Tacoma is a great little game which tells its brilliant story in a really unique way. Despite never meeting them, the characters aboard the Tacoma are full of charm, and you get attached to them rather quickly, especially given how you learn a lot about them not just through AR recordings but by examining the spaces they inhabit throughout the ship - the environmental storytelling is really superb. The humour and easter eggs found throughout the game also elevate this; one book references the fact that Elon Musk became president and incorporated Tesla with Google, truly the darkest of all futures...

Regardless, I love how the plot unfolded and how you learn about what really happened aboard the Tacoma. The conflicts between the Venturis Corporation and the workers' union and socialist movements are really compelling, but I do wish they could have been explored more. The game's ultimate narrative payoff was satisfying, and I don't think it could have really been done better without increasing the length of the game. Overall I really do recommend it! And if you're looking for something similar I recommend checking out event[0].

Spiritfarer is an excellent game, with very few major issues. While parts of the game are a bit janky or have weird progression, generally speaking, the management mechanics are a great source of fun. But it's the story that makes Spiritfarer really shine. It's one of those games that you know you'll grow even fonder of after you complete it and get a chance to ruminate on its themes. The major characters you'll come across have such beautiful plotlines and are all so well-written. I felt genuinely moved when completing most characters' plotlines as the game succeeds at making you empathise with them all, even the ones who are huge jerks. Top that all off with a fantastic art style, great humour, and a beautiful soundtrack, and you've got yourself the brilliant Spiritfarer.

The sometimes grindy gameplay certainly isn't for everyone, but this is a great chill game to play to unwind. Getting all of the achievements can be a massive hassle, and the game overstays its welcome a tad too much if you do so, but so much of the rest of the game is good that I had no issue just powering through when that was the case.

Right, with this review done, I'm off to go watch a ton of video essays about this beautiful game. "Ozymandias beckons..."

After having a blast getting all the achievements in the very fun defenestration simulator Gunpoint, I decided to have a glance at Suspicious Development's other games. The trailer for Heat Signature was one of the most immediately convincing trailers I've seen; it's no fuss, just a quick explanation of the design philosophy and why it's so fun! After starting Heat Signature I was hooked, despite not usually being a fan of the type of procedural game generation that's used. It proved to be a great game to pick up for short bursts of time, but over the past week I chose to try to beat the game and get all the achievements in one quick burst. While there isn't much to spoil, this review won't go into detail about any late-game mechanics: keep in mind that what you see from the first few minutes is what you get for the whole experience, just with added complexity and intensity!

While the core of the game is the same from start to finish, it never got dull, perhaps with the exception of many of the completely optional Defector Missions which are almost always incredibly easy and quickly become far more simple than any strategies you might employ in the main game - they always felt like a nice change of pace nevertheless. The variations in character traits, ships, and loot are enough that the game never felt stale. There are certainly some methods that might be much more effective: hijacking another ship makes assassination, capture, rescue, and steal objectives very easy in missions without clauses, while the slipstream+stealth shield combo remains incredibly effective all the way up to high Glory missions. However, I was always willing to play around with different builds and explore the uses of the items I found, especially I as neared the end of the game. Working around tough vows ended up being a highlight, although I rarely chose to choose characters with vows I had already completed, I would just pick missions with clauses with relative frequency.

Heat Signature certainly didn't need anything beyond a simple story, but the game's humour often shone, be it in the writing of item descriptions or the inherent humour in the ridiculous situations you get yourself into. All-in-all, the game is great, well-polished, and almost never frustrating if you're willing to take the road less travelled by having fun and not worrying about perfectly optimising strategies (the game felt so much more freeing when I started taking risks and more frequently retired characters). You'll get a lot of fun out of it, all at a rather low price tag. While harder missions often felt impossible starting out, the idea to tie game progression to the variety of available items in the store cleverly allowed tougher enemies, clauses, and ship designs to feel intimidating at the start of the game when you're still getting to grips and rarely have access to a consistent means of dealing with them, but just another fun obstacle by the time you've already mastered the game's systems. I certainly plan on returning to this game for a quick session whenever I need a fix of "live fast, die young"-style emergent gameplay.

Achievements that require Steam friends for single-player games aren't the end of the world, but can really annoy me!