Witch cards will drop: Steredenn

I spent way too much money in October (hint: Chicago is expensive) and now I need to get my ass in gear for the Christmas sale! And what place does one take one's ass for the Christmas sale: That's right, grinding on cards. While I idle most of the cruddier games that have cards, there's a ton of good, or at least good looking games that can be short reviewed for fun and cards. And everyone loves selling cards.

One advantage to playing a lot of games is getting to see the filtering of ideas, or even hypothetical parallel evolution. That is to say when designs are not influenced by each other, but rather arrive to the same design conclusion independently. It makes gaming feel a little less like closed individual systems and more like ecosystems of ideas, which almost makes it feeler grander in the way art likes to be played as. We're all aware of basic copying, of taking a basic "thing" from one game or a basic genre, like platformers in the 80s and FPSes in the 90s, but the more subtle cues and design hints make for a more interesting way to see games made.

And to mock their short-comings.

Steredenn has one of the oddest little names I've ever seen. Google's best translation is from Breton and it translates into Star. So the game is basically named Star. It's a simple name for what is ultimately a pretty simple game.

Anyway, Steredenn is a shmup of the side scrolling variety, built from the higher end level of pixel art where style and aesthetics are both emphasized. If the game has much of a story, well, I didn't notice. Instead - as games are wont to do in the modern indie paradigm - the game is a psuedo-roguelike, or roguelite, or something I'm tempted to call rougelite since we've fallen so far from the original design that boy is my face red.

Rougelites kinda drive me batty. Ha! Get it?

It is also about robots: Steamworld Dig

Steamworld Dig is presented in the reviews that pop up when you look over the game news as a Metroidvania, which I don't think it is. In turn, I'm not exactly sure what Steamworld Dig actually is, beyond feeling like the partial combination of various other elements from other games.

First things first, the game's visuals are fantastic, the usual steampunk aesthetic getting its groove on with a mix of other styles. All the characters look good, and the game is just plain easy on the eyes. It feels a lot like playing Terraria, but it is more hand-drawn and in most ways better looking. It doesn't do quite as well in terms of how it uses its lighting, which is a bit disappointing since digging games really benefit from deep shadows and contrast. The lighting effects in Steamworld Dig are rather limited, and don't have the spooky impact they do in Terraria, which was sort of weird.

Second, it is mostly a platformer with digging options - it does have some Metroidvania elements to it, but it doesn't quite feel like one. At its very core, the combat is pretty light stuff, and most of the game is just exploring the mysteries as you dig down in a huge mine and then just keep going with little in the way of backtracking. You do get upgrades along the way, but they generally feel less like something you absolutely need and more like quality of life improvements. There's a good vibe to it, though, just as a certain element starts to drone on in your brain the game throws you an upgrade to make that get less annoying.

In this the gameplay is very satisfying and very soothing. It isn't a difficult game, more or less a casual title, centered on digging. You dig things up, sell them, buy and find upgrades. The game's story is actually very reminiscent of Primordia, which is weirdly ironic given I settled into playing both so close together. It's not exactly as dark as Primordia, but it has many of the same angles that do tend to feel a little grim.

The main elements of the gameplay are digging and then the interaction between digging and your various supplies. You have limited bag space, limited hitting power, limited health, light and water. All of these being depleted makes it pretty difficult to get around, and in the case of health, ultimately kills you. You can upgrade all of this stuff with money or "power orbs" which increases them in a pretty linear fashion over the course of the game. The Metroidvania, I guess, comes from the aforementioned upgrades which grant you running or double jump or the various sort of things you usually gets.

Steamworld Dig is pretty by the book, mixing elements from various other titles, but the clean visual style and simple gameplay make it a relaxing if a little monotonous title. I don't really recommend it in the pure sense of a fantastic, engrossing core title to spend your time on, but I do recommend it if you want something to sit in front of the screen with controller in hand for twenty minutes every once in a while.

Not everything needs to be the next big heart stopper. Sometimes it is alright to just be good, right?

It's about robots: Primordia

So, I'd be the first to admit I couldn't tell you the difference between a puzzle game, a HOG or an adventure game or any of the myriad divisions. I mean some games are puzzle games, but there are also games which have puzzles in them? They are puzzling but not puzzled out? I would also be the first to tell you that I delight in robots - robots are very important to me. And Primordia is about robots.

Or it is sort of.

Primordia is a well-written adventure (!?!) game centered on a robot with a wacky pun spewing sidekick that has to solve the essential problem of power, since another robot showed up, shot him and took his "power core" that provides power to his ship. And oddly that song does fit the theme of the game, somehow. The game's story slowly comes together, and I don't really want to spoil elements, but I found it sort of an interesting take on post-apocalypse sort of things since the robots don't really recognize it as such. Or much of anything as such, but since they're robots, you go yeah ok this makes sense.

There isn't a lot to say about Primordia, given the gameplay is very simply and very soothing. The characters, pardoning the one, are very interesting and unlike Morningstar they're not intentionally pushed to be annoying. I wish I could have screenshotted more of the sidekick's puns, but unfortunately the game won't allow you to use the steam overlay screenshot tool OR the raptr screenshot tool (how that is even possible is beyond me) but will allow you to screenshot using the printscreen key.

Which makes no sense! Unfortunately that also advances the dialogue, so I'd see something funny and then the game would eat it. Sigh.