The Indie Challenge: Reus - Week 3
I'm not the sort person who is fond of Indie games. I like my big name titles, my polished graphics and my big budgets. I dislike titles that I can't add to Steam or that can't use the processing power I've lovingly paid out for in my gaming rig. I am, for lack of a better term, a gaming snob. For this reason, I have given myself The Indie Challenge.
Each week, I will be playing at least one lesser known Indie game. I may not have enough time to complete said game, but I will at least try it. I'm doing this to attempt to expand my gaming horizons and stop being so focused on a small selection of game types. There is a whole world of gaming out there ready and waiting for me to come across.
I'll be posting a weekly blog following this challenge and detailing the game I've been playing as well as the game I will be playing next week. If you want to follow along with me, I'll be posting a link to the game.
It's week 3 of my Indie Challenge and I'm really enjoying it, which is a complete surprise to me! This week, I was playing Reus, the newest title from Abbey Games. In Reus you play as the 'god' of a planet and control four giants to sculpt the landscape as you see fit.
You can play in stints of 30 to 120 minutes and you have certain objectives to complete in this time. At the end of this time, your giants to go sleep and "hope that the planet is still alive when you wake up" which, inevitably, it isn't.
It's art style is fantastic and actually the thing that drew me to Reus to begin with. It's not quite cartoony and yet not realistic. It's quaint - I think that's the right word to describe it. What I loved about it was that everything was scalable and done so incredibly well. If you zoom out, you can see your entire planet slowly rotating in orbit but if you zoom in you can see each of the individual villagers faces or the fish in the ocean.
Not only this, but the soundtrack was great. Usually, I'll listen to music when I'm playing a game but I turned it off whilst playing this title because the soundtrack created so much atmosphere and drew my immersion in further. Again, everything was scalable though. Zoom right out and you're treated to a peaceful melody, zoom right in and you can hear the villagers going about their business, depending on the type of village they have made (desert, forest etc.).
Reus is a deceivingly simple game and sucked hours out of my week like it was nothing. The more you play, the more complex you realise the structure of the gameplay actually is. However, I am by no means complaining about this. It's great to see a game have so many levels to it.
You can set up a few villages and see how they fare without your input or you can control every aspect of the landscape, influencing the villages. It really depends on how difficult you want to make it for yourself. Me; I like a challenge.
We recently posted our review of Reus which can be viewed here: http://www.gamegrin.com/game/review/pc/reus-pc-review
If you'd like to try your hand at Reus you can find it on the Steam Store here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/222730/
This week, I will be playing Thomas Was Alone, a puzzle/platformer where you control a group of blocks around diffrent levels.
If you'd like to follow along with this challenge and play Thomas Was Alone as well, you can purchase it on Steam here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/220780/
It can also be found in the Humble Indie Bundle 8, along with a multitude of other indie titles, available for the next 7 days: http://www.humblebundle.com/
You can also find our review of Thomas Was Alone here: http://www.gamegrin.com/game/review/ps3/thomas-was-alone-ps3-review
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