Games You Might Not Have Tried - ep 13 - Find New Games - Extra Credits

Hey, check it out. We got games. Have you tried them? Maybe. I don't know. Let's find out. As always, the promise is simply that all of these games have something interesting about them. Not necessarily that they are all good. But, if you are a designer or an efficient auto of the medium, I think you'll find some interesting novelty here. I'll be adding a bunch of links to these games down in the description, and some of these links happen to support Extra Credits. So, if you do decide to go pick any one of these up, go give one of those links down in the description a click. Let's go. Sonic Mania Yeah, I just kicked this off with a Sonic game. What are you going to do about it? That's what I thought. Now, the game's design isn't especially innovative or novel, but Sega's business approach here absolutely was. A major developer turning to a very small team

that had helped port their games before, and giving them a crack at a new release for a major license is a pretty wild event in this industry. But, then those indies had proved that they understood the Sonic series in a way that the license holder didn't. It's a game made by fans of the original series for fans of the original series. And while I would love to see more innovation creep into that basic old-school Sonic formula, sometimes you just got to return to form before you can build on that foundation. That is what this is. Sonic Mania is proof to the game industry that good things can happen if you're just a little less overprotective of your license. Arte Mecenas I just all night binged on an

educational game. What is happening? I'll tell you what's happening, art. Arte has the most interesting premise I've seen in a long while. You play one of the early Medicis, but instead of fixating solely on wealth or banking, the game focuses on how your patronage choices influence the history of art. And as it does so, it shows the real prestige and propaganda value art held at the time. Arte plays somewhere between an old trading game where you're trying to buy low and sell high, and a kingdom management game where you have to manage your relationships with other factions or territories. And at the center of all of it is art. Have you made enough money that you can afford to sponsor Brunelleschi to work on your cathedral dome? Should you commission some art from Michelangelo to prove your piety? It is, at the end of the day, a strategy game, and it's a tough one. Even if you can ace all of the game's tiny little art quizzes, which increase your reputation and standing with the church, you're still going to have to be pretty savvy to beat this one. Now, I'm

not sure if the game is available for general release yet or if you have to order it from a school, but I do know that they at least plan to put out a general public version soon. Maybe they already have. So, if you ever wanted a strategy game that seamlessly incorporates art history, you better try to get your hands on a copy of Arte. Star Wars: Force Arena It just would not be a Games You Might Not Have Tried if James didn't try to get a collectible game in there somehow. And here it is. There is plenty wrong with this game, but as a designer, it's interesting to see what they're trying to do with the thing. They have tried to put MOBA-style characters into a Clash Royale-style game. Or, I guess to put it another way, they've tried to make a small-scale MOBA where instead of having abilities, your characters can summon specialized creeps from a deck. If

you're looking for an interesting mobile game to help pass the time, and you want to see a game attempt to combine two well-known themes, this is definitely one worth looking at. Gary Grigsby's War in the West. This is the sort of game that 97% of you will have absolutely no interest in whatsoever, and that's okay. Of the 3% of you that remain, 2% probably already found this game themselves. But for you, you who exist in that last 1%, boy oh boy, have I got a game for you. You see, Gary Grigsby is a master of the old old old school war game. Not like Panzer General, I mean 70s old. I'm talking like the old Avalon Hill board games with maps so big you had to push two tables together to put them down. Games

with so many tiny chits that post-game cleanup takes an hour and a half. Am I speaking your language, last 1%? Are you picking up what I'm putting down? See, War in the West is Grigsby's take on the World War II invasion of Europe. It has literally every regiment ever involved in the fight modeled with their own stats and placed in their historical location. It has got the weather plotted for pretty much every week of the war for every freaking hex on the board. And do you know how many hexes are on that board? Guess. Did you guess 36,000? Because it's 36,000. And you can play over all of them at once. So, if you're looking for not just a hardcore war game, but the hardest of hardcore war games, enjoy Gary Grigsby's War in the West. Just be prepared to spend a lot of time learning the rules, and bid your family farewell for at least a week, and maybe stock up on food. Kingsway

