Zane: Let me start the formal interview process by thanking you for taking the time to have this chat. I really appreciate it.

Joe: I definitely appreciate your time.

Zane: Founding a studio and creating a game of this scope aren’t small tasks by any means. What made you decide to become an indie developer, and found your studio?

Joe: Well I basically learned to write code about 19 years ago or so and started with writing BBS door games and moving on from there. I’ve worked at a few studios here in Toronto and in San Diego but eventually found myself working in other industries. The core game and ideas for Empyrios is actually a design I’ve been toying with for probably 4-5 years before the actual start of development and something that I’ve wanted to build for a long time.

Zane: Ah! Admittedly, I was curious which came first: Empyrios, or Creoterra.

Joe: Creoterra was really born in order to focus attention on building the types of games that we really wanted to play, to be honest. The core ideas and gameplay definitely predate us striking out and founding the studio, and we had a lot of world design and gameplay mechanics to start with. Once we found Jove—our artist—and he came on board with the project, is when things really started to come together from both a design and aesthetic point of view

Zane: Your aesthetic does have that old-school fantasy game feel. There are a number of areas where you’re doing things differently. For instance, I notice you’re not going with the traditional fantasy races. Even the dvergar as ‘dark dwarves’ in concept are very rarely seen compared to, say, dark elves.

Joe: Well that was one thing that we really spent a lot of time on because we really wanted to create a new world for the game to take place in. We do have a human race, the Aduro, and then the Dvergar as you mentioned, but we really wanted to have a fresh feel rather than sticking with ‘old proven’ so we’ve tried to come up with a lot of different concepts. Jove was also a big part of this and we worked very well going between art and design. One example would be the ‘Shade’ race, which our original design had more as a traditional type of undead. Jove wanted to try something new and he took the backstory of them being outcast for refusing to stop playing with necromancy and other dark arts, and tied it into the overall race. So now instead of having, say, the usual skeletal minions you might see elsewhere, the shade are basically a humanoid spirit, but with various parts of different types of living beings kind of moulded together.

Zane: Even the Aduro have a unique feel compared to the tried-and-tested staple of Humans. It’s great to see all these unique options. I can’t resist, though: are there any races that are developer favourites?

Joe: We’ve really tried to give all races, and the entire world for that matter, a really unique feel both through art style and ability design. Regarding favourites I can say that the Lithos are quite popular and we usually feature the Brute character out of game, but beyond that everyone seems to have their own favourite to play. I play a lot of the Caelum (avian race) myself and would definitely say they’re one of my personal favourites. Some people like sticking mainly with one race in their team composition, but a lot of people actually like to select from various races in whichever faction they’re playing.

Zane: I’m glad that you came to the topic of factions. You probably get this question a lot, but what is the Prophecy of Flame, and how does it relate to the two factions and their agenda?

Joe: Well the Prophecy of Flame actually stems from the Aduro race but has ramifications across the world. The human race in this part of the world started to have visits from very strange humans from other lands. They spoke of Pyrios, the god of flame, and began to recruit others into their religion and follow their beliefs. This had huge ramifications as once the Aduro Nation became the largest sect, they went from a passive view to being more aggressive, and banning and outlawing various forms of magic. This is what led to the Shade, as they are actually exiled Aduro who wanted to continue their research and practice into the darker arts. Whether that was a good idea or not is yet to be seen. I can’t go into the actual prophecy itself, as I don’t want to spoil the plot of either campaign, but it encompasses the entire world and story.

Zane: No worries! We wouldn’t want to spoil any surprises. The two factions, the Mystic Covenant and the Shadowlord Pact, they’re then centred around the Aduro and Shade, and their positions regarding Pyrios and his word?

Joe: Well their battle is one component, but every race actually has their own goals in mind, and they the factions are alliances of purpose and convenience. One example is how during their exile a high mage of the Shade actually created the Lithos race through necromancy and spirit magic. This impacts the Dvergar as you now have these wild destructive creations born in the mountains who start attacking the mines and trade routes. On the other hand, you have the Caelum who have forged a pact with the Sylvan to protect the wooded lands, and by making it seem as if the Reptilis attacked them first they’ve drawn the Sylvan into their battle. The Prophecy of Flame also foretold of the ‘beasts from the desert’ which later emerge as the Az’Modai, something the story goes into in more detail. So really the factions are actually created out of necessity, trickery, or something in between. They are much looser than say a conventional alliance where different races are friends for no reason, and it’s always been that way.

