PixlBit

I jumped around a lot today. I looked through a list of games in the Xbox store labeled as sims and downloaded a few and tried them out. 

FIrst, though, I went to get farther in Railway Empire. The confusing controls got me too frustrated to keep at it. Mark played it on free-play mode and started having a lot of fun with it. I watched him create tunnels and bridges and ride first-person in the locomotives. It's really cool outside of campaign mode. 

Rock of Ages II: I got this on a sale. It has a humor and animation style ripped right from Terry Gilliam and Monty Python. You roll a large rock at opponents castles. The other side can build obsticles to slow you down. It goes back and forth until someone destroys the other's castle. It's cool, but I kept flying off the sometimes narrow path. It's like Marble Madness in that way.

Virtual Villagers Origins 2: This is a free-to-play sim where you control villagers to farm and whatnot. It was clearly designed for touch screens, and I couldn't get the controls to do anything with my controller. I didn't persist for long. 

Lord of the Rings Adventure Card Game: This was a Games with Gold freebie this week. It's a fine card game with a surprising amount of voice work trying to tell a story between battles. I got frustrated, however, when a shield card I applied to several characters didn't actually shield them from damage. I'm sure I did something wrong, but I'd had enough anyway. 

Bad North: This is sort of a simplified Banner Saga but in real-time. You defend islands from the Viking hoards. You control a few squads of defenders and move them from square to square in real time. Time slows down when you are selecting squads but never stops. You earn coins for successfully defending buildings. These coins can be used to specialize and upgrade your squads. Then you defend as many islands as you can as the unstoppable Vikings proceed to conquer. You have to chose the right islands to defend or the overall invasion will overtake you and end the game. It's fairly unforgiving. Get all your squads killed and you have to start over. Get stranded on an island with no nearby island to move to, and you lose as well. 

I really liked the game and played it for several hours. I created archers and lancers to perform different strategic functions. I only got to about 15% completion. It gets challenging. The graphical style is simplistic but charming. Controls are easy and quick.

You can escape an island you are losing on by jumping in the Viking ships that land. You can also send a squad to a house to replentish their numbers, but it takes precious time. 

It's a great little game. 

Well, that's a day. Here's the video game book section in my library:Not that much, really.