Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a
look at the rouge-lite puzzle action game, Subaeria, developed by studio Illogika, primarily a mobile developer this will be their first original PC
title. In a somewhat near future, post-apocalyptic
setting where the world as we know it has completely flooded, you play a young
girl called Styx who has recently become bankrupt or credless as it’s called in
the game after taking out numerous loans from the big two companies of the
world, Soma and Amos, to feed her virtual reality addiction. Unfortunately in
Subaeria your bank account determines which areas of the underwater labyrinth
you are allowed to enter and entering a restricted zone can end poorly.
In every zone of Subaeria, robots
controlled by Soma and Amos known as cleaners patrol the area for any citizens
found where they shouldn’t be. If any are found, they will be met with deadly
force as the cleaners will aim only to kill with their sawblades, laser rifles,
missiles and other weaponry. While these Cleaners are deadly killing machines,
they also come with one major flaw in that if a cleaner controlled by the Soma Company
comes into contact with the Amos company cleaners they will destroy themselves.
A pretty big flaw considering that both companies’ cleaners patrol the same
areas and are conveniently colour coded for you to take full advantage of. There
are outlier Cleaners with no company association though that you will have to
be aware of. To be able to move freely through zones and areas you will have to
clear out each room by tricking these robots into colliding with each other or
with other elements like laser walls or explosive barrels. There are multiple
puzzle elements to help you eliminate the Cleaners like pressure plates that
change the colour of laser walls, motherboards that need to be activated and
more. You won’t be able to leave a room until there is only one Cleaner left at
which point it will shut down and open the doors for you to proceed on your
journey. Every zone is procedurally generated with the key areas being shuffled
around requiring you to do a little bit of exploring to get where you need to
be, plus each new run will spawn different programs and sniffs to use providing
a somewhat unique experience with each new run.
Using the collision method of eliminating
the cleaners is really the only way to do it as you have no weapons that can
deal with them directly. However you do have a little droid that follows you
around and is capable of loading up 2 programs that can help you out including
things like changing a Cleaners company owner, Placing a decoy to attract
Cleaners away from your position and a healing program. Many of these programs
will require your drone to get up close and personal with the target and it can
only go about an arm’s length distance away from you so you do have to play the
risk and reward game when attempting to use one of these programs. The programs
also work off of a charge system that when depleted will render that program
useless and drop it from your droids ability list. Programs aren’t too rare
though with you easily finding a new one by the time you have depleted the
equipped ones charges. There are also passive upgrades for your character
called sniffs that can be found around Subaeria just like programs can. These
sniffs give bonuses like reduced damage from lasers and a distance increase
that your droid can travel away from you. Both programs and sniffs while being
obtainable for free out in the world can also be purchased with creds that you
can find randomly around the world or by destroying Cleaners however they can
be a bit pricey.
As you travel through the different zones
of Subaeria you’ll meet other people with their own little story’s and snippets
of information about the world. To expand upon that there are also text logs
that can be found around the world or just sent to your droid that can contain
important story elements as well as some other information like emails from Soma
and Amos about your financial status. The main overarching story to the world
has the people of Subaeria separated into certain zones depending on their
financial standing, the zones borders being patrolled by homicidal machines
called Cleaners. Most of the poor people are addicted to an extremely popular
virtual reality game called The Eden Experience that simulates Subaeria and its
people, something that you later find to be more then it seems.
Other features of the game include multiple
endings for each character with 5 endings currently in the game for Styx. There
will be a total of 4 characters in the game at release ranging from the poorest
in Subaeria to those in power.
Altogether Subaeria provides a really cool
world and setting to explore with puzzles that will require you to think and
act extremely quickly. Hearing one of the steel blades activate puts you into
an instant panic especially as they somewhat camouflage into the background and
suddenly appear. The puzzle variation is a little limited at the moment but
that should fix itself overtime as the game is in early access. With the
addition of the other 3 characters Subaeria will have a ton of replay ability
especially if you aim to unlock every characters multiple endings. If you like
puzzle games that aren’t exactly hard to solve but require you to act quickly
and you enjoy the 1 game 1 life gameplay of Rouge-lites then Subaeria is
defiantly worth a look.
Anyway,
that’s been my player preview for Subaeria. The game will be officially releasing
sometime in 2016 but is currently available on Early Access for $13 or your
regional equivalent. If you want to find out more about the game check out the
links below. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you guys next time.
