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| Mischief Maker's Chill Games List. by Mischief Maker 05/11/2020, 7:26pm PDT | ||||
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| Like the title says. Games to help you chill out, maaaaan.
Trine 2: The Complete Story 
To this day one of the most beautiful games ever created, and yes I'm including Trine 3 and 4 in that assessment. Trine 2 is a sidescrolling platformer with a heavy emphasis on physics engine puzzles strongly influenced by The Lost Vikings. The player controls 3 characters who can body-switch in a blink, and fight their way through armies of nefarious goblins and mind-boggling witch's portal-traps to solve the mystery of the talking flower. Along the way they'll pick up hundreds of magic potions that unlock new powers in their extensive skill trees, providing new ways to fight and new tools to solve puzzles. All of this happens in one of the most gorgeously rendered storybook-come-to-life worlds I've ever seen realized in videogame form. I've long since solved the game's puzzles, but playing it over and over is still a delight to this day, it's that gorgeous. Aven Colony 
A "lite" citybuilder that tasks you with creating mankind's first space colony on the nearly earthlike moon of the gas giant Aven Prime using TNG-esque levels of technology. It's not all juggling power levels with food income and entertainment infrastructure. Aven Prime is teeming with life, much of it unfriendly, like giant sand worms, or floating plague spores, or other more intelligent foes who need to be fought off with plasma turrets. The moon's environment itself constantly throws curveballs, changing seasons from summer to winter in a single day and frequently having lightning and hailstorms. But despite all this the game remains imminently accessible, maybe holding your hand a little too much with tutorial miniquests that have substantial resource rewards (sandbox mode lets you play without these tutorials). While a game like Surviving Mars shows what a claustrophobic nightmare being trapped on an Elon Musk-style Mars colony would be, I would love to live on Aven Prime. It's hopeful and optimistic in a way Star Trek hasn't been for decades, and the graphics really show off Unreal Engine 4 at its absolute best. Shadowhand 
Solitaire is a chill game, but gets kinda boring. Shadowhand is solitaire mixed with a Puzzle-Quest style battle system and all tied around an extensive story of a young 19th century noblewoman who by chance is forced to take on the disguise of a busty highway robber and go on an alarmingly murderous rampage to save her friend and uncover a vast conspiracy that has been unfolding beneath her very nose. So significantly less boring. The solitaire game is fairly simple at its core. Cards are placed down in various patterns face-up, and your job is to remove them by picking a card one point higher or lower than the current card in your hand. Longer combos give larger rewards. The combat scenarios have you and the enemy making matches from the same pattern of cards, with combos charging up your weapons, and longer chains add to a damage multiplier for your next attack. Sometimes the card patterns are locked until you find a key item buried in another pile, sometimes you and your enemy are racing to be the one to grab the healing potion buried at the bottom of the pattern. The game has a surprisingly deep equipment system, allowing you to see the strengths and weaknesses of your opponent and change outfits before every match to maximize your advantage while slowly turning your protagonist into some kind of lunatic clown pimp. The one detail that might harsh your chill is this is solitaire at the end of the day, and a bad shuffle is a bad shuffle, even in verses battles. The game gives you several active powers to turn the odds back in your favor, including a titular Shadowhand ability the reshuffles the entire table. Do you want the very best Solitaire game ever made? This is it. Tokyo 42 
