#oneaday Day 838: Still No Wind Here

As promised, here are a few further thoughts on A Valley Without Wind, given that I've inadvertently spent most of today playing it.

First up, having read a few reviews around the Web which focused heavily on the visual side of things, I direct you to this post. Get over it. Not everyone has the budget to make something that looks like Final Fantasy XIII, and it's not as if AVWW's visuals are bad per se, they just look like something out of a PC game from the 1990s, shortly after we discovered Super VGA. If "8-bit" can be an acceptable aesthetic (and I shan't get into a rant on the misuse of that term here) then why not "mid-90s PC game" if the graphics don't actually hurt the experience?

Secondly, the music. You will, as the cliche goes, love it or hate it. Here's a simple test. Do you like chiptunes and electronica? You will like the music. If you do not like chiptunes and electronica, you will probably want to switch it off and listen to something else. (I love chiptunes and electronica.)

Those two glaringly obvious points which most reviews seem to focus on aside, let's discuss the gameplay a little more.

Following an initial tutorial which introduces key gameplay concepts to the player with various gravestones sarcastically describing how various predecessors could have avoided their fate, the player reaches a settlement. This is a sorry affair to begin with, with only a single, bedraggled-looking survivor staggering around it, but a selection of basic buildings already constructed and ready to go. Three of the giant crystalline "Ilari" life-forms are here, and later in the game they'll provide a means to purchase items, build things and cast far-reaching spells. To begin with, their most important function is to restore your hit points.

Leave the settlement and you'll be taken onto a grid-based randomly generated world map. Each tile has a particular terrain type which controls the type of enemies that will spawn there, the items you'll discover and, if you're lucky, the survivors you might come across. Each region comes from a specific time period — the game's story centres around the concept of the world being "shattered" both geographically and temporally — and this comes into play with some of the missions later.

When exploring a region, you'll come across buildings. You can enter every single one of them. Most of them are sprawling mini-Metroidvania adventures in their own right, but for the most part you'll be seeking out the "stash" rooms that contain plenty of treasure. These are conveniently marked on the graph-like abstract dungeon map in the corner of the screen, which shows the connections between rooms but not their exact layout. A key part of gameplay is "scouting" buildings, which means delving in just far enough to reveal the rest of the map — rooms that are within two "connections" of the one you're in appear without you having to go to them — and then weighing up whether it's worth exploring further.

The buildings are rather abstractly designed (not to mention having TARDIS-like properties), and call to mind retro classics such as Jet Set Willy, where a "real world environment" was simply a room with obstacles in it and various graphics representing toilets and televisions scattered around the place. They're far from "believable" environments, but it doesn't matter — you're playing a side-on platform game, so there's a limit to how realistically these structures can be designed anyhow. I'd rather have something that is interesting to explore than something where every building is the same.

Missions play a key role in progression. You'll come across missions either on the world map or tucked away inside buildings. These whisk the player off to a unique, special area and challenge them with a specific task. Sometimes you might be climbing a linear tower and bashing bosses on the way up. Another time you might be defending storage silos from incoming meteors like a Missile Command platformer. Another time you might be tasked with removing the "anachronisms" from an area, which involves figuring out which monsters don't "belong" in the region you're in and eliminating them. Destroying all the correct monsters concludes the mission. Destroying an incorrect monster spawns two more, either, both or neither of which may also be an anachronism. Yet another time you might be challenged with getting through a "one shot, one kill" dungeon where either you or the enemy grazing their knee results in instant death.

As you progress through the game, death becomes an increasingly frequent occurrence. When a character dies, they're gone for good, leaving behind a tough-to-defeat vengeful ghost at the location where they shuffled off the mortal coil. Fortunately, you don't lose all the stuff you've spent hours accumulating — you simply lose any upgrades you might have applied to that character's health, attack power and mana pool and have to pick a new playable character. As you rescue survivors from different time periods, you gain access to a range of characters with varying abilities — those from an "ice age" era, for example, are resistant to the cold, while those who are not will require special equipment to explore cold environments effectively.

The eventual goal is to storm into the local Overlord's lair and kick him squarely in the balls. Said Overlord has a bunch of lieutenants, too, who can either be knocked off individually before taking on the Overlord or battled at the same time as the big boss man. You can theoretically walk straight into the Overlord's lair from the beginning of the game, but you'll be ill-equipped to deal with the challenges therein. Instead, it's advisable to complete a bunch of missions to raise the continent's "civilisation level" (thus affecting both the strength of the enemies and the potential rewards on offer) while also collecting the raw materials required to buff up your character's spells. And rescue survivors. And build buildings. And construct wind shelters to push back the wind storms that buffet the region, making exploration difficult. And track down "mystery rooms" to find clues describing exactly what the hell happened to the world to get it in this state. And… you get the idea. There is a shitload of things to do, and completing the first continent then invites you to do it all again in a more diverse array of environments.

