Video Games You Might Not Have Tried

Hello and welcome to an article about some Games You Might Not Have Tried!

In this article, I’ll be covering some esoteric games that many people may have not heard of — from FPS games to 4X games.

1. Factorio
2. Endless Legend
3. Beastbuddy: Tale of the Guardians
4. Hammerwatch
5. Magicite

Factorio (There is a free demo of it on Steam, as well!)

If you are like me, and really enjoy Minecraft, but hate the tedium of mining the minerals and ores, then Factorio would be a game more your speed.

It starts off with the need to gather different ores by hand — ores such as Coal, Iron, Copper, etc. — But as stated before, nobody wants to do that. The true joys in the game come from constructing a factory, as the name might imply, after all!

To start with, you’ll just be automating the collection of resources, such as using drills etc, but you can quickly work you way up to having multiple factories connected by a transit (train) system, and having drones construct buildings for you, based off of blueprints you present to them.

Of course, like any game, there are adversaries in this game as well. The native wildlife isn’t very pleased with you constructing a factory on their land, and will grow and try to take your factory down. This is based off of the amount of pollution you make. Certain buildings — such as coal furnaces and boilers — cause pollution. The more pollution you make, the more enemy “bases” appear, and the more aggressive the aliens become.

As with any game, it does have it’s flaws too. Some of the factory systems can be very high-level when trying to understand / set them up (such as gathering oil and performing oil processing). and I found it can take some time to work your way up to the dream of having drones for combat or construction
though some people might see that as a good thing).

My rating: 7/10

Endless Legend

Endless Legend is a 4X strategy game. What does 4X mean? It is quite simple: eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate (think Civilizations as another more common example).

In Endless Legend, you play as one of twelve factions, all of them asymmetric. The Broken Lords, for example, are all focused on making money and funding a strong military — to a point where they can not gather food at all. The Necrophages, however, are focused on gathering food and fighting wars, whereas this faction can not make any alliances at all.

If you’ve played Civilizations, then you would be familiar with how this game plays. I found it less confusing than Civ, however, and most certainly much faster paced than Civ. As a quick synopsis of how it plays, you start off with four units — one hero, two basic infantry, and one settler for making a city. You’ll start in an empty region — save for one to three neutral camps of “barbarians” — and here is where the 4X’s begin — you eXplore! After youve founded a city, and built up, maybe researched some technologies to facilitate the growth of your indomitable empire, you might consider the next X’s — eXpanding and eXploiting (the earth). This is where another one of the differences between this game and Civilizations comes into light — you can only have one city per region.

Once you’re ready, you move on to the final X — eXterminating your opponents (or forming an alliance with them). All factions have military units and all but one can declare wars — only the peace loving traders, the Roving Clans, can not declare war. You can either go for a Supremacy or Conquest victory by eXtermination — though many other victory conditions exist. Supremacy is where you are the only faction with a Capitol City left, and Conquest is where you are the only faction with any city left.

The only flaws I have found with this game would be that the management of the armies and equipping them with weaponry can be non-intuitive. Eg. Attack =/= damage.

My rating: 9/10

Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians

Beatbuddy is a rhythm game at its core. You play as a little blue stay puft looking guy (see title image above). You have to go around solving puzzles to the beat of Elecro-Swing musicians such as Austin Wintory, Parov Stelar, Sabrepulse, Ari Pulkinen and more. How they play around with the music is quite nice as well — certain instruments will only play in the presence of certain puzzle elements — eg there are crabs that move to the beat of the snare drum, there are portal flowers that move to the beats of the bass. This game is pretty short — which makes it easy to handle and makes it not feel like it drags on forever.

The only flaws I have with the game is that it does not last very long, which is good and bad. I also feel like it does exactly what it tries to do, but it doesn’t actually do very much.

My Rating: 6/10

Hammerwatch

Hammerwatch is an action/RPG/Rogue-lite game where you play as one of six playable classes. Each one has different strengths and weaknesses. Then you and up to three other people try to go though the dungeon and best the boss at the end — pretty simple. The intricacies of this game is where it shines — this is a great game for completionists. There are many secrets to be found in the game, from secret rooms to secret planks (#SpoilerAlert!). The game itself is not very hard — however you can select different difficulties and different modifiers. Some of the modifiers change the game very drastically — there is a mode where you have one HP each, and a mode where everyone has shared life. Mix them together? Everyone dies anytime anyone takes any damage. It is actually a lot more fun than it may sound.

Initially there was only one story mode, however more have been added recently. These modes are vastly different, thematically. The first one is in a dungeon, whereas the second one is set in ancient Egypt-esque lands.

My only complaints about the game is how sometimes the hidden elements are too hidden. For example: for the first three or so levels of the first campaign, all of the hidden rooms are marked with cracks in the walls. by the last level, there is no marking whatsoever to discern that there is even a hidden room behind a wall.

My rating: 8/10

Magicite

Magicite is a Rogue-Lite, Role Playing Game. Rogue-Lite means that when you die, virtually all of your progress is reset, save for some passive buffs that persist from play-through to play-through. You play as a small explorer and have to go from area to area gaining items and experience. Through this leveling up, you can select one of three paths — Strength, Intelligence, and Dexterity. Strength is more directed towards physical damage, Intelligence is more directed towards Magic and manipulation, and Dexterity is more directed towards ranged damage. This is a fun little rompfest of a game if you have some spare time — most play-throughs don’t take very long.

My only complaint with this game, is that gaining the passive boosts/additional characters can take some time due to it often being a random chance.

My rating: 7/10

So hopefully you might try some of these games — While they might not necessarily be everyone’s cup of tea, personally, I think they are good games and worth the time to have a look!

Until next time, this was Brandon’s Ramblings.