#BackpackBattles | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

monriatitans · 6 days ago

Text

youtube

MonriaTitans

Let's Play Some Demos! – Part 9

Welcome to Part 9 of the Let's Play Some Demos! | LPSD series! For those who are new, I aim to introduce gamers to, usually, Indie games and provide commentary and feedback on the games for educational purposes! For this episode, I, once again, perused through Steam’s Demos Category to see what was available.

Today, I, attempted, to play 4 video game demos for your enjoyment:

Backpack Battles - Early Access A PvP inventory management auto battler! Buy and craft powerful items, then carefully arrange them in your backpack.

Glaciered - Planned Release Date: To be announced Soar the seas at the end of time. 65 million years in the future, the world has frozen over, and the oceans have been sealed under a thick layer of ice. Become a Tuai — a species that evolved from birds — and protect the Everwinter in this futuristic underwater action game.

Ratopia - Early Access Ratopia is a new game that has combined elements of both strategic survival and city building. With plenty of content available, and more planned, enjoy a vast world to adventure and populate with citizens! Build your own economical system to sustain your ideal city of Ratopia.

Slime Rancher - Available Slime Rancher is the tale of Beatrix LeBeau, a plucky, young rancher who sets out for a life a thousand light years away from Earth on the ‘Far, Far Range’ where she tries her hand at making a living wrangling slimes.

All links above are to the games' Steam pages.

Why was it an "attempt" to play? If you started watching the video before reading this, you'll know the first video attempt was cut due to running out of storage space. Thankfully, I have another drive to move big things.

However, I will still be able to render a verdict.

In both videos, I showed why I wasn't able to play Backpack Battles: when I was "in" the game, the video went black. When I clicked off the game, it was viewable. So, I'll have to play it in my own time and do a written mini-review. I will start with this, though: the art style was amazing! And the two classes they had available looked pretty interesting.

Glaciered was disappointing. That's the dirt on top of the "Compliment Sandwich". The story has potential. The graphics are GORGEOUS! You play as a bird, shark creature! Why did the controls have to be so irritatingly confusing? Good thing I wasn't counting because I would have lost track of how many times I opened up the Controls menu to make adjustments and the menu that adjusted camera sensitivity.

The game has Controller Support, and yet not all of the buttons and sticks were automatically mapped. The tutorial would tell me to press a button to Heal, but there wouldn't be a button symbol shown. It wasn't until I went into the controls and picked a button, X, that it was presented in the tutorial. That was pretty cool, actually, the tutorial adjusting to me. I had to figure out how I wanted the buttons mapped myself. And here's where I get to things being annoyingly confusing.

In order to move, I, eventually, mapped forward, back, left, and right to the Left Stick. Yes, I had to map each one to the Left Stick separately. However, in order to actually turn corners, the camera had to be used, which was mapped to the Right Stick. To Ascend quickly, it was A. To Descend, it was Y. Unless I mixed them up again... To dodge left or right was B. Again, it was X to heal. The game had me using the ENTIRE controller!

And the mapping of buttons wasn't the main issue, as I mentioned. The camera sensitivity was ridiculous! I had to drop it down to the minimum in order to be comfortable, but then, when they showed me how to sprint, I realized I needed more sensitivity. Had I not had to figure out how to MOVE, and had I not gotten motion sickness from all the attempts, on TOP of the motion blur, I could recommend the game. As is, it's too frustrating. I wasn't able to have fun with the combat because I was too busy being annoyed at the controls.

Ratopia SIGNIFICANTLY improved my mood! Even when it frustrated me. I eventually realized I was the cause of my own frustration. It was during this demo that the first video cut. So, since I wasn't going to go back and play Glaciered again, most of the demo was Ratopia. And if it hadn't been, I definitely would have made it a "Let's Play Some $#!7 | LPS$ - Let's finish the demo!" video. I WANT THIS GAME!

