Demo Driver 8: Defender’s Quest: Valley of the Forgotten (#179)
Next time I play this game, I’m going to name you Blinky just for continuity.
I’m very fond of tower defense games as a concept, but over the years I’ve started to get just a wee bit tired of them. I mean, there are only so many ways that you can assemble a game based on enemies coming in straight lines toward a central objective before life just plain starts getting boring. And at first glance, Defender’s Quest: Valley of the Forgotten is not the game to revitalize the experience, seeing as it’s filled with Flash-level non-animations and an interface that screams indie production in all the worst ways.
Then you play it and you want to continue playing it until you forget how to play any other game ever forever. This thing is an absolute joy.
While last week’s demo barely fleshed out 15 minutes, this week’s offering was something I dove into and could happily have kept playing for another hour, both because it allowed me to do so and because the game is just plain great. I have high praise for this one, and while it has its flaws, it is a superb example of a game being well worth the asking price.
Demo Driver 8: Unmechanical (#416)
Tim Burton has so damn much to answer for.
I’m just going to lead off here with what I think is a pretty simple thesis: if your game can’t sustain a demo that lasts for at least half an hour, you might not want to put out a demo in the first place.
I blew through Unmechanical‘s entire demo in about 15 minutes, and that was with a bug that made one puzzle take longer than it should have. That’s really short. Flash-game short. And I make that comparison for a good reason, too, because Unmechanical has definitely been sipping from the cup of Flash gaming, namely the vague and surreal cup that places an emphasis on a clever look and environments over actual narrative.
That’s not necessarily to disparage games that are all about clever looks and environment; some of them are, in fact, quite fun to play. But it’s a tricky line to walk. For every game you can think of that was a fun play while mostly being based upon looking neat, I can think of a dozen that missed the point of those great games in favor of the surface elements. Unmechanical feels more like the latter than the former.
Demo Driver 8: Magical Drop V (#218)
This isn’t how I remember it, but I’m not sure whose fault that is.
I’m going to be totally honest with you, folks; when I saw the title of this demo come up, I was excited. Magical Drop and I have some history.
When I was a younger man going through a rather dark time in my life which I like to refer to as “the end of college,” I was first exposed to Magical Drop, specifically the second game in the franchise and specifically its Super Famicom release. Was it the most original title? of course not. But it was large, colorful, and very Japanese in the way that a puzzle game featuring anime drawings of the various tarot cards can be. It was a charming experience.
So I was sincerely bolstered by the thought of playing the game again in a new incarnation, because who wouldn’t be? Like any franchise, it’s nice to see the original developers still making new versions of…
Oh. Oh, it’s a new developer. Oh dear. Oh dear.
Demo Driver 8: Rochard (#379)
I played Portal and you didn’t, you miserable hacks! Have fun shooting an invulnerable box!
Sometimes this feature can make me feel just a wee bit cynical. By its very nature, I wind up playing a lot of little indie games, and a lot of these little or single-A titles turn out to be obscure for good reason. My overall desire for games remains the same as it has ever been. Which makes me wonder if the problem is just me, or if maybe the whole indie development switch doesn’t have the legs that I want it to have, or any number of other things.
Then I play a game like Rochard and it reminds me of the best part of trying on random demos – finding a gem you never even would have looked at otherwise.
Rochard is very much in the puzzle-platformer vein, a former PSN title that migrated to Steam as well a little while back. It is also very, very charming, marrying a strong visual sense and a simple-but-enjoyable story to solid mechanics. It’s fun, and it’s the first game that I’ve had where I immediately tossed it onto my wishlist once I was done with the demo. Then, of course, I sat down to write this article. It’s what I do, after all.
Demo Driver 8: Din’s Curse (#273)
Go kill the things down the hole, you jerk.
Sometimes a game’s biggest problem isn’t itself, it’s the market. Which is really sad when just a few years earlier, you could have really been a contender.
Din’s Curse is a game very much in a familiar vein, plumbing the depths of the graphical roguelike that Diablo plumbed first oh so many years ago. Just from that description alone you have an image in your head, I’m sure, and I’m going to tell you right now that it’s largely accurate. Beyond that, though, it also does a good job of putting its own spin on exactly how class mechanics and the like work, and it was released at a time when the genre hadn’t experienced a big resurgence.
However, right now it’s in a field with Diablo III and Path of Exile and Torchlight II and Marvel Heroes and so on. The net result is that a game which could have been a real charmer is placed up against a number of competitors that it just can’t, well, compete against. Not solely by virtue of quality, but because its weaknesses show through.
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Eliot Lefebvre 