Prison Architect

Build and manage a prison they said. It'll be fun they said. And indeed it IS fun! Whoever this "they" person is that told this,. I'm sure we should listen to them more often.

Prison Architect is a chill prison management simulation game. And very well made at that. A quick note: If you enjoy Prison Architect, often RimWorld is mentioned in the same sentence. Be sure to check it out as well.

Bill and Barry

The initial tutorial levels should keep you busy for an hour or two. These will casually introduce you to the basics of prison life. What do people need and what can you provide them to ensure they stay calm and happy while in your prison. Do you build a luxury hotel with ample space, workshops, giant canteens and private showers? Or will you be a dictator that prefers to maximize security and keep your prisoners down and sedated under an iron fist?

Your first prison will probably be a small one. A simple entry hall to take in prisoners and for trash and produce to be exported. All the basics from the tutorial may be placed, and some bunks for your prisoners to sleep in. Making a decent, not overly comfortable place for your involuntary visitors to spend their days in and plot their escape.

As you grow your building to fit in more, and more prisoners you'll start to notice things getting a bit crowded. Queues are not a thing in Prison Architect, everyone wants to do their thing right away. And so you'll get a few prisoners who end up being rather angry at each other.

Riot!

Nothing good lasts forever, and neither will a peaceful prison. Each of your prisoners has their very own personality. Some are more sedate, but some like Barry, are hotheads by nature. Bumping into other prisoners in the shower will certainly lead to some knuckles getting busted and blood spilling on the floor. If things get really heated you may get some other inmates knocked out or even killed. Either way do not wait too long to build an infirmary.

Your income and expenses are a fine balance that will eventually topple over. Ambition is always a great thing when it comes to having a small prison and a massive slab of land to fill. Your prisoners are always plotting however, never forget that. Spoons stolen from the mess hall, used to dig a tunnel under their toilet is a favorite nighttime event.

Scandal,. your prison has had an escapee. Fundings were lowered. Scandal, another prisoner killed in your prison. Less money to spend on food, and luxuries means prisoners will become agitated and it's time for a RIOT !

Scandal! Fire! Death!

The prison goes on lockdown, all prisoners are ordered to return to their cells in an orderly fashion. Time to bring in the troops. You have available multiple squads of SWAT with riot shields, tasers and even shotguns.

But, not all prisoners were created as equals. Meet the Legendary prisoner. These guys will have the "legendary" tag in their profile, and can have as much as 10 perks instead of the usual 3-4 that Bill and Barry had. Think Barry, but then 10x as strong, hotheaded and able to kill other prisoners in a single hit.

I had a guy like that enter my prison once. He did not agree to his cell so be broke it open and took down a few guards before getting caught. Het got bumped up a security level and I moved him to a smaller cell with a reinforced steel door. Less than 2 days after this incident he was hungry and irritated again and eventually went into a rage. During this rage he broke his cell door. (Again,. this was reinforced steel! I guess reinforced with paper,.. but whatever.) Two guards took notice but were quickly dispatched and disarmed. An armed guard came in, and was dispatched in a similar way. There was now a single legendary prisoner on a rage, armed with a gun walking around my prison. He proceeded to kill three more armed guards before being pummeled down and locked up again.

The next day he did the same thing again! This guy was a madman.

The scandal that followed caused me to get fired from my job as prison warden. And right when you think it's game over - Prison Architect gives you an entirely new game mode to play. Escape mode!

Escape?

Similar to how your prisoners spend their day, you too now have the orange jumpsuit. Criminal negligence and most cruel - you get to spend your life in your OWN prison.

Welcome to your very own prison. You get assigned a random cell and your new game goal is to escape. (or die trying) Build a reputation as a legendary prisoner, gain game and grow stronger. You can recruit a crew / gang and fight your way out of the fortress you constructed. No special treatment for you, scrubs and prison food along with everyone else. Mandatory curfew and school hours if you want to learn new skills.

Prison Architect : Release date: 6 Oct, 2015

Minimum system requirements: Windows 7, Intel Core 2 duo 2.4 Ghz, 6 GB Ram, Nvidia 8600 / Radeon equivalent, 400MB HD Space.

Fall Guys - Ultimate Knockout

Lemmings. Or closer perhaps, Transformice would be the best way to describe the inspiration for Fall Guys. Maybe even the TV show Takeshi's Castle. It's a seemingly innocent game full of pink and soft tone colors suitable for the youngest kids in your household. But, in reality it's a brutal competition with only one winner.

60 player bash

Every match starts you off with 60 players. Each round is up to about 2-3 minutes in duration and you will play up to about 5 rounds until there is only one winner. The winner takes the crown.

