Gamehouse Going Too Far?

For a long time, Gamehouse had only a small number of original games. Their only long-term time management series was “Delicious” in its various iteration (“Campfire Legends” was their shot at horror HOGs). While I’d personally say everything before “Delicious: Emily’s Taste of Fame” isn’t really good, the series definitely has evolved over time. Recently, they’ve used the same engine (with various tweaks) to start off several more series and do several one-shots (so far).

Their first try quite some time ago was “Heart’s Medicine,” which also was the game which started their ‘mini-game craze.’ After playing the game, a lot of people were waiting for a sequel, but it took ages until it came - only to be followed very quickly by a third one.

It might seem logical that they would make a ‘sister series’ to “Delicious,” especially as Emily, main character of the “Delicious” series, has a sister who has featured prominently already: Angela. So about a year ago, Angela got a short game with four levels (“Fabulous: Angela’s Sweet Revenge”), the first “Fabulous” game - if you can call a four-level affair for 99 cents a game. After a lot of people enjoyed the four levels of Angela getting even with her (now ex-)husband, she got her first full game with “Fabulous: Angela’s Fashion Fever.” Fashion in addition to food proved a good idea and the game sold well enough so recently there was a third (actually second) “Fabulous” game (“Fabulous: Angela’s High School Reunion”).

But Gamehouse didn’t stop at that. Several other games have come out during the last few months alone, including “Dr. Cares” (veterinarian drama), “The Love Boat” (yes, based on that TV series you might still slightly remember), and “Parker & Lane” (crime drama). In addition, there’s games like “Cathy’s Crafts,” “Mary le Chef,” and “Sally’s Salon” (they got the rights to Sally from the original makers, apparently). They even made a FROG with the engine, using another original content they had: “Mortimer Beckett and the Book of Gold,” which also features the sister of Emily’s husband.

In addition, they pushed their publishing schedule for the “Delicious” series, more than doubling the output per year. It seems that since Emily got married, she’s more interesting than before - or she needs to work more in order to keep the family afloat, who knows? After all, she’s got three kids now.

I’m not sure what to think about this. On one hand, I like most of the games. They have the same feeling as the “Delicious” series (which I still love, despite Emily being a wet hanky most of the time - Angela has a better drama management than her older sister, as is obvious from her own series). They expand the basic topic from only food service to fashion, medicine, and many other things. They bring in new characters (or bring back loved ones, like Sally).

Yet, the newer games no longer have an adjustable difficulty, which is a little let-down for me. Some also seem a little imbalanced - which is one reason why I recently started buying them from Steam instead of Gamehouse, because there I get automatic updates. The other is the Premium Editions (which are the Gamehouse equivalent to BFGs Collector’s Editions) are cheaper on Steam. Yes, I’ve invested a lot of money into Steam by now…

The new game policy of Gamehouse is a double-edged sword for me, therefore. A lot more games to play (and they’re all colourful and fun), yet also a few developments which I could very well do without (mini-games and only one difficulty, especially). The fun achievements from the early “Delicious” series such as ‘have an order on your tray before it turns up’ have disappeared, too. The games still have achievements which are usually shown on an extra screen, fitting with the topic of the game, but they’re pretty much the same old now, the same kind of achievement you find in most casual games (especially the PEs or CEs). I’m afraid they’re actually going to ruin the series (and its type of time management game) in the long run with the changes and the huge number of games they put out.

Yet, I still get giddy when a new game turns up, especially when I wasn’t expected it (like “Parker & Lane” two weeks or so back). I still get curious, I have to download the demo, I fidget until it’s on Steam (or break down and buy from Gamehouse instead). I still like the games - well, most parts of them.

Gamehouse is still doing good time management games, which is good news, because they’re pretty rare by now (lots more HOGs on the market which I’m by now hardly interested in, a few series withstanding). But I would really like it if they toned it down - with the amount they release and with the drama in some of them (looking at “Delicious” and “Heart’s Medicine” especially).

Subnautica Review

So, after my last review, here another one. This time for the underwater survival game “Subnautica.” I mean, it’s an underwater survival game, what’s not to love here?

First of all, I have to admit that I didn’t have an eye on it at all. I had heard about it, seen some stuff on Steam sometimes (mostly in the ‘popular’ section), but I didn’t pay any attention. That changed when one of my favourite YouTube channels ran a first Let’s Play on it. I was completely fascinated by what I could see - even though it was not much of what you can actually do in the game. Since the guy doing the Let’s Play was just beginning, he was putting out the fire in his lifeboat and diving in the shallows, where you can’t go deep and every life form is either completely harmless or at any rate passive (except for that stupid exploding fish in the caves there).

