I Recommend: Bad North

The best techniques are passed on by the survivors 

Playing games is a sort of a thing that I like to do, not sure if you've noticed. Sitting down and diving into games both unfathomably massive and complicated as well as those that are simple and relatively small both form perhaps the most core aspects who and what I am. That's partially why I started this series of games that I recommend, because otherwise I'd spend all my time talking about these big extravagant affairs of gaming when the smaller more intimate one's are just as important and special to me. They're just not the sorts of products that would slide into any other discussion, which is why it's important I don't forget to cover this series like I've done something like twice in a row now. (That's an angry message aimed directly at me.) With that in mind, the game I have to bring up today is one I only actually came across thanks to that ol' Epic free games deal that they love doing, which has me begrudgingly admitting that they certainly do seem to have a rather solid track record so far of offered games. (Doesn't mean I have to love every single thing that Epic store does) The title in question is: Bad North.

Bad North, or specifically for the version I'm playing, 'Bad North: Jotunn Edition' is a frightfully simple strategy game which answers the question of what could I possible do to kill time whilst I spend an actual week setting up my modded Oblivion run. (Why do I need three different mod organisers to sort things out? How did the community allow things to get this convoluted!?) The answer being; I get lost in a world of polygonal simplicity where all the game consists of is a 'king of the hill'-esque scenario that just is built upon level after level with small nuggets of tactical planning thrown in there. But don't let that get to sounding intimidating for you, trust me when I say that 'tactics' is a phrase that typically gets me running for the hills too, rather I'm talking the sorts of rock-paper-scissors tactics that you take to so easily you don't even realise you're being challenged until you've been hopelessly pulled into the cycle of island hopping.

Plausible Concept's Bad North presents the player as a group of Viking-looking polygons sitting on a mostly desolate island save for a single building present there. Over the course of the level a few ships with gently drift into dock, with their path being predictably straight for cohesive planning purposes, and a party of marauders will try to storm the island and destroy the building. All you have to do is guide your army of warriors to mash themselves into the invaders and keep your home from being set on fire. That's pretty much it, I just laid out the entire gameplay loop of this whole title. Yet I'm being honest when I say that within that simple premise there's enough game to keep you on-your-toes and hooked for a few hours at the very least. (And sometimes a few hours is all you're looking for.)

First off, it extends itself by having a barrage of seemingly endless scenarios just like that level I just described, but randomly generated with a few conceptual consistencies so that you develop and maintain some idea of what's going on. The islands that you come across might be bigger and with more than one building to protect, and that swelling in size will mean that a proportional force of enemies will come to greet you. Maybe they'll be so many enemies that you cannot devote your warriors to protect all side at once, something you'll have to figure out. Or maybe, as the levels go on, you'll find yourself facing enemy troops who are more powerful and capable of overpowering your ordinary troops. These are variables that occur naturally and are conveyed to the player through either a general overview of the island they choose to travel to for the mission or through a very barebones user interface. Both ways in which the team devoted themselves to the concept of a 'minimalistic tactical experience'.  

As the screenshots have likely succinctly imparted, minimalism is the key design philosophy that drove majority of the development decisions. The bare, yet elegant, featureless attackers and defenders, the control scheme which literally consists of little more than clicking, and even the core progression that is very straightforward and comprehensive. Tactical games have this tendency to appear big and intimidating unless you dedicate yourself to memorising all of these rules about 'unit counters' and 'resource nodes' and 'development costs' and all of these topics that are least worthy of entire dedicated tutorial pages to explain them. Trust me, as someone who's actually quite a big fan of 4x titles like Stellaris and Civilisation, they can take up a lot of your time and mind just to come to initial grips with. What I feel that Plausible Concept have succeeded in doing with Bad North, is in whittling down all of that chafe into bare simple basics that are unimposing, approachable and still fun. Now that's not to say I think Bad North makes the perfect stepping stone to being able to enjoy 4x mind you, that's still a pretty substantial leap, but I still think it makes for a great strategy game for those who don't think they like strategy because it's just too much to absorb at once. (Which I think is a genuine criticism of the genre type.)

