Gaming

I will be honest upfront and say I haven't finished the DLC, but I'm also not sure I'll bother, so it seemed as good a time as any to review. Spoilers below.

Feel free to share your own thoughts...personally I was disappointed.

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Haven is an open-world exploration game which centers on the romantic relationship between its two protagonists. The Steam page description of it is:

Two lovers gave up everything and escaped to a lost planet to be together. Glide through a mysterious landscape, explore a fragmented world and fight against what’s trying to tear them apart in this RPG adventure about love, rebellion, and freedom.

In Haven, you control both characters, swapping between them with the down arrow. You can also play couch co-op, though given the nature of Kay and Yu's relationship, you might choose your partner carefully, or else end up swapping sexy banter with a sibling.

Haven is a very basic game. The graphics are plain but pretty, the gameplay is uncomplicated, and there really aren't any subplots or side quests, nor is the main quest terribly complex. I consider this a great game for winding down at the end of a busy day, or when you need a break from a more demanding game. Most of Haven is spent gliding around the various little maps clearing corruption and gathering supplies. There are frequent breaks for Kay and Yu's banter and discussion. Jaunty but mellow music plays and the characters will occasionally exclaim about a fruit you've just harvested or an animal they've seen or a move executed with their hover boots.

While you do gain XP from combat (for this, you control both Kay and Yu at once, and can coordinate their moves, or have them perform separate actions, using the D-pad for Kay and the letters/shapes buttons for Yu), the much more significant chunk of your XP will come from the discussions and interactions between Kay and Yu. The game excels in making their relationship the core of the game not only from a narrative, but also from a gameplay perspective. Each time Kay and Yu's relationship "levels up," they celebrate with a drink and your health and attacks gain a boost. Some of these scenes happen automatically (such as after meals or sleeping), others you can seek out with various object interactions.

Given that the game centers so totally on them, it was crucial for Kay and Yu's relationship to come off well, and I think it does. Their interactions feel realistic, and the game isn't afraid to be open with them: the game is rated M for the amount of times Kay and Yu get frisky (not shown on screen, but clear in dialogue) (although for some reason they decided to censor all the curse words with a fantasy replacement, which made little sense to me...), there's a scene where Yu pops a zit on Kay's back, Kay complains about Yu clogging the shower drain with her long hair...the game doesn't focus only on high-level ideals of love and romance, but also on the practical realities of Kay and Yu's life, and that's where it shines the most to me. Small things really matter when you're on your own--early in the game, Kay and Yu are separated from their ship, a catastrophic experience, as most of their survival tools are onboard. Throughout the game as you gather food, they have various dialogue lines about the struggle to maintain their food stores. And that feels real--two individuals on their own would spend an enormous amount of time just trying to ensure they have enough food. Yu is upset when she finishes the last book they had on the ship--and is now looking forward to a life with no new books ever. While some things about the game are convenient--Kay and Yu can recognize and eat most of the food on Source--others drive home the full impact of Kay and Yu's decision to leave their home in the Apiary.

A decision that feels appropriate to the two individuals in the game. Kay and Yu aren't always completely likable, but I always believed "here are two people who would give up everything they knew for the chance at the future they want." Kay and Yu can be impulsive, selfish, and reckless--which may be frustrating to watch, but it it feels so true to the setting of the game. It would take someone being reckless, impulsive, and a bit selfish to be willing to do what Kay and Yu have done to try to be together. And overall, I do like them--but more importantly, they felt real, and they felt believable. Kay may come off as more levelheaded than Yu--and in a lot of ways she is--but she can absolutely be just as feckless.

The Nest--the spaceship that Kay and Yu live in--is so charmingly designed. I loved drifting around looking at their stuff, especially as they collected more things from around Source. The glide mechanic works well too, and there's something almost a little mesmerizing about sailing around Source on foot, with the grass swaying and fruits sparkling in the distance.

