nlinePlanets Align
My gaming desires
The past day or so, I’ve had 3 games I’ve been waiting on for years turn up.
Not to mention my Citizen Sleeper design works book and tarot card solo TTRPG narrative game turn up.
It’s been a bit overwhelming.
Citizen Sleeper
Citizen Sleeper 2 gives you a slight discount if you bought the first game. So I bagged it for £17.99. It didn’t come onto the store til late today.
I didn’t finish Citizen Sleeper the original, there are so many story arcs and I got about half way through, but was distracted by something else… and meant to get back to it, before CS2 and here we are. I played some of CS the other night, and I can just read its story like a book, like a branching, adventure book from the 80’s. The prose is so dense and well written I kind of feel it needs to be turned into an audiobook. It’s high sci-fi cyberpunk dystopian clone robotic future of indentured servitude - with data network hacking and dismembering spaceship parts for quick bucks, harvested mushroom meals and stims to keep your sleeper frame alive..
It’s a work of art, with prosaic story and thematic artwork,without a single ray trace reflection needed. Decision based, objectives that require deliberation and moral guidance. I can’t evangelise over it enough. This is a game that is tattoo worthy.
Wake Up Sleeper!
Defenders Quest 2
DQ2 is an RPG/Tower Defense(TD) hybrid that refines the first games fantasy essence into a more beliveable settings, despite its dystopia. The same elements come together, in building your party to combat the waves of enemies ahead, along with synergies between characters and their interacting skill trees.
Development of the game has been fraught with troubles especially personal for the main developer Lars Doucet. Tragedy striking his family and having to shift focus personally.
Defenders Quest 2 is finally out
I am SO encouraged that factors were put in place to get this title out to the gaming public. If you’re a TD devotee and you have a prediliction for RPG’s then this truly is worth your time and effort.
Defenders Quest 2: Mists of Ruin on Steam
Heart of the Machine
Lastly, Arcen has finally pushed out their Heart of the Machine game, in early access, which blends a lot of genres such as 4X, RPG and turn based decision making. You’re a sentient AI in a cyberpunk city and you pursue your goals whether hostile, ambivalent or supportive to humanity. The complexity available to your choice algorithms is unlimited.
Somehow the planets have aligned when all my aspirational games have arrived at once. It’s going to take me a while to parse through them and assess their worthiness… but even though the world is spiralling into dystopian climate catastrophe, my gaming dreams have become reality all at once.. so temporatily things are looking up, if I can devote enough time to them all at the same time.