Zane: Wow. Suffice to say, there’s been a lot of preparation and fore-thought. All of this no doubt creates a rich back-story to set the current campaign’s events against.

Joe: Each faction’s campaign story isn’t actually just a linear point A to point B narrative. Sometimes you might have 2-3 options open to you on the map and you have to make a decision. Do you help the Dvergar town or the Aduro town, or do you ignore both to support the Sylvan on the front lines in the forest? Each campaign is different depending on the choices you make and the outcomes of the battle.

Zane: Strategizing well is clearly a big part of the game, and using your environment to your advantage is a core component thereof. What are some of the key elements of Empyrios’ tactical combat?

Joe: Well you hit on one key component which is trying to take tactical advantage by using the environment. Some units can set traps or alter the environment in small ways. To that effect. map control and positioning is pretty big. Another is that each unit has a set of 3 skills that vary in power cost, so you have to decide on whether you want to use ability X now, or wait and use something that costs less until you can get into a better position for a larger ability. Ouside of the battles the units in your army gain levels, have a skill mastery tree, and even one additional customization system that we’re still working on. So just because an enemy is using a Lithos Brute, you can’t be sure if he’s using it as a traditional ‘tanky’ type build, crowd control, or focussing on raw damage. And of course setting up team synergy and combos and planning your strategy is something that gives a nice edge.

Zane: Wow. Multiple campaigns with non-linear story-lines and player controlled outcomes, and then full control in a tactical environment with a myriad of options…have to say, you guys have put a lot of thought, effort and passion into this project.

Joe: Yeah it’s actually been quite the undertaking! As I mentioned early the core game concept and ideas were coming together for years before development started (actually using HeroQuest miniatures on a cardboard map), and we’ve been in full production for quite an insane amount of time.

Zane: What have been some of the major challenges of going Indie and working on Empyrios?

Joe: Well the biggest challenge for me has been the switch over to production. I spent the majority of my career, both in and out of games, in software engineering and technical direction. So while I worked hand in hand with producers, artists, and designers, I was still heavily tech focused. I had a million and one things to learn, and a lot of mistakes to make, but having someone like Jove on the project was absolutely huge as he took care of the aesthetic direction and really helped bring this idea and story on paper to life. Also, scope was a huge issue as the amount of work was pretty staggering on all fronts, whether it be code, design, art, anything! Although on a positive note we knew going into the project that it wasn’t something we would be building quickly and that we were in for the long haul project… so it wasn’t like we were surprised or hammered by scope creep.

Zane: I can imagine with something like an RPG, where you have to cater for every individual player contingency, as well as test to ensure the combinations are compatible, that it’s a huge undertaking.

Joe: The testing is actually a major part, especially with the team composition and customization. I build a lot of in-house tools and we’ve basically had bots playing the game 24/7 against each other for over a year constantly collecting data. It was quite fun, actually, because the bots were building teams and combos based on statistical analysis. Quite a few times the AI created some monster teams where we immediately knew we had to go in and fine-tune some abilities. The bots came up with a few team compositions that we never would have dreamed of using… but if the AI found them, players definitely would have at some point.

Zane: In that case, mental note to self: only play against other humans. You mention a variety of game modes, including the campaign and multiplayer. What are the modes on offer for the release?

Joe: We have the campaign mode, which is has a full non-linear campaign for each faction individual faction. Then there’s online multiplayer, local multiplayer, and practice. With online games we have a full infrastructure and matchmaking system so you can play ‘ranked’ games or just friendly games against friends. There are even unlockables and achievements. Local multiplayer is just what it sounds like: multiple friends against each other, playing on the same device. Practice mode is essentially local multiplayer versus bots.

Zane: Whom we’ve just established might be much nastier than your friends, depending on your difficulty level (and friends).

Joe: Hehehe very true.

