The Watchlist: Planet Nomads

Title: Planet Nomads
Developer: Craneballs
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux
In development
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Go further and become a true planet nomad – put all your energy into mastercrafting a huge self-sufficient mobile fortress with all the facilities needed to survive on the road

Both the survival genre and the building genre has grown incredibly popular in recent years. From Ark to DayZ, Space Engineers to Besiege, there's a plethora of titles for fans of the genres to enjoy. The upcoming Planet Nomads combines the strengths of those genres into a single sci-fi package, as you construct vehicles and bases to survive hostile worlds.

Sprawling deserts, freezing tundras, colorful wilderness...Planet Nomads is home to all manner of biomes and dangerous fauna. Supplies are slight and your only hope of surviving is to construct a space ship and get off this isolated planet. Thankfully, you have the engineering skills to make those plans a reality. With gathered resources and tools, you can construct bases and outposts, powerful defenses, and new equipment. But the most versatile tool is a mobile one: building whatever vehicle you can imagine to travel the planet.

The developers released the Editor a while ago and it's complex, deep, and surprisingly user-friendly. Essentially, it's Space Engineers for land-bound vehicles. Nodes, armor, wheels, control modules, weapons, and much more lets you construct everything from simple buggies and tanks to gargantuan sandcrawlers complete with helipads or even a recreation of the War Rig from Mad Max. But your best option is a mobile base, a self-sufficient home on wheels.

You'll need every piece of armor and weapon, because the worlds in Planet Nomads are not friendly. Subzero temperatures are a constant threat in icy regions. Meteor showers bombard the surface. Fierce predators lurk everywhere, from hulking beasts to massive worms lying in wait underground.

Planet Nomads is coming to Kickstarter in January, with a playable alpha expected to be ready by the summer. You can download the Editor here and learn more about the game on its main site.

Quick Fix: Screenshot Saturday 12/12

Title: Man O’ War: Corsair

Developer: Evil.Twin Artworks

Engage in epic naval combat and explore the Warhammer world’s Great Western Ocean.

Man o’ War: Corsair is a video game of high adventure, naval combat and exploration based on the Games Workshop classic Man O’ War table top game.

Title: Massive Galaxy

Developer: Massive Galaxy dev

A space trader adventure game set in a massive galaxy

Title: Fishing: Barents Sea

Developer: Misc Games

A realistic simulator strategy game, which puts you in a role as a fish boat captain on small fish boat and a small cabin that you inherited by your grandfather who passed away, located in the open cold and harsh Barents sea.

Title: Betwixt

Developer: Betwixt team

A young wanderer crosses a frozen landscape, in a search to discover who she is. Lost and alone, she stumbles across an elderly recluse protecting mankind from something almost forgotten.

IOS Review #108: Power Hover

Title: Power Hover
Developer: Oddrok
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: $3.99
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Between Temple Run, Subway Surfer, and everything in between, I've been somewhat burned out on behind-the-back runners. It's one of the most common genres on mobile, and in recent years, seems to have been reduced to the format for generic licensed titles. Switch lanes, jump, slide....sometimes it feels like if you've played one, you've played them all. None that I've played have been able to match the variety and style of the hectic Boson X...till now. With its incredibly varied stages and colorful low-poly aesthetic, Power Hover is easily one of the best runners on mobile.

The story is simple. The energy to your robot village has been stolen,  get on your hoverboard and follow the thief's trail of batteries to retrieve the power. It's merely there to serve as a framework for the fast-paced chases and hazards to evade, and it's in those aspects that Power Hover shines.

Endless deserts where massive worms gracefully arc through the sands. Sea-bound ruins and seaside cliff faces. Tight canyons wracked by seismic tremors and drills erupting from the dirt. Every level in Power Hover is unique, not merely in terms of locations and hazards, but in how the camera seamlessly changes perspective. One moment, you're guiding your robot boarder through discarded shipping containers from high up; the next, the camera swoops in close as you enter a claustrophobic tunnel.

The constantly changing locations and perspectives, even within the same level, makes each stage feel like an adventure, driving you to see what comes next. The hazards along the way are equally diverse, ranging from stationary stones and rusted cars to rolling spikes and saws to lasers. Between hand-crafted stages and endless boss levels, Power Hover offers a surprising amount of variety in every aspect of its gameplay.

The reflex-testing action wouldn't be worth experiencing if the controls weren't tight. Actually, tight is the wrong word. Your hoverboard has an intentional looseness to it, feeling more like surfing than rigid lane swapping. You're always in control, even as as you smoothly weave between obstacles or grind across rails, but doing so skillfully requires timing and looking ahead to prepare for the next section,

Power Hover's aesthetic completes this polished package. Each level pops with vivid colors and interesting sights, whether it's a coastal strait with wind turbines and gulls skimming the water or a massive machine lumbering through the desert.

Power Hover is available for $3.99 on iPad and iPhone.

PC Review #134: Devouring Stars

Title: Devouring Stars
Developer: Nerial
Platforms: PC, Mac, Linux, IOS Universal
Price: $9,99 (Steam), $4.99 (IOS)
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You've waged war on land, air, and sea. And more than a few real time strategy and tactical games take place in space. But in Devouring Stars, your conflicts don't just occur among the cosmos. Here, the cosmos are your weapons, as you wield the stars themselves in a war between celestial forces.

As a cosmic being far beyond mortal comprehension, you challenge the might of other cosmic factions among the nebula clouds and black abyss. Devouring Stars's gameplay is relatively simple: gather resources to strengthen your units, capture the enemy's portal, and escape the stage. But simple doesn't mean easy, and there's an array of mechanics and complexities that make Devouring Stars stand out.

