This game has a curious dichotomy: it's relaxing to play and not stressful in setting a tone of urgency, while it is also a game where I feel I'm busy all the time always with something I need to tend to next or worry about. Either the plants are going dry, or someone on the boat wants to talk, or whatever is in the kitchen is ready, or something needs harvesting, or I forgot to set the destination and get the boat moving, and so on.
I guess that makes sense with the official website's tagline "a cozy management game". I mean, I have to manage stuff - but I'm not sure there's a fail state you can paint yourself into? So, just manage until you're ready to continue. I wonder if nighttime is when I'm supposed to be all about getting catching up? The ship doesn't move, and the game lets you advance time pretty easily (you go to bed and wake up next morning). I wonder if you can work all night? I don't even know if time passes at night? Oooh! I guess I want to try this out...
So far it's pretty linear in the progression - boatmates make requests that usually align with the next thing to do in terms of progression (build me this room, which you need to get some resources for, and the next room unlocks more resources, and then you make the boat bigger, etc.).
I've currently got three guests on the boat and I've built some stuff and even upgraded the kitchen so I can make some new recipes.
It's pretty relaxing actually, slow paced, no urgency, and - so far, no real sense of having to grind stuff out. I'm surprised it's taken this long to get a character off to whatever the afterlife place is.
I'm guessing I won't finish the game - but will play enough to see a few characters depart?
Also, the 2-player mode is quite fun, the cat becomes playable and can interact with stuff - so, you can collect resources, cook stuff, and more.
I played the first chapter of the game Saturday evening. I never really played much of the original King's Quest games - any of the 7(?) in the series. It's kind of weird then to play this game - not really knowing much of the originals, and have it feel familiar to a vague sense of understanding of some of the things that happened in the original game. The characters hat (with feather) was pretty iconic - and it's referred to a lot in the chapter. But also I remember knowing something about a mirror and a dragon and stuff like that.
The game is narrated in raconto (I think that's the term?) - so, there's an old man narrator who is telling his grandkids about his adventures when he was younger, which is what you're playing. So, when you screw up, the narrator addresses the error (sometimes one of the kids pipes up to complain). It reminds of the Prince of Persia Sands of Time which had a similar framing. It really works well.
These kinds of games live and die by their puzzles and the writing - I enjoyed the humor in the first chapter, both from characters, situations, and even the art/modeling/animation. I thought it was interesting that there are multiple paths through the game - in this chapter there are 3 puzzles you can do, but you only need one to make progress (doing the other two, which I did, requires quite a bit of extra work - since the puzzles are "gated" buy requiring a coin which you spend on the first puzzle, so doing the other two (which also require a coin) means wandering around the game environment until you find where the coin might be.
I also thought it was interesting that some of the "puzzles" are quick-time events and others are real-time (the one where you move the yarn around to trip the strong guy!). So, dexterity and hand eye coordination matter this time around. But, overall it was neat to see the variety in the overall experience.
I've "soft" decided not to play the other chapters - mostly due to time (and huge pile of other games to get to) BUT, at least from the icons illustrating the other chapters - it looks like each one will tell a story from a different moment in the life of the King (main character). The character's portrait looks older in each, which I think is a neat thing to have in a game - you're living/playing through the highlights (presumably) of the character's life. This is a perspective that is not that common/usual in videogame narratives, so kudos for that. It also seems that the first episode is the highlight in terms of review scores, so perhaps it's best that I leave ahead as it where? I did like that once you finish the chapter you get a "picture" that has elements representing main decision points/choices you made in the game - so, did you spare the goblins (patience) or kill them quickly (speed?) and stuff like that.
Perhaps the biggest surprise (and pop culture touch point) was meeting the short knight (whose name escapes me), but whose voice sounds exactly like the short guy in the movie the Princess Brid. The character that does the poisoned cup switcheroo game. And, lo and behold, there's a scene with that character, with cups, one of which is drugged and then you play a boardgame. I wasn't able to win "fairly" (but got some help by changing the color of the drink in one of the cups, and was then able to trick my opponent into drinking from the drugged cup, thus giving me a turn to set myself up to win). Yay!
Is it cheating to cheat in a mini-game inside a game? lol.
I had played this a while ago (IGF?) - but now I played it some more in the context of a rogue-like seminar I've been teaching this semester. While I enjoyed it the first time around, I think I have a much better understanding of the game now - mostly because I think I've got a feel for the game's meta-progression.
I don't mean this as an indictment - but I think that some rogue-like games live/die based on their meta-progression when the core (a single run) is perhaps not quite there to encourage continued play. I think of this as a spectrum - some game's single run is not that compelling, but future runs are more compelling because of stuff from the meta-progression (unlocked options that make things more interesting), while others are super compelling as is - and might get even better with meta-progression.
So, Void Bastards lies on the closer-to-individual runs being less compelling (they can get a bit repetitive), but become more interesting. The core run is ok - but I found I was getting a bit bored as I played, but then things got more interesting as I unlocked new/more weapons and found that some of them made it easier to play the game (it's pretty unforgiving) but also allowed me to better understand some of the different approaches (as you move from derelict to derelict).