What fascinated me was the great way the diving was simulated in the game. The movements of the character underwater felt right - even more so after I’d bought the game and started playing it myself. Swimming and diving felt like it should. I’ve never done any diving in deeper water (where you’d need an oxygen tank and training), but I’ve done some diving in shallow water while holding my breath. A lot of it while I was a kid, really.

In addition, the game was outright beautiful in my eyes. Some people might argue that the textures aren’t as high definition as they could be and, yes, sometimes stuff plops up without warning, but on the whole, the underwater world looks great. Well, not in that area where there’s little but some shark-like creatures and barren grey spires, but everywhere else. Even in the depth there’s weird and beautiful things. To a degree, even the leviathans (huge sea monsters in various types) look beautiful in a scary way.

So, I bought the game and started playing, completely losing myself in that world. The game comes with four different difficulty settings from hardcore survival (with permanent death) to creative (where you don’t have to worry about anything and have unlimited resources). While I do really enjoy the survival mode (not hardcore, bur regular, where there’s no perma-death), I’ve spent more time in creative mode, simply because it allowed for me to already build the two submarines you can build in the game (the small and manoeuvrable Sea-Moth and the large Cyclops). I also have quite a nice base constructed.

The two submarines (you can also build a heavy-duty underwater suit which allows for you to drill stuff and endure more pressure in deep sea) are another reason why I love this game so much. They are completely different in handling. The Sea-Moth is small and quick, it moves very much like the player does in the water. You can dart around, are quite a bit faster, have a place to replenish your air (while not in creative mode, where oxygen isn’t a topic), and have light for night-time or deeper sea explorations (fully upgraded, the Sea-Moth can go to a depth of up to 900 meters). The Cyclops on the other hand is a mobile base. It can host either the Sea-Moth or the Prawn suit, has space for putting up furniture or machinery (such as putting a fabricator in the ship), and can go really deep (down to 1,700 meters, if fully upgraded). It’s also more stable, in case you meet with a leviathan (those usually live in the twilight and dark zones of the ocean). Ideally, you put the Sea-Moth in the Cyclops for longer travel and do your actual exploring the smaller ship while returning to the Cyclops for creating and storing stuff.

The game not only encourages exploration beyond the direct surroundings, it actively pushes the player to go out and have a look around. As soon as you have repaired the lifeboat and the radio inside, you start getting messages from other lifeboats and you get destinations to go to in order to find out more. You find new technology to scan (among it the information for the submarines and the mobile base necessary to build them), you can scan new life forms, too, since some of them may come in handy.

There’s a lot of resources you need and can find in the different biomes, so you have ample reason to travel a lot. You’ll want an oxygen tank and fins first, because they enhance your movements underwater (you swim faster with the fins and can stay underwater longer with the tank). You’ll need a survival knife for harvesting some resources and stabbing the first smaller predators who’ll attack you. You’ll need the repair tool and the scanner to get anywhere. You’ll want to start your base and need to make a habitat builder and gather the necessary resources for the rooms. Later on, you’ll be sure to expand it or build an auxiliary base somewhere else. It should be noted that the game doesn’t overdo it with the need for resources, though. Most objects can be build from few resources, even if some of those are not too easy to find.

Besides, who doesn’t love a game where the PDA claims that severe head trauma is the best possible outcome after a crash? Or a game where you can find and explore several alien bases? Subnautica has a lot to offer, even in the longer run. Also don’t get me started on the Cuddlefish and how I can’t bear having one, because I would have to leave it behind when I finish the game.

Subnautica does have its weaknesses, mostly in the graphics, but it has a lot more strengths overall. It gives you a whole ocean to explore which is filled with the strangest alien life forms. It gives you amazing biomes, from the shallows to the fiery depths of a volcano. And it tops it off with an interesting story and a lot of emotional moments. For me, that makes it a great game to play, so you might want to check it out.

The Sims 4 Review

First and foremost, this is only a temporary review. “The Sims 4” (from now on Sims 4) is still added to, just a few days ago, the latest game pack (Jungle Adventures) was released. In addition, a single review can’t encompass the whole game. I’ve been playing quite a lot of it, but I haven’t even tried out all jobs and all other things the game offers (such as having a long-lived dynasty or owning a business or restaurant or vet clinic). But still, the game deserves a review.

