Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia (PC, Mac, iOS, Android)

Dear god, that’s a helluva name.

The King of Erathia, Gryphonheart, has been assassinated. In his absence the underground empire of Nighon has teamed up with the, literally, hellish force of Eofol to take over the kingdom. Meanwhile, the Necromancers of Deyja are thinking of putting Gryphonheart’s corpse and it’s military experience to use. The kingdoms of Avlee and Bracada are trying to hold Erathia together but between the invasion from below and the barbarian land grabs, they’ve got their hands full. Catherine, the new queen, having heard of her father’s demise returns home. Having fought in Enroth’s brutal war for its throne, she expects only to bury her father. With her country in chaos it falls to her, and her talented commander, to fight for her homeland.

History

New World Computing had just been purchased by 3DO and they wanted a sequel for their successful Heroes of Might and Magic series. David Mullich, the director of the project, had worked on such games as Ducktales for the NES and I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream –two games that couldn’t be more different. He was accompanied by writer and assistant director Chris Vanover who wrote every character bio and most of the text for the game. Mullich’s goal was to take the basic systems of Heroes II but improve the visuals and tighten everything. To that end they used 3D sprites instead of 2D sprites. Mullich put together his team personally and said, “I was working with a dream team the likes of which I have never again experienced in my thirty-five years in game industry.”

Fun Fact: David Mullich appears in the level editor as an Erathian knight named Sir Mullich, who is “prone to spasmodic fits of uncoordinated excitement believed to intimidate his troops into working faster.”

Heroes of Might and Magic III was released on February 28, 1999. It’s competition was Baldur’s Gate: Tales From the Sword Coast (PC), Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance (PC), and Final Fantasy VIII (PS1).

Oh man, 3D graphics! I wish the heroes could do more than cast spells though… alas they don’t attack until Heroes IV.

 Experiences

Before I knew what Dungeons and Dragons was, before I knew about Tolkien, before Diablo, there was Heroes of Might and Magic. This is the game that taught me that Medusa turns things to stone and that wizards are awesome. I used to play this game when my mother would visit some of her friends. These guys were old-school nerds. These guys used to code in DOS and had played Betrayal at Krondor. This game sort of started my interest in nerd culture and I thank it for that.

This game’s got everything, dragons, orcs, titans, necromancers, elves, EVERYTHING! They’re throwing fantasy at the wall and everything sticks.

Gameplay

The player assumes the role of a commander overseeing all affairs military and domestic in some sort of armed conflict. This commander hires heroes who take the battle to enemy heroes and cities. Heroes gain experience and level up, gaining new skills and improving the stats of units under their control. Cities produce military units, gold, and a mage’s guild that teaches heroes valuable spells, both combat and non-combat.

These heroes navigate an overworld map covered with all sorts of monsters, locations, and general adventure.

The game is split into scenarios which each have a certain goal. Sometimes it’s simply to destroy all enemies but sometimes it’s something more specific like taking a certain town or destroying a certain hero. Sometimes the goal is something as oddly specific as getting a particular artifact or enough resources before other players.

There are also aproximately this many artifacts. All of which have an interesting ability.

The game also comes packed with Hot seat and IP address multiplayer. So you and your friends can settle which is the better on the field of honor.

The Gush

The music in this game is really awesome.  It’s delightfully epic in its scope. It’s low budget grand fantasy, it’s nothing that an 8 track and a keyboard couldn’t put together but I think that just gives it charm. From the sweeping crescendos of the Stronghold’s rugged mountains to the dingy gloom of the Necropolis’ death filled halls the music fits wonderfully.

There’s also something pleasing about building up a city from a town hall and some huts to something like this.

The campaign writing and voice acting is pretty good. My favorite writing is the incidental writing though. All of the artifact pick ups have a description and all of the heroes have little biographies. It’s usually really campy but occasionally there’s something unique and interesting. The story of the main campaign is also pretty good so I felt rewarded.