Though that simplicity doesn't mean Bad North has stepped away from strategy staples such as progression, indeed there is a rouge heart to this little game, so some form of progression does need to be instituted so that each run can be measured against the last. Minimalism is the soul here, yet again, in order to maintain that all important approachability. Every building you manage to protect throughout the duration of the assault rewards you with coin related to how big the building was, coin that you can then spend on upgrades to make your troops more powerful. Additionally, some islands come with standing armies already upon them, that will join your roster if you manage to complete that level with them. Of course, the risk comes that if an army is ever completely destroyed during a raid they're gone for good, but Bad North, once again being much more friendly compared to the rest of the genre, offers ways to replay levels if you screw up badly and manage to lose an army unjustly.

By the late game, and where things become interesting, the real hook of the game comes when the enemies start reinforcing their troops with  three or four archetypes that directly counteract yours. There are archers, warriors and Pikemen, each with an obvious advantage and disadvantage to range and melee attack strength that can be deduced. It's up to the player to match armies with their counters, whilst positioning defensively to keep the island safe, and there's even a few specially powered armies you can earn along the way in order to sprinkle just that extra something into the variety of the formula. Throw all of that in together and you've got a surprisingly clever little tactical defence game that naturally introduces all of it's ingenuity to the player and even at it's peak is never too much to come to grips with. Making Bad North an absolutely great time for those who are here to digest short sessions of strategy action without becoming too invested (as one might with 'Into the Breach' and it's 'every mistake is deadly' policy) or getting dragged into a game that lasts months. (As one would with 'Civilisation' Because of course.)

Bad North is the sort of game that I would recommended simply because of it's wide spread possible appeal to literally any kind of game player out there. Those that are used to small chunks of bitesize game that they'll get off their phone, will find an easy to latch onto experience. Some that might be into some types of games but perhaps not so much strategy, will discover that this is a very casual yet rewarding time. And strategy fans I'm sure will be able to pick up on the understated depth in the game's mechanics that are just enough to stimulate. And beyond all of that, I love the game because visually the idea of utilising a minimalist artstyle to portray Nordic snow islands has a simple beauty to it that I deeply resonate with. What's more, the game is less than £12 on Steam, so it certainly meets it's value proposition. If casual strategy is in anyway your thing, then so is 'Bad North: Jotunn Edition'.

My month of Rougelites

 I don't plan this stuff, it just happens

Note: As I've never heard anyone satisfyingly explain the difference between the two; I'm going to use Rougelite and Rougelike interchangeably until someone shouts at me. 'kay?

So as we lay January to rest, I look back and realise; I've been gorging out on one of my least favourite gaming subgenres. Why have I done that to myself? To what end? But first let me be clear; I have nothing inherently against the quality of rougelites, they are just so often antithetical to what I seek out of a gameplay experience that the fact I play that at all is baffling. As in, there must be something seriously screwed up about my sensibilities with the amount of them that I play. In pure subjectivity, I'm honestly really taken aback by how exceptional the genre is, quite often turning out classics and masterpieces that are must plays for genre fans, but I'm not a subjective fellow, oh no. Thus let me take you into the mindset of why I've literally been playing them almost non-stop over these last 30-odd days. Maybe to find vindication, maybe just in order to diagnose myself with whatever mental illness has stuck me in this spot.

So first of all, the rub; what is my problem with Rougelites? Ever since the first of their number that I played, which I think was Spelunky, I've realised that I feel I lose more enjoyment than I gain out of playing these sorts of games. (Does that make them my least favourite subgenre? No, I said that for effect.) My issue really comes thusly; I'm the type who likes to shove himself at a brick wall again and again until he gets through it. Obstinate, would be the perfect adjective to describe it. That means even when I'm playing an RPG and have hit an encounter that I'm starting to feel a tad under levelled for, I'll pull out every single stop I can muster to turn it into a  win, no matter the cost. Eventually that might mean resorting to simply stupid levels of resource sinking rather than just sitting back and accepting that I have lost, but if I manage to brute force it I'll be ecstatic. Thus, any genre which expects me to lose regularly in order to learn from it, is already clashing with my innate playstyle.

