Switch • Don’t Die, Mr. Robot! DX is the second game on the Switch in as many months from Infinite State Games, following the excellent Rogue Aces in April. And, like Rogue Aces, DD,MR!DX (Yes, I will be abbreviating the title.) is a fantastic pick up and play arcade game that is well worth a spot on your Switch.
iPad, Android tablets, PC/Mac/Linux • Last Thursday I stopped by Steam several times to see if Handelabra‘s port of One Deck Dungeon was live. One of these trips — for no good reason — I scrolled down to read current Steam reviews. Negative reviews weren’t hard to spot, all complaining that this game uses too much “RNG” which is, apparently, a cool thing all the kids are saying. It means random number generation and if you’re complaining about randomness in a game that has you chucking literal handfuls of dice each turn then maybe you’re playing the wrong game. One Deck Dungeon is nothing but randomly generated numbers and, if you’re into that kind of game –other ports I can think of are Elder Sign and Roll for It! — then you’re in for a treat.
PC • As the axe fell on the RTS after the turn of the century, and we all realised that the late Nineties RTS arms race had an unfavourable signal-to-noise ratio (sideward glance to this current battle royale malarkey), a name rang out in the wilderness. Spieleentwicklungskombinat. But if a dinosaur roars and nobody hears it, is it really there? Behold, the enigmatic ParaWorld.
PC • I’ve been having quite the ball with Aartform Games‘ rather intoxicating conglomerate of colony sim, squad manager and, heck, off world King of Dragon Pass. Very much one of those games where efficiently nutshelling is beyond my capacity for brevity. Fiction-heavy, tactics-light and rather good. Do you want to read on (+1 to author morale) or redirect browser to Reddit? (-50% chance for a good time)
Tabletop • I’ve been pondering whether or not to review Journal 29 from the moment I cracked its first truly difficult puzzle. You see, it’s not the usual fare here at Stately Play, and I wasn’t sure if our readers wanted to live the dread of English teachers everywhere, having to read a poorly written book report. Yes, a book report. You see, Journal 29 is an actual book made out of dead trees without a battery to recharge or screen to tap. It’s like the 80’s, with the exception that I’m not listening to Spandau Ballet [for the record, Dave is totally still listening to Spandau Ballet -ed.].
PC • At the intersection of Hornblower-Tolkien cosplay, you find Maelstrom. It’s an enticing clash of high-fantasy and fighting sail, and is exactly the twist a certain type of popular multiplayer game needs right now. Behold, Battleship Royale.
PS4, PS Vita, Switch • Biggles Defends The Arcade – by Captain W.E. Johns and Infinite State Games. If you’re rocking one of those Switchy things, or a PS4, or the Mark Hensby of Sony handhelds, you’re in for a treat. Especially if the Brewster Buffalo appeals. Rogue Aces has landed.
PC • Nothing turns the alternator of mid-life assessment more than realising you’re no longer at the top of your game-game. Nerves withering like sun-dried kelp. Reaction time raising smirks and eyebrows in the Galapagos paddock. The abyss, it looms. But then along comes the invigorating cordite suppository known as SYNTHETIK. Sometimes, you just need a little help to feel the old magic.
Trespasser: Jurassic Park is such an outrageously fantastic game. It’s as much a primeval, primordial walking sim as it is a survival-lite FPS, served on a revolutionary bed of fully-realised physics. It has wonderful environmental story-telling; audiologs and internal monologues that don’t strain atmosphere. It offers a natural sense of physicality. Hell, it did the two-weapon limit before Halo. Trespasser: Jurassic Park is also a broken, under-baked mess. Twenty years on, there hasn’t really been a game quite like Trespasser. There have been games better than it in some of its aspirations, but DreamWorks Interactive’s ungainly opus is more than the sum of its oft-busted parts. What follows is a record of certain events in which I took part between the years 1980 and 1997, on an island I will call Site B – Hammond
PC, Xbox, Playstation, Switch • Witching Hour Studios‘ Masquerada: Songs and Shadows had been sitting near the top of my Steam wishlist for about a year when I got around to it. You may know Witching Hour for their mobile and PC TBS Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion, and if you don’t you should. Almost everything about the game intrigued me: the hand-drawn isometric art style, the highly developed and original fantasy setting, a plot that sounded like it just might actually explore tensions between the rich and poor with some subtlety, and the promise of tactical combat modeled on fencing.