run cities of Deus Ex. But those futuristic metropolises have a dark side, explored in fiction like KOP, Altered Carbon, or Human Revolution's lower Hong Kong. The places those megacorps build on top of and leave to decay into crime-ridden slums. In-development cRPG Copper Dreams explores a world like that, the distant island colony of Calitana, left to fester and rot far from earth, where crime syndicates rule and food is a scarcity.

Inspired by the decrepit future of Escape From New York and other works of 80s science fiction, Copper Dreams is a gritty cyberpunk cRPG, focusing on open world traversal, stealth, and augmented tactics. Among the grimy streets and dark rooftops, you control an agent for the department of Asset Inquiries, engaging in acts of espionage and incursion. A vast array of upgrades let you customize your playstyle and tactics, from the typical customization like a suppressor for your weapon to exotic augmentations like chainsaw hands, grappling hooks, detachable eyes to spy around corners, and more.

Much like Klei's Invisible Inc, turn-based tactical stealth is a major aspect of Copper Dreams. Your agents can peek around cover and crouch in the shadows, avoid line of sight, listen for telltale footsteps, create distractions, hack electric grids, and more. Stealth won't merely be useful to avoid and evade tougher patrols, but also to get into strategically advantageous positions before attacking.

Smart positioning will be critical to surviving Copper Dreams' combat, due to its unique twists to the typical cRPG format. Your party doesn't have HP, but rather suffers from injuries and effects to individual body parts, so cover and an efficient offense will keep your crew healthy and in one piece. Enemies can summon reinforcements and investigate suspicious sounds and last known positions. Attacks take time to occur, allowing for tactics such as cooking grenades. Being aware of your environment, using the 3D world to gain a height advantage, will be the difference between life and death in Copper Dreams' complex encounters.

Copper Dreams is currently seeking funds on Kickstarter, and is expected to release in March 2017. You can learn more about the game on its site.

The Watchlist: Overland

Title: Overland
Developer: Finji
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Releasing 2016
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A road trip through a ruined continent

The end has come and gone. Charred corpses litter the ground. Insectoid beings emerge from below. Abandoned vehicles rust on the roadside. Aliens? A tear in reality? Some unknown species released from the bowels of the earth? Whatever calamity ravaged the planet, the only thing that matters now is survival, in the tactical cross-country roguelike Overland.

Overland blends resource-managing map travel, reminiscent of games like FTL and Convoy, with strategic turn-based scavenging on low-poly dioramic stages. Your goal is westward, as you and a companion, either human or canine depending on your luck, travel the roads across America. Considering the focus on travel, fuel is perhaps the most important resource: each stop on the map costs varying amount of gas, and the promise of finding more can tempt you to take on a risky encounter.

Choosing an destination on the map screen drops you into a self-contained isometric encounter, bisected by the road and populated with randomized arrays of enemies, supplies, environmental features, and other elements. At the strategic level, you soon learn that the most crucial tool at your disposal is your vehicle. Your car is your means of escape, your transport through the stage, able to store extra supplies and ram through creatures, and explode in spectacular fashion in the worst case scenario. Lose your car to the encroaching horde, and you'd better hope that there's another vehicle on the map to commandeer.

Playing the recently-released private alpha, the game that I was most reminded of was actually the mobile roguelike Hoplite. Hoplite is often praised for its very almost puzzle-like combat, where you can use the knowledge of enemy's range and attacks to meticulously plan out your strategy and remain unscathed. Similarly, Overland's turn-based encounters are more tactical puzzles than classic roguelike combat. With only two action points per character, and only able to hold one item, each action must be economical, efficient, and carefully considered.

The tactical puzzles grow more complex as you travel from the east-coast fields to dry-grass plains, temperate forests, and beyond. Characters may start with special traits or develop new ones over days, such as improved stamina (extra action point) or CPR training (reviving survivors), You can pick up new passengers if you have empty seats in your car...or leave them to act as a distraction for creatures. The environment is as important to consider as your own strategies. Prairie grass can be set aflame (or may already be burning when you arrive), creating a useful barrier that could turn deadly as the fire spreads across the map. Fuel can be used to fill your gas tank, or poured on adjacent tiles to create a flammable surface. Dumpsters and other debris can block the roadway, forcing you to divide your group between clearing a path, driving the car, and scavenging the map simultaneously.

