YouTube Review: Control (PS4)

Hoping for a bit of paranormal-ability-fuelled adventure, I recently picked up Control for the PS4. I then made a video review about how I got on with the game:

Why Slay The Spire Is A Great Stoic Workout

Written by Casey Douglass

At a time when gaming has lost a big chunk of its appeal to me, the one game that has managed to cut through my indifference is Mega Crit Games’ Slay The Spire. It’s a great looking, well-designed and fun game, but on giving it some thought, I also think that it’s a great game for a practising Stoic. Stoicism is the philosophy that I am trying to embrace in my daily life, and many elements of Slay The Spire seem to lend themselves to its practice. In the following post, I ponder what some of those elements are, how they relate to Stoicism as I understand it, and why I think that Slay The Spire is a great Stoic game.

What is Stoicism? + Would Stoics Even Play Video-games?

Stoicism is a philosophy that was born in ancient Greece. It values reason and building character above anything else, and bares little resemblance to the modern day use of the word ‘stoic’. Stoicism, the philosophy, aims to help someone develop and make use of wisdom in everyday life, knowing which things to put their energy into, which things are actually in their control, and how to greet life’s challenges when they appear.

Would a Stoic “waste” their time playing video-games though? If you are looking at a philosophy, a religion, or any other outlook on life, you’re never far from questions such as “Would someone who adopts X as a philosophy do Y?” You’ll find people with zealot-like zeal who will revel in telling you that doing Y would never be entertained by people who truly want to adopt the particular view in question. You'll also find people who let almost anything go, it’s all good! I think it’s often a matter of personal choice and interpretation, with elements of situation, duration and motivation thrown in for good measure.

When it comes to video-games, I think that there is a world of difference between someone who obsessively plays video-games their every waking hour, and someone who dips into them in a measured way for awhile at the end of a long day. Even when two people play a video-game, their approach or goals can vary wildly, from the teeth-clenched rage-quitter who swears at everyone on their team for being a noob when they lose, to the quiet, patient person who loves solving strategic puzzles to increase their ability to think under pressure. If done in moderation and in the right mindset, pass-times and enjoyments are there to be savoured. Gaming is one of those things, and it might even be a fine playground for practising Stoic character traits or virtues, such as wisdom, courage and temperance.

Slay The Spire

A boss battle in which I can just about survive until the next turn...

Slay The Spire is a deck-building rogue-like game where the player guides a chosen character up a Spire that is filled with various rooms, treasures and monsters. It is a game in which the player has some control over events in the choices that they make, but in other ways, are at the mercy of the randomly generated elements of the game. You might be on a very promising run up the Spire and, due to a few terrible card hands, end up dying to a basic mob. You might be on a run in which everything seems to be going wrong and yet you end up white-knuckling it through to the final boss. You often don’t know what will happen next, and that is where the fun is!

Knowing which things you have control over and which you don’t is one of the key aims of Stoicism, something Epictetus expressed when he said: “Some things are up to us and some are not.” If our state of well-being hinges on things that are not up to us, we end up struggling against reality and become prone to more negative emotions such as depression and hopelessness. In his book A Guide to the Good Life, William Irvine explains that following Epictetus’ teachings turns the usual way that we think about fulfilling our desires upside down. Rather than striving for things that we might not attain, the path to a good life is for us to martial the things that we do have control over, and that we are certain to achieve. A lot of this comes down to making our goals internal rather than external.

When it comes to Slay The Spire, this notion can be illustrated in the following way. If your goal is to get to the top of the Spire, that is not something that is wholly in your control. You have no idea which random cards, relics or bosses you will encounter, even if a thorough knowledge of the game might stop these from being a shock when they come. What you do have full control over however, is the goal that you want for yourself. If you set your goal as “I want to get as far up the Spire as I can, and not to give up even when things seem hopeless”, that is a very achievable aim. Even if you die to the first act boss, if you didn’t give up, you achieved your goal and can feel good about that.

You will see this screen a lot...

This is what I like about gaming in general, it gives us a chance to put into practise the character traits that we’d love to cultivate for other areas of our lives. You might like to add being patient and not letting frustration get the better of you too. You might not succeed at these 100% of the time, but if they are linked to a wiser overall goal of “seeing how far you can get”, even these slip-ups won’t feel so bad.

Something that I currently struggle with in Slay The Spire is being too hasty in my turn-taking, often realising that there was another card or potion that would have made a difference the split-second after I click the end turn button. Sometimes, I even end my turn and then notice that I still had enough energy to play one more card! So at the moment, while seeing how far I can get in each run, my intrinsic goal is to slow down and to give adequate time to finding solutions. Another thing that I’m prone to is fixating on a certain card build, whether or not I actually have the other cards to make it work. This often happens when a rare card comes into play and I take it, hoping that others that might support it will turn up later. Again, another goal is to not be dazzled by what's in front of me, to the extent that it makes me closed off to other possibilities. Slay The Spire is full of these little tests, and that’s why I love it.