It's a battle royale. In such a way that you will play up to 5 rounds of random levels consisting of races, team matches and dodging obstacles. If you are eliminated then you'll be able to start a new match pretty quickly because currently this game is on the 11'th spot of Steam's most played listing. It had a peek of over 100k players just last month. Odd enough the reviews are "Mostly Positive", which generally indicates about 60-70% positive reviews.

A modern success story

Fall Guys grew fast, very fast in fact. Currently it has over 2 million copies sold and isn't slowing down much. The devs have been overwhelmed (literally) with the gigantic influx of players and feedback. Quite simply being unprepared for the hit this game became seemingly overnight. Some Twitch streamers may be to blame for this, in bringing awareness of the game to the masses.

No company can expect suddenly having to deal with 100k active players when they're expecting maybe 10k or 25k. Just look at the ever memorable Blizzard launch days for Diablo or WoW, with queues going upward several thousands along with crashes.

As with any success story there will instantly be copies showing up. Especially on Android it seems. Titles like Fall Dudes, Knockout Race and Run Royale are basically lesser quality carbon copies. Or perhaps Fall Guys wasn't first? Either way it's very successful and people have taken notice.

On the flipside

With the high level of popularity the game has brought forth, so too come in the cheaters. After all, any competitive game will have people wanting to win - at any cost. Up until recently you couldn't join a single match without contestants magically flying or teleporting straight to the end. The devs have taken notice and been working hard at creating a fair competitive environment for all involved.

Season 1 is currently in progress, and season 2 has been previewed with a lot of improvements coming. New levels, more costumes, many more costumes. On top of the base game price there's a rapidly growing amount of extra money you can spend on making your Fall Guy look more unique than the rest of the horde. Unicorns, crocodiles, wolves, hamburgers you name it. For a couple bucks you're able to look just like everyone else who bought the collector's edition. As the franchise grows, we're sure to get more costumes over time. Those servers aren't going to pay for themselves.

As the game is new and fresh, the amount of content is still fairly limited. Season 2 as stated should bring in a lot of extra content as the devs have shown - they have no plans of stopping anytime soon. (Coming this october 2020)

Play with friends

Or better yet, play with GGPlayers. Come hang out on our discord and join the fun. Fall Guys is a decent game when playing solo, as you can quickly get into matches and boost up your rank for this season. But honestly - a game like this works best when played with (new) friends. Up to a small group of 4 players at a time. There really isn't that much difference to playing solo, so hopefully the devs will improve upon that in the near future. But for the time being - turn off the repetitive music, turn up some of your favorite metal tracks and get racing for that crown!

Fall Guys will inspire your inner competitive self to grab, tackle or hug your friends and drag them into the abyss along with you.

Release date: 4 Aug, 2020

Minimum system requirements: Windows 10 64 bit only, Intel core i5 or higher, 8 GB ram, Nvidia GTX 660 or AMD Radeon HD 7950 or better, Broadband internet, 2 GB available disk space, Gamepad recommended.

Life is Strange

The Life is Strange series is an episodic "choices matter" game. So far there's three parts to the series:

• Life is Strange: episode 1 - 5
• Life is Strange: Before the Storm (A prequel to LiS)
• Life is Strange 2: episode 1 - 5

Choices

I put "choices matter" in quotes because ultimately you're following a storyline. Whether you choose to eat cereal brand A, or cereal brand B,. you'll still end at the same place in the end. This becomes visible when you complete the first episode and are shown a list of choices you made versus the choices other players made.

In short - your choices don't really matter. The game is "on a rail" as it were for the major events. But, many smaller things like watering a plant or your choice in music will ultimately come back to haunt you. Obviously I don't really want to spoil too much, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Characters

You play the game (LiS1) as Max (depicted above on the left) and are often accompanied by Zoë, the girl with the blue hair. There are more characters to run into, some likable, some much less so. Everyone has a story and a past, and as this is a story based game you'll be introduced to most of them through your interactions with them.

The two are long childhood friends but Max had to move out of town. She just recently came back to school and learns someone has gone missing. She takes a photography class and here learns of her special power that somehow started showing up recently.

Power

The main gimmick of the game is Max' power to reverse time, up to a couple seconds back at will. Time travel in this way allows you to try things and see different reactions when you chat with various people. This allows you to have knowledge you otherwise would not have had, and to steer a conversation in a desired direction. You can play detective in a way, as you learn more about recent events and how the residents of your town are involved in them. Not everything (or everyone) is as they seem, as you will eventually find out.

