Recent reviews by The Zealous Sea Cucumber

It's great for what it is: a village simulator, populated by exiles. Build a little corner of civilization in the wilderness. It's minimalistic and cute. There is a little bit of scale to the difficulty, but overall it's pretty tough (and rewarding) to see your little village grow.

Easily the best $20 I've spent on entertainment since Cultist Simulator. Loads of fun, perfect progression, tons of variety of stuff to do to keep things engaging.

My one complaint ~~is~~ was that some of the relevant data is hidden. It's impossible to see how many customers you have or project each night, how much your employees get paid, and some other little things that would make it a little easier to manage the restaurant aspect.

But after playing it some more, I don't know that it's really a problem. I've never been short on money and not having that system means that I can focus on the fun parts instead of looking too closely at optimizing things.

Still, the game is very chill, and I've never had to worry about balancing things too closely. If you don't like the restaurant part, it's easy to hire employees, train them, and have them do all the work. If you enjoy it yourself, you don't have to hire the help. Pretty clever system.

Overall it's a great casual ... I want to say roguelike, but that's not quite right. It's like Spelunky in that the level changes every run, but you never play a different character. There's a great variety of equipment and things to discover, though, and it perfectly scratches an itch I have for something relaxing and fun.

i should have learned to play the piano instead

This is one of those games that simulates a job, but not too closely. The execution follows the premise pretty closely: you're an astronaut who junks ships for money.

So, to start off with the bad: the storyline is very heavy-handed pro-socialist. Anti-capitalism, secret unions, corporate greed, and supervisory incompetence are all recurring plot points. I think that part is trite, childish, and the game (so far) has even worked in contravention of them: you're earning tons of money and on track to pay down a "debt" incurred at the beginning of the game. Maybe there's a twist, though, that'll come along later to derail you.

Anyway, the gameplay itself is really good. It's well-paced and a lot is either implied or builds on previously learned skills. I was priding myself on surviving several close calls until I finally needed a "spare" (the game's version of a continue) after a stupid mistake. The physics in the game were better than I realized, and when I used the gravity gun to try to push away something weighing several thousand kilograms (beyond the tool's capacity) of course it pushed me into a wall instead, crushing my suit and handing me my first death around eight ships into the game.

The music is really nice for the first few hours, but gets repetitive. The audio cues are really good, though, with a high-tempo track that drops in to indicate danger and HUD distortion for radiation. The overall "feel" of the game is very good, I just don't care for the story.

Anyway, it's a nice little puzzler. I strongly recommend playing open shift if you want a more relaxing experience. The other modes have a 15-minute timer and, along with an optional oxygen drain, I found that too abrupt to make satisfying progress in one session.

I've been reading a lot of books lately from the age of sail (including the Aubrey/Maturin series), and was yearning for a particular sort of naval game. Of course I've got Sid Meyer's Pirates!, which is a classic. I tried Assassin's Creed: Black Flag on a whim, but still haven't gotten to the sailing part. Then I saw this for sail, and it caught my eye.

It turns out that it's almost perfect. I don't particularly care for the setting; it's not attractive to play as Germans during WWII, but I can look past that. Everything has to have a reason, and sinking tonnage across the Atlantic is enough to play a Uboat captain.

It's obvious that a *lot* of care has been put into the game. From the very beginning, there's some warnings about realism, and they're well-justified. I have a mix between sim and realism, and have dialed it back some to enjoy things more. I used the presets to get started, but tweaked things to be a bit more fun. The game offers options all the way from playing in strictly first person perspective and using a hydrophone yourself to detect ships to a very basic simulation that requires only point-and-click, with a lot of options in-between. If you want to calculate torpedo solutions yourself, trying to set them to impact a moving ship on the high seas, you can do that. If you just want to fire away, you can do that, too.

The game lets you customize the enemy AI a little, too, which is very helpful. My first run, I thought I'd just sneak up and blow up a cargo ship in the middle of a convoy. With a fresh burst of confidence after sinking some ships in the tutorial, I was sure it would be easy.

I couldn't be more wrong.

The enemy warships should be respected, and I had to keep an eye on my visibility. It turns out Uboats are pretty delicate things, too. I suffered an impact, and in the course of trying to dive to hide, my descent became uncontrolled and I was sunk to the bottom the Atlantic in another Allied victory. After that, I got a lot more cautious.

It can be a lot of fun to go out in the Uboat. The environment is beautiful, and the developers have put a lot of love and care into crafting a great experience for you. The music stations are limited for now, but they're selling the game for less than $20. I'm surprised at how much they've already done with what they've got, and I'm really hopeful that they'll continue on their roadmap to create a perfect game.

My one, small wish is that the devs themselves or a very talented fan will make a total conversion mod for the game. Let us play in an alternate world where someone else has a Uboat Navy in a variety of scenarios; or better yet, let us play as pirates with letters of marque, capturing cargo, prisoners, and sinking ships for profit.

As it is, though, this is a wonderful, enjoyable game, and I'm grateful that I get to play it. If captaining your own boat in the industrial age is something you think might be fun, then I highly recommend you get it.

A really good management sim that requires little clicking and can be forgiving if you make a mistake. The game has a good sense of humor, winking at the player and indulging in a bit of fiction for the sake of fun.

It's the most innovative shooter I've played in years.

Completely changes the game. Reminiscent of Carmen Sandiego, if she were dealing in the occult and could barter for people's lives.

I didn't care for it. It lacks the atmosphere and writing of Sunless Sea and goes off in a very different direction.

This is the creepiest one. I haven't been able to complete it yet; it's quite difficult but it explores a lot more lore than the original. You'll explore the meanings and lore of the setting and the mechanics of painting.