That juggling act defines Overland's challenge. This isn't a game of clearing out an area to safely loot; it's an ever-tightening vise of tension and danger, as each loud rummaging through dumpsters and derelict cars draws more skittering creatures. as you choose which supplies to gather, as you drive the car to the exit while maneuvering everyone back to the vehicle safely.  Killing is your absolute last resort, as the dying screech of a monster will only attract more. Playing aggressively but cautiously is your best strategy, always being aware of where enemies are in relation to your characters and your car, always weighing the risk and reward of each action.

Overland may already have a solid and compelling foundation, but it's still only an alpha, and the developers have plans for many interesting features in the future, ranging from customizing your vehicle with armor and other additions to groups of survivors that you can trade with...or brutally murder (a choice that come back to haunt you).

You can find more information about Overland on the game's site and Tumblr page.

PC Review #144: Enter The Gungeon

Title: Enter The Gungeon

Developer: Dodge Roll

Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, PS4

Price: $14.99

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Perhaps the most apt and concise description for Enter The Gungeon would be the lovechild of The Binding of Isaac and Nuclear Throne. The crazy weapons, stacking items, weird enemies, and random loot of the former, the fast-paced, hectic, evasion-heavy action of the latter. But on the other hand, that label is a disservice to Enter The Gungeon. While it certainly has the DNA of those other titles, the game most certainly has an identity and style all its own.

The Gungeon awaits. A mysterious temple, where many venture to seek out the ultimate treasure, a gun that destroy their past, where lead cults and ballistic inhabitants thrive, an ecosystem in its own right. As one of four heroes -the Convict, the Marine, and so on - you descend into the randomly generated depths, armed with only a mediocre starting loadout and your skills to survive.

Skill is perhaps the most crucical aspect that elevates Enter The Gungeon above other entries in the action roguelite/shooter subgenre. When loot pickups fail you, when you're having bad run, when you're low on heath or getting surrounded by bullets and enemies, you can always rely on the dodge roll. With precise timing and leaping at the right angle, you can dodge anything, from masses of bullets to screen-slicing lasers. Combined with limited ammo and the need to reload, Enter The Gungeon is easily the most skillful game of its ilk.

But dodging will only get you so far. And thankfully, as you might expect from its title pun and its firearm-themed stages, Enter The Gungeon offers a vast and varied selection of weapons and items to find. While the basic AK-47s and sawed-off shotguns and machine pistols feel satisfying to use, they can't compare to weird wacky weapons you'll find in chests or buy from shopkeepers. One gun fires an egg bullet that unleashes tiny homing baby bullets. Another throws out globs of oil that you can ignite when the gun switches to fireballs upon reload. Other guns freeze, poison, set aflame, convert to your side, electrify. And more still throw off t-shirts and bees and junk mail and other exceedingly silly ammunition. Each weapon feels unique, some designed for specific situations while others are room-clearing monsters that can end a boss in seconds.

Items, both active and passive, only add to that variety. Much like Isaac, the stat increases and weapon buffs can stack in myriad ways, from swapping out your dodge roll for a jetpack to increasing your movement speed to more unique effects such as linking bullets with chain lightning and causing ice shrapnel to shred the room when you get damaged.

As you progress, you'll encounter NPCs hidden in the dungeons, trapped in cages, waiting to freed. Once rescued, they'll show up in levels or back in the hub area, opening new shops where you buy items and weapons to add to the randomized loot pool or shortcuts or offering side challenges for money and rewards.

But more than the weapons and the items and the dodge roll, it's the little touches and environmental details that make Gungeon's combat so satisfying. The way dead enemies and debris can flung aganst the walls by the force of explosions. How book pages flutter and drift across the floor as you fight in a library, How oil stains the ground and leaves scorches marks in carpets once a fire dies down. Your reflection in pools of water. The puffs of smoke and particles from bullets hitting the walls and barriers. 

Enter The Gungeon takes the best elements of the subgenre - the fierce combat, the thrill of uncovering new weapons and discovering powerful synergies between items, the sense of mastery and progression - and blends it all together in a single polished package. You can find the game on Steam, Humble, GMG, GOG, and PS4.

PC Review #143: Hyper Light Drifter

Title: Hyper Light Drifter
Developer: Heart Machine
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Price: $19.99
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Besides Rain World, Hyper Light Drifter was perhaps my most anticipated game funded through Kickstarter. Not only due to its wonderful pixel art, fast-paced combat, and intriguing world, but also because it was the game that introduced me to crowdfunding. So my expectations were quite high, and thankfully Heart Machine's debut project succeeds on every level, delivering a challenging action-adventure through a mysterious sci-fi world.