The Stoic Test Frame

In another of William Irvine’s books: The Stoic Challenge, Irvine explains the value in meeting life’s obstacles and set-backs as a test from the Stoic gods. While you don’t need to believe in said gods, viewing things in this manner, as a challenge, can take some of the sting out of setbacks, and even add some fun into something that previously, you might have been despairing about. Irvine explains that a true setback has the element of surprise about it, but the ancient Stoics also engaged in toughness training, a process in which they deliberately put themselves into uncomfortable situations, in the hope of better dealing with setbacks when they popped up in other areas of life. Slay The Spire seems to have elements that are fitting for each approach, especially if you purposefully take the harder path or choice when the game presents you with one.

Which path to take?

A Slay The Spire setback that you have little control over might be that you are low in health and you decide to click on a mystery encounter, trying to avoid the certain monster fight that is your only other option. Once inside the room, you not only find that there are monsters inside, but that you are in a boss battle that you have no way of escaping. You die two turns later. You could rage and hiss your annoyance at the “stupid game”, and not learn anything from the experience. Or, you could notice the irritation that you feel, realise how unwarranted it is, and maybe even give a silent nod to the developers for crafting something so tricky and challenging. Your irritation is in response to something that you couldn’t control, and in realising this, you might give yourself a mental pat on the back as you chalk it up to experience. You might even feel pleased that you didn’t fuel your irritation until it blew up and ruined the rest of your gaming session. Same event, two different outlooks.

Video games seem to be the perfect arena to practise the Stoic Test Frame. After all, you already know that you’re playing a game, except in this instance, you are pitting yourself against the developer, possibly other human players, and, as in other areas of life, yourself. You only have to watch gaming content on YouTube or Twitch to see how games affect some players. There is a reason that the words “Rage” and “Tilt” and “Toxic” in video titles draw lots of clicks. If you want to see how to fail at building character, watch those videos. If you find that rare individual who seems to take setbacks in their stride with a smile and a more tranquil demeanour, enjoy their content and see how they frame things. You will more than likely find someone who loves rising to a challenge and who is also skilled at taking the sting out of what is happening by framing things in a beneficial way.

If you want to engage in some Stoic toughness training, you might even try playing Slay The Spire in a way that rubs against what you’d usually like to do. If you always grab certain cards or relics when they appear, you might like to have a run where you take cards or relics that you despise, or that go against your usual play style. If you prefer to keep your card-deck small, you might like to try accepting a card every time one is offered, letting you see what it is like to play with a massive assortment of cards. If you always avoid certain encounters or choices, forcing yourself to take them can be a wonderful way to learn something, and at the least, to get practise with some of the character traits that you want to nurture inside yourself. A video-game is the ideal, low-stakes place to try these kinds of experiments.

The shop in which many a build died due to temptation.

In Conclusion

I hope that I’ve done justice to the title of this post and have adequately explained why I find Slay The Spire to be so captivating. I’m sure that you can apply Stoic ideas to any game that you might play, but there is something about the turn-based, semi-random nature of Slay The Spire that seems conducive to having the space to breathe and to grow a little each time that you play it.

If you’d like to look into Stoicism a little more, you might like to read my review of William Irvine’s The Stoic Challenge, which is a book I very much recommend. I also recommend Donald Robertson’s How To Think Like A Roman Emperor, which illustrates many Stoic notions by depicting the life of Marcus Aurelius.

Dark Ambient Review: Mortal Shell Soundtrack

Review by Casey Douglass

Mortal Shell is a new grim fantasy RPG from Cold Symmetry that I’ve seen garner many comparisons to the Dark Souls series of games. When you have a game world that is so dark, the soundtrack is an important element in keeping the atmosphere and the dread going. As it turns out, Mortal Shell is certainly not lacking in this respect, as dark ambient artist Atrium Carceri is on hand to provide the extra dose of darkness that the game needs.

A dominant theme of the Mortal Shell Soundtrack is the use of dark choirs to build the sense of doom. While I couldn’t make out any particular words, at times the vocals seemed dirge-like and resigned, as if the choir itself is watching the character move towards their doom. The other prominent element in certain of the tracks are the various drum beats that punctuate the soundscapes. I liked these a lot as they lend a sense of forward motion to things, maybe again hinting at someone shambling towards their doom.

There are other sounds that might grab the listeners attention too of course, some of them enjoyably tricky to pin down. Fallgrim contains a bell-like resonance, but one seemingly without trace of an actual bell. The Tower includes a horse-like clip-clopping that could also be water, and Under A Broken Sun has a rattling alarm-clock beat. These are all interesting sounds, whatever they truly are, and they sit very nicely in with the drones, static and other shimmering tones that various of the tracks contain.

Sanctum is one of my favourite tracks, its wind and sighs, knocking and cries melding together in an echoing space. It also contains a kind of ghostly shimmer effect, and nicely conjured the feeling of being in some deep underground vault, but one that’s by no means safe. Another track that I really enjoyed was Ritual At The End of Time. It opens with a kind of grinding gears type feeling, with a lurching beat. It also features a kind of organ-like tone, one I described in my notes as “church organ blended with fun-house/distorted mirrors at the circus”.

