Continuing to go through my back-log of shorter games that I've bought in bulk on sales, I spent a couple nights going through an indie game called Exo One. Exo One is a sci-fi ... um ... adventure game? Puzzle game? Platformer? Infinite runner? I'm really not sure how to classify this game ludically. Exo One feels like somebody thought "let's adapt the last 10 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey into a game" So it's part 2001, with a little bit of Contact thrown in for good measure, and plays similarly to Journey (but without any of the multiplayer aspects that made Journey such a beloved insta-classic). Basically, it's a game about going somewhere, but without really knowing where that "somewhere" is supposed to be. As such, it's the journey that matters; not the destination.

The basic plot, as I understood it (because it's a bit trippy and difficult to follow), is that an alien civilization transmitted data to Earth containing plans on how to build an exotic interstellar space craft (hence, the Contact reference). When a crew of astronauts travel to Jupiter to test the spacecraft, there is some kind of accident or unexplained phenomena that causes one of the astronauts to become lost in space. We play as that astronaut trying to return home -- well, actually, it's a little bit more complicated than that, but what's actually happening falls into spoiler territory, so I'll just leave it at that for now.

The spacecraft itself is a metallic, shapeshifting ball that can transform into a discus-shaped glider. It is equipped with a "gravity drive" that allows it to temporarily multiply the the force of gravity that is applied to it. As such, the core gameplay loop consists of rolling this ball across alien landscapes, using the gravity drive to pick up speed whenever you are falling or rolling downhill, and then jumping and transforming into the discus glider in order to reach higher elevation or travel long distances.

What if the climax of 2001: A Space Odyssey were a game?

Yeah, it's a weird one...

When Civilization VI released, it was criticized by many as being a "do-over of Civ V." It was, indeed, a much more iterative release than many other Civ games have been, taking the concept of "un-stacking" units that was pioneered by Civ V, and expanding that to include un-stacking of cities. Then it threw in some iterative changes to many other core systems that had been introduced in Civ V, such as city states, religion, trade routes, and archaeology (to varying degrees of success). The end result is that Civ VI felt very familiar to anyone who had played Civ V.

That is absolutely not the case with Civilization VII, which enters life in a much more competitive market, and may have felt pressured to do things different. Civilization isn't the only dog in the yard anymore, when it comes to historic 4-x strategy gaming. For the first time in the series' history, it has real competitors in the form of Amplitude's Humankind, Microsoft's Ara: History Untold, Paradox's Millennia, and others. In fact, Civ VII seems to have taken many design cues from these competitors, and there definitely seems to be a lot of convergent design.

For example, Civilization VII borrows the idea of changing cultures between the different eras, which was introduced by Humankind. It divides the game up into 3 distinct Ages, similar to how Ara divides its gameplay up into 3 Acts. And all of Humankind, Millennia, Ara, and Civ VII feature units that stack together into armies. And that says nothing about all the "live service"-inspired systems that have been added, such as cumulative progression rewards for each leader, profile badges, and so forth. These all represent pretty dramatic departures from what Civ V and Civ VI were doing, and I'm not sure if I like the way that these creative choices have affected this version of Civilization.

3 ages of history

The division of the game into 3 Ages is probably going to be the most controversial change, since it fundamentally changes the way that the game is played.

Civilization VII is not designed as a single, seamless trek through alternate human history. Instead, it is basically divided up into 3 smaller, more focused games, each with their own distinct gameplay mechanics and goals. I couldn't find any statements from 2K or Firaxis that the ages were implemented in order to better facilitate multiplayer, but that seems to be the consensus among the game media. Many articles (from GameRant, The Gamer, and others) highlight how each of the ages can be played as a stand-alone multiplayer game that is much shorter than a traditional game of Civ, thus resulting in more mutliplayer sessions that actually go to a proper resolution, rather than everyone simply stopping because it's 3 in the morning.

This is great for players who do want to be able to complete a game, and reach a proper ending within a single afternoon. It's less good for players who do want a full, Civilization game. Put simply, the Ages create hard stops and resets at pre-determined points in the game, which hurts the sense of continuity when playing a full game.

The game is divided into 3 ages, with hard resets in between each age.

An age might just end when I'm in the middle of doing something, or with there still being things that I wanted to accomplish. Maybe I wanted to settle another city, or capture another player's city, or annex a city state, or build a wonder? Nope. Can't. The age just ends, and the game kicks me back out to a loading screen before advancing straight to the start of the next era, which may skip decades or centuries on the in-game calendar.

I've been trying to go through some of my backlog of games on both the PC and PS5, and recently played through a retro, lo-fi indie horror game called No One Lives Under the Lighthouse. I'm not quire sure what to make of it, and have very mixed feelings. In essence, the first half of the game is excellent. It perfectly evokes the loneliness and sense of isolation of being a lighthouse keeper, and both the lighthouse and the island it sits on are incredibly atmospheric. The back half of the game, however, kind of went off the rails for me. It jumps around a lot, the imagery becomes exceedingly abstract and difficult to parse, and it was just overall confusing. Honestly, I kind of wasn't even sure if I was playing as the new lighthouse keeper, or if the game had flashed me back to the past to play as the previous lighthouse keeper who had gone missing. That's right, the game was so confusing that I wasn't even sure which character I was playing as!

