Our grand ol’ time at PAX continued on Sunday, as Jared, Lucio and I played more games, survived a barrage of Cheerios, met Ron Gilbert and learned a valuable lesson in friendship.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime – Asteroid Base Games
This was a great surprise title this year, the type of game I wouldn’t think I would enjoy that actually turns out to be pretty great. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime has you and a friend (Or an an AI canine companion) manning a spaceship, guiding it through the start and running its defenses. The idea is that you and your friend must run from point to point in the ship in order to man different turrets, direct the ship’s force fields to intercept enemy attacks and ever steer the ship itself as you travel throughout maps, rescuing bunny friends and fighting space bees. As you are only two people you won’t be able to do everything at once, and sometimes you’re going to need to make due with not having shields in order to have enough firepower to win a battle, inspiring you to cooperate effectively with your teammate to survive each mission.
The game inspires some great chaotic moments as you frantically try to manage your team’s efforts to fight off foes, avoid obstacles and run upgrades from individual stations to power up your facilities. The game enjoys a really bright, cute design which the developer tells us was a very deliberate choice to contrast between the usual dark, gritty aesthetic of other space games. At first glance this put me off, but after spending a few minutes with the game I can see how it adds a cheerful attitude to a game that I would think would be best played with a friend for a laid back, good time. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime will be releasing soon, on September 9th, and we hope to have more info about the title before then.
Bedlam – Skyshine
Bedlam takes place in an apocalyptic wasteland where factions of survivors cross a vast desert into contested lands using gigantic passenger tanks dubbed “Dozers”. When we went for a demonstration our presenter described the game as “FTL meets Mad Max”, where your goal will be to cross a map, managing resources and harrowing random encounters like mechanical breakdowns, ambushes, and scientists who will process your passengers into valuable fuel (Which Lucio was more than happy to do).
The rep we spoke with told us that Bedlam offers a huge number of random encounters, which is exactly what a game like this will need to stay fresh. The game also sports a turn-based strategy combat system which pits you against mutants, robots, rogue AIs and wastelanders in a tactical RPG setup reminiscent of Banner Saga, but with an interesting modified mechanic where each turn consists of only to split throughout your entire squad. This puts some difficult constraints on how to best run a team of three to five people and results in a unique play style. Bedlam will be releasing on Steam this September 17th.
Xing: The Land Beyond – White Lotus Interactive
Xing is the first project by three-man team White Lotus Interactive, an investigative puzzle-solving adventure game set in vibrant locales, you play a recently deceased person who finds themselves on an abandoned island searching for clues in a title that evoked memories of Myst’s benign yet haunting abandoned setting. The developers were nice enough to let me try the Oculus Rift version of their title and felt like just the right type of game for the experience, making the deserted island I played feel both beautiful and immersive but also a little chilling. Being somewhat less than a natural born puzzle solver I didn’t get too far in the title during my time with Xing, but I did enjoy some interactive puzzle-solving and some great views. White Lotus Interactive is aiming for release at the same time as the Oculus Rift, during the first quarter of 2016.
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