The Mortal Shell Soundtrack is a fitting slice of the game’s dark world. Many of the tracks are quite brief, due to its nature as a soundtrack, but there are a few that are of a longer duration, and I found myself gravitating towards these a little more. The dark fantasy aesthetic shines through in all of them however, and as someone who has yet to play the game, I could certainly appreciate the tracks without much knowledge of the game’s story-line or lore. If you’ve already played the game, I can only imagine that you'll gain even more enjoyment from them.

Visit the Mortal Shell Soundtrack page on Bandcamp for more information. You can visit the Mortal Shell website to learn more about the game itself too. Check out Sanctum below:

I was given a review copy of this album.

Album Title: Mortal Shell Soundtrack

Album Artist: Atrium Carceri

Label: Cryo Chamber

Released: 25 August, 2020

IndieDev Interview: Beard Envy

IndieDev Interview: Beard Envy

When I was browsing the new releases on Steam a short while ago, my attention was drawn by a newly released puzzle game called Filament. The game itself looked intriguing, but seeing that you could buy the “Marmalade edition”, and reading that the developer is called Beard Envy... I just had to go to the developer website. Once there, I read about the plucky UK-based three-man team who make up the “Great Emanating Beard”, and had soon secured an interview with one whisker of said beard: Ben Webster. He tells us about the virtues of game jams, the challenges of creating a puzzle game, and also imparts a few of the lessons the team has learned along the way.

Casey: If someone looks at the Beard Envy website, they won’t fail to notice the humour and whimsy that the text contains. Even the circumstances of how the three of you came together to make Filament, your newly released game, also seem to fall under ‘whim’. How did two games artists and a visual effects artist come together to create Beard Envy, and what was the learning curve like as you all expanded your areas of expertise to accommodate the wider elements of game creation?

Ben: Injecting a little humour into the website was a bit of a crutch to motivate us to actually do it, web design isn't exactly our thing. Regarding coming together to form Beard Envy: we were already good friends and began doing weekend game jams in our free time. We enjoyed doing it and we liked our outcomes from the game jams, so decided to give making a full game a go. The learning curve was not only huge, but something that took a long time. Even now after Filament is done, we're still learning things from it. We have a giant list of things we did in Filament which we wish we had done differently, but that's hindsight, ey?

C: In 2017, you entered the Epic Megajam and had to create a game to suit the theme “However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.” This is where Filament was born. What was it like to create a game in seven days, which tools helped you to stream-line the process, and how valuable do you think game jams are, as a tool for creativity?

B: Creating a game in 7 days, at the time, was a luxury. Every other jam we'd done was a little over 48 hours (although now, nearly 3 years later, I can't imagine how we'd make a game in a week). During that jam, we actually had no idea what we were really making until around half way through, where we just stumbled across 'it'. So the biggest tool for us, once we reached that point, was the fear of not finishing in time and very little sleep. Honestly, we couldn't praise game jams any more highly. They are simply the best way to get some ideas that you would never normally come up with, and very quickly, get a feel for the game. We're planning our next project and we're doing our own jams for it. It’s so easy when starting a new project to get bogged down in details or to focus on the wrong parts. When you have such a small amount of time, you really focus on the bits that make the game feel right, and they're the most important.

C: Do you guys make use of any particular brainstorming or creativity techniques when you are game jamming your way through an idea, or is it more a case of cups of tea, biscuits and bouncing ideas off each other?

B: We don't have any particular brainstorming techniques really. I should take this moment to shout-out some free software we use: Drawpile. It allows us to all draw on one big canvas together and we can pull images from the web. Perfect for coming up with ideas.

C: In an interview with PC Games N, you said that when you were all brainstorming visual ideas for Filament, you soon realised that it felt important that things were “cosy”. I’d imagine that’s not a word that gets spoken very often in game development. Why did this cosy feeling become so desirable, and was there an element of wanting to soothe the player as they grappled with the puzzles?

B: I'm not quite sure I can put into words why 'cosy' felt right. At the time we weren't really thinking about soothing the player too much (Filament was a little rough then, merely a shadow of its full self). I think we were still looking for the aesthetic but the feel of the rooms we were making, cluttered and lived-in, was exactly what we wanted, what we dubbed: cosy.

C: Filament allows the player to approach its puzzles, for the most part, in the order that the player decides. It’s not even required to complete all the puzzles to finish the story-line. Why was this approach adopted over the more unforgiving puzzle-game variety, and did weaving the puzzles and story together present any particular issues along the way?

B: We decided to, fairly often, have the puzzles be solvable in (more or less) any order. No one likes getting stuck on a puzzle game, but it's somewhat unavoidable, especially if you want your puzzles to be challenging. The best way to deal with this (and I feel like this is good advice for life in general) is to leave what's currently frustrating you and to come back with fresh eyes. We wanted to enable this behaviour within the game. If the player gets frustrated with a puzzle, they will hopefully find something else to do in game and then return to the puzzle later feeling better. This is why you can approach the puzzles in any order. There is also a story to investigate and uncover (we also just really wanted to write a story) and there are secrets to find and solve.

