The RPS Selection Box: Julian’s bonus games of the year

While I would go so far as to say that I have an affection for the team here at RPS, they certainly tried my patience when it came to the Advent Calendar voting. How dare they not have played and loved the same games as me through the year? Here I was, new head honcho, and I couldn’t find a single one in the bunch who had put the necessary hours into Chip ‘n Clawz vs. The Brainoids. Shameful.

Thank goodness I can put that right with my Selection Box.

Next year, after a full 12 months in the editor’s chair, I’ll have learned all the levers of power that will allow me to create an Advent Calendar that truly reflects my tastes. That, or I will have learned to love this democracy of which they speak.*

Though, in truth, my first game is more an admission of omission.

Skin Deep

I started playing Skin Deep too late to include it in this year’s Advent Calendar voting, and I think I will be kicking myself for that oversight for a long time to come. In Blendo Games’ bite-sized im-sim, you play an insurance commando cryogenically frozen on deep space ships piloted by cats. In the (surprisingly common) occurrence that the vessel is boarded by pirates, you are thawed out to rescue the purring members of the crew and escape the ship.

Like the best im-sims, how you go about your mission is up to you. You might sneak up on the pirates and brain them on a nearby wall, or throw soda cans at a window until it shatters and vacuums the marauders out into space, or use a soap dispenser to create a cloud of flammable gas, draw an unaware pirate near, throw a lighter into the combustible flames, and take the head of the newly deaded pirate and flush it down the loo.

Skin Deep is a welcoming and funny entry to the genre that sits just as well alongside the Dishonoreds, Preys, and Deus Exs of this world. It has one advantage over them, however, as it features significantly more cats and it has a James Bond-esque opening music number.

Strange Antiquities

Left in charge of your boss’s antiquities shop, it’s your job to sell customers the magical charm or knickknack that suits their needs. They might arrive knowing exactly what they want – a shadow hold, say – but it will fall to you to consult your catalogue for a rough description of the item. At which point, it’s up to you to search the shelves and drawers of the boutique relying on all your senses to identify the item. Guessing, for instance, whether the gourd with the intricate etched pattern is more likely to be “used to contain an Oshadic Spirit” or the wooden box that’s strangely cold to the touch.

Just as Hardspace: Shipbreaker has a permanent docking port in my heart for teaching me the ins and outs of a job I’ll never have in reality, the path to becoming an expert in the identification and sale of magical items is deeply satisfying. If this were a just world, 16-year-old me would have spent his work experience week helping customers find the perfect ward for keeping away pigeons, not working behind the counter at a PC game shop telling someone they really shouldn’t bother with Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude.

Herdling

Completable in a single evening, Herdling sees you break out of a dirty city with a pack of strange animals called calicorns. These shaggy-haired, horned creatures are part bear, part goat, part guinea pig, and all heart. You lead them to the mountains on a journey accompanied by a soaring orchestral score, shepherding them between manmade and natural dangers.

Edwin wasn’t a huge fan of Herdling when he reviewed it in August. And, while I agree that its story is simplistic and its themes of ‘city bad, nature good’ are well-trodden, and your role as herder/tamer isn’t questioned or explored, I found it a much-needed tonic. Herdling left me rejuvenated in a month when I was feeling penned in by the short winter days and loud traffic in the streets around my flat.

Let’s hope The Free Shepherd, the game where you play a border collie guiding a flock of sheep, gives me the sharp critique of the power dynamics between herder and herdee I’m looking for…

Chip ‘N Clawz Vs. The Brainoids

Looking like a lost Saturday morning cartoon, Chip ‘n Clawz Vs the Brainoids sees you trying to save what’s left of Earth from some brain-in-jars alien invaders. A co-op mix of real-time strategy, tower defense, and MOBAs, the game has you repel the invaders by harvesting resources, building unit-spewing towers, and leading your troops against the enemy’s bases.

Your troops fall into fairly simple rock, paper, scissors style counters, with artillery smashing buildings, aerial drones thrashing artillery, rifle troops shredding drones, and melee units topping ranged units, but the small maps and low unit numbers make for a forgiving setting for micromanagement. That said it can be a challenging strategy game at times, particularly if you’re playing in single player. From map to map, you will need to wield your units like scalpels, cutting through each layer of an enemy’s base defences one at a time.

For someone like me who adored the genre-blending strategy games of the early 2000s, such as Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Hostile Waters, and Battlezone 98, Chip ‘n Clawz is a much-missed gaming flavour.

The Count of Monte Clicker

As I wrote about in my Advent Calendar entry for The Alters, this year I have spent a lot of time playing idle games on a second screen while filling hours at a less than demanding job.

It’s not a genre I’d wholly recommend, as I think most of my pleasure comes from the smooth delivery of dopamine when clicking upgrade buttons, and certainly not through any challenges of meaningful choices. And the Count of Monte Clicker doesn’t change that. What it does do, however, is have the sheer gumption… the chutzpah… the raw ambition to retell the story of Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo with the blunt tools of an idle clicker.

With scenes where you incrementally upgrade your masonry chipping tools as you dig a tunnel out of prison and another where you level up your stroke speed and unlock dolphins as you swim from the jail island’s shores to nearby land, the Count of Monte Clicker remains in my memory over all the other idle games I played this year.

It’s wonderful to see how the same mechanics I had experienced over and over in other games took on a new life with a simple change of theme. I don’t know if it’s my algorithm or there is a genuine surge in the number of idle games appearing on Steam, but if there are going to be many more of them then I hope they share the same inventiveness.

*Honestly, the residents of the Treehouse are a lovely bunch and it’s been a thrill to work with them and hear about the games they’ve loved this year.