The BIG Award!

Well it’s nearly the end of the year, and no gaming blog would be complete without a set of awards to give out. So without further ado, the Best Indie Game award!

This year I’ve found myself playing more indie titles than ever before. Part in thanks to Kickstarter giving a new funding source to budding developers, and part to the greater recognition indie titles are receiving in the mainstream gaming media. It wasn’t an easy decision as I’ve enjoyed all three games in this list, sinking may hours into them all. The runners up are:

Endless Space! Amplitude studious set themselves the lofty goal of making the best strategy games and Endless Space was an impressive first release. They took the strategy 4x sub-genre and axed the complexity leaving a highly streamlined game. A brave move when these games are defined by having an instruction book longer than a short novel.

The end result was a stylistic sci-fi world which you could dip into briefly and get a lot of enjoyment. Ship design and combat is too simplistic which is the game’s only negative point. But some nuance is added by the tactics system. Correctly predict your opponent’s strategy and pick the counter move gives you a powerful advantage. Enough to overturn a tech advantage, which allows players to explore different avenues within the tech tree, without having to keep a constant focus on war. Since its launch, Endless Space has had some free bonus content added, including the option to create your own space fairing race. Tailoring a faction to your preferences is good fun, but there are some combinations which are a bit unbalanced.

The second runner up is Legend of Grimrock! This game revived a genre that had been dormant for many years. And I’m glad it did as it introduced me Dungeon Crawlers, a category of games I would have completely missed out on otherwise.

Adventuring through the depths of Grimrock with your rag-tag bunch of four criminals is both tense and satisfying. Puzzles are everywhere and they’ll test you. There are many that you have to solve to progress and even more that are hidden, guarding the game’s greatest treasures. The game is well thought out as out of the hundred or so puzzles, I found only a few that completely confused me. The vast majority follow good logic, so with a bit of patience, you should not find your progress impeded at any point.

Combat was surprisingly tense throughout the game. Screenshots don’t really do the game any justice, as they can’t explain the feel of the grid based system. Moving around is simple with a few direction keys, leaving the mouse free to active your fighting abilities on your character portraits. You often hear enemies before they reach you, building the suspense as some horror stumbles out of the darkness. When the enemy is in sight, you engage in a ballroom dance of death. Gliding around the tiles, trying to land attacks on your foe before neatly side-stepping away.

The story is the driving force of the game, leading you deeper into the depths of the mountain with the promise of freedom for staying alive. How long the game takes to complete depends on how many of the secrets you try to find. It should give most people a good ten to fifteen hours for their first play-through. Unfortunately there is only one dungeon created by the developers to explore. There is now a dungeon editor, so the game content possibilities are endless, but the quality may well not be the same as the main game.

So who is the winner of the first BIG award!?

It’s Faster Than Light! This stylish rogue-like has really captured my attention this year, and kicked my arse whilst doing so. You play the part of a Federation scout ship on a mission to deliver critical information on the Rebel fleet. Your journey takes you through varied and random systems as you try and escape the pursuing Rebels.

Each time you jump to the next system you encounter new hazards: derelict ships, asteroid fields, nebulae and pirates. If you survive the perils of space, you salvage parts to improve your own chances. Upgrades for your ship include new crew members and more powerful weapons. The further you progress, the higher the stakes become. You’ll need to develop clever strategies in order to take down ships that are much larger than yourself.

FTL’s presentation is a fantastic combination of excellent two-dimensional sprites and animations. You quickly forget that your ship is static in the centre of the screen. When combat starts, missiles and laser fire starts flying. You have to manage your weapon systems to do the maximum damage to the enemy whilst putting out fires and patching up holes in the hull. The whole game is accompanied by an excellent sound track that captures both the emptiness of space and the franticness of combat.

With plenty of achievements and ships to unlock, FTL has an excellent amount of replay-ability. Combined with its price point, FTL is excellent value for money, and this makes it the winner of the first BIG award! 

Endlessly Enthralling: Endless Space

Endless Space is the recently released 4X title developed by Amplitude Studios. Their first game since the company was founded in April 2011. They set themselves the challenge of developing the best strategy games, and Endless Space is an excellent start.

The format is very traditional. Pick one of eight races to conquer the galaxy through military power, scientific discovery, diplomacy or economic dominance. Each race has a unique design for its ships, but the real differences come from the traits. The Amobea can see the entire galaxy map and are master diplomats. The Sophons are great scientists and the Cravers build large navies, stripping the worlds they own for bonus resources. If none of the default choices take your fancy, there’s an excellent customisation option allowing you to tailor a faction to your liking.

What really sets the game apart from its peers is the focus on simplicity. The genre is defined by complex titles, allowing players to micromanage empires down to the minute details. But here, everything is kept at a high level. There are only four resources in the game: food, industry, dust (money) and science. The UI provides clear information on the production of your systems, allowing you to easily shape worlds to needs of your empire. The happiness of your citizens acts as a fifth resource. High taxes and barely inhabitable worlds will lead to strikes and shrinking populations. So remember to research technologies like Infinite Supermarkets to keep your peons happy and industrious.

Fleet battles also take a minimalistic approach. For the most part, the player sits back and watches as the ships close, unleashing their broadsides. Clashes take part in three phases. Each phase allows you to pick from a number of tactic cards to determine your strategy. Do you unleash a full broadside, repair damage or flee from the fight? Every tactic can counter another. Predicting your opponent’s moves correctly gives a powerful bonus. This can be enough to overcome a slightly more powerful fleet.

The weapon systems and ship classes you have researched have the biggest impact. Ballistics, lasers and missiles all have different mechanics and each is countered by a different defence. Clashes can often be as one sided as rock- paper- scissors if you focus too heavily in a single weapons technology. This leads to some great tactical situations, battles can swing back and forth based on your choices.

Heroes can also be the difference between victory and defeat. Each has two specialities which can be developed to improve a systems’ production, or bring clever tactics and bonuses to battle as an admiral of a fleet. You’re limited to three to begin with, but research allows for more as long as you can pay the bills.

The camera does a great job of following the action, as colourful laser exchanges and ship explosions contrast against the darkness of space. It does sometimes focus on the wrong areas, but a free camera mode is provided. Simply hit the button to enable the feature, and then manoeuvre using the arrow keys to follow the fighting.

Simplicity is also the game’s one weakness. The tech-tree has four branches, each representing different fields: science, warfare, colonisation and diplomacy/economics.  But since it’s all unlocked by science, it dominates the game. The other resources should help contribute to particular research fields, counter-balancing the problem that if you ignore science, you fall behind in production and have inferior ships when war breaks out.

And war is inevitable. Holding out for economic or scientific victory can only be done with military supremacy. So why not take the rest of the galaxy if you have that advantage? Diplomacy and co-operation between human players is the only counter, working together to overhaul another’s lead.

But of course, finding several people with the spare time for a game isn’t always a possibility. The AI is capable of putting up a good fight on norm al difficulty. The diplomacy of the AI isn’t particularly nuanced. But they are smart enough to make deals to their benefit, and try to appease warmongers. They do have an odd liking to lots of small strike fleets, which would give them a lot of tactical flexibility. But instead they like to throw all their might against your navies in waves, allowing you to swat away their advances like pesky flies. You'll get tired of pressing the auto-resolve button very quickly.

Overall Endless Space is an incredibly accessible game for the genre. Its simplicity is a real strength and its sole flaw. The aesthetic design is fantastic; all the races look distinct in battle. The use of colour in the UI is well done, giving consistency to the multitude of icons. And the music perfectly captures the optimism of space exploration. It leaves me looking forward to Amplitude Studious’ next title.