Try it Tuesday Round-up
I need a cooler name for this. The Try it Tuesday Report? What Happened Wednesday? The Day After Tuesday? I don’t know!!!
Regardless, last night I played host to a few indie games that I was excited to check out. It’d been a bit since I’d done a proper Try it Tuesday, so it was a welcome change of pace. Featured on the channel last night were three unique titles with no real similarities between the lot of them: Warm Snow, Hero’s Hour, and Hidden Deep. I figured rather than doing a “round-up” video every week, which is an exhausting output of content, I could do a quick post to summarize the general vibe for those who may just want a synopsis, and maybe at the end of every month I can do a round-up video featuring some of my favorites – even if they were all great, I don’t know. Ideas!
Anyway, here’s the summary of last night’s Try it Tuesday menu.
Links to Humble Bundle and GOG are affiliate links that will support the stream, if used.
Warm Snow
I’d heard rumblings of this games from some of my fellow streamer friends, and definitely had a curiosity going into it. Warm Snow looks like it’s going to be a specific type of game, at least to me it did, and turns out to be something much more satisfying than I could have ever imagined. It’s a rogue-like where you’re playing a warrior who is tasked with carving your way through The Five Great Clans to save the world from utter destruction. The game is rich in Chinese lore, the skill tree, relic boosts, weapons, abilities, and everything mesh so well together, and the general feel of the game is so satisfying that I found it hard to put down. By one of my last runs, I had created a build that was shredding through everything in its path to my shock and delight. If I had to liken it to any other game that is out there today, I would say perhaps Wizard of Legend, Children of Morta, or perhaps even Hades – the highly acclaimed award-winning rogue-like coveted by all who have played it, and with good reason. There’s a demo available for Warm Snow as of this writing, and I highly recommend checking out this title as soon as you can.
Steam page
Hero’s Hour
An obvious homage to Heroes of Might and Magic, albeit one that I didn’t pick up on entirely because I didn’t play HOMM, Hero’s Hour is a delightfully adorable, but deceptively difficult, turn-based strategy game. It has some depth, but it’s accessible to most. Battles are usually played out in an automatic sense, though you can intervene to some extent with pre-battle planning, and in-battle spellcasting and buffs. Exploration is deep, as you’re given a wide but procedurally generated map to work with. Enemies will come and go, and you must conquer them as they make their way towards your kingdom. I absolutely adored my time with this game, and had difficulty putting it down. I couldn’t help thinking about my time playing For The King, which is also as difficult, and not entirely all that similar. But the map exploration and the loot did have similarities for me. As the chat kept bringing up Heroes of Might and Magic, I felt myself wanting to go back to play those games, as well as more Hero’s Hour, of course. If you love the chaos and strategy of Stream Raiders, Heroes of Might and Magic, and the random chance exploration of something like For The King, I would recommend Hero’s Hour for sure.
Steam Page
Humble Bundle
GOG
As a side note, there’s another HOMM-inspired game from some of the same developers that is coming out in the near future called Songs of Conquest – and if you like that style of game, it’s worth keeping an eye on!
Hidden Deep
This game was an absolute treat, but very difficult to master controls to. Hidden Deep was getting a lot of comparisons to Barotrauma, another 2D sci-fi horror game with a similar vibe that features co-op play. Hidden Deep definitely dips into the movie reference realm, clearly taking inspiration from the Alien franchise and naming some of the characters stuff like Hicks and Paxton. You’re mostly playing as either one, or a group of, researchers? Expeditionists? I’m not sure. People that work underground. They’re tasked with various missions they have to go on, and you’re tasked with not only figuring out what those missions are and how to complete them, but keeping your crew alive along the way. Every map seemed like it brought on a new and horrifying challenge, and the hilarity of it was that half of the horror presented was in the failure that you met from trying various… things… to complete the mission. I think I could have strung together a Jackass-style highlight reel of spectacular deaths that my crew met at my incompetent hands, which made for some truly funny moments to bear witness to. What a fantastic game this truly is. Made me think immediately of Darkwood, probably because of atmosphere, graphics, and controls. Another game it reminded me of? Distrust – an isometric rogue-like that’s directly inspired by The Thing. While Darkwood is top-down and more akin to something like Resident Evil, Hidden Deep just has a really great sci-fi horror feel that, like every other title on the lineup last night, I had a hard time putting down. It’s still in early access, but it’s a high-tier recommend for me.
Steam page
Humble Bundle
GOG