Zane: I know this is probably your least favourite question as a developer, but the journalist code of honour dictates that I ask. Without us forcing you to commit to it, do you have a rough release date in mind?

Joe: Well our target is Q4 this year, but depending on development we may run into Q1 of next year. We’re actually 100% art complete at this stage (and we’re working on the first update actually), and majority code complete. Right now a lot of the work is in continuing to work on unit balancing, story/campaign, and heavy polishing across the board. Of course no promises with time as we want to make sure everything is extremely polished and as perfect as we can build it in our view.

Zane: That’s exciting news! Is there any way our readers can help show their support or keep up to speed with the latest progress reports and news?

Joe: Well we always massively appreciate support on Twitter and Facebook which we’ll be updating with news much more often. We’ve been ‘working in a dark cave’ for the last about 5 weeks while trying to get our latest alpha build ready and in testing so we haven’t had the stream of updates I’d like to see but there will be a lot more in the coming weeks. Also we’re hoping to have both the empyrios.com website and steam green light page online within the next 3-4 weeks or so. And of course players can check our company site where there is more information on the game and will be continually updated

Zane: Thank you very much, Joe. Do you have any final words of advice or inspiration you’d like to share with any aspiring indie devs who might be reading?

Joe: Well for me I think the biggest thing is that if you have a great game idea that you’d like to realize, you have to build it. In some cases, like with Empyrios, the design morphed from tabletop gameplay builds over the years, and writing the backstory as a hobby, into building out the entire game in production. Just be very mindful that if you haven’t produced a AAA or indie title in the past, you are going to learn a million new things, your time estimates will be derailed, and you’ll probably hit a host of unforeseen problems. As we’re wrapping up development on Empyrios I am definitely really happy with the overall process and what we’ll have achieved in the end, and I hope that players will feel the same way.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

In this quirky indie title, you play as a caveman named Ergaster who must escort these odd creatures called lemmings the habilis to safety. You start alone in a cave with drawings on the walls that tell you which buttons do what, provided you’re playing on an Xbox 360 controller. This game hates keyboards. If you play on a keyboard, you must look up both the keyboard and game pad controls and memorise the corresponding buttons so you know what the walls are telling you, and don’t even think about rebinding the keys while you’re in the option menu. The options menu isn’t for rebinding keys; it’s for switching between a full screen mode that doesn’t work and a windowed mode that doesn’t work.

You can see my wallpaper and task bar peeking through even in full screen mode.

Like most escort missions, walking the habilis through stone-age Afro-Eurasia is more frustrating than hard. Ergaster can smack a habilis to make it sit down, stopping other habilis from walking past it. If you’ve played Lemmings, think of this as the block skill. Unfortunately, timing it is finicky. I’ve had many a habilis walk past their appointed protector and into a wall of spikes as Ergaster’s outstretched palm came down like a hammer upon the savannah grass. It also necessitates more waiting than I like in anything other than a stealth game because you have to wait for a habilis to show up before you can smack it. To make all this worse, there are no checkpoints, which means doing the easy and boring parts of the level over and over again until you make that jump you keep dying on. This increases iteration cycles, which is bad game design.

Despite all this, there is some fun to be had here. There are silex to collect, and it’s a lot of fun air dashing about to collect them all. It’s also surprisingly satisfying to air dash through a wall of prehistoric crates. It’s also interesting to play such a unique platformer. Unfortunately, Ergaster isn’t executed well enough for me to recommend it over other platformers like The Fourth Wall. If the idea of playing Lemmings as a caveman instead of a benevolent god appeals to you, go ahead and check out Ergaster and the Habilis.

Overall Rating: ★★☆☆☆ 

What does this score mean?

This game was reviewed using a copy provided by the developer for that purpose.

