The component based navmesh system has been in development for quite some time, and I’ve been using it over the built in pretty much since it first came out. It has been availabe on Github since the start, but has now moved into an experimental package. You can still clone the github repo, but you may want to use the experimental package instead.

For Unity 2021 it’s quite well documented: You can just add the package by name. However, they don’t mention that you can add it in older versions. I’ve only tried this in 2020.3 but it may also work for older versions.

2020.3 does not have the “Add package by name” feature, but you can bypass this by using the “Add package from git URL”. Somple add the following when you are asked for the URL.

com.unity.ai.navigation

Hope this helps!

Since I’ve been looking into survival style city buildings for the past few years. This game was an obvious buy for me.

The developer behind this has made a similar style game called planet base that I haven’t played unfortunately.

This game takes place in the early history of mankind (Or should I call it early modern history since we are talking about modern humans?). You start out as a hunter gatherer tribe in the Paleolithic era (Old stone age) and need to survive and develop your tribe into an iron age settlement. I would say the game spans a few thousand, up to maybe 10.000 years depending on how you look at it.

Graphics

The visuals are nice, with a lot of attention to detail. There’s also a sort of action camera to get a close up of any thing in the game, instead of the usual top-down view. It has no practical use but it’s a nice touch.

Audio

Well, the game has good ambient music, audio cues and other sounds expected from such a game. Animal sounds and human grunts (or whatever it is) is also well done.

User interface

The user interface is nice and clear but I would like some more hotkeys and panels. Adding specific villages to a hot key would be nice for example. They have added more panels through patches, so I hope this may be added in the future.

Gameplay

This feels like a quite casual city builder at first, but if you play on higher difficulty or in hard core mode you have a lot of pressure to keep developing your settlement to avoid getting wiped out by raiders that will occasionally attack and try to destroy your nice little village. WHen you are not under attack, it’s all about assigning important tasks and placing buildings. It’s the usual city building stuff plus hunting. Just be careful what you try to kill, because animals will defend themselves and kill your villages. Your villages may also get killed while gathering resources or fetching food, bu roaming aggressive animals (I hate those wolves).

Conclusion

So far, I love this game. If you are interested in a survival style city building game. This is for you. This reminds me of banished, but has more features and resources plus a quite big tech tree, that seem to be growing with every patch. Buy it when you have the chance!

Recently, I’ve set a goal to play at least a few of the CIty builders, and especially those with a focus towards survival. This game came out last year I think, and I heard about it through a podcast. Maybe you can say it’s more of a base building game, but I still put it into the category of survival city builders. It’s set in a future where the earth is suffering from Global cooling, yes, not warming, but cooling. You have quite a small area with limited resources to work with and things can get quite hectic at times.

Graphics

The graphics are definitely nice in this game, even though everything is icy. It has some nice effects and I really love some of the buildings. The game has some cutscenes, but these are nothing special.

Audio

The sound effects are nice, and I love some of the voiceover lines. The music is fantastic. You can listen to it on Spotify if you like that kind of music. It works really well for the mood of this game.

User interface

The user interface works fine for the most part, even though I sometimes find myself trying to find specific buildings when things get cluttered later on.

Gameplay

Usually in this type of game, I go for sandbox mode if available. Here however I went straight for the first scenario. I think there is a sand box mode available now, but I haven’t tried it. The whole point of this game is that things get worse over time. You start with a limited set of buildings and very few people, and this game is played over days instead of years, so things happen quite quickly here. You can assign new laws and research new tech to unlock new buildings. Laws will affect the two major stats in this game. Hope and discontent. You’ll have to make quite a few decisions that makes you feel terrible in this game, and you usually seem to end up with some kind of extremist community. On my first attempt I was banished for bad leadership. You grow your population through immigration. The first scenario is basically survival, but on the second one you have to try to keep seeds alive, starting with just a few scientists. Each scenario also has an extra hard survival mode that you can try if you don’t feel challanged enough. The resource management part of this game is nice, and doesn’t feel to easy. During the course of the game you also get a lot of time limited quests from your population, such as heat all homes or treat all sick people. You usually have several options when these quests pop up. If you don’t feel you can do everything they want, you can gain some hope by at least doing something.

Conclusion

If you like the less releaxed type of city building/management games, this is definitely worth picking up. I loved the setthing and how things really got worse over time. In some games it’s the oposite; things start difficult and becomes easy once you get everything sorted out. I highly recommend this game.

