2295: You Should Play Aselia the Eternal

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JAST USA recently released Aselia the Eternal on Steam. The game’s been around for a good few years now — its original Japanese version for even longer — but its release on Steam will doubtless allow a whole new audience to (hopefully) enjoy it. I will now attempt to explain why it is worth giving it a go.

Aselia the Eternal is a combination of a visual novel and a strategy game. The overall balance is very much in favour of the story side of things — it’s a good six hours of reading before you get to the game’s first strategy battle sequence — but when you do get to the strategic aspect, it’s a game that puts up a good fight.

The narrative concerns the player-protagonist Yuuto, who finds himself drawn into another world populated by people who speak a completely different language to him. Unable to find his way home, he gradually learns to communicate with these people — the ones with whom he’s staying known as “Spirits” — and finds himself recruited into the army as an “Etranger”, a wielder of a powerful, sentient sword that regularly threatens to eat his soul.

Gradually, as Yuuto becomes more and more involved in the lives of the Spirits, he starts to worry less and less about trying to find his way back home and more about helping to resolve the conflict that threatens to tear this fantasy world apart. As such, the narrative becomes very much a high fantasy sort of affair — war on a grand scale, magic and mayhem around every corner, transcendence of humanity not at all out of the question — and builds to a thoroughly exciting conclusion that I won’t spoil here.

The story is compelling, interesting, well-written and well-translated, but it’s the gameplay part that is perhaps the most interesting thing about it, since it’s one of the most original takes on strategic RPG-style combat I’ve seen. Virtually eliminating all luck from the equation, combat in Aselia the Eternal is actually about putting units together in small squads to perform most effectively according to what type of unit they are — and by doing this correctly you can effectively guarantee that you’ll win a conflict before you reach it. The tricky part is in finding those suitable combinations in the first place.

The basic rules of engagement have each of your squads made up of three ranks — a frontline fighter, a mid-range tank and a support fighter bringing up the rear. Each of the different types of Spirits perform best in a particular slot: Blue Spirits (such as the eponymous heroine) do their best work as speedy damage dealers in the front row; Green Spirits tend to have the highest defense and HP, so sit in the middle; Red Spirits often have support abilities that can damage an entire enemy squad or provide suitable benefits to your own, so sit at the back. You’re not limited to this arrangement — and indeed, with Yuuto in the mix, who is none of those things, you’ll have at least one squad with an unconventional lineup — but there are clearly optimal ways to do things, making each of the battles in the game as much of a puzzle as a strategic RPG experience.

Aselia the Eternal comes together so nicely because everything it does is in service to its narrative and worldbuilding. Despite not having an open world you can freely explore, its excellent storytelling and descriptive narration builds a wonderfully convincing setting that gives the strategic sequences genuine meaning and drama. And, as a result of that worldbuilding, your units in the strategic sequences become more than just sets of stats and abilities; they become people. People who you don’t want to see die, because yes, this game has permadeath.

The question of being “more than just a soldier” is one of the main narrative themes explored in the game, and it’s a rather wonderful moment when you realise that you, the player, are having the same epiphany that the characters in the game are. There are some wonderfully touching sequences with Yuuto and the Spirits as they get to know one another, and you’re right there with them. And, as the narrative ramps up and you bring more and more allies with you, the tension becomes palpable as you take them into battles that you really don’t want to see them lose.

I don’t want to say too much more because part of the wonder of Aselia the Eternal is exploring the experience for yourself and discovering everything this remarkable work has to offer. Suffice to say if you enjoy in-depth storytelling — and lots of if — and aren’t averse to a bit of red-hot strategy action, you should most certainly check it out. And then strongly consider supporting JAST’s recent release of the sequel Seinarukana, which I’ll be investigating for myself in the near future!

2267: HunieCam Studio: Private Time Management

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Remember “time management” games? Diner Dash and the like? They were a large part of what constituted “casual games” before free-to-play mobile shit entered the marketplace and ruined everyone’s fun with microtransactions, throttling and “fun pain”.

HuniePot, developer of HuniePop and now HunieCam Studio, clearly remembers the good old days of casual games before free-to-play. Not only have they made an excellent puzzle game in the form of HuniePop — a game that successfully puts an interesting twist on match-3 and doesn’t just clone Bejeweled — but now they’ve made an enjoyable and surprisingly addictive time management game in the form of HunieCam Studio.

