WilyEngineer

I only played this for four hours?! Why does it feel like so much longer than that?

As I remembered, 7 Grand Steps is a repetitive experience. The game revolves around creating tokens and collecting beads for story-based rewards, and it’s an interesting trade-off at first, but it wears itself out fairly quickly. What I didn’t find out the first time I played this, though, is that it’s actually two repetitive experiences! Reaching the highest social level leads you to a somewhat-sparse city management system. It was a welcome addition to the monotony, but this system also wore out its welcome rather quickly.

What bothered me the most about this game is how none of my actions in it seemed to matter. Didn’t find a mate to have children? No problem – here’s a baby to adopt! Getting behind on the track without any tokens? Other humans will come to you! It’s the end of the age, and here’s a choose-your-own-adventure book in lieu of anything that would be harder to program – you made the wrong choice and died! Oh no! Luckily, we’re prepared to power through with a distant relative.

Incidentally, the beginning of age 2 (of 3, or so I’m told) is where I stopped. There was nothing indicating that anything was going to be different, and I didn’t have enough patience to make it through any more of it. Maybe there was a shake-up later, but I didn’t care enough to find out.

Friends, I feel like there’s a good game in here somewhere. The idea behind it all – that you’re playing as a family surviving and evolving through the ages in a Crusader Kings sort of way – is sound, and I appreciate the simplicity of its systems on paper, but there’s just not enough here to stave off the boredom.

Recommended to no one

Here’s something that was definitely part of a bundle.

Friends, I have a deep appreciation for hubris. Any endeavor with enough ambition will ultimately produce a result that ends up being fascinating, even if it fails. Of course, I’m not sure I would describe 7 Grand Steps, Step 1: What Ancients Begat that way – in fact, I’m having trouble remembering anything about it at all.

From what little I do remember, this game is about guiding a tribe of prehistoric humans through the generations, obtaining resources and competing with other tribes. It’s all stuff that should work well in theory, but it just fell flat for me. I can’t remember exactly why, though. In terms of the actual gameplay, this had something to do with spinning concentric circles, I think? It reminded me somewhat of a board game called The Village, although it’s not quite as good as that.

Steam tells me that I’ve only played 7 Grand Steps for 54 minutes – which sounds about right, even though I definitely have more to say about it than that figure would indicate. I guess it’s just because, before playing it, I thought it seemed like a fascinating concept. I’m actually really curious to rediscover this one and do more of an autopsy – I strongly suspect there’s a good game in here somewhere.

By the way, despite the title, I think this game is a standalone experience. It’s probably for the best, honestly.

That was quite pleasant, actually.

I managed to get to the end this time, and even ended up doing most of the optimizations – there are a couple I’m having trouble figuring out, and I don’t really feel compelled to finish them. So, I’m calling it a day.

Friends, I have a million little problems with this game – the lack of breakpoints, the inability to copy parts of a solution instead of the whole thing, the slow speed of execution (even when set to the highest possible speed), workers blocking data cubes so I can’t see what’s on them… I could keep going, but ultimately none of these issues were so bad as to ruin the experience. The mechanics are elegant, there’s a good difficulty curve, and Tomorrow Corporation’s great humor runs through the game well.

I guess I would say I liked it better this time around? It’s more or less what I remembered, so perhaps something changed about me in the interim. (Maybe I’ve learned to be more patient? That’s not likely.)

Recommended if you like programming games – this is a good one. If you’re not sure whether you like programming games, I think 7 Billion Humans is a good place to start.

Well, I actually finished some games. So that’s something.

The complexity of 5D Chess grows hard and fast, and that is still an intimidating thing to deal with. Strangely, however, I would posit that normal chess has more depth than this version. 5D Chess tends to focus on putting the opponent’s king in check in the past, which leads to a quick checkmate and means that it tends to be the focus of the entire game. There’s no need to set up checkmate or worry about keeping ahead of your opponent in terms of material.

Other than that, there’s not too much to comment on other than the price. $12 on Steam! I definitely didn’t think there was enough content to justify a price tag even that high.

Recommended if… You know what? You already know if this is up your alley. Just don’t expect it to blow your mind or anything.

Not lots of surprises so far. But you know what? That’s ok.

140 was more or less what I remembered – solid platforming with a compelling aesthetic and a great soundtrack, but nothing too earth-shattering. I managed to make it an additional level past where I got last time, and I’m ashamed to admit that it took me that long to realize that the fifth and sixth level (and probably the seventh and eighth, although I didn’t get that far) are mirrored versions of the first levels! Who needs to create more content when you can just copy and paste? Who needs to come up with new, engaging challenges when you can just pretend you’re ramping up the difficulty by making players repeat the same five minutes of low-intensity gameplay over and over again to get to the actual challenge?

I’m not really into doing the same exact thing over and over again until my brain melts – this is probably why I’ve never really been into MMOs. So, I gave up. Maybe something interesting happens once you complete all the mirror levels, but frankly, I doubt it.

Look, friends, there are some things I really liked here. The levels themselves are all really solid, the controls are snappy enough, and I really like the minimalism on display, which still ends up being engaging despite how flat everything is. I just wish there were more levels. Surely there are enough ideas for this game to manage more than 4?

Recommended if you like Kraftwerk.