The sheer amount of things that there are to do can make the game seem like a daunting prospect. The game often draws comparisons to other open-world freeform adventures such as Minecraft and Terraria and that feeling of being alone in a vast, terrifying world is very much present and correct here. Focus on completing a few simple tasks, though — the game is good enough to suggest some to you — and things will gradually start to fall into place.

A Valley Without Wind is an ambitious title that tries very hard and while it's true there are elements of the experience that could do with a little refinement, it's a very memorable, compelling and addictive game that produces some excellent emergent narrative. Best of all, though, is the fact that the developers are still working on it, meaning the game experience will grow, change and evolve as time goes on. If it's this intriguing now, I can't wait to see what the game looks like in a few months or years.

#oneaday Day 837: No Wind Here

My fine friend Alex picked me up a copy of the unusual A Valley Without Wind for my birthday — thank you, good sir! — and I had a brief foray into its strange world this evening. Obviously I haven't spent that much time playing yet, but it's certainly been enough for me to determine it's a game I look forward to exploring further.

AVWW is a procedurally-generated Metroidish platformer with spellcasting, building, collecting and resource management. The concept sees the player taking the role of one of several random (and disposable) characters and exploring a vast 2D world in an effort to take down "The Overlord".

In order to accomplish this, the player must explore the overworld, find their way into abandoned buildings that are remnants of the "old world" to recover supplies, delve into caves to find gems and other resources, and ultimately build up a settlement and their own power.

As you progress through the game, you acquire new "spell gems" which allow you to cast various magics. You can also upgrade your abilities with various materials and take on missions to provide a sense of "structure", but otherwise the game is very open and free, and the developers claim that it's both impossible and impractical to explore every nook and cranny of the randomly-generated world.

The game takes place on a series of 2D maps, with different "rooms" (actually scrolling regions) connected to one another by doorways and cave entrances. Exploring these rooms and the way they're connected to each other is a key part of the experience. A helpful minimap system helps you figure out where to aim for, where resources are located and where strong boss enemies can be found.

Interesting things come about when the player dies. The game features permadeath of sorts, but the game isn't over when a character bites it. Instead, the world lives on but the player starts a new character. There's even the chance to come across the ghost of your old character.

Then there's a multiplayer option, which I haven't investigated as yet, but the prospect is intriguing in a Minecraft sort of way — a procedurally generated world with multiple players running around finding resources and killing enemies? Sounds awesome.

There's an element of the "roguelike" genre about the game, and as regular readers will know, I'm a big fan of that sort of thing. The fact the game has a convincing sense of structure while still being put together almost completely at random is an impressive achievement, and I look forward to seeing if the game manages to maintain a sense of pace and direction throughout. It's obviously designed to be replayed, too, as there are a wide array of difficulty settings for both the combat and the platforming sections separately.

Further thoughts to follow when I've spent a bit more time with the game! (And you can expect more on Nier shortly, too — though this may well be in the form of a Squadron of Shame SquadCast.)

#oneaday Day 836: Brandwatch

So, at the time of writing, the No. 1 free iPad app and No. 2 free iPhone app is this game. A quiz. About logos.

This seems to be something of a craze at the moment, as it's far from the only title like this available in the App Store, and doubtless there are similar offerings on Android that I can't be arsed to look up right now.

This is what we're reduced to for entertainment now? Seeing how deep the brainwashing of advertising has burrowed into our skulls? I'd argue that scoring highly on one of these quizzes is not anything that we should particularly be proud of, as all it simply proves is that advertising has successfully drilled its way into your subconscious.

The same goes for anyone who uses the word "simples", describes anyone as being "so Money Supermarket" non-ironically or sings that bloody "Go Compare" advert. (If you do the latter, I will likely punch you in the face. If you do the "so Money Supermarket" one, whether or not you get punched in the face will depend entirely on how good your Patrick Stewart impression is.)

The counter-argument to this, of course, is that many of these brands, logos and slogans have transcended their original meanings and become pop culture phenomenons or memes in their own right. And to an extent that's true, but I can't shake off the feeling that these things have been forced into the public consciousness, while true phenomena and memes should grow organically, naturally and without marketing spend. In many cases, they do, of course — look at the Know Your Meme page for Katawa Shoujo or the astonishing popularity of My Little Pony among people that it wasn't originally intended for, for example. But I think we can all agree that anyone who takes an opportunity to sing the Go Compare song is a grade-A arsehole of the highest order.