Weaving the story into the game was challenging and I still don't think we got it spot on, we had to make plenty of compromises. We know not everyone who plays Filament will care about the story, they might just want to go to town on the puzzles, so we did our best to have the story force very little on the player, but also to leave much more to dive into for the people that are in it for the story. It's for this same reason that you can complete the story without solving all of the puzzles, the game is hard and if the story is the player's reason for playing, we don't want to force them to solve every puzzle to see where the story goes. Like I said, it's impossible to please everyone, so we aimed for a balance that felt good for us.

C: Sadly we find ourselves currently grappling with the Corona Virus pandemic. Filament released on Steam exactly one month after the UK entered lock-down. What issues did the lock-down cause in the month before release, and how have you all managed to cope with the added stresses that have come into other areas of your lives? Was there any stockpiling of beard oil?

B: We have been affected by the lock-down but nowhere near the extent of others, I'm sure. We made Filament out of our living room so the lock-down didn't hugely affect our work schedule. We all cope in our own ways; I like to go for a bike ride. There wasn't any stockpiling of beard oil. Regarding facial hair, lock-down has been liberating; permission to let it get more unwieldy. I myself am currently rocking (citation needed) a moustache for the first time in my life.

C: If you had one tip or one lesson learned the hard way, to impart to someone who is thinking about creating a game, or who is even a short way into their new project, what would it be and why?

B: It's tricky to give just one lesson, I touched on one a bit earlier, do game jams, or more importantly, get the feel of your game down before you spend time on art (and other faff), your game will be better for it. Another important lesson that we're already applying on our next project is to set a reasonable scope for your project early on and stick to it. We kept adding more and more to Filament, and don't get me wrong we ended up with something we are incredibly proud of, but it took nearly three years and finishing it was really hard. Starting off smaller would have taught us most of the lessons we've learned but in a smaller amount of time, and would have just been far more manageable.

***

My thanks goes to Ben for kindly taking the time to answer my questions. You can visit the Filament page on Steam for more information about the game, and you can also find Beard Envy at their website and on social media.

Dark Game Review: We Went Back (PC)

Dark Game Review: We Went Back (PC)

Review by Casey Douglass

There are so many cautionary tales about going back to things you shouldn’t. Never go back to a lit firework. Never go back to someone who treats you badly. Yet we’re human, we’re idiots, we go back. We Went Back is a free sci-fi horror game from Dead Thread Games, and even though by the end, I wasn’t sure what we “went back” to, or why for that matter, I’m kind of glad “we” did. Okay, I’m banning myself from doing “this” again in this review, unless I’m quoting something I said.

We Went Back begins with your character inside a stasis-chamber, being helpfully prompted to Press E to open the thing. The computer system warns of a life form being detected, and if you’ve cut your teeth on the space horror genre, you'll be itching to see what this life form is. Unless it’s space fleas of course, in which case you'll just itch. You move off to explore and find a camera hanging from the roof. This is an important item; it’s your way of solving the puzzle that spans the game. You then come to a door that will only open with the correct password. Opening this is your goal, and the puzzle that you have to solve.

We Went Back is a game in which you explore the corridors and the items in them, trying to find clues that will help you enter the correct password. You only really walk in one direction, and seem to make a circuit of the space station. You soon find yourself back where you started, but each time around the circle reveals new things, and these sometimes come with a jump-scare. The creepy horror atmosphere is handled nicely and I was pleased that the game also managed to create insidious and more subtle tension too. The jump-scares got me twice, one even causing me to shout: “Fuck me!” which doesn’t happen that often.

It was the more insidious type of fear that I enjoyed the most. There is a rat in a science lab that you pass early in the game. When things started happening on another rotation, I stopped short at that spot and realised that the rat was gone! This startled me and wowed me in equal measure as it genuinely felt like an “Ohh!” moment. I’ll also add, that it isn’t the end of the tale (tail?) as far as the rat is concerned, so I haven’t robbed the rat of all its mystery.

On a technical level, I played the game at 1080p, all settings turned to high on my GTX 970. It ran smoothly but I detected a slight judder to things when I looked around at times. The game recommends a 960 at minimum so maybe my 970 is too close to the lower end? Who knows. It wasn’t any kind of problem, just something I noticed. The graphical style of the environment and the objects it contains is pleasing. The life-form that you catch sight of at times was probably the least impressive visual element. The music/ambient sounds did a fine job of setting the atmosphere too, and married with the 70's style sci-fi aesthetic, does help you to feel like you are stuck in some kind of retro-sci-fi space flick.

We Went Back is a short game. The developer says it’s a 30-50 minute experience. My first playthrough clocked in at 28 minutes, and I didn’t rush. I think it’s well worth the download. If I remember rightly, the download size (not install size) was 2.5 gigabytes, so even if you have a crappy connection like mine, you can soon grab it in a couple of hours. I think the best thing I can say is that if it was a 30 minute section in a much longer game, I’d have been happy to play on to see what else might happen. As it stands, it’s a fun 30 minute horror experience that did make me jump, and I’m happy with that.