A little bit of behind-the-scenes info--Haven was originally created as a M/F couple (male Kay, female Yu), but after feedback, the devs dropped an update with a fully voiced and animated female Kay and male Yu, so that when you start the game you can choose between playing them as a F/F, M/F, or M/M couple. It doesn't change anything about the character dynamics or gameplay, but it was a great move for inclusivity. It also works really well with the theme of the game, centered on Kay and Yu's love, and has a sort of "in any universe I'd find you and I'd chose you" feel to me. I first played through the game with female Kay and female Yu, and I've started a new playthrough with male Kay and male Yu to grab some achievements I missed--so far, I prefer the female voice acting, particularly for Yu, but both teams do a solid job.

I had a lot of fun with Haven and it was a great breath of fresh air from the claustrophobia and crazy-making of Twelve Minutes. As long as you don't look for more than the game is serving, Haven is a fun, sweet little exploration game with fantastic integration of story and game mechanics.

Review crossposted from my main.

I have FINALLY finished my first playthrough of Sunless Skies so here I am to talk about it. I should say upfront it didn't take me that long because I was putting it off, but because there's a lot of content and I've been very busy the last year (I graduated in May!) The Steam page description for the game is:
It's a very brief description for a pretty detailed game. Sunless Skies is part of Failbetter Studios' Fallen London universe, but you don't need familiarity with the past games to play this one. This was the first FL game I had ever played and I didn't find my experience hampered at all (and I've heard the gameplay is a huge step up from Sunless Seas, the last game).

First, Sunless Skies is a HEAVILY text-based game. There is gameplay, in the form of flying your train around the universe and occasionally battling enemies while managing your resources, but the overwhelming bulk of the game takes place in the text, so if you're someone who doesn't like a lot of reading in your games, this one is probably a miss for you. That said, the text is very well-written, which is a relief from some of the more recent text-based games I've played which just do not hit hard enough for something so reliant on the prose.

Second, the atmosphere of the game is exquisite. It captures so well the kind of eldritch/Lovecraftian horror I love. It never overplays its hand, either by wielding the cudgel of eldritch horror too frequently--it often lurks under the surface or just around the corner, hinted at but not seen directly--or by explaining too much--you must accept that most things about this world you will simply never understand, and that's appropriate for your poor captain.

Third, while the graphics are somewhat limited--the game is primarily an isometric view of the map with landmarks, landmasses, and engines seen from overhead--what does exist is beautiful. Even well into the game I still found myself charmed by the beauty of the stars passing by under my engine and the details on the map. The character avatars too are unique and varied, with so much personality in each of them.

Fourth, the options! Because it's text-based, Sunless Skies has a bit more freedom to give you a massive breadth of choices on how to play your captain and what you want to do while exploring the perpetually-dangerous universe. There are many things in the game which are not super relevant from a gameplay perspective, but which may make a huge difference to you and your PC from a roleplaying perspective, so if you're someone who gets really into developing your PC's motivations and personality, you'll enjoy this aspect.


Fifth, the game provides two difficulty modes, which is great. With the first, if your captain dies, you have to start with a new one. You'll retain some benefits from the last captain, but you will also be largely reset. Under the "merciful" mode, you have the option to continue from the last save with your same captain OR accept that captain's death and start with a new one. If you love a game that really challenges you, Sunless Skies can be that. If you prefer minor challenges and a focus on story, it can get you closer to that too. Sunless Skies, particularly early in the game, can be brutal in terms of managing your nightmares, terror, fuel, supplies, and trying to discover new ports and necessary landmarks. I've heard it's not as challenging as Sunless Seas, and there are various adjustments--such as aiming assist--which you can use to lighten the load, but it will certainly present you with difficult choices at some points.

If you want any advice, prioritize obtaining and getting the stats to use the wrath of heaven canon. It is ridiculously OP and allows you to 1-2 shot most enemies in the game, which is useful because the combat is easily, to me, the worst part of the game. It's so frustrating that for the first three-fourths of the game, before I had the wrath of heaven, I just avoided combat entirely.

Overall, this game felt really creative to me, I had a lot of fun with the narrative, and I've already started my next playthrough in order to play an absolutely bastard captain. Thumbs up from me!

Crossposted from my main.