Adventure

Stray

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The Game

Stray developed by Annapurna Interactive is an adventure puzzle game that has been in the works for some time. Before you proceed, this review may contain some light spoilers – so if you want to fully fresh experience avoid the screenshots and maybe go play it first. Announced a couple years ago, the game really got cat lovers around the world hyped. The game lets you take control of an adorable kitty in a post apocalyptic world where humans no longer exist. After a misadventure with your fellow kittens you end up deep underground in a forgotten structure where you find some rather strange larvae (known as Zurks) and a hidden city of friendly robots. On your adventure you befriend a little drone, known to you as B12. The drone seems to remember a time when humans existed and the things they used to do. The robots in the city, known as Companions have adapted to the underground way of life, but some of them yearn to return to the Outside once more and to see the sky once again.

As you find out more about this world and the Companions you are tasked with collecting various items, exploring parts of the city and ultimately making your way to the outside. The core gameplay loop focuses on really satisfying puzzles that are delivered in a variety of ways: from jumping (parkour or is it catcour), to following cables, pulling levers, stealthily avoiding enemies or completing tasks for various Companions. The story takes you on a captivating adventure in a beautifully designed and crafted world with amazing attention to detail.

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Worth it?

While it’s not the longest of games (first playthrough may take around 4-5 hours depending on how much you mess around and explore) the game certainly delivers in charm and story. The beautiful world, satisfying puzzles and amazing story will make you want to complete it while at the same time wishing it doesn’t end so you can explore and learn more. The game does also autosave quite frequently which allows for shorter play-sessions. The simple controls and short playtime also mean that you could hand it to a “non-gamer” and let them enjoy the experience (although they may need a hand with the Zurks). The game will currently set you back around £25, but I expect we will see it in some sales later this year, but even at this price it is worth getting. For PlayStation extra members it is included in the available games at no extra cost. There are currently some speculative rumours around an Xbox release, but it will be some time away with the earliest being October, some estimates even saying 2023.

Overall Stray is a beautiful game, with a captivating story and really satisfying gameplay. It goes above and beyond being simply a cat simulator (although it does that pretty well). It is a pretty unique game in terms of allowing players to see the world form the perspective of a cat which will make it a firm favourite amongst cat lovers (maybe also dog lovers alike). It is really hard to fault the game and it even has a bit of replay value in the music sheet or plant collection side quests and the memory collection element. The game also provides a solid base for the speed-running community and it will be interesting to watch some of those attempts as get better at it. I’d highly recommend checking this game out.

Tips

  • Follow red painted air conditioning units with orange streamers
  • Follow orange lights, cables, wires or arrows
  • You cannot go back for the music sheets after leaving the slums to go into the sewers
  • Hide in boxes to avoid sentinels, or in other areas where you break their line of sight
  • Scratch things when you can (pretty much anything that isn’t a carpet will lead to something)
  • The purple, yellow and red plants can all be found within Antvillage
  • Meow to distract/attract enemies
  • B12 can remind you of your current objective should you forget
  • Your backpack will light up if you can interact with nearby objects/NPCs
  • Interact with vending machines in order to be able to get all of the Barterman’s items
  • Talking to companions can give you hints or other objectives that will help you along the way

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The Survivalists

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The Game

The Survivalists is a pixel-graphics survival game by Team17. You are stranded on a deserted (or is it?) island in the middle of the ocean with nothing but the clothes on your back and the wreckage of your raft. It’s up to you to build up your base and arsenal of tools and weapons and eventually make your way to other islands and even back home. The game shares a lot of similarities with other popular survival games (like Don’t Starve), but is also quite forgiving and can be quite chill at times (rather than the hectic panic that other such games induce). There are regular attacks by the goblin natives of the islands – you will always be warned the evening before these occur and you’ll have a good amount of time to prepare yourself for the impending attack.

Where The Survivalists really comes into its own is it’s unique monkey buddy system. While exploring the islands you will run into monkeys who will need your help – sometimes they’ll be capture in a cage that needs breaking, other times they will need a specific item. Once you’ve helped them they will join you on your adventures and quite literally follow all of your orders. The monkeys allow you to automate production, construction, resource harvesting, combat, etc. as you can teach each monkey to perform one of the roles described above. This is quite a unique mechanic and makes for some pretty interesting scenarios, especially as you amass a bigger and bigger following of monkeys.

The game also features vaults and labyrinths, which are basically dungeons with cool loot and secrets to be uncovered. These are scattered throughout the world and up to you to find on your adventures. The labyrinths will require special keys to be purchased from the Mysterious Stranger. There are a few other NPCs and some quests that will keep you busy when you get bored of building up your base and gathering resources. If that’s not enough for you, you can also play cooperatively with your friends online (sadly no couch co-op options available).

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Worth it?

