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Bjorn

Basingstoke - A hometown apocolypse simulator

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I picked up Basingstoke (who's name I keep fucking up as Basingston).  It's a new roguelikey thing from PuppyGames, makers of Ultratron and Revenge of the Titans, both of which I liked quite a bit and convinced me the relatively high $25 launch price ($30 normally!) was worth it.   I wish I knew more about Basinstoke, it's obviously full of jokes and jabs at a real town, but I have absolutely no knowledge of it at all. 

 

It feels somewhat hard to describe this game.  It's top down, with graphics very much in line of what you'd expect from the dev if you've played their other games.  Roguelike doesn't quite feel right though.  There are chapter check points, and it seems like you can begin from any checkpoint you've reached.  Checkpoints let you store gear, so when starting from a checkpoint, you can even partially load yourself up.  Though the amount you can leave a checkpoint with is limited.  It seems like a system designed to let people who might struggle to finish a complete run still get through the game by slowly stockpiling more and better gear at deeper checkpoints until they can push through.  But if you want to start over every time, that's an option. 

 

So far it is very focused on stealth and running away as dominant strategies over combat.  It almost feels like how the beginning of ResEvil2 felt, where avoidance was far more important than shooting (though a very different game). 

 

The maps are only partially generated, I think.  From having gone through the first two levels multiple times now, it seems like the general layout is the same, but what goodies drop is random and the path through the level can be altered by rooms, buildings, fires and enemies being in different locatiosn. 

 

There's what looks like a fairly robust crafting system, where all sorts of things can be combined to give you the tools to get through an area.  A basic sandwich serves as a cheap distraction for enemies if you toss it out.  Sprinkle that sandwich with coffee though, and a zombie will go on a rampage attacking its fellow undead.  Sprinkle it with hot sauce, and the poor sap that eats it will burst into flames. 

 

It's quite a bit of fun to be starting up a game like this with no guides or wikis to guide you, which is not something I've experienced for quite awhile,  I tend to be terrible about wanting to look things up.  But just being forced to experiment and put things together and try to figure out how to unlock more things is all really fun! 

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Game looks fun, might pick this up.

 

Basingstoke (the town) is in Southern England and is remarkable for being unremarkable. It’s pleasant, by all accounts, but the kind of place you’d never go unless you live or work there, or you’re driving through on your way to somewhere else. Some companies have head offices there. The name has comedy value, kind of like Norwich, when it's listed alongside more prestigious places. 

 

Manchester!... London!... Basingstoke...

 

It’s got lots of roundabouts.

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8 hours ago, dartmonkey said:

It’s got lots of roundabouts.

 

Lol, I've seen several roundabouts in the game already :P

 

There's quite a few comments in the steam forums about it's launch price, and one of the devs weighed in with this comment:

 

Quote

 

Interesting aside: $30 to a customer ends up being £2.64 to me, personally, which isn't actually enough to even buy a McDonalds meal let alone a fancy one, and we've gotta pay rent too.

The only people getting rich round here are Valve...

 

Aye, there's three of us at Puppygames, and the taxman takes an equal share, and we keep back 20% for a rainy day

 

 

You don't often see a firm number about how much a particular dev or studio is getting from a single sale once all the different cuts have been taken. 

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I think it's been since Spelunky that a game has made me want to ragequit as hard as this has, and yet I have a love/hate thing going on with it where I keep wanting to come back for more.  Dying in a single hit to anything is just brutal.

 

Each unlockable character is like their own campaign though, the item stashes don't carry over from one character to the next (so far all the unlockable characters just getting fixed starting gear as their bonus, but at the penalty of harder/more enemies).  It makes for a nice changeup after dying on my furthest along character to jump over to one of the others and work on progressing them through an easier/earlier level before taking a run at the level I'm actually stuck on again. 

 

 

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