I got you here safely. Now get in the giant mouth.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

My first problem with Zelik Adventures is how hard it is to start a new game or continue an existing one. Its menu was pretty unresponsive on my Droid Razr HD running KitKat, and it wasn’t readily apparent whether it hadn’t registered my taps or was just taking its time responding. In Zelik Adventures, you play as an alien named Zelik who would have a hard time outrunning my girlfriend’s turtles. After you manage to start a new game, you’re dropped off on planet Earth by a small rocket to begin your mission of meeting five wise men and convincing them to share their wisdom with you. Your first task is to close all the tutorial hints as they tell you how to do things like “run,” jump, and open chests, usually a few seconds after you find out for yourself. Provided you have the patience and will to resist the urge to simply close the app and do something fun, the hardest challenge is jumping using the atrocious controls.  As the ever-so-helpful tutorial hints will tell you without being the least bit intrusive, touching either side of the screen makes Zelik sprint towards that side with all the speed of a seahorse. Swiping upwards on the screen makes him jump as long as you swipe straight up. The slightest slant to your swipe will make it register as a tap on that side of the screen, often walking the alien into spikes or off a ledge.

Throughout whatever part of Earth Zelik Adventures takes place on, there are chests you can open by tapping them. Upon being opened, these chests will vomit up gold coins and a mixture of fruit and junk food the game calls treats. The game keeps track of how many treats you’ve collected, but they aren’t good for anything besides annoying your friends by telling them how many you have. Coins are used to buy disguises like cowboy hats and sunglasses.  The human population of Earth is scared of Zelik, but humans are unobservant enough that they won’t know it’s him if he’s wearing one of these disguises.

Once you have a disguise, you must find a wise man, usually by doing some clumsy platforming. If your disguise is good enough, he’ll talk to you. I would have had a lot more fun with Zelik Adventures if the wise men didn’t all say the exact same thing. The only question on this personality test is “What attracts you?” and each time you are asked it, you are given three answers to choose from. From your answers, the game will assign you a trait like agreeableness or open-mindedness, which you can share with your friends on Facebook until they un-friend you for annoying them. On the game’s stats page, the game will tell you your trait as if it’s your only one.

What is your name? What is your quest? What is your favourite colour?

This could be seen as a good thing in a game with such lousy controls, but Zelik Adventures has no failure state. There are spikes and enemies, but all they do is take away your disguises. This isn’t a big deal because chests can be looted as many times as you want. If you lose your disguise, you can just re-loot a chest and buy another one.

I kept playing, taking frequent occasional breaks to engage in more entertaining activities such as watching my girlfriend’s turtles race, until I found all five wise men and told them what attracts me. At this point, I expected the game to congratulate me for finding all five wise men and show me an endgame cutscene as a reward for putting up with it for so long. Instead, it told me to go find more wise men to learn more about my personality. What immediately followed was the most enjoyable part of my experience with Zelik Adventures: uninstalling the app.

Zelik Adventures is definitely one of the worst games I’ve ever played. The story is boring, the controls are horrible, and it doesn’t even have the decency to be over when you finish it. If you don’t believe me, download it and see for yourself. If you want a mobile platformer that’s actually good, check out Splashy Slime.

Overall Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ 

What does this score mean?

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

In Splashy Slime, you must navigate thirty 2D levels using just one button as a ball of green slime named Splashy, who is probably a ninja-in-training. My favourite thing about Splashy Slime is its control scheme. Despite its apparent simplicity, German developer paranoiax did a lot with it. If you can call it running, Splashy runs from left to right automatically until he/she/it bumps into a wall and turns around. To jump, you tap the screen. The longer the tap, the higher the jump. If you’re touching the screen when you run into a wall, you do a wall jump that I would never have guessed Splashy is in good enough shape to pull off, which is one of the reasons why I think he/she/it is training to be a ninja.

The game loads in a little over six seconds on my Droid Razr HD running KitKat, and the loading screen explains the controls. In case you’re one of those people who doesn’t read the tips on loading screens, the first four of the thirty levels serve as a tutorial that explains the controls again. The problem is that both of these sources are a bit misleading. They say “Tap to jump” and “Hold to jump higher,” which implies that there are only two jump heights: one for tap, one for hold. It would have been more accurate to say “Tap to jump” and “The longer the tap, the higher the jump.” After that, the tutorial teaches you how to wall jump, how to use springboards, and the most important lesson of all, “Remember: if it’s spiky it kills you.”

Remember: if it’s spiky it kills you.