Kingsway makes it on the list just because I love it conceptually. It's a fairly standard RPG if the interface for a fairly standard RPG was old school Windows. They do some clever things with this gimmick both in combat and in the general management of the game, but it's one of those where I would love to see somebody take this even further. Just check it out, you'll see what I mean. Contradiction All right, so the potential uses for FMV in games just continues to fascinate me. Not necessarily because FMV is good, but because the challenges and the

possibilities that accompany FMV are just so utterly novel, especially if you're somebody who's mostly worked in traditional video games. And Contradiction follows one of those paths that seems the most obvious choice for an FMV game, the murder mystery. The gameplay is all about finding the contradictions in people's statements, and admittedly the system for doing that is far, far, far from perfect. There are a lot of times where you will want to call somebody out on an obvious lie, but the game won't let you. But the story is filled with cults and small town secrets, and sure the acting's a bit campy and much of the gameplay is arguably a simplified version of the old Sega CD Sherlock Holmes game, but Contradiction is still good for a lark with some friends if you're all interested in the idea of FMV games because a few iterations down the road one of these could be killer.

Subsurface Circular Since we're on the topic of mysteries, the fellow who made Thomas Was Alone has quietly released a strange science fiction robot mystery game and the premise is great. It's the near future. You are a detective. A stranger approaches you on a subway and tells you a crime has occurred, a disappearance and you decide to take on the case. The twist is that you are a robot. In fact, everybody you deal with is robots. In this near future, robots of varying degrees of sentience exist in a society controlled by human governments. As such, they are all controlled by laws and you, a highly sentient detective, are geo-locked to a subway train making a perpetual loop. You must solve this mystery without ever leaving your train car. The game itself is basically one of dialogue trees. You ask questions and you discover new possibilities to ask questions about until finally you come

to the truth. You're in for a lot of reading if you pick this one up is what I'm saying, but it is well written. Its world feels fully realized despite only being viewed from a single subway car and it is filled with colorful characters. I just love how a robot programmed for accounting thinks and responds fundamentally differently than a robot programmed as a tour guide. If you're looking for a unique mystery and are up for a lot of text, I definitely recommend picking this one up. Children of the Zodiacs Years ago, a designer walked up to James at GDC and told him all about a collectible card dice tactics game he was working on. And now it's here, Children of the Zodiacs. The story and the characters are a bit weaker than I

had hoped, but the fundamental idea is solid. So, if you're thinking about ways to innovate on a tactics game, or if you just want to see card and dice mechanics integrated into more things, take a gander at Children of the Zodiacs. And in doing so, maybe give them the funds to iterate and refine this concept even further. Mundaegon I think. How do you pronounce this? Really, I just wanted to show this on screen for a moment. It's a fairly straightforward platformer that'll take you less than an hour to beat, but the game's also free. And the love that went into the world and the music and the story and verse really makes me want to include it here. But perhaps most of all, it's the fact that Mundaegon I hope I'm saying that right really feels less

like a game made for the player than as an expression, a way to wrestle with grief. It deserves a few minutes if you're ever looking for something simple and gentle and slow. Ultimate General Civil War. So, just between us, there's a long-lost episode of games you might not have tried that just sort of fell off the schedule years ago. In it, we were going to mention a game called Ultimate General Gettysburg, which James recommends for its innovative RTS movement system. But, at the time, we lamented that the game lacked a full-fledged campaign with army management and unit experience and

leader growth. Turns out, Ultimate General Civil War has a full campaign with army management, and unit experience, and leader growth. 10 points to Gryffindor, I guess. If you are a strategy buff and enjoyed the original at all, this is absolutely one to check out. And finally, Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator. We don't often recommend dating sims here, but I will gladly recommend this one. It's well-written, it's funny, the music's happy, it's just a wholesome good time. Look, life is hard, and sometimes you just need a game that makes you smile. And it's not perfect. The mini-games, while amusing, are clunky as all get out. But, at the end of the day, Dream Daddy is inclusive and positive and just charming, and that is great. And I got to say, for all the games in recent memory that have me

playing a parent figure with a kid to protect, I have never cared as deeply for those kids as I have for Amanda. For real, I want everything for this kid. She deserves the world. Anyway, I hope you have seen something today that catches your interest. And if not, uh maybe next time. Maybe next time. See you next week. Woo!