A Big Games Event Is In Melbourne This Weekend
Plus Minishoot Adventures, racoons that have embraced capitalism and old games that are now extra old
Hello button buddies!
This week Alice and Tim are going to a big gaming event, playing indies, revisiting capitalist racoons and celebrating the birthdays of old games.
Are you going to be at Dreamhack on the weekend? Let us know in the comments what you’re looking forward to.
See you there!
Dreamhack is this weekend!
By Alice
There are three really big events on the Australian gaming calendar: PAX, SXSW and Dreamhack. Dreamhack is special, not just because it’s the only one of the three festivals brave enough to use actual words in its branding, but because it’s Australia’s biggest dedicated esports event.
While it is nowhere near as well attended as PAX or SXSW, and it’s significantly more niche, there is something about the atmosphere of an esports event that you can’t get anywhere else. It’s not just a room of nerds with similar interests learning more about a shared hobby, but it’s a room full of passionate people getting to watch the best in the world play their favourite games in a way mere mortals could not imagine.
Players will be vying for their share of a $150k+ prize pool, which will certainly add some excitement.
But there’s also the same community element you get at other gaming events: There’s the artist alley, a stage where people will be presenting panels and playing D&D, and just the opportunity to meet people who like the stuff you like. There will also be influencers, which I’m told some people enjoy.
If you want to head down, it’s at Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne from this Friday (the 26th) to Sunday. Tickets are currently 20% off, which is rarely a good sign for attendance, but there should be some really good cosplays around, if you’re into that. Plus, tickets are pretty reasonably priced compared to other gaming events, with three day passes for $99 and one day for $45.
Mostly, though, just go and soak up that atmosphere.
What to play
Coming to Game Pass this week are a trio of brand new and genuinely much-anticipated games. First is Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes, which is inspired by classic RPGs and sports a wonderful art style, but with a hook that you can choose from more than 100 heroic characters. (Including shark people!) Then there’s Another Crab’s Treasure, a silly underwater soulslike where you can equip different garbage items as shells on your quest to buy back your original. And Manor Lords, which is a PC-only mediaeval strategy game with city building and social sim elements. Those paying extra for Game Pass Ultimate also get Star Wars Jedi Survivor, which was one of my (Tim’s) favourite games last year.
PlayStation Plus Extra also gets a brand new game this week, in Tales of Kenzera: Zau. It’s a 2.5D metroidvania with an emotional narrative, which is a well proven combo.
Fortnite now works with Guitar controllers! Sure, Fortnite Festival Jam tracks cost twice as much as Rock Band DLC ever did, but it’s better than nothing!
Free on the Epic Games Store this week are Industria and LISA: Definitive Edition. Industria is a post Cold War first person shooter set in East Berlin (cheery) and LISA is an extremely violent 2D RPG.
Mini ship, big adventure
By Tim
As someone who enjoys the gameplay of twin-stick shooters but tends to get tired of them pretty quickly, I’ve recently found a game that perfectly delivers something I never knew I sorely needed: a bullet hell Legend of Zelda.
Minishoot’ Adventures is a game with a frankly terrible name, but everything else about it is phenomenally executed. You play as an adorable little floating ship, drifting and boosting through a cheerful overworld / dungeon setup inspired directly by the Zeldas of the early 90s. Various enemy types each follow their own movement styles and bullet patterns, making combat a matter of slick dodging and skillful aiming.
Moving around just feels great in this game, and the level of polish from a team of just two developers is astounding. The music and audio design in particular is a constant joy, with chunky bullet smacking sounds, crunchy enemy explosions, tinkling debris and a dynamic score giving you loads of aural feedback as well as a sense of sweeping adventure.
More than anything I just love how well the flying and shooting gameplay has been melded with an old-school action RPG progression. There are item upgrades that open up new traversal and combat possibilities, a full skill tree to improve your loadout, hidden friends to rescue and treasures to find, high-speed obstacle courses, massive bosses and a big map to navigate. There are also a number of difficulty and accessibility options if you find the bullet-dodging too hectic (or not hectic enough!).
The game is currently only on Steam, but a controller is an absolute must. I played the whole thing through on Steam Deck, and it’s ideal for portable or otherwise consolised PCs if you have one. For everyone else, this is absolutely one to look out for upon its inevitable move to Switch.
Bricks, Boards and Beginnings
by Alice
Alas, the cold of doom has meant that I haven’t really wanted to play anything than comfort board games this past week. When you’re recovering from a cold, there’s something about the idea of learning to do something new that just feels like a bridge too far. So, wanting more than just Wingspan (still playing 2-4 games a day, though), we got out Racoon Tycoon.
What I find interesting about Racoon Tycoon is just how much it changes depending on which end game trigger you aim for.
For the uninitiated, Racoon Tycoon is like Monopoly, in that you try to claim railroads, resources and towns, and hoard money. But it’s unlike Monopoly in that it’s actually good.
There are three different ways to trigger the end of Racoon Tycoon
1. All the railroads are purchased
2. All the towns are purchased
3. One player gains $1000 and declares themselves the winner
Let’s break this down.
Railroads are perhaps the smartest and easiest path to victory, because when paired with a town, they give the town two extra points. If you have more towns than railroads, you’re leaving points on the table. However, depending on the cash reserves of your fellow players, railroads can get expensive at auction. If you’ve levelled up your resource collection buildings, getting towns could be a good path while the other players mess with railroads.
Getting $1000 seems impossible. I’m excited in games where I have $100 cash in reserve. This weekend I plan to see if it’s even doable, but that is going to require the other players to also only be going for cash, otherwise it’ll be too easy for them to buy up all the railroads for cheap (while you save your money) and destroy you at the end.
Racoon Tycoon is one of those games that’s fun for everyone (aged 7 and up). It’s a game primary school kids will enjoy the cute animal pictures in, and grandma will enjoy schooling you in capitalism. It’s one I strongly recommend.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
Now 10: Monument Valley Is 10 years old retro? Yep, sorry about it but you’re ancient. Monument Valley was a revelation, particularly on iPad, echoing the console indie push for poignant and simply told narratives with elegant gameplay, but featuring a design built entirely for touch. Every frame of the game’s impossible geometry, pastel backgrounds and cheeky crow people is a work of visual art, and the puzzles (which involve rearranging the Escher-like paths and discovering secret shortcuts by shifting perspectives) are smart but tolerable. Unlike many mobile games from a decade ago, it is both still available on app stores and still absolutely worth playing.
Now 30: Final Fantasy VI The final game in the series before things went 3D (and worldwide) with FF7, this is a game that shows Square at the absolute height of its 16-bit powers. Together with Chrono Trigger and Trials of Mana it represents the culmination of all the company’s incredible work on Super Nintendo, but of the three games FF6 has more reverence for the turn-based structure that started it all, as well as a more epic story and more memorable characters. From the steampunk opening to the incredible music throughout, and from the iconic opera scene to the final fight against a literal god, it remains one of gaming's finest stories. It’s also the subject of many of illustrator Yoshitaka Amano’s best pieces.
Now 45: Head On You’ve likely never heard of Sega’s early arcade maze-racer, which is odd considering other similarly influential games from the same year (Lunar Lander, Asteroids) are considered some of the most important games of the time. Maybe it’s because in retrospect Head On is quite similar to the infinitely more popular Pac-Man, which hit bars and arcades one year later. You play as a race car who, like Pac-Man, needs to move over all the dots on screen to clear the level. But instead of ghosts there are rival cars you need to avoid, or speed past with a dedicated accelerator pedal.