Bedlam - A post apocalypse Banner Saga

[sclpls]

I played about an hour and a half last night, and also really liked it. I was nervous because the RPS review I read had a harsh assessment of the game. It was a relief to discover the game felt much easier to interpret than the review lead me to believe, and the basic tactical dynamics of the 4 unit types felt good. The aesthetics of the game are also top notch (not that this was a surprise). Using a shotgun blast to knock a unit back into range of your sniper who finishes the unit off never stops feeling satisfying.

 

That being said, I'm not sure it will hold my attention as much as FTL did. There are two aspects of the game I find frustrating. I dislike the random placement of units when a tactical battle starts. When you have such a scarcity of actions I feel like you can really get fucked by your random starting position.

 

I also suspect that if your first two combat encounters go poorly you've lost the game. Getting early veterans (and subsequently keeping them alive long enough to be useful) already feels critical in the little of the game I've played. So I worry that the game has a bit of a "dead man walking" problem.

 

I am looking forward to discovering more unique weapons and units though, those have been a lot of fun to mess around with.

[Bjorn]

I played about an hour and a half last night, and also really liked it. I was nervous because the RPS review I read had a harsh assessment of the game. It was a relief to discover the game felt much easier to interpret than the review lead me to believe, and the basic tactical dynamics of the 4 unit types felt good. The aesthetics of the game are also top notch (not that this was a surprise). Using a shotgun blast to knock a unit back into range of your sniper who finishes the unit off never stops feeling satisfying.

 

That being said, I'm not sure it will hold my attention as much as FTL did. There are two aspects of the game I find frustrating. I dislike the random placement of units when a tactical battle starts. When you have such a scarcity of actions I feel like you can really get fucked by your random starting position.

 

I also suspect that if your first two combat encounters go poorly you've lost the game. Getting early veterans (and subsequently keeping them alive long enough to be useful) already feels critical in the little of the game I've played. So I worry that the game has a bit of a "dead man walking" problem.

 

I am looking forward to discovering more unique weapons and units though, those have been a lot of fun to mess around with.

 

RPS gave it a shit review?  Fucking weird.  I think I'll avoid reading it until I've spent more time with the game.

 

Random Placement: I'm split on this.  On one hand, YEP SUPER FRUSTRATING!  On the other, the majority of the combat encounters I had were prefaced by, "Your people leave the dozer to investigate and AMBUSH!"  So in those situations it actually makes much more sense to have units scattered, much more than than the traditional lines with you on one side and the enemy on the other.  And in the few I can think of that were definitely not ambushes, My people were on the left side, and the enemy was on the right.  This is a case where I'm not sure if making something more realistic is a good or bad thing. 

 

On the opening battles: My suspicion is that this as an issue will go away with practice, that once I've got a dozen runs under my belt, having poor opening battles will be a rare occurrence. I could see me getting good enough to start going into the early battles with just 2-3 people to get early bonus resources and focus on leveling a few people.

[Gormongous]

I can see me getting into this as much as I did FTL.  There are unlockable Dozers, which don't look like they add quite the variety that the ships in FTL did, but definitely give you something to shoot for.

 

Warning: the RPS review complained particularly that there are no unlocks or achievements on Easy, which I find almost unconscionable and which makes me worry. A game that won't let you play with all of it unless you play at a certain difficulty points to a bloodymindedness of design for which I have little tolerance. 

[brkl]

You'll be in the minority, FTL had the same problem but was praised for it.

[Gormongous]

You'll be in the minority, FTL had the same problem but was praised for it.

 

I've barely ever played FTL except on Easy and I have all of the ships except the Crystal Cruiser unlocked. It may have been different on release, but by the time I started playing it, all playing on Easy did was flag your unlocks and achievements as having been done on Easy, which is... I don't know, whatever.

[sclpls]

Yeah I definitely side with Gormongous on this point, although I don't feel about it as strongly. I found it odd that in EU4 you didn't get achievements unless you played in iron man mode. I think that sort of stuff is a cop out. If a designer feels a particular game mode (easy, non-iron man, whatever) doesn't reflect the "true experience" of the game then that mode should not be in the game.

 

Achievements and unlocks have never acted as an incentive for me in games so these decisions don't impact my impression of a game, but I can imagine the frustration felt by people that want that stuff!

[Bjorn]

Warning: the RPS review complained particularly that there are no unlocks or achievements on Easy, which I find almost unconscionable and which makes me worry. A game that won't let you play with all of it unless you play at a certain difficulty points to a bloodymindedness of design for which I have little tolerance. 

