What's Your Gam3? #16

Welcome

Welcome to What’s Your Gam3? #16 My aim with everything I do is to introduce you to new games! As I continue to improve the newsletter, all feedback is gratefully received. Now, let’s see what has happened this week.

What’s That Gam3? [review]

You can join me live as I play new games on Twitch! Alternatively, you’ll find edited versions of my playthroughs on my YouTube channel. [Don’t forget to follow and subscribe].

Goombles

“The sweetest player-owned mobile game!”

TLDR: 

• Pvp tower defense

• Cute sweet themed asthetic

• Solid, if basic, core loop

• Lacking strategic depth at this stage

• Too early to rate but I like the direction

How to play

• Playable on mobile or PC

• Closed testing for NFT holders

Game Loop

• You load into the game and can either play solo or PvP, both your aim is the same, survive as many waves as possible by using towers to defend your castle

• Loading in you have a single track that takes multiple branches from the creature spawn to your castle

• You opponent has an identical map - during play, you can switch between yours and theirs

  

• To defend your castle you have 3 towers

• A all round tower, an anti-infantry tower, and an anti-air tower

  

• You also have a moveable mech

• Your mech has 2 abilities to help with defense, rockets, and slow sheild.

• Each kill drops some gold, this gold is used for tower upgrades

• During the upgrade tree, you need to make a choice on which stat to focus on

• The graphic for the tower changes as you level

• You also randomly collect S tokens.

• These are used to hinder your opponent, e.g. disabling their mech

• The winner is the one who survives the longest

Game feel

• The core loop is well-known but solid

• I like the aesthetic and the graphics

• Some of the animations are good, the guns firing, others are underwhelming, all projectiles looking the same

• There are several UI changes that I’d like to see them bring in from previous tower defense games - such as upgrade tool tips

• You quickly run out of tower placement spots, leaving you only with upgrades

  

• I managed to reach a point were I had nothing left to buy

• With only 3 towers and a single spawn point, there is limited strategic options

• However I think further map and tower development will help this and I do like the direction being taken

Rating

• I am going to rate it “too early” at this point

• I would recommend keeping an eye on it as it is targeting a very underserved audience with its casual playstyle and cute aesthetic

• I’ll be interested to see how much depth is added with more towers and maps getting developed.

Web3 integration

• The game is currently gated behind Goomble Avatars on Cardano

For more information follow their Twitter to keep up to date.

Degenheim

“Action-packed top-down isometric roguelite game.”

TLDR: 

• Banging soundtrack

• Solid core loop

• Plenty of variety for replayablity

• Clean graphics and animations

How to play

• Closed playtest on Steam

• Plays on PC

Game Loop

• At first, you have 1 hero to play

• They have a range of stats including health, armor, dodge, crit chance etc

• They also have 4 moves

• Standard attack, special attack, dash, and ultimate

• Initially, there is only one story mission, but more unlock as you progress

• Each story is made up of different levels with boss fights mixed in

• Loading in you are on a map that has a defined edge and contains some obstacles

• Enemies then spawn in

• Sometimes it is a single wave other times the level has multiple waves

• These enemies have a range of attacks

• The attacks are outlined ahead of time to give you a chance to dodge

• As you progress through the levels the variety of enemies increases as well as their difficulty.

• Your goal is to clear each level using a mixture of your skills

• At the end of the level you collect gold and unlock a new ability

  

• These range from adding a freeze to your basic attack to a giant fire tomato falling from the sky

• There is no health regen in the game, so maintaining your health pool is critical

• The run ends when you complete all the levels or you die

• If you do the story again you must start fresh

• Outside of the story missions you have equipment and talents that you can spend your gold on to increase

  

• You also unlock more heroes to select from.

Game feel

• I usually play games with the sound muted, but I enjoyed the music and sound effects for this game

• The graphics and animations were really good and I found the theme engaging

• The variety of enemies was wide enough that I never felt it getting stale

• I did find it difficult in places, but that is probably a skill issue

• Unlocking a new hero was a little underwhelming as they were overall worse than the one I already had

  

• There was more depth to the equipment that I hadn’t explored fully yet, but would work as a persistent progress outside the constantly refreshing story modes

Rating

• Overall found it very engaging

• The challenge and 1 life added good tension

• The controls and skills were intuitive enough whilst leaving plenty of room for skill to shine through

• It hasn’t quite become my whole personality, but I can see it becoming a lot of players “main” game

• Enjoyed it and would recommend it.

  

Web3 integration

• Right now the game has 3 associated NFTS - Degenheim, Degenesis, Degensis Armor

• All 3 are on Ethereum

For more information follow their Twitter to keep up to date.

What’s on the timeline

2024

I took 2 weeks off over Christmas, which was very refreshing. However I wasn’t idle, i’ve been planning what content is going to look like in 2024.

This is what you can expect!

1. Weekly project AMA on X - converted to YouTube podcast and summarised in the Newsletter.

2. Weekly game review panel on Twitter - summarised in an X thread including the audience votes

3. Weekly (ish) podcast interviewing builders in web3 - summarised in the Newsletter

4. 2+ streams per week reviewing new games

5. 2+ game reviews per week, first in writing in this newsletter then as a video on YouTube and X.

6. Daily Shut up and watch this - to prove there are a lot of playable web3 games.

7. Plus all sorts of shower thoughts I come up with post on X.

I’ll be aiming to make all the content as useful and full of value as possible, and I’ll always be open to feedback and ideas.

Let’s have a great year.

Secret Phrase: 2024

What's Your Gam3?

No AMA this week, let me know if there are any projects you want to hear from in 2024.

Catch up on all previous episodes on YouTube.

Don’t forget to join us next week!

WYG?: Gam3 Changers

No podcast this week, let me know if there is anyone you want to hear from in 2024.

Catch up on all previous episodes on Spotify.

Thanks for making it to the end, that is all the new games for this week. Do you know any you’d want to hear more about? Let me know.

Remember to tell your friends about What’s Your Gam3? Otherwise, they’ll hate you for letting them miss out on all the new games.

Remember to play games you enjoy!