Skybreak the No Man's Sky that isnt shit?

Sky break is one of those games that come along once every blue moon, they are really well put together, they look outstanding and they dont break the bank. it one of the games that im kicking my self for not knowing about earlier in its development because i would have loved to support these guys in anyway i could to get this out sooner.

the game is made by FarSky Interactive the same people who brought you far sky a couple of years ago back in 2014 and it shows they haven't just been sitting on their thumbs the whole time they have been hard at work.

So picture this, the earth is dying, a new virus has emerged and has started wiping out the human population , what does our world government do? why they send people into space to research and find a cure of course, but wait... somethings gone wrong your ship has crashed and you have been flung from the debris, you awake with a crushed ship and no clue where you are, you must battle the elements and the "Wild Life", now i use quotation marks because the wild life are robots.. or mechs i should say, picture wolves but robot wolves really angry robot wolves.

the guys over at farSky Interactive really do know how to do survival games and after the recent outrage from the community over the whole  No Man's Sky ordeal its amazing to see devs not shying away from exploration space type games, its a bit of a leap to compare the two but i do feel they share a similar approach in the type of game they are going for


Gameplay

controls are simple and intuitive, WASD to move,space to jump,mouse to aim and shift to run/sprint.you have an endurance bar that limits how long you can run for, this is also uses a 1/4 at a time by jumping, you have an inventory that stores your items and an ammo pouch type bag that holds you ammo, kind of self explanatory i know but it also hold your hacking tool, i like to think of it as a hacking taser as it shoots out like a taser would on to the mechs in the world, speaking of mech, ever wanted a pet robot that is also a bad-ass killing machine? yeah you do who doesn't want a bad-ass killing robot? well sky-break has them, this is the main function on the hacking tool, to hack into the robot after yo beat them in battle and they begin to listing to you, the do things such as follow you, and attack enemies to help you, they can be upgraded from the sky ship with fragments you collect form beating other mobs, the same goes with your self you can upgrade your Armour your blaster, your endurance just like any other sort of rpg type game. 8/10 its a very well done approach to a very saturated market but they managed to break through and make something great here.

Visuals

Outstanding, simply amazing, beautiful. For a game made in the unity engine, an engine that alot of indie devs have used and not been able to pull much off with, FarSky have done wonders, it is hands down one of if not the prettiest games i have played in 2016, and the optimization holly balls, i was able to run this game on a 6 year old gpu in full HD on high with 60+ fps, which is the bare minimum these days for a quality experience, 9/10 just because of the fact nothing can be a perfect 10 as there is always something wrong.. i just cant find it yet.


Fun
Again farsky are hitting all the right boxes, at the time of me writing this I'am only 3 hours into the game,( I've died a fair few times and had to repeat alot of stuff) and I'am loving it, i dont see myself putting it down until its finished which is something i dont do often, normally with games like this ill play it for 6-7 hours and get bored but this games has the potential to hook you and be a classic, i can see it being something people will speed run, i can see it being something you will come back to in 5-10 years when you are looking for that rush of excitement of a nostalgic game 8/10 in the fun department.

25/30 or an 83% in our scoring its the highest i think i have ever scored a game and that's just because its the best game i have played in a long time, it has me wanting to play more, to explore more, to go and find this dam cure for the virus and save the world and i love that about it, its making games fun again,something people seem to miss when they make good games, the focus to much on the micro transaction instead of just making a good game as always links down below to where you can find the game and the devs web page, I've also linked to my own personal channel where i have started a play through of the game if you guys would like to follow me on my journey through the world that is SkyBreak.


Lucas Cause

sky break
http://www.farskyinteractive.com/skybreak/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/405370/

Personal Channel with play through https://www.youtube.com/larryplaysgames
Video playthrough can be found here https://youtu.be/RtBXijSJMY4

Email us here at---spotlightgamesreview@gmail.com
follow us on twitter at www.twitter.com/Spotlight_gr
check out our youtube channel over at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7RoOKJBv1BU3yRQFV20ejw
^^^ we cant get a custom url just yet but we are working on it

Orwell Being the Big Brother you wish you could

Privacy and safety... two sides of an extremely sharp sword, the idea of the government always watching and keeping an eye on you is a scary thought, I dont need the head of the country knowing if i scrunch or fold, but at the same time, If something were to happen to me, Id want the full extend of the law brought down apon the people in question, But that cant happen if there isn't enough evidence.