Hey what’s up, Serpentine here taking a
look at the turn based strategy game, Blood Bowl 2, developed by Cyanide
Studios, the same guys behind Styx: Master of Shadows and Aarklash Legacy.
Blood Bowl 2 has you managing and playing as your very own Blood Bowl team, Blood Bowl being like gridiron or American football but just a little bit
rougher and set in the Warhammer universe.
The game plays player by player for one
team and then switching over to the other team. Everything you do in Blood Bowl
is tied to a dice roll weather you’re blocking an opponent, performing a throw or
even just trying to pick up the ball which for some teams can actually be surprisingly
hard to do. Most teams are made up of 3 different types of players with their
own specific uses. You have your frontline that are your strongest players
aimed at preventing any of the opposition players from breaking through to your
ball carrier while attacking or to break through your enemies frontline to get
to their ball carrier while defending. Blitzers that are aimed towards
supporting other players due to their high mobility and finally backline
players that are great at using the ball and scoring but are extremely fragile
and need to be protected.
For most of the game you will be attempting
blocks on opponents, an aggressive action that can have 5 different results. On
the low end you can push an opponent backwards, selecting 1 of the three
possible locations for them to end up which is important when trying to clear a
pathway for your ball carriers to get through unscathed. Then you have the 2
different successful tackles were your opponent will be downed, these two
tackles work very much the same however there are player traits that can dodge
the push tackle. Finally there are the failed tackles, the sides of the die you
never really want to get. For both down your tackle will be successful against
your opponent however in the process of the tackle you will also be downed. The
worst result you can get though is attacker down. Your tackle will fail on the
opponent and instead they will knock you down. Failing a block will result in a
turnover so it’s best to leave 1 die blocks till last and get all your movement
and double die blocks out of the way first.
Having one of your players knocked down is
bad for multiple reasons, the worst being that you have to roll on that players
Armour Value to see if they receive an injury. If you fail the best outcome is
to be stunned, the player will remain on the field but be unable to make an
action for one turn. Being knocked out the player will be removed from the
field but can make it back after a touchdown or halftime if they roll
successfully on a 50% chance roll. Getting an actual injury starts off by
having a player missing a game but can have players stats decrease or be out
for multiple games and of course then there is the absolute failure state where
the player can actually die which can be devastating if you have levelled up
the player multiple times. You can purchase an Apothecary outside of the game
that basically acts as a reroll on any injury a player may receive, you can
only ever have 1 of these so it’s best to save it for the major stuff like
deaths or stat decreases. If there are no injuries, knock outs or deaths then
you just have the downside of the player having to spend some of its movement
getting back up while it also counts as an action so you won’t be able to block
with that player unless you blitz for a second action. Each turn you will only
be able to blitz one player allowing them to move and block rather than just
one or the other. Removing a player from play on your opponent’s side is a
massive advantage especially if they have no players in reserve as now you have
a numbers advantage. While you can perform blocks in the hope of knocking out a
player or injuring them you can also push them off the field and into the crowd
to remove them from play. This also has the same chance of injury as being
knocked down.
Every player on the field has stats in four
different categories that will help or hinder them in certain actions. These 4
categories consist of Movement Action, representing how many tiles on the field
you are able to move in one turn. Strength, the number used in any blocks a
player is involved in. Agility, used for dodging out of enemy players tackle
zones and finally armour value that is used to determine if a player is injured
when knocked down. It is possible to increase these stats during a level up however
you will need to roll extremely high. To level up a player they must gain star
player points by performing certain actions during a game including touchdowns,
knock outs, injuring a player or performing skill based actions like passes.
Once they reach the level up requirement you roll two die to determine whether
or not you get an additional skill or statistic. Most of the time you will only
be able to unlock another skill for your player in their specialisation like
strength, agility and passing. Skills are an extremely important part of the
game and can give your players significant bonuses like a re-roll on a failed
dodge roll or if you roll a both down during a block you can get a skill that
negates the knock down effect on your player. Reading through all of these
skills and picking the right one is extremely important as players don’t level
up all that fast especially some of the more specialized players that require
up to 5 times the Star Player Points as normal players to level up.