The object of Splashy Slime is to reach the exit sign in each of the levels without getting killed by the multitude of bottomless pits and spikes that are out to ruin your day. The game never explains what’s at the end of these exit signs that mean so much to Splashy that he/she/it is willing to risk his/her/its life, but jumping over saw blades and avoiding spikes both sound like skills that would be taught at a school for video game ninjas. This is the other reason I think Splashy Slime takes place at a ninja school, and I never saw Splashy in a history lesson to disprove this hypothesis.

I never expected a mobile game to do platforming as well as Splashy Slime, but I do have some gripes with it. As is the case with many platformers, there are coins you can collect. However, there’s no reason to collect them, so they end up being annoying rather than adding to the game. In a hardcore platformer, I would expect the coins to add another layer of difficulty for those brave enough to try collecting them, but paranoiax misses that opportunity.

There are three different environments, but the only one I liked was the dungeon between the forest levels and the winter holiday-themed ones. The dungeon appeals to my affinity for dark themes in video games and literature, and it’s the only level where all the spikes and saw blades don’t seem out of place. The dungeon levels also feature hanging platforms that aren’t in the rest of the game, making the game play slightly different. The other two environments don’t do this. The woodlands and the holiday environment would be indistinguishable given a paint job, and the spikes look out of place in both of them. All three environments also share the same music, which is a shame because having three background songs would have made the game’s biggest problem a little more bearable.

Just like I never expected anyone to make a good platformer for mobile devices, I never expected anyone to make a game with music so bad that the game is better on mute. I usually like chip-tune soundtracks, but Splashy Slime‘s is easily the worst part of the game. The music in the trailer is actually pretty good, so I’m not sure why it’s horrible in the final product. Splashy Slime touts itself as “an impossible hardcore platformer”, but I stopped playing more times because I was sick of the music than because I was frustrated by the difficulty. I ended up playing the second half of the game on mute, and it only took that long because the mute button also silences the sound effects.

Despite some design flaws that keep it from being as good as it should be, Splashy Slime is a great game that exceeds my previous expectations of mobile platformers. It’s a free download on Google Play, and I recommend it to anyone who doesn’t mind playing it on mute.

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆ 

What does this score mean?

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

There’s lava at the bottom of this pit, but it can’t hurt me because it’s not on screen.

If I were a sarcastic person, I would say there is a dearth of indie 2D platformers like The Fourth Wall and Four Sided Fantasy with unique and often-clever gimmicks. The Fourth Wall‘s gimmick is that pressing CTRL locks the screen in place and allows the hero to walk off one side of the screen to emerge on the other side, fall through the bottom of the screen and reappear at the top, or jump through the top of the screen and pop out of bottom. The game is filled with puzzles that are solved by using this gimmick, and I encourage you to download The Fourth Wall for free because because playing it for yourself will give you a much better idea of whether you like it than reading about how much I enjoyed it. Four Sided Fantasy‘s developer, Ludo Land, will build on The Fourth Wall by adding multiplayer, more ways to use screen wrap, and a new art style.

Four Sided Fantasy is scheduled to be released on PC for $10 next year. You can vote for it on its Steam Greenlight page.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

I’m not sure what kind of animals those are.

Hilomi is the opposite of a 2D platformer. In a platformer, you are given a character and an environment. You control the character to navigate the environment, collecting items and completing objectives. In Hilomi, you are given a character named Hilomi and an environment, but now you control the environment to help Hilomi collect pictures of animals and reach the gate to the next level.

The mechanics of Hilomi are pretty simple. The environment is made out of Minecraft-like blocks that Yamago repainted with better textures. There are different materials like earth, stone, sand, water, totem, wood, ice, and fire. All of them are good for something except stone. You can create and destroy blocks of earth, and you can turn materials into other materials. Making and destroying earth takes one mana per move, and converting materials takes two. My first problem with Hilomi is the contrived nature of this Minecraft alchemy. It makes sense that you can turn wood into totems because totems are often made of wood. It makes sense that these wooden totems can be turned into fire because, as any pyromaniac who’s received something from a Hawaiian gift shop knows, wooden totems burn quite well. If anyone understands the logic between being able to turn fire into sand, please, I implore you: leave me a comment and explain it to me.

Hilomi has a variety of environments, so you won’t get bored of the scenery.

