Publisher: Lehti E.
Developer: Lehti E.
Platform: Microsoft Windows
Price: $7.99
I realize that this is going to be one hell of a strong bit of praise to start out this review with, but it must be said: Ember Seeker is the first game since Dark Souls to feel as expansive and interconnected as that flagship From Software title. Another point of comparison would be the map, which, like in Dark Souls is actually fairly small.
And despite all that, Ember Seeker isn't a soulslike. Instead, it's an exploration-based game that some might uncharitably call a "walking simulator." I believe there's too much to it for that label to apply, but we'll get into that.
As you can likely tell, I'm giving this one a firm recommendation. So, read on, and I'll tell you why!
On your journey, you'll also meet some charming characters. You'll note I said "charming," not "deep." These characters each have a singular motivation, but they're fun enough that I was happy to see them every time I ran into them in a new place.
Sadly, where things fall short is in the writing. English is clearly not the developer's first language. So there are little oddities in the script...and also they simply struggle with tone. It's not quite Marvel level, but it is Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins level.
For example, when reading the item description for a watermelon, it's fine for the most part...until you come across the end of that description, which says something to the effect of "watermelons are generally considered really epic." This could easily be another lost in translation thing that wasn't intended to be a joke, but it comes off as one even if that's the case.
Same goes for when you respond to...a scenario I don't remember. Let's pretend that the scenario is a cow falling from the sky, because that allows me to relay the line to you. Your paraphrased response is "yeah, they generally don't do that." Again, I could see that being a translation thing. But I could equally see Alistair saying it, which is never a good sign.
Thankfully, these lines of dialogue are few and far between. That does make them stand out a bit more, though.
There's two problems with this, though.
The first is that you can only carry the compass or a light source at any time. And remember, this is a land shrouded in eternal night. Some areas are better-lit than others, but one or two are going to require you to swap out your compass for a lantern.
The second is that the last of the orienteering quests asks you to find a mage to the east in the ashen forest...but the mage wasn't in the ashen forest no matter how hard I looked. I was stuck on this part for longer than I care to admit before I gave up and decided to explore a bit further, at which point I simply ran into a character who basically served the same purpose as the mage...or he was the mage. I don't actually know. If he was the mage, the interpretation of "east" was a bit liberal since he wasn't where he was supposed to be.
So, some minor problems, but I believe I've armed you with the knowledge to avoid getting stuck, at least.
After a couple objectives, the focus shifts away from orienteering as things become just the slightest bit more linear. You stop getting directions in documents and start simply following the path. The strange thing is that I was so enchanted by the world (simple though it is) that I didn't care. Just be aware of that before buying.
In addition to all of this, every area (even the mostly linear ones) contains loot and lore and side quests. You'll find documents on the ground that explain key aspects of the world. You'll run into those aforementioned charming characters and help them out in some way. And you'll find chests containing health potions (for if you fall far enough to take damage), money to use with vendors (for things like upgrades to light sources and more health items), key items for the quests those characters offer, and equippable rings.
Yes, there are equippable items asides from the compass and light sources in this "walking simulator." One helps you jump higher. One helps you sprint faster. One provides a light source so you don't need to hold one. And there are others! Every option offers you a way to make engaging with the world feel smoother according to your needs.
Finally, there's this year's second "inoffensive but undercooked" card game. It's called "Veen," and I'm not going to get into the details. Suffice it to say it's fun enough and features some minor strategic thrill, but matches do go on for far longer than they should. You never have to engage with Veen at any point, but it is required for some achievements, and you do get some rewards for winning matches.
So, there you have it. Ember Seeker gets a firm recommendation from me. If you want to get completely immersed in a small-yet-intricate world, this is the game for you. If you want a laid back experience that comes with a surprising wealth of game mechanics for what it is, this is the game for you. And for a meager $8? Come on! Ember Seeker isn't perfect, but in the face of how wonderfully it accomplishes what it sets out to do, I suspect most people will be able to forgive it for its few transgressions.
Well done, Lehti E!
With this being a smaller game, I'll be using my smaller game scale where I can take off a maximum of two points for any negative instead of the usual single point.
Let us review,:
Weak script - 1.0
Minor gameplay woes - 1.0
The final score for Ember Seeker is...
8.0/10 - Great
Publisher: Nick Nieuwoudt, Dominik Latos
Developer: Nick Nieuwoudt, Dominik Latos
Platform: Microsoft Windows
Price: $19.99
In the interest of full disclosure, I haven't yet completed Iron Nest: Heavy Turret Simulator (henceforth referred to as Iron Nest, as it always should have been). We'll get to why, but know that I don't like that I haven't finished it. I've been made to understand there's only 2 or 3 missions left, though, and I think I've likely seen everything new. So, I think it's an ok time to write the review!