Click the link to go to the We Went Back page on the Steam Store.

Game Title: We Went Back

Game Developer: Dead Thread Games

RRP: Free!

Released: 3 April 2020

Platform: PC

PC Game Review: Kind Words (lo fi chill beats to write to)

PC Game Review: Kind Words (lo fi chill beats to write to)

Review by Casey Douglass

Playing online games with strangers often seems to bring out the worst in people. No matter how much you try to keep things in perspective and tell yourself you are just a nickname to someone, being verbally abused or insulted can still hit home. Kind Words (lo fi chill beats to write to) is the polar opposite of this experience, as it’s a game in which you share what's troubling you, and in which you can send and receive kind words instead.

If that last sentence made your heart beat a little bit faster, don’t worry. It’s all done anonymously, with the letters you send simply being signed with the first letter of your chosen nickname. There are also safety warnings about not sharing contact information etc, which is very sensible. People can post “Requests” where they share what they want to share, and you can browse these and decide which ones you’d like to reply to. When you click Reply, you have a number of lines in which you can type your answer. You can even attach a sticker to brighten the recipient’s day, with the potential to unlock other stickers as you interact with people. The person receiving your letter can’t respond beyond sending you a sticker back as a thank you. That’s it, end of exchange. While on some levels, that might feel disappointing, I personally think that it adds to the charm of Kind Words. You don’t have to get into a prolonged exchange with someone to possibly help them have a brighter day. At times you’ll wish you could say more, but for the most part, I think it’s a good limitation to have in place.

A lot of research has gone into the power of writing and how it can help people who are struggling with something. Give James W. Pennebaker a Google to find all sorts about how disclosure can boost mood and function, as just one example. There is also a panoply of information about how feeling compassion towards others (and yourself) can bring health benefits, and it’s hard not to feel compassion for most of the people who write on Kind Words. In the days that I’ve been on there, I’ve seen people post about porn addiction, loss, loneliness and fears about the future. I’ve also seen people just wanting to share a funny experience or a pleasant dream, so it’s not all “heavy” by any means. Kind Words gives people an outlet who might feel invisible in their everyday life, or who don’t feel they can voice their troubles to the people around them. It also seems to give a far better feeling of connection than any social network seems to offer. There is less meaningless bullshit for a start.

As far as I can see from the developer's Twitter postings, the letters appear to be moderated by a mixture of auto-flagging word lists and manual moderation, so if someone is posting stuff that is really unacceptable or worrying, regular users are unlikely to even see it, and if they do, there is a Report button to flag up your concerns. I would imagine this extends to the paper airplanes that you can also send. They are a more instant way to send a very brief message floating through other players’ rooms. These are usually a quote in my experience, or a brief sentence saying “You rock!” etc. A nice little feature.

The bedroom in which the game takes place is a cosy graphical space in which your in-game character sits at a desk, listening to those lo fi beats mentioned in the title. As you post, reply, and earn new stickers, these can be used to decorate your room with models of what the sticker represents. It’s another nice touch and a pleasing thing that gives the kind words you’ve received a visual representation in your environment.

Popcannibal released Kind Words on 12 September 2019. By 30 September, over 250,000 letters had already been sent, far surpassing the developer’s hopes:

When we dreamed up this little trust experiment, we never imagined it would get this big. In fact, before launch I did a stress test on the server with 60,000 fake messages and laughed to myself "hah, we'll NEVER get close to that".

I find myself dipping into Kind Words a couple of times a day, whether I’m feeling troubled or not. It might be that I just want to see if there is anyone struggling with something I can offer words of encouragement about. Or it might be that I’ve been playing another game and want my last interactions with people online that day to be kind, rather than just the memory of being told to kill myself by a salty bad loser.

I bought Kind Words on Steam for just over £3 in a sale, but its RRP is only £3.99. For either price, I think I would have been happy with my purchase. You can find it on the Steam Store here.

GAME REVIEW: Flowscape

Flowscape is a kind of meditative creativity tool, the soothing music and gentle animation helping the player to create scenes and views that they might want to escape to. It also has a map-making feature for any DnD'ers out there. You can read my full review over on Geek Syndicate.

GAMING NEWS: PC Building Simulator is Now Available on Console

GAMING NEWS: PC Building Simulator is Now Available on Console

I always keep an eye on the various simulator games available for PC. It's one of the reasons that I love PC as a platform, as you get to see all sorts of interesting and niche creations. The Irregular Corporation's PC Building Simulator might have been deemed one of those games, once upon a time, but now, it's only gone and flipping released for PS4, Xbox and Nintendo Switch!

The original version of PC Building Simulator started out as a free tech demo on Itch.io and went on to sell 750K copies as a full release. It certainly seems to be a great example of an idea proving itself viable, which is refreshing in this day and age of rehash reboots and compulsive sequelitis.

Tim's RED HOT Repairs sounds like a porno movie waiting to happen...

