Spilled! (PC, Steam)
Spilled! is a very small game about making the world a nicer place. You pilot a boat, armed with a water cannon and a big scoop, through polluted, oil-filled water to clean up the gunk, sweep all of the debris away, and rescue stuck animals. Returning the mess and debris to a recyling centre gives you coins which you can then spend on upgrades for the boat, such as faster speed, a larger holding tank, or an even bigger scoop.
It aims to be relaxing, rather than intensely fun – the reward for cleaning up each area is seeing the formerly brown and murky waters returning to beautiful blue ones teeming with coral, tropical fish and plants, and rescuing its creatures from being trapped in muck, rather than acheivements or loud fanfares.
The controls are simple: RB/RT to accelerate, LB/LT to slow down, B to stop, and the left stick to turn. (Just note that the turning is relative to the screen, not the boat, so holding the stick left will make the boat turn towards the left of the screen regardless of direction). The water cannon and magnetic scoop are assigned to the face buttons, which the settings menu describes as “button north/south/east/west” – I’m not sure if this is a programming/translation efficiency thing, or just a quirk, but either way I quite liked it.
The UI is also very minimal, as the small size of each sub-area, and the choice to have a recycling center and upgrade stations in each sub-area, means that information such as your coin count and the number of coins needed for upgrades can be stored on these buildings and not require any HUD space. The instructions are wordless, which I often dislike, but it this case it is done well – the pictures and icons used are very clear, as are the video prompts that show how to activate an upgrade station when you drive into it.
The pixel-art graphics are very pleasant and detailed in the environments I saw during the demo, and they demonstrate the relaxing nature of the game well. The gentle piano-led soundtrack also supports this. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of the “slurp” noise of sucking up the oil from the water, that’s just my dysfunctional ears – the sound does work well in the conext of the game. (It can also be turned off separately from the music.).
When I finished the demo section after about 20 minutes, the ending screen said that there was “about 45 minutes of game left after this point”. Spilled! is made by one developer, Lente, with another person assisting with graphics, and its clear that they are aiming to share a small but finished and polished game, rather than overpromising and having to compromise.
Am I buying this one? Yes. £4.49 for what will be an enjoyable 1-1.5 hours, and which supports the indie-est kind of indie dev, is a fair trade for me. Spilled! is a definite recommend if you like games such as Unpacking or Powerwash Simulator. As a bonus, 10 cents from every sale goes to a whale and dolphin conservation charity.
News Tower (PC, Steam)
News Tower is a management sim about running a newspaper publishing company founded by your father and uncle. The intro explains, via postcards, that after your father’s death and your uncle’s move to unspecified other pastures, it falls to you to rescue the failing company.
The demo starts you in November 1929, in an office that has been ransacked by debt collectors, and continues until July 1930. The full game, which is currently in Early Access, goes until 1935, with further years still being added. The graphics and the erractic character animations are the only real clue that the game is in Early Access. Everything else, including the jazzy soundtrack, the polished UI, and the well-connected systems, works really well.
The tutorial takes place over the first two production runs, and covers the basics of researching potential new stories, sending out your reporter, and hiring staff. After this point, as new systems and tasks appear, they are accompanied by the option to play their guide.
You are likely to need some of these guides, as there are far more systems than I expected in News Tower! Management-game staples such as manging the number of staff, matching staff skills to assignments, and balancing income with expenses, are obviously present. But there are also more detailed factors to consider. One of these is planning the locations of each office in your building to minimise the negative effects of other rooms, such as the noise of your printing press and the smell from the toilets.
Another is manually laying out which stories will go in each position of your newspaper – this allows you to decide whether to prioritise increasing your audience (the sales numbers are visible, and change as you add/move stories), or to prioritise fulfiling your duties to one of the game’s three Factions.
Just when I was getting the hang of things, the city map opened, which added multiple other levels of strategy to think about. Your company can focus on individual districs of NY by publishing the types of stories that its citizens want to read about. Each district is a node on the surprisingly large city map, and winning enough districts over unlocks nearby training facilities and shops. There are a variety of shops selling different items, such as desk accessories that will buff specific reporting types, items that make your building more comfortable/prestigious, and items that can only be bought if you have enough influence such as a security presence for your building.
To sum up, there is so much here. The demo took me just under 2 hours to complete and there were still many more aspects left to unlock. I’m definitely recommending News Tower, as a lot of work has gone into this game – this is the kind of project that Early Access was meant for!