HunieCam Studio describes itself as a management/tycoon game, but set aside any thoughts of the complex ’90s/’00s-era tycoon games here: this is a game that is extremely simple to pick up — thanks in part to an amusingly well-written (and skippable) tutorial starring Kyu, the perverted fairy from HuniePop — but challenging to master. And it’s a game that’s designed to be replayed and experimented with, too; both to beat your own high score and to tackle some of the challenging achievements on offer.

But what is HunieCam Studio? Well, let me rewind a bit and give some context. HunieCam Studio’s predecessor HuniePop was a Kickstarter success story, promising a Western-style dating sim with anime-style graphics but a distinctly foul-mouthed Western comedy approach. It changed a little from its original brief, but maintained its core formula of using its puzzle mechanics to represent how well your dates with the game’s various lovely ladies were going, and incorporated some resource management as you upgraded your character’s abilities and bought the girls gifts.

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HunieCam Studio takes much of HuniePop’s cast along with some newcomers and puts them in a new context: the seedy underbelly of the Internet, specifically the “camgirl” industry. For those far too innocent to know what a camgirl is, you can probably work it out; just in case you really have led a sheltered life, though, a camgirl is an online sex worker, putting on shows from her bedroom (or studio) for the gratification of horny people who want to watch some live porn. Camgirls make their money through a combination of tips from the audience (delivered electronically) and particularly amorous punters who pay for some private one-on-one time with the girl.

In many ways, camgirl work is the “acceptable” face of the sex work industry, if such a thing exists, since many camgirls work independently for themselves, and the natural barrier that the Internet puts between them and their audience means that it’s a lot easier for them to stay safe from dangers such as STDs and punters who get a little… overenthusiastic.

Ideal video game fodder, wouldn’t you say? No? Well then, you’d be wrong.

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HunieCam Studio’s gameplay takes place on a static town map. Beginning with just one girl in your camgirl empire — HunieCam Studio’s take on camgirls has you working for Kyu, who in turn wants nothing more than to roll in big piles of money obtained through the sleaziest means possible — you assign your charges to various tasks, each of which takes a varying amount of time, but which can be sped up by clicking or holding the mouse button down on it. This has led many people to arguably erroneously describe HunieCam Studio as a “clicker” game, but it differentiates itself from popular clickers such as Clicker Heroes by having a clearer structure and goals in place rather than just playing endlessly for the sake of it.

The tasks the girls can take on include putting on cam shows (which earns money), doing photo shoots (which earns fans, which equal more money when doing cam shows), training their talent (which improves the money they make per fan during cam shows) and style (which improves the number of fans they acquire per photo shoot), shopping for booze and cigarettes (both of which cause those with varying degrees of addiction to either or both to remain somewhat more stress-free than their clean counterparts), fucking punters in a sleazy motel (which makes money more quickly than cam shows, but which carries a risk of the girl catching one of several STDs, each of which has its own negative effects that restrict her actions), shopping for accessories (which carry passive bonuses) or resting at the day spa (which alleviates stress built up through all of the above activities).

Meanwhile, as Kyu’s assistant, it’s your job to manage the girls’ time effectively and upgrade the overall operation using the money they earn. As you progress, you can unlock more slots to hire more girls and consequently perform more simultaneous actions, and you can also improve the pace at which clicking on things speeds things along as well as automating the collection of the resources actions produce. This becomes particularly important later when the girls start earning large amounts of money and fans with each action; clicking over a thousand times to collect all your ill-gotten gains isn’t going to work.

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You also have to manage the overall budget. The girls have an hourly rate of pay that increases as their talent and style levels increase, and at midnight each day you have to pay them. If this puts you in debt and you’re not back out of debt by midnight on the next day, you lose. There are no other consequences to getting into debt, however, so sometimes it can be tactically advantageous to quickly blow all your money to get your operation in a good position, then spend part of the next day recouping the deficit you’re left with after paying the girls.

