Blog Posts

Games You Should Be Playing: LifeLine

7/22/2015

I don't normally play cell phone games, but this isn't just a game. Even if you don't like phone games, buy this one. The amazing story line and multiple outcomes are all based in text messages you receive from Taylor, a stranded astronaut. Her choices and her survival are depending on you. The first day I texted back and wondered why there's such a cult following for a simple text based game. After several chats with Taylor, I found myself thinking of her as a real person. I was emotionally invested for several days and in the morning my heart was racing to see if Taylor had survived the night. I am replaying the game as I type this and I have gotten to know more and more about her fears and hopes. My hope is that I can keep her alive. Can you?

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Fun Games You Aren't Playing - Dungeon of the Endless

7/17/2015

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As the Dungeon Dame, it’s no secret that I’m a sucker for a good dungeon crawler. My latest addiction is Dungeon of the Endless, a game that takes the best parts of many genres and crams them into one hectic catacomb-exploring journey.

Dungeon of the Endless starts with a spaceship crashing deep into the underground of a strange planet.

Your goal?

To explore these monster-infested passageways and work your way up, level by level. You must also keep the ship’s energy crystal functioning, and drag it with you to the exit. It’s more challenging than it sounds-- lots of monsters, remember? Just turn on all the lights you can-- spooky things come out of the dark.

At first, this game reminded me of FTL in that it’s only sort-of turn based, since the combat takes place in real time. Also, it’s in space, and you will die a lot. The first few times I played, I had no idea what the heck I was doing, and barely made it into a few rooms alive before being swarmed by beasties.

There are only two difficulties so far: “Easy” and “Very Easy.”
The latter lives up to its name, but “Easy”? Hold on to your butt...

This game has plenty of little jokes like that, especially in the items you pick up and team members you meet. Some of the characters are thinly-veiled references, such as Sara Numas, a blonde bounty hunter in a blue suit (no relation to the hero of the Metroid series, Samus Aran.) There’s also an item called a “Hipster Scarf,” which, when worn by a character, forces all the monsters to hit them.

If your gaming mantra is “just one more turn,” you owe it to yourself to try Dungeon of the Endless. Just don’t be afraid to play on “Very Easy” to get the hang of it, gamer pride be damned.

We’ll leave the light on for you,
The Dungeon Dame

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Fun Games You Aren't Playing - Analogue: A Hate Story

7/9/2015

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Video game marketing gets impossibly strange from time to time, which leads me (and I suspect a lot of people) to accidentally ignore games that are way more fun and interesting than they present themselves in promotional images and blurbs.

Top studios are especially guilty of slapping a pair of angry Kirby eyebrows on everything in order to appeal to whoever the main target audience is (apparently they really, really like angry eyebrows).

While most of the time I’m perplexed by a game of sudoku made to look like a futuristic military shooter, I got a completely different kind of bait-and-switch in Analogue: A Hate Story.

Analogue is a visual novel complete with pretty anime girls that you are meant to woo. According to Steam, it’s “A dark visual mystery novel featuring transhumanism, traditional marriage, loneliness, and cosplay.” Armed with this information, I was expecting the standard, eye-rolling visual novel stereotype and let it languish on my hard drive, unplayed and mostly forgotten. When I finally summoned the energy to play through a cute-maid-robot-romance-cheesefest, I instead got something far more engaging.

The game begins with a mission: an abandoned space station that was lost for centuries, and it’s up to you to find out why it disappeared, and what happened to all of the crew and passengers on board. At this point, my interest in the game did a complete 180°:

why didn’t anyone tell me this was actually Star Trek?!

You are then put in contact with the ship’s artificial intelligence, who happens to be the adorable young girl in the uniform seen in the promotional pictures. Your contact with her is surprisingly limited, though; most of the time you’re reading through the personal emails sent on the doomed ship in order to piece together the mystery.

There’s a bit of a slow start as you read through the ship’s archives; at first, it is nearly incomprehensible with a large cast of characters, lengthy emails, and a uniquely Korean setting. However, it’s worth trudging through, as it starts to make sense once you uncover more pieces of data and ask the ship’s AI questions. You also uncover another AI on the ship: one that has a completely different view on what happened to everyone.