A cataclysm has occurred, and in the aftermath, the Drifter arrives. Armed with an energy sword and gun, draped in a flowing purple cloak, he soon finds himself afflicted with an otherworldly corruption and embarks on a quest across the four corners of the land to cure himself. All this is presented to you wordlessly, through cutscenes and vignettes that leave it up to you to understand and interpret the story.

This elegance of the subtle storytelling also weaves its way into the world. Each area is one of gorgeous pixel artistry, lavish details, and vibrant colors: the gargantuan remains of titans now choked with flora, technological ruins, windswept peaks, bustling town square, dim subterranean tunnels. An abstract map guides you through these environments, but it's the sense of discovery and mystery and allure of secrets that drives you onward.

Hyper Light Drifter's beauty is only surpassed by its danger. A deadly menagerie of foes await, from avian mages that unleash devastating short-range lasers and lupine samurai that teleport-dash towards you with their blades to shuriken-armed toads and towering crystalline beings. Innocuous flowers erupt into hulking beasts, heavily-armed creatures fire bullet hell-esque volleys of projectiles, and relentless bosses unleash multi-tiered attacks that test your evasive prowess.

To the new Drifter, this onslaught of enemies, as groups encroach from all angles, and bullets and lasers threaten to chip away at your precious five hit points.can seem overwhelming. But soon the lessons become clear. Never slash mindlessly, but with confidence. Always watch for enemies' telegraphs and tells. Shoot from afar to even the odds before you engage up close. While Hyper Light Drifter's combat is fast and fierce, it isn't hectic. Precision, timing, carefully timed dodges, using the environment to split up or funnel groups, prioritizing enemies, knowing when to slash or shoot or when to break away and heal. Every encounter is manageable, every enemy able to slayed. Once you've mastered the rhythm and pacing of the combat, clearing areas with expert evasion and combos of blade and bullet never ceases to feel satisfying.

But perhaps skills alone aren't enough. As you defeat enemies and explore, gold credits allow you to purchase new abilities and weapons from shops. The multi-dash lets you flank around ranged enemies with ease; a shield lets you absorb several bullets, A grenade gives you a powerful area-of-effect attack that can clear entire groups when used at the most opportune moment. A charged attack can decapitate multiple enemies with a single strike, while a jabbing blow can stun a foe for a few precious moments. Following your melee attacks with a point-blast shotgun blast can devastate, while a rifle can snipe lurking enemies from a distance. Each of these upgrades expand your moveset in useful ways, giving you myriad ways to handle any battle.

And yet even with the intriguing environments and fast punchy combat, it's the little details that can make a great game, special. The way you can sit down at any time to just relax and admire the environment. The snowy footprints and pools of blood you leave in your wake. Your cloak flying and fluttering with each strike. The fancy sword flourish the Drifter performs after a particularly challenging battle. The dust-throwing skid at the end of a dash. The charming animations of town NPCs.

Hyper Light Drifter is rife with secrets to be found and hidden areas to seek out, behind camouflaged paths and invisible walkways. New Game Plus offers a new challenge, carrying over your upgrades but reducing your health, a true test of your combat skills. A first playthrough might take around 6-8 hours, but much more awaits your Drifter.

Hyper Light Drifter is available on Steam, Humble, and GOG. Console versions are coming later this year.

The Watchlist: Voidrunner

Title: Voidrunner
Developer: RealityArts
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, Consoles
Releasing mid-2016
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An intense multiplayer flight game which introduces FPS controls to the flight genre in exotic, epic landscapes

Set against a backdrop of futuristic cityscapes, gargantuan alien arches, and lightning-streaked skies, Voidrunner promises relentless aerial combat, combining the precision of a first-person shooter with the agility and mobility of a flight game.

Voidrunner focuses on high-flying multiplayer combat, as fighters, hunters, and other ship classes wage furious war in the sky. From performing full-out assaults on sprawling cities to classic modes like deathmatch, Voidrunner plans to deliver a varied array of modes to please both single- and multiplayer fans.

Additional depth comes from the inclusion of RPG elements ranging experience and levels to extensive parts to modify your ship. While pre-existing designs will let you jump straight into the action, customizing your loadout and design will allow for a wide spectrum of playstyles, from fast evasive snipers to weapons-heavy fighters.

