Caltrops - What Are You Playing Right Now?

Forum Overview :: What Are You Playing Right Now?

by blackwater 04/11/2024, 11:49pm PDT

It's pretty good. I really feel like this game should have been better known than it was.

The basic idea is you're playing an AssCreed style of game inside a gorgeous palace. A palace which is kind of a liminal space: repetitious, immense, perfect.

Unlike AssCreed, things do not get repetitious quite as fast, because there are a lot of limitations on what you can do. For example, you need to use a consumable item that you can pick up to do a lethal takedown. So you mostly can't do that, unless that particular item is around (there is no inventory.) You are fighting mostly clones of yourself.

Every time you do certain actions, such as shooting, running, calling an elevator, or dropping down from a ledge, the palace takes note. After a while, the lights turn off. When they turn back on again, the clones now know how to do the things you were doing (shooting, running, dropping down, calling elevators, etc.)

So there is an incentive not to teach them too much. Particularly shooting and running. Combined with limited ammo and a relatively slow weapon, this is a great incentive not to just blast your way through everything, no matter how good you are.

So far, I have been enjoying this. It was made back in 2017 and doesn't seem to have received a lot of updates since there. There is a particular problem with newer Intel CPUs that requires you to set an environment variable to work around it. Specifically "set OPENSSL_ia32cap=:~0x20000000" I think the developer dissolved, so I don't know if this will ever be officially fixed. With the env variable fix, it runs great, though.

The plot doesn't do much for me. I would really prefer silence to hearing the main character converse with the cynical British AI character. A sense of aloneness would really heighten the mood. This douche explaining the Dune ripoff universe in which I reside to me doesn't help.

Still, this game is kind of a hidden gem, I think.