Perhaps I'm just being grouchy. Or perhaps I'm just fed up with feeling like I can't escape advertising any more. It seems to encroach on my time more and more. It's all over the Internet. I get text messages from lawyers inviting me to seek compensation for the accident I supposedly had (funny, I don't remember it). I get phone calls from twats trying to sell me shit even though I'm registered with the TPS. (Note: this is the main reason I never answer my landline. Call my mobile if you need to speak with me.) I get people knocking on my door trying to sell me double glazing or get me to switch energy suppliers. It's plastered over certain games. It's smeared all over Facebook like festering shit. It encroaches on Twitter occasionally in the form of "Promoted Tweets" and "Promoted Users" — though these are, thankfully, easy to ignore. I even had to remove a Chrome extension yesterday because it was inserting an ad at the bottom of every page I viewed.

Ads allow things to be put out there for free, of course, and without them we'd be having to pay a lot more money for the things that we do, so I guess we should sort of be grateful for them. That said, it doesn't excuse the sleaziness of some ads, particularly on the Internet — take the large "Download" links on software sites, for example, or the "You Have 1 New Message/Virus/Picture" banners you get on mobile apps. Or indeed the "lose 3 tons of belly fat with one weird old tip" thing. (Spoilers: you probably won't, otherwise the world would be talking about it.)

You know what? Thinking about it, I'd actually be happy to pay for more things and have them advertising-free. I pay for Spotify premium and don't have ads. I'll happily pay to remove ads in iOS games I intend to play for more than five minutes. I pay for Netflix and get movies and TV shows without ad breaks. I'd even happily hand over some money to WordPress if it became a premium-only service, such is the excellent use I've got out of it for free over the years.

In short, provide me with a quality product and the means to not be battered around the face with people trying to sell me shit I don't want, and I'll happily hand over some money. Yell "Buy! Buy! Buy!" repeatedly at me with no means of respite and I will, yes, punch you in the face.

#oneaday Day 835: I Finished Nier

As the heading says, I have indeed finished Nier… once, anyway. I'm going to hold off on doing a "review" as such for the moment, however, for several reasons. Firstly, a full understanding of the game is only attained following several playthroughs. And secondly, Nier is a fine example of how the "reviewing" system we use most of the time is, at times, flawed.

Nier enjoyed mediocre review scores on its original release, netting a Metacritic average of 68. As people who care about such things will tell you, 68 is not "bad" if you're taking 50 to be "average", but unfortunately no-one does. The assumption is made by most people that anything under 80 is not really worth bothering with, and anything 90 or higher is an essential purchase.

But in my experience, it's often in these slightly lower areas that you get the most interesting games. They may be rough around the edges, they may not be perfect, but by golly they have soul.

If you were judging Nier purely mechanically, it's easy to see why it attained the mediocre review scores it did. There are a very limited number of environments to explore which you spend a lot of time backtracking through. The environments are pleasant enough, but not that interesting. The enemies are repetitive. Combat can be a bit clunky. Most of the magic spells are fairly useless. The AI partners you pick up over the course of the game are completely useless. Most of the game's quests involve either killing things or fetching things. Choices you make don't matter. And the "real-time" mechanic for growing crops is just ridiculous.

The thing is, though, play Nier and become invested in its story, and absolutely all of these factors cease to matter completely. Nier tells an interesting, mature, emotional tale, and it tells it well with a small cast of well-defined, unique (and bizarre) characters — and a much larger supporting cast who make the bleak, far-future world of the game seem all the more believable. It piles on the darkness but knows how to lighten the mood with a pithy comment or two at just the right moment. It constantly does things you don't expect — with the story, with the characters, with the style of gameplay, even with the camera angles. It encourages the player to get inside the head of this unyielding, determined protagonist and almost "method act" their way through the game as he toils and struggles to save his daughter.

Do Nier's occasionally-clunky mechanics and sometimes-repetitive gameplay make it a "bad" title? Absolutely not. They may, however, put off the less patient players out there — and that's fine. Those who stick with it will find themselves enjoying a surprisingly creative adventure, while those who chose to forgo the game's hidden charms and depths for whatever reason doubtless have plenty of other things they'd like to spend their time playing.

The sad thing, though, is that the mediocre review scores were probably enough to put a lot of people off even trying the game in the first place. Why bother buying and playing a "68" when you could play a "90"? This problem becomes compounded when you take into account the fact that a lot of publishers make strategic decisions about what franchises they want to explore further — and in extreme cases, which development studios get to keep taking home their paycheques — based on Metacritic scores. Do you think we'll ever get another Nier (or at least a game like it)? Probably not. Why? Because it's too risky. Nier has its fans, sure, but they number relatively few, and aren't necessarily going to be enough to let the game make a profit.

I'm glad Nier exists, though. It's evidence that all hope is not lost for creativity, maturity and a desire to do something a little bit different, even in these days of budgets spiralling out of control and a growing desire to create games that are "services" rather than "creative works".