From the intricate cockpit of your ship, Voidrunner launches you into gorgeous Unreal Engine 4-powered aerial warzones. Buildings burn and belch thick smoke into skies sliced by furious laser fire, as combatants shriek by and larger carriers hover among the dogfighting. The lavish graphics give the sci-fi battlefields an impressive sense of scale and chaos.

Voidrunner is expected to arrive on Steam Early Access this year. You can learn more and follow the game's development on its site and Twitter page.

PC Review #142: HyperRogue

Title: HyperRogue
Developer: Zeno Rogue
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, Android
Price: $2.99, Free
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Roguelikes have taken us from the ASCII depths to sci-fi battlefields and all manner of worlds and time in between. HyperRogue drops you into a new land, a non-Euclidean space where the rules are always changing and one wrong move can be your last.

HyperRogue is more puzzle game than pure roguelike; it's actually quite reminiscent of chess. Much like how in chess, you carefully move pieces across the board and must always be cognizant of the dreaded check, HyperRogue is a game of carefully planned steps as you avoid being cornered with no way to escape. You're a fragile being, only able to take a single hit, and you enemies are equally thin-skinned. Instead success and survival revolves around not getting surrounded and trapped by encroaching beasts. You can't even make a move if that move places you in immediate danger, so movement and exploration becomes a puzzle of positioning.

But while HyperRogue's combat may be simple but surprisingly tactical, its world is anything but simple. The landscape spreads out in a circular plane of interlocking tiles, extending outwards from the red-brick crossroads. But this is no normal space; it's a place of distorted distances and looping paths that extend into infinity and straight lines that somehow never intersect, a non-Euclidean world of adjacent biomes where retracing your steps is a trying task

Undying sand worms roam the parched desert, forcing you to flee rather than fight. Walls shift with each step in the living caves. Each step erases the floor behind you in the land of eternal motion. Enter the mirror world, and you'll be accompanied by clones of yourself. Each new land you discover has its own unique quirks and inhabitants, from one where safe crossing relies on avoiding dangerous tiles through minesweeper-style rules, to the oceans where pirates and sharks lurk.

Exploring and understanding each of HyperRogue's biomes is a satisfying and challenging task, forcing you to adapt, observe, plan each step to avoid or flank enemies or maneuver around some hazard or element in a level. While your driving goal is to collect treasure and locate the fabled Orb of Yendor, your immediate task is always to plan each move, study the world, learn its intricacies.

HyperRogue is available as both a freeware download and paid game; the paid version is the definite version, gets the latest updates first, as well as additional worlds not found in the free version. You can buy HyperRogue on Steam, itch.io, and on Android. The free version can be downloaded here.

The Watchlist: Need To Know

Title: Need To Know
Developer: Monomyth Games
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
Releasing late 2016/2017
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A surveillance thriller sim

Information is power. It can fuel new discoveries and breakthroughs, promote change, change the tide of a battle. Need To Know takes that central conceit, along with the themes and ideas brought to the forefront by games like Papers Please and The Westport Independent, and places them in the very relevant context of modern-day surveillance.

Need To Know put in the shoes of a young talented analyst in the employ of the Department of Liberty, an NSA-style agency fighting a digital war against terrorism. This means your job is to go through your daily allotment of profiles and decide if these people are valid threats. That decision rests on your research into each person's life, digging through text messages and financial records and browser histories and other means to determine guilt.

With each successful job, your reputation improves, security clearances open up, more advanced tools and more complex operations becomes available. Operations to locate fugitives and expose cults, operations where your the options are "assault" and "neutralize",

But with those more advanced tools come more power. The world is your oyster, so to speak. The information-gathering means used to spy on suspected terrorists can just as easily let you learn more about the woman you're in a relationship with. Or to blackmail and sabotage a co-worker. Or to make a fortune on the stock market. Or manipulate an election. If you can cover your tracks, you can use information and skills for your own personal gain and perhaps for other more corrupt agendas.

If the immoral path isn't your goal, Need To Know also lets you take other road and expose the illicit actions of the Department to the world. Act as a whistle blower, leak information to secret partners, and you'll be able to undermine the agency from within.

Need To Know will follow a relative linear narrative, with hefty amount of side jobs and the means to use your powers to pry how you see fit. The choices you make will affect the story, and while some suspects will be the same every time, other missions have new suspects to track and investigate. Post-launch, the developers will also be adding an Arcade mode, which will test your skills with increasingly challenging missions and randomly-generated suspects.

Need To Know is currently on Kickstarter, and is already 380% funded with all stretch goals achieved. The campaign has seven days left; you can support it here, and learn more about the game on its site.