PC Building Simulator does come with a story mode, one in which you find yourself taking over your uncle's PC workshop, having to diagnose and fix your customers' PCs. There is also a Free Build mode in which you can build goliath PCs that you would likely only ever dream of owning in real life. As a consequence, the game features a variety of real world brands and components, so you can aspire to churn out those quad-sli gaming PCs to your virtual delight, and not have to remortgage your house to pay for them! The only thing you'll be missing out on are the sore thumbs from having to insert so many cables, and the swearing session as that CPU heat-sink assembly always ends up needing a lot more pressure to clip in place than you anticipated.

If a GPU isn't overclocked, you obviously worship at the altar of Warranty.

Visit PC Building Simulator for a more in-depth look at the game, and keep an eye open for it in your gaming console's store. The pictures above are all from the PS4 version and the launch trailer below is one from the PC version. Just FYI.

Game Review - American Truck Simulator Washington and Forest Machinery DLCs (PC)

American Truck Simulator has had a couple of new DLCs released recently, and you can read my review of them over on Geek Syndicate at this link.

Why I Think Subnautica is One of the Best Horror Games

Why I Think Subnautica is One of the Best Horror Games

By Casey Douglass

Subnautica is a game that I almost didn’t buy. I’d had an interest, then a disinterest, and then things seemed to align and I saw it on sale and picked it up. I knew the kind of game I was getting: a sci-fi water-based survival game with exploring and beasties. What I didn’t realise is that Subnautica would give me some of the best experiences of horror and awe that I’ve probably encountered. Which, as surprises go, was a most welcome one.

The life pod with the wreckage of the Aurora behind.

The game begins with a spaceship, the Aurora, plummeting through the sky, a life-pod splashing down in water and a nice bit of fire-extinguishing. Then the longer-term survival begins. Everything you need is scattered for miles around, the groaning, flaming Aurora blotting the horizon. You can’t stay long underwater before running out of oxygen. You also don’t have much equipment. Or food. Or drinking water. As situations go, it’s a grim one. But to paraphrase The Martian’s Mark Watney... ‘Fuck you water-planet!’

My Seamoth in the moon-pool

The early game is spent creating basic equipment, scavenging resources and scanning everything you

can find to see if it’s useful. Before long, you will have moved from your small life pod to a base of your own construction. You will create a mini-sub called a Seamoth, and you will likely have swanky things like battery chargers, food-growing beds and sonar. Sonar links to one of the first ways that the game wowed me.

Sonar revealing the terrain

As you might imagine, shallow water is easy to see through. As you explore, the sea-bed dips away from you into ominous looking darkness. You might catch sight of something lurking out there, or even hear the alien-cry of some vast predator. But it’s all shrouded in murk. It’s like looking into the abyss of space, but scarier in some ways, more personal and reachable, rather than infinite darkness. You know there is a bottom to it, where unseen things dwell and cavort and consume. Pinging your sonar reveals the secret of the contours around you, but fades moments later, like the ultimate tease.

My humble base

As you push on, scanning and discovering abandoned places, you get the chance to build a Cyclops, a larger submarine. When I finally built mine, I was amazed at the size of it. My base at the time had four rooms, a moon-pool (a snazzy underwater docking room) and various corridors, yet the Cyclops, while narrower, sat three stories tall and loomed next to it like a leviathan of my own making. I wasn't expecting it to be so big. When you turn the engine on it rumbles and purrs with a power that the tiny Seamoth can only dream of. Oh, and that Seamoth can drive up into the Cyclops’s bowels and dock, strapping itself in to come along for the ride.

My new Cyclops 'looming'

The thing is, and I don’t mind admitting it, I’ve barely taken my Cyclops ten yards. During the early game, I lost two Seamoths to things that latched on and tore them apart. I’m wary of my Cyclops meeting the same fate. Sure, I can build another one, given the time and resources, but right now, I find myself sat in a comfy zone of mild fear. I’ve carried on exploring with my Seamoth, even built the Prawn suit that enables the player to bound around like a little underwater mech, but the Cyclops sits and waits for me, wondering when I will feel the urge to go deeper.

I know there are bigger things out there, deeper darknesses swirling with creatures that, if provoked, would attack me and destroy me. I also know that the answers to the various mysteries around the planet, and my own survival, lie down there too. I can definitely sympathise with Bilbo Baggins sneaking into the Lonely Mountain. You want to go but you don’t. That’s where I am. And I’m enjoying it. I can dictate the pace, and stretch out the anticipation as long as I feel like it.

At the moment, I am scouring the safer areas for resources, enjoying my feeling of relative safety. Every time I come to one of those areas of extreme depth, I ping my sonar and watch the red grid slide down a previously unseen funnel, and not even come close to showing the bottom. I hear things roar and take heed of the depth warning coming from my craft’s A.I, and I know I will find out what is at the bottom soon.

Fresh underwear time.

I never expected Subnautica to cause the feelings to arise that it has so far. It’s a different kind of fear to that found in a game like Alien: Isolation or Outlast. They provide a more acute fear. Subnautica’s is a nagging unease that occasionally results in moments of panic-fuelled retreat and loss, but it is more seductive for that very reason.