Being a sequel let’s take a look at what’s
new in the game. A campaign mode has been introduced that will have you leading
the human Reikland Reavers team from the ground up to potential champions. The
mode starts off as a tutorial to the game so any newcomers may want to start
there as jumping straight into a multiplayer game may be a little overwhelming
if you don’t understand the mechanics. Later on though the mode will start
adding scripted events that are only available in the campaign mode like the referee
taking out your players because he has a grudge against your team or one of the
commentators joining your team for a game. The commentators also play a bigger
part in blood bowl 2 delivering most of your team’s backstory and sideline
drama between and during games in a comedic fashion that some will love but
others may find it a bit corny. Stadium Customization is now a thing with 5
unique stadiums that can obtain upto 10 possible addons and will be used when
playing at your home stadium. A player Marketplace has been added for online
play where you can sell and buy players to create better teams however this
feature doesn’t seem to be fully implemented yet. Lastly there is the
cabalvision or replay feature that saves replays of your games that you can go
back to and watch if you ever want or you can also watch current top tier games
live.
Online play is definitely where BloodBowl 2
excels, however it’s not your typical matchmaking system. You will have to register
your team as part of a league and then register that team as part of a
competition within that league. Open ladders act as your main play anytime
matchmaking ques but it’s the actual tournament structured competitions that
will have you playing simulated rounds each week against smaller groups of
players. Unfortunately you do have to go looking for these types of
competitions and it’s not easy to find one that is currently taking new teams,
something that could be improved by showcasing new competitions on the league
front page. The official Blood Bowl league also seems to be the only league
that offers Cyans after every game, the in game currency. Currently there is no
use for these Cyans but customizable items for your team are planned to be
purchasable with these later this year as well as being obtainable as rare
random drops after a game.
Due to the aggressive nature of the game I
do feel that some of the physically stronger teams like the Orcs or Chaos have
somewhat of an advantage in getting players levelled up and just winning games
by eliminating as many of the opponents players as possible. The more fragile
skilled based teams like the High Elves and dark elves can perform some really
great plays but there will almost always be a bunch of injuries during a game
that will eventually cripple the team in the long run. Playing one of these
more fragile skill based teams will require a lot of strategy and luck to be
successful. It’s extremely obvious as well when you take a look at the top
teams in any of the ladders usually consisting of Chaos, Dwarven and Lizardmen teams
in the top rankings. Unfortunately due to this players will concede games if
they are up against certain races so as not to lose any of their important
players. Doing this though does have some negatives including that you don’t earn
any star player points for your players to be able to level up, while the game
still counts towards your players aging which will eventually lead to them
gaining age injuries and eventually retiring.
Outside of the main game you can purchase
staff members for your team for added benefits, re-rolls being arguably the
most important allowing you to re-roll a failed roll or block. The apothecary
is on equal footing when it comes to importance especially later on when you
have skilled players as it allows you to reroll injuries and deaths, you’re
only allowed to have one of these so use it wisely. The next few staff members
will help you on the random kick-off events, increasing your chances at good
events for you through cheerleaders, assistant coaches and team fans. Right
before you go into a match you will also be given the opportunity to buy other
bonuses like another apothecary if you are playing against a strong team, a
star player if you have the spare cash to purchase one for the game and a
wizard spell which out of all the available purchasable bonuses can be
extremely powerful, able to knockdown large groups of players in one shot
leaving many injured if a 50% chance roll is successful. The wizard spell, more
specifically the fireball spell is the only bonus that probably shouldn’t be in
the game due to how powerful it is however it is quite expensive to purchase
and it does only work half of the time.
Other features of the game include a bunch
of statistics regarding your overall performance as well as team specific
statistics so you can find what your team is lacking and try to improve it via
skill selection on player level-ups or just changing your play style. I would
like to see player specific statistics as well though to keep track of certain
player careers. If you want to play some friendly matches either against your
friends online or locally you can, for online play you will have to have the
person on your steam friends list.
Altogether Blood Bowl 2 brings fantasy and
football together quite nicely having you sitting on the edge of your seat for
every block and roll. You can become incredibly invested in your players and
team with each match adding to their own unique narrative and if they get
injured or die, it can be devastating. The almost complete randomness of the
game may not be to everyone’s liking but the randomness can create amazing
moments in the game. To get the most out of the game you will have to go
looking for a good, consistent league that runs competitions in your time zone
or get together with a bunch of friends and create your own league
competitions. If you enjoy turn based strategy and the competitive nature of
American Football or any sports in general then Blood Bowl 2 is definitely worth
a look. If you’re sitting on the fence maybe wait for the patch due for the end
of this year as some more features will be added to the game that may sway you
on whether or not to get it.
Anyway,
that’s been my player preview for Blood Bowl 2. The game officially released on
the 22nd of September on PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One and is available
on steam for $45 or your regional equivalent. If you want to find out more
about the game check out the links below. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you
guys next time.
