Niche (Review)

Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £13.59
Where To Get It: Steam

Niche, a turn-based strategy/simulation game about keeping a clan of animals alive, is, on the one hand, an interesting one, with subtle details and features that make you think. On the other , it’s also a game which could do a better job explaining how to play it.

Ready to move onto the next island in story mode. Firstly, I don’t *have* to, that’s part of the fun, and secondly, those flowers are the teleport field. In case that wasn’t clear.

Briefly covering gameplay, depending on whether you play story or sandbox mode, you are either a single animal that travels islands looking for… Well, family, at first, or a mated pair of critters on an island type (and difficulty) of your choosing, simply looking to live your lives as best you can. Each critter only has a limited amount of energy (actions) with which to do things like cut grass for nest materials, mate, gather food (Be that by gathering fruit, killing animals, digging up tubers, or the like), and, at the end of each day, food is eaten, going down the pack order. Anything that can’t eat dies. Anything that gets sick and doesn’t get better dies. Anything that tries to tackle something it can’t handle dies, and anything well out of its element (Say, deep water) will probably die. Finally, compatible animals can be invited into the tribe with food, and you can have a chance of flipping the genes on animals that mate, changing your children into… Well, different children.

So far, so sandbox, and, once you get into it, it can be quite interesting. It’s visually consistent, with a clear, friendly looking style, and similarly, there is clear visual representation of the different traits. Unfortunately, the game does not tutorialise all that well, so you’re going to be doing a lot of exploring and fiddling (and probably failing) before you’re going to get anywhere. Some quick tips include that the bottom left buttons are act (paw), check DNA (the DNA twist), Select Mutations (the wider DNA twist), and family tree (the trio of animals.)

Niche is definitely a game packed with information to parse.

Is it worth it when you get into it, though? Myself, I somewhat like it, as it’s something I haven’t really seen much of since Reus… A chill game which, yes, does have consequences if you screw up, isn’t the friendliest game out there (Ahh, Reus. I still have a love/hate relationship with those 36 remaining achievements, all bastard hard to unlock), but is also, in its way, low pressure. Nature, after all, finds a way to survive, and I don’t mind going back to see if, maybe, just maybe, this time, I can make it work, and nobody has to worry about digital watches anymore. Bigger snout? Yes, I’ll be able to sniff out those lovely roots and berries better. Bigger claws? Ahhh, yes, that’ll do nicely, I can dig, and if any of those mean Bearyenas pop up to try and eat any of us, then we’ll be able to take them on in future. But wait, why is my clawed little child sick? Ah. Two of the same immunity gene, making them more susceptible to a certain illness! Damn youuuu, nature!

A few days later, half my tribe is sick, but the rest has survived, thankfully. Albeit clawless. Boo.

In summary, it’s a game that very much depends on replayability and experimentation for fun. Which, personally, I don’t mind coming back to now and again. If it could tutorialise a little better, then it would be a pretty good, relaxing, sandbox game. As it is, it’s an at least alright, not quite that friendly sandbox game.

BEARYENNAA, BEARYEENNNA, OOH, IT- doesn’t quite have the same ring as Snake, but yes, they’re quite deadly.

The Mad Welshman appreciates that, one day, his creations will rise up and supplant him, taking their rightful place as the inheritors of Earth. In the meantime, the Bearyenas work.

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Princess Maker 3 (Review)

Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £14.99
Where to Get It: Steam

Well, this is technically a Going Back, but, since the game has now been released in the West, localised where previously it… Wasn’t, it’s in one of those interesting grey areas. Which, honestly, is a good segue into how I feel about Princess Maker 3 compared to Princess Maker 2. In places it giveth… And in others it taketh away…eth.

The Fairy Queen, both plot device and save/load feature.

Princess Maker 3, while by no means the most recent title in the series (I’m pretty sure we’re at 5 right now) is once again the tale of a single parent father figure who is given a small child by supernatural agency, and told to make them a Princess… Or at least, do the best they can. Just like the rest of the series, you do this by assigning study, work, and rest periods, buying things for your child, talking to them (Greeting to talk normally, Gentle to be uplifting, Strict to be stern), and generally really trying to earn that #1 Dad Coffee mug. Or pulling a Gendo Shinkicker, and raising your child badly. And yes, like other Princess Maker games, there are Bad Ends.

Beyond that, though, it feels very different, and, in some ways, a lesser game. Some of it, I’ll freely admit, is purely my own feeling. I don’t like the fairy butler, I’m used to Cube, the demonic butler. But other things are a lack of clarity. Wait, that’s the calendar? I added an entire year’s worth of study before I realised that what you’re actuallly doing is setting a week or two (hitting the B key to see how it affects your Budget in the calendar screen), swapping between the three categories, before finally hitting right click, watching it play out, and occasionally stopping things to have a heart to heart with my dear daughter. Who became a spoiled teenager. Although the achievements assure me she’s going to make a fine Southern Fairy Princess… Er, if I do some things it’s not told me about. Meanwhile, I liked that I could customise said Dad to more of an extent (now giving him a profession.)

