Game On: First Impressions of the Darkest Dungeon and Tricky Towers

Game On: First Impressions of the Darkest Dungeon and
Tricky Towers

Another day at writing and reading articles, it’s going pretty well, even though it's only been a day. I had some time in-between work and writing to play some games that I always wanted to return too. Darkest Dungeon is one of the games that really interested me when it came out as early access on February 3, 2015, and fully released on January 19, 2016. It's a dungeon crawler, side-scrolling, Rouge-like game. All the systems in the game work great together, which make the game really stressful to play.

The systems in darkest dungeon are really deep. The whole game revolves around the management of your team, hiring characters and team compilation, these play a huge part in succeeding in the game. Your main goal is to beat "The Darkest Dungeon". You can immediately enter "the darkest dungeon" as soon as you start the game, but it's safe to say that you are going to get destroyed.

 As the game progresses you get new characters with different skills sets from healing/support to damage/range. The cool part of it is the customization. You can rename each character, it can be someone you know, celebrity, family, and friends to make a personal connection between the character and you (player). Before you enter a dungeon you must pick four characters from your pool of characters.

When you picked your team to die a horrible death, it's time to stock-up on supplies. You will be able to buy food to gain health, “torches for light (cause of course it's the darkest dungeon)”), and others items to heal debuffs. When playing a couple of dungeons, you'll notice that it's procedurally generated. Every experience is different. Now in the dungeon you need to watch out for stress, hunger, sickness, character traits, and torchlight meter. Everything will play a factor in affecting a character, depending on their traits.

While walking through the dungeon you’ll need to look for traps and treasure (some has hidden traps). The combat system is turn-based. This is where your team compilation plays a big part. Each skill set depends on where you place your characters, for example; healers are in the back or big hitters will be in the front.

When you complete a dungeon you will gain reward for completing it, and addition to all the treasure you find a long your adventures. If you don't finish and surrender, you do not get the completion reward but obtain the gold you found.

Every time you exit a dungeon all characters in the dungeon will develop positive and negative traits. These traits will remain with the character forever. The only way to cure it is to place him/she in the hospital for removal of trait. I've played about 7 hours since I got the game.

One of the most unforgiving and rewarding game I have ever played; the unforgiving parts are what makes the reward so much more triumphant.

Man That's a really deep game. Now for something a little more casual and more approachable Tricky Tower. A quick summary of the game, it’s a tower building, physics based game with tetris blocks. It Launched on August 2, 2016 on PC and PS4 (free PS Plus). Being a free game on PS plus I thought, “why not it's free". Tricky towers were developed by an indie developer, "Weird Beard Games". This is their first go at making games.

I've only played single player which has trials. I completed the beginner's trial (10 modes) and about half of the apprentice trials (4 modes). Each mode is chosen out of three modes Race, Survival, and Puzzle. Each mode will use different blocks and different ways to complete the objectives.

In racing mode, you will have to build a tower to the finish line and hold it up the line for 3 seconds 

to complete the objective.

In survival mode, it will provide you with a certain number of blocks that you have to keep up without dropping the blocks. If any blocks drop you will lose a heart, out of three hearts.

Now puzzle mode, is a little different. You will get a small number of blocks to hold up for 3 seconds without touching the laser. If you fail to complete the objective, you try again with blocks in the same order.

I only played about an hour and it seems like a really cool idea. Like Tetris but opposite, stacking blocks but building up. In Tetris you stack blocks to break down the building.

It was a fun experience even in single player. It has 10 trials and about 100 modes to play in single player. I really want to try online multiplayer and see how many people are interested in playing. I'm going to hang with friends on the weekend and hoping I will play some local co-op and get their thoughts.

I hope you gamers enjoyed the games that I played the pass two days. I really enjoyed writing about the games I played and my experience. I had time to play but it just not just all fun and games anymore. I now have to think critically about what I'm seeing and feeling. I know it's not just about me, it's about you guys and how I get my experience to other people, because what I've learned in the past 2 months that everyone wants perspective to improve themselves.