The overall aim of HunieCam Studio is to have as many fans as possible by the end of a 21-day period. Once this time period is up, your final fan total is totted up and you’re awarded a trophy according to how well you did. This, in turn, provides you with coins that can be spent on unlocking new hairstyles and costumes for the girls, with a mildly lewd picture on offer as a reward for each girl if you unlock all her variations. (Interestingly, during the game itself there’s no explicitly lewd content whatsoever; everything is implied or mentioned in text. This is not a game to fap to.)

HunieCam Studio appears simple, but there are some interesting things going on under the (clitoral) hood, particularly with how the “fans” system works. Each girl starts catering to two specific fetishes, usually relating to their physical appearance — “MILF”, “Teen”, “Latina” and suchlike. Fans you acquire have specific tastes, meaning that girls who have a greater share of your total fanbase will make more money doing cam shows, and more money means faster upgrades. Ideally, you’ll have multiple girls with overlapping fetishes, and this can be partially manipulated by purchasing accessories from the shop — buying butt plugs and giving them to a girl allows her to cater to fans who enjoy bum fun, for example, but this won’t do you much good until you attract some fans of bum fun in the first place through photoshoots or paying for advertising to a particular audience.

As the game progresses and you get more girls in your little harem, things get surprisingly hectic if you want to keep things running as efficiently as possible, and STDs can throw a real spanner in the works, particularly if they’re one of the serious, incurable ones — AIDS, for example, prevents a girl from doing anything at all because she’s so depressed about the situation, making her completely useless to your operation. There is, sadly, little time to feel sorry for her, though; not if you want to make money and attract fans, anyway. Such is the way of a capitalist society.

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I enjoy HunieCam Studio a lot more than I was expecting to. Its controversial new art direction — taking a distinctly more “Western cartoon” approach than the anime-inspired art of HuniePop — actually looks pretty good in the context of the game, and it’s enjoyable to play. A full 21-day game only takes about an hour and a half tops, too, so it’s easily replayable, and for those with little free time, you can save and come back at another time. You can also continue playing the game in “endless” mode after the 21 days are up, but you can’t achieve the better trophies in this way — you’ll need to start again for that.

A lot of people describe the people making consciously “arty” indie games as the punk movement of the games industry, but I have to say, I feel a bit differently; while I have nothing against the art-games movement and indeed encourage it in many cases, it’s a very cliquey little part of the industry that has very specific ideas about what is and isn’t “acceptable” or “good”, particularly with regard to controversial and/or progressive themes.

HuniePot, meanwhile, don’t give a shit what people think of them and deliberately set out with their games to be as provocative and offensive to those with delicate sensibilities as possible — while taking care to ensure that what they produce is also actually technically proficient and enjoyable to play. That sounds pretty punk to me — and they’ve set out to achieve what they wanted to twice now. I hope we see more from them in the future.

#oneaday Day 845: Endless SPAAAAAACE

As I believe has been well-documented on this very site a number of times, I am not very good at strategy games, be they of the board- or computer-based varieties. I have trouble prioritising what I want to do, and as soon as I do decide upon a course of action, some asshole other player comes along and beats the shit out of me before I have a chance to follow through on my master plan.

So it was with some trepidation that I decided I would give Endless Space a go. I’ve been playing a bit of Starbase Orion on iOS recently and, having recently won my first game (against one Easy-level opponent) I felt I wanted to investigate the space-based 4X genre a little further.

Aside: If you, like me, constantly forget what “4X” stands for, it means “explore, expand, exploit and exterminate” and is used to describe strategy games that involve a combination of building, expansion, collecting resources and military conflict. They’re typically (though not always) turn-based in execution due to the amount of micromanagement necessary to keep an empire running smoothly, and depending on the game, victory can generally be attained in several ways. Sid Meier’s popular Civilization series is one of the best-known examples.

With me? Good. Endless Space is an upcoming space-based 4X game from French indie developer Amplitude. You can preorder the game right now and jump into an impressively-complete alpha build and, in an interesting twist on the usual development cycle, participate in the decision-making process as the game gets closer to release. I shan’t go into detail on that side of things right now (though I may in the future as it’s a very cool idea to get the community involved in development) but I will talk a little about the game itself and how I’ve found it after a few hours of taking it for a spin earlier.

Endless Space, like many other games of its type, takes place in a randomly-generated galaxy. You’re given a starting colony and a meagre supply of ships to get yourself up and running, and from there it’s all about the empire-building. Scout out new systems, send colony ships to the richest-looking planets, then build, expand and conquer until you are the undisputed ruler of the Universe. Easy enough, right?