Nier most certainly is a creative work, a labour of love, and it should be applauded for that.

#oneaday Day 834: RUMOUR: Rumours 'Rumoured', Says Rumour-Monger

If you've ever started a conversation with "I heard that…" and then gone on to explain exactly how you heard somewhere/from some guy in the pub/from "The Internet" that something awesome/awful is going to happen, then I urge you to think before you speak in future. Because if you continue with that sentence, you're simply feeding the rumour mill, and the rumour mill doesn't produce good things and help us make the Bread of Truth. It produces garbage and poo, and then squishes it all out into the world's most unpleasant pâté.

Tortured (and gross) metaphors aside, it's a fact that I wish more people — particularly in the press — would cotton on to.

Today, for example, saw news that Liberty X "might be" reforming for a new album and a tour. Firstly, I don't think anyone wants that, and secondly, the only evidence that such a reunion "might be" happening is the fact that they were photographed together outside the ITV studios and — get this — they were smiling. Stop the fucking presses.

There are a ton of journalism sectors that are particularly prone to this. Showbiz columns report who might be sleeping with whom. Sports columns report who might be moving to some other club for a disproportionately enormous amount of money. Music and arts columns report who might be working on what. And then, of course, there are the tech-related industries.

Anything related to Apple is accompanied by an inordinately huge amount of rumourmongering, for example. In the run-up to the company's announcement of the third-generation iPad, all sorts of nonsense was flying around. This ranged from suggestions that it might not have a Home button to the frankly astonishing assertion that the reason iOS apps had started having textures like leather and the like in the background was because the new iPad would have a haptic display — i.e. one where you could feel textures as well as see them.

The video games industry is far from immune, either. Rarely a week goes by without one outlet reporting on some rumour from a mysterious, anonymous source and the "story" then being picked up by every other news site on the Web as if it were fact. This particular rumour mill goes into overdrive as a hardware generation starts to wind down and people start wondering what the next generation of consoles might look like. Inevitably, the vast majority of stories turn out to be absolute bollocks, and on the rare occasions when an outlet or reporter writes something that turns out to be true, there's at least a day's worth of smug, self-satisfied cries of "Called it."

No you didn't. You were throwing darts blindfolded, and you happened to hit a lucky bulls-eye. Your other fifteen darts are embedded in the barman's testicles, the barmaid's left boob, the right ear of that hard-looking dude who drinks absinthe by the pint and the TV that was showing the Bolton v Wigan match. (Everyone is angry. I'd run, if I were you.)

So why do we persist on reporting on these festering sores on the very arse of journalism? Because they attract attention, particularly if they're controversial. If one site prints a story that Liberty X is reforming, or that the next Xbox will feature a system to prevent used games from working on it, or that the iPhone 5 really, totally, absolutely positively is coming out this time, then that will attract commenters like flies around shit. And that means page hits, advertising revenue and the little graphs that make the men in suits happy moving in an upward direction. Who cares if it's absolute nonsense dreamed up by someone who cleans the toilets at Microsoft? Print it!

I make a point of not reading any stories that start with the prefix "RUMOUR:" now. And should I ever find myself back on the news desk for a popular gaming website, I will most certainly do everything in my power to avoid reporting on such nonsense — unless some actual investigation turns up something interesting, of course. But blindly parroting another site's "anonymous source"? No. Just no.

So, then, I reiterate: think before you speak/write/publish. Because rumours are rarely helpful. Remember that time it spread around the whole school year that you'd shat your pants when in fact you'd just sat in some mud?

Yeah. That.

#oneaday Day 833: Some Further Thoughts on Nier

I haven't yet finished Nier, but I thought I'd take a moment to write a little more about it since I've been playing it quite a bit over the course of the last week or so.

Nier is a game that rewards patience and perseverance. The game's enormous number of completely optional sidequests is testament to this fact. These sidequests tend to fall into one of several categories — gathering materials, killing things or delivering things. There are a couple of outliers (one of which I'll discuss later) but for the most part they are mechanically very simple, and usually simply involve beating up a bunch of monsters or running from one place to another.

In gameplay terms, they're very boring, and this is one of the reasons why Nier received rather mediocre reviews on its original release. But thematically, they are entirely appropriate. Nier himself is known among his peers as "that guy who will do anything" and so is regularly called upon by various villagers to do things for them. Some are respectful and kind about this, others less so.