As a big fan of snoop-on-personal-emails gameplay, moral choices, and fantastic fake computer interfaces as seen in the writer’s earlier game, Digital, I’d like to think that Analogue: A Hate Story totally undersells itself in its super-lame promotional material. Then again, I’m not sure how anyone could promote it without spoiling its strange story outright. Um...slap a few angry soldiers with guns on the cover and call it a day? Sounds about right.

Playing anime girl dress-up with no shame,
The Dungeon Dame

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Get Your Game On: Adventure Games

6/26/2015

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We may have gone a little overboard during the Steam Sale and picked up more games than we could ever finish. However, this past week has been a fun gaming adventure with some awesome titles you can still grab discounts for. All of them feature female protagonists and beautiful artistry. Definitely worth playing for hours!

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Dungeon Dame Presents: Super Steam Steals You Should Just Buy Already

6/19/2015

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As always, these games can become even cheaper if you catch them as a flash deal on Steam. If you’re adamant about saving that extra $1, go ahead and watch the sales like a hawk for an even greater deal. But seriously, these games are so cheap and so good, go ahead and just buy them already.

(Click on the pics for my previous reviews)

Puzzle Agent for $1.24
Puzzle Agent 2 for $2.49
http://store.steampowered.com/app/31270/

Vacationing in Scoggins, Minnesota has never been so affordable

Cook, Serve, Delicious! for $2.49
http://store.steampowered.com/app/247020/

All your burger dreams will come true, for less than the price of a Big Mac.

To The Moon for $2.49
http://store.steampowered.com/app/206440/

Emotional clearance sale! Have all the feels at bargain basement prices!

Tales of Maj’Eyal for $3.49
http://store.steampowered.com/app/259680/

A turn-based RPG for way cheaper than the cost of a player’s handbook, with none of the arguing over minutiae with the DM.

Hotline Miami for $2.49
http://store.steampowered.com/app/219150/

Super-violent 1980s Miami fun, without adjusting for inflation!

Happy bargain-hunting,
The Dungeon Dame

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Get Your Game On: The Inner World

6/13/2015

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Let's just get this out of the way first, I love point-and-click adventure games. I play them on a weekly basis, yet this one managed to surprise me.

The Inner World is now one of my Top 10 point-and-click adventure games. It's got quirky characters, great art, and rich story. Rarely does a game make me laugh out loud, but this one was very tongue in cheek. It was lighthearted and funny despite the dark undertones present throughout the entire story. I love an unreliable narrator and this game has a charmingly naive hero, in a world he knows very little about.

As far as the game play goes... the more you click the more you know... I feel like there was unending witty dialogue for everything you clicked on. So, the more you want to know about the story, just keep clicking. They really put a lot of effort into the characters and managed to break most game cliches. It translates really well to tablet play and I really appreciate the voice-work. Some puzzles are a bit outside the box, but the developers added a useful hint section within the game to help you if you get stuck. Seriously, it's worth the price. Join the cult and play The Inner World.

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Fun Games You Aren't Playing - Earthbound

6/12/2015

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Happy Steam Sale!
Remember when I told you to play Earthbound way back when? Well, I’ve taken my own advice, because instead of playing all the brand new, fun games I’m buying during the sale, I’ve been playing Earthbound. Again. A game that celebrated the 20th anniversary of it’s American release last week. I’m either clearly an obsessed fangirl, or this game is just as good as it was twenty years ago. (Probably both.)

Earthbound is that game that Ness is from, the plucky psychic boy with the baseball bat in the Smash Bros. games. Ness is the chosen one, destined to save the Earth from an unspeakable alien horror. However, on the way he must defeat drunk businessmen, exploding trees, and the neighborhood gang that hangs out at the arcade. It’s your typical RPG-- but set in 1990s America. You can even order a pizza!

The strange humor and lovable characters are probably why this game has a cultish, unexplainable fanbase that still baffles Nintendo. You befriend a knockoff Blues Brothers band, whose loud music comes in handy. You journey to the surreal world of the Mr. Saturns, who are as helpful as they are confusing. One of my favorite characters is a budding video game dungeon designer, who bends the fourth wall a little with his lovingly designed dungeons.