 

Achievements: Don't care.  They're achievements, everything about them is arbitrary to begin with. 

 

Unlocks...eeeehhhh....That's something I'm split on, I guess it will depend on how difficult Normal vs Easy is.  I would philosophically agree that players should be able to get the full experience without the locked items being too difficult or arbitrary to unlock, but if their intended experience is Normal, and Easy is just included as training wheels, then I'm not sure if it bothers me.  What's the difference between if they would have just shipped the game without an Easy mode?  Binding of Isaac and Spelunky have unlocks, but with a fixed difficulty, many people will never see some of them.  Does that design also strike you as bloodyminded?  Or Crypt of the Necrodancer, whose "difficulty" levels are essentially governed by which character you use.  The reality here is that I will NEVER unlock certain things in Necrodancer, even with the easiest character.  Because I am bad at that game.  Terrible, in fact.  I am unlikely to ever even see the final credits roll, let alone unlock all the things, I am so bad at it.  And that's okay with me.  Is that an intolerable state to leave a game in, with a skill threshold so high that some of your players will never cross it?

 

I'm not trying to pick a fight here (not sure what the tone that previous paragraph has), I'm genuinely curious if you have the same reaction to all those games, or if as sclpls says, you think if Easy modes shouldn't exist if a developer wants people to experience their "true" game as it was designed. 

 

You'll be in the minority, FTL had the same problem but was praised for it.

Yeah, as far as I know, FTL always allowed unlocks on Easy, but the Crystal Cruiser was a fucking nightmare to unlock originally, which everyone pretty much hated because of how random the unlock conditions were. 

[Gormongous]

I'm not trying to pick a fight here (not sure what the tone that previous paragraph has), I'm genuinely curious if you have the same reaction to all those games, or if as sclpls says, you think if Easy modes shouldn't exist if a developer wants people to experience their "true" game as it was designed.

 

Mostly, I just dislike when games seem to have an "easy" mode in the spirit of inclusivity, but then restrict it in some way to make it clear that it's not the "real" game. I don't know how unreasonable I sound when I say this, but I wish those developers would get over themselves and just have the courage to make a hard game that not everyone's going to play, or allow for multiple difficulties as each being a fully legitimate choice. The weird way that some developers passive-aggressively try to disincentivize me from selecting an option that they decided to put in their own game just gets me, somehow.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Mostly, I just dislike when games seem to have an "easy" mode in the spirit of inclusivity, but then restrict it in some way to make it clear that it's not the "real" game. I don't know how unreasonable I sound when I say this, but I wish those developers would get over themselves and just have the courage to make a hard game that not everyone's going to play, or allow for multiple difficulties as each being a fully legitimate choice. The weird way that some developers passive-aggressively try to disincentivize me from selecting an option that they decided to put in their own game just gets me, somehow.

 

Essentially it's less about needing to have everything available to you and more about disliking the implied developer attitude that the babies playing on Easy don't deserve the unlocks?

[Gormongous]

Essentially it's less about needing to have everything available to you and more about disliking the implied developer attitude that the babies playing on Easy don't deserve the unlocks?

 

Precisely, thank you.

[Dewar]

RPS gave it a shit review?  Fucking weird.  I think I'll avoid reading it until I've spent more time with the game.

 

Random Placement: I'm split on this.  On one hand, YEP SUPER FRUSTRATING!  On the other, the majority of the combat encounters I had were prefaced by, "Your people leave the dozer to investigate and AMBUSH!"  So in those situations it actually makes much more sense to have units scattered, much more than than the traditional lines with you on one side and the enemy on the other.  And in the few I can think of that were definitely not ambushes, My people were on the left side, and the enemy was on the right.  This is a case where I'm not sure if making something more realistic is a good or bad thing. 

 

On the opening battles: My suspicion is that this as an issue will go away with practice, that once I've got a dozen runs under my belt, having poor opening battles will be a rare occurrence. I could see me getting good enough to start going into the early battles with just 2-3 people to get early bonus resources and focus on leveling a few people.

 

If they're always being ambushed, you'd think they'd move in formation all the time.

[Bjorn]

Precisely, thank you.

 

I guess...I just don't care.  If they made unlocks available on Easy, that would be fine.  But if they want to restrict them to Normal, also don't care. 

 

I just got their update from feedback from day 1 players.  It sounds like they are taking a lot of feedback in and willing consider tweeking various elements of the game if they don't feel like it's delivering the experience they want the player to have. 