Do you see this guy? You’d better step back…

… because you’re dealing with motherfucking Solmyr, one of the most busted characters in the entire game. Anyone who likes the Tower knows that they hire this guy on sight. His heroic specialty is the spell Chain Lightning so he starts with it. It costs tons of mana and deals buckets of damage. It win fights –Unless it jumps to your troops. If you luck out then you’ll find the Pendant of Negativity which renders your troops immune to lightning –never strike your own troops again!– then again there’s the opposite scenario where it falls into enemy hands and Solmyr turns into a useless blue cloud. Oh yeah, and he’s a freaking genie!

The Kvetch

Some cities have building restrictions. It’s usually really flavorful, the city just doesn’t have the military infrastructure to support strong units. The problem comes when I spend a lot of resources claiming a city that actually didn’t have the ability to build anything useful. There’s no way to know before taking the city so it just feels like a giant waste of time.

The randomness factor on maps can be a big one. I’ve gotten artifacts that benefit ships on maps with no ocean because that’s just what randomly spawned. Monster randomization has left me crying on some maps and sometimes I breeze through the same scenario because the monsters joined me instead of fighting because we were of the same faction. It makes me feel like strategy and skill doesn’t have the amount of impact that it should.

The main campaign is incredibly hard at later levels! The first few scenarios are alright but I hit a giant brick wall that I’ve never been able to overcome without cheating. I keep thinking that I should just get good but I don’t know how to improve or what I’m doing wrong.

The Verdict

This game holds up today. I’ve kept going down the Heroes series and I’m not sure if its nostalgia or if the future games just keep adding more unnecessary stuff but this game feels like the sweet spot between features and simplicity. No matter what, it’s a wonderful strategy game with a deep lore. It’s a fun time and worth the cost.

Next Week: Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor

Army Men (PC and Game Boy Color)

Author’s note: I apologize for the lack of images in this review. I couldn’t take or find many good quality screenshots for this game — which makes sense given its overall quality.

All those little battles you and your friends had with those green and tan army men seemed like good fun at the time. Little did you fools know you were changing the face of an entire other world! This world is split between Grey, Tan, Green, and Blue. You play as the top soldier in the Green army, known only as Sarge. He’s been sent into enemy territory to unveil a Tan bid for power and generally ruin Tan’s day. Run, crawl, shoot, and struggle with controls in Army Men.

History

3DO started its bid as a company in order to create a CD based console that could blow the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo out of the water. It was certainly far more powerful, being able to play Playstation era games 2 years before the Playstation was released. It’s powerful hardware made it very expensive however, about three times as expensive as its competition, retailing for $599 — a business move that didn’t even make sense when Sony did it 13 years later with the PS3. This immense cost eventually ended up scuttling the company’s console development plans and forced them into making games such as the succesful Might and Magic and less succesful Army Men series.

Army Men was released in 1998. It’s competition was Metal Gear Solid (PS1), Starcraft (PC and N64), and Fallout 2 (PC).

Experiences

There’s one mission in this game that is so hard that childhood me almost stopped playing the game forever. It’s the escort mission. Every game had them back in the day and this game is no exception. You have to escort a truck with vital plastic on it through a series of narrow mountain passes to safety.The thing that really irks me though is that enemies come from behind, from off screen — I take that back, the thing that really irks me is that the truck can get stuck on a wall and destroy itself. It’s a game of memorization. You’ve got to figure out where to use this mortar to destroy that passage or use those land mines to stop that tank that comes from behind and destroys you at minute four or whatever. It’s just trial and error and that’s no fun.

Gameplay

The game is split into three acts which are seperated by different settings. These acts are split into chapters which each have a different map, each chapter has three or four missions in it which must be complete sequentially — the objectives of which are delivered via scratchy radio voice over. Sarge is mostly unsupported so get ready to attempt to be a one man wrecking crew — key word, attempt. The goal of each act is to find three pieces of some sort of cosmic key — which are made out of interlocking tinker toys — which tan will presumably use for some sinister purpose.

At least soldiers from other factions will fight each other as well as you.

Sarge’s main strengths come from his ability to not rely on the awful AI and the ability to use whatever weapon he finds. He has his trusty rifle, a secondary weapon, and a support item. Secondary weapons include grenades, bazookas, and the flamethrower — in a world made of plastic the flame throwing man is king [now that I think about it, how do they keep a flame thrower made of plastic working?]. Support items include first aid, explosives, mines, or a minesweeper — which serves only to gate off certain areas, necessitating that Sarge have to go someplace unpleasant to find a minesweeper so he can continue on the original path.

