Month: January 2014

Deep Space Settlement

January 6, 2014
Cool PeopleGame DesignGame ProgrammingGames
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And now on to something else. I found another indie developer who also has a long-standing project she is obsessing over, and from what I’ve seen it looks like it could be really good.

The project is Deep Space Settlement. Your job? Turn a colony ship into…well, you get it, and then defend that settlement from anyone or anything that tries to harm it. The kicker is that the game uses RTS mechanics even though it’s more of a build/strategy type game.

The game manages to give off both Homeworld and Sins of a Solar Empire vibes, which resonate deeply with me. And despite the plurals on the home page, the entire game and its underlying engine have been written by one woman, Stéphanie Rancourt. So she’s working on a labor-of-love project that’s probably way too big for her and writing everything herself from scratch. I’ve found my French-Canadian distaff counterpart!

Borderlands 2

January 6, 2014
FamilyGames
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So! A while back I mentioned Saints Row 4 and how much I enjoyed it. Since then a lot of DLC has been released for it and while I haven’t bought all of it, I have paid attention.

And that’s how I saw this.

Now, despite laughing at the trailer, I had no idea who that girl was or what “Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin'” was. So I went to the Tubes of You to find out. And that’s how I found out about Anthony and Ashly Burch.

And then I ran across an episode of HAWP (gotta use the acronym to prove I’m hip, dontcha know) where Anthony talked about writing Borderlands 2.

Which reminded me that I’d picked up Borderlands 2 during the Steam summer sale and never touched it.

So I touched it.

For about thirty hours.

Borderlands 2 is a great game and I’m very, very sad I didn’t play it sooner. I should have just dumped that pretentious, jumped-up Bioshock Infinite and gone for this. It’s fun, it’s funny, and it’s got one of the best villains in recent gaming memory with Handsome Jack.

I actually bought another copy for my daughter and she convinced her friends to buy it and it’s like Catan where it’s always good but at its peak when you’ve got four people.

(I think I may have mentioned in the past that I think co-op multiplayer is the only good kind of multiplayer? Yeah, this game proves me right. Again.)

So if you like FPS games and/or you like to laugh and/or you like playing games with your friends, definitely check it out.