The controls were easy to pick up on, despite the typos throwing me off on occasion, and the "combined elements of both strategic survival and city building" had me engaged! I don't remember playing another city-building game that had me caring about the people within said city. Backing up a bit, the bit of story we received was you're a ruler of a kingdom and you're escaping assassination attempts. You tunnel into a new land, with your second in command, and now you're rebuilding. And, due to limited resources, you have to pick which migrants are allowed to enter your community. And you NEED to pay attention!

Would it be better to take in two people with some attitude problems so you have additional workers or take in a more reasonable individual with hygiene issues? Because, yes, you have to monitor your peoples' hygiene. And their joy. And, yes, the developers make you pay attention to their personalities because there are CAUSES of their negative behavior. And they make requests of you. And your choices matter. I had already decided I would be a fair queen who actually gave a damn, so when someone complained there weren't enough fun things to do, I, as soon as I was able, researched the building they were requesting. I also put more focus on fun.

My mistake was not paying close enough attention to the Research. I was being told to build buildings I wasn't even CLOSE to being able to research!

And I haven't even talked about the art; EVERYONE was adorable! Except for the diseased rats that kept attacking everything. Remember when I mentioned in the beginning I was causing my own frustration? They were what I was talking about. It took my dying, and then reloading a previous save, for me to realize I was being overrun by the rats because I was attacking their home base. Oops. I made sure to back away before attacking the invaders after that. And during the attacks was when everyone was the most animated! I mean, duh, but they were very well done! It was always clear how everyone was feeling, regardless of the situation, due to how well done the animations were. This was an EXCELLENT example of Early Access done right!

Slime Rancher wasn't for me, but I see why people would enjoy it. I very much enjoy watching people play, even if watching them gives me headaches. I noticed I didn't really get a headache playing this, like I expected. I had one, but it wasn't caused by the game. And because I had watched other people play, I played CAREFULLY! No genicidal, tar slimes for me, thanks!

I, kinda, got into the ranch building and updates, but the exploring was... meh. I wasn't excited about engaging with the world. Did I freak out once about how cute the non-tar slimes were? Yes, but that was all the game had going for it. That and when I had to beat certain slimes to plorts. My reaction to those slimes amused me because I realized how invested I was getting. But the game wasn't able to maintain the investment. Comparing it to Ratopia, since they're similar, I wasn't really attached to the slimes. In Ratopia, I was actually TRYING to learn about the people in my community. The slimes were a means to an end. An end I didn't care about.

In the end, I moved Ratopia to my WANT Collection, after uninstalling Glaciered and Slime Rancher.

As a reminder, Backpack Battles and Ratopia are in Early Access, Glaciered does not yet have a release date, and Slime Rancher is Available.

And that's it for Part 9! Thank you for reading! If this series of videos is something you're interested in, the videos are available on YouTube, The Titans' Discord, Steam, Rumble, and Odysee! Don't forget to hit the Subscribe and/or Follow buttons to know when there's more!

—

"Let's Play Some Demos!" Video Series YouTube Playlist

—

TIMESTAMPS 0:00 - Welcome Again Gamers! 2:39 - Artist Shout-Out 7:07 - Quick Recap Begins 7:14 - Backpack Battles Recap 7:43 - Glaciered Recap 9:43 - Demos' Description Reading 11:29 - Ratopia Continued 2:31:46 - Slime Rancher 3:24:50 - Took a Call 3:26:10 - Slime Rancher 3:31:56 - Demos' Lineup/Quick Commentary 3:33:15 - Artist Shout-Out 3:34:06 - Thank You/Links 3:35:23 - Rendezvous Point Bookshop Plug 3:36:04 - Farewell

—

MORE INFO & TO SUPPORT – MonriaTitans | WGS Summarized – Rendezvous Point Bookshop – Artist Shout-Outs Criteria – Throne Wishlist – #SubOffTwitch – YouTube – Rumble – Odysee – Twitch – Steam

Originally published to https://opinionsandtruth.wordpress.com on November 19, 2024.

0 notes