Senaste recensioner av His Imperial Bodgeness

I mostly enjoyed my time with this interactive book - and that's a very deliberate choice of words. This book starts with a fascinating premise: as you speed away to a new life on a distant planet at speeds faster than light itself, you browse your old social media feeds back on Earth..with a catch. FTL travel comes at the cost of time dilation, letting you experience 29 years in 29 minutes, and isolating you completely from your friends stuck back on Earth.

With this idea planted in your head, the player has little to do but refresh their social feed and see how the future unfolds. Through the lens of social media (and the trouble that brings...) you are allowed to explore the potential philosophical and social cliff edges we will soon face in AI and civil rights, guided by mostly good writing. At times, news posts were dense, and some of the content confusingly worded. There is no other gameplay, which is unfortunately the main sticking point for me, as is the ironic fall of the game into the very echo-chamber that it cleverly lampoons: by the end you are only permitted to see the world you have left behind through the very specific social lens of your Friendpage friends. I don't mind politics, but I can't help but think that it was a missed opportunity to explore the conflict that rapid changes in civic rights, the reach of corporations, and AI advancements could have sparked. Perhaps this was all intended by the devs, but it left me wanting more.

Either way, I was forced to think, so the devs can chalk this up as a success. I like the idea, and the integration into an interactive art installation, but I wish they had been bolder. For those who need a bit more 'game' in their gameplay, this may not be for you.

It's difficult to write about one autobattler without comparing it to its rivals (Teamfight Tactics, and the original Dota Autochess mode), but Underlords is a great solo game in its own right. Your job is to fill up the chess-grid battlefield in front of you with heroes from the Dota universe, hunting down multiple copies of the same character in the hero shop between each round of fighting to level them up and beef up your team. The beefiest team knocks out the other 7 competitors and wins, although there isn't much of a ranking system as of yet to track how much beef you've wrangled.

Yes, you are limited to watching the AI fight with these heroes (and sometimes the AI can be very bad at fighting), but as their 'GM' you have a deep level of control over equipable items, positioning, composition and economy management, so you never feel powerless. Each round pits you against a different player in a little self-contained duel, and over time you develop organic rivalries with other teams as you take turns smashing each others faces in. Those emergent stories and desperate shop rerolls are what breathe life into the game, and this is twice as true in the inspired Duos mode that lets you share economy and heroes with a friend.

Much like Dota, it's a very obtuse and complex game to the outsider, but you get the hang of it quickly. Grab a friend and get in on the autobattler craze while its hot.

Kingdom is... cozy. You play a king (or indeed Queen, your character is randomised) thrown into the desolation of a former empire and tasked with rebuilding it. Though you cannot fight or build an economy, you recruit others who do it for you, building up your hamlet into a castle. By day you build and train your men, by night you defend the walls from hordes of monsters.

If that sounds stressful, it isn't. It's a rather simple game - your input is limited to spending money to place and upgrade buildings, recruit vagabonds, and assign jobs. At the end of the day you trot through the main square to collect your tax dollars, and then do it all again the next day. Imagine if Tropico was a survival game, and you have Kingdom.

The satisfaction comes from seeing your strength slowly grow, from shifting onto the front foot and taking the fight to the monsters, and from pushing back the borders of the forest that surround you. As a resource management sim, it's refreshingly straightforward. As a game, it's gorgeous, and I wiled away a relaxing evening tapping keys to its soothing soundtrack. Definitely worth your time, purely because all your subjects bow as you ride past.

Possibly the most hardcore game ever made, its unique and weird depth is pretty much what compelled me to play it in the first place. Trying to explain the basic principles to a new player is an exercise in contradiction (eg keeping creeps by your own tower during laning in a game where your objective is to get all the way to the enemy base), and playing without friends is tantamount to self-harm. You will be terrible at this game for your first several hundred hours without a willing guide or self-directed outside study. In a way it is a response to the purity and simplicity of its Valve esports sibling Counter Strike, but with even more obtuse mechanics and under-the-hood hidden tricks. While it is difficult to recommend this game to anyone who can't afford to devote themselves to it as a hobby in itself, it is a unique historical marker in gaming that I think everyone should at least try, even if its absolutely ridiculous learning curve and refusal to explain itself (there was no tutorial until very recently, and shortly after introduction a new update broke the tutorial and rendered it impossible to finish) makes it hard to see how it would survive if released in the current year. Possibly the most reluctant recommendation I will ever give for anything.

A good introduction to the social deduction genre for new players, with essentially none of the roles or abilities you might expect from its competitors. This may sound like a negative, but Mindnight understands the tension between people that makes these games fun. Since there are only 5 objectives for Agents to protect or Hackers to hack, games are reasonably short in most cases.

The fly in the ointment is that in a game where each player plays perfectly, it is almost impossible for Agents to win without sheer dumb luck: in a smaller game you might catch the first hacker, and maybe even the second one, but beyond that you will frequently struggle. The mechanics are so pared down that you have to rely on intuition, but it still makes for a damn good time - especially when queued with friends.

The apotheosis of social deduction games, in complexity and concept. The sheer volume of information you have to absorb is daunting at first, and the community rather intolerant of poor play while you learn the ropes, but the dozens of roles on each of the 3 sides - Blue Dragon (goodies), Cult/Unseen (baddies), Neutrals (either, or neutral killers who hate everyone) - gives you near limitless replay value of near infinite depth. Over time, you learn the value of your character and of the other characters within your team, complementing their strengths and patching their weaknesses as you deploy your day and night phase abilities to satisfying (and sometimes devastating) effect. There are so many ways to have fun in Throne of Lies, so many ways to express your skill or ♥♥♥♥ it all up, and it never gets old.