The year is 1927 in the Kingdom of Castile (a fictionalized Spain), and the kingdom finds itself beset on all sides by enemies. Thankfully, it has one resource that puts its military capabilities above all other nations: the Iron Nest. The Iron Nest is a semi-mobile heavy artillery unit capable of launching far heavier artillery than ever actually existed in 1927.
You are this weapon's handler. You eat, sleep, and just plain exist within the walls of the weapon, and you're responsible for every aspect of its usage. When High Command sends word that you're to blow up a train, you blow up the train. When they send word that you're to flush out enemy strongholds with gargantuan tear gas missiles, you flush them out. When they send word that you're to blow up an allied ship after a select few pre-selected survivors go on shore leave so that you can pin the attack on a different foe, you do so. You're a cog in the ever-turning fascist machine, and that's about how far the story goes (at least for as far as I've gotten).
The first step of the process is to receive a command from on-high, which comes in on a kind of fax machine/typewriter combo. It'll give you your general orders as well as any mission-specific hiccups to keep a look out for. These orders will usually contain the Iron Nest's grid location and the grid locations of a handful of scouting units at the very least.
Next to the typewriter/fax combo the High Command orders come in on, there's a second one for "field observations." These will give you more precise information with which to accomplish your goals.
So, here's an example of those two things working in tandem:
An order comes in from high command saying that you need to blow up an enemy cannon. It also says that you're currently located in grid A2 at position 1:9. It then says that the two scouting units are located at grid C5 at position 8:3 and D8 at position 0:4, respectively.
On the field observations side, the report specifies that scout unit 1 reports the cannon is 5.45km away from their location at a bearing of 45 degrees. Meanwhile, scout unit 2 reports that it's 7.55km away from their location at a bearing of 95 degrees.
You haven't had to actually do anything yet, by the way. For this first step, you're just taking note of all this information and writing it down on your in-game clipboard for reference.
Keep track of this example, I'll be using it to describe the entire rest of the process.
The second step of the process is to take all that information to the giant war map in the center of the Iron Nest. You'll then grab three markers: one for the nest, one for scout unit 1, and one for scout unit 2. Next, you place these markers where the intel specified. This isn't a required step, per-se, but unless you have a literal supercomputer brain, having these visual references on the map is going to be crucial.
Then, you start drawing lines on the map based on the intel. First, a line jutting out from the marker for scout unit 1 at a bearing of 45 degrees that goes on for 5.45km. Second, a line jutting out from the marker for scout unit 2 at a bearing of 95 degrees that goes on for 7.55km. Wherever those lines intersect is roughly where your target is. So, finally, you draw a line from the marker for the nest to the intersection of those previous two lines. In doing so, you write a measurement on your clipboard that tells you the bearing and distance to aim for.
The third step of the process is to take the newly-calculated bearing and distance and plug it into a machine that tells you how many powder charges to use and at what elevation to raise the gun. This comes in the form of a little printed slip that gets attached to your clipboard for easy reference.
The fourth step of the process is to load a shell into the gun. You go to a specific station for this, cycle through your gigantic rounds until you're at the kind of shell you need, push the shell into the chamber, flip the correct number of switches to load the calculated number of powder charges, and then push those powder charges into the chamber.
The fifth step of the process it to rotate the nest to the bearing you calculated. This is done with a fairly slow-moving lever.
The sixth step of the process is to elevate the gun to the degree calculated by the machine from step 3.
And the final step is to flip 5 switches to signify you followed all steps, pull the "no turning back" lever, then pull the "fire" cord.
At that point, you'll walk back to the war table to watch a special tool that shows where the shell is in real-time. If all went according to plan, you'll see it follow along that line you drew to make the calculations, stop where it was expected to stop, and leave a smoldering crater where your target used to be.
Thing is, there's always a margin of error when making these calculations. If you continuously fire at the same bearing with the same amount of powder charges at the same elevation, you're going to hit the exact same spot every time...but when you're creating a new calculation, there can be some trial and error involved.
That, in my experience, was the only thing that really irked me about Iron Nest. You don't have to be pixel-perfect with your calculations, but the level of perfection required still ended up being a bit of a pain until I started getting a sense for how to orient my calculation lines to account for errors. Even after that point, I'd sometimes find that my shots were just a teensy-weensy little bit off and start facepalming. Despite having the manual processes involved down to a well-optimized science, it still takes an awfully long time for a shell to finish loading and the gun's elevation to reset. So that's an awfully big time sink just to correct a shot by 0.05km.
Skill issue?
Yes.
But like, come on.
The good thing is that once a shell lands, you get an aerial photograph that will reveal any allied or enemy assets close to the point of impact (in most missions, anyway). So if you do miss, you can see how much you missed by.
