Reigns

Platform: PC
Price paid: £1.99

Reigns is a strange game. It's also a strange game to describe. It's not a difficult game to describe: it's a text-based dual-choice resource management game with roguelike elements putting the player in the role of a monarch. But that is strange. It's another one of those really inexpensive little indie games with Satan in it.

Steam is overrun with humorous, gimmicky indie games and most of them have some form of a devil. There's never much in the way of gameplay and there is always a moment that's designed to mess with your head and make your jaw drop. There is always a girl and there is always a lighthouse type shit. What sets Reigns apart is the fact that it is actually funny and challenging. As king, you must keep the kingdom's resources in the balance. These resources are the church, the people, the army and the treasury. Throughout the game you are faced with situations demanding you make one of two possible choices, either supplementing or depleting your supplies in varying degrees. The game is nice enough to let you know how big an impact your decision will make with a little circle above the concerned resource but you're left in the dark as to whether it will be going up or down. You might think it adds a degree of strategy. It doesn't. There are only about 50 different situations and you'll see them all within an hour. If variety is the spice of life, Reigns was cooked by white people. The challenge lies in the fact that you lose when any one of the resources is either completely empty or completely full. Reigns is probably the first game I've come across to punish me for doing too well. Narratively, they are all very different types of failure and you should definitely try to max out the people and the money resources.

Reigns is more suited to quick, short plays than to hour-long sessions. It is literally just text and weird, blocky portraits. And jokes. Haha. Admittedly, some of the humour is bang-on but a lot of it is just random stoner nonsense and I get the feeling the writer(s?) was trying to tick too many boxes. It's a very LOLRANDOM kind of game but has just enough charm and clever design to be endearing like a blind dog pissing on your feet rather than painful like a blind bloke shoving his walking stick up your read end. The player starts off completely blind (I was always going somewhere with this, even if you couldn't see it) and gains more and more insight into just what is going on until we meet the devil himself. Every 666 years. Haha. Now, I can't in all honesty tell you whether there is a point to it all because I stopped playing after meeting the devil for the second time and it being, for all I could tell, identical to our first meeting. Except that he told me the game would end after 1998 turns, or in the year 1998. That's probably a reference I don't get. Probably something to do with Windows 2000 and ME, the two OS following Windows 98, being an absolute pile of shit. But then again, it all plays like something made and especially written by an 18-year-old. So who knows?

Reigns is cheaper than a large bag of chips and infernally fun with friends and alcohol, maybe not so much on your Jack Jones. If you've got an evening free and some friends round, it's a two pound game that will probably offer you two hours of fun and with the state of Steam as it is, Reigns falls into the top 15% of games on the storefront in terms of overall quality.

Reigns is: going to the pub with Philosophy students/10

10 Things They Should Throw Into Pokémon Go

So, Pokémon Go has had its second update and will now have them bi-weekly according to Niantic. It's as good a time as any, then, to make some suggestions as to what should be added in the next few. Bear in mind that some of these may be things that have been confirmed and a lot of these ought to be things you too thought of adding.

1. Working Pedometer 

Number one was going to be working servers but since the casuals are back to playing Candy Crush, this hasn't been much of a problem. It would be nice, however, if the game actually tracked the distance you cover and hatched eggs accordingly. I've walked 12+ miles to hatch 5km eggs and 3+ miles to hatch 2km eggs. While you might say I'm getting fitter, I'm also wasting a lot of time and growing to resent walking and Pokémon all at the same time. Ain't nobody got time for that.

2. A Pokémon Tracker 

Wouldn't it be great if Pokémon Go had some sort of feature that would let you know what kinds of Pokémon you can catch in the nearby area and where you should head to find them? Imagine, instead of wandering aimlessly, you could be decisively heading to find that 101st Magikarp you're so desperate to find. As it stands, we're left with the "nearby" which just shows random pictures of Pokémon in a random order.

