All posts tagged in Builder
Oct 5, 2023
I had the chance to try out the dotAGE demo recently, and I have to say that it was quite fun! In this game you play as the Elder. You had a vision of doom, so took several of your fellow Pips (people) with you in search of safety. You find an empty, but flourishing valley to restart life in, and it’s your job to ensure your Pips survive the events foretold by the Prophecy you saw!
dotAGE blends turn-based village building and rogue-like survival to create an engaging experience. There’s not a moment where I was bored playing the demo. Every moment is full of trying to prepare and survive. You’ll direct your Pips to complete tasks like gathering food, building new homes or other useful buildings, herding animals, growing crops, and much more. The goal is to build a thriving new settlement that can survive the doom foretold by the Prophecy.
Plus, each run of dotAGE will be different. The Elder’s memories are unclear, so what you experience in one run may not be what you experience in another run. This keeps the game fresh and replayable. You can also change the difficulty of your gameplay to further challenge yourself and master the game, or just enjoy a cozy pixel graphics city builder in the easier mode. It’s up to you!
Available Now
dotAGE is available now on Steam! You can check out the demo before buying, too.
Parkitect, Havendock, and Autonauts are other great resource management games to try!
- Sep 10, 2019
Unrailed is a chaotic co-op multiplayer (online and local) where you have to work together with your friends to build a train track across endless procedurally generated worlds. Master random encounters with its inhabitants, upgrade your train and keep it from derailing! Unrailed is developed by Indoor Astronaut and published by Daedalic Entertainment and blibili. This adorable low-poly voxel inspired building game is available now on Steam Early Access here.
About Unrailed!
Your train is constantly moving and you have to hurry to build tracks by gathering the resources (wood, iron) around the unique levels. However, you only have access to one of each tool type within your team. Cooperating is therefore paramount as you will also encounter several obstacles. For example, flocks of ‘unbudging’ cows, choke points due to the terrain, and the possibility of your engines catching fire. Upgrade your train to effectively overcome certain obstacles by adding an atomic engine, upgrading your crafting wagon, attaching a supercharger, and more! You can choose to play cooperatively with up to 4 friends, or if your teammates don’t conduct themselves to your liking, compete against them in 2 vs. 2 challenges!
Key Features
- An intense and chaotic railroad construction experience
- Online and local couch co-op multiplayer
- Procedurally generated worlds with different difficulty levels
- Dynamic weather system & day and night cycle
- Game modes: Endless, Quick (up to 4 players) and Versus (2 vs 2 players)
- Distinct biomes (5+)
- A bunch of upgradable wagons (10+) to modify your train in Endless mode
- Unlockable characters
- A replay system
- Simple controls & split controller mode
- Blocky to the core
If you’re a fan of this art style and procedurally generated maps, then check out our article here: Cube World Is Finally Within Our Reach. If you like doing puzzles that involve trains, go here: All Aboard on Steam – Locomotion is Out Today.
- Aug 31, 2019
Any game that says it will allow us to ‘shape the world under our feet like clay’ has our attention. Astroneer first released, digitally-only, on Steam and Xbox One in February of this year. During that time, this space-exploration game has maintained a ‘very positive’ rating across over 34,000 reviews on Steam. And now we have the great news that the game will release onto PS4 as well! You can buy a physical copy of Astroneer for Xbox One or PS4 on November 15th, 2019.
You can watch the PS4 announcement video right here. It doesn’t have a lot of gameplay content! But watching one little pioneer-astronaut play with his buddy (literally!) via PS4 controller was really cute.
Game Features
- Reshape the ground under your feet as though it were made of clay.
- Survive on and explore carefully crafted planets that can be entirely deformed and traversed.
- Snap together components and objects to build bases and vehicles.
- Play with friends in 4 player online drop-in/drop-out co-op.
- Discover and uncover the mysteries of the solar system
It should be noted that the one consistent note of dissatisfaction with this game was in its multiplayer aspect. Glitches plague the multiplayer feature, even according to many of those who love the game on Steam. We don’t yet know if that will change as the game releases for PS4.
We’re quite excited to play this space exploration sandbox game. Let’s build bases on every planet and shape each world to suit its own unique style! We can’t wait to join PC and Xbox One players and see what is possible in Astroneer on November 15.
If you like games of space exploration, where you can build bases on the planets you visit, you might want to get a good look at Kerbal Space Program 2.
- Mar 20, 2019
Two Point Hospital is a quirky hospital sim builder developed by Two Point Studios and published by SEGA. For those of you who recall playing EA’s Theme Hospital back in the late 90’s, Two Point Hospital will have you feeling nostalgia as the two games are very similar with Two Point Hospital feeling just like an updated version.
Story & Content:
Two Point Hospital lacks a story line but that doesn’t mean it lacks personality. Every patient that comes into your hospital will have a quirky disease that needs to be taken care of by an even wackier medical contraption.
Sound & Music:
While you are treating your patients, there are occasional announcements over the intercom and a radio station with a funny DJ. These little touches along with a very fitting cartoon art style, work well together to bring out the personality of Two Point Hospital and help you not miss a story line.
Gameplay:
The gameplay is quite simple and in-line with the usual sim builder games. Within 15 levels you build various rooms, hire staff to run them and once you have everything you need, the game will run itself while you watch. There are a few other options like making your hospital look visually appealing, making sure your patients don’t get bored, putting sanitation centers to insure the cleanliness of the hospital, and training your staff, but these aspects are also very limited. The simplicity of this game-play led for a very relaxing afternoon but I felt like the game needed more context to keep me playing it.
Final Thoughts:
The game runs for $34.99 on Steam and with the amount of content it has now, this price seems to be quite steep and (to those not accustomed to Tycoon games) might not be worth it. However, when this game can be found on sale, purchasing it would be recommended if you are looking for a funny and relaxing sim builder.