The other contrived bit is the way you get more alchemy powers. In the beginning of the game, all you can do is make and destroy earth. Your alchemy powers are introduced one by one as you need them, with no explanation as to why you just learned a new trick. In fact, I don’t know who is helping Hilomi navigate these areas to take pictures of the wildlife. Hilomi is introduced in the opening cut-scene as a young, probably French girl who likes to take pictures of animals. I really like her as a character, but I have no clue who I am playing as. Am I some kind of benevolent god? Am I Hilomi’s subconscious, controlling a dream she is having? Am I a vampire who is working to gain her trust so I can eat her later?

That last one would make me feel better about the art style and music choice. In my preview of Forward to the Sky, I made a distinction between the kind of cheery that makes me feel like I’m going on an epic adventure and the kind of cheery that makes me sick. The art style of Hilomi is the latter.

My other problem with Hilomi is its loading times. My phone is a Droid Razr HD running Jelly Bean, and it took an average of 27 seconds of loading time to be ready to play. After that, there is a 5 second load time between worlds. This won’t be a big deal to some people, but when you’re waiting for your grandfather to get his hair cut, 27 seconds feels like a couple of minutes. The development team is currently looking at the issue.

Other than that, the game is really good. It’s easily the best mobile game I’ve ever played. While the cute art style annoys me, I like that the animals smile when Hilomi gets close to them. It has a rating system similar to the three-star system in games like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope, and Ten Second Ninja. Each level has three or four animals, and you must take pictures of all of them in order to get the highest rating. It’s incredibly satisfying to come back to a level that’s been troublesome and finally get all of the pictures. It also amuses me that Hilomi takes no fall damage but dies instantly in water like Cole McGrath from inFamous. Once you get past how contrived the game is, it’s incredibly fun. It has minor flaws that keep it from being perfect, but if you have an iOS or Android device, I strongly suggest you at least download the free version.

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆ 

What does this score mean?

This game was reviewed on an Android-based device using a copy provided by the developer for that purpose.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

The alteration of gravity and smooth movement make dodging and pulling off all sorts of awesome kills possible. A variety of different selectable characters and level variance ensure that the game doesn’t get repetitive too fast. Overall, these features along with the different weapons make for exciting combat that allows for both tense and intensely frantic moments. While there are other games in the same vein as Paperbound, none of them to my knowledge allow the freedom that Paperbound’s movement system and manipulation of gravity allow, both of which add much to combat.

Besides gameplay, Paperbound also has good sound design going for it. For most games I feel the need to put my own music on in the background, unless there is a good story with professional voice acting. Paperbound’s music fits well with the game and there is enough of it to where I never think about turning down the sound. It has an epic score of ominous music which helps to bring suspense into play.

While the game is currently local multiplayer only, the developers are looking into having someone add network support to make it online as well. If they do manage to give it online multiplayer, I think it will become that much better of a game. But if not, in its current form it is already a fun “couch” game that is going to receive further polish. Paperbound is set for release this Fall and will most likely have a starting price between 10-15 USD. Note that the game is currently on Steam Greenlight and could use your vote.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Still Alive attempts to distil this popular ‘survival sim’ formula, removing some of the more hardcore elements of games like DayZ and Rust and introducing a bigger focus on player combat. By pitting up to 10 players against each other in a last-man standing deathmatch mode, players are expected to scavenge the supplies and weapons necessary to fight against their fellow humans in an attempt to be the sole survivor.

Today’s apocalypse is brought to you by way of a meteor shower raining molten fire and rock-based destruction across the earth. The planet is left scarred, most life has ceased to exist, and everything is generally looking bad for the remaining survivors. What’s worse, the meteor shower seems to have implanted an alien species onto the planet; a hive mind organism that can mutate any life form it is able to inhabit. Naturally, humans become a perfect home for these alien bacteria baddies, and genetically spliced mass murdering humans begin to flood the landscape seeking out the tender flesh of whoever remains.

It’s an interesting concept that I’m surprised we haven’t seen sooner. By amalgamating the best features of a number of games, Still Alive seems to be highlighting a specific element that makes these kinds of games great – the emergent play that comes from conflict between players. However, only time will tell if that alone is unique enough for it to achieve its $45,000 Kickstarter goal.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Why on Earth did I start playing this game, simply why? Oh, do not take this as a negative comment, I mean that in the most positive and excellent way. Allow me to elaborate.