I’ve played a lot of RPGs over the years. Some of them very different from each other. For example. I consider The elder scrolls series quite different from games like Baldur’s Gate or Pillars of eternity. Also, they obviously have different settings, but for the most part it has been sci-fi or a high fantasy setting. This game however, brings something fresh to the table, by trying to focus on a realistic medieval setting. Very few games have tried this over the years. I think Darklands tried in the early 90s. Mount & Blade sort of does (in With Fire and Sword), but none of them really succeeds. This game however manages to capture an atmosphere and immersion that I haven’t experienced in any other game. I can’t put my finger on what it is. Maybe it’s jsut the historical setting combined with the (for the most part) focus on authenticity, or maybe it’s just the fact that they’ve managed to make an interesting RPG without magic. I don’t know. I think it’s a combination of a lot of things. Another reason might be that you don’t start out as a super here that’s destined to save the world from all evil. If you haven’t figured it out already, I’m in love with this game. Both as an RPG fan, and a history nerd. From a history perspective, it isn’t perfect if you dig deeper, but it’s the best I’ve seen in both moves and games set in this period. The first problem that comes to mind is the lack of crossbows in the game, because as far as I know. The region where this game is set (early 15th century Bohemia) used a lot of crossbows. There’s other issues, but I won’t go into them here. There’s some good YouTube videos on the subject.

Graphics

The graphics range from great to fantastic. The enviroments are very detailed and has high graphical quality. It probably requires a decent PC for the best experience. I like the graphics in this game, not only for it’s quality, but for the great attention to detail.

 

Audio

Sound effects are great, and voice overs are for the most part ok.

User interface

The user interface can feel a bit clunky at times. For example the inventory system. Replacing gear, something I do quite often, can be a bit tedius.

 

Gameplay

This is a first person RPG. If you’ve played games like SKyrim, you’ll feel quite at home, except that the combat system is very different (much better IMHO). You start out as a Blacksmiths’  son, without much combat experience, and it’ll take some time before you learn to fight properly. ALso fighting with different weapons feel quite different. The addition of notrition, the need to sleep and repairs is also nice.  Ranged combat is even more difficult than melee before you get used to it. I also usually go to an archery range whenever I switch to a new bow to try a few shots.

 

Conclusion

Well, if you haven’t noticed already, I’m totally in love with this game. This might turn out to be my favorite RPG of all time. If you want a historical RPG, or just something fresh. Get this game right now!

 

Last month I participated in another Ludum dare. I wasn’t to happy when the theme was announced. Them theme was “The more you have, the worse it is”. A broad theme, but I wanted to make something unique.

After getting some sleep and thinking about different ideas, I came up with a very vague idea about planting seeds and either the plants or the seeds would be poisonous. As I said, the idea was very vague at the beginning, and I started working on something without a good plan. At first I had the idea of the seeds being represented by particles like a gas cloud. I scrapped that idea, but the problem was I kep the idea about seeds being particles. I don’t know why I didn’t change that, but I ended up spending several hours implementing a system for detecting and destroying individual particles as they collided with the player. This system ended up very buggy, as expected, and I had to spend a lot of time just messing around with colliders to make things work the way I wanted (they still don’t btw). By that time, I had a clear goal at least, even though it was one that I no longer liked. I ended up building a game without any increase in difficulty over time but at least I had something playable to submit at the end. I ended up submitting it for the jam instead of the compo as planned, but still I made something.

Since I wasn’t happy about my game, I wasn’t eager to get it rated either, so I didn’t do much to draw attention.

What went well?

  • I managed to submit a game.
  • The idea was somewhat unique.

Where did I fail?

  • The game was even worse then my first submission.
  • Spent way to much time on things that the game didn’t need.
  • Didn’t have a clear goal. Changes are fine, but not knowing what I even want to make is terrible.
  • I could actually ahve done something with the idea I had, but the implementation was horrible.
  • 2D animations lol
  • I recorded sound effects and made a music theme. The music felt out of place.
  • When I was done. The game still didn’t have a clear goal, except to survive as long as possible without increasing difficulty.
  • I didn’t get to use my ugly death animation 🙂
  • A lot of other minor things.

So, to sum it up, I ended up making a bad prototype that I haven’t looked at since. For my last game, I knew there were room for improvements and I actually went back after the jam ended to implement some of them. This game, I just want to forget. If I ever want to do something similar, I’ll do it from scratch.

