Last Week's Games: Roleplaying Games, Warhammer Quest, Skyrim

It’s been a while since my last blog post. There have been a few reasons for this: The main one is that I’ve been involved in a theatre project for the last three weeks which has taken up a lot of my spare time. Barely a week has gone by since September where I haven’t had to adjust my working patterns to accommodate one thing or another. Also, my mental health hasn’t been at its peak over the last month. It’s nobody’s fault, nothing’s happened, but in the small amount of quiet I’ve had over the last few weeks, I’ve found it difficult to keep my mind focussed enough to find something interesting and relevant to say.

I’ve been looking at new campaign ideas for Dungeons and Dragons, with the aim of putting together a framework for a whole campaign without getting bogged down in small details. The idea is that if I ever get the chance to run it, I’d develop it one session at a time out of the framework and ideas I’m writing now. However, I’d really like to play as well so I’ve been looking in to trying to find an online group, using mainly Roll20 as a source. This hasn’t been successful; timing often gets in the way but also there are so many people trying to join games on Roll20 it often feels like applying for a job. But I’ll keep trying and we’ll see how it goes.

Sadly, I lost a friend I knew through roleplaying games the week before last. Andy from the Black Country Role-Playing Society passed away in hospital; I don’t know any more than that and I would prefer not to ask. Andy was one of the first people I was in an RPG with; he was one of the players in Pathfinder: Souls for Smuggler’s Shiv. He was also in the first game I ran as part of the group. After that, he ran another Pathfinder game: Council of Thieves, in which I played a couple of fighters (I had to change my first one after I learned about builds!) It was a good game to be a part of, and I was able to help Andy run it by occasionally looking up a rule to resolve a dispute or explain a ruling in ways that made sense. I had to leave the game eventually when life got in the way, but Andy remained a constant and committed presence in the group and I’m sure everyone there will miss him very much. I’m glad I got to see him a few weeks ago when I had the opportunity to return to the group; you never know when it’s going to be the last time.

Imagine five, six, seven of these spiders
firing off their webs at you...

With video games, I’ve been having problems with spiders. In Warhammer Quest, I’m fighting some high-level spiders – Venomous Gigantic Spiders, or something along those lines. The problem I’ve been having with these is the way their AI is programmed. They have two ways of attacking you – bites, which can poison you, or webs, which stop you from moving. Bites are the nastier of the two moves, but they will only do this if you move close enough to attack them. If not, they’ll keep firing their webs at you, with the result that whatever is left of your party can’t move or act in any way. This slows the game down to the point where I had to quit out of the dungeons and start again, and since they can take quite a while to clear, this isn’t fun!

Apparently those things either side of its mouth
are its sexual organs. Doesn't bear thinking about...

I’ve also started playing Skyrim again, as an Argonian Two-Handed Weapon fighter. I’ve learned a few things from my time with Dark Souls and I’m a lot better equipped to take on the game now. I like how the game is developing, but I don’t like the Frostbite Spiders. Horrible things. They’re huge. It’s certainly not the first time I’ve tried to play through Skyrim and I can’t remember how far I’ve got in the game before, but my character is at level 18 now and I’m enjoying it so far so hopefully I’ll be able to see it through to the end this time.

Last Week's Games: Warhammer Quest and Escape Game: 50 Rooms 1

 I don’t know if anybody noticed, but most of the games I’ve been playing lately have been long-form RPGs, strategy games and platformers which I’m taking a fairly decent amount of time to complete 100%. One of the problems I run in to when I’m doing this blog is trying to find something new and interesting to say about the games I’ve been playing in that time. However, this week, two opportunities presented themselves, with Warhammer Quest and, er, Escape game 50 rooms 1.

Warhammer first, then. I’ve described the game in previous blogs so have a look at those if you want to know what it’s like. But I discovered a cheat. Well, that’s not true, I doubt I’ve “discovered” anything; I won’t have been the first to have found this. And it’s not even a cheat, really, it’s… not a bug either, more an exploit in the game’s programming. Here’s what it is:

"I saw a rat! Where?"

At some point during the game your party goes to Altdorf, the capital city of the Empire. Here you are given three missions against the Skaven.[1] On the second of those three missions, you’re given half of your pay at the beginning – 750 gold. You then play through the mission, where you have to drop a gas bomb in the Skaven tunnels – a thrilling battle in itself, as you only have a limited time to escape once the bomb has been set, and when I played it, it literally came down to the last available move! Immediately after completing the mission, you’re taken to a cutscene (which in this game rarely amounts to more than a text scroll, from what I’ve seen so far) where you’re paid the rest of your fee; another 750 gold. If you exit the game at that point and come back to it, the scene triggers once more and you get the 750 gold again – and you can repeat this process as many times as you like for what I assume is a potentially unlimited amount of gold! I did it twice: the first was quite by accident, as I had to leave my computer pretty quickly after finishing the mission, and the second was to check what was happening. I didn’t exploit it any more than that – I prefer not to cheat through a game – but it’s there if you need it!

The other game I played this week was Escape game 50 rooms 1, which I downloaded onto my Android phone last week and I’d beaten by the following Friday. It’s an escape room game, where you must solve puzzles in order to proceed. You find various keys for various doors, items to solve other puzzles, and the occasional number and symbol puzzle. If you find the way to open the door, you move on to the next room.

What's the connection between the
TV and the fish on the opposite wall?

Some people might think games like this are trashy timewasters, and those people aren’t necessarily wrong; it’s hardly A-Grade material. The number puzzles rarely look like the thing they’re representing. A key code panel, for example, will rarely have their numerical display in an Arial font! And some of the solutions to the puzzles are horribly obtuse. Even without that, fifty levels of essentially the same thing can get dull after a while, not that a mobile game is intended for extended play. But when it goes for it, really goes for it, Escape game works well. With most of the puzzles being confined to one room, there’s little wandering around becoming hopelessly lost and confused. The rooms you’re trying to escape from range from hotel rooms, to late 90s offices, to eerily decorated children’s rooms, to some quite frankly bizarre one-shots like ancient Egypt, a cave, and a grisly morgue. The creepy soundtrack, the abstract art, and the level design that looks ever-so-slightly off, creates the unnerving impression that you – the player character – are trying to escape from a place you don’t belong.

I’ve mentioned it here rather than giving it a full review; it’s a free download and it’s not a game I would consider I had to beat, but Escape game is a good experience that I’m pleased I’ve had.

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[1] Rat Men, if you don’t know.