The game has all the classic survival game mechanics you’d ever want and the monkeys give the game something truly unique. I would even argue that they make the game what it is – they take away the tediousness of crafting and resource gathering and allow you to focus on the bigger picture problems like layout out your base, exploring or even just watching them to all the hard work while you take a nap. The game will generally set you back around £20 but is often on sale for around £10 (you really can’t say no to that). I played the PS4 version and have very little to fault it on there.

Overall it’s a very enjoyable game with a great amount of depth to it – it can be quite chill at times, at other moments you may be fighting for your life. As with all such games, things to tend to get a bit repetitive after a while and the loop of finding better materials for better tools to get better materials starts to become a bit tedious – that would be my only major criticism. Other than that the game has some truly unique elements to it and will keep you busy for hours on end. It also has that addictive moment where you just keep thinking to yourself: “one more day, one more job” and then you find you’ve actually played a few hours longer than expected.

Tips

  • Only go up 1 difficulty when moving to a new island, otherwise you won’t be able to gather resource and will probably get killed.
  • Gather as many monkeys as you can.
  • Setting monkeys to follow you and giving them weapons will allow them to fight alongside you.
  • Vaults aren’t too difficult, especially on the first island – they often contain monkeys as well.
  • You can give a chest to a monkey to carry as a way to have more storage space when out in the world.
  • Try to get to the 3rd difficulty island asap as you will find the materials for portals there – this will help you massively with navigating the world.
  • Find the Mysterious Stranger to buy the Mysterious Chest (36 slots) for 500 Doubloons – this will help you massively when adventuring.
  • Complete 3 quests for the Beastmaster to unlock the first backpack upgrade to be purchased from the Mysterious Stranger – these will then appear on the 2nd page of the crafting menu.

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ABZÛ

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The Game

ABZÛ was made by developers Giant Squid Studio and is an underwater adventure experience. Similarly to Journey, the game plunges you into a beautifully designed world without much explanation and lets you figure things out on your own. In ABZÛ you’ll find yourself swimming with the most amazing see creatures as you make your way through a world that seems just a little bit off, and you’ll soon discover there is something disrupting life in the oceans. Venture through different areas and swim with whales, manatees, dolphins, sharks and many many more beautifully simply designed animals. There’s no combat, just exploring and interactions with the world around you. There’s a few simple puzzles, but nothing tedious or stressful. The simple gameplay and graphics accompanied by a brilliant sound track make for an unforgettable experience.

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Worth it?

The game normally goes for around £15, but you can find keys or discounts for around £10. The game is currently free on PS4 as well. It will probably only take you a couple hours to complete the game, but those two hours will be one of the most relaxing and compelling experiences you’ve had.

Overall the game is a must see, especially if you can get it while it’s free on PS4. You won’t really get a lot of gameplay for the money, but there is a deal of replay value as there are a few collectables hidden in each of the main areas. It’s also a great game to let a friend play through when they visit and just to watch as they experience the vibrant world and help restore the ocean.

Tips

  • Look out for the coral portals (they have an orange interaction pyramid above them), they are dotted throughout the levels and will add/release a bunch of trapped animals
  • Hold L2 (PS4) or Shift (PC) to hitch a ride on an animal – you can also take control of that animal
  • You can flip or get an animal to do a flip

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The Outer Worlds

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The Game

The Outer Worlds developed by Obsidian and published by Private Division is a game that may look quite familiar to the more observant amongst you. You would be right to point out the many similarities to Fallout but it’s also worth mentioning that this is the team behind Fallout: New Vegas (but not the newer ones). In a nutshell, The Outer Worlds is what the newer Fallout games should have been.

While it may have a similar retro-futuristic atmosphere to Fallout this game is actually based in the 24th century when humanity has left Earth on its mission to colonise the stars. Similarly to Borderlands you’ll find that corporations and companies are in charge of life on these planets and in a typical hyper-capitalist fashion they are focused on exploiting people until they die – all in the name of maximising their profits. Quite early on you will learn that The Board is in charge of the colony of Halcyon where you now find yourself after being woken up from a hibernation pod, where you’ve spent the last 70 years. However, the colony is in a dire state and it’s up to you to sort it (or not).

The game is heavily decision based, has brilliant dialogue options and gives you an unimaginable amount of freedom. You don’t like this quest giver because they looked at your strange – that’s fine, you can kill them and keep playing. Of course all such decisions will influence the world around you and you’ll quickly learn that every action has consequences and not everything is black and white. There are virtually infinite ways to play through the game, in fact after I finished my first play through I couldn’t just put the game down and instead started a new playthrough immediately, now trying to do the opposite of what I did on the first play through – easier said than done. Virtually every quest will give you at least one decision to make at some point, this will affect the outcome, your relationship with factions and in some cases even the ultimate fate of the colony.