While it may be an RTS, the game strips back the complex base and building systems of other titles in the genre in favor of a more minimalist approach. Stars act as resources for both you and your enemies, and there's only a finite amount on each battlefield, forcing you to assess the stage and decide when and where to gather cosmic energy.

Each star gathered makes your units stronger, but strength isn't always enough to emerge victorious. Before each mission, you're able to select a small group of units to bring into battle, compared to the typical RTS method of spawning units during battle. This challenges you to consider what strategy you plan on using and choosing which units best suit your plan of attack. While that mechanic may seem limiting, Devouring Stars' units are more versatile than they may first seem.

By combining two units, you can create a single, more powerful unit. These celestial warriors not only gain increased stats that could boost their movement or their efficiency at absorbing stars, but also have unique abilities that can turn the tide of battle. Your merged units can do everything from teleporting short distances to freezing opponents in their tracks, to unleashing powerful ranged attacks or achieve damaging critical hits.

Devouring Stars may lack the bombastic spectacle of other real time strategy games like Planetary Annihilation and Supreme Commander, but what it lacks in bombast, it makes up for in beauty. Battles in Devouring Stars are dances of swirling particles and flashing color as stars and galaxies become weapons of the gods. It's always satisfying to watch.

Devouring Stars is available on Steam, and recently released on IOS. You can learn more about the game here.

The Watchlist: Shadwen

Title: Shadwen
Developer: Frozenbyte
Platforms: PC
In development
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Shadwen is a true stealth game where the only rule is to remain unseen

Frozenbyte is well known for its colorful charming Trine series, but their next game looks like quite a departure. Trading 2D platforming for 3D stealth, Shadwen combines sneaky backstabbing and physics-based maneuverability for an enjoyable new entry in the genre.

As the titular assassin, your quest to kill the king is interrupted by a chance encounter with young innocent Lily. Now you must protect her as you work your way through the city. In many ways, the gameplay is what you might expect: careful crouching behind cover, brutal backstabs, distractions, and evading guards. But where Shadwen stands apart is your agility and grappling hook.

Unravel your hemp tether and the world becomes your stealthy playground. Grapple to the rafters and drop down behind guards to attack from unseen angles. Deftly swing overhead to avoid patrols. Topple over boxes and other items to create distant distractions or crush enemies from afar. The addition of the grapple imbues the stealth gameplay with a fluid, aggressive pace.

In the current pre-alpha demo, you only have a dagger at your side, but later you'll gain access to more diverse tools like poison traps, spike devices, and smoke bombs. But the more powerful tool is your arsenal is that Shadwen is actually a tactical game in disguise, that feels reminscent of the "time moves when you move" FPS SuperHOT. Whenever you stop moving, time freezes, allowing you to assure the situations, decide if and where to fire your grapple hook. You can even rewind, reversing a fatal mistake or trying a new tactic. Combine the fast-paced nature of the movement and the strategic real-time-with-pause gameplay. and you have a stealth game with the freedom to try different tactics and adapt on the fly.

Shadwen is relatively early in development. You can find more information about the game here.

Quick Fix: Screenshot Saturday 12/5

Title: No Trace
Developer: Square Mountain
A stylized top down stealth action game, with the mechanics and objectives inspired by the Hitman & Metal Gear Solid game's. Combat mechanics inspired by Hotline Miami & LA Cops. Art style inspired by Crookz & Hitman GO.

Title: The Cycle
Developer: Marek Budík
The Cycle is a pretty isometric 3D arcade combat platformer about fighting your way up the tower over on fly generated destructible platforms.

Title: Reditum
Developer: Reditum Team
Reditum is a surreal themed adventure-puzzle platformer game which has a deep story.

Title: Hunt
Developer: Hunt Team
Hunt is a dark, first person stealth-game, where the player is a wolf in a forest full of deadly hunters and has to find its stolen cub.

IOS Review #107: Euclidea

Title: Euclidea
Developer: Horis International Limited
Platforms: IOS Universal
Price: Free
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Math can be difficult and frustrating for some people, and the very notion of math puzzler probably is enough for people to dismiss some games. But Euclidea isn't like most math-based puzzlers; rather than numbers and addition and subtraction, it's all about geometry, constructing figures and shapes. There are quite a few games that feature similar concepts, usually physics-based puzzlers where you need to build supports or structures, but Euclidea distills that idea down its purest, most minimalist form, with an elegant presentation and easy-to-use controls.

Euclidea starts out simple, easing you into its collection of geometric brainteasers by teaching how to create line segments, select points, draw circles. And then gradually, the challenge begins to increase, as you use intersecting circles to create equilateral triangles and perfectly bisect lines.

But the game isn't completely merciless. For several of the more common and tricky actions like bisecting angles and creating parallel lines, once you learn how to construct it once, Euclidea provides tools that automatically perform the action. Thanks to the game's controls and clean UI, the challenges of the puzzles are about figuring out how to accomplish a task rather than in the execution

You'll need those tools, because while Euclidea may be easy to control, it certainly isn't easy. Figuring out to create a perfect hexagon within a circle or trisecting an angle requires you to think ahead, understand how points and intersections and line segments all interact and can be used together. It may sound scary, but the game does a good job at introducing its concepts and making sure you can use them before throwing the tricky challenges at you. Like math in general, Euclidea's puzzles are cumulative, building upon what you figured out before and challenging you to use that knowledge in new ways.

Euclidea is visually sparse, black lines against white, but there's something appealing and satisfying about the symmetric patterns of lines and arches created from your attempts to solve puzzles, how distinct shapes emerge from the mess of intersecting and overlapping figures.

Euclidea is free to download, with only an IAP to remove ads. You can download the game here.
And if you enjoy this one, the developer released Pythagorea earlier this year, a similarly geometry-focused puzzler with its own unique twists.