In their fourth iteration, the sims have been changed quite a bit. Gone is the large, open world of Sims 3 where you could walk around the whole neighbourhood and travel around with cars, motorbikes, bikes, and even horses (Pets expansion necessary). Sims 4 offers a combination between the world of the first two titles and the third one. You have small neighbourhoods with an open area which the sims can walk around in, so visiting your friends is still possible, but between those small neighbourhoods, you have to travel and get a loading screen. It’s not as bad as it might sound - there’s quite some stuff to discover and gather in those neighbourhoods and loading times are not too long. And you can visit all worlds, no matter which you live in.

The classic wishes which have been around since Sims 2 (the fears were removed in Sims 3) are gone. Sims have whims and ambitions. A whim is something simple and short-term, such as reading a book, watching TV, hugging a sim, or travelling to a certain place. They come and go and some of them are influenced by the sim’s mood (more about that below). Ambitions are something you choose, something your sim will strive for, like a big family, wealth, becoming a master vampire, or many other things. Ambitions are not set in stone, they can be changed at any time (and you keep your progress) and they come in steps, each of which includes a few things to do, such as practice with an instrument for a certain time or try the food from the Jungle Adventures world. Ambitions do not include careers, unlike the life wishes in Sims 3 (if we’re honest, a lot of them are about reaching the top of a career).

Whims bring us to another big change: moods. Sims 3 had moodlets which influenced how happy a sim was at a given time. Moods have more influence on the sim than the moodlets did. A sim can feel happy, focused, inspired, sad, angry, and many other things and it influences their behaviour and what they can do. They can also be in a neutral mood which is called ‘Fine.’ Certain actions, surroundings, happenings, but also traits have an influence on the moods. Sims with the ‘Creative’ trait are inspired more often, sims which have made a blunder in front of others tend to be embarrassed, sims which have worked intensely can become tense, focused, or confident. You get the drift.

Create-A-Sim (or CAS) has been dialled back, too. The colour wheel is gone, completely free design is no longer possible (but every object comes with quite some pre-designed varieties).

What has also been changed is the way the game is growing. In the first iteration, there was the basic game and the expansions. Same goes for the second iteration. With Sims 3, the players also got stuff packs which didn’t bring changes, but new things for build and buy mode and for the create-a-sim tool, in addition to expansions. Sims 4 added the game packs to the mix. Settled between full expansion and stuff pack in price, they’re also in-between when it comes to content. As the stuff packs, they add new objects. As the expansions, they add new game-play, but on a lower level. A recent example: Sims 3 had “World Adventures” as one of its first expansion packs. The pack brought three vacation locations (France, Egypt, and China) with a lot to discover. Sims 4 recently got “Jungle Adventures” which brings one vacation world (the second overall) with a few locations to discover. It’s mostly centred around the new culture and the temple exploration. Both is fun, don’t misunderstand me, but World Adventures had a lot more content for about twice the price. Yet, the game packs are also closer to the point in many cases. Instead of an overall expansion like “Supernatural” for Sims 3, Sims 4 had the “Vampires” game pack. It was completely focused on the vampire theme, from the objects to the new game-play. So if you want to play vampires, you buy it. You don’t need to shell out for an expansion pack which includes creatures you don’t really need (I mostly played the witches from the Supernatural expansion, hardly the fairies or werewolves). It’s also more logical than including the vampires in another pack (Sims 3 included them in their Late Night expansion which brought the only metropolis setting).

  

But now from the basic mechanics to the actual game-play. The basic principles of The Sims haven’t changed, of course. They were there since the first iteration.

Your sim has traits which define their interests and what they enjoy or don’t enjoy doing. They also have a certain influence on the moods. Sims with some traits can also learn specific things faster (a sim who loves dancing, for example, will learn it faster).

Your sim also has needs. In Sims 4, there’s six of them (bladder, fun, hunger, social, energy, hygiene), the first iteration had 8. Sims are autonomous enough to take care of their basic needs when they sink below a certain level. They will go to the toilet when their bladder need is low. They will get some food when their hunger need is low. And so on. So you don’t have to keep an eye on all of your sims the whole time, they can manage their daily lives.

Sims need a job or another way of making money (painting, writing, gardening, and some other skills can result in things to sell). They will not choose a job by themselves, but in most careers, they’ll leave the house and come back without you having to control them much. There’s, however, three interactive careers with the “Back to Work” expansion pack.

Sims age and will eventually die (and, perhaps, return as a ghost). They can also die sooner in an accident or, if they’re emotional, of too much feelings.

Sims can fall in love and found a family. They can have kids together (or adopt them). Kids grow up into adults and can then start their own life in the same game, but another home (even in another world in the same save game). Like this, you can have a long dynasty of sims in a save game, generations upon generations of them.

