The last episode of a short series on games I discovered at WASD x IGN 2023.
Mars First Logistics
I first encountered the work of Ian MacLarty with Boson X, a rotational runner that required lightning reflexes. Holy shit, that’s like ten years ago. Anyway, then I played MacLarty’s Jam game called BOOOT. Then he obliterated everyone’s vision in Catacombs of Solaris but I loved his pocket puzzler Dissembler. He returned to twitchy gameplay with Jumpgrid and now we have Mars First Logistics: your job is to transport stuff on Mars, but to do that, you’ll have to make vehicles from pieces that look suspiciously like Lego but are definitely not for Martian legal reasons.
I played Mars First Logistics for a Thinky Games stream and it was a lot of fun – but it’s a physics game at heart, and the missions get progressively more challenging, so expect to make over-sized Mars cars that have a high centre of gravity. At least, that’s how it ends up for me, every time.
Mars First Logistics is currently in Early Access for Windows.
Nivalis
I think I’d heard of Cloudpunk, released in 2020, but nothing more. Cloudpunk was a “neon noir” game in which the player delivered packages in the Blade Runner city of Nivalis. I heard the game aspects were not that engaging, but Cloudpunk successfully transported you to this other world of voxel and light.
And so when I landed on the followup to Cloudpunk called Nivalis at WASD, I thought I might be sitting down in front of some Cyberpunk gun game, not that I wanted that. But something wasn’t right; a piece of paper describing the controls explained how to “rotate furniture”. I’m going to ROTATE YOUR FURNITURE HARD, CYBERPUNK, POW POW.
So what is Nivalis?
First, it is an incredible place to wander and explore. I spent most of my time breathing in the sights. The voxel world of Nivalis seems more personal and detailed than Cloudpunk‘s broader brushstrokes.
Second, it’s a story about running a humble noodle stall – but from small acorns, business empires grow. The Steam page promises that “eventually, you’ll own all the nightlife in Nivalis”. If you ever wanted to do something in a Blade Runner world other than kill people, here’s your chance. Nivalis was my big surprise find at WASD.
Nivalis is scheduled for release next year for Windows.
Gori: Cuddly Carnage
It was the end of the second day and, well, I thought I should play just one more game before packing up shop. I was standing near Gori: Cuddly Carnage and there was an open seat. But I wasn’t enticed; it didn’t seem like my jam. A skateboarding cat with attitude? No, I didn’t want to play it – but I was too fatigued to go hunt something else, and I would be haunted by indecision. Just one more game but which one? Just play the damn cat game, you fool.
The opening scene grated. I didn’t dig its strange mix of cute and vulgar, its permanently depressed ship computer which seemed very familiar, or the beep-sweary skateboard F.R.A.N.K.. It’s something to do toys taking over the world and wiping out mankind, which makes it all a bit FNAF Extended Universe. But I played the entire demo.
Gori is a fighting game with a skateboard and the feel of the controls was nice and tight for someone who has slowly lost their action skills over the years. I even managed to remember what some of the buttons did. Gradually, the skateboard hijinx and mowing down hordes of undead unicorns calmed me down. I even began to like F.R.A.N.K..
Gori: Cuddly Carnage will be released on Windows, Playstation, Xbox and Switch, but currently has no release date.
Hexarchy
There was only one seat available for Hexarchy and it always seemed occupied.
This is because Hexarchy is complex, with a dense tech tree that can only be appreciated in seven-dimesnional space. On the last day of WASD, the seat was open and I took my chance.
Hexarchy is a 4X game but uses deckbuilding mechanics as the engine of this game. You need to develop resources, keep the people happy, trade with other fledgling empires and watch your borders. It also tickled that part of my brain that can’t get enough of the board game 7 Wonders even though this didn’t really play out like 7 Wonders at all. Hexarchy has a steep learning curve and I needed handholding all the way – but I ate it up.
Hexarchy will be released in October for Windows and Mac. I plan to stream this for Thinky Games in a couple of weeks.
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I’m currently enjoying Mars First Logistics very much. The physics sim is surprisingly robust, and it’s got a good balance between an open toybox and a series of objectives to keep you going. I thought for a while that I was going to optimise the fun out of it, by making a multipurpose car-tank-crane-bot early on, but it’s dished out new challenges and new machine parts in a way that’s kept me interested.
I’m the kind of player who wishes it had a story. (Ludists hate him.) I find they keep me interested in sandboxy games. Like a Hardspace Shipbreaker or Subnautica level of story. But it’s cute and fun enough that I don’t mind.
Honestly Joel (and MrBehemo), I can’t wait for Mars First Logistics, especially after your stream Joel! It looks like my kind of tinkery puzzle-y toybox. I know very little about Hardspace Shipbreaker other than Doc Burford was the narrative designer for it (I think!) and the game is apparently very good!
I own Cloudpunk but haven’t yet tried it out.
Mr B
I’ve only dabbled a bit with Mars First Logistics a little since I played on that Thinky stream. When you keep having three or more new Thinky games shoved into your Steam account every two weeks, it can be hard to keep going with any one of them :S
But I really want to spend more time with it, working on constructing more elaborate vehicles. I’ve only completed missions with cheap hacky vehicles in MFL 🙂
Gregg
I actually bought Cloudpunk this week (getting ready to make a WASD video).