3. Better Spawn Rates 

I'm literally tired of walking literal miles with literally nothing spawning. The app is very temperamental, it has its good and bad moments; bit of a shame that I usually experience its bad moments. Using lures and incense has little effect and usually only attracts the commonest Pokémon to me. I understand that Niantic wanted some coherence with water types spawning near water and grass types spawning in parks but in practice, we just get Pidgeys and Rattatas everywhere. Where are we supposed to look for fire types, anyway? In the dessert? In a volcano? I have walked along power lines hoping to find an Electabuzz and came away with a Poliwag.

4. Working Catching Mechanics 

Again, the game just decides when it wants to like you. I can sometimes catch a 800+cp Pokémon with a single Pokéball and other times I'll have a 50cp Pikachu break free from a great throw with a Greatball and instantly run away. I've had the game show me the "Excellent!" message and not score me the excellent 100xp bonus. I've scored "Nice!" and "Great!" with a throw off-centre and nothing with perfect throws. All I really ask here is some consistency so that I can learn how to play the game.

5. Mewtwo 

I mean...

JUST LOOK AT IT

LOOK AT THIS GORGEOUS BEAST

LOOK!!!

It's the most powerful Pokémon to ever exist and my personal favourite. How great would it be to find one at 10cp? 

6. Gen 2 Pokémon 

I am not the first and I will not be the last to ask for this. I've seen rumours here and there that Niantic are planning to start fazing in the later generations of Pokémon into the game but since they haven't even added the gen 1 legendaries yet, I don't suppose this is happening any time soon. They'll probably make a big announcement when the player base drops low enough. What would you have to name your Eevee to get an Umbreon though?

7. Trades 

This has been confirmed but only as a thing that will happen, no details as of yet. There are obvious issues at hand with trading in Pokémon Go: can you trade a low CP Pokémon and receive one much higher? Would the CP be swapped, i.e. if you trade your 10cp Charmander for your friend's 970cp Jynx would they receive a 970cp Charmander? Should there be a CP gap restriction for trading? What about other perks of trading? Traditionally trading a Dragonite or a Rhydon for a Kadabra is a decent move since you receive an Alakazam; sure, you trade a really strong Pokémon for an average one but the end product is equal to and in some ways better. What about xp for trading? Should a player trading the stronger Pokémon receive bonus xp? Should trading potentially earn you candy or poké coins? We will just have to wait and find out.

8. Local Battles 

Another confirmed feature, local battles should be arriving soon. One would hope that with the addition of local battles, the battle mechanics can be fixed and made something other than just tapping the screen. See, the game claims you can swipe to dodge but it never really works. It seems to me that the game adopts the old Bioware style hidden-turn-based system where it all looks like real-time actions but the game secretly takes turns. It manifests in invisible cooldown periods which last longer for slower, usually harder-hitting attacks. The only strategy to battling right now is picking a Pokémon with attacks that are strong against the opponent's type.

9. Rewards for Milestones 

Other than the "Well done, you've walked 200km!" medal you get now. These medals have a ton of potential. Hatching loads of eggs should give you a second infinite use egg incubator. Walking 5,000km should give you running shoes which count each step as two so you only have to walk 1km for a 2km egg. Catching loads of Rattatas should give you character customisation options to look like the youngster sprite. Catching 200 steel types should let you carry a katana on your back. All I'm saying is, Pokémon Go is basically a free-to-play MMO - it should act like one.

10. A Second Pikachu Evolution

Pikachu is the Pokémon icon and that's thanks to the 90s Anime. Now, Ash's Pikachu in the Anime is special, it is unnaturally strong for its species. The ultimate Pokémon in the game shouldn't be Arceus or Dialga or Kyurem, it should be Ash's Pikachu. Imagine you evolve your Pikachu into a Raichu and see a "Devolve" option costing 10,000 Pikachu candy. Try and tell me that wouldn't be hella cool.