One of my 101 Goals is to play 20 games that I never played before. Well, I downloaded a bunch of games from my Steam library to start out. Of the 20 games I picked, I played 4 so far: Renowned Explorers: International Society, Kami, Epistory, and Sunless Sea. They are all very different games, but no triple A.
Renowned Explorers: International Society
Renowned Explorers: International Society is made by the same developers as Reus, Abbey Games. They’re a Dutch team and I enjoyed both games by them. Renowned Explorers is more complex than Reus, with sixteen different characters that can make up for your team of three. Each playthrough is different with the choices that you have. The mechanics are borrowed from different genres and I particularly like the combat, even when I suck at it. You can choose to end and encounter in a positive way, by becoming friends with your enemies, or ridiculing them, or just plain killing. You can earn bonus points for resolving an encounter in a specific manner. So far I’ve only completed one round without dying, and that’s okay. I don’t have to be good at a game to enjoy it. Even knowing that I’ll probably fail my next round, I still go in. Maybe I’ll get lucky.
Kami
Kami is a puzzle game that reminds me of origami with coloured paper. You have to change the colours so it ends up in just one colour. It’s a nice puzzle game to play in between things to relax and focus your mind. I’ve reached the harder puzzles now and it’s taken me a few times before I managed to succeed. I’ll try to finish all of them before the 1001 days are over.
Epistory – Typing Chronicles
I loved Epistory from the moment I saw the art, way before the release. I actually still use one of the artworks as a wallpaper. It looks stunning and the narration is great as well. Think Bastion, but with a different voice. You kill the enemies by typing words. If your average words per minute is on the high side, this game will be easy for you. For the others it’ll be a challenge, but not one that’s impossible. I love the game’s atmosphere, the art, the story. It’s adorable. I highly recommend this for anyone who wants a unique indie game experience. I’m definitely going to finish this.
Sunless Sea
Years ago I played the browser game Fallen London. A card based game set in the dark shadow side of London. The Victorian world with gothic flair is incredibly immersive. I think the whole game has over 500.000 words now. Sunless Sea is also made by Failbetter Games and set in the same universe, maybe now slightly more Lovecraftian. It’s a dark, rogue like game, where you’re an explorer of the Sunless Sea. Complete quests, find out everyone’s secrets, make money by smuggling wears, and kill great sea creatures.
There are still a few more games that I tried which I didn’t play using Steam, but I’ll talk about those later.