If you like horror games and have not tried Subnautica, due to it not really looking like a horror game, take a closer look. Visit Unknown Worlds Entertainment here to view the official site.

Dark Game Review: The Council (PC)

Dark Game Review: The Council (PC)

Review by Casey Douglass

Recent years have brought gamers some fantastic episodic adventure games, but for me Big Bad Wolf’s The Council has to be the darkest I’ve encountered, both in the characters’ deeds, and in the game’s aesthetics. I’m a big fan of Dennis Wheatley, particularly his Duke de Richleau character, the intelligent occultist gentleman who always has some piece of arcane knowledge that will get the characters out of trouble. The Council felt very “de Richleauian” to me, and about half an hour into the story, I knew that I felt at home.

The player character is Louis de Richet, a young man who in 1793, is invited to the island of Lord Mortimer, a powerful and mysterious figure who seems to know pretty much everyone mighty and powerful. Louis’ mother is also on the island, but she has gone missing, with no one knowing where she is. Both she and her son are members of a secret society, a society that wields its own power across the world. As Louis, you must find out what happened to your mother, deal with the intrigues of your host and his powerful guests, and also grow as a person in your knowledge and abilities.

The Council is a third person narrative adventure game. As you walk around Lord Mortimer’s island, you can interact with the characters and various other objects in a number of ways. When speaking to a character, you will often see a variety of conversation options to choose from. Some won’t be available to you, because Louis might be lacking the ability to use them at that time. As you complete tasks in the game, and collect various manuscripts, you can boost Louis’ abilities in a number of areas, from occult knowledge, to detective abilities such as logic and agility. If you have enough Effort Points and the correct ability unlocked, you can use that particular tactic during the conversation.

There are a variety of items to collect in the game world, from the hard to see collector’s coins, to useful potions that restore Effort Points or highlight other things, such as someone’s vulnerabilities for a short time. Getting information out of your conversational partners, and their trust, is key to achieving your aims in The Council, so anything that boosts your abilities in this area is a welcome thing. Even with the variety and number of pick-ups, things are still scarce enough to mean that you will likely have some conversations the old fashioned way, that is, without extra help. If you overuse certain potions or make a blunder, your character can be hindered by a de-buff that makes certain actions more costly. But hey, wouldn’t you know it, finding and drinking some Golden Elixir will remove any negative status effects, so things are golden in more ways than one.

The conversations are where The Council truly shines. Each character has their own personality, complete with vulnerabilities and immunities to particular manners of approach. Trying to manipulate someone who is immune to manipulation isn’t going to end well. Conversations are used to probe and test, the dancing around the subject at hand just as valuable as finding out what that character knows. There are times when you will have to lie, others where brutal, risky honesty might win the day. Slapping Napoleon Bonaparte to end a risky “what are you doing?” conversation chain is just one of the ways that you can deal with the challenges Louis faces. As the description on the game’s Steam Store page says, failing an encounter isn’t game over, but it will have consequences later.

As the characters are so central to The Council, it is no surprise to see that they are presented in
lovely detail, particularly their faces. I must admit that Duchess Emily Hillsborrow was my absolute favourite because she was dark, sarcastic, and seemed to channel Eva Green, both in look and attitude. Her particular elements of the main story were some of the most interesting too, a couple of “reveals” genuinely twisting things to a new level. All of the characters were fun though, out for themselves, scheming and duplicitous. The location too, a grand mansion with room after room of obscure relics, mystical artwork and books of knowledge, was a pleasure to explore. The blue-sky view from the guest room was a particular highlight, and later, the hidden places that aren’t visible unless you know their secret entrances.

The game gives Louis a fair few environmental puzzles to solve, from decoding the cryptic clues needed to open a combination lock, to using books and artwork to deduce how to find a rare artefact. The puzzles were for the most part very enjoyable. I did get stuck on a couple of them, but given enough time I was able to get to the bottom of things. This proved very satisfying, as the game made me feel like I had actually earned my progression. A couple of puzzles near the end of the game were a bit tedious however, but still relatively fun. I must admit that the game certainly gets great mileage out of its mansion location, but traversing the corridors and various rooms never seems to take too long, which is a fine balance to achieve.

My first play-through of The Council lasted around 12 hours, and the ending I achieved was so dark that I couldn’t help but smile. Before playing, I had seen a number of people say that they loved the game until the final episode or two, when things slipped a little. For my play-through, I don’t really recognise this. The story is layered, and as you play and reveal more and more of what is going on, the things you previously thought you understood sometimes shift, or sometimes solidify. I didn’t feel the rug was pulled out from under me, nor was I confused about what was going on. The only reason I can see for the comments of the people who didn’t like the way it went is that it somehow confounded their expectations of what the game would be like. Go into The Council with occult-detective in mind and I don’t think you'll be disappointed. I wasn’t.