Then there's the restarting, oh god the restarting. The signature feature of roguelites and rougelikes, aside from their random nature, is the starting from the beginning every time you lose. I hate that. God do I hate it. Because as much as I'm used to the sting of defeat, it comes with the promise that I can learn and improve so as to win eventually. But when I'm kicked back several hours in order to start from scratch, it just demoralises the heck out of me. I recognise that this is my own fallacy and I really need to learn how to let go, but I've always been this way. I'd rather just give up than watch everything crumble to nothing, and I hate giving up already so an entire game loop built around that is just about the worst thing imaginable to a player like me. When I finally manage to get over that, maybe I'll be capable of that Iron Man Xcom playthrough which I know I have to do eventually. (Then again, maybe I can just swallow my pride and do that run on easy difficulty first... urg, that hurts to even consider.)

But then, why oh why have I kept playing them over and over throughout the years, or at the very least attempting to before driving myself loopy. I tried to give Don't Starve a go, had a good few months of Isaac, but never do I manage to ride them the distance. It's to my own detriment because even I recognise that some these games really are great. (For Isaac I actually managed to defeat the Heart once, but that's probably the furthest into a Rougelite that I've ever been) And just to be clear, it is through no conscious effort to 'better myself' which draws me to these games, I just always somehow end up playing them. As such it was only really at the last week of January when I looked back and realised that 90% of my playtime has been oddly more frustration fuelled then usual.

=

Primarily I was playing Pillars of Eternity after finishing Tyranny and loving it. (So far I think Tyranny was better but I appreciate the ways in which Pillars core gameplay systems complicates themselves) And then, by the law of surprise, I ended up with Crying Suns. Now that was a game I'd actually heard of before, but never really given a lot of attention towards. Thus it was only after I'd been through the tutorial when I realised 'crap, this game is gonna tick me off.' Yet, I will admit that what I did play of my first run through Suns, was incredibly fun. Although the way in which I did ultimately snuff it was soul-crunching, in the way that these games always, inevitably, are to me.

Crying Suns puts you in charge of a ship that's making it's way through post-apocalyptic space, (I swear that makes sense, it does) thus there's a lot of dealing with managing systems, random encounters and ship-to-ship combat; although all presented in a very easy to absorb manner. I found the game easy enough to get into, and will probably pick it up again, but it's still odd that I played it in the first place. Am I a glutton? Then there's Bad North, a basic hut defence game which complicates itself through sceanrios rather than through gameplay, and it has honestly proven to be the one of the most palatable rougelites I've ever put my hands on just because of how easy it is to get back into the swing of things. It's just vikings riding from island to island and holding back invaders, simple enough to be appealing and deep enough to keep me interested. But if there was one game of this subgenre that really turned me around to the idea of these games, without me ever realising it, it was Hades.

Hades is a game that won accolade after accolade last year, and I was absolutely late to the party. It was only coming into the new year that I got around to playing the game, and it was coming off of Bastion so I was really expecting a game more in that vein. Ultimately, Hades is mechanically similar to Bastion, but it's heart revolves around that 'try, die and repeat' formula that I usually hate, but with Hades I just find it intoxicating. I think it comes down to the cavalier charm of the game, the way that failure is brushed off and the very story of the game unfurls before you with each failed escape attempt. In many ways, getting knocked out of the race and socialising with the denizens of the underworld is your reward for braving the depths once more, and it brings me around to the whole 'repetition' affair to a degree I wouldn't have thought possible a few months back. So if I want to know why I've come around to a subgenre I hate, the answer is Supergiant Games. (They snuck in there and converted me, the rascals)

I've always been one who greatly respects the genres that I'm not exactly in love with, because most of the time I recognise it as just a situation where I'm either not smart or not flexible enough to engage properly. And given the chance, I'll always give it a go to try and get into those sorts of games, just for sheer desire of wanting to learn new things. I suck at strategy games, and yet Civilisation, Empire at War and Stellaris are some of my favourite games to... well, be bad at. Racing games elude me, but the Forza series is an undeniable masterpiece. (Even if the 'Horizon' series hides a conspiracy everyone's too scared to talk about) Fighting games... just the less said about my talent at them the better. (But my 'Killer Instinct' days really ruled!) I suppose what I'm trying to say is; even if you think you're out of your wheelhouse, maybe it's worth keeping an open mind in case you spot something new and special that you might have otherwise missed out on. Or just don't bother check the tags of the games you buy off of Steam. Might have skipped on Hades if I did.