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by Jen  If you've played Exploding Kittens, then I bet you were as excited as we were when Elan Lee and Matthew Inman launched a Kickstarter for a new game last October. Today that excitement payed off when the new game (Bears vs. Babies) showed up in my mailbox! I can hardly wait to whip this out on game night! Exploding Kittens still makes me laugh almost two years after its initial release, so I'm sure Bears vs. Babies will provide hours of entertainment as well.
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 To be honest, I’ve been pretty stressed out lately. Dungeon-raiding day in and day out takes a toll on your nerves. So instead of talking about games that are plot-heavy, or full of different mechanics, or designed to test your patience, I’m going to talk about relaxing puzzles. If you’ve ever gotten into sudoku, or worked on newspaper puzzles in a cafe in an attempt to look quirky yet intelligent (not that I know anything about that) this one’s for you.
Pokémon Picross is a “picture crossword” game, where you fill in squares according to clues to make a picture. The in-game tutorial does a fairly decent job of explaining the rules to newbies, but it took me many puzzles to get the hang of some of the more advanced strategies. When you complete a puzzle, you catch the Pokémon that was revealed. Soon you’ll have a full roster of the little guys, each with their own special ability to help you solve more difficult puzzles.  The game is free-to-play, with an in-game currency called “picrites”. You gain small amounts of picrites from playing a daily puzzle challenge, or from completing puzzles, so you’ll end up experiencing the whole game for free if you have the patience. If you don’t want to bother with all that, the full game is $30, with all the bells and whistles. You really can’t pay more than $30, so that’s a nice touch compared to most money-hungry free-to-play games.
The 20th anniversary of the series is next week! What are you waiting for? At the very least, pick up your 3DS and start filling in cute, calming picture squares.  Gotta solve ‘em all!
-The Dungeon Dame  Games “for girls” have come a long way since Barbie pink floppy disks roamed the land. Now that women are the largest demographic of gamers, perhaps we won’t have to fight the stereotypes much longer. Still, I’m grateful for the girly games made in the era of Games Are For Boys; in a way, it was a little sign that we weren’t forgotten. Even now, I believe there’s a place for deliberately feminine games, regardless of the gender of the player. Sometimes fanciness can be fun too. As a big fan of the princess maker (and princess-killer) game Long Live the Queen, I’m glad I finally got my hands on the developer’s latest feminine high-stakes choose-your-own-adventure, Black Closet. Billing itself as “schoolgirl noir”, you play as the head of the student council at a prestigious all-girls school, working to uphold the sky-high reputation of the elites. Of course, troublemakers abound, so you use your roster of minions to settle problems before they get out of hand. Also, you get to eat cucumber sandwiches and tea.
Plus, there’s a traitor in your group who deliberately sabotaging your efforts-- messing up investigations, bringing you sucky items-- so it’s worth your while to find out who the double-crosser is, and quickly.  Black Closet has more of an RPG vibe, with dice rolls and everything. I had to fail a few times before figuring out exactly how the system works, but pretty soon I was deploying my team strategically. Like Long Live the Queen, there are many ways you can fail spectacularly, so I’d recommend just going along for the ride even if you mess up. There’s a lot to do and see in this game, so I fully anticipate playing it through a few times. Did I mention that there’s romance? I’ve got to seduce all of the ladies!  Black Closet is easily the best all-girls school mystery strategy game I have ever played. Hopefully my love life will improve on the next playthrough, since it seems I’m about as awkward in the game as high-school me was. I think that counts as bonus points for “realism”.  Sneaking into your room to gather evidence,
The Dungeon Dame  Let’s talk about old-school style games for a bit-- as many of you know, plenty of indie games use pixel art due to limited budgets or a smaller team. Personally, I love this. I’m a big believer in the value of knowing your limits; too many wonderful things have never come to existence due to over-ambitious goals. Plus, pixels can be very pretty. But while most of these games are fairly modern, every now and then you find a game that’s truly made in the old style, complete with the limitations of the era. Recently I went full retro with Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt, a game that definitely has more heart than graphical power.  In Princess Remedy, you play a recent graduate of Saturnian healing school, who descends from the stars ready to heal the crap out of everyone and everything. Thankfully, there is plenty of healing to be done in Hurtland, where citizens suffer a variety of ailments, such as playing a game so awesome their face melted. You then engage in “healing mode” which involves rapidly shooting medicines at baddies.  It’s a quick and simple “bullet-hell” style game, which starts out easy but ramps up in difficulty. Although I had to play several levels a few times, the levels are quick enough that frustration is minimized. My problem with these types of games are looooong levels where you almost get to the end, but die and have to start all over again. None of that here; the only extended battle is the final boss, who offers a challenge but isn't too complicated to defeat.  