 

 

I dislike the random placement of units when a tactical battle starts. When you have such a scarcity of actions I feel like you can really get fucked by your random starting position.

• • Random unit placement allows us to have a more dynamic and reactionary experience on every battle, keeping with our more ‘arcade’ feel as opposed to a long drawn-out process. We really enjoy the puzzle that it creates at the beginning of each match, compelling the player to either go on defense or offense right from the start. We understand the desire for player controlled deployment because it would definitely make the game easier, but we really didn’t want players spending half of their time carefully deciding where each of their pieces should go. But if the majority of players would rather spend additional time before battle carefully placing unit deployment, then we might have to rethink this design choice. We are still discussing this, but perhaps there is a way we can have both worlds. 
  • What are we doing about it? Our next patch is going to mitigate this issue by moving deployment areas far enough away where you will have more time to make an adjustment to your randomly generated spawn point. Right from the start, you can activate shields to prevent death, while you can also find other equalizers that allow you to teleport units where you need them or use invisibility to cloak your crew, avoiding that round of retaliation from the enemy altogether. We think if you experiment with the tools at hand you will find this to be a fun and challenging part of the game.

[Gormongous]

I guess...I just don't care.  If they made unlocks available on Easy, that would be fine.  But if they want to restrict them to Normal, also don't care.

 

It's just a weird design choice for them to make, in my eyes. If the unlockable dozers are a long-term goal and source of gameplay longevity, it makes no sense to restrict them to a single difficulty unless the intent is for players to graduate immediately from Easy to Normal once they get the hang of things, which is not a common behavior in my experience. If the dozers are just a superficial reward for expert play, then I don't care, but it would disappoint me for the game to have no metagame progression, then.

 

Anyway! More about the game?

[Bjorn]

Anyway! More about the game?

 

It's getting super duper shit on in Steam reviews....which is a massive bummer.  The first several pages of the default "Helpful" reviews are almost all negative. 

 

This does not strike me as being indicative of what the game is really like, but I've only got 2 runs in so far.  Feel super bad for Skyshine if the reviews end up tanking their week 1 sales.

[sclpls]

Oof yeah, that's unfortunate about the Steam reviews. Seems like people are upset that the developers didn't design a different game. That seems unfair.

[Bjorn]

Oof yeah, that's unfortunate about the Steam reviews. Seems like people are upset that the developers didn't design a different game. That seems unfair.

 

Yeah, most of them seem to be, "I wanted FTL, and that's not what this is" or "I wanted XCOM and that's not what this is".  There are some legitimate criticisms in there, but even the criticisms there are are not the type that lead me to think that it is worth a negative review. 

[Bjorn]

Alright, I got through a complete run on Easy last night, and fairly deep into a run on Normal.  There was a patch yesterday, I'm not sure if it made the game easier, or if I just figured a fair number of things out (or both). 

 

I'm maybe not as enthusiastic about it a few more hours in as I was in the first couple of hours, but I still think it's a fine game.  I think it probably would have been helped if it has been delayed a couple of more months for additional content and balance. 

 

I think my biggest issue right now is that it's almost too big, but doesn't have enough content.  FTL managed this by restricting how long you could stay in each sector.  Bedlam's only impetus to move forward is the steadily increasing difficulty, which may ultimately kill me, but I'm on the next to last tier on my normal game and managing, though the numbers of enemies it is throwing at me is getting pretty tough.  I'm just wandering back and forth across the wasteland at this point instead of moving towards Aztec City because I want to unlock one of the other dozers, or find one of the questlines for some of the items I've picked up.  You can always backtrack, or pick paths that will move you away from Aztec City rather than towards it.  But you end up seeing the same events over and over.  FTL never had you have the exact same encounter twice in a run, but Bedlam has no problem throwing the same encounters at you again and again.  It takes some of the fun out of exploration.  And there are a lot of places to explore, which is why I think it's this way.  About three-quarters of your travel points feature 4 points of interest that can be explored before moving on.  You don't have to explore them, but it's obviously potentially valuable to do so, particularly if you're trying to unlock stuff.  I've probably traveled through about 20 nodes in my normal game, so I'm up to something like 70-80 total encounters. 

 

But, I'm still really digging combat.  Each one is like a puzzle, and once you can focus on using your energy just for combat because all the upgrades on your dozer are done, then it gives you a lot more options.  Double damage, stealth and a shield have all saved a bunch of my soldiers lives. 