The Gush

I still like the final segments of the game. The final fight takes place in a graveyard where Tan and Grey soldiers rise from their graves to fight Sarge and each other. It was bizarre, like the forces of the keys were messing with reality. It also presented an interesting strategy where it was in the player’s best interest to avoid the conflict and let these quasi-zombies destroy each other.

I find it sort of humorous and interesting that this world is one where people, their tools, and vehicles are all made out of plastic.There’s one mission in which Sarge robs a bank filled with plastic. Is this inert, lifeless plastic or is this living plastic meant to be turned into men? Do they have to instill it with green color or will it work for them even though it’s tan? Well, nobody cares and this sort of lack of world-building makes me laugh.

The graphics actually look pretty good for the time. The set pieces look like they would actually be sold with the toys.

The concept of human objects being super weapons in a world of Army men was a pretty cool idea. I gotta give credit where credit’s due and say that a gate made out of building blocks and activated with a tinker toy key is pretty funny.

The Kvetch

The minimap is useful in a number of ways, it’s got a great sector system that informs the player quickly and succinctly where they need to go. On the other hand the first stage is a desert and therefore tan troops don’t show up on the mini-map even when the player uses reconnaissance to reveal it. Little did I know I could get a more detailed map by pressing F12 that points out troop movements and other information — and it was little known because who would press F12 for anything in a videogame?

Most of the game feels like memorization as opposed to a top down shooter. I’ll admit there’s tactical decisions to make such as where to place one of three air strikes but they always lead to memorizing where on the map the tanks are and use the strikes there.

The Tan AI is pretty good for a game from 1998 but it’s plain to see why the Green forces suffer heavy losses, it’s because their soldiers have the rough intellectual capacity of an actual plastic toy. Green soldiers that follow Sarge generally spend most of their time running in circles and shooting in the wrong direction.

I don’t know why but if I’m running forward and shooting I can turn right but I can’t turn left. This usually leads me to running around in a circle to create the most roundabout left turn in the history of gaming.

This one’s a little specific but I got stuck on a mission for days when I was a kid. The scenario is that there’s a wounded Green soldier who has important information but the bridge to reach him was destroyed and there’s no other way across the river. What I’m supposed to do is go upstream, blow up each of the ends of a bridge there, and let the center section of that bridge float downstream to create a new bridge to reach that soldier. The only thing that hints at this is the  that the game gives you explosives. This sort of thing has not happened before and it never happens again.

The music can get really repetitive. Every once and awhile I’m treated to a new song and it’s like a golden glow reaching through gross clouds made of snare drums.

I’ve had such a hard time remapping the controls into something that makes the game playable. Firefights are made pretty simple by rolling out of the way of bullets and rockets but I was never able to get the dodge roll keys off of the number pad, which meant I had to switch from the keypad to the number pad in order to win fights. It’s a frustrating mess.

Also, the voice acting is nearly unintelligible at points. I was thankful that the game super imposes text of the conversation when Sarge is getting orders. Sometimes it was so garbled I didn’t know what was going on.

The Verdict

I may have loved this game when I was a kid but that just leads me to think that I was a really dumb kid. Vehicles control poorly, getting caught on the smallest pieces of scenery. Sometimes I run into tanks with no weapons that can deal damage to them. I beat most missions by remembering ways to destroy certain things to enemies can no longer reach me. This game is four dollars on Ebay and I’d say that’s an appropriate cost for a game of this caliber.

Next week: Heroes of Might and Magic III

Zoe’s RPG Corner: Dragon Age: Inquisition

Dragon Age: Inquisition is a single-player 3rd person RPG that exists to expand the world of Thedas in a way players have never seen before, redeem the franchise after the up and down ride of Dragon Age 2, and make straight white boys really angry (apparently.)

