I don’t have much to say during the preamble this month, so let’s just dive right into what I’ve been playing, and some neat upcoming games.

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Timberborn

First up for March, we had Timberborn, which released out of Early Access on 12th.

For those unfamiliar, Timberborn is a City Builder where you manage a colony of beavers. Though, that’s a bit of a misnomer because the beavers are basically just furry humans that don’t mind swimming. That is, you’re still building houses, and factories in the same way that you would in any other City Builder instead of a network of lodges.

Don’t get it twisted though, you will still be doing the most beaver thing of all: building dams to redirect water. That’s because the overwhelming majority of the land that you’ll be building upon is completely dried out. As such, you’ll need to engineer a solution that allows you to collect, and distribute the water throughout your settlement so that land becomes arable. In my own experience, this invariably leads to the creation of aqueducts, and a central dam with a massive repository of water.

In no uncertain terms, Timberborn is an engineering wet dream, albeit the tools and solutions are fairly simple to use. It doesn’t take any complicated math to manage the flow of water through your settlement. Rather, it takes a little bit of creative problem solving, and experimentation. As someone who isn’t particularly well versed in maths, I appreciated this more relaxed approach.

That said, I will fully admit that I need to sink a bit more time into Timberborn. I ended up spending quite a bit of time playing it prior to the 1.0 patch in conjunction with my vertical villages article. As such, I was quite burned out on the game by the time the 12th rolled around.

Regardless, Timberborn still gets a thumbs up from me. The focus on managing your settlement’s water gives it plenty of unique challenges for players to overcome. This is especially true if you’re a little burned out on more traditional City Builders.

The Art of Reflection

Next up for March was The Art of Reflection. I wrote a Demo Dive for it in September of last year, and my thoughts haven’t changed all too much now that I’ve played the full game. The concept is smart, there is just enough variety to keep things interesting, and the ability to skip over puzzles that you’re stuck on is always appreciated.

Having said that, I do wish it had wrapped things up a little earlier. When I triggered what was signposted as the end of the game, I expected to immediately see the credits roll. That was not the case. Instead, I spent another hour and a half slogging through the game’s final handful of puzzles, which I didn’t really enjoy.

I’m of 2 minds here though. 

On one hand, I understand the inclusion of these final puzzles because they tied together all of the different mechanics from throughout the game. Prior to this point, most of Reflection’s mechanics were isolated to specific puzzle groups. These final puzzles bucked that trend by testing the player on everything that they’ve learned with a few really challenging puzzles.

On the other hand, it feels a little strange to hit players with a test of what they learned when the overwhelming majority of the game’s puzzles are optional. I couldn’t quite get my head around the mechanic in 1 of the 5 areas, so I moved on from it without completing most of the puzzles. Unfortunately, that kind of screwed me in the final area where I was forced to solve even more complex puzzles that utilized this mechanic.

Despite being extremely annoyed by that final stretch, which I was eventually able to get through, I still think The Art of Reflection is worth a look. It gets a lot of points for being unique, and, until the final stretch, I found the game to be pleasantly brisk as it cycled through new ideas.

Slay the Spire 2

I already dedicated 1400 words to my lukewarm reception of Slay the Spire 2’s Early Access release.

Generally speaking, I think it’s fine. Good even. However, I’d be lying if I said I was as impressed with Slay the Spire 2 as I was with the deluge of high profile indie sequels that we got last year like Silksong, Hades 2, or Monster Train 2. At present, it feels like Slay the Spire 2 doesn’t move the needle enough to really impress in the same way as those aforementioned sequels did. It’s just more of something that you already enjoyed with more spit, and polish.

That said, there are a few changes in the sequel that I really appreciate. For starters, the number of Ascension levels, Slay the Spire’s optional difficulty modifiers, has been halved. This makes unlocking all of them a lot less tedious, though you still need to unlock them on a per character basis. Obviously, I’d have preferred a system wide unlock, but this is still an improvement, and we take those in this house.

I also really like 1 of the 2 newly added classes, though I find both a complete ballache to play. As it would turn out, it’s a lot easier to pilot the classes that I’m already intimately familiar with as opposed to classes with completely new keywords. Who would’ve thought?

Regardless, I really enjoy playing the Necrobinder. I’ve lost so many times with her, but I really like how her cards work. Doom isn’t my favourite keyword since I find it more fiddly than Poison, but the high volume of Ethereal cards, and various combo pieces for Osty (the oversized hand familiar) are all neat to build around. Plus, Soul gives her a relatively easy solution to help cycle her deck. Though, I do wish that more cards added 1 Soul to her draw pile, and 1 to her discard. Maybe that’ll change over Early Access? Time will tell.

