Indie Games

So my copy of Dawn of War 2 hasn't arrived yet, despite being dispatched by play.com 7 days ago. It's getting to the point where I'm going to get fed up and buy it from Steam (even ignoring the fact that it costs £12 more) and I'll send back the play.com version when it does eventually arrive.

Meh.

Anyhoo, to stop myself from going crazy, I've bought a few indie games as well as a budget version of an Ubisoft one...

A Vampyr Story

Long story short, this is an adventure game concerning a vampire maiden trying to escape from the island of her vampire husband/captor person.

Adventure games have progressed a lot thanks to Telltale's Sam and Max games and it's extremely disheartening to see those lessons almost completely ignored. Some puzzles make sense but most of them rely on massive leaps of logic that I'm not entirely convinced any sane person would be able to get.

The two main characters are also rather annoying. The vampire you control seems to be channeling Jennifer Tilly from Bound (as far as her voice goes at least. Sadly, certain other aspects of that character aren't present) whilst her sidekick has *the* most annoying American accent I've heard. It's set in Transylvania, why the hell does he have a really, really blatant American accent?

This sort of thing is just about okay in games like Assassins Creed where the accent is more neutral than anything else but this bloody bat sounds like a Brooklyn cabbie.

So yeah, not very good annoyingly...



Crayon Physics Deluxe

Crayon Physics is a game where you are presented with a ball and a star. You have to move the ball to the star but there usually isn't any ground in between the two. Or there are obstacles. Or whatever. You can draw things onto the screen, though, and when you're finished they're given weight and substance. So you can make a hammer to swing and hit the ball or a dead weight to pull the ball or whatever.

The actual game itself isn't that great but what is really good fun is creating hugely over complicated scenarios and mechanisms. These get more fun the more pointless they are.

Making a dead weight which pulls a string which pivots a lever which drops a rock with lands on a see saw which catapults a box to a set of scales which tips a hammer which hits the ball the three inches it needed to go to reach the star is utterly pointless yet very, very good fun.


Settlers 6: Rise of an Empire

This isn't technically an indie game but no-one bought the bloody thing so I think it should count.

I've completed Settlers 6 before and loved it - the combat was rubbish but building a self sustaining city was fantastic. Creating the right amount of grain farmers without over stretching your tailors or cleaning supplies stores.... it's like balancing a complex equation but with awesome visuals and added elements like predators that kill your sheep and seasons that stop grain growing and freeze rivers so you can't get any fish.

This is also the only strategy game I've ever played where the skirmishes are more fun than the campaign. It's great to just get plonked onto a massive map and expand and expand and expand. You don't have to worry about fighting people, you just need to worry about building and creating. It's the game version of the hippie movement but with more vikings.