The key thing about the gruelling experience that is attempting to 100% the sidequests in Nier is that it reflects Nier's own struggles. Life in his world is hard, and everyone has to pull together in order to survive. This sometimes means knuckling down and doing things you don't really want to do, or things that are time-consuming, or things that are expensive. By completing these quests you may not be directly making Nier himself any stronger, but you as the player come to understand his strength of character and his resolve to do the right thing. Couple this with Grimoire Weiss' sarcastic comments about the inane nature of the tasks his companion is asked to complete (which reflects what the player might be feeling about taking on such seemingly meaningless missions) and you have a very clever piece of characterisation and storytelling that would only really be possible in the medium of video games.

Some aspects are just ridiculous, however, the most notorious of this being the farming minigame, where Nier is able to grow various crops outside his house and then harvest them, hopefully for profit. The thing is, these crops grow over the course of a day or so of real time, meaning that anyone getting serious at farming is going to have to do one of two things: play Nier for weeks at a time, or take the path of least resistance (which I don't know anyone who has played the game that hasn't done) and start messing around with your console's clock. I can't speak for the process on PS3 as I haven't tried it, but on Xbox this is an unnecessarily cumbersome experience that involves quitting the game entirely, turning off the Internet connection (to stop the clock being automatically set), resetting the time and then reloading the game. It works, though, and allows for a considerable amount of harvesting in a very short period of time.

One quest in the game (and a related achievement/trophy) practically requires that you do this. It involves cross-breeding various colours of flowers in order to produce rare breeds. The trouble is, the game doesn't explain how this works anywhere, and debate still seems to rage on the Internet at large as to what is actually necessary in order to perform this task in the most efficient manner possible. In some senses, this could be argued to be another aspect of the game inviting the player into Nier's shoes and tasking them with finding out how this flower cross-breeding works, then applying that knowledge in the game — because it sure as hell isn't going to tell you.

How anyone was expected to do that without a strategy guide to hand is anyone's guess. Still, even when simply following instructions on how to do it (with something along the lines of a 10% chance of success each time) it's strangely satisfying when it does all come together.

I'm about 77% of the way through the sidequests in the game now, meaning that shortly I'll be able to pursue the rest of the game's main plot, which has been both interesting and unconventional for a Japanese game so far. I'll talk more about that when I come to do more of a "review" of the entire experience, however. The game also supposedly encourages repeat playthroughs (minus the sidequests, thankfully) to get to several different endings, but how this actually works I haven't found out yet.

In fact, I've managed to remain completely spoiler-free for the entire game so far, meaning I've been able to appreciate all the game's unexpected and bizarre things as they happen. This has been a big part in why I have come to regard the game so fondly; though the characters, writing and music are all excellent too. Again, though, further thoughts on these when I've actually beaten the whole thing.

For now, I have some white moonflowers to harvest, if you'll excuse me.

#oneaday Day 832: The Seven Wonders of Waterdeep

So, birthday number 31 has been and gone and it's been a pleasant one. It's been a rather more low-key affair than last year's few days of awesomeness that Andie arranged, but it's still been a fine day filled with good friends, board and computer games, cookies, coffee and Catan.

I wanted to talk a little bit about two of the board games we played today that weren't Catan — 7 Wonders and Lords of Waterdeep. These two titles are relatively new to me (in fact, today was the first time I'd even seen Lords of Waterdeep, let alone played it) but I like them both a great deal. They're very different from one another, so let's take them one at a time.

7 Wonders is a card game based around the concept of civilisation-building. Unlike many other civ-building games, however, a game of 7 Wonders is over and done with relatively quickly thanks to its simple, elegant mechanics.

The game is split into three "ages", each of which has its own deck of cards. These are dealt out equally to each player to give them a unique hand. Each player then picks one of the cards from the hand and passes the rest on to the next player. Some cards may be built for free, some require the payment of gold coins (represented by cardboard chits) and some require specific resources to use.

Resources are depicted in an abstract manner by cards — unlike games like Catan, though, they are not expended when used. Rather, they represent a player's potential to produce a certain amount of that resource per turn. For example, if a player has two cards with "wood" symbols down on the table, they may play a card which requires one or two "wood" resources to use, but the wood is not expended in the process. In order to get the ball rolling, each civilisation has its own "starting resource" which it doesn't require any cards to make use of — and player may pay gold to one another to "borrow" resources. Again, this does not expend the other player's resources, nor does it stop them from using the same resources themselves.

Cards are split into several different types — basic resources (wood, stone, brick, ore), luxury resources (glass, silks, papyrus), trade buildings (which generally allow players to acquire resources from other players for cheaper), point cards (which simply score points), guild cards (which provide bonuses at the end of the game for certain specific cards), military cards (which represent a civilisation's military strength in an abstract manner) and science cards. Science cards form the basis of the game's most complex mechanic — collecting sets of the same type of "science" provides the player with points to the value of the number of cards squared, while collecting one of each of the three "science" symbols provides the player with a further 7 points.

