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Square Valley takes the idea of the city-builder and turns it into a unique puzzle game where the way players place specific features in relation to each other makes all the difference. It's a bit of an abstract exercise when comparing it to other city-builders, but your end results end up looking like well considered spaces the more you strive to score big points. It's an elegant merging of strict mechanics and player creativity that feels substantial and satisfying, despite a few missing convenience features.

Puzzle place

At its most reductive, Square Valley is essentially a worker placement game. You have a pool of items to place on a 9×9 grid, but you draw from that pool as if it is a deck of cards. These items are features you'd find in a rural village like houses, windmills, trees, farm animals, etc. Depending on how you place these items, you can score different amounts of points, and those point totals can change based on how these items are placed in relation to one another.

For example, you can score more points for houses if they are placed along a roadway, and windmills score big if you surround them with wheat fields. Every feature you have at your disposal has a clear explanation of its scoring rules and you can also tap on existing features in on your valley map so you can always double-check how new placements might affect them. Games of Square Valley end when you hit a turn limit, which varies based on the mode and/or level you are playing.

Valley variety

It doesn't take too many rounds of Square Valley's standard chapter-based mode for the variety of features to place on the map to explode. Different breeds of animals, variations on residences, and even blights like haunted buildings or predators make sure you're always encountering some new kind of challenge while trying to score big with the items at your disposal.

Luckily, Square Valley maintains a solid line of logic in how practically all of its features work so building with them or around them starts to feel somewhat intuitive, even when working with them for the first time. Through the lengthy primary mode, nearly 50 levels are divided into three chapters that differentiate themselves by land type (valleys, plateaus, islands), all of which require some alternate strategies and creative thinking to score well enough to move on to the next challenge.

Hamlet hardships

The balance of all of Square Valley's various pieces is remarkable in how it both manages to consistently provide satisfying challenge while also–when played well–produce village landscapes with walled-in city centers, witch huts buried in the woods, and farmland that sprawls out by livestock pens. Even if you don't want to ride the slow ramp of unlocked features, Square Valley lets you roll right into a Sandbox Mode where you can mix and match all of the rules and items to set your own challenge or compete in a daily challenge to compare your score against other players using the same map and elements provided to you.

As great as all of this is, there are a few annoying aspects of Square Valley's design. The most glaring of these issues is that the game doesn't suspend or save your sessions, forcing you to either sit and play through a full puzzle map or risk having to restart it from the beginning when you come back to the game. There's also a few building features like walls and rivers that aren't entirely clear about how the rules of how “painting” them onto the map work, and can lead to situations where a ton of your planned out moves can go to waste because a wall can't run alongside a plateau, for example.

The bottom line

By and large, Square Valley is a highly compelling puzzle game that captures the spirit of city-building in a pretty flexible and fun package. I just wish I could pop in and out of it a little more easily. Despite this (and a small handful of rulesets that could be a smidge clearer), Square Valley is well worth checking out.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/square-valley-review/

There are a lot of narrative adventure games about relationships and romance, but there aren't many that consider the idea of trying to love someone who isn't quite sure of who they are. We'll Always Have Paris examines a relationship well past its prime and what happens to a loved one with dementia in an experience that is as moving and surprising as it is brief.

Old love

We'll Always Have Paris tells the story of Simon, a retired chef living out his golden years trying to keep himself busy. One thing that occupies a lot of his time is Claire, his spouse of fifty years, who seems to experience episodes of dementia. In addition to tending to her, Simon has his social circle to keep up with and a young grandson to bond with.

Over the course of this game's one-day story, you help guide Simon through a set of errands and activities that stir up some bygone memories and tell you a little bit more about Simon and his life with Claire. Much of this narrative unfolds in a fairly linear fashion with you either buttoning through text prompts or performing some light environmental interactions like rubbing a foggy mirror with a towel or choosing groceries to buy as Simon's internal monologue and interactions with others drive the story forward.

Beauty in brevity

It's almost a challenge to break up We'll Always Have Paris into multiple play sessions. The game is intentionally easy to get through in a single sitting (as noted by a text box at the start of the game). Say what you will about the value proposition of games you can play through in less than an hour, but the amount development that occurs over Simon's seemingly ordinary day is perfectly paced and the primary reason the game feels cohesive and satisfying.

We'll Always Have Paris is surprisingly efficient with its dialog and exposition. Small responses to questions or items in the scenery all play their part in building a fully realized world and past around Simon, and the sparse visual style and melancholy piano soundtrack all do their part to effectively set tone and make meaningful contributions to what ends up being a pretty emotional journey.

Uncertain recognition

The story in We'll Always Have Paris is its main selling point, and it's well worth the asking price. If you are looking for a game with more puzzle elements or even branching paths to explore, this is not the game for you. In fact, the worst moments in We'll Always Have Paris come whenever it tries to challenge you with environmental interactions.

This is to say it isn't always entirely clear what kinds of actions We'll Always Have Paris wants you to do. Sometimes you need to tap items, and at others you need to drag them to certain places. This kind of inconsistency without instruction can lead to moments where you're correctly identifying the objects you need to use, but can't advance because you aren't putting the right kind of touch on it. These create points where you can stall out or otherwise slow the pace of a game that is very much interested in keeping you moving through it without much downtime.

The bottom line

We'll Always Have Paris is a wonderful story and experience that is able to delight, surprise, and move you in a remarkably short period of time. It doesn't always strike the balance it needs to between storytelling and interaction, but for the most part it lets you swiftly enjoy everything it has to offer.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/well-always-have-paris-review/