History and Development

Dragon Age III had a lot of buzz for a long time before it was ever announced.  Even around the time that Dragon Age II was coming out, people were finishing it and going “where’s the next one?”  Unlike Dragon Age: Origins, everyone knew there was going to be another one.  There’s this whole thing that goes down in Dragon Age II (look, accept that this review will have spoilers in it, you have been warned) and that, coupled with the framing mechanism and final scene of the game made it clear that there was something more coming.  So players had been waiting for this game for years.

The game was announced in 2011 but didn’t come out until November of 2014.  It was suppose to come out a month earlier but production was delayed.  The stated goal was basically to take all the good shit from Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age II and just squish it all together in a prettier container.  And basically that’s what they did.  They introduced another new PC, instead of continuing the Warden or Hawke from previous games, took the streamlined mechanics of Dragon Age II and the more open world of Dragon Age: Origins, and made this really quite lovely game that doesn’t feel at all like the Frankenstien’s monster it kind of is.

I do actually have a fun story for this.  My friend bought me this game because at the time I was broke, unemployed, and living with my mother.  Also, I had no internet access.  It was a rough time.  He apparently decided that I really needed Dragon Age: Inquisition because I am a huge Dragon Age fangirl and I think he wanted someone to talk to about the game as he played it.

I of course was very excited.  Shout out to my favorite physicist video game sugar daddy (I cannot believe I just typed that phrase.)

But then it took me two weeks to download it at the library and my computer hates it so the loading screens freeze for like sometimes an hour and a half and it’s hilarious.  If I hadn’t been raised in a time when computers were still glitchy as frak as a rule, I would be super upset about it, but I’ve got infinite computer patience.  I get a lot of reading done while playing.

Character Creation

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE HUMAN!

I know that was way too excited about that, but you have no idea how much I dislike being a human in games.  It’s just a weird personal thing because I generally get super tired of it.  I honestly do not care.  If I can avoid it, I will.  And Dragon Age: Inquisition doesn’t make you.  It lets you be one of four races.  Yes, that’s right, one of four.  The three of Dragon Age: Origins (Human, Elf, or Dwarf) and a new one, Qunari, who are basically seven foot tall grey skinned horned giants.  I love them.  I love being a video game giant at the best of times (see: Guild Wars 2 Norn) but the Qunari are fascinating and I’m all about it.

There’s less in the way of customizable origin story but I can’t fault the designers for that.  This game is huge.

But what it may lack in story customization, the character creator more than makes up for in physical customization.  Like, the amount of stuff you can do with your character’s face is insane.  There are sliders for everything.  There’s a color wheel for eyelashes, for god’s sake.  You can do so much with it.

Frakkin’ EARLOBE SIZE.  I don’t know about you, but that’s not even something I notice on people.

My complaints are the same as everyone else’s really.  Qunari lady hair is weak and every artist I’ve ever seen draw their female Qunari character creates a different hairstyle for her, me included.  But I guess I can accept that when it comes down to it because it’s just so much fun.

Story

Dragon Age: Inquisition has, I think, the most straightforward story of all the Dragon Age games.  Dragon Age: Origins had a pretty linear one but there were all sorts of little finicky bits that pulled you around and off course – each area had a choice and specific things to do regarding that choice.  Dragon Age: Inquisition is a little more traditional.  A thing happens.  A bad guy did it.  Collect some friends.  Solve the mystery.  Kill the bad guy.

This isn’t in any way a dis to this game.  Sometimes it’s nice to have something that’s pretty solid and linear.  I think that BioWare took a lot of risks with Dragon Age II in terms of story structure and found that they didn’t pay off quite the way they’d hoped.  Once bitten, twice shy, they fell back on what they knew, which was good old fashioned sword-and-sorcery tropes.

Here’s the basics.  You play someone present at a disastrous attack on the Church Chantry, the only survivor.  You have a weird glowing thing on your hand.  A hot battle-scared Prussian woman “recruits” (read: yells at) you to help figure out what happened and also close a big glowing green hole in the sky.

As usual, these games live and die by the NPCs and this game is no slouch on them.  They’re great.  It notably includes: the smoothest dwarf known to man, Sid Vicious if Sid Vicious was an elf chick, a crotchety old egg with pointed ears, the physical incarnation of Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk” and a confused five-year-old.