It’s a simple and quick game that you can easily finish in one sitting, but there are also plenty of secrets to discover if you’re so inclined. The hidden goodies were the biggest source of nostalgia for me- I had a blast uncovering small bonuses and little jokes left by the developers. The best part of the game is the 64 “endings” you can choose from-- what other game can offer that?  Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt is completely free to play, so if you’re even slightly interested, definitely give it a go. What better way to spend an evening than by taking a trip back in time, when we only needed a few bits to tell a story? With how complicated games have gotten, even the pixelly ones, Princess Remedy was just the tonic I needed. Healing from a particularly intense game jam,
The Dungeon Dame Believe it or not, I’m actually playing the games I bought during the winter Steam sale! Crazy, right? I hope you’ve found the time to enjoy some of your purchases, whether they were pre-planned or impulse buys. As always, I’ve discovered some games I really, really want AFTER the sale, but so far I’ve been able to resist temptation. (Feel free to keep tempting me with your tales of awesome games, though. This wishlist isn’t going to update itself!)  One of my last-minute finds was Why Am I Dead At Sea, a game where you solve your own murder as a ghost. While there are a handful of games with this premise, Why Am I Dead has a uniquely strong focus on the characters in this nautical murder mystery. Who are these people, and why are they on this terrible ferry? It’s a true thriller, one I quickly finished because the story was so intriguing.  In the game, you gain clues by possessing other travelers, each with their own backstory and special abilities. The goal of the game is to figure out what makes each of them tick, their inner thoughts, their deepest fears-- granting you more power over their bodies. It’s heavy stuff, and the story deals with some mature and disturbing themes. There are some moments of humor, though—the special power the first mate has is to make “announcements” over the intercom, and it is delightful.  Despite having new-school mechanics, be prepared for some old adventure game leaps of logic and getting stuck. If you’re into that sort of thing, knock yourself out, but there’s a character that gives really good hints if you’re getting frustrated. The indie-ness of this game definitely shows, since the ambitiously large number of characters and clues led to some nasty bugs on my first playthrough. It’s not polished to perfection, but it’s worth muddling through the iffy parts to get to the explosive ending.  Why Am I Dead At Sea is a quick voyage, taking less than 10 hours to finish even for perfectionists, but it’s one that will haunt you for the duration of the journey. Story game people, this one’s definitely for you! Just don’t play it right before going on a cruise ship.  Abusing the intercom as much as possible,
The Dungeon Dame After all the sales and holiday shopping, The Dungeon Dame understands if you’ve busted your budget. If you’ve spent entirely way too much on friends, family, or Steam games this year, don’t panic! We’ll be featuring free games for a while, so you can give your wallet a break. 
 The game takes place over AIM in the early 2000s, on a computer running Windows XP. As someone who spent their formative years over instant messaging services, the nostalgia factor was sky-high. The story is spent chatting to your friend Emily and navigating all the drama that can happen over AIM as a young person. You select an answer, and “type” it in. This mechanic allows you to see how your character corrects a message, changes their mind, etc. before hitting the all-important send button.  The choices don’t really matter, (spoiler alert: kids are dumb) but what I found interesting about this game is that the protagonist you play as is… not the best. Emily and the character you play as are both flawed, but while I’m used to dealing with all sorts of disagreeable characters in the third person, it’s jarring to have a first person antihero. It definitely forces you into the shoes of someone you might not want to be. There’s one point in the game where I was actually horrified at “myself” and what I was “typing.”  Emily is Away needs only one playthrough to see everything, and takes less than an hour to complete, but I’ll recommend experiencing it, especially if you’re in your late-twenties/early-thirties. Thankfully it’s 100% free to relive your awkward years! Updating my away message, The Dungeon Dame 
 After popping out all the phaser tokens and assembling the classic Trek character pieces, getting started was quick. The directions were pretty simple and the head-to-head dice roll battle mechanism was easy to pick up after a round or two of practice. Much like Monopoly, you have a home base where you get phaser blast chips (like money) and an access card every time you pass 'Go'. You follow the flow of the board around, collecting or losing chips and picking up action or 50/50 cards as you roll. The real excitement begins once you get an access card to move into the inner path.  There you encounter 'hostile planets' and you have to battle roll to collect one of each of the four resource tokens. As resource chips run low and you have to make a run to home base to secure your cargo, that's when things can get 'nasty.' Remember those action cards you've been collecting? Yeah, it's time to use them to sabotage your opponents for extra turns, tokens, and avoid Federation Blockades.
