It’s not all about surviving, though, as the game will present players with an opportunity to maintain and improve the colony’s base. Construction/upgrade of base modules, delegating tasks to individual workers, and of course exploration make up just a few of the player’s responsibilities as they battle the harsh, life-or-death conditions. It reminds me a bit of the old Sierra game, Outpost, which I played extensively, so naturally I’m curious to see how this compares.

Construct, maintain, and upgrade your Mars colony to survive and thrive.

A few weeks ago, TBA Games created a Kickstarter campaign to help fund PeriAreion‘s development. With weeks left in the campaign, the studio met its initial $3000 goal back in mid-March, followed soon after by hitting the first stretch goal: expanded artwork. There are still a few  stretch goals remaining including a new game map, custom base placement, and improved animations. With just over a week left, it’s not too late for backers to get on the bandwagon, and there are plenty of tiered rewards left including copies of the game, stickers, posters, and the chance to be turned into a playable character.

For more information on PeriAreion and to stay on top of updates, be sure to check out the game’s official website.

© 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.

Released on Steam as an ‘Early Access’ build last month, Maia started as a Kickstarter and Indiegogo project. Developed by Simon Roth, who previously worked in AAA game development and on Terry Cavanagh’s VVVVVV, Maia is a colony-building and management sim set on a hostile, but habitable planet located about twelve light years away from Earth. Taking inspiration from games like Dungeon Keeper, Dwarf Fortress, and The Sims, the player must work to ensure the colonists survive in their harsh new environment. Build shelters, construct power sources, regulate food production, keep a careful eye on the mental and physical health of your colonists–everything you would expect from a good simulation is there. What’s also neat is that, being on a volatile planet, the colonists are not only subjected to the more routine aspects of survival, but also foreign toxins, alien flora and fauna, dangerous geological events such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, and extraplanetary hazards such as solar radiation and meteors of a much more violent nature and frequency than that experienced on Earth.

While the construction of the facilities in which the colonists will live initially starts underground, the player will be able to explore the planet’s surface and conduct research and experiments which will expand their knowledge of the planet and their colonists’ chances of survival. Robots and a first-person mode seem like it’ll make this facet of the game extra interesting, especially considering the look of that mode. Despite the fact that I normally don’t care for first-person perspective in games, I’m actually pretty excited to try this mode out when it’s added to the game. The visual style of it is a total blast and I hope Roth introduces more elements which will emphasize its uniqueness.

Speaking of style, there’s more that will make certain sci-fi fans–me included–salivate at the mouth: Maia also takes a lot of influence from the aesthetic and functionality of 70s science fiction. The technology in the game will be reminiscent of the era in many ways, and the look and music will surely bring folks back to their favourite 70s sci-fi movie. I know when I first heard the haunting sounds of the Kickstarter trailer I was flung back to when I first watched Alien.

Anyway, Maia looks to be a highly ambitious game. The map will be 2km x 2km and procedurally generated. The colonists you manage will all have distinct personalities and skills which you’ll have to pay close attention to in order for the colony to thrive. Like any good game that even mentions terraforming, the player will be able to change the environment and change certain settings which will influence the difficulty and direction of the game. But everything will have its trade-off. Want more minerals? You’ll have to contend with increased geological activity which will put your colonists at risk. Playing around with the amount of light that reaches the planet from its star? Plants will grow faster, sure, but that might also attract more wildlife, and where the prey is, there are predators. This attention to detail is incredibly enticing, and I sincerely hope Roth is able to pull off everything he hopes for in this game. Simulation games are great for creating unique stories, and a story about colonists hashing it out on a hostile planet is too good to pass up.

