I inaugurate today, on the 13th of December 2019 this new series of articles dedicated to three Steam games I have been playing in the current week. They will be recently released games, for the most part, which I deem to be of interest for the reading public to either buy, try or ignore altogether.
It’s December so the perfect time to be huddled before a monitor playing some random offers from the Steam store.
Expect a new article every Friday.

Let us begin.

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Life Goes On

Death happens, but life goes on. This is not one of those RPGs where your progeny is a quirky way of continuing the game, instead it’s a game mechanic distilled to the bone. Life Goes On, developed by Infinite Monkeys, is a straightforward 2D puzzle platformer with simple jump controls, where you utilize the corpses of your previous dead knights to overcome obstacles and complete levels. It’s a pretty looking package to boot, the audio is also professional, it lacks a bit of that quirk unique personality which will keep you playing beyond the first 20 levels, but the humour makes up for it. Life Goes On aims for a humouristic medieval theme, which works okay to differentiate it from the mass of deadly “Google Play store platformer” clones.. The game also offers various unlockables as incentive to find every secret, mostly decorative (and meme worthy) items for your knights, but a good gesture nonetheless.
Right now it’s on sale for little more than a dollar, definitely worth it.

Fly o’clock

There’s something devilish at work behind Fly’o’Clock, developed by Digital Melody.
On the surface it looks like the simplest of games with the most barebone control scheme you could ever imagine: one button. That’s all. One button to make your fly jump over the neverstopping hands of a clock to avoid dying. The more it jumps, the faster the hands go, until it dies. Maybe there’s a philosophical lesson in here somewhere, the more we jump around the faster our end approaches? We never stop to appreciate what we got, instead we waste our lives in our battle against time, our running against the hands of the clock, we’re all dying we just don’t know it?
Yeah, maybe.
The only incentive to keep playing is unlocking various flies/sheeps/human beings to play with and seeing the random clock faces and hats your characters is sporting. It’s the perfect game to waste 5 minutes and keep away boredom. And I’m uncomfortably drawn to it, for some godforsaken reason.
It’s retail price is a perfect 0.99. Get it if you’re of stronger will than mine.

Loot Rascals

I tried, believe you me. I really wanted to like Loot Rascals. Damn thing doesn’t want me to like it!
It’s a frustrating one way relationship with this hexagonal isometric rpg shooter (HIRS!) developed by Hollow Ponds. It had potential to be great, alas it was quickly abandoned by its developers. Now, it’s just playable. It made so mad that I had to gave up pretty soon. Here the randomly generated content becomes the key factor in not having fun. The game can start you at level 1, on the map, a few steps away from horrendously powerful enemies, for no reason at all, except the random factor. As soon as you die, you lose everything you’ve collected: all weapons, all items. You’re left with nothing. Dying is the same as clicking “new game”, unless you gained enough experience to level up, which takes an awful long time and is always subject to the total randomness of the gameplay.
I could go in detail and explain what the game does right, like the art style or the card based inventory, but it’s just not worth it. Loot Rascals is a body floating in a river. Maybe it’s an attractive body, but don’t let that carcass fool you. Remember, necrophilia is a crime, don’t risk it.

It’s full retail price is almost 15 dollars which is more or less 10 dollars more of what is worth, so I wouldn’t bother.