After all the sales and holiday shopping, The Dungeon Dame understands if you’ve busted your budget. If you’ve spent entirely way too much on friends, family, or Steam games this year, don’t panic! We’ll be featuring free games for a while, so you can give your wallet a break.  It’s only fitting the game with one of the longest titles is also one of the shortest I’ve ever played. Still, Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist is worth the 15 minutes of your time, especially since it’s completely free to play. A high-stakes stealth/heist game featuring a ferocious tiger, Dr. Langeskov will keep you on edge for the entirety of the brief time you’ll spend on it. I can’t say much more, since this short experience is best gone into blindly.  Dr. Langeskov, created by William Pugh of The Stanley Parable fame, will probably be familiar to Stanley fans, since one of the main features a british narrator. This time it’s one of my favorite comedians, Simon Amstell, who is hilarious as your frustrated guide. It’s very linear, though, so don’t expect much replay value --except to listen to the insane cassette tapes voiced by Rick and Morty’s Justin Roiland, which I highly recommend doing.  If you like British absurdist humour, DLTTaTTCE:AWH is a game you can’t miss, especially if you’ve got a few minutes to spare. Please stop reading this and give it a shot. If you don’t like it, I’ll give you a full refund.  On strike until next week,
The Dungeon Dame After all the sales and holiday shopping, The Dungeon Dame understands if you’ve busted your budget. If you’ve spent entirely way too much on friends, family, or Steam games this year, don’t panic! We’ll be featuring free games for a while, so you can give your wallet a break  When the announcement came that the next “Five Nights at Freddy’s” game, FNaF World, wouldn't be the horror-fest we all know and love, but instead an RPG adventure, fans of the series had mixed reactions. Curious about the new gameplay, I decided to use this as an excuse to finally play The Desolate Hope, one of the creator’s earlier games. Now that I've gotten an idea of what’s possible, my excitement for FNaF World has only skyrocketed. If this new RPG is anything like the weird, hectic, haunting world of The Desolate Hope, we’re in for quite a game.  The Desolate Hope takes place on a decaying space station, neglected for years and running out of power. You play as a coffee pot who has made it their mission to tend to the needs of the robots in the station as well as destroy viruses attacking the system. This is not as easy as it sounds; the viruses are ruthless and the robots have slowly gone insane over time. You do all this by using scavenged computer game code-- creating games within games within games.  With the pre-rendered graphics and old-school gaming styles, it’s reminiscent of a bizarre, long-lost 90s PC game. The intensity ranges from slow, lonely walks on the abandoned planet to hyper-intense and fast paced RPG battle color explosions. There are moments of humor as well as dark, soul-searching monologues. It shouldn’t take too long to beat this game, about 7 hours, but it is jam-packed with everything but the kitchen sink.  Another old-school element is the fact that absolutely nothing is explained or easily understandable-- a game guide is a must for this one. Trust me, after playing a bit and going “What the heck?!” just go ahead and print one out. There is a time limit, but don’t worry too much about it. Once you get your bearings, you should be destroying viruses left and right.
The game is completely free to play, so if you’re even just a little bit curious about this space adventure, you've got nothing to lose. It’s easily a top recommendation at the $0 price point. At the very least, check out the crazy robot designs because they are the best. Hopefully the new Freddy’s game will have even a small slice of the madness within The Desolate Hope.
Never underestimate the power of Coffee. -The Dungeon Dame I have a confession to make: I am a huge Animal Crossing fanatic. A game where you hang out with animals in a village and pay off a ludicrous mortgage? It’s just the right amount of weird to keep me addicted. So, instead of my usual adventuring to find great indie games and hidden gems, I’ve been stuck behind my 3DS, playing one of the latest (and strangest) additions to the Animal Crossing series, Happy Home Designer.  This game is the HGTV of video games: instead of a resident of the village, your character is a new hire of Nook’s Homes, tasked with designing a variety of houses and businesses to keep your animal clients happy. And just like the best home design shows, you are given complete creative control-- feel free to recreate your favorite disasterpieces from Trading Spaces if you wish. Your clients will give you a basic guideline, but other than that, the sky’s the limit!  Designing is fun and intuitive-- using the stylus, you can drag and drop to your heart’s content. If you’ve ever struggled with the typical Animal Crossing design experience, rest assured that it is much easier to summon, move, and copy furniture in this game. And no need to worry about gamified “objectives” or the importance of feng shui-- you aren’t being graded, and your client will love your work regardless. That being said, I liked to follow the (minimal) prompts, so I can experience all that the extensive furniture catalog had to offer. Especially if an animal insists on a tractor and hay in their living room.  There are hundreds of animals desiring a brand-new home, so there’s tons of work to be done. Plus, if you’ve got your heart set on one particular animal, there are trading cards (!) you can scan in with a NFC reader to request your favorites. I enjoyed designing facilities the best: would a modern school be the most fun, or perhaps something more Hogwarts-like? There’s also plenty to explore online, where you can visit the impressively creative designs of players around the world.  supertortimer.tumblr.com As a fan of home design shows, relaxing games, cute animals, and obsessively collecting trading cards, I’ve been more than happy to give Happy Home Designer first priority in my 3DS game collection. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a Raccoon boss who demands that I get back to work.
Let me know if you’d like to trade cards! -The Dungeon Dame |
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