Also there are more romances than I can count.  This game allowed me to send one of the greatest texts in history: “In the new Dragon Age game you can engage in a mostly healthy BDSM relationship with Buffy Summers’ husband.”

And his pillowy man bosoms.

Gameplay

In the development, someone on the team looked at Dragon Age II and went “You know what we did really well here?  Combat.”

There are some minor tweeks in combat from the second game, like the fact that instead of an auto-attack you have to hold down a mouse button (I hate this because I’m a wussy baby), but for the most part it’s the same kind of thing.  Skills are done via trees and mages can hit dudes.

There are two big changes.  The first is healing, because there is no healing skill.  That’s right friends, no longer can mages cast healing spells and save your failing butt when you’re trying to kill a dragon.  You’re stuck with potions (you only get a certain number of them at a time but can refill that number as much as you want…if you don’t mind going back to camp) and man are you going to feel that later.  By later I mean dragons.  Because fighting dragons can be hard as frak, let me tell you.  They are big and they hate you and they will try to kill you and they will inevitably succeed about sixty times because you have no healing skill.  Good luck, friends.

The other change is crafting.  This is a change I like a lot because it means you’re not relying entirely on loot or shops or quest rewards to keep your party armored and spiky.  Also I have a real soft spot for easy armor crafting (again see: Guild Wars 2) and this one is really simple.  They didn’t try to go too crazy.  It’s really basic and that’s the kind of thing that I’m all about.  Just let me make some pretty armor for my pretty ladies and go about my business without having to look anything up.

Also they allow you to avoid things like this. Or I guess create it if you’re mad at a companion.

Oh and you can hide helmets which makes things way less embarrassing for everyone around.  They need a better hat designer at that company.

The Good

Honestly, most of it.  It’s a solid game.  It feels traditional, sure, but it’s kind of like coming home if you’re a fan of this genre.  The environments are absolutely glorious and really make the game feel huge.  There’s a lot to do.  It’s a well thought out story line.  You see old friend from previous games, and while in this one your choices don’t feel as monumental as they did in Dragon Age: Origins, it still feels comfortably compelling.

I don’t have a whole lot of gushing to go here.  I like this game a lot.  It’s great.  But I don’t feel the need to drool over any specific aspect the way I have with other games.  The whole thing just feels complete.

The Bad

I…disagree, let’s say, with some design choices made.  Not big ones, just like…Skyhold pajamas.

This is exactly what I would wear to judge war crimes, clearly.

There are some other little nitpicky things.  I don’t like some of the hair options.  I don’t like certain companions, or at least I don’t feel as connected to and compelled by them as I do others (there are none that I hate or anything).  I would have liked a little more explanation on the big bad because he really just seems B-movie mustache-twirling evil.  But nothing is major.

The Ugly

Let’s talk about fans for a second.

See, there’s nothing I can really think of about this game that I hate.  But you know what I do hate?  People’s reaction to this game.  Oh, not the majority of players, but a certain small contingent of (probably) straight white dudes, the same ones who hated Merrill and Isabela in Dragon Age II, who are so upset that they don’t have some pretty little blonde white girl to romance in this game.

The only blonde white girl in this game is only into other women.  The straight woman is tough and has a big facial scar (and is amazing).  The bisexual woman is not white.

And then there’s Vivienne.  People HATE Vivienne.  Some for character reasons, which I’ll let pass, but a lot because of how she looks.

Which is beautiful, by the way.

I’m not even going to point out their “concerns”.  You can guess.  I just want to say that I’m really tired of hearing this out of people especially about BioWare games.  It’s really stupid.  I need everyone to maybe not do this ever.  If you have a friend who does this, slap them.  If you do this, slap yourself.  Just…this vocal minority needs to stifle themselves.

From here…?

Okay, Dragon Age: Inquisition is still very expensive and they’re coming out with DLC which is also pricey and it’s just generally still in “New Game Pricing” which I get is super hard.  I mean, I didn’t pay for this game, certainly.  But if you get a chance, if you’ve got the money sitting around, if it’s on sale, go for it.  It’s huge.  It’ll keep you occupied for a while.  It’s fun.  It’s beautiful.  It’s very, very long.  Have fun.  That’s what Dragon Age games are for.  Fun.  And also hitting on elves.