An isometric overhead GTA-clone taking place in an idealized sci fi Tokyo at a "Where's Waldo?" level of zoom. In the future, death has been cured by nano-drugs that restitch people's bodies back together in seconds, making assassination a much less despised profession. Forced into becoming a freelance hitman to get the underworld contacts necessary to clear your name of a crime you didn't commit, Tokyo 42 is the chillest game about murder and mayhem I've ever played. You move with WASD and aim with the mouse. Bullets are rendered as 3D objects and need to be lined up vertically as well as horizontally, but this game is much more forgiving than Brigador with the aiming mechanics. At any time you can rotate the camera 45 degrees to get a better angle on your target or reveal new routes to travel in. Occasionally you will get a warning that there's a rival assassin in the crowd and you need to figure out which random passerby is about to attack. If you go on a rampage, the game has a full GTA-style star system where you're at first attacked by cops in hovercars, then by Ghost-in-the-Shell spider tanks. The aesthetic of the game is like Mirror's Edge if that bright dystopia was much livelier and more inviting. The music is wonderfully immersive and very, very chill. Note that the Smaceshi's Castles DLC is just a series of short puzzle missions ala. the VR Missions from Metal Gear Solid. Driftland: The Magic Revival 
A realtime 4X in the vein of Sins of a Solar Empire taking place on a shattered fantasy world made up of floating islands. You and your opponents are the first wizards born in a generation powerful enough to bring the floating shards together and bridge them, setting off a war to see who will be the first to rebuild and subsequently rule the world. In addition to Sins, Driftland is influenced by the Majesty games. Your army is made up of individual hero units who you don't control directly, but rather influence their actions by placing reward flags througout the world. The point of your kingdom's economy is to fully equip your heroes with various skills to make them more potent fighters against hostile barbarians and rival kingdoms. The most powerful floating islands you can capture have nests on them where heroes can tame a flying mount ranging from a giant raven to an actual dragon. Obviously in a world of floating islands, heroes who can fly have a huge advantage. Another game that shows off the Unreal Engine 4 at its best. Gorgeous glowing spell effects, close zoom in that lets you see a dizzying horizon of stars above the exposed planet's core. And each of the 4 factions has their own beautiful musical score that changes dynamically with the action. I personally love the African Tribal sound they chose for the wood elves' OST, reminiscent of Civ 4. Note that there's a big balance overhaul/expansion coming in June so aspects of this mini review may be out of date very soon. Yoku's Island Express 
A pinball metroidvania! You play a dung bettle tied to a huge pinball who has just been given a job as the postmaster on a magical tropical island, but just as you arrive an ancient evil called the Godslayer has critically injured the lovecraftian deity who sustains the island. You can roll your ball around dung bettle-style with the arrow keys, but the island is dotted with colored flippers everywhere that flip automatically when you hit the shift keys, sending the ball flying with your effectively weightless beetle dangling behind it. Your primary mode of travel will be bouncing your way through ramps and other obstacles behind your ball. The entire island is effectively a giant pinball table! The game is rendered in bright colors with a peppy soundtrack as you bounce and shatter your way through its delightful environs. Unfortunately most "tables" in the game are solved by shattering their targets, not leaving much room for repeat play in a single session. But this is a game I've 100%'ed many times, and replaying it doesn't get any more old than replaying a favorite pinball cabinet. (Protips: some flippers are hidden in the background and only revealed when you flip them, and the noise maker can explode nearby slugs. You'll thank me later!) |
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Mischief Maker's Chill Games List. by 05/11/2020, 7:26pm PDT  Bumping so ICJ doesn't miss this. NT by 05/11/2020, 8:42pm PDT Whoa. by 05/11/2020, 8:59pm PDT FINAL DRAFT by 05/12/2020, 5:20am PDT I am loving these themed games lists. by 05/12/2020, 6:45am PDT Will schedule it for Monday morning. NT by 05/15/2020, 3:12pm PDT ACTUAL FINAL DRAFT (embarrassing typo spotted) by 05/17/2020, 6:47am PDT It didn't fire - investigating. NT by 05/18/2020, 8:51am PDT Looks like it's up now. by 05/18/2020, 10:06am PDT You're welcome! NT by 05/19/2020, 1:45pm PDT Intergalactic Fishing by 05/12/2020, 2:16pm PDT Could you check if it's DRM-free? by 05/12/2020, 3:08pm PDT No, I don't want to encourage your ridiculous behavior. NT by 05/12/2020, 6:35pm PDT It's only available on Steam. NT by 05/13/2020, 7:49am PDT |