Unlike its tear-jerking sequel (which haunts me to this day), Earthbound is purely the heart-warming adventure of a boy and his best friends. It might show its age due to difficulty, which can really knock you down hard from time to time, but overall it is a timeless classic. One strategy hint: explosives. Lots and lots of explosives.

Lost my shirt in last night’s solitaire game,
The Dungeon Dame

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Fun Games You Aren't Playing - Icarus Proudbottom Teaches Typing

6/2/2015

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While we’re on the topic of typing, here is a free browser game better than many games you've probably spent cash money on.

Icarus Proudbottom Teaches Typing is a completely bonkers sendup of those glorious edutainment games you were forced to play if you took a typing class any time after 1987. It shouldn’t take you too long to complete, but it’s a wild ride while it lasts. Plus, you’ll probably improve your typing speed.

Icarus (and his owlkin spirit animal, Jerry) will be your guides on your typing journey. Just don’t pay too much attention to what you type, and you should be fine....right? There are a few fun nods to 90s freeware gaming, including a needlessly convoluted character creator and a “Typogatchi” that needs to be fed with the words you type. It’s just like being back in an era where computers came in “beige” or “grey”.

For a hastily made free game, a lot of love and detail was put into Icarus Proudbottom Teaches Typing. It truly is a joy to type as letters explode in pixelly glory as you go along.

Also, there’s a genuinely intriguing story; what IS up with all of those weird disclaimers you’ve been typing? Plus, you get to learn of the magic hidden behind the tilde key.

Savor the typing,
The Dungeon Dame

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Get Your Game On: Deponia

5/27/2015

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Deponia, point and click adventure at it's snarky best.

Quickie Opinion: It's a must-have for point and click fans. Sarcastic humor, quirky future scenario, great puzzles, unique characters, and hours of fun!

Full Game Overview: Deponia is the first game in the adventure, point-and-click trilogy made by Daedelic (don't underestimate the Germans, they're actually humorous). You control Rufus, a lazy self-centered jerk who hates Deponia - a goofy junkyard planet - and wishes to go to Elysium- an elite upper paradise. The result is a game full of snark and awkward moments. This adventure presents some difficult puzzles that require some elaborate thinking, but completing them releases a strong sense of satisfaction.The whole trilogy is worth buying on sale and is definitely lengthy. If you like Monty Python, Voltaire, or Filking, then the Deponia soundtrack is for you.

Also as a bonus, the game is on sale for $0.99 on Steam this week.
You're Welcome.
xxx Guild Mistress

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Fun Games You Aren't Playing - Typing of the Dead: Overkill

5/22/2015

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I thought I had already hit my limit for all things “zombie” years ago, but every once in a while a concept so charming hits the scene that transcends the overplayed trend.

I was a huge fan of Typing of the Dead back in the day, where our heroes defeated zombies through skilled typing on goofy strapped-on keyboards. As an avid student of Mavis Beacon, this was probably the only time my touch-typing came in handy.

Now you can easily experience the magic with Typing of the Dead: Overkill, available for PC. Sadly, the awkwardly hilarious keyboard-wrangling is no more-- the characters still use real guns. Their shooting accuracy, however, is tied to how fast and precise your typing skills are.

The game is set in a terribly-edited, worse-acted grindhouse film, complete with tacky vintage soundtrack and gratuitous violence and swearing. This is a game for adults hoping to remember their old typing lessons, or perhaps edgy teens who need to improve their WPM.

Gameplay is a traditional rail shooter, just like the arcade originals. When typing, remember: don’t glance down at your keyboard. Enemies are constantly assaulting you, so remember good typing form and look up. If you’re not into typing, you can switch to the normal House of the Dead game, but where’s the fun in that?

Recently, they've added custom dictionaries, so if you want to improve your German vocabulary or your creative swearing, you’re free to type whatever you like. Even without DLC or new dictionaries, I found the phrases I was typing to be amusing enough.

“Not on a first date”? Stay classy, Sega.

Knowledge is power,
The Dungeon Dame

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