Starting anew, the first group of gnomes begin carving out a kingdom

I introduce to you Gnomoria, a sandbox village management game by Robotronic Games. Gnomoria tasks you with taking a small wandering group of gnomes who have left their home kingdom in order to carve out a settlement and form a kingdom of their very own. You accomplish this by utilizing the gnomes, as well as their initial supplies. You begin in a randomly generated land, and from there, you must create a home for your little guys. Carve out a home for your gnomes and generally create anything you desire for your kingdom. In order to do this though, you need gnomes with the appropriate skills and tools in order to get your kingdom started. Any mining and digging requires a pickaxe, a gnome with good mining skills, forestry requires woodcutters and axes, farmland requires seeds, and able workers.

Does this formula sound familiar to anyone? If it does, you may very well be a Dwarf Fortress player, or at the very least heard of it. Gnomoria is heavily inspired by Dwarf Fortress, and it emulates many gameplay aspects of the game, but with its own brand of twists on the formula. I myself am an avid Dwarf Fortress fan, and I have logged countless hours creating kingdoms, building them up as marvelous beacons of wonder and wealth, and inevitably watching the kingdom crumble and fall as is the norm in any game of Dwarf Fortress. With each fallen kingdom I strive to build another, then another, and another, ad infinitum until I realize how much time I have spent on my virtual kingdoms – the countless hours of lost sleep on minutiae. Along comes Gnomoria, with the same addicting village management and kingdom creation gameplay. Again I must reiterate, why on Earth did I start playing this game?

Slowly but surely creating a majestic kingdom

While I do call upon Gnomoria‘s similarities with Dwarf Fortress, it creates its own brand of gameplay, and does so in a much prettier package. It uses a 2D isometric overhead style, complete with pixel sprites for every character and object. Gnomoria also sports a very impressive soundtrack. It has an assortment of music to accompany you whilst you build your kingdom. Easy-going and even jolly rhythms play while you build, mine, and farm; if goblins show up it will change to an ominous tone to signify their presence. The unique thing about the soundtrack is that it comes in two varieties, Classic and Orchestral. The Classic version uses an 8-bit style reminiscent of the NES era of games, whereas the Orchestral uses a more modern synthesized track to emulate an orchestral piece. This is an extremely nice touch, and the 8-bit style is a great nod to the retro era of games.

Gnomoria graphics

The gameplay is nice as well, and you create your kingdom by designating areas with various work commands. Then you create workshops which can create various items for your gnomes, followed by your kingdom’s source of food and drink. It all starts simple at first, but as you progress in the game you require more specialized workshops and tools, which of course needs a skilled gnome for that particular workshop. Certain items may need multiple workshops before it can be created, with more valuable items needing more additional steps. Thankfully, Gnomoria provides a bit of automation while creating these. As long as you have the required workshops and resources, you can have the items automatically requested for creation. Simply request an item to be made at the correct workshop, and after some time going you have your item, all made auto-magically and without the manual tedium.

From there on, everything is up to you as you cater to your own whim and fancies. Create an underground metropolis worthy to be called a kingdom or create an imposing fortress up on the surface. That is the joy of this game, seeing as it has no end goal to speak of, the fun of the game is what you make of it.

Goblins, professional soldiers and a ragtag militia. FIGHT!

While a lot of fun can be provided from Gnomoria, it does suffer from a few problems.The pacing seems a bit slow, certain tasks often get ignored from while gnomes putter off to do other things, and large maps tend to crash the game. I have also found that certain resources have bottlenecks that can severely stifle your kingdom, even to the point of failure. I have lost a kingdom due to my gnomes bleeding to death from simple injuries, simply because I ran out of bandages. Bandages are created at the tailor, but I lacked the materials needed for the creation of the workshop or its supplies, so all my gnomes eventually died off one by one.

This game may not be for everyone as it has a bit of a learning curve but once you get the basics down it gets easier. If you are a fan of Dwarf Fortress or sandbox village management games, give Gnomoria a go. The game is still under development and is currently available for purchase at various online distributors.