In short, sims are a pretty good simulation of everyday life and that’s what the game is about. You can try out whatever life model you want, from a sim who just earns money to pay the bills and uses their spare time for their true passion of meeting every sim in the worlds to a sim who wants to be a triple agent one day (top of the ‘evil’ branch of the secret agent career, the only career with 11 instead of 10 stages). You can found a large family (8 sims er plot is the maximum, though, so before your couple can have more kids, the oldest might have to move out) and see where it leads you. You can have a sim who is filthily rich (there are money cheats which are easy enough to use, the two most-used have been around since the first iteration) and just does as they please without working a day in their life. You can just build houses with the build mode, if you feel like you should have become an architect.

And you can share every family you make and every house you build with the whole community. With Sims 3, Origin and EA started a community to share content and Sims 4 has capitalized on it with an in-game browser to go through all the community-created content.

On the technical side, that comes with a few bad sides. You need to install, maintain, and open the Origin app to play the game. You need to register all expansions with Origin, too (not much of a problem for me, since I bought most of my additional content directly from Origin). But such programs are no longer unusual. Whether that’s good or bad is pretty much up to your personal tastes.

My verdict of Sims 4 so far is positive. I’m having a lot of fun with the game and I know I will have more fun with it in the future. There are a few things I don’t like and a lot more which I like. No game is perfect, but this one definitely is eating more of my time than it should - like every Sims game before.

A different kind of strategy

I like playing strategy games. I enjoy plotting and planning. I also enjoy playing business simulations and building games, though. Because of that, I soon realized that “Offworld Trading Company” was a strategy game and not a business simulation or a building game, despite its look.

I stumbled over OTC a little while back at GOG, during one of their sales. The game looked like a building game of sorts to me and I decided to buy it for myself. After playing through the tutorials, however, it was very obvious I had not bought a building game. Nor was it a business simulation, despite how well it simulates the movements of a market. It was a strategy game, but an unusual one.

Why was it unusual? Because it’s not the kind of game you imagine when I say ‘strategy.’ You don’t fight with soldiers and tanks and other weaponry. You fight with money. You do not set out to destroy what your enemies have built. You buy them up and use their production for your own gain. That makes it a very interesting and challenging game and I do have a lot of fun with it.

I also like the setting very much. Mankind has started to colonize Mars. But the colonies up there need a lot of things: food, water, air, building materials, and so on. This is where companies from earth and companies only created for this venture step in. They provide what the colony can’t create by itself, because they have a lot of other work to do. They build farms and sell food. They build wells and sell water. They build converters and sell oxygen and hydrogen (which serves as fuel). They build mines and sell aluminium and iron. They build factories and sell steel, glass, electronics, chemicals. They even build structures like the pleasure dome and profit from the workers relaxing and having fun in there. Or they even use their money and resources to expand the colony.

But, as with the Highlander, there can be only one. To make the best out of the deal, only one company can cater to one colony. Since several usually set up close by, the only way to become this one company is to eradicate the competitors. And since open violence is frowned upon, the companies fight with shares. Every company has a total of 10,000 shares. 2,000 usually are owned by them at the beginning. If you own 6,000 shares of another company, they become your subsidiaries. If you own all 10,000, they become part of your company. Shares have to be bought at market value and in packages of 1,000 shares. If a company owns at least 5,000 of its own stock, you have to buy those in bulk. If they own more, not only do you have to buy in bulk, you also have to buy for a much higher price. So it’s in your best interest to make sure you buy in early.

How do you make money? By producing goods and selling them. It’s literally the only thing you can do in this game. You can buy from the black market, to protect yourself (with the hologram or the goon squad) or to damage the others (with the pirates or bombs), but that will only give you a slight advantage and the more you partake in the offers of the black market, the more it costs you. Trading offworld with a rocket brings a lot of money, but to get there, you need to earn a lot first. And you only have limited space, too.

Limited space is actually where this game becomes a strategy game. With every upgrade of your headquarters, you get a number of new claims, which means you can build a couple more structures. You can also buy claims from the black market, but, as mentioned, that gets more expensive every time. You have to plan what you want to buy. You can destroy structures again and build something else instead, but you don’t have enough claims to build up a huge production. You need to decide what to build and what to do with it. Do you want a second offworld market (the rocket) or do you want a hacker array to manipulate the prices with? Do you want to invest in research or do you rather want to overproduce on food and send out rocket over rocket to the asteroid belt?

