Small Saga (Demo) (PC) - Part 3 - Guest Post

Previously on the demo of Small Saga, our hero Verm and his new friend Siobhan had a disagreement with a cat and rescued a pigeon from a wheelie bin. Now airborne, the pair continue their journey to the rodent capital Murida.

Small Saga (Demo) (PC) - Part 2 - Guest Post

Previously on the demo of Small Saga, tragedy struck when mouse brothers Lance and Verm undertook a daring mission to steal from the gods. Who dares wield the Titan Reaper now?

Small Saga (Demo) (PC) - Part 1 - Guest Post

This week on Super Adventures, guest poster mecha-neko has decided to mix things up by writing about a game so new that it's not even out yet. It's indie RPG (rodent-playing game) Small Saga!

It seems like it's been nothing but drab sci-fi games forever around here. My previous post was dystopian misery in Crusader: No Remorse, and my next post is going to be a gloomy survival horror derelict spaceship thing. What I need is some wonderful, colourful, adorable game to lift everyone's spirits!

Developer:

Jeremy Noghani

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Release Date:

March 2022 (Demo)

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Systems:

Windows

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It's time to play the brand new demo of Small Saga! Well, it's brand new to me. The Kickstarter ended three years ago, but this latest standalone demo was released this year. I was told there was a cat in it, and that's all I need to know.

Small Saga (Demo) (PC) - Guest PostPart 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Broken Age (PC)

Developer:

Double Fine

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Release Date:

2015

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Systems:

Win, OS X, Linux, Ouya, iOS, Android, PS4, PSVita

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This month on Super Adventures I'm playing Broken Age, formerly known as Double Fine Adventure back in its Kickstarter days.

Though this isn't one of them Kickstarter success stories like Giana Sisters, FTL, Pillars of Eternity and the rest, this is THE Kickstarter success story, the one that kickstarted all the others by proving that game developers could actually crowd-fund niche video game projects that publishers would never touch. In this case Tim Schafer wanted to make an old school point-and-click adventure game like the ones he worked on at LucasArts during the 90s.

They asked for $400,000 ($300,000 for the game, $100,000 for a documentary), which seemed like they were pushing their luck a little, but soon people were lining up to take a risk in the hopes of getting another Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle or Grim Fandango. They ended up raising a massive $3,336,371 in the end, which is clearly $3,038 too much. Except not really, as even after getting over 8 times the amount they wanted they still ran out of cash and had to split the game up into two parts, with their plan being to fund the second half with their earnings from the first half.

Broken Age: Act 1 came out in 2014 (just 2 years later than planned), but I've written 2015 up there as the release date because I'm playing the complete product here, with both acts welded together into one seamless whole. I remember that its second act wasn't all that well received, on account of it being bastard hard due to overcompensation after criticism of Act 1, but that's about where my knowledge of the game ends, so I'm not really sure what to expect from this. Though I'm hoping it's like a cross between Broken Sword and Dragon Age, or maybe Brain Age and... damn I can't think of another game with 'Broken' in the title.

By the way, the game supports widescreen just fine, but it's making me rescale the window manually by dragging the edges around and every time I start it up it resets to defaults, so I'm leaving the title screen how I found it to teach Double Fine a lesson. Also I think I like it better in 4:3 anyway, as there's more clouds.

(Click the screenshots to view them slightly bigger than they are here but not as big as they'd be for most players.)

Consortium (PC)

Developer:

Interdimensional Games

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Release Date:

2014

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Systems:

Windows

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This week on Super Adventures I'm celebrating Star Trek's 50th anniversary by playing games with some connection to the series. Today I'm sharing screenshots from the first few hours of CONSORTIUM, a game that likes to SHOUT its name all over its Steam page. What does this have to do with 'Star Trek'? Well... I've read a few people say it's a bit like 'Star Trek: The Next Generation', except on a plane. And that's pretty much the only link.

Consortium's one of those Kickstarter success stories, though they didn't quite bring in millions. Or even hundreds of thousands. But what they got was apparently enough to finish an ambitious first person, guns and chats, RPG type of game, which is cool because that's one of my favourite genres.

This is a heavily story based game so I'm inevitably going to be spoiling a lot of things you might not want spoiled here. Though its description claims that "the story unfolds based largely on your actions," so if that's true I'm only spoiling one possible outcome! I won't give away the answer to the game's big mystery though, assuming I even manage to solve it.

(You can make screenshots moderately more visible by clicking on them.)

Shovel Knight (PC)

Developer:

Yacht Club

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Release Date:

2014

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Systems:

PC, 3DS, Wii U (soon PS3, PS4, PSVita and Xbox One)

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Today on Super Adventures, I'm playing Shovel Knight's theme tune, over and over again. I'm kind of torn here because the music's saying "Go forth brave knight and hit evil with your shovel!" while on the other hand my head's saying "Hang on mate, just leave the tune playing for another minute first, okay?" Here have a YouTube link so you've got something heroic to listen to while you read: Shovel Knight Main Theme.

The soundtrack was actually created using a NES chiptune editor so that it could be as authentic as possible, give or take a few sound channels. The philosophy behind the whole game was that it should be absolutely dead-on accurate in look, sound and gameplay... to the player's fuzzy memories of their favourite NES games. It's an 8-bit game enhanced with rose-tinting technology.

Before I continue, first I have to apologise for the quality of these screenshots. Usually I try to capture pixel art in its purest unfiltered form, but the game seems determined to scale it up and ruin the clean edges. Then on top of that I needed to scale my screenshots back down again so that they fit my site, which left them so fuzzy that I figured I might as well just save them as JPEGs and save a few kilobytes.

Wasteland 2 (PC)

Today on Super Adventures I’m taking a relatively brief look at the actual sequel to Wasteland that now actually really exists in the world for real. It hasn’t been all that long since I wrote about Skyrim, and yet here I am writing about another insanely massive RPG, I guess I must just hate having free time.

Wasteland 2 is one of the big isometric RPG Kickstarter success stories that came out of nowhere these last couple of years, along with games like Divinity: Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, Shadowrun Returns and Torment: Tides of Numenera. Maybe this is just a fad, or maybe we’re looking at the glorious rebirth of a subgenre unfairly killed off long before its time by developers chasing more mainstream audiences, I dunno. Personally I’m happy with what we’ve got so far, as five of these games combined must be like… 30,000 hours of gameplay, at least.

I’ve only been semi-looking forward to finally playing this though, as to be honest I’m not a huge fan of Wasteland or its spiritual successor Fallout, and seeing as this is a sequel to one and a successive spiritual successor to the other, there’s a fair chance I’ll come away from this disappointed. On the other hand it’s mostly their dated game design and interface that puts me off, so maybe a more modern take on the formula will win me over! It worked for Fallout 3 after all, but then that's not quite the same thing.

(As always when I played one of these new-fangled PC titles, you can click the screenshots to view them in their original resolution. Might give you a fighting chance to make out some of the text).

Project Giana (Demo) (PC)

Today I'm taking a look at a demo for a game that doesn't exist... yet. It doesn't even have a name, 'Project Giana' is just a placeholder title. (Edit: The game was eventually titled Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams.)

This is the second sequel to classic platformer Great Giana Sisters though, so hopefully it'll make a million internet bucks on kickstarter in its last few days and they'll get the cash they need to finish it. Maybe someone will even give them a good idea for a new title while they're there.