It doesn't help that the dialogue and narration is completely text-based, and that text is too small, and the font is too elaborately-decorated in an Old English style. So I may have mis-read some of the text that might have explained what is going on. There's no options to change the size of the text or use a more plain type-face either.

The premise is to maintain a lighthouse after the former keeper disappeared.

The basic premise is that a lighthouse keeper goes missing under mysterious circumstances, with no body being found. A new keeper comes to the island to take over that missing keeper's duties, and the nature of the previous keeper's disappearance is gradually revealed. Or at least, it's supposed to be revealed, but I honestly couldn't follow along with what was happening.

After the prologue, it is assumed that I'm playing as the replacement keeper. But later in the game, it starts to be implied that either I've switched to playing as the previous keeper in the past, or that I was playing as the previous keeper all along. There might also be a third lighthouse keeper, who was the original keeper before the one who disappears in the prologue? I don't know.

I came across this video on YouTube last week, in which HPRshredder defends the second half of Dark Souls (after obtaining the Lordvessel). Most people say that the second half of the game is a clear drop-off compared to the first half, but HPRshredder argues that most of the second half is actually pretty good, and that many of the things that people hate about the second half are actually in the first half.

Many of HPRshredder's points are actually quite valid. I mean, some of it is pedantic nitpicks about defining "second half", but you know, it's not wrong. However, I feel like he missed the biggest complaint that people have against the back half of Dark Souls. Specifically, after the player obtains the Lordvessel, the player is able to teleport to many bonfires. The ability to teleport eliminated the need for From Software to maintain the tight, interconnected world design through the entirety of Dark Souls' campaign. Instead, the areas where the player must obtain the final 4 Lords' Souls are more linear dungeon crawls that are disconnected from the rest of the map. In fact, in all of these instances, the player cannot even walk out of the boss arenas, and must teleport out.

Of all the people who I talk to about Dark Souls, this is the primary complaint that they levy against the later parts of Dark Souls. Aside from Izalith and the Bed of Chaos (and sometimes the Tomb of the Giants), people rarely have specific complaints with the levels or boss fights in the later stages of Dark Souls. Mostly, people just believe that the world design suffers from the lack of interconnected paths between these final levels.

Many of the criticisms of the 4 Lords' areas in Dark Souls could have been mitigated, or headed-off entirely, with a little bit of extra creative level and world design. If these areas could retain the interconnectedness that people love so much about the rest of the game, then maybe that would have created more memorable moments that might make players think back more fondly of these areas?

Defeating Ornstein and Smough, and obtaining the Lordvessel, is widely regarded as the peak of Dark Souls.

I think I bought This Bed We Made on a PSN sale. Or maybe it was one of the free monthly titles? The trailer piqued my interest. It looked like it might be a fun little murder mystery.

Mystery video games are difficult to get right. It's a tough balancing act to give the player enough information to solve the mystery, but not so much that the game basically plays itself. Can the solution be easily brute-forced? Do option prompts give the solution away? Does the player ever get that sense of "eureka!" for figuring things out for yourself?

Generally, in my experience, the bigger the game, the more difficult it is to hit that fine balance. It seems like indie games make much better mystery games due to their smaller scope. This Bed We Made certainly keeps its scope fairly small, which helps to provide a reasonable possibility space for the player to work with, and allowing for player-driven deduction and some assertive leaps of logic.

The protagonist is a hotel maid with a penchant for snooping into guests' personal belongings.

The player plays a hotel maid tasked with cleaning up the rooms for patrons. But she has a penchant for snooping around in the customers' personal belongings. The game takes place entirely in the handful of rooms that she is assigned to clean, on a single floor of the hotel, as well as the lobby, and some of the employee-only spaces in the basement. The protagonist being a hotel maid also introduces the game's core gimmick: the game isn't necessarily about solving the mystery; it's more about how you handle the evidence and clues that you find.

Your job is to decide which pieces of evidence should be cleaned up, and which should be left behind. After all, your job is not to tamper with guest's belongings; it's simply to clean up their trash. Throwing away the wrong scrap of paper could, hypothetically, get you fired. But at the same time, not throwing away certain pieces of evidence could incriminate you or another innocent character.

Furthermore, your choices will also have impacts on the other hotel staff. Your actions may reveal co-workers as negligent or insubordinate, but that negligence or insubordinance may be justifiable or sympathetic, which leads to interesting moral and ethical dilemmas. Does a co-worker deserve to be held accountable for their actions and potentially fired? Or are their reasons for the inciting action justifiable or excusable, given the circumstances?

Your actions (or inactions) can lead to consequences for yourself and other characters.