And you're going to need to, because after the game has put you through a handful of missions like the one I've been using as an example, it'll start turning up the stress.
And the stress. Gets. Intense.
But the most stressful missions are the ones that left me feeling the most amazed with myself when I pulled them off.
I've got three examples.
In the first, I was tasked with hitting a train that was on its way to an enemy station.
Yes. I was going to have to apply everything I'd learned to hit a moving target. The intel was simple: the train was expected to pass through one grid space at x time, a different grid space at y time, and arrive at the station at z time. Not only a moving target, but one on a timer.
So, I put my brain to work calculating bearings and distances to those grid spaces and determined the second grid space was the first one I could realistically hope to hit, as preparations would take too long for me to try and hit the first grid space. The pressure was mounting, as if I missed the train, I was going to have to re-calculate everything over again in anticipation of where it would end up, not where it was at the moment. With my eyes on the clock and a vague idea of how much time the missile would take to reach its destination, I pulled the trigger something like 10-15 seconds before the train was set to arrive at the second spot. I watched the little tool travel across the map until it finally stopped and generated an aerial picture of the damage.
I'd gotten a direct hit on that moving target on my first try.
Now, there almost certainly had to be some scripting on the back end to make this a bit more forgiving than usual, but I want you to try and imagine the thrill of accomplishing that. I was close to sweating, but there have been few games this year that have made me feel that good.
And that was just the first example.
The second example was a mission involving enemy counter-batteries. I was given the usual intel that would help me locate the 2 batteries and was advised that the second my first shell landed (wherever it landed), the counter-batteries would start up and I'd then be on a timer to destroy them. The best I could hope for was to destroy one of them on my first shot and handle the second one shortly thereafter, because the timer was not forgiving (I failed two or three times). So, I realized I needed to invest in prep-work.
I made all the calculations for both batteries one after another, loaded both the left and the right gun, elevated the left gun to match the elevation calculation for the first battery, and elevated the right gun for the second. I also made sure to stock up both guns with plenty of ammunition in case I missed by a hair.
By doing this, I was able to take out the batteries with time to spare, at which point the mission became the usual seek and destroy situation for 4 remaining enemy assets.
After destroying the second asset, though, the timers started flaring up again. Two more unforeseen batteries had come online with only slightly more time on the clock than the first time around. And because this was unforeseen, I was caught with my pants down and not even the slightest bit of prep work. I was going to have to do the whole process again under a blaring alarm.
I haven't yet mentioned this, but if you fail a mission, you have to start it from the beginning. So if I lost this, I was going to have to go through the first timer section again. I didn't want that to happen.
So I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, actually sweating, and speaking the various calculations aloud as I went through the motions. I seriously must have sounded like a rambling madman!
"3 powder charges *flip flip flip chkk* alter bearing to 98.2 degrees while elevation resets *crank crank crank* c'mon c'mon c'mon reset ALRIGHT alter elevation to 55.42 degrees *craaaank* ALRIGHT elevation 55.42 check bearing 98.2 check left gun ALRIGHT *click click click click click pull boom*" to give you an idea.
I wear a fitbit, so I can tell you that my heart rate was over 120 doing all this.
And reader, let me tell you. The final shell landed and blew up the last battery...
AS the clock hit zero.
And it counted as a win.
I actually slumped back in my chair, slid part of the way down, and let out loud, vocalized breaths from the relief. But it was the same story as with the train example. I'd done that. I'd pulled that off, with nothing but my calculations and attention to detail.
The last example isn't as good a story or as stressful a situation, but it still goes to show how great it feels to succeed in Iron Nest. I was woken up by a shell hitting the nest, and my mission was to wipe out several enemy installations to the east. "East" was the only clue I had, so I calculated an eastward bearing for about half the distance between the nest and the end of the map, turned around to plug these measurements into the machine from step 3...
and found that that aforementioned shell had put that machine out of commission. For this endeavor, I was going to have to calculate the powder charges and gun elevation by myself.
Powder charges aren't an issue to calculate: 0-5km is 1 charge, 5-10km is 2, etc. But the elevation is another story.
I pulled out a real pen and notebook and fired some test rounds to get a sense for how far certain key elevations would shoot a missile (and to get aerial photographs for the precise enemy locations). By the end, I had 12 lines in my notebook with specific elevations and the rough distances they covered. I used this to make shoddy calculations that somehow almost always worked.
Things like "31 degrees of elevation got me 5.31km and 35 degrees got me 5.85km. That last target is 5.96km away, so maybe 36 degrees?" or "53 degrees got me about 9km and 47 degrees got me 7.64km. This target is 8.42km away, so if I subtract x from y and divide by z I might get the amount of degrees per .10km and end up with 52 degrees?"
