Tharsis
PC/PS4
The first and only time I’ve succeeded at a play-through of Tharsis I was forced to make the following decision: With just one turn left I could either take my chances and risk the lives of my three remaining crew members, or I could slightly increase my chances of winning by killing one off and feeding their remains to the survivors. Welcome to the dark, hopeless space nightmare that is Tharsis. Developed by Choice Provisions, Tharsis is a dice-based rogue-like game where the goal is to continually repair your space shuttle and survive the ten week journey to Mars. Each week lasts one turn, and with each passing week new problems emerge at random that need fixing: your greenhouse may become contaminated thus depleting food supplies, the laboratory may have been hit by a meteoroid strike which will cause hull damage if left unrepaired, a system failure may render the medical bay useless, etc.
Each character begins with a number of dice to roll which decrease by one each turn. The core gameplay is based around the management of each character’s dice rolls, maxing out at a possible five dice per turn. Dice can be used to repair damage to modules thus nullifying their impending threat, or they can be held as research points which can be cashed out with a variety of effects: one research point could repair three damage, three could heal a player, six could grant immunity to injuries for that turn. Each playable character, of which you choose four, have a set skill which is either passive or can be employed with an adequate dice roll.
Tharsis’ learning curve is somewhat steep: my first win came after countless attempts spread over the course of seven hours. Like most rogue-like games, a successful play-through of Tharsis relies heavily on chance. While a successful journey requires a decent amount of luck regarding which crises emerge and what numbers you roll, Tharsis cleverly offers a good amount of options, meaning that rolling triple ones can be just as useful as rolling triple sixes depending on your situation. Tharsis is random and difficult but ever rewarding to overcome… and if you figure out a way to get through without cannibalising the crew, let me know. –AW
Pony Island
Daniel Mullins Games – Windows, Mac, Linux
Karma systems in games, while often a straightforward and entertaining way to let players put their own stamp on an avatar, generally have a whiff of the ridiculous. The idea of having your every deed judged and quantised in a cosmic ledger feels reductive, to say the least. But, from the Catholic Church’s medieval indulgences (the original pay-to-win) to Santa Claus’ naughty list, there’s always been an appeal to gamifying real-life morality.
Pony Island doesn’t actually have a karma system, but it does posit a world in which The Big Book of Stuff You Did Wrong really exists. Not only that, it immediately puts the player way in the red, and promptly chucks them into the afterlife, just in time to face the music. Hope isn’t totally lost, though. If some infernal database has consigned you to hell, then surely it can be hacked, reprogrammed and otherwise cajoled into offering redemption.
In the meantime, though, you’re expected to serve out your divine sentence by playing ‘Pony Island’, the game within the game. Initially a surprisingly pleasant (for hell) if somewhat tedious, auto-scrolling platform game, it begins to expand and contract in interesting ways as you deconstruct its programming and mess with the Satanic OS on which it runs. Developer Daniel Mullins does a remarkable job not only switching gears (and genres) over the course of the Pony Island‘s two-hour length, but manages to wring endless jokes, both surprising and gratifyingly foreseeable, from the concept and the action of the game. Imaginative, enjoyable, and even a little creepy, I feel I’ve done my good deed for the day in recommending it. –LD
Like a Boss
Saren
Mass Effect
Sure, bad guys are always trying to build an evil army, blow up the world, enslave humanity, or just murder you. Saren’s even trying his hand at all of these. But you know what makes him *really* bad? He’s just a real big jerk. By turns pompous, self-righteous and snivelling when cornered, you’ll feel your motivation to save the universe morphing into a desire for bullet-laden comeuppance. He may not be the ultimate villain of the Mass Effect series, but once he’s down, you’ll feel your mission’s accomplished. –LD
Words: Leo Devlin, Aidan Wall