All of this lead to my biggest surprise - the game does really progress in terms of story/narrative. When you first start you need to get a few objects in order to achieve a goal. I was (on one run) able to get them - and this then unlocked a "level 2 depth" where you're now "deeper" into the game and if you die you don't have to start all the way from the beginning. Again you're after some new items - because the one's from the beginning didn't cut it (essentially more bureaucratic red tape corporate nonsense, which is part of the theme of the game).
So, after some more in-depth play I can say that I've both enjoyed the game more and that I think I understand it much better. It also helped that I played it on my steam deck? I think. It downplays some of the FPS aspects - 'cause the game isn't really great as an FPS. So, I got better and running away, selectively choosing battles, and making better use of the weapons and items you unlock (grenade-types and so on).
I'd like to get back to it and see if I can get all the way to the end - at least eventually, but we'll see. So little time and so many games!
So, literally years later I was able to get back to this game and finish it. I'm surprised by how well I remember the "big picture" points relating to the game's story. I couldn't remember some of the finer points (who stole what? why are both characters after person X for revenge?).
Unfortunately my wife bowed out, but in two sessions I finished the game playing with my daughter (with my wife sort of paying attention as we made progress).
My daughter's experience with regular controllers help - and we made good progress with few hold ups on that end. And, it was fun to answer her questions about what was going on - which is why I can say that I was surprised by how much I remembered. My daughter did have a preference for playing Leo - and she explained this mostly due to her enjoying his accent.
So, overall feelings and reaction? Wow - this game really is great and interesting and fun and all kinds of other good things. As we played the sections in Mexico (the game starts with both characters in a plane - and then you play up to that point, the plane is on the way to Mexico, and then you play stuff in Mexico and more. But not that much longer after the Mexico section), I couldn't help think of the Uncharted games! The Mexico section is basically wandering to the bad guys home/base (we chose to walk rather than parachute in, I have no idea what happens if you choose to parachute in), shooting the place up and then escaping on motorcycles while getting shot to pieces until you leap back on the plane to escape. It's fun, action-packed and (arguably) less impressive than Naughty Dog's work on Uncharted, but still really engaging with lots of slow-mo cinematic moments where both characters stuff is synchronized in cool ways (e.g. motorcycles grabbing air while barely missing each other and some jeeps that are also in the air, etc.).
I assumed that the game's end would be a sort of wrapping up with Vincent (and his estranged wife and newborn child) and Leo (with his girlfriend/wife(?) and young son re-uniting...
And then - BLAMMO! - Plot twist!
It turns out that Vincent is actually an undercover cop working the case because his undercover cop brother got killed in Leo's initial deal (the one where he was crossed and then escaped). Uh oh!
So, big uh-oh because the game has been super co-op all the time! And now, both characters are at odds with each other! Leo escape, Vincent chases him down.
I thought this was super interesting from a collab game perspective and I wonder how/what other people decided to do when they got to this point. My daughter and I decided that we wanted Leo to escape - so I purposefully didn't shoot him, fire on the speedboat, etc.
It was for naught since ultimately the game lands on a 1 vs 1 confrontation - both characters can shoot at each other and depending on who does more damage (get to a certain threshold in their lifebar) a different ending will ensue - either Leo dies, or Vincent dies. Whoah! We all thought this was a cool (and unexpected) dramatic twist - and the game definitely forces one outcome - someone has to die.
So, we decided that Vincent would die. And we watched the really sad game ending - this included Leo delivering a letter Vincent wrote to his estranged wife before the he crossed Leo. Super sad. Cop funeral and all that stuff. But Leo is on the move with his family. Silver lining?
Then we decided to play the ending again - but this time Leo would die. Also, super sad. Vincent visits Leo's girlfriend/wife(?), supposedly explains what happened - it's sad all around. Here Vincent is given another chance with his wife. Again, silver lining?
From a narrative perspective, the plot twist may not be that surprising, and I'm guessing people guessed what would happen. But, I'm more interested in the game design side of things. Here the game does not give you an out - and if you were playing with a stranger on the internet with no way to communicate with them then my hunch is that the cross would turn nasty and that you'd really play to stay alive. But, the game's design also encourages couch-co-op AND playing with a friend (it allows you to share the game with someone who doesn't own a copy!). So, I think the way the game is/was actually played probably differed! I would guess that this was a "put down the controller" moment for players and that there was probably some negotiation (as players realized that the game offered no way out - there's not "and both lived" scenario AFAIK) about the kind of ending they wanted. So, player deliberation and desired probably trumped what the game "forces" you to do. So, players would meta-game and not play "by the rules". I'm curious to know if my hunch is correct? I haven't looked online, but I wonder...
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the game's design and context encourages (implicitly) players to negotiate out of the game as they become aware of the limited options the game gives them and that this design was deliberate. And, I think this is both cool (from an experiential perspective) and interesting (from a design perspective).