Players may also choose to build a stage of their civilisation's Wonder. This costs several resources and prevents the player from using a card that turn in the process — however, this can be a good strategic means of preventing the next player from getting a card they really want. Building a Wonder stage either provides the player with points or a special ability of some description. Some allow cards to be acquired for free, others allow players to rifle through the discard deck and build something which is already out of play, others still bend the rules in different ways.

At the end of each "age", players tot up their military strength cards and compare them to the players on either side of where they are sitting. If their military strength is greater than their neighbour, they gain a point bonus that increases with each "age". If it is weaker, they take a score penalty. This remains the same — -1 — in each stage of the game.

At the end of the game, all scores are totalled up and whoever has the most points wins. Simple.

7 Wonders is a fun game because it's quick to pick up and understand (despite what my description above may read like to you, it's actually fairly straightforward to learn even if you're a complete board game newbie) and fast-paced. There's little in the way of "analysis paralysis" as people agonise over which cards to play, and you can get through an entire game in well under an hour. Despite its brisk pace, it has plenty of depth, though, and various randomised elements provide each session with a degree of variety.

Recommended, then.

Lords of Waterdeep, meanwhile, is a Dungeons and Dragons-themed building game where each player is competing to score the most victory points by the end of a limited number of turns. Most of these victory points come from the completion of "quests", most of which require the expenditure of resources and money — in this case, the resources being adventurers of various types. This is D&D, after all!

The basic gameplay is quite similar to Agricola. A variety of "action spaces" are available on the board, and players take it in turns to place one of their "agents" on a space to claim it and perform its action. These actions range from simply taking resources or currency to more complex activities such as playing "intrigue cards".

Quests are completed simply by having the appropriate combination of resources on hand, at which point the player flips over the completed quest card and takes any rewards printed on it. Quests are divided into several different categories, and at the start of the game each player receives a secret card telling them which categories of completed quests will score them bonus points at the end of the game.

The aforementioned "intrigue cards" provide a lot more interaction than something like Agricola in that they are typically used to attack other players or benefit whoever is playing them in some way. Some cards allow the player to steal resources from others. Others simply force other players to give up resources, or allow the player playing the card an extra turn. They can turn the tide of a round completely almost immediately, and provide great scope for both laughs and wanting to throw chairs at your opponents.

Players may also build buildings in the city, which become extra action spaces but typically provide a bonus to whoever "owns" the building when used. The exact buildings which turn up in the game are randomised, too, so there's an element of chance and uncertainty to what is coming up rather than the more predictable turn order of Agricola.

I enjoyed Lords of Waterdeep a lot. I'd need to play it a few more times to understand its nuances, but I felt like I understood what I was doing a lot better than Agricola. (I am constantly comparing to Agricola because mechanically it is relatively similar, though arguably less complex.) At no point did I feel I was "out of my depth" or being "left behind" — there was always something worthwhile to do, but it never felt like there were too many things to do and not enough time to do them in, which is my biggest bugbear with Agricola. It's not a "beginners'" game by any means, but for those who enjoy a good Eurogame and have any fondness for D&D, it's a worthwhile investment of your time.

Two great games, then; if you're a board game fan, be sure to check 'em out. And if you're at all interested in the hobby but perhaps don't know a great deal about it, I strongly suggest you check out Wil Wheaton's new YouTube show Table Top, in which he sits down with a variety of famous people (well, famous geeks, mostly) to play a game, explaining it along the way. It's a good way to get a feel for how a game works — including the dynamic of group interaction during play. So far they've covered Catan and Small World.

And on that note, time for bed, I think. Night-night.

Pete, age 31

#oneaday Day 831: Another Year

So, as of the time of writing, I've just turned thirty-one years old. As becomes increasingly common as the years pass by, it doesn't feel any different to being thirty.

I was mostly prepped for the supposed horror of turning thirty by my parents. My father in particular apparently didn't take to turning thirty all that well, so I was expecting a semi-to-fully traumatic experience. It actually turned out to be a rather pleasant experience, as I was whisked off on a weekend to London by my girlfriend Andie, and then had the chance to see a bunch of friends for curry and good times.

A lot has happened in the space of the last year. Having been forced to move back home with my parents due to my shattered personal life from the year prior, in August I moved back out again. At the time I was working for GamePro and was earning a decent wage from it, too, so Andie (who was also living with her mother at the time) and I decided that we were both in a situation where we could get a house and move in together. So we did. And that was good.

Since that time, GamePro collapsed — in December of last year, to be specific. I was very sad about this, as I felt I'd found my "calling" — I did a great job of posting the daily news there, and my hard work was appreciated by the people I was working for. I was grateful for the opportunity, grateful to be accepted and appreciated in what I was doing, and grateful to, for the first time in my life, have a job that I actually enjoyed.