Next Month: The Exiled Realm of Arborea, more commonly known as Tera.  Ooooooh, this one is gonna be good.  The worst of boobplate, uncomfortable sexualization, and pedophelia!  And I guess we’ll also talk about the mechanics.

Game Dev Tycoon (PC)

I don’t know who you were before all this happened but that doesn’t matter now. The future is in shambles, brought upon by bad videogames. You’ve gone back in time using your trusty Delorian –you could use it to kill Hitler or something but… videogames, dude– to use the knowledge you have now to make a videogame development company that will stand the test of time.

Who’s garage is this? WHO’S GARAGE DID YOU STEAL!?

 

History

Game Dev Tycoon was made by Greenheart Games, a team of five people. Patrick Klug directed the project, inspired by a game called Game Dev Story. He and his team wanted a game like Game Dev Story but one that was based more on player decision and less on chance.

The game is probably most well known for it’s response to piracy. Green Heart released a version of the game on the Pirate Bay after it’s release that had a fatal error in it. After the player made a few games pirates would start taking a majority of the game’s profits prompting players with the message “Boss, it seems that while many players play our new game, they steal it by downloading a cracked version rather than buying it legally. If players don’t buy the games they like, we will sooner or later go bankrupt.” Eventually making the player go bankrupt.

Game Dev Tycoon was released on December 10th, 2012– and re-released on Steam in 2013. It’s competition was Baldur’s Gate: The Enhanced Edition (PC and iOS), Knytt Underground (PS3), and Street Fighter X Megaman (PC).

Gameplay

The game is pretty simple. You start out in a garage working alone, developing for the Govadore 64 and the PC. Each game needs a topic and genre pair — not all combinations are created equal however– and then a console to release it on –once again, some consoles are suited to different topics and genres. You can unlock research to market games, cater to a type of audience, or release it on multiple platforms. As well as researching new topics, better sound, graphics, and other features. The game then goes through a cycle of development which is expressed by a series of sliders. The more focused on one the more neglected the others become so it’s important to spend your developer’s time wisely — i.e. an FPS game needs good AI and Level Design but it’s Story doesn’t necessarily have to be great.

Eventually you get out of the garage and move on to an office, at which point you can hire additional employees — who can even be real people from the industry if you scout at the right times. More people means making better games but spending more money so it’s all a big gamble — one that you can control by making good games by considering what decisions will make them good.

Things eventually get crazy when your company opens up a Research and Development section or a Hardware lab. Then you can start making consoles or a version of Steam itself called The Grid and all sorts of other high end things.

I really like what a silly caricature this R&D lab is. My personal favorite is the guy in the purple scarf. It’s possible for him to end up in there alone if you cut the budget, spending his days talking to the open air.

Experiences

This game is like a pile of legos. It’s only limited by the player’s imagination and how many pieces they’ve got. I’ve known players to make silly challenges for themselves like trying to naming all of their games with dinosaur puns. I like to imagine what the game I’ve made would be like based on its title and such.

This game’s a surprisingly fun party game. Me and my friends have rules where one person is head director and every other person is on the board of trustees. They can make suggestions and instruct the director. They become the director if the game tanks and they offered the most helpful advice. So it, behooves them to offer bad info to make the game tank but enough good info to take over.

I also like naming games obvious parodies of pre-existing titles.

The Gush

I really like how obviously spoofy all the consoles and companies are. Mirconoft and Ninvento will always tickle my funny bone. It’s also interesting to hear the retelling of gaming history and why certain events occurred as they did.

The game has a bunch of silly and interesting easter eggs. It certainly doesn’t take itself too seriously. With such events including a secret agent named Blowfish who can wreak havoc on competing companies or give you technical support. Or Dave Johnson asking if you can put some exploding red barrels into a game.

The Kvetch

The musak in this game is definitely musak. It might change from stage to stage but it sounds samey and it’s just not very catchy or good. I muted the music and played just about anything else in the background.

