I felt like Episode 1 of The Walking Dead was better than okay, but not by much. The storyline was good, but the gameplay seemed to flounder a bit, not sure where it wanted to concentrate. Episode 2 honed the story down to a razor's edge of awesome, and the gameplay was tightened up to serve the game's quiet moments as well as its pulse-pounding action ones. I'm happy to report that Episode 3 doesn't regress at all.
I sometimes ask myself, "Do I like adventure games for what they are, or do I just like the idea of them?" My Steam library is full of them. The Dig, Indiana Jones, Loom, Machinarium, The Secret of Monkey Island, Sam & Max (lots of Sam & Max), Time Gentlemen, Please! -- I have quite a backlog. Of these games, I've played only a quarter of them to some degree of completion.
Dungeons, by definition, are not nice places. They're usually dank and deep. They are equipped with chains and racks and iron maidens -- implements that, generally speaking, are not designed to bring pleasure. The dungeon is a place of imprisonment. When you do something wrong, you're placed in one as punishment. You'd think that, considering the dark nature of the dungeon, people would be less inclined to visit them.
It's a beautiful day out. You're having a nice trip to the zoo. Hey, look over there, a giraffe! You saunter over to get a closer look, and-- is that dynamite in its mouth!? Quick, use the syringe! There is no syringe, silly. You're on top of a train, and you've got to put out a cabin fire. By peeing on it. No, you're not on a hallucinogenic trip. Even better: you're playing McPixel.
Inbetween Land is one of those games that will either draw players in or lose them entirely based on its story alone. It places you in the role of an average woman, sent to a floating island in the sky where she's challenged to save her comatose best friend, whose sprit is inexplicably floating around. Still with me? Moving on: crystals are hidden behind locked doors, magical panels or within crypts, and colorful alien ghosts will guide you through the collection of these shards to eventually save the day…and send the floating island…back…to space?
You can't trust robots. Of course that little Roomba looks innocent, but if it had eyes they'd be red and full of disdain, rage, and vengeance. This neverending conflict of man vs. machine is exemplified in a side-scrolling card game aptly titled The Trouble with Robots. The difference in this indie title's story is that the robots are invaders of a world populated by humans, trolls, elves, and dwarves. That's not the point, though. The point is, robots are not to be trusted.
Tower Wars manages to capture a particular essence of tower defence games that others in the genre so often fail to achieve - glorious, hectic panic. There's never a moment in this game, even from the initial whistle blow, in which you're not scrambling around trying to send off more troops, upgrade some towers, or hire more people for your mines.And here's the rub; the thing that makes Tower Wars really work: you're doing all of this against fellow humans.
The last time we saw Princess Sophia, our heroine had traveled to the Goblin Kingdom via the Awakening installment of the same name, continuing in her dangerous search for her people. After helping the Goblin people reunite with their true king, Sophia was left to make her way to the Skyward Castle, where humans ultimately fled. In this fourth installment in the series, Awakening: The Skyward Castle, we'll finally come face to face with the humans Sophia has so desperately longed to find, and will head into battle against menacing shadows that wish to stop Sophia in her tracks.