 

Some criticisms I saw in the Steam reviews that are just wrong:

 

No choices to make during encounters - Just not true.  Depending on what named characters you've picked up from which factions can influence what actions you can take during some encounters.  I don't think it feels as robust as FTL, but it's like there are no choices to make. 

 

Run out of resources too much - These people are bad at the game.  If you make sure on easy fights early in the game to take in 3 or fewer people, you get double the energy, which lets you get your dozer leveled much faster, which should take care of all resource issues by the fourth or fifth node.

 

Melee units are worthless!  -  These people are dumb and bad at the game.  Rookie melee units are basically only useful against snipers.  But once you get them to Veteran, holy shit are they awesome.  Tons of movement, high health, decent damage, your best chance to pick up resources during combat, can get inside most units firing ranges and completely lock them down.  There's no cap on increasing the damage of units, so if you get a badass melee guy going, he can end up one of the most damage units. 

 

ProTip!  Dozer weapons that kill enemies will grant those kills as experience to whatever unit is currently selected.  It makes getting some rookies leveled up super easy if you have the energy to spare, or need to use a weapon anyways.

 

Overall I'd still recommend this game to anyone who enjoyed FTL or Banner Saga, with the caveat to not expect it to be either of those games.  Even with some of my criticisms of it, it's doing some interesting things with that genre that are worth checking out.  

[elmuerte]

I like the art. The writing/lore is a bit flat though. I've played up to half way, and a quite a bit after that until I got stuck on a loading screen.

[osmosisch]

I may be missing something, but in Bedlam I got to the second node, ran out of fuel and soldiers and basically was dead in the water. There are always more enemies than I have soldiers, their soldiers manage to have some sort of overwatch that mine don't and in general it felt rather unmanageable. My soldiers are so fragile that they die before getting veterancy (or are just stuck in the hospital forever).

Also, like 90% of the encounters were just things like "Hey, something interesting and mysterious. You have no tools to do anything with it. Oh well."

Whatever trick there is to it, it's not immediately apparent to me.

[Bjorn]

Tips:

• Use your starting energy to upgrade your Crude usage twice and your Food usage once before moving a single node
• Enemies do not have any kind of overwatch (though Gunslingers do have the ability to counterfire under certain circumstances, yours have the same ability)
• Use Frontliners to bumrush snipers, they can one shot them and have the longest move range
• Try to let your frontliners soak up the damage, so just they end up in the hospital and the rest of your people are okay
• Once you've got combat figured out, only take 3 soldiers into the first five or six combat encounters.  It doesn't matter if you lose a solder each fight, the extra energy is worth the sacrifice.  Pump all your energy into Crude and Fuel until they are maxed.

And yeah, encounters can be that way until you start picking up some of the items and characters necessary to do more with them. 

 

 

This game has some pretty gnarly bugs in it, and I seemed to have found most of them while finishing my normal run last night.

 

• Units can stop gaining levels sometimes if you initially level them up using kills from Dozer weapons.  Solution is to try and level them to Veteran on their own initially
• Do NOT using the Dozer ability Doppleganger until its patched.  It is currently bugged so that the unit that is cloned automatically dies at the end of combat (I fucking lost a monstrous Frontliner to this, a guy who could do something like 12 damage a shot). 
• Taking too many Elite units (the 4-square units) into some maps (seems like it is the smaller ones) can break the map and stack a bunch of your units out of bounds.  The upside is that it also break the enemy script, and enemies do not try to move or attack.
• And the fucking kicker, it's possible (though unlikely?) to have a game crash in the final few seconds of a run that prevents you from getting credit for the run or from seeing your score screen.  The game locks up on the final loading screen.  It's not a random crash, it appears to be reproducible according to some posts on the forums.  The autosave point to retry and see if you can avoid the bug requires you to go back through three really hard fights.  I'm not going to play it again until this gets patched.  I was not happy when I finished that run last night. 

I'm increasingly convinced they really needed another few months of work on this.  There's a good game here, but it could have really benefited from a few more months of polish and bug fixing. 

[Bjorn]

The next patch list changes have been posted, and a lot of these are very significant changes.  To the point that they really change combat particularly from what it was just a week ago at release.  I'm wondering how much of this is just in a reaction to so many negative reviews on Steam and panicking trying to make people happy to improve the customer reviews. 