Unlike some similar titles, Endless Space’s map is based around specific routes between star systems. (In Starbase Orion, for example, ships can move between any systems that are in range via the most direct route.) Because of this, it’s much more straightforward to figure out how to defend yourself because attacks will only be coming from certain angles. Blockade your systems that are on the front line, then figure out a pathway through your opponent’s defences that will whittle them down piece by piece. In some ways it reminded me of the excellent board-game adaptation of Blizzard’s StarCraft, which is well worth a punt if you have a few hours (and a very big table) to spare.

The basic mechanics are similar to the classic Civilization titles. Each colony under the player’s control produces food, industry, science and “dust”, which is the currency used in the Endless Space universe. Food leads to population growth. Industry is used to build things — the more industry, the quicker things are built. Science is used to research new technologies. And dust is used for all sorts of purposes — hurrying production, upgrading ships and all manner of other things. Each colony in a star system adds to that system’s pool of food, industry, dust and science (referred to in-game as “FIDS”), and each system may then use said pools to upgrade its population, contribute to the empire’s overall research progress, build ships or build improvements to that specific system. It’s simple to understand in practice, particularly if you’ve played Civilization before.

An interesting twist on the usual formula comes in the form of “hero” units, who are generated every few turns and may be hired for a fee of dust up front, then paid a salary each turn. Heroes come in two main forms: system governors and admirals. The former provide various bonuses to FIDS and morale in the system they’re assigned to, while the latter may be used to take command of a fleet of ships and make them more powerful. As they do their jobs, they level up and may be customised with various abilities to specialise them or make them better generalists. They can be shuffled around the player’s empire at will, too.

Combat, too, takes an intriguingly unconventional approach. Rather than going outright real-time such as in Sins of a Solar Empire, or almost completely hands-off as in Starbase Orion, Endless Space’s combat takes a curious “cinematic” approach. A combat encounter unfolds over a set period of real time which is divided into several phases. There are a few seconds at the beginning of combat while both fleets approach each other, then the battle progresses between long, medium and short-range phases. The player may play a “card” on each of these three phases which provides numerous special effects. Cards have categories, too, and certain categories cancel out the other player’s abilities. This gives an element of uncertainty to the combat, though the “combat preview” window, which estimates the player’s chances of victory prior to the combat unfolding, is a pleasing addition, as are the Battlestar Galactica-style cinematic combat sequences (complete with ethnic instruments) and ability to completely skip the combat scene altogether if it looks like being a complete whitewash.

I haven’t played a game through to completion yet, but I’ve been enjoying what I’ve tried so far. I don’t feel overwhelmed with things to worry about and I don’t feel I’m being “left behind” by the computer players. (I may feel differently if I get stomped on by one of them — my closest neighbour declared war on me just because I forcibly removed one of his scout ships from my border system with a fleet of destroyers.) The “hero” mechanic adds a cool sense of progression and the way the game is presented is simple, clear and easy to understand while remaining aesthetically impressive, with smoothly-animated, attractive UI elements, excellent background music and atmospheric sound effects.

If this is an alpha version, I very much look forward to seeing how the game evolves over the coming months. If you have the slightest interest in the turn-based strategy genre, I’d strongly suggest you give it a shot — and thanks to my good buddy Alex for the recommendation.

Check out the game here and preorder on Steam to get access to the alpha build.

#oneaday, Day 73: Strategic Mind

I’m shit at strategy games. I mean really shit. That doesn’t stop me playing and enjoying them, but I am just awful at them. I think it’s an inability to think ahead or do those mind-fucking mental calculations required to predict what situation you’ll be in ten turns down the road. If I start getting into thinking about that, I end up suffering from analysis paralysis and have to lie down for a little while afterwards.

This is frustrating when playing board games which you know are supposed to be really good, like Agricola and Power Grid. But I find myself consistently losing at them. Agricola is more of a problem than Power Grid, which I can normally do respectably in.