I was half-expecting the collapse of GamePro to signal another disastrous collapse in my own personal circumstances. At the time, I didn't have enough money saved up to survive for very long and still be able to pay my tax bill at the beginning of next year. I started frantically applying for jobs and finding the same situation I had done prior to starting at GamePro — no-one was interested in me. I don't know whether it was my lack of "relevant" qualifications for certain sectors, my wide-ranging experience that covered both teaching and writing positions, or something else. Whatever it was, it carried a significant risk of making me feel like absolute crap again.

Fortunately, I found myself with a new job before long, and I'm enjoying it. I'm constantly learning new stuff, too, which is a big bonus. My writing may not be quite so much in the "mainstream" public eye any more, but I'm find with that; it means that I have to deal with far fewer hormonal teenagers who can't spell, punctuate or formulate an argument. I also haven't had any accusations of being a paedophile since starting my new job, either, which is always nice.

What else? I've bought a new computer, bought an Android tablet, discovered My Little Pony, played all three of the "Operation Rainfall" role-playing games on the Wii, finally started playing Nier, started a few creative projects, started, stopped, started, stopped and started again at the gym lots of times… the list goes on. When put that way, it probably doesn't sound all that interesting, really. But I can't say it's been a shitty year, unlike certain previous years I could mention. On the whole, it's been a reasonably good year and hopefully things will just continue to improve.

Now it's time to go to bed. I've had friends over playing TrackMania, Dungeon Defenders, 7 Wonders and Catan this evening, with more arriving tomorrow for further board game fun and frolics.

See you on my "proper" birthday.

#oneaday Day 830: Roguelikes, for the Adventure-Curious

I was having an idle discussion with a couple of people on Twitter earlier, at least one of whom I know reads this blog (hi Anne!) and the subject turned to that of roguelikes. This is a genre of gaming that I've got to know quite well over the last couple of years and while I'm still not that good at them (I'm yet to beat one, for example), I feel I know a bit more about the genre now.

Quick recap for the uninitiated: a roguelike is a (usually) turn-based role-playing game typically focused on exploring randomly-generated dungeons, killing as many monsters as possible and acquiring lots of lovely loot. Sometimes there is a plot or quests and usually there's some way to "win", but they tend to be monstrously difficult games and generally feature "permadeath" in that they delete your save game if you happen to kick the bucket during one of your (mis)adventures.

It's easy to see them as utterly impenetrable, however, thanks largely to the fact that many of them are presented using purely ASCII graphics, making them look more like something from Teletext than cutting-edge interactive entertainment. The fact that some of the more popular ones have a key command mapped to literally every key on the keyboard (shifted and non-shifted) doesn't help matter, either.

So what I've gone and done is pick out some of the roguelikes I've played over the years that seem to be pretty accessible and easily-understandable. Then, if you're curious, you can try them out for yourself. If not, you can, I don't know, go and harass a badger or something.

So let us begin.

Diablo III

Okay, technically it's not a roguelike in the strictest definition of the genre, but Blizzard's upcoming title shares a lot of DNA with the genre. Randomly-generated dungeons, a focus on combat and loot whoring rather than plot (though the game does have a story, and seemingly somewhat better delivered than in its predecessors) and even the option for permadeath if you're feeling masochistic. The Diablo series has always been very accessible yet deep for those willing to invest some time and effort into it, and early indications seem to be that the third iteration will be no exception. It also has a great multiplayer mode, which is the highlight of the experience for many.

Where to get it: Buy it for PC here. It'll be released on May 15, but you can preorder and pre-download now.

Dungeons of Dredmor

Dredmor is an independently-developed roguelike from Gaslamp Games. The game casts players in the role of a male or female hero with a custom combination of skills — some useful, some just plain bizarre. It's then up to the player to battle their way down through the titular dungeons on their way to a confrontation with Dredmor himself. Dungeons of Dredmor is accessible in that there are not many commands to remember and the base mechanics are pretty simple. It also has attractive pixel-art graphics, a bizarrely cheerful soundtrack and an excellent sense of humour. The developers also regularly release updates to the game that improve the experience significantly.

Where to get it: Buy it for PC and Mac via Steam.

Hack, Slash, Loot

Hack, Slash, Loot differs from many other roguelikes in its scope. Its quests are short, there's no level grinding for experience points and the only stuff the player character can carry is the stuff they have equipped. Potions and scrolls are used immediately, and equipment is swapped out when picked up, meaning players have to weigh up whether or not their newly-discovered loot is worth taking with them. The whole thing is wrapped in an endearing retro aesthetic and its difficulty level is fond of kicking you repeatedly in the face until you cry. As compensation, however, the more you die, the more characters and quests you unlock.