Which is where the idea of this game comes in.. you play as a new member of an information gathering group called Orwell, think Oracle from the Batman Comic books, the all seeing eye of Gotham, except instead of Gotham, its the nation. You take the part of a new recruit to this organisation on his first day and are given a "training "case as they call it.

You are tasked with digging into the life of Cassandra Watergate, a suspect in a crime, you start of as if you were any other detective, knowing nothing more then whats in the police report, this is where the game takes the turn into something i think is pure genius, they manage to mix puzzle and story telling together in a way that no one out side of tell tales has been able to do in a long time, games today spoon feed to much , and this game does as well to a certain degree.

But no where near as much as other story driven games that walk you right into the path of the next puzzle answer. Instead you have to use your own logic and understanding to figure out where the pieces fit in relation to each other, now this being only episode 1 with 4 more to come over the next coming weeks you are only given the opportunity to explore Cassandra's life and back story, despite being given information on other characters and their relationships with Cassandra. 

The way you gather the information to Cassandras backstory and find out about her relationships with these other people is by digging through new paper articles , Web sites ,Blog posts, Social media accounts to find any mention of her that you can, from there you can take that information, lets say a social media handle, and look for that online  and from there you might get a link to a blog post she made about someone, you are now given a blank profile on that person, and you must build the back grounds for these people to help prove weather Cassandra is guilty or innocent of the crime in question.

So remember when i said this game doesn't spoon feed you as much as other games do? the extent isn't as bad, they do spoon feed you in the sense that you cant put the wrong info about say cassandra, under the profile of her mother, that being said if you have 2 bits of conflicting evidence you do only get to decide on one piece ,and this can either save cassandra from jail or send her away for a nice sleep in a cold cell.

GamePlay

Its a point and click puzzle game, there is no getting around that so if you were hoping for am open world first person detective game, might want to look else were,(if you find one id really like to play that so let us know) what it does offer is a sense of exploration, you may not see it as that but its what it is, you are sifting through piles and piles of useless information in hopes to find that one link to a webpage, or that one text where they incriminate themselves, now most of the game is payed out through the " Reader" tab, think of this like your go to bag of tricks, it has all the links to everything you have uncovered about every one, from the news headlines, to the personal portfolio of cassandra, 

You are also given a tab called " listener" which is what it basically Orwell doing some magic tomfoolery and tapping the phones and social media accounts of the person they are investigating, giving you full access to spy in on their private conversations they are having with people, there is another labeled " insider" but as this is the first episode this is still locked, i speculate that the insider may be a way to tap into the suspects computer in latter episodes but this is just theory at this point so dont take it as fact. 

So along your travels you will uncover more and more info to put together the suspects life, back story, personality and other personal facts to develop a profile on said suspect.My first run through took about 45 minutes to an hour to complete most of which being the tutorial and walking you through how the game works, which is good, a game that explains how to play it is amazing, unfortunately 

The music behind the game-play fits the tone the devs were going for perfectly, the slow intense resonance off the bass combined with the energetic liveliness of the mids melds together to really set the tone for a serious story.

through my play through i found no bugs, no glitches nothing, it was polished and a great example of what a game studio can do if they want to put out a good game my score for game-play is n 8/10

Visuals

The UI is outstanding, its the right amount of cluttered and organised to fully immerse you in the the idea of being swamped with information, it really made me feel as if i had piles of papers stacked around me , not knowing where to look for the next clue, That being said the colour scheme didn't quite match for me, its not that it didn't look good, i personally dont think the only blue tones they chose worked with for 90% of the background was a good choice, they proved they know how to do colour with the rest of thee game be it the web pages or the character profile shots, if they had of gorn with something in more of a deeper shade it could have worked well but with just the dull lifeless pale blues they weren't winning me over with visuals sadly, which hurt because they did such a good job everywhere else , 5/10 

Fun

Now im the sort of guy who loves digging into things, always have, i like to understand why people do what they do, why things work like they do, and knowing what people are doing gives me a sense of reassurance that nothing will surprise me, so when i got to dig through page after page looking into Cassandras life and figuring out what made her tick and why she is the person she is... oh boy did i get excited, its the most fun playing a detective puzzle game i have had since playing L.A Noir years ago , which to this day i hold as the greatest puzzle game i have ever played, so it should be a surprise when i give Orwell a 7/10 