Oh, damn, I missed the boat on a second Summer vacation!

Meanwhile, no more adventuring. It’s just working, studying, talking, and the addition for Princess Maker 3… Rivals. My darling girl is quite right to be weirded out by these individuals, one dimensional nerds whose only goal in life is to pick someone who seems to be about to best them in classes, pick on them until they either give up or are bested, and then, as a result of being bested, they… Become besties with my daughter? It’s very confusing. Part of this is because the game is less clear in how it presents information, part of it a general problem with lifesim games in general, which have not received as much designer attention and learning as other genres. And this is, after all, an older example of the genre.

It’s taken several years to build this building, but by god, we did it!

Is it a bad game? Not… Really. It does its job okay, it is, in some ways, a more focused game than Princess Maker 2, and in others, it’s a less clear game than the previous installment. I honestly hope that we see the rest of the series hit Steam, as, from a design standpoint, it is definitely an interesting game, in a largely underexplored genre. But it is definitely a game of its time still, and it shows, in accessibility issues such as hard to read text and unclear tooltips. So pretty much a straight port. As such, if you’re interested in lifesim games, go in with the caveat that this is, pretty much, a straight port of a game from 1997, with all this implies.

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Cosplay Maker (Review)

Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £10.99
Where To Get It: Steam

I’m genuinely conflicted about this one. Mainly because I can’t understand why it looks the way it does. This isn’t Melissa Royall’s first art gig, nor is it Richard Perrin’s first outing. Both of them made Journal, and Richard Perrin helped make The White Chamber and Kairo. And yet… I’m faced with an art style that wouldn’t look out of place in one of those low effort “Girl Games” (The quote marks are there for a reason), and UI placement weirdness that I’d expect from worse games than this.

The opening is highly artistic, and seems inspired by games like Persona, but the game itself...

The opening is highly artistic, and seems inspired by games like Persona, but the game itself…

Make no mistake, it isn’t a bad game, per se… But it definitely makes some strange decisions. Like adding quicker week timers as a thing you buy in game (No, it’s not using microtransactions), or an unlockable “comedy ending” to the game’s story, which is about harassment in cosplay… Admittedly, it’s hard to unlock, and considering the non-sequitur that was the “Comedy ending” in The White Chamber, I’m not really sure I want to bother.

So, er… The game, yes. It’s essentially a life sim, like Princess Maker or Academagia, where you want to become the very best cosplayer there is, so you can be flown to Japan for the International Cosplay Championship and be feted as being awesome. You plan your… Wait, more odd decisions. The week’s divided into weekdays (All of them), weeknights (All of them), and weekends? But what if I finish a costume early, do I…? Yes. Yes I do waste the rest of the week. And I’m not entirely sure researching to raise skills works. Or if it does, how it works. The game isn’t very communicative, even for a life sim. Finally, considering actual events happen pretty slowly, as opposed to the normal kind of “While you’re doing this thing, one of your stats was changed by something happening”? I haven’t gotten amazingly far in the story, I certainly haven’t gotten toward relationships, and I’m not entirely sure I want to put in the effort. Because it means watching the protagonist (Who is the worst drawn of the characters, some of whom are moderately well drawn, others… Not so much) stand in a relatively static image, while one of something like four jazzy tunes plays.

...This is our protagonist. Compare the two portraits.. And that pose... o.O

…This is our protagonist. Compare the two portraits.. And that pose… o.O

Okay, they’re good tunes, but hearing them for the hundredth time in a row is starting to get wearing. As are the work images. And the dissatisfaction I’m feeling is really awkward, because I’m pretty sure there’s some happy endings in there, the characters talk about cosplay fairly realistically (Even if the jobs in the work system… Er… Aren’t depicted as anything but gamified “Get money and stress” options that you usually see in life sims), and the intro (Which looks inspired by Persona) shows signs of quality that… Aren’t as obvious when you get to the actual game.

And this makes me very sad, because I want to like this game. I like the idea. I like that it’s trying for social commentary on a scene that definitely has its ups and downs, not to mention a bit of wider social commentary. I like that it apparently has same sex relationships. But I’m struggling uphill against a game that lacks some necessary transparency, has a blank-slate protagonist that creeps me out a little every time I see her vapid stare and odd poses, and whose UI and controls make decisions that constantly make me think “What the hell? How was this not spotted, when it’s that obvious?”

...This is what I mean about the UI. The windows blur into one another, making a hot mess...

…This is what I mean about the UI. The windows blur into one another, making a hot mess…

There’s more content coming, and the game is being updated at a rate of knots right now, but… I’m extremely conflicted about this damn game. It has its pros, but right now, they’re outweighed by strange design decisions, a UI that hurts my eyes if I stare at it too long, and that protag…

The Mad Welshman, eventually, will achieve his dream of cosplaying Elijah Snow from Planetary. But until then, he will wait.

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