Back in 1983, well before I was born, the video game industry experienced a major crash. Over saturation of the market with low quality, hastily released games decreased consumer confidence in game manufacturers. One of the most well known examples
By Ian Moorhead for Indie Game: The Podcast
Happy 4th of July, everybody! I hope everybody had a fun and safe weekend! Now, as the smoke clears and the sulfur smell fades from around our houses, we can get back to the finer things in life, like playing ridiculously difficult games that make us want to make our computers explode next!
In 1980, three video game developers; Micheal Toy, Glen Wichman, and Ken Arnold unleashed upon the world a game that would define an entire genre of gaming for most likely the rest of time. The game, called Rogue, was simple. Players explored randomly created dungeons filled with monsters and would try to fight their way to the bottom level to grab an amulet, then get out again. As the player progressed, the monsters would become more numerous and tougher to defeat. Furthermore, there was no save feature, so death was permanent and would mean restarting the game (with a brand new randomly generated dungeon). Not surprisingly, this game became popular among the growing community of gamers and has nowadays spawned a whole subculture of games to torture and delight gamers alike. These games, known as roguelikes, follow the same basic principle; vast, randomly generated dungeons where enemies get progressively harder the deeper the player ventures. I personally tried to avoid these games because, you know, I like feeling good about myself. However, due to the recent summer sale on Steam, mixed with pressure from certain roommate (~cough cough~ Michael!~) I ended up getting two of them. One of them, called Risk of Rain, I've not personally played yet, partially because I'm a little nervous about becoming addicted to it, and partially because I'm already addicted to the other one I got, Rogue Legacy. I'm going to avoid doing a full review right now, but suffice it to say that it was well worth the money I spent on it, and I recommend getting it.
If you're not very skilled in gaming (kind of like me) don't worry. Many, if not most roguelikes have a way to level yourself up to make at least the first few minutes of each round easier. For example, in Legacy, Your character collects gold coins which, after your character's death, can be used to buy stat upgrades or new equipment by the next character (your original character's child ).
At first I thought I would not like these games, but I've discovered that they can be a lot of fun ( a lot more so than the chest-high wall extravaganzas that are today's firs-person shooters!) So for a fun experience outside of the normal dungeon crawling of the Elder Scrolls series, (nothing against Elder Scrolls, by the way. I'm a huge fan of Bethesda's games.) go get a roguelike today! They're usually cheap, being made by indie developers and they can be a blast!
By Ian Moorhead
The Steam Summer Sale is upon us! For those of you unfamiliar with the treasure trove of pure awesome that comes about this time every year, the Steam Summer Sale works like this: every day, the game client Steam will knock a ridiculous amount off the price tag of some of their best selling games. Feel like picking up Borderlands 2 Game of the Year edition? Ten Dollars. Indie games more your thing? I myself got a bundle of games that included the games Prison Architect (Normally $30 by itself for alpha game play access) , Uplink (a hacker-style game) Darwinia and Multiwinia (I haven’t installed these yet, so I can't really say much....), and DEFCON, which is a game that was inspired by the 1983 movie War Games. (All of those games sell normally for $10 apiece.) All of that ran me twenty. One thing though, each of these deals is only good for 24 hours, so make sure you keep checking back to see if a game you want is now on sale.
Also included in this sale are mini sales ( saleception? A sale within a sale?) called flash sales. These 8 hour long mini sales are voted on by the Steam community itself, so if a game you would like isn't going on one of the 24 hour sales, try voting for it to see if it will go on flash sale. Like getting achievements and earning experience and leveling up? Then get in on the ever popular Steam trading cards. In many, if not most of the games on steam, playtime will earn you trading cards for that game. If you can collect all the cards in a certain set, you get a badge for that game and a certain amount of XP points, which are used to “level up” your profile. (As far as I can tell, it doesn’t do much besides tell people how awesomely you game, but it's still cool when you see someone of a high level.)
All in all, this sale is a really great chance to pick up some great games from up and coming developers at a reasonable price. Developers also benefit from this sale because it opens their game up for playing by people who may not have bought the game at full price, but now that they have it, they can tell their friends, who may buy an awesome game at now full price. (Like I ended up doing with Kerbal Space Program after my roommate got it cheap). It also helps the developer get their name out there, so that people who like their older games are more willing to try newer titles. So get out there in Steam world and pick up a few great games at even better prices!