I really want to play The Council again, taking the other options that I either messed up or ignored the first time. This is also something that is very rare for me, as when it comes to “your decisions have consequences” narrative games, I nearly always only play once, get my own version of the story, and move on. This is mainly because I like feeling that my outcome happened, and replaying over and over to get “all the endings” just lessens the impact of that first enjoyable jaunt through the game.

The Council has planted the urge in me to learn more about its world and characters, and to try and “better” the first ending I got. There is something about its dark mansion, masked servants and conversational combat that is trying to drag me straight back in, and I know it is a call I will answer soon. That being said, I am reasonably sure that my next attempt at the game will be my last, as thinking ahead with the knowledge I already have, the amount of repetition in a third play-through would be too tedious for me to fancy. Still, two journeys through the story will likely equal around 20 hours of play time, in a game world with characters I enjoy interacting with, so I’m more than happy enough with that.

If you know that you enjoy the Telltale or Life is Strange episodic adventure variety of game, but fancy something more layered, dark and RPG-esque, I highly recommend that you pick up The Council.

Game Title: The Council

Developer: Big Bad Wolf

Publisher: Focus Home Interactive

RRP: £25.99 (on Steam)

Available on: PC, Xbox One and PS4.

PEGI Rating: 16+

Dead by Daylight: The Legion First Impressions

Dead by Daylight: The Legion First Impressions

The latest Dead by Daylight chapter – Darkness Among Us, released a couple of days ago, giving players the usual mixture of a new Killer and Survivor to play as. The Killer is The Legion, a multiple-personality killer with a Feral Frenzy attack that allows them to race forward at speed, vault pallets, and also give them a sense of where healthy Survivors are. Sounds pretty decent on the face of it, but as is often the case, things can be different in practice.

My first session spent playing as The Legion was purely designed to get used to him. (I`ll call The Legion him for laziness purposes from here onwards). I expected to lose, and lose hard, as I was comfortably in the red ranks when he released. It took a little while to get used to his “ice skater turning” when frenzying. It felt like a milder adjustment process than getting used to Hillbilly and his own turning arcs, but it wasn’t wholly dissimilar. I messed up a number of tight vaults due to this, but I soon settled to his eccentricities.

As far as his power, it was fun, but it didn’t do much to win me the match. I still felt like I was being looped for just as long as other Killers, even with pallet vaulting and deep wound timers ticking down on a number of the Survivors. If I’d formed my opinion after my first experience with The Legion, I would have likely branded him “A bit shit!”, even allowing for his newness to me. Thankfully the next session I played him, I did much, much better, and that was partially helped with finding some complementary perks for his play-style.

One of the main criticisms levelled at The Legion is how his ability takes so long to down a Survivor. He has been dubbed a “5 hit killer” and other labels like that. Married to this is his low general movement speed, and the way that even his normal M1 attacks deplete his power gauge if they connect. Not very sexy. To me though, The Legion is an ambusher/stalking Killer, maybe even more so than our friends The Shape or The Pig. The Legion needs to get his licks in, then hold back, circling for the chance to end things later. Perks that aid this play-style make this a lot easier.

I’ve been making great use of BBQ & Chilli, Monitor and Abuse, Enduring and Bloodhound. The two that started making a big difference were M&A and Bloodhound. M&A lets me get closer to the Survivors on gens before they know I’m approaching, which is just generally helpful. The expansion in terror radius when in a chase also aids my Survivor locating power, so it gives in two ways. Bloodhound proved most effective for me though, and even at level one, the boost in tracking ability it gave me was immense. Certain maps have very bad scratch-marks right now, and even the ones that don’t, they can often send me the wrong way. Glowing blood puddles though.. much easier to track, and blood shows when you are running in frenzy, whereas scratchmarks don't. I’ve seen others use Stridor and say that it serves them well, but I’ve yet to unlock that for The Legion.

As I said above, I found The Legion to me most effective as an ambusher/stalker. I get my feral frenzy off, hit as many people as I can if others are clustered, or get two hits on one person. I then let myself fall back far enough that the chase breaks. Some streamers have been advocating the “turning away and following them backwards” gimmick. Fair play if they can do it but I don’t bother, it feels pretty cheap to me, but that’s just my opinion. Once I’ve broken the chase by dropping back or going in a different direction, I can then follow the injured Survivor at leisure, following their glowing blood and pressuring them at distance while they need to Mend. If I don’t lose them, there is little they can do. They are going down, either to another attack from me, or their timer running out. Since adopting this play-style, I have 3 and 4 K’d quite consistently as The Legion, with the odd narrow loss thrown in here and there. The enjoyment I’ve gained playing in this way is substantial, even in those losses.

It is very early days with The Legion, with both Survivors and Killers still getting to grips with him, so it’s hard to know what he’ll be like once people are more experienced, and he gets his inevitable patches to tinker with his stats over time. People worry about how viable Killers are at the higher ranks, and where Legion will fit into this, but in my experience, all Killers can do decently well at Rank 1, even Freddy, it’s just a matter of tactics, RNG and who you are facing. You can’t win every game. The Legion doesn’t feel over powered at the moment, nor terrible. I’m just hoping to carry on having fun with him for as long as I can.