Day 5 - Toki Tori and Patrician III

Toki Tori

My first experience with Toki Tori was as an android game, where I played very briefly and lost interest. The game concept is simple enough; your space chicken will teleport into the level, and you must guide it towards all the eggs to collect them so he can teleport out. Gameplay consists of moving the character and using the limited and unlimited powers that are a part of the puzzle. Some examples are the ability to lay a bridge tile, teleport a short distance and move bricks behind you. From what I experienced in the first 2nd set of levels, each puzzle is designed to give you sufficient abilities to complete the level, but usually only if you're efficient and follow the correct path. Logic plays a big part here, but thankfully there's a rewind feature to prevent trial-and-error from becoming tedious.

By the end of the 2nd world the levels were getting decently challenging. I was unable to solve the final puzzle as I eventually ran out of ideas. The game gives you a wild card, which is the ability to skip one level per set, to prevent you from halting completely. If you go back to beat the wildcard level you get it back, and can use it elsewhere. There's also a hard mode which I did not try.

For some reason it feels like this game just isn't made for PC. It could be the fact that you can't use WASD to move your space chicken, or the main menu that really looks like a mobile app, perhaps it's the lack of visible hotkeys for your abilities. Something just didn't click. A huge annoyance is that you have to scroll around to see the whole level, making it annoying to plot a route on a new challenge. I may come back to this title for the challenge alone, as that unfinished level continues to taunt me.

Patrician III

I'm not familiar with the Patrician series, but I do love trading and business sims. This particular title is definitely dated, the included setup app asks you to test resolutions to know what's supported, and caps out at 1280x1024x32. After selecting the highest resolution and attempting to launch the game it provided me with an obscure error about 800x600 not working! I fiddled around with it some more, and followed the suggestion on the Steam forum to add the title to the DEP exclusion list and eventually got the title running.

I started by launching the tutorial, because I thought I should learn to play properly for once, but that turned out to be completely non-interactive, and merely a long series of tiny text messages in the bottom corner of the screen. So I decided not to learn how to play the game, and jump straight into the campaign. There's a series of campaigns, and the one I selected was designed as an introduction. You will occasionally receive tips on how to proceed, such as what to trade for, and where, when to build, etc. Naturally, I ignored the majority of the tips and played with mixed success.

Trading is relatively simple, and there aren't so many goods that you can't remember them all. Towns produce and use goods and raw materials. You can build these facilities yourself, or rely on those available to other towns. Some simple trade routes were suggested at the beginning, with more advanced ones suggested when you can afford the more expensive items. I found myself simply going from town to town along the coast, picking up what was cheap and selling what was profitable. This worked well enough to get me money, but did not advance my career much.

There's some sort of mechanic with home towns that I clearly wasn't getting. For every trade you make, in any town, you will gain or lose reputation. Selling much needed goods to a town increases your reputation while buying the last of their stock lowers it. The game suggests many ways to increase your reputation in your home town, but it did not work out well for me, and my home town wasn't particularly fond of me. Meh, screw them, I'm rich.

The game was easy enough to pick up and play. Even though I only played for an hour and a half, I can see how it expands. You can buy additional ships, there's naval combat, although I don't know if it's interactive, and the production-chain mechanics are all here. I like this sort of game, and Patrician III did feel faster paced than Port Royale 2, so I may come back to it later.

Notes

12 games played, 249 to go. This is going to take a while.

Album: Steam Challenge: Day 005