 Basic napkin math will tell you that's a 66.6% repeater of a score, which looks pretty low but dont let that fool you, the game lost a lot of score in the visual department, but if you can look past the dull lifeless colour of the back ground long enough to get engulfed into the world that is Orwell i dont think that will matter to you which is why i strongly recommend that you head over to either their 

website http://orwellgame.com/ 

their indiedb page http://www.indiedb.com/games/orwell 

or even the steam store http://store.steampowered.com/app/491950/ 

to go and get your copy of Orwell right now i know ill be on the edge of my seat for a week waiting for part 2 to come out 

------Lucas Cause

Follow the writer on their social media below

https://twitter.com/TheLarryLazz

https://youtube.com/LarryPlaysGames

contact info:

Email us here at---spotlightgamesreview@gmail.com

follow us on twitter at www.twitter.com/Spotlight_gr

check out our youtube channel over at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7RoOKJBv1BU3yRQFV20ejw

^^^ we cant get a custom url just yet but we are working on it

Artificial Selection Game Spotlight

So recently I reached out on twitter for any devs with playable  builds of a game they have or a game they know someone who’s is working on, and asked if they wanted some press, and with what I thought was a lost cause, I was contacted by the one of the creators of the game Artificial Selection, a game that has been in the works for a while now and is even going on the steam greenlight program later this year, so after a little back and forth from them I was given a Dev build of the game to do a spotlight on, which I have over on my YouTube channel, if you’d prefer to just watch the game and see what it’s all about, you can head over to www.youtube.com/larryplaysgames

But… for those of you that would like to read my thoughts on the game I’ve decided to to a full write up of my thoughts and idea so let’s get this started shall we?

Firstly I’d like to reiterate that this is a Dev build and not a public release of the game so anyone who wants to play this I’m sorry you’ll have to get in contact with the devs, and maybe, you might be able to work something out no promises though.

So what’s this game about? It’s a 2D top down shooter, that’s what it is, nothing new, but… instead of just using the normal weapons upgrading system what they have done is to “mutate” the weapons which I thought was a really nice touch this is done with creates that you can pick up, but I’m getting a head of myself a little aren’t I, let’s start from the beginning,

The first thing I saw when I loaded the game was the menu screen, its vibrant RGB neon coloured grid back ground really made the darkish blue menu buttons pop, the buttons themselves have small electrical trails in them around the words, which I thought made it stand out more. There are 7 menu buttons in total and I’ll use them kind of like a table of context for the post to explain the elements in each.

Campaign: So the campaign starts out with a basic story of a good guy having to stop a bad guy from unleashing a terrible weapon on civilization, pretty basic story line but from what I was told the main  feature of this game wasn’t the story as much as it was the gameplay, think of the campaign kind of like a tutorial, it teaches you the ropes on how to play so your can jump in and make your own maps to play with friends, kind of like with AAA titles like call of duty, you play the first little bit of the story mode to learn how to play, then you go and jump online to play with friends. So with this being said there are still 8 playable levels with only one of the not having any enemies to kill just power ups and health points this is just before the boss door.

Controls are pretty standard WASD to move, left mouse button to fire main weapon right to fire special, 1234 to swap between weapons, R to reload(game will auto reload but if you want you can manually do it) and the spaced bar to dash.

The enemies in this game don’t go on patrol rounds per say, they are activated via sound and sight, so if one sees you it will come after you and alert the others, just like it will do if it hears the sound of your weapon firing, which I thought made it more fun and challenging, trying to see how far I could get without being seen was a nice touch.

Destroyable environment, not something a lot of games have but something more should, gone with the days of just barrels or pots being broken to give you things, while this game only has specific things that hold items, the fact that I could sit there and spam a wall till it broke was pretty fun (and no you can’t just skip to the last level… I tried).

The music for this game was created by one of the developers of the game Chris mills-bowling, he has a YouTube channel with tons of his own music on it links to this are over in the description of the video if you want to find out, its mostly upbeat techno influenced, relying heavily on both a synthesizer and drums but also using a guitar and even a violin during the open of the track, this all combined adds to a create a fantastic sound track for the game, if I had any complaints about it, it would be that it is quite repetitive, I understand that making a song that lasts for that long will become repetitive, and that there are only so many sounds one can work with.