Aside moving time slightly backwards, Max also finds she can "relive" and influence events from her past by focusing on a photo. With this power she can travel back in time several years and for all the good (and bad) this does, she may influence the coming storm.

A great story to experience

While your choices ultimately don't matter too much in regards to how everything plays out it's a great story to experience. I can highly recommend the in depth involvement you will enjoy as you play the game. Detective Max will surprise you in many ways, and the game will happily throw you a curve ball or two. It may even set you thinking why that cereal or pancake was so important.

Once you finish the first part (LiS1), the "before the storm" is a standalone prequel to the first in the series.

Life is Strange 2, is less well received, and needs a note of warning as it contains Denuvo anti tamper. This is downright weird for a single player offline game. If you've followed the critics regarding that software you may want to just skip LiS2 entirely, or find a way to play it without it. Especially since it involves different characters than Max and Zoë. But this choice at least, is ultimately yours.

• Life is Strange: episode 1 - 5: Release date: 30 Jan, 2015
• Life is Strange: Before the Storm Release date: 31 Aug, 2017
• Life is Strange 2: episode 1 - 5: Release date: 26 Sep, 2018

Minimum system requirements: Windows Vista, Dual core 2GHz or equivalent CPU, 2 GB Ram, ATI or Nvidia video card with 512 MB Ram or higher, DirectX 9 and up, 5 GB available disk space.

Also see: Top 5 story games where choices matter, on GGP.

Cat Quest 1 and 2

Wait, 1 and 2? Can we review two games at the same time? Let's find out.

Let's start off with saying Cat Quest 1 and Cat Quest 2 are actually very similar in terms of gameplay, story, monsters and puns. So many puns. You don't have to play Cat Quest 1 in order to understand Cat Quest 2, but it "does" help.

That's punny

The Cat Quest series is a LOT of puns and cat/dog related word replacements. You may think it silly, but it actually gives the game it's charm. Fur real that's an impawtant fact throughout the game.

CQ2 is a big graphical improvement over the first in the series but the main draw to playing CQ2 is the fact that it's multi player. Indeed, straight from the start you can plug in (or steam remote play) and enjoy the game with a friend.

Grapawcal impurrovements

Cat Quest 1 vs Cat Quest 2 graphics may be compared below.

As you can see the resolution is a lot better in the second version.

For a quick Cat Quest 1 demo you can view Eleonora's recent twitch stream. It's a bit laggy, but should get you a good idea of the gameplay.

The game

You find yourself a level 1 cat/dog with a pointy weapon. You're dragged along a questline to get a bigger pointy weapon and learn magic skills along the way. Many monsters are very rude to you and putting the pointy end of your weapon into them repeatedly causes them to stop being disagreeable. In the end there's always a bigger monster, and another cave to venture into. Cat Quest 1 and 2 are very similar in that regard. CQ2 brings you a few more dungeons, better graphics and teleportation for faster travel.

I found CQ1 to have a slightly more in depth story than CQ2, but both were engaging and very doable on the first playthrough.

The combat and magic are very similar as well - stab, stab, stab, roll away to avoid a counter attack then cast a spell and roll back in for more stabbing. It sounds simple in theory, but the speed and amount of enemies that get involved in a single fight make this quite tricky. Especially when those enemies start casting three or four offensive spells at the same time...

Mew Game Plus

Once you've beaten the boss in either game you're given some new options to continue your play and collection. The game would be very short without these. Introducing New Game Plus. Basically start from the beginning but keep your level, skills and gear. A good way to get yourself to a higher level of power and put pointy objects into disagreeable monsters.

But then,. Mew Game (yes, yes, many cat puns everywhere!) and Mew Game Plus. In Mew Game you're given a set of difficulty increasing game modifiers. Furever Alone, Naked Paws, Nine Lives, Purre Magic, No Leveling, Ruffer Enemies, No Upgrades, Fast Furwards. These options are basically translated as 1 life, no gear, 9 lives, and more. All made to change the way you play the game while all enemies get stronger.

Is there any reward to playing in that way? Yes, it's the only way to get the king's armor set and complete the "collect all equipment" achievement. It's a pretty monumental task.

Cat Quest 1, release date: 8 Aug, 2017

System requirements: Windows 7, Intel Core I3 2100 CPU at 3.1 GHz, 4 GB ram, Intel HD Graphics 520, 250 MB disk space. Available on Windows and Mac, also on iOS and Android.

Cat Quest 2, release date: 24 Sep, 2019

System requirements: Windows 7, Intel Core I3 2100 CPU at 3.1 GHz, 4 GB ram, Intel HD Graphics 520, 600 MB disk space.

Cat Quest 3, release date: tba. (Yes indeed, coming soon!)