Deep beneath my desk lies a secret shame: impenetrable black thickets of power leads, sprouting forth across two overlapping extension units. Such a failure of cable management pierces my conscience like the beat of Poe’s tell-tale heart, and yet I’m forever powerless – as in, I can’t be bothered – to do anything about it. Yet even I was soothed by the Steam Next Fest demo for Plug It In, a chilled-out puzzle game about clicking chunky plugs into the right outlets.
management
Ara: History Untold review: a pretty, almost great resource management game chafing under a 4X suit
I am puzzled by Ara Colon History Untold’s priorities. At its heart are a couple of interesting ideas undermined by its own determination to put the wrong thing on centre stage. Make a rich and elaborate resource management game with an unorthodox research system, but then spend so much time on a simultaneous turn system and detailed animations that you’re left with a cumbersome interface and lifeless AI, and you too might wind up making Ara.
There’s an almost great game here, but it’s all neglected and bruised from being shoved into the packaging of a lacklustre 4X.
Planetary Annihilation’s factory management spiritual successor has hit its Kickstarter funding goal
Industrial Annihilation is a mashup Planetary Annihilation (big robot armies do battle on a planet) with factory management such as Factorio (conveyor belts conveyor belts conveyor belts). When we last checked in with it back in January, it was funding via StartEngine with an ambitious eye towards a spring Early Access release.
Now it’s September and it’s just got done being successfully funded via Kickstarter, with a probably-still-ambitious eye towards an Early Access release before the end of 2024.