The more you go through the game, the harder it gets, right? Well yeah it wouldn’t be a challenge if it was easy, to many games these days are too easy to beat, and this one is kind of the same, yes it’s hard to beat the boss, but it’s the boss it should be hard, but the a part from just adding more to the screen on later levels, I didn’t feel that it was really a challenge, which is where the arena comes in.

Arena: Want an arena mode? Yeah this game has it, and boy is it fun, I felt it was just what the game needed, and granted this was what the developers wanted the game to be, I would have been quite happy with just playing this, with a max wave size of 10 waves with a possible 50 mobs each wave and an actual difficulty setting, it was where I spend most of my time with the game.

Editor: Ever thought “dam if only I could make my own levels in this game and make it how I want!’? well they have you covered in this one with a possible 33 different textures to use as walls and a total of 28 different ground types, I doubt you’ll have problems finding room to place the whopping 64 different spirits, now apart from those in the editor mode there’s really only 2 other interesting things, there’s a load/save feature and a test mode, where you can spawn in a player and test out your idea, if you watch the video I go over one of the small levels I made as a test of some of the textures.

Credits: It’s just what it sounds like, it’s the credits it has the names of all the people who worked on the game, including the names of people they got sounds from, they fly across the screen which is nice, but it makes it a little hard to hover over the names to find out what they person did on the game.

Settings: With things like volume, resolution, an in game fps counter there really isn’t much you can’t change in the game, vsync to particle physics, having a good setting menu is key to a game, if you can’t have the game run the way you want, you won’t want to play it. So having the ability to do so was defiantly a tick in the right box.

Simulation: This was one of the things I wasn’t too sure about, pressing this button will play out a 10v10 match on the back ground, while I agree it is a good thing to show as it shows what the game looks like, it felt like there was too much going on, onscreen. Maybe have it as a watchable video or something, but having it playing on the back ground was just a little too much for my liking.

Exit Game: Not much I can really say about this, it was a button to exit the game.

Now comes the part of the review/spotlight that most people look for, a score rating, now here at SpotlightGameReview I do things a little differently the game is broken in to 3 section, Gameplay, Visuals, and Fun, I go over each really quickly and give a score out of 10 for each for a possible best score of 30

Gameplay: With the use of the standard WASD keys and the mouse, the game was very enjoyable for both me, someone who uses a mouse and keyboard often and even others in my house hold who are more console oriented, we all agreed that the mechanics and the way the game was set out was good simple, But yet good for replay ability. With that said I give a 7/10

Visuals: The game was full of onscreen action tons of partials fly all over the place, explosions and dead robot bits, but while I enjoyed this, others felt it was a little overdone , now granted you can turn the partials down to the lowest setting, but to play that low just didn’t give the same immersion 6/10 

Fun: This is the big one, how fun was it, if you’re a fan of beatem ups, that what it is, while it has a campaign that’s not what the game was designed for, its designed as an arena game, see how long you can survive, if your also a fan of casual gaming, it works well as something to sit down with a couple of people and try to beat each other’s score, But, if you like to sit down for a game and play the story sorry but this isn’t for you. Still though 8/10

So my final score and thoughts of the game 21/30 or for the % people out there 70%

The game is fun, don’t get me wrong I had a blast with it but being someone who isn’t really a fan of that style of game I wasn’t fully devoted to playing it, and I don’t think I’ll go back to the game until it’s at least on steam greenlight…

Beast Towers Spotlight

Tower defence games, over done? used up ideas? nothing more to give to the gaming world? these are all things one might say when they are told about such a game, But i was lucky enough to try out something a little different, something new, something interesting… something French.

I got in contact with Baptiste Largaiolli the creator of the brand new tower defence game for mobile devices,
“Beast Towers”, and when i first herd about the idea i thought to my self a lot of the things you are
right now, “how is this going to be any different then all the rest”. But after a little back and forth with
Baptiste Largaiolli i got the go ahead to try out his game and was given a test copy to do this
Spotlight with.

But first a little back story shall we? get us in the zone for this game, let us get to know the real Beast Towers. development of Beat Towers was started back in April 2014, with the developer only really working on it on weekends as he is a free lance Unity3D dev , so in total time, he spend about 4 months worth of time developing the game, but he first got the idea to start working on it as far back as the Ipad 1 days. With this device clearly not being powerful enough for what he had in mind he decide to wait until devices were at least as powerful as an Ipad2, these features that he wished the game to have included full 3D,and to have both enemies and towers animated.

