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Best of the Rest: Danny's picks of 2013
Team Joystiq is barging into 2014 with a celebration of last year's best games. Keep reading throughout the week to see our assembly of ingenious indies and triple-A triumphs. Dragon's Crown Dragon's Crown is the best thing to happen to the beat-'em-up genre since Castle Crashers. Taking its inspiration from Capcom's Dungeons & Dragons games, Dragon's Crown forges its own identity with satisfying combat, a lengthy quest, and a bottomless well of character customization options. The sheer amount of loot players accrue in Dragon's Crown keeps the experience fresh and compelling even after you've hacked your way through hundreds of owlbears. The game offers a broad selection of playable characters, all of which play very differently and require varying degrees of expertise to master. Online multiplayer is a joy as a result, mixing the game's varied cast for some gloriously chaotic battles. It's worth noting that Dragon's Crown has seen a number of significant improvements since its initial release, as patches have consistently addressed player feedback while adding major gameplay features. The newest patch, for instance, gives hardcore players the option of skipping the game's introductory chapters, making character leveling more efficient than ever before. Oh, and it also adds a 10,000-floor dungeon. If you love beat-'em-ups, Dragon's Crown will keep you satisfied for months.
PSA: Spelunky, Guacamelee, Papers Please available on Steam
A triple-threat of indie games made their way to Steam today, starting with Papers, Please, which is debuting for $9.99. Additionally, Spelunky and Guacamelee Gold Edition are ten percent off (each game priced at $13.49) until August 15. The Gold Edition of Guacamelee includes a free copy of Tales from Space: Mutant Blobs Attack for this week only, which is regularly priced at $7.99 on Steam.
Papers, Please legally enters Steam, Humble, GOG on August 8
Papers, Please – a Dystopian Document Thriller – launches on August 8 on Steam, GOG and the Humble Store for $10, on both PC and Mac. Pre-orders are live right now. The game has players take on the exciting role of an immigration inspector in the early 1980s at the border of the fictional communist state Arstotzka, which has just ended a six-year war with its neighbor, Kolechia. Players must feel out discrepancies in documents from people asking to cross, some of whom are terrorists, spies and smugglers, and some of whom are kind old grannies wanting to see their families. Papers, Please made its way through Steam Greenlight in May as part of the system's first "mini round" of games. The gameplay offers a twist on classic espionage mechanics, creator Lucas Pope told us in June: "I was inspired originally by my trips through airport immigration in the last few years .... Instead of playing the cool spy protagonist that slips through a checkpoint unsuspected, you can be the hard-ass inspector that casts their skeptical eye at every grandmother trodding through. That sort of role reversal sounded fun to me and I thought others might like it, too." Papers, Please has 20 different endings in Story mode, based on the decisions players make each day as immigration inspector, though a "unique save system" allows for easy replays of any days. One ending unlocks Endless mode, which offers three game types and four rule sets built around an endless stream of travelers, complete with online leaderboards on Steam.
The Joystiq Indie Pitch: Papers, Please
It's not that there are too many indie games; it's that there aren't enough hours in a day to play all of them. The Joystiq Indie Pitch curates the best indies to play now and watch out for in the future. What's your game called and what's it about? The game is called Papers, Please and it follows the daily grind of an immigration inspector working in a fictional communist country in the early 1980s. The gameplay is based around detecting discrepancies in the documents provided by entrants. Using the limited resources provided by the Ministry of Admission, you have to sort spies, terrorists, smugglers and criminals from the flow of hopeful immigrants. What inspired you to make Papers, Please? I was inspired originally by my trips through airport immigration in the last few years. In general I try to keep an eye out for new game ideas and figured that whatever rigamarole the immigration inspector was doing behind their desk might be fun. Once that idea started to grow, I noticed other aspects of the concept that could be fun. Instead of playing the cool spy protagonist that slips through a checkpoint unsuspected, you can be the hard-ass inspector that casts their skeptical eye at every grandmother trodding through. That sort of role reversal sounded fun to me and I thought others might like it, too.
Steam Greenlight gets a mini round: Edge of Space; Papers, Please
Steam accepted a mini batch of games and software on Greenlight today, picking up four new, community-voted titles to eventually launch on Steam. The three games are Edge of Space, Venetica and Papers, Please, and the software title is Substance Designer 3, a texturing toolset. Edge of Space is a 2D terraforming experiment set on a distant, rogue planet; Venetica is an adventure set in historical Venice and starring Scarlett, the daughter of Death; and Papers, Please is an intense immigration checkpoint simulator. Steam will likely continue Greenlighting games in smaller batches so the entire process can move more quickly, this round's announcement reads. "These titles were selected on the same criteria we have been using in the past: Votes in Greenlight give us a hugely valuable point of data in gauging community interest along with external factors such as press reviews, crowd-funding successes, performance on other platforms, and awards and contests to help form a more complete picture of community interest in each title," the announcement says.