It could well be difficulty in prioritising things. In Agricola I’m never sure what action is the best thing to take, and seeing my regular opponents playing I’m always pretty sure that they are doing some sort of black magic to convince me I’ve had the same number of turns as them but in fact knocking me out for three rounds, getting into an extremely advantageous position and then waking me up as if nothing had happened. Of course, I know that’s actually not happening, that it’s just a case of me making poor choices. But it’s immensely frustrating, and prevents me from enjoying the game as much as I should – because, I hasten to add, it’s a great game.

Now games like Warhammer Quest and Arkham Horror? Fine. I work well as part of a team, so co-op games are good for me. Even Catan is fine, as the semi-randomised nature of the game means that I’m not totally reliant on my non-existent strategic brain. Ticket to Ride, too, is great. But as soon as the game comes down to nothing but my own skill and chance is kept to a minimum? I suck. Hard.

Perhaps I should find a way to practice strategic thinking. Does anyone have any suggestions?

One A Day, Day 46: Dungeon Lords

One of the group of friends I semi-regularly play board games with shared a new acquisition tonight – a game called Dungeon Lords. It’s a fairly lengthy game to play, but it’s bursting with character and fun, despite it being a self-confessed game for “hardcore gamers”.

Dungeon Lords casts you in the role of one of the titular evil overlords. It’s your job to build a dungeon, populate it with monsters and traps and then settle down to watch the heroes try their hand at fighting their way through it. If it sounds like Bullfrog’s ageing PC game Dungeon Keeper to you, you’d be about right.

The game is split into two phases, each of which you play through twice. The premise is that you have two years to prove yourself as a Dungeon Lord and acquire your Dungeon License. To do this, you spend each year building and populating your dungeon, followed by a period of defending it against a party of adventurers who have gathered to face your challenges. In the second year, the adventurers are tougher, but you have slightly different options at your disposal for building.

Gameplay is based on players simultaneously choosing actions by laying cards face down. Two of your possible actions per round are laid face up as “forbidden” actions that you can’t do. At the end of each turn, two of your actions that you took become next turn’s “forbidden” actions, meaning a degree of forward planning is required for success. The actions allow you to do a number of things – collect resources, manage your reputation, hire imps (who are used for building the dungeon, mining gold and staffing the various rooms in the dungeon), hiring monsters or building rooms. All of these things are important – resources are needed to extend your dungeon and hire creatures, your reputation affects how powerful the adventurers who attack you are (a more evil reputation leads to tougher adversaries, leading up to an almost-invincible paladin as the ultimate challenge) and everything has the potential to score you points.

Once actions have been chosen, they are resolved in turn order. Up to three players can take the same action in a round, but the precise nature of the action varies slightly depending on who gets there first. Sometimes it’s the cost of things that vary according to turn order, sometimes it’s how effective the action is. It’s an interesting system that forces you to consider what your opponents are likely to do carefully, as well as prioritising your own needs for victory.

Eventually, you’ll have a “working” dungeon featuring a collection of corridors and rooms, and some monsters and traps to put in them. At that point, combat starts. Adventurers attack you as a traditional RPG party, with a tanking warrior at the front and rogues, wizards and priests at the back. Each type of adventurer has a particular special ability – warriors always go at the front, rogues reduce damage from traps, wizards can cast rather inconvenient spells and priests can heal the damage you’ve caused to the party. It’s up to you to carefully use the monsters and traps you’ve collected to try and slow their progress through your dungeon. It’s pretty much impossible to halt their progress altogether, but it is possible, with careful planning, to minimise the damage they cause. The game has some excellent tutorial scenarios to play through that are more like logic puzzles, and these give you an opportunity to see the sort of tactics you should be considering in the game proper.

Similar to farming sim Agricola, Dungeon Lords is a game where you mostly focus on your own efforts, but have to pay attention to what others are doing. There’s no direct interaction with other players, but your own actions can indirectly influence their success. For example, carefully managing your reputation to ensure you always get weak adventurers attacking can cause other players to take a beating. After one game, it’s clear that there are a lot of tactical considerations to learn.

It’s a really interesting game, and I’m looking forward to giving it another shot. It took a good few hours to play, but it didn’t drag – while actions are resolved one player at a time, there’s not much downtime before someone else gets a chance to do something. Plus the theme of the game coupled with the excellent artwork gives it a huge amount of character, encouraging a bit of improvisatory storytelling about what’s going on in the players’ respective dungeons. Check it out if you’re looking for something a little bit different.