As mentioned previously, Maia is available on Steam as an ‘Early Access’ title, which means you’ll be able to follow its development first-hand and receive future updates to the game directly through the client. A word of warning, though: Maia is still in very early Alpha, so it’s still got a hardy amount of bugs and is far from polished and feature-full. The developer seems to be consistently putting out updates, however, so if you’re interested in seeing the game grow as you play it, check it out on its Steam page. You can pre-order the game on its official website as well as find out more information about it on there and on its Facebook and Twitter accounts.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Have you ever been playing a game and thought out loud to yourself, “I can make something better than this piece of junk”, or “I can easily make something as awesome as this”? Ever wanted to make your own video game but lack the creativity or knowledge of today’s thingamabob-gadgets and do-hickeys? Well, it is your lucky day. Greenheart Games have released their flagship title appropriately named Game Dev Tycoon, a business sim where you start and run your very own game company.

 In Game Dev Tycoon you begin your journey at the early years of video games. You begin by giving your company a name and by creating your games on a single workstation in your garage. From this humble origin you must now make a name for yourself in the world of game development. Do not worry about about the technical aspects of the game-making process, creating games has been simplified in Game Dev Tycoon. It is as easy as picking a game topic, its genre, and the target platform and you are on your way to creating the next hit.

As the owner, you call the shots as to what game is created; that werewolf RPG game you had rattling around in your brain? You can make it a reality. Zombie romance sim, government action-adventure, transport RPGs? Sure, why not. Mix and match to your adventurous whims.

Actual development is divided into stages where you adjust sliders in order to focus on certain aspects such as dialogue, graphics, sound, and so on. Care must be given to this as each stage will affect how well your game fares out compared to other games of that genre. Action games heavy in dialogue and RPGs lacking in story or graphics may fare poorly in the market, so you must use experience and your best judgement in order to make the game focused on what is most important to that specific game. Not everything will work, but it is fun to experiment with obscure mixes of genres and subjects. You never know what may become the next smash hit.

Every start up begins somewhere

Your options are very limited at the beginning, with only your garage as your office, yourself as the sole employee, and only the early infancy of computer technology as your platform. As time progresses you will gain new platforms and technology to work with as companies form and begin to release new consoles. As well as new tech, you gain experience with each new game released, new tech to research and, hopefully, some income from your game sales for which you can use to fund more projects or expand your company.

Speaking of platforms, the timeline in Game Dev Tycoon develops much like the real-life game industry. As the gaming industry grows, parodied versions of companies such as Ninvento will release game consoles and even form rivalries with other industry players such as Vena. Early on you gain access to consoles such as the Ninvento TES and the Vena Oasis for your game development. Those names sound familiar? These thinly-veiled parodies of real-life companies were a great source of amusement for myself. It was fun trying to guess what the next console or company would be named.

Cleverly “disguised” company rivals

If you have managed your money and releases well enough you will eventually be able to move into bigger and better offices. These offer a much larger workspace than a dingy garage and will allow you to hire employees and expand your company. As you grow even more you can expand even further into the industry by adding your own research department or develop your very own console. This all adds up to more tech, more development options, and more income. The amount of options available to you is simple astounding and frankly a little overwhelming.

I have played other similar game dev simulation games in the past such as Game Dev Story, but GreenHeart Games’ adaptation offers a bit more “meat”, so to speak. The game continued to impress me at each turn and gave me a few chuckles along the way. Very few issues come up with this game other than some frame rate slowdown at the later stages of the game, but it is bearable and it didn’t bother me so much.

I adore this game. It caters to my whims as an aspiring game developer and it just simply oozes with charm. If you want to fulfill your dreams as the head of your own game company or like business sims, give Game Dev Tycoon a go. You won’t be disappointed.

I wholeheartedly agree with their reviews

I would have to agree with the above rating. Simply marvelous.

Overall Rating: ★★★★★ 

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

Buy or demo the game at GreenHeart Games

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Despite it’s title, Arcadecraft is not yet another Minecraft clone available through the Xbox Live Indies Games market. Instead, it’s a game that puts players in the role of an arcade manager in that scene’s heyday of the early 1980s. Arcadecraft plays on actual history by including events like the video game crash of 1983 and ending with a nod to the release of the NES in 1985. Through it all, it’s up to the player to ensure that their arcade is remaining popular with the crowds and racking in enough money to pay the bills.