Cairn

Gosh. What an amazing game.

Bit of background: Cairn is one of the titles I highlighted during the Next Fest last October. It was one of the last demos that I played, having originally passed it over because the somewhat realistic rock climbing that underpins the whole experience looked super frustrating. However, a lot of different people recommended it, so I gave the demo a shot. To my surprise, I didn’t find Cairn all that frustrating. Instead, I found it to be an almost meditative experience.

Fast-forward to present day, and I can confirm that the full release is just as meditative. There’s just something kind of zen about slowly free climbing up a mountain while you hear the wind, and Cairn’s fantastic original soundtrack in the background.

It’s also worth noting that Cairn is a surprisingly mechanically involved experience. I don’t have any rock climbing experience, that’s my wife’s wheelhouse, so I was surprised by how much I had to think while working my way up the face of each cliff. There’s an almost puzzle-like sensation to figuring out how you’re meant to support yourself, while leaving a limb free to continue working your way up the wall.

Once it finally clicks, Cairn is a lot like playing some of my favourite Platformers. There’s a palpable sense of accomplishment as you breach each of the game’s challenges and climb ever higher in your trek to the summit of Mount Kami.

That said, the thing that really cemented Cairn in my mind was the story. I would prefer to cover exactly what I mean by that in a future article, so I’ll ask anyone reading to be patient with me as I try to pen all of my thoughts.

In the interim, go check out Cairn for yourself. It’s quite good. Hopefully it’ll put The Gamer Bakers on the map in a way that neither Furi, nor Haven were able to prior. They certainly deserve more notoriety than they’ve gotten in the past several years given how good their entire catalogue of releases is.

Mewgenics

And finally we have the reason for why this article came out a few days late: Mewgenics. I keep thinking I can squeeze in another run, and then 8 hours disappear. That’s probably a good sign even though my productivity with writing has been nuked out of orbit as a result.

Regardless, for those who don’t already know about it: Mewgenics is the latest brain child from Ed McMillen of Super Meat Boy, and The Binding of Isaac fame. Though it appears that McMillen isn’t one to be pinned down by past successes as Mewgenics takes a slightly different direction from his past work. It’s still a Roguelike, a la Isaac, but it’s about breeding demented cats while leading them in Turn-Based combat instead of flinging your tears at angry poo monsters.

As I already alluded to, I’ve really enjoyed playing Mewgenics. It’s unlike any Roguelike that I’ve played before in that I genuinely feel like there is no end to the different combinations of things that I can cobble together in each run. There’s something like 12 classes (I haven’t unlocked them all yet), and they all have over 2 dozen passive, and active abilities plus there’s hundreds of items. This means that there is a ton of variance in what you can play with each run, which makes every play session feel wholly unique.

That’s without even mentioning all of the interactions that happen when certain ability, or item properties begin interacting with one another. As a brief example, you can douse a flame with any ability that creates water. Basically any time you think to yourself, “I wonder if this will work,” then it probably will. The development team seems to have accounted for everything, and they’re totally okay with letting players discover, and abuse all of these interactions.

However, I’m going to park it here for now. Mewgenics is something that I want to write about in much greater detail at some point in the future. Though, I’ll have to continue pulling myself away from it to do so.

Indie Spotlight

ShantyTown

In what will be a recurring theme for this month’s spotlight, ShantyTown is a game I covered during the most recent Next Fest.

It’s a little puzzley, but ultimately plays more like a sandbox where you build a tiny settlement in an unconventional space. The results are frankly beautiful, and I loved how many different visual options were provided for each object type within the demo.

inKONBINI: One Store. Many Stories

I can’t believe inKONBINI is already coming out. It was one of my favourite demos from this past Next Fest, and I’m very keen to play through the entirety of it when it launches on the 30th.

The elevator pitch is that you’re working at your auntie’s konbini store during the late shift. You’ll be tasked with properly stocking the shelves, and helping any of the customers that come through looking for goods. As that happens, you’ll get chatting, and this is where inKONBINI’s writing sneaks in to steal the show.

Vultures – Scavengers of Death

Finally for April, we’ve got Vultures – Scavengers of Death, which is a blend of Tactics and Survival Horror. I had a great time playing the demo since it combines 2 things I really enjoy in a way that highlighted the strengths of both. I also loved the crunchy PS1 style visuals, which I feel is the best route to go when you’re making a Horror title.

Full disclosure, I should be reviewing this one in the coming weeks, so keep your eyes peeled for that closer to Vultures’ April 28th release date.

As always, I hope there was something there that caught your eye. If so, feel free to let me know. Alternatively, let me know what you’re looking forward to in April so I can put it on my radar.

Thanks for reading, and stay safe out there!

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