Kenshi: Sandblasted sword-punk D&D where the dungeon master wants everyone dead

Yay!

Great idea for a column, bring it on!

Skinner's Roam

Gibson fan, eh?

15 years later...

and secondlife is still alive. Ever wonder why? A game that is a complex as you want it to be, and no one cares if you play or not, the game goes on without you there.

Nice.... Gives some new games to try..

Will definitely download this over the weekend.. any guys insane and devoted enough to develop this deserves support :) kind of reminds me of the 80's game development, just the modern twist seems a little more ummm convoluted shall we say.

"Sandbox" and "survival" are swear-words in my book (and I do have a bunch of others that do not apply here), regardless of how overwhelmingly popular they apparently are these days; if I wanted to be an insignificant cog in a giant meat grinder, that's what real life is for, and I play games to get away from that. An opportunity to become a bigger cog does nothing for me. But to each their own - if you like this, more power to you...

" the dungeon master trying their darnedest to kill you"

(Nods approvingly).

The proper function of a GM *is* to try to kill the players. Good ones manage to do that *and* have the players enjoy themselves.

Good GMs are truely rare.

Pay 30,000 cats...

I wouldn't want to carry them in "cash" sounds, heavy, noisy, and I certainly wouldn't want to clean the litter tray. Mission one. Invent better currency :-)

Any chance of Open Source too?

If older games are going to feature, can I also ask for the occasional open source game? I'm not a game player myself, but my children are quite fond of 0ad, Super Tux Kart (now at version 1.0, though there's been a change of development team which still has to settle down) and OpenTTD which is both open source and has a long heritage :-)

M.

You didn't mention the bugs

Firstly - like the new column, as an avid gamer I'll definitely be following it.

Your review of Kenshi is nice, and highlights some of the excellent features of the game. Overall I agree that it's something special that any gamer should try. However it's rather a glaring hole not to mention that the game is massively bug ridden, and will always be that way. The developer has stated that they are only focussing on bug fixes now, rather than any new content, but during my time playing through (about 2 months ago) I encountered bugs that ranged from frustrating to game breaking. The bug fixes being released aren't addressing these things, they are more around balancing. Examples of bugs include random invisible walls appearing in your buildings causing your team to be trapped, team members getting "snagged" on corners and just standing there starving to death unless you help them (or getting eaten by something if it's their not in a safe place), and raiding parties that forever occupy your base, forcing a reload from before they spawned (often losing hours of play).

It's a great game, and would be even better if they finished it, but they won't. It's worth playing, but I hope to help people realise in advance that you're going to get frustrated by all the issues.

I'm also an avid gamer. For reviews, write what you think and if you've played 66hrs, that's a lot longer than a lot of game reviewers!

As for bugs, quirks or 'features', luckily Kenshi's a bit of a cult game, so a pretty decent wiki & a lot of YT 'let's play' videos to help climb the learning wall. Pathing is one that can bite. So one town, I figured having feeding troughs for my bone dogs by the door to my stockpile would mean bandits bitten before they could loot it. Sadly, it also meant my loyal subjects also getting blocked going in/out of the stockpile, and occasionally starving, getting stuck, or slowing production chains. Trick like many games is to balance optimised production chains with leaving enough space so that folks can move around.. Or abusing pathing to keep bandits outside your walls and pepper them with x-bow bolts before they can steal all your rotten meat.

(then again, bandits can also be a good source of sustainable bone dog food..)

((oh, and it's emergent gameplay can also bit. I set up a village near an NPC farm to make it nice for trading.. Which worked fine until ninjas wiped out that farm. Then again, exploiting NPC fights is probably the best way to get gear & stuff early game.. Remember, it's not stealing unless you're stopped and inspected, or there are surviving witnesses!))

Nice to see a games column

Though monthly is a bit infrequent, but tiny acorns etc.

Will it be jsut PC / console games or will it cover mobile gaming too (I know we are talking apples & oranges in game scope & complexity on mobile gaming - but phone / tablet gaming is huge and demographic extends way beyond the stereotyped "hardcore" gamer)

I assume whatever focus, it will be covering "non blockbuster" games - as the top titles are covered all overr

Post-apocalyptic

Crossbows, and bionic limbs?? Hmm. Can you build a Six Million Cat Man?