Shown from an isometric perspective, the empty arcade is the player’s canvas for creating a gaming hotspot. As the ever-running calendar moves from month to month, game publishers release new arcade cabinets available for purchase by the player. These cabinets vary in initial cost, genre, control method, number of floor spaces occupied, power consumption, and a few other characteristics. Once purchased and placed on the floor, each cabinet will begin drawing in money based on a few factors including the arcade’s current popularity rate and the popularity of the individual machine. The newer a machine is, the quicker it makes money. That money must be repeatedly collected from the machine by the player, otherwise the game stops raking in coins.

I give credit to the developers for trying to add strategic depth through individual game cabinet settings. However, I found that the game suffers from a pacing problem that interferes with the use of that level of customization. The early portion of Arcadecraft speeds by too quickly to really get a grasp of how or when the settings will affect that cabinet’s money-making ability. Early on there’s not much incentive to fiddle with the defaults because of the risk of failure, and later in the game there’s simply too much money-collecting taking place to do anything else. It was only once I hit the final year of the simulation – when no new arcade cabinets are available for purchase – that I really started toying around. There are lessons to be learned from the first full play-through of the game, but it’s doubtful most players are going to go back and repeat the exact same sequence of events using that newly-gained knowledge. I think if the developers had decided to include a controllable speed setting, just like in Smooth Operators: Call Center Chaos, it would give players a chance to run their arcade at a pace that allows for experimentation.

Individual machines can have their pricing and difficulty settings modified.

One of the best aspects of the game has to be the homage to the gaming industry of three decades ago. It’s an interesting look back at the evolution of technology as newer games offer varying cabinet styles and control methods. There’s also a bit of a nostalgia factor as a number of the games in Arcadecraft are parodies of classics like Donkey Kong and Space Invaders. Some of the game publishers even release sequels to their titles ala Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man. If the player manages to hold onto the original and can seat the sequel(s) next to it, each machine gets a popularity boost.

There are a number of other interesting strategical decisions that the player must make during the lifespan of the arcade. Periodically a pro-gamer will stop by and want to try one of the most popular machines. If he manages to beat the high score, a popularity boost will temporarily be placed on that machine. The trade-off is that while he’s hogging the machine it’s not earning any money. From time to time, a vendor will stop by and offer to buy one of the player’s classic gaming arcade cabinets for a high ticket price. However, to keep a machine around long enough for it qualify as a classic generally means its old and far less popular (read: cost-ineffective) than the latest and greatest cabinets.

Succeed by creating a customer-friendly layout and buying a wide variety of cabinets.

As with many simulation games, Arcadecraft suffers in its endgame. Once the player has reached the two-year mark and paid off their debt, most of the challenge is gone. Truth be told, I failed to pay off that debt during my first go-round, but that experience was an education in the keys to winning: start slow and continue to replace old, unpopular machines as soon as you can buy new ones. Once the player figures that lesson out, the challenge changes from mental strategy to menial labor as he/she has to repeatedly run around in a frenzy emptying coin boxes. It becomes tedious very fast, and the ability to hire an automated helper does little to relieve the effort of maintaining a large number of cabinets. At this point, the goal becomes simply trying to collect as much money as possible before the simulation ends. Unfortunately the lather-rinse-repeat process happens earlier in this title than some of the similar games I’ve played on XBLIG. Ultimately I would have liked to have seen a slower-paced game with more to do during that time than collect money and fix broken machines.

Arcadecraft‘s premise and early execution show so much promise that I was doubly disappointed when I became bored by the end. One or two design choices made differently would have been the difference between this being a decent game and a great one. It’s obvious that the developers put a lot of work into the presentation. I fear, though, that the 240 Microsoft Point price tag in a typically 80-Point market may keep even the most curious of players away. I think it’s still worth a look for those who enjoy simulation/strategy games and those who can still remember the golden age of arcades.

Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

What does this score mean?

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

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.