Instead of exploring the cosmos in Elite Dangerous, I’m actually quite bored with that game again. But instead of what I’ve been doing and wasting money on games that I never play after paying for (for some reason that even I don’t know the answer to), I’ve been watching a particular Youtuber.
This Youtuber has been co-oping with a guy named ‘Aavak’ (who has a pretty cool Elder Dragon-like avatar) doing the “Factorio Beginner’s Guide”. This guide has helped me greatly with my factory. And I highly recommend it (if you haven’t updated to 0.13 yet).
Now the main Youtuber, who calls himself ‘shenryyr2’ has played quite a lot of games on his, I assume second channel (hence the ‘2’ at the end of his name). He mainly plays a game genre that I stay away from; real time strategy games. Mainly, games that require micro-managing of the player.
I feel these type of games are exceptionally tedious and complicated. But that’s just my opinion. I know there are several, like Shen, that play these. And that’s fine for me.
There are two particular games that have actually caught my interest enough to consider. Stellaris, and Stardew Valley.
The first one, feels like (to me), Spore’s Space Stage done right. Mainly due to how the races in the game, all of the people look like that race. But unlike Spore’s Space Stage, it is… immensely feature-detailed. It’s mainly based on starting out of your Homeworld and exploring the galaxy. And of course, you are definitely not alone out there.
But what makes the game really stand out from Spore, is the core features. You can name your Empire, which isn’t possible in the other game. You can also set how your Empire will work as a species, and other species. You can be a ruthless dictator. You can tell your species that getting slaves and “laying your eggs in their bodies” as Aavak had his, or be a peaceful Sloth race (as Shen had his).
As for the races, shockingly (from Aavak’s initial playthrough), there doesn’t seem to be a dragon-like race. The closest, is Hydras. But you can actually play as the Human race (but on a fictional Earth-like world).. or not even that.
Yeah, you can choose what type of world that your Homeworld will be (and what world your species prefers. The other types of worlds can be unlocked through research.
But this is where the game loses me. And that’s when you’re looking for a planet to colonize. And that is “tile size”. Typically (from Shen’s playthough), you’ll want to find good-sized planets that are 15 or more tiles, with 6 being the minimal and 25 being the maximum. Each tile may (or may not) have one or three types of resources; Food, Research, and Power. How you place your people, depends on how profitable that planet is. This alone just makes me feel uneasy. It’s one of those “with practice you’ll get better” things (which bug me to no end).
That’s not the only thing that bugs me. There is no Easy difficulty. The default is ‘Normal’. You can increase it, but not go below it.
I just..dunno. I do like how it (if this was ‘Spore 2’ in disguise), feels like a huge step up. But it also feels too BIG of a step up. With this, I am 75% against getting it, and 25% for getting it.
Overall, the game kind of feels too micromanaging for me. Again, maybe that’s just me. If the game ever went on sale…maybe I’d pick it up (as it does have an ingame tutorial for first time players. Maybe it might help me).
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And now we look into something completely different. It’s not a typical top-down RTS game, and the character selection screen feels kind of like Terraria. And that’s “Stardew Valley”.
Dan did a video about it last year. He actually liked it, but that was the only video he did (compared to two videos of Factorio). This game, from Shen’s playthrough, seems a lot more friendly to casual players.
In this, the player’s aging grandfather gives you a ‘gift’ for you to get away from city life of working at a dead end office job for the rest of your life. And this gift is a way to completely have a fresh new start, and live the life your grandfather feels you deserve; life on your own farm. He has given you the deed, and you can move right in to a happy little town named ‘Pelican City’. His only dying wish, is to keep the family name alive. Now in this game, you can also have your chosen player avatar get married and have a kid in it, if you wish(there is even an option that you can marry the same sex). But if you’re smart, you’ll hold up on it. Because really, you have all the time in the world. There’s really no rush.
This game is quite easy to get into, compared to the other one. The object, is pretty much what the player has set for their character. It can be to get all the money they can. It can be to get the biggest fish. It can be..pretty much anything. And I’m sure there’s just so much more to this game. I just haven’t seen it yet (from Shen’s playthrough).
Of course, farm life being as simple as life could be, has challenges. However, they are quite small from what I’ve seen so far. And that’s just to make sure you’re planting the right seeds in the right season, making sure you water them once everyday (with rainy days really being helpful in that regard), and keeping crows off your crops (but in the early game, you’ll be able to unlock a scarecrow to take care of that problem).
So really, there’s hardly any challenge. It really is a game for casual players. The only real thing keeping me away is how repetitive some of the activities can be. Thankfully, this can be somewhat broken down by the player finding other things to do.
The only real thing (that I’ve seen so far) that you have to worry about, is the Energy bar. This is drained from working or doing repetitive tasks like fishing. It can be slightly filled up by eating crops or other things. What’s awesome is there are no main needs to worry about. No need to eat or drink. But the only other need is sleeping. You must return home by 12am and sleep in your house, or your energy bar will go down. Yet what’s awesome about this is, you’ll have a full Energy bar by the time you wake up, which is not exactly possible IRL (unless you sleep 8+ hours or drink lots of coffee)… you know who you hard-working people are.
Final verdict for Stardew Valley, is currently 65% for and 35% against. I feel cautiously optimistic. It looks like a fun, slow game for anyone to enjoy. It doesn’t give that “git gud” feeling. What it does, it gives a feeling of “there’s no need to rush. Take it slow. Relax. You are in no real danger.” Plus, what I hear, this game was made and maintained by only one guy. That is amazing. The level of love for this game and his fanbase. We really need to see this more often.
So those are my thoughts on both of these games. They both deserved a mention. There is another game that’s appearing on my radar as a possible ‘want’ candidate (No Man’s Sky). But that’s for another day. Depends if either Shen or Aavak decide to do a playthrough on this. Would be awesome.
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EDIT: Stardew Valley is no longer on the ‘want’ list. It’s not even supportive of me, because it doesn’t support 1824×768. It’s another sign the devs are phasing out 4:3, as the highest supported resolution is 1280×768. I really hate this. It feels nothing more than a gimmick to force people to get more expensive hardware.
I tried to deal with it, but my head refuses. I get a really bad headache from eyestrain, seeing the bright big colors on the screen. There’s not even a brightness setting.
It’s a real shame. I really wanted to play it, but my body isn’t ready. And it pains me to ask for a refund because of it.