The kingdom secures its spot in history and has won its survival

Still unsure of Gnomoria? Let me give you an insight on my time with it. So far I have 19+ hours logged into Steam, this is the time while logged online. I do the majority of my gaming offline from Steam, so the majority of my game time has not been logged. That 19+ hours is merely a fraction of the total time I have put into the game. Heck, even a severe power outage problem in my community wasn’t enough to deter me from it. Rolling blackouts that lasted over a week plagued my hometown, and I still snuck in a few hours of game time during that period. I’m surprised I managed to pry myself away from the game long enough to write this article.

Now if you will excuse me, my kingdom needs some attention.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Magicians and Looters pays homage to old Metroid-esque side-scrollers and does it well. It has a beautiful 2D high-definition pixel artstyle, real time map system, items to discover, and skills to unlock. You play as three apprentice sorcerers aiming to save their mentor from the ominous castle Looter. In Magicians and Looters you switch between  Brent, Nyn and Vienna. Each character has access to the same magic abilities, but also have their own personal abilities. After the epilogue is finished you are able to switch between the three at any save point.

Brent using in-game map

Brent is a classic warrior type, toting a sword and shield. He is the slowest of the three, but can use his shield to block incoming melee and projectile attacks from any direction. He later gains the ability to wall jump, a useful skill for solving puzzles, gaining loot and reaching hidden areas. Brent’s personality is very straightforward. He has good intentions but is very oblivious at times.

Vienna is the sister of Brent, and she’s a headstrong fighter type who specializes in speed and hand-to-hand combat. She is by far the fastest of the three and her only weapons are her fists. She can also equip the most accessories and has more abilities at her disposal than the other two. Vienna is my personal favorite because she has an “in your face” attitude that matches her fighting style. She has abilities like a high jump, wall run and a falcon kick (a likely nod to the Blue Falcon). Nyn and Brent occasionally mention that Vienna may have a screw loose. The fact that she unlocks abilities from her talking cat isn’t helping her case.

Nyn is a hardened ex-child mercenary that doesn’t back down from a fight, and she would be considered the rogue of the group. She can equip two swords, is speedy and has an evasive roll. She later attains the ability to slide, furthering her usefulness in evasion and obstacle clearing. She was my least favorite to play as, but I loved any of the dialog involving her. She is sarcastic, quick-witted and doesn’t pull punches when it comes to her opinions.

While I did find the game’s dialog funny, the actual plot lacked a bit. The story played off the popular cliches of older successes. A majority of the game’s talking has a satirical undertone that I loved, often taking jabs at current games versus the older ones. In one instance, two sorcerers converse about how sorcerers nowadays always use tutorials and teleporting instead of backtracking. I found this hilarious and spot on as today’s games have a tendency to spoon feed players. On random occasions and at save points, the main characters might have a chat with one another. This would at times provide backstory to one or more of the characters in a witty fashion.

King of Looter

Exploration is encouraged and necessary. Rather than grinding to gain levels you must collect a certain number of orbs. These orbs are usually well hidden, and each time you level up the number of orbs required increases. This is a nice reward system for completionists and makes backtracking that much more worthwhile. Orbs aren’t the only things you will discover while exploring; weapons, accessories and even the occasional dungeon wall chicken are out there, ripe for the picking.

The gameplay is easy to get a feel for, and fans of older Castlevania games will feel at home here. For this review I played the PC version and used an Xbox 360 gamepad. The controls are pretty standard with jump, attack and ability buttons. The ability varies depending on the character selected; a block for Brent, back dash for Vienna, and roll/slide for Nyn. Activating the map is done in real time and fills in as you discover new areas. Holding down the right trigger gives you access to any magic abilities that you’ve unlocked including shooting fruit. Yep, in this game rapid fire fruit is a magic spell, attained from defeating the devious Fruit Magician.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Magicians and Looters, and I honestly hope that Morgopolis Studios puts out another one. With a $7.99 price tag it’s well worth the money. Magicians and Looters is available for PC and Xbox 360, and you can purchase your copy here.

Overall Rating: ★★★★☆ 

What does this score mean?

This game was reviewed using a copy provided by the developer for that purpose.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.