The unique hook of ToL is the King, the overlord of the court who starts with executive powers (both literally and figuratively) that can swing the game decisively in your favour, assuming of course you can trust him... The King is a powerful force diplomatically too, and is always the centre of attention, as courtiers try to assist or discredit him, or even replace him on the throne.

The game might not look too pretty at first glance, but it's visual design bursts with medieval fantasy flavour and the UI is surprisingly competent at clearly showing you the important details, even when the game moves at breakneck speed during a trial as the accused frantically rushes to type out a defense: this is vital in a game that essentially plays like an dynamic murder mystery. In an ever-evolving metagame (thanks to regular updates), the hundreds of different interactions between roles somehow manage to maintain a rough balance, all whilst having (in my opinion) the most inventive mechanics of any social deduction game, both for its support classes and it's more aggressive killer classes. There is no more chilling a feeling than realising the Reaper has been silencing your friends, one by one, day by day, leaving an empty shell behind.

It's a really good time. Due to how detailed the role interactions are, it always feels like there is enough information to figure out who the next threat is - seeing as that's where all the fun flows from, that is the most valuable sentence in this whole review.

A very innovative and uncomfortable horror rogue-lite, where you are tasked with escaping a deserted ship in any way you see fit. Whatever escape route you chose, the partially randomly-generated resources and map layout will force you to explore the darkest, dankest bowels of the ship in search of items and materials, drip feeding you lore along the way. Some of these are defensive or distraction items, from which you will have to squeeze out as much value as you can to keep at bay one of 3 possible monsters stalking you - each with their own behaviour pattern and tendencies.

Deeply creepy and atmospheric, with a sound design that is as much a weapon for the player as it is a means to scare you. I was able to brave it, until a steam guide exposed me to the most disturbing feature of the game: no matter how carefully or deliberately you creep around the ship, the monster will eventually, inexorably, instinctively, wander towards you.

A really unique game, and well worth your time.

The title that started my Paradox grand strategy obsession, and endless hours of entertainment. You've all heard some of the ridiculous stories this game generates, thanks to the inspired central Dynasty mechanic - a tool that lets you either raise up or sabotage an entire bloodline through diplomacy, warfare, marriage, legal wrangling and political intrigue - and it really is genius: every other system in the game feeds into building a more complex picture of family life in your dynasty, so that even on the worst runs you will end up rooting for your band of inbred, unpopular halfwits. It might still be a slow-burning grand strategy game, but it's a surprisingly intimate one.

Over time, and sadly over many MANY DLC packs, even the weaker aspects of the game (such as combat) have been satisfactorily polished. In its final form, there is an unbelievable amount of content in this map simulator, without even considering how I spent most of my time: mods. My recommendation: download the Game of Thrones mods and wash out the taste of season 8.

This game occupies my thoughts more than any other I have played - completely hostile, inaccessible, esoteric and inimitable. You are a ship captain on a cursed sea after Queen Victoria doomed London with a secret pact, sinking it into the earth. You are expected to die often and have your next captain continue your legacy and progress, with a wealth of locations and enemies and storylines to ensnare yourself in. Narrative is definitely more the focus than the fighting, which is barebones and risky, and the writing is cthonically spellbinding - I loved it. The world feels alive and angry and by the end of your time in each location you will have just about scratched the surface of its mysteries in a way that is just about enough, collecting secrets and gnostic lore as a kind of currency you can spend to unlock the game's greater mysteries. You are guided by an ambition you pick at the start of the game, which can then be taken over by hidden ambitions you find in the world (these are incredibly ambitious and satisfying - one of them lets you become immortal).

There are large problems. Firstly, the game does not explain anything and the setting can't really be an excuse. You are not given any clue as to how a merchant captain should earn money, and without this knowledge each voyage loses money until you run out of fuel and supplies and inevitably destroy yourself. I played with a Steam guide open in the background to patch this as it's not a fun or fair kind of challenge - some kind of logbook which recorded the prices of goods at different ports would have been enough to get around this but the game does not have it. Secondly, you are given no idea how rare the 'knowledge currency' you build is, and how you should spend it: should you be holding on to your 'searing enigmas' (yes) ? For an impatient player I can see this being extremely annoying as you may find it very difficult to replace something that is later critical. As well as this, your boat is also slow and upgrades expensive so you will spend a long time on the dark oceans between ports, and combat is a bit of an afterthought. Sunless Skies is much more accessible but in my opinion loses a lot of its magic and charm and is worse for it.

If none of that puts you off, this is the best Lovecraftian, open-world survival horror nautical adventure you can hope to have.

Intense, grinding, fruitless trench warfare with gun and bayonet and gas - and some of the most unique multiplayer shooter action I've come across to date. The well-designed maps steal the show and set up interesting friction points which you will throw your squad against again and again - play in Frontlines mode for the full WW1 experience.

I also just have to mention how much I love the squad system, which assigns you equipment and roles when you enter the game, as a group of 4 people: the squad leader allows you to spawn on him, giving your attacks some real heft and momentum if he can stay alive (and your defence some resilience). Highly recommend if you're interested in the idea of an indie take on Battlefield 1.