The project was a one man team, but Baptiste has hopes to work with a 2D or 3D artist for later updates and later games, and with the introductions out of the way lets get into why you are really here huh? the game play.

So the game starts off like any other, a simple menu screen, with deep classical music giving a very dark med-evil tone to the game, with its bright torches lighting the door way and surrounding bricks, it almost makes you feel like you have discovered a secret under ground chamber in a large old castle from the middle ages, this is added upon by the small bugs crawling and flying around the screen leading you to believe that no one has been down here in a very long time, the skull that makes up the door gives the impression that a dark evil power is sealed away in there.

With 4 touchable button on the screen you have the option to turn off the music, turn off the back ground sounds, start the game or quite, which is good, while a lot is going on in the back ground the foreground is kept simple and clean.

Selecting the start button will bring a pop up block, with the option to create a new game or play an existing game, once a choice has been made the door behind the box is opened and both the box are pulled into it.

The first thing you will notice is the music change, it becomes more uplifting, more adventurous, the next thing will more then likely be the first stage,a small brick square with a platform i the middle surrounded by a pit which to me look like a Lazarus pit( a little comic influence maybe?), You have 3 buttons around the sides in the corners, starting from the top right corner you have a button that will take you back to the main menus screen, moving over to the top right, you are given list off all possible towers to play, the music is toned down a little more calming, gentle, soothing almost but still with a hint of adventure lingering in its tone. the third and final button is a “shop” where you can buy upgrades for your towers. Now don't worry, these aren't micro transaction, these upgrades as bought with in game “money” and by completing levels.

To start a level simply click on it and another pop up window appears, giving you the option to play or exit the screen, another button is there but locked at this point, this is called the tsunami mode, where it is one continues wave , this is locked until you have completed the level.

Now I'm not going to be going over how to play the game, if you want to know that you will have to play it for yourself, but what i will do is explain some of the core elements in the game and use them as sub categories to explain each.

Upgrade able towers

Now this isn't anything new to a tower defence game so its not as thought its ground breaking stuff, hope ever with the full 3D animations on all sprites, the upgrading becomes a lot more fun, to be able to see a tower start out a level 1 sprite doing no damage and with in 3-5 waves be fully upgraded to basically doing all the work, and have him flailing his arms around, nice touch in my eyes

Controlling the enemies path

this isn't something you see at lot of in tower defence games, in fact its the first tower defence game i have ever played that implements this, the ability to control where the enemies can walk greatly aids you in being able to create the most efficient design, being able to decide whether you make the path out of towers, walls, or a mixture of both

tsunami mode

this is basically the best part of a tower defence game, seeing how long you can last with out dying, that's right its an all out assault, mass waves of mobs, progressively getting harder , you start with a lot more money then you do in single player mode, but that goes by really quickly.

But now we get into what a lot of the people who are reading this are looking for, my score rating, the thing that tells you if you should get the game, because i know that's why you were reading this… don't lie i know you were ;), so i will do this in my normal fashion. Break the score into 3 parts GamePlay, Visuals and Fun and then give each a rating out of 10 for a possible score of 30

So GamePlay, it played like any other  tower defecne game i have played, challenging at first but once you unlock some of the latter tier towers it becomes a lot easier, the smooth inter face, the fluid controls, the way it just worked is one of the finest examples of a tower defence game i have seen/used on the mobile platform, to give it anything less then an 8 would be a crime.

Visuals, this is where the game really shines, the 3D aspects of this game set it apart from the crowd, it brings something new to the table in this genre, yes i know other 3d tower defence games exist, and i have played a few of them, but this one is something that i felt was special, the dark and gloomy but yet friendly and somewhat cute nature to both towers and mobs takes a different approach on the style of game play, that said a 7 seems very fitting for this game.

And finally Fun, arguably the most important part of any game is how fun it is, that is why its also the hardest one to give a score for, because everyone who plays games plays them a little differently and everyone has different likes and dislikes,but for me? i liked it, i thought it was something i could sit down and play, i had a flight i caught just the other day actually and spend the whole 3 hours playing this game. so is it fun for me? you bet it is, but being that i have to give it a fair score, being that i loved it as much as i did I'm going to give it a 9.

So for those of you who just wanted a number a 24/30 or an 80%.

My final thoughts on this game are that you should defiantly go and check it out over on his web page

www.beasttowers.com or head over to his indiedb page at http://www.indiedb.com/games/beast-towers and let him know what you think of his game...