Sometimes you play a game and can tell right away that it’s going to give you Thoughts™, but that wasn’t the case with Technotopia. My time with it started out the same as any other game, doing my best to get absorbed into the world it crafted and gameplay mechanisms it implemented, all the while taking notes on the side to prepare for the inevitable review. And then things changed. The narrative beats slowly began to go off the rails and I went from raising an eyebrow occasionally to having one permanently cocked. Futurist stories have the capacity to hold up a mirror to our current world or speculate on what tomorrow may bring, and yet Technotopia frequently feels like it gets so lost in critiquing what’s happening now that it forgets to provide that extra layer of futuristic abstraction. This is less satire, and more someone stating their beliefs directly to the player. And let me say, some of those beliefs are … questionable to say the least.
Tag: City Builder
Minami Lane Review
It’s a great time of year for cozy games. With the weather getting colder (though where I am it’s still unseasonably warm) and the days shorter, there’s nothing quite like curling up with a welcoming game. Well, maybe not literally; it’s hard to curl up at a computer desk without getting into spine-mangling poses. Be that as it may, jumping into Minami Lane at this time of year turned out to be an excellent choice on my part. It’s a brief experience, but one which I absorbed in bite-sized portions, making it seem longer than it actually was. And for my money, if you like the idea of a city-builder game but get easily overwhelmed, it’s well worth a look.
Terroir: A Lesson in Winemaking
Games can be great at teaching. Titles like Influent attempt to game-ify the process of learning a new language, while games like Papers, Please opt for a more “immersive” approach, teaching the player not about real-world events specifically, but about the circumstances that no doubt surrounded the events it parallels. What I find particularly interesting, though, is the games that don’t so much “teach” as they “encourage to learn”. I’d argue that games like the Civilization series are a perfect example of this; while they don’t specifically mirror history (unless Gandhi was secretly a psychotic warmonger), I know of several friends who have started researching historical civilizations and figures simply because they got a taste of the available knowledge in a game of Civ. It’s in this category of games that Terroir finds itself, both to its benefit and detriment.
Welcome to Buttsville: My Week as Mayor in Community Inc.
I arrived in town bright and early, and was quickly greeted by a company representative. Almost immediately, they began rattling through their “best practices” list that every new hire has to hear. To be honest, I didn’t really mind; this wasn’t my first run as mayor, but, seeing as I’d been out of the game for a while, it was good to get a refresher course. Something seemed off, though. The rep’s ear-to-ear grin and exuberant shaking of my hand seemed to mask the fact that they were more than a little scatter-brained. Within minutes, they jumped from the acquisition of Lings (citizens of the town) to resource gathering and management, and then into combat and trading.
“But wait, how do I—”
“Aaaaand that’s it! Good luck!” cried the rep as they dived past a Mushface (a race of lumbering mushroom-folk) into the town’s dimensional portal. I looked at the Mushface, confusion and worry plastered all over my face, but he just shrugged and walked through the portal. An auspicious start.
Block’hood: The Environmentally-Conscious City Builder (GameSpew)
I found Block’hood to be deeply unsettling.
Now, that’s something of an odd emotion to feel when playing a cheery, colourful city-builder, no? With its intricately detailed cities (known as “‘Hoods”) that can consist of dozens of structures carefully stacked on one another, it seems like a lovingly optimistic view of the future. Catwalks criss-cross between constructs, providing elevated walkways to navigate the vertical landscape. Glasses clink in bars, internet cafes emit bleeps and whirs, and clothing stores sell the trendiest fashions to citizens. It’s a veritable utopia.
Suddenly, things collapse. Businesses fall into disrepair. Apartments cave in and lose all sense of life. Protesters line the streets as black clouds swirl in the sky. The veil is lifted, and the weight of everything you’ve done comes crashing down with the city you worked so hard to build. The clothes in those stores were manufactured in sweatshops around the corner, which in turn received their supplies from pollution-producing cotton fields. The internet cafes distributed electronics that were made with plastic, and therefore, oil. The apartments were constructed on the graves of trees, driving out assorted wildlife in the process.
Olive's Game Garden 