 

• Bug fixes include end game show stopper, performance related issues and reduced overall map memory to fix never-ending battle loading screens
• Increased the size of many battle maps and spread out the enemy and player spawns to prevent ambushes at the beginning of combat in every map
• Powercell pickup awarded immediately in battle
• Weapons now use 1 action point
• Balance of equalizers vs. powercell cost
• Rookies will reach Veteran status after 3 kills with the first level up at 2 more kills and each level up after that requiring 5 more kills
• Now the heal time is proportional to the unit’s class and health
• Lowered the overall number of enemies
• Threat level ramp up tightened
• The Away Team now has a 4 crew member maximum
• Away Team sizes of 3 or less will net twice the crude and meat rewards after battle Instead of missing, cover now provides a 50% damage reduction with the exception of directly adjacent attacks
• Elite battles are more like mini-boss fights against an entire team of one weapon class 
• The encounter spread for Elites is better balanced 
• Rogue A.I. now teleport/shield but do not attack 
• Faction dozers now have starting faction crew
• Updated Double Down Map now has boundary lines
• Balanced the powercell reward based on threat level
• The entire board and all of the valid movement tiles are now displayed
• Movement flood tiles are now much more prominent
• Removed the forced encounter outside the gates of Bysantine
• Changed S.O.L to 3 outcomes and more resources rewarded in good outcome Passengers die off quicker when the Dozer is out of meat

[Dewar]

Hmm, so I watched the Giant Bomb Quicklook this morning. Obviously, that's never the best situation to demonstrate gaming skills, but I couldn't see a way to really use the snipers effectively, considering their range band is one square wide, and you can't shoot over your allies. You're pretty much in the situation of having to move, then fire, and then that would be your whole turn.

[Bjorn]

I know there have been a couple of pretty hefty patches with balance changes since I last played, so this may not be entirely accurate, but snipers are more usable than they appear.  Once you can get them to Veteran status, their range band increases to 2-squares wide, which makes them a lot easier to use.  You're often in a situation of only being able to move + fire on a turn, no matter what unit you're using, so it's no more a hindrance to snipers than it is any other class.  The real problem with them is their incredibly low health and short movement range (both of which are supposed to get improved, if they haven't already).  In the original release, it was next to impossible to keep them safe.  Multiple units are capable of 1-shotting them, and their movement is too short to ever run away.  So once the AI decides to advance on a sniper, it's usually the end of that unit, as enough classes have long enough movement range to reach them in a single round once you're a few rounds into the fight.  I lost more snipers than any other class. 

 

I keep trying to talk myself into going back and trying it out again after some of the balance changes, but I think a lot of my enthusiasm for the game got smothered by how buggy it was on release. 

[brkl]

All I know about this game is that it looks great and everybody starts out useless.

[Dewar]

I know there have been a couple of pretty hefty patches with balance changes since I last played, so this may not be entirely accurate, but snipers are more usable than they appear.  Once you can get them to Veteran status, their range band increases to 2-squares wide, which makes them a lot easier to use.  You're often in a situation of only being able to move + fire on a turn, no matter what unit you're using, so it's no more a hindrance to snipers than it is any other class.  The real problem with them is their incredibly low health and short movement range (both of which are supposed to get improved, if they haven't already).  In the original release, it was next to impossible to keep them safe.  Multiple units are capable of 1-shotting them, and their movement is too short to ever run away.  So once the AI decides to advance on a sniper, it's usually the end of that unit, as enough classes have long enough movement range to reach them in a single round once you're a few rounds into the fight.  I lost more snipers than any other class. 

 

I keep trying to talk myself into going back and trying it out again after some of the balance changes, but I think a lot of my enthusiasm for the game got smothered by how buggy it was on release. 

 

Yeah, I guess that's the other half of my concerns. Without the ability to shoot twice, you can never kill anything before it advances on you, so I don't understand how you're supposed to survive. With the frontliners, you get just get up in someone's face and trade blows, which gives two attacks per round since you no longer have to move. With the gunners, it seems like it would pretty easy to pull a chess move and fork (be in attack range for two enemies,) forcing the computer to either move each guy and get no attacks, or take a double hit next round. Honestly, the shotguns seem like the best class, if you can manage to position enemies where the knockback is blocked so you can hit someone for 10 points of damage in one round.

 

*shrug* Obviously, veteran units would change all this. I don't think Austin had a single unit promote while he was playing. From what I saw though, I can't imagine ever bothering with a sniper on my team at the start, which means I'd never get a veteran anyway.

 

Edit: Despite all this, I'm intrigued. I might pick it up once a few more balance patches are out and it looks a little more stable.