The combat is essentially the established and familiar mechanics seen in the Fallout series. You can choose from a variety of weapon types, be it melee or range, different damage types and weapon mods. This will allow you to customise your weapons so that you can have the perfect gun (or hammer) for any occasion. During combat you can use the TTD (Tactical Time Dilation), which slows down time and allows you to hit enemies in their most vulnerable places.

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Worth it?

While the game doesn’t necessarily do that much “new” stuff it cements its place in gaming history with some of the great titles of this genre like Skyrim or Fallout: New Vegas. The Outer Worlds takes an established and successful formula and turns it into an epic masterpiece. The visuals are stunning, the dialogue is extremely well written, the story is compelling, the characters and their backstories and off the cuff comments are brilliant. There are many side quests and regions to explore, each with its own unique challenges. An average play-through of the game will take about 20-25 hours (my first playthrough was 27hrs and I did a lot of side-quests), depending on how many side-quests and dialogue options you engage in, but as mentioned above that’s only going to be one version of the story. You can easily replay the game taking a different approach and be introduced to other stories and characters. The replay value and potential of this game is actually brilliant – while some key story points may remain, getting to them and their outcomes can differ immensely.

If I had to fault it (which is really difficult) I would say occasionally it sounds a bit empty – maybe some sort of radio or a bit more on the music front and there’s the occasional visual bug, but that’s being picky. At full price the game will set you back £49.99 – honestly I do think that’s a bit on the expensive side as its now a couple years old as well, but you can frequently find it on sale for a much more affordable £19.99 – check out the links below for some good deals on CD keys. If on sale, I highly recommend you give it a go (especially if you’re a Fallout fan, who’s been left wanting after recent games). Overall it’s a brilliant game, great visuals, aesthetics, dialogue, story and gameplay. An absolute must play.

Tips

  • If you are doing ok and not being particularly challenged, don’t spend your skill points as you may reach a point where you need a few extra points in a dialogue option or lockpicking and those spare skill points will come in handy.
  • You can actually make your character dumb at the start of the game, which will unlock some [Dumb] dialogue options (and even a dumb ending) – definitely doing a playthrough like that.
  • Persuade/Intimidate/Lie are useful skills to avoid doing leg-work. Being able to talk yourself out of a situation can save you time.
  • There’s always multiple ways to handle a situation. Sometimes you may see a door that’s locked and think it’s the only way through, but if you look around you’ll often find alternative options – maybe a key somewhere, some dialogue or a PC you can hack that will get you through.
  • Generally speaking there’s two main paths to take – you either help The Board or you help Phineas the scientist who saved you. Each option has a variety of main quests you’ll need to complete to progress with many important and impactful decisions along the way.
  • Adding things into your medicine slots means that you will ingest that when you restore your health.

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Exiled Kingdoms

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The Game

This one really took me by surprise – I kept seeing it recommended on the Google Play store, but didn’t think much of it. I had no idea what I was missing out on. Exiled Kingdoms is an action-RPG by 4 Dimension Games that pays homage to many classic isometric RPGs. The game is set in a fantasy world with hundreds of years of lore and history. On mobile there is a paid and free version. The free version is quite a lot on its own, but certain features and classes will be disabled. There are 4 classes to choose from in total – warrior, rogue, cleric (paid), mage (paid).

The game is based around completing quests and there are tens of side quests, in the paid version there’s an option to get randomly generated quests from the town hall that also give gold and reputation. The story is very well written, as are all side characters and lore. You have the option of recruiting a companion who will act as your sidekick – there are 3 to choose from and you can equip and upgrade their skills as well.

Each class has it’s own talents that can be improved, but there are also guilds that can teach certain advanced skills – some of these advanced skills aren’t specific to the guild, i.e. a Warrior could learn some advanced Rogue skills or vice versa – this makes for some very interesting builds. Quests often have multiple solutions with different effects o

An absolutely immense open world.

Worth it?

I don’t think there’s a game I would recommend more than this, especially for anyone looking to scratch an RPG itch on mobile – this offers the complete PC experience in the comfort of your hands. While the free version is quite decent in itself I would 100% recommend buying the full game – extra classes, town hall quests, more areas, the full story, the ability to travel using boats and best part is supporting the awesome developers.

For a game that could potentially offer you over 100 hours of gameplay the price is completely acceptable. Overall definitely worth the investment.

Tips

  • Save frequently!
  • Save wolf pelts to sell to the Varannari – white ones are exceptionally valuable.
  • Save emeralds to sell to the guy (Orduc) in Jabal.
  • Try and get one of the 3 companions as soon as you can, don’t bother with day hires.
  • Hirge is a great companion as she has a healing ability.
  • The Wiki has a lot useful tips and guides so definitely worth a check for more information.

Useful Links

Wiki: https://www.exiledkingdoms.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page