Where to get it: Buy it for PC and Mac via Steam.

Doom: The Roguelike

Doom: The Roguelike (or DoomRL as it is often referred to) is an excellent example of the creativity often seen in the genre. The game is quite literally a reimagining of the original Doom but rendered as a roguelike. Until recently, it combined the original music and sounds of Doom with ASCII art, but the most recent update has added graphics, new music and remastered sounds. It's a simple but fun experience and works considerably better than you might expect. Best of all, it's free.

Where to get it: Download it for PC, Mac or Linux for free here, though the Mac port is a bit dodgy.

Tales of Maj'Eyal

Tales of Maj'Eyal (formerly Tales of Middle Earth) is one of the more well-established names in the free roguelike sector. It's a more complex game than some of its peers, but its interface is accessible and the mechanics are straightforward to understand. There are lots of different character classes to try, and lots of locations to explore. The game is relatively unusual in the genre for including a "world map" and towns to explore between dungeons, giving it a more traditional RPG structure while still punching you in the squishy bits with its difficulty on a regular basis.

Where to get it: Download it for PC, Mac or Linux here.

100 Rogues

The quintessential iOS roguelike, 100 Rogues combines attractive retro pixel art with simple mechanics and addictive gameplay. The quest is short enough that it could potentially be finished in one sitting, and you get the opportunity to battle the Pope. Like most of its peers, it's incredibly challenging, but very addictive.

Where to get it: Buy it for iPhone and iPad here.

There are hundreds of other examples out there, but these are some that I've played and enjoyed as someone who is still something of a greenhorn in the genre. Why not check them out? In my experience, roguelikes are some of the best games for creating "emergent narratives" — that is, the stories that occur naturally through your play rather than an explicit narrative included by the developer. Stories like these, for example.

#oneaday Day 829: Nier: Some Early Impressions

I've been playing Nier, a game I've been meaning to try for absolutely ages and struggled to find a copy of. As it happens, my local second-hand games emporium had a copy, allowing me to sample its delights. Like many titles I've wanted to try for a while, I've managed to go into the experience with a relative sense of "beginners' mind", allowing me to enjoy it as if it were "new", so to speak. This, I feel, is a key part of the Nier experience, since it continually throws you curveballs as you play, remaining constantly surprising.

At its heart, Nier is a simple action RPG, but to call it that is to do it a gross injustice. The hack-and-slash combat may be a bit simple, but when combined with the variety of bizarre magical attacks Our Hero gains the capability to perform over the course of his adventure, the gameplay is shaken up regularly enough to keep you questioning exactly what sort of game it is that you're really playing.

So far I've experienced open-world "run around and kill shit to get their stuff" gameplay; lots of "fetch quests"; side-on platforming sections; top-down Zelda-style sections; fishing; "bullet hell" shooter sections… and I have little doubt that the game has further surprises along the way.

Nier subscribes to the "less is more" viewpoint by taking place in a relatively limited geographical area. Within these relatively few zones, however, lots of things happen. Locals have their own little questline stories to follow, many of which end in surprisingly bleak tragedy. Some people drop a few hints about Nier's curious far-future setting. It's quite a believable world at times, and your attachment to it as a player grows as Our Hero tries his very best to Do Good.

One of my favourite things about the game so far has been the stark contrast between the random errands you find yourself doing for locals and the more intense, "main story" stuff which tends to culminate in ridiculously over the top boss fights. For the best part of 10 hours, for example, I barely gained any experience points whatsoever, instead choosing to pursue quests. In the process I acquired plenty of items and money, but most importantly I learned a great deal about the world of Nier and its characters. It's a vaguely similar approach to what The Last Story does with its completely optional, often seemingly reward-free sidequests on Lazulis Island. By immersing yourself in the lives of the characters going about their day to day life, their struggles carry greater meaning when things start to get a bit crazy.

The writing is worthy of note, too. Early in the game, Our Hero acquires a sentient magical book known as Grimoire Weiss, and there are some extremely well-scripted sequences between the two of them prompted by all sorts of things — starting a new quest, going fishing, coming across a new location. The very British-seeming sarcasm of Weiss is juxtaposed beautifully with Our Hero's stoic determination — but Nier himself isn't above the odd sarcastic comment. "Try not to get crushed!" yells Weiss during an intense boss battle that carries the risk of being crushed. "That's good advice, thanks," spits Our Hero sarcastically as he rolls to escape the aforementioned fate.

I'm given to understand that there are numerous endings to the game requiring several playthroughs to fully appreciate, so I'm going to reserve full judgement and further comment on the game until I've done exactly that. I will say, however, that I am having a blast with it so far, and am even enjoying running back and forth doing errands for the people of Nier's world.

Expect further bulletins as events warrant!