Humble Monthly: September 2019
Entering another round of Asheron’s Call mania, there’s a passing fair chance I’ll stop being tempted by every new shiny that passes my way. For a little while at least. Although on reflection, I have actually been fairly good at not impulse purchasing as much stuff as I might normally of late. The last thing I bought was Remnant: From the Ashes and before that… I don’t even know, but it’s been a while!1
Anywho — August’s headline titles are now here, Squad and Save the Spire. Squad I’ll be keeping for myself, but Save the Spire I already own so I can gift the copy to my son. :)
As for next headliner for October?
October Headline Title
Battletech
Recent reviews put the title at ‘Mixed’ on Steam — from people upset about bugs still existing a year post launch, to tabletop players unhappy with some of the translated elements. It probably also doesn’t help that the DLC hasn’t been particularly well received, either.
I kickstarted Battletech on the strength of the devs work on the Shadowrun RPGs and for my part I have no regrets. As someone not intimately familiar with the Battletech TTRPG, I found this variant to still offer a depth of customisation and tactics in play. After the initial weeks I never ran into any further crashes or gamestopper bugs — and I’ve picked this up to play a few times since it came out.
Perhaps best of all, it is incredibly moddable with unofficial expansions and total game overhauls being released. So if you haven’t picked this up yet and turn based tactics games fit within your wheelhouse then this is an easy recommend within the context of the Humble Monthly, even if you end up liking nothing else in the bundle.
But that’s probably a good thing — given it is the sole revealed headliner at this stage!
Revealed Titles
For a wonder, I only own one of these already — Distance. Distance might actually have been my first early access style purchase. If it isn’t, it’s right back there. As to what it is? Well… ‘Stunt Racer’ only begins to explain it. I mean… Your car can fly. But layer on top of that too an actually interesting story reminiscent of Tron, as you race deeper into the core of a corrupted system with weirder and weirder artifacts of this corruption appearing as you go.
At times it borders on the feeling of a horror (although there is nothing particularly scary about it — maybe better to say it is good at creating a sense of tension in both story and gameplay).
Of the others, I’d be most interested in trying out Mothergunship. It’s an FPS-roguelike basically, with the gimmick of the game being the crafting of the most preposterous multibarrel weapons you can imagine.
God’s Trigger could potentially be interesting too — it’s a top down ARPG style thing, where the story seems at least at surface level copied inspired by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens. You play as an angel and a demon out to stop the apocalypse by ending the four horsemen. (Who are bikers.) … Yep.
That aside, it does look like a potential spot of fun — but I just don’t think it’ll bust high enough up the list of things I want to play on the backlog to see the light of day any time soon.
Footnotes
- I went and looked in Steam history — it was Age of Wonders: Planetfall which was a planned purchase. Go me!