In the end, it doesn’t matter what strategy you have for making money, as long as you make much of it quickly. At the beginning, the shares usually are in a range of $15 to $17 a share, which means you need around $15,000 to $17,000 to buy the first package. After you start buying, as with everything on the market, shares go up in price. Do you want to go ‘all out’ and buy in bulk, even though the last packages will be very expensive like this? Do you want to buy a package here and there, which is cheaper, but will allow the other player to buy up shares as well to make it harder for you? You can cash everything you have in at once and use the money to buy up package after package, but what if you lack a few thousand in the end? It will take you ages to build up your stock again. You can go the safe way and buy shares only when you have enough money on the side, but that gives your competitors time and resources to do the same to you - or to buy their own shares to force you to buy in bulk. That is where the game becomes challenging. Have I also mentioned the game runs in real time? This isn’t one of your 4x4 turn-based affairs, despite the hexagonal tiles.

And you have the choice between four types of companies, too. There’s the expansive fraction which seem pretty much the regular ones. They have advantages in freighter movement and building and get extra tiles per upgrade of their headquarters. There’s the scavenger fraction who are connected to the black market much better. They build with carbon instead of steel, so they don’t need steel mills, they learn about shortages in advance, and they can buy from the black market more often (all companies have a cool-down time after buying a black market offer). There’s the scientific fraction which has the advantage of technology. They can build production buildings on resources to cut out mines, quarries, or wells, EMP attacks and power surges are over more quickly for them, and they can do their patent research faster. Finally, there is the robotic fraction which doesn’t employ humans. They don’t need life support (food, air) and work on power (of which they need more, of course), they use electronics in upgrades (and don’t need glass), they don’t need hydrogen fuels, and their production buildings become more efficient when next to a building which produces their resources.

The choice of the fraction has a huge influence on your strategy. Robots can settle even in places without water resources (or ice) nearby. They can produce food to sell it (same goes for oxygen and hydrogen), but they can totally forego water and invest in other buildings. Scavengers can do without iron and steel. Their close connection to the black market allows for pulling a lot of tricks on their competition, such as munity (redirect resources from a building to your own headquarter for a while) or slowdown strike (lowers productivity of the building targeted and those around, very effecting in clusters). They can make use of the market more often, because of the shorter cool-down time, but they will suffer from the increased prices and lower efficiency on the same tile as well. The scientists don’t need to go for quarries or mines (except for aluminium, which is used ‘raw’), because they can build production buildings directly on a resource. But many buildings need two resources and thus they need to produce one of the resources directly or to auto-buy it. They have an advantage in research, but since their production buildings are usually scattered around, they can’t make as much use of clusters (productivity is enhanced, if production buildings of the same type touch). The expansive fraction is the most beginner-friendly of the four, it doesn’t have huge advantages (building cost, speed, and more tiles aren’t that much of an advantage), but it also doesn’t require an ultra-specialized strategy. If you want to experiment and play around, they’re the best choice.

But the core of the game which really makes it a taxing real-time strategy game is the market as a such. All of the resources, primary or otherwise, are on the market and the prices offered for them constantly change. If a player buys a lot of a resource, prices go up. If a player sells a lot of a resource, prices go down. If there is a shortage, you can take advantage of it and sell a lot of a resource at once for a higher price. If there’s overproduction, you can take advantage and buy. Every action on the market is met with in real time. Every time you click on the sell or the buy button, the prices change. Sell much at once and the price hits rock bottom, which means you don’t get as much as you thought. Buy much at once and the price skyrockets, forcing you to pay a lot more. Build a hacker array and you can create false shortages or overproductions and take advantage of them - but the competitors will suspect something and they can take advantage, too. Sooner or later, you will need to sell or buy. The claim limit means you can’t produce everything for every eventuality and you will at some point need more money than you have, too. You might have to sell so you can buy a share package, you might have to sell to meet the financial requirements for the first rocket shipment (afterwards, you usually have the money from the last shipment), or you might have to sell so you can buy a resource you can’t produce yourself. Every time, you will influence the market and your competitors can see it. And that is what I like about the game. I like it that you have to outsmart your opponents, that you can’t just rush at them. You can’t just produce more than everyone else, because you lack space for that. You can’t just make soldiers and overrun them. You have to devise a strategy to make money faster than they do.

And the games don’t take that long, which is a plus for me, too. Instead of spending hours with advancing my culture in AOE or AOM (which I also love playing) to build up a large army, I need to advance my headquarters, build up a production, and find a way to efficiently sell what I make so I can buy the others up.

OTC is a very good example of taking a genre into an unusual setting and making it work. So if you like strategy games, I suggest you give it a chance or at least a good look.