The Verdict

I really like this game. It offers a satisfying power fantasy with relevant and educational information about the history of the game’s industry. That being said, there’s not much game here. The fun I have is based on silly challenges and thinking about stuff that the game doesn’t show like what the game would actually look like or what it would be about. If the concept of an imagination fueled adventure through making silly or awesome games interests you then I suggest you give this game a shot. It’s also cheap to boot with a ten dollar price tag.

The Yawhg (PC)

 

In a world of sword, sorcery, sorrow, and song, there is a city. The city is beset every great while by a disaster known as the Yawhg. You live in this city, ready to buckle down and really get your life in order– or perhaps to spend every week getting blackout drunk, it’s up to you. You’re all unaware that the Yawhg will come again in six weeks. Do what you will with the these weeks but the Yawhg will reduce the city to rubble…But perhaps you can rebuild and start over.

It’s text like this that puts me on edge in the best way.

 

Development

I said it didn’t get more indie than Studio Pixel’s one member but the Yawhg’s development team was pushing it with four people. The game was designed by Damian Sommer, a man who’s been making games since he was ten years old. He made the game based on an older and less robust title called Dungeon of Fayte. Emily Carroll made the art, co-designed, and c0-wrote it. She’s most well known for her horror themed comics and her marvelous art style. They made it during the Independent Games Festival and it made it to the finals although it didn’t win.

The Yawhg was released on May 30th, 2013. It’s competition was Fez (PC), Dust: An Elysian Tale (PC), and Monaco: What’s Yours is Mine (XBox Live Arcade).

Experiences

Because I’m a giant dork who doesn’t like large groups of people I occasionally host tea parties. Little get-togethers where I can see all of my friends in one day, they can all see each other, and everyone can have a little snack. We all chat and sometimes we sit around the computer and play some games. The Yawhg has become one of the most popular titles during these gatherings. There usually aren’t more than four people so it all works out perfectly.

And with exquisite characters like these there’s never anyone that someone doesn’t want to play.

Gameplay

The Yawhg plays like a choose-your-own adventure. Each character starts with a five in all of the main statistics, like physique or charm, except wealth which always starts at zero. The city has locations like the arena, hospital, and gardens that the player can visit and each location has two activities the character can perform there. After the player chooses an activity they’re beset by a random encounter and the player can choose how they react. Do they have wealth to spare for the fortune teller? Do they drink the potion that’s about to explode? Well, it depends on their stats whether they succeed– although a panty-waist might not want to drink that exploding potion, just saying, but you do you man.

Also, just look at this beautiful fucking city.

After the Yawhg hits it’s up to the players to use their abilities to help rebuild the town– or descend into drunkenness or looting. If the players use their talents effectively then the town will be able to rebuild. If the leader is dumber than a rock or the builder isn’t physically fit then things could get problematic.

The Gush

There are only seven tracks to the soundtrack but it’s all very well employed. The game is short so it’s also more than enough music to go around. The music is mostly acoustic guitar and keyboard so it’s pretty simple. The epilogue music gets me a little choked up every time though.

The game provides a simple but wonderful setting to roleplay in. I found it a good opportunity to introduce people to RPing to see if they liked it.

The art provided by Carroll is marvelous and I feel like the characters are so animated. Each of the characters looks so good that I like playing them all.

Although, Mr. Aurum is definitely my favorite.

The scenarios are often absurd and silly but that just adds to the fun and contrasts with the darker scenes and epilogues. It’s interesting to think of a character who once found the King’s secret wine cellar then drinking to forget the horrors of The Yawhg.

The Kvetch

There are over 50 unique endings for completing the game but sometimes there will be stretches where I swear I’ve done different things but I see the same epilogues again and again. I much prefer the more unique endings.

The Verdict

It’s a fun little party game that’s got a fair bit of replay value, especially considering the cost. But it is little, although Sommer has added content here and there. It’s worth a few playthroughs at least and I think it’s definitely worth the cost but the game has as much enjoyment as effort you put into it. It’s all about creating a character and thinking of what they would do and why. As soon as it gets reduced to stats and that sort of dominant strategy it loses its luster. It’s also super fun the more friends that join in.

Next Week: Game Dev Tycoon.