Recent reviews by SemiSquared

I love to have the freedom to explore in games and that's where Miasmata delivers. It's actually the entire game. You wake up on a beach and have to roam the landscape, searching for botanical ingredients to a plague cure and piecing together the story of a group of researchers who recently occupied the area.

The really great bit to the game is how a handful of minor obstacles shape the experience. Your character starts the game sick, so he's not able to run for long without getting winded, climb steep slopes, or swim more the a few feet in deep water. If you try to push him harder, he'll just get sicker. When he starts to run a fever, he needs medicine or bedrest or it gets slowly worse until he collapses. When you're not as sick, it's still very easy to get lost. There's a map, but you have to update it by triangulating your location from known landmarks. On top of all that, there's a mysterious creature on the island that occasionally harrasses you. All the obstacles are pretty easy to overcome or avoid, but when you make one mistake, it usually snowballs, culminating in a frenzied attempt to get to safety.

The story is very minimal and based mostly on found notes, but it's just enough to add to the mood while letting the experience be your own. Miasmata has a very lonely beauty to it and few limits that seem artificial. Almost the entire experience is just you stumbling through the woods, but it still manages to be compelling.

I played the first act of Kentucky Route Zero this afternoon and it put me in a really nice mood. It's got a nice leisurely pace and encourages the player to be inquisitive without having to exhaustively check every nook and cranny or click every dialogue option. The spectacular vector art, subtle audio, and ambiguous writing keep the game half on-screen and half in the player's head. The main gameplay is mostly just moving the character around the screen and reading dialog and descriptions, so this isn't a game for everybody, but it's exactly the type of thing I'd like to see more of. I'm really looking forward to the rest of this as it comes out.

This is a fantastic little puzzler with very unique gameplay and a sort of Lovecraft in Space plot. The puzzles consist of programming two manipulators to move along a track and interact with atoms to complete objectives. I've seen it suggested that Spacechem is a programming simulation and I agree, but it's a pretty accessible one. If you like logic puzzles, this should be right down your alley.

This is a great little retro-styled point-and-click adventure game. It's not without it's flaws. Like most adventures, there's a lot of backtracking, repetition, and battles with the interface, plus the action minigame they've thrown in is pretty frustrating. However, what it gets right, it really does well. It uses very well done low-res pixel art with competent audio design to let your imagination help with creating the gritty noir atmosphere. The game's serious tone, suprisingly, doesn't feel forced and I can't think of many of the classics that managed that. Finally, the story, while fairly short and uncomplicated is still very engaging.

I don't really know how somebody unfamiliar with the adventure genre would feel about Gemini Rue since I think adventure games are an acquired taste, but it's worth the money if you're a fan.

Star Ruler is a fun little real-time space empire game with an emphasis on streamlined gameplay and the potential for gigantic fleets and empires. The camera controls are horrible and tactical control is clunky, so empire management ends up being the dominant gameplay. The part of the game I really love is the ship design. You sort of design the concept of the ship rather than tacking weapons on to hard points and choosing engines. You can really choose any configuration you want as long as you get all of the ships atributes balanced. The learning curve is steep, so make sure you're willing to put time into Star Ruler before buying it. It's got some faults, but I'm still really enjoying it.

Super meat boy is great at bestowing a sense of achievement on the player. Some of these levels are exceedingly difficult, but with most of them being short are infinitely repeatable, a gamer with medium skill should be able to beat them eventually without becoming too frustrated to continue. There are also enough diversions if the main track gets too tough to keep the player interested long enough to try again.