 

 

 

This is another game I’ve been wanting to play for quite some time. I remember drooling over the original Wastelands when it came out in 1989, but never had the money to get the 6 5’25 disk game (at least it was 6 if I remember correctly). I was going to kickstart this game, but ended up not doing it (thought I had more time). I didn’t buy on release cause I had other games to play and never got around to it until recently. I’m really happy to see games in this old school RPG genre coming out. The game feels a bit unpolished at time, and I would love more voice overs, but overall, this is a great game.

Graphics

The graphics are good enough, they are far from tripple A quality, but works well for this game.

 

Audio

Sound effects are ok, but nothing special.

User interface

The user interface can be a bit clunky at times, at least till you get used to it. Maybe there’s some settings I can tweak, I haven’t looked into it.

 

Gameplay

If you like old style RPGs. get this game! If you like the combat style of the original XCOM series, you’ll like this as well. You don’t get much of a tutorial. Just some popups the first time you run into something, like wounds, death etc. This is nice, but if you create your own squad for the first playthrough, you’re pretty much left in the dark. A personal tip from me is to make sure you have someone with the perception skill in your party. ALso make sure to scout out the first area and talk to everyone before you leave. You can get a companion that really helps.

Conclusion

This game will end up of my top list of RPGs. There isn’t as much interaction between party members as in the infinity games, but overall, this is a great game.

 

 

This is a game I’ve been wanting to play since it came out a few years but never picked up. I was a huge fan of Baldur’s gate back in the 90s and also own the BG remake, ubt haven’t had time to play it that much either.

If you’ve played Baldur’s gate, or other Infinity Engine games you’ll feel quite at home. It’s easy to see this game was inspired by those games, but at the same time, it’s quite different. The system is inspired by D&D II think, but it feels fresh and I like the way stats work so far. It feels like there’s a enough to do to keep your busy for quite some time, and the game should also have some replayability. There’s a lot of side quests, and the game feels unforgiving at times. This isn’t a problem since you can tweak a lot of difficulty settings, but don’t expect the difficulty to be increased linearly If you go in the wrong direction you can easily hit a wall, and you’ll have to leave and come back later. I like it this way, so for me this isn’t a problem at all, rather the opposite.

I expect the spend a lot of time with this game, and should probably have picked it up earlier.

Graphics

The graphics isn’t super impressive by today’s standard, but I like the art style, and as with everything else in this game, it reminds me of old times.

 

Audio

Music is nice, sound effects are fine. The only problem I have is that the voice overs seem to be a bit random. You may find an NPC that has voice overs for part of the conversation, but not all of it. Voice overs could have been more consistent, but I guess they didn’t have time. An add on with full voice over is something that I personally would be willing to pay for. The game also has a lot of text and dialogue, so being able to listen to more voice overs would be nice. It’s no big deal, but it’s something I’ve noticed.

 

User interface

The UI is pretty straight forward for the most part, but some things are a bit unclear. Some UI help features will also be disabled in expert mode.

 

Gameplay

If you’ve played Infinity engine games like Baldur’s gate you’ll feel at home here. You’ll do a lot of pausing during combat, so the game might take time. THere’s a ton of micro management to do to win some battles. As mentioned, the game has a lot of lore text and dialogue, so be ready to spend a lot of time reading.

Conclusion

I love this game. Probably one of my top RPGs along with Baldur’s gate and Dragon Age Origin. I won’t compare this to the Bethesda titles since they are completely different. If you want a classic RPG, pick this up!

 

 

I received this game as part of the humble monthly bundle last month, and after reading a bit about it I just had to test it for nostalgic reasons. If someone remember the Dungeon Keeper series from the 90’s and want something similar, this game is a must have. I loved dungeon keeper, and so far this is the closest I’ve found to the original experience without feeling like a clone, or a remake. I’ve only spent a few hours learning the game and playing the campaign. This game is, for me, what Dungeon Keeper 3 should have been. I read that this game was in a poor state on release, and I’m not sure how much of that is fixed at this point in time. It looks however, like the game has been updated post release.

Graphics

The graphics are nice and clear, but a bit difficult to describe. I haven’t tried the possession (first person mode) yet so can’t say much about that.

 

Audio

Audio is great, and I’m not sure, but I think they hired the original Dungeon Keeper narrator which is a very nice touch 🙂

 

 

User interface

So far, the UI works fine for me. it’s not to complex, but you can find everything in it.

 

Gameplay

This is like playing Dungeon keeper all over again, so if you liked that, this is for you. It’s a dungeon management game, and there isn’t many of those around

Conclusion

As I’ve said, if you liked Dungeon keeper, or if you want something different from the usual city builder, city management game, this is for you.