Steam Summer Sale: Prison Architect

Unfortunately the Steam summer sale of 2013 has come to an end. As always, I bought too much but I regret nothing. This will be my last post on the sale until Christmas, when the Steam Winter sale will begin. I will binge on games I won't have time to play and get all excited all over again.

If you're tired about me talking about my gaming purchases, you can scroll to the bottom and leave a comment about pancakes or something.

I went to Ihop for the first time the other day, they were pretty good.

Today we'll be talking about another indie game. I'm certain that most people have played or heard of Simcity, the game where you're tasked with designing and caring for a sprawling metropolis. You control everything from taxes, to where residential areas are built, or getting more police to deal with crime.

Prison Architect is in the same vein of gameplay, except you are now in charge or building and maintaining a maximum security prison. You decide their daily regime, how many cells are in maximum security, what kind of staff to hire, and even providing power and water to your entire facility.

Things get hectic very fast.

It's such a simple concept, but it really makes you think about the kind of decisions you make. Should a man on deathrow have a window in his cell? A fenced off area outside technically counts as a yard, but should you put the effort of adding trees or weights for your prisoners to use? You're low on money, is it ethical to lower the quality and quantity of the food provided?

The decision is yours. If you wanted, you could even take in more prisoners than your prison can handle. Just keep the excess in a holding cell forever. Who cares right? You're still getting money from the government. Which is actually what some prisons do so it's not completely unrealistic.

But to keep things interesting, each prisoner has an individual psychological profile. And you have no way of knowing what they're actually like. Is Prisoner A just quiet and boring, or is he actually quietly waiting for a chance to start a riot and murder everyone in his cellblock? Is Prisoner B spending a lot of time in visitation, or is actually getting contraband from his family?

Or I can just search Prisoner B all the time for no reason.

But your prisoners will care and will complain if they aren't treated right. For example, I thought that simply serving food in a canteen was enough. Nope, turns out prisoners don't like standing and eating. In fact, they hated it so much that after a week they started rioting, and murdered all my staff. I can only imagine what would happen if I revoked visitation rights.

The game however is still in its alpha stages. So things are still very buggy and features are continually being added. For example, there's a glitch where a fire can start but prisoners will continue to eat and burn to death. I have personally experienced workmen refusing to construct things for me.

I'm personally excited for features such as parole. 50% of your prisoners will claim that they're innocent, but only a fraction of them actually are. And now you're in charge of deciding who gets to be released early.

Riot police would also be nice if they actually did anything.

Prison Architect is still available for purchase and because it's in the alpha stages, you can pay a bit more to get addition benefits. For example, I paid just enough to name a prisoner and provide his personal information.

Regular posting will resume later this week.

Steam Summer Sale: Surgeon Simulator 2013

The spending continues. As mentioned in my last post, from July 11th to the 22nd, Steam is having it's annual summer sale, where games are anywhere from 25% to 85% off. My brother and I have been buying probably way too much for our own good,  and I still will not disclose how much I have spent.

(It's doubled since my last post).

In my defense, when I see something that's normally $30 and it's on sale for $5, I'll buy it, hoard it, and then give it someone later as a gift. I'm literally stockpiling birthday and Christmas gifts right now.

I am so clever.

But let's not just talk about my horrible spending habits, let's talk about another great game that I've been playing. Ok, some people may find it absolutely horrifying, others may find it absolutely hilarious. In reality, it's a bit of both.

Who here has ever wanted to be a doctor, but didn't want to go through all the training and debt that comes with medical school. Well, now you too can become a surgeon and perform operations all by yourself with Surgeon Simulator 2013!

(Note, do not try anything you see in this game in real life.)

Yes, that is a fire hydrant being used.

You play as Nigel Burke, a man who literally has no experience being a doctor but has been forced into the role of being a surgeon, and it shows! The controls are clumsy, unintuitive, and difficult at best. He only operates with one hand, and each finger must be individually controlled to grasp anything. With separate keys for each digit, moving the arm up and down, and turning the hand.

And this is where the fun begins.

Now, using these klutzy motor skills, you, yes you, will attempt to perform anything ranging from a heart transplant in a surgical room, to a brain transplant in the back of a moving ambulance using the most awkward of tools in uncompromising angles.

Or just fill the patient's chest cavity with everything you can.

Hack your way into Patient Bob's ribcage using a hammer in order to remove his defective kidneys, saw out his old heart with a bonesaw, and remove unnecessary organs in order to make room for the new. Lungs? Who needs lungs! Onto the floor they go.

Of course, you need to be careful. Slashing around mindlessly whether you want to or not is going to cause your poor patient to bleed and lose blood. And as we all know, losing ALL of your blood is the only way to die.

For anyone still interested, the trailer is below. The game is currently 40% off until July 22th and I highly recommend it for a good laugh.

Note: The Team Fortress 2 Downloadable Content is also free with the purchase of the game. It's good to fool around with if you're a fan of the series.

Steam Summer Sale: Don't Starve

I'm a big fan of deals and a big fan of good PC gaming. So it's not a surprise that I am particularly fond of the digital distribution platform, Steam, which is notorious for it's sales. Right now, tons of great games are on sale for anywhere from 15% to 85% off. I've managed to snag several for $2.50 so these will make great gifts in the future.

I however, will not disclose how much I've spent so far, or how many of these games are going to sit untouched. I have a tendency to stockpile games and let them gather dust. I am also told this is a common occurrence.

All hail Gaben!

But one game I have been spending a lot of time with is Don't Starve. You are a scientist, and for whatever reason, someone or something has dumped you in the middle of the wilderness to fend for yourself. Now you have to make sense of the new world you've been placed in, gather enough resources to survive each passing day, defend against wild animals, and most importantly, don't starve.

It's such a simple idea but it has a lot of depth to it. With each passing moment, it gets closer to night and you need to make sure you have enough light to dissuade monsters from taking a bite out of you. You need to constantly hunt and forage for food but not everything is edible. And being alone in the dark can really take a toll on one's sanity, resulting in hallucinations which can eventually manifest and attack you.

And they never leave you alone!

But you are a scientist afterall! Find the right materials and soon you can craft better forms of light, research farming methods, and build armor and weapons to help in your fight for survival. Cook food to make it more nutritious, build and bait traps to catch prey, and begin to tinker with magic that can freeze your enemies or even bring you back from the dead.

Speaking of death, Don't Starve is in the genre of of rogue-like. This means that if you die, your entire world is deleted and you need to start all over again. While it does ramp the difficulty curve up a bit, it makes survival that much more pressing. You need to explore to get food, but running through a dangerous swamp could be deadly. Chopping down trees for fire is necessary, but it's hard to do when besieged by a swarm of spiders.

This also gives the game a lot of replay value. You are given a completely new world to run around in each time you start over. Plus, after playing through a few times, you'll unlock new characters, each with their own quirks and traits to mess around with.

For example, Willow starts with a lighter.

For a game that's only in the beta, it runs very well, has a lot of content, and is continually adding more content with each passing week. New areas like caves are being expanded on, as well as new characters and gamemodes to try. I highly recommend taking a look at this game, especially since it's currently 40% off until July 22th.

Anyone who isn't convinced so far can watch the trailer below. If you'll excuse me, I have more games to buy.