Intense math for someone like me...who is not good at math.
But you know what? I got through that mission too! And that time, it was even more just by the power of my own calculations.
If that sounds like one hell of a high for you, then I can guarantee you it will be. But I also have to reiterate that the stress is non-trivial. I'd say it's far more stressful than any horror game I've played. And the stress is unfortunately backed up by the fact that you have to do every stressful thing in a mission over again if you fail the last stressful thing.
I'm never a fan of the "no in-mission saves" style. I can understand why it gets used sometimes, but I think it's disrespectful of player time if nothing else. Missions in Iron Nest can run a LONG time, and people have jobs they need to go to bed to prepare for at night, you know?
That's right. In addition to all the other stressors discussed thus far, you also have to supply your own ammunition. You'd have to be quite the screw-up to have that actually become a problem, as each shell costs about 10 points and you usually have around 400, but it's another little thing hanging above your head.
So while you'll definitely want to keep points on hand for ammo, you can also use them for much-needed hints.
The best one by far is preemptive aerial photography (meaning not the aerial photography that happens when a shell lands), which costs something like 60 points. For this, you'll specify a grid space and a bearing, and you'll get the same photographs you'd normally get after firing on that space but without the rigamarole. Assuming your line work on the map pointed you in the right general direction, you'll then be able to actually see the target and make a more precise calculation for your shell.
But in some missions, aerial photography isn't possible. In situations like that, there are also extra scout reports that can be purchased for a measly single point. Like the aerial photography, you specify a grid space, and when you confirm the operation, a smaller hint about the closest enemy asset appears in the field observation screen. "Closest enemy asset" doesn't automatically mean "your target," especially if the target is in a grid containing more than one asset. But if you're smart about how you use this resource, it can still be invaluable.
For example, I was working with vague hints for one mission and thought I had my measurements down to the correct square, but I wasn't 100% sure. Aerial photography wasn't available for this mission, so I went with one of those scout reports. The report read something to the effect of "0.5km away from G7 5:5". As helpful as that might sound, 0.5km could be directly north, it could be directly west, it could be directly south, it could be directly east, or it could be in one of 360 degrees. However, my initial calculation turned out to be just about 0.5km away from that specified point on the map, so I had confirmation that my guess was correct before I went through the firing process.
So, one type of hint is super expensive, another type is pretty vague if you haven't already narrowed things down. But like with everything else in Iron Nest, it's all in how you use these hints. Careful consideration and strategy is key.
There is, however, perhaps a bit too much atmosphere at times. By that, I mean there's simply too much screen shaking in pivotal moments even at its lowest setting...yeah...you can't turn screen shake off entirely. It's not the shaking that happens when the gun fires. It's the shaking when you're being fired upon in later missions. These are the most stressful of the bunch, and sometimes it comes right down to the wire. You don't want to get motion sick during so stressful a time, but I'd bet you'll have a hard time not feeling motion sick when you're trying to keep track of small numbers on screens. Even at its lowest setting of 10%, there doesn't feel like there's any meaningful difference in the amount of shaking either. I should know...because I felt seriously sick towards the end of my time with this game for this very reason.
That's the only technical problem in Iron Nest...but it's a big problem. Which is a shame, because it means even less people might gel with this. For a game that so many people already aren't going to gel with because of the math factor, that's not a great thing.
Now...as for why I haven't finished this game...I legitimately don't think I can. The mission I left off on takes the stress and the challenging nature of some of those examples I gave and turns it up to 11. The time constraints are so unreasonable and the win condition so ridiculously beyond the pale that I think I've ultimately given up. I've gone back a couple of times to try my hand again, but I'm just not good enough. For a game that I've practically been kissing the feet of all review, that's a hell of a negative note to end on, but end on it I must. Iron Nest stumbles right at the end with an incredible difficulty spike in an experience where more difficulty was never needed.
Maybe I'll be able to finish that mission one of these days...but then what? There are only 2 or 3 missions left after this, so what kinds of shenanigans are they going to pull next? If it isn't impossible for me at the moment, will it become impossible not five minutes after overcoming this particular challenge? I don't know, but it's disheartening either way.
So, there you have it. It's a conflicting review for sure, but I have to stress that I was positively floored for the vast majority of my time with this. The level of challenge and stress were just enough to get the heart racing and grant me some major bragging rights for my accomplishments. The atmosphere was flawless. And despite the fact that I - and you - might never see the credits, I'm going to wholeheartedly recommend you at least try this out. If it's your thing, it'll really be your thing!
Let us review:
Motion sickness with no way to turn it off - 1.0
Frustrating at times - 1.0
The final score for Iron Nest: Heavy Turret Simulator is...another...
8.0/10 - Great
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