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You start off with a small stockpile of resources and two minions standing in a space station that’s just a single square floating in an abyss of stars. To expand your station you can assign your minions to build rooms and corridors to connect them. Each time you want to build something it comes in the shape of a Tetris piece that must be placed carefully to make efficient use of space.

Since your stock of resources will run out quickly, you need to build Extractors to turn nearby Particle Fields into building material, Gardens to grow food, Kitchens to make that food edible, Reactors to generate power, and Quarters to expand your minion population. Finally, you’ll need a few Weapon Rooms to protect it all.

Protect it from whom? Well, at the bottom of the screen is a meter that gradually fills up, indicating when alien raiders will assault your station. They only target your minions, so you won’t suffer any collateral damage, but they can wipe you out if your defenses don’t cover every inch of your station. This encourages you to make a nice and tightly built base. After each assault, the meter begins to build again, but slightly faster, and more foes attack in every successive wave, so there’s always pressure to grow as quickly as possible.

While I said you want to have a tightly formed base, there are factors that force you to do otherwise. Particle Fields only have a limited supply of resources to extract, and you need to spread out to reach them all. But most importantly, there are four mysterious black obelisks at the edge of the map that can unlock upgrades, like faster minions or longer range weapons. But you’ll have to connect your base to these obelisks and devote minions to researching them for a good deal of time.

This made for a fascinating first playthrough as I experimented with various combinations of rooms and base layouts. I was only able to reach a single obelisk and lasted about 30 minutes. Three more playthroughs and many hours later, I felt like I understood the game almost too well. I was able to activate all four obelisks and I even ran out of Particle Fields to exploit. This left me with a slightly disappointing endgame of consolidating all my units into defensive positions and just watching to see how many waves I can survive before the ever-growing alien attacks overwhelm me.

The controls are incredibly simple and pleasing. To build rooms, you just drag your finger from one of the colored room names at the top of the screen, and tap with a second finger to rotate the shape. You can also assign minions to various tasks like construction, defense and research by dragging and dropping icons for your little workers along the bottom of the screen into pockets for each task.

Simplicity has its price, however, as you can’t micromanage to optimize performance. For example, I’ll sometimes see a dozen workers all carrying material to the same room that only needs one more item to complete. In this case, I would like to tell some of them to bring that stuff to a different room. And if a minion has nothing to do, they just lay down wherever they are, often making them sitting ducks for raiders and I can’t tell them to move to a safer location.

The sound compliments the game perfectly in all ways. The developer calls this a “meditative strategy game,” and that comes through in the music. It’s very transient and relaxing, and it doesn’t drown out the sound effects that help you know what’s going on, from rooms being completed to incoming attacks. It makes for an experience that feels very hard to pull yourself out of.

I genuinely enjoyed every moment of Rymdkapsel, even through the slow buildup early in the game. But I can’t help feeling like there should be more to it. I don’t like how the game is limited by finite resources. I want to keep trying to expand my base and outpacing the invaders just to see how far I can get. Sure, that might be more frantic and less in keeping with the meditative tone, but it would be a nice option because it’s only been a few days and I feel like I’ve mastered it already.

There are achievements to accomplish, but only three, and I completed them all after my third playthrough. Additional achievements could be an easy way to get me to play more and try totally new play styles.

I still feel the urge to pick it up every so often just to relax and watch my minions milling around the base like a space-age beehive. It also fits nicely into my commute since you can complete a game between 30 and 90 minutes. But this has the potential to be the kind of game people won’t put down for years, and I’ll be anxiously awaiting any updates that give me another reason to turn this title on again.

RATING:

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Also, we have the usual news roundup of all the Vita, 3DS, and mobile gaming news you can handle.

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Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner – Soul Hackers

This is actually a port of a Sega Saturn title from 1997 that was never before released in the U.S. My guess is they thought the game was too Japanese for the rest of the world. At that particular time they were probably right, but today there are far more fans of this genre who will see this as a long-buried gem. It’s a point in the game’s favor that even 16 years, it’s able to hold its own on a modern system.

Fantasy Vs. Reality

Etrian Odyssey IV proved that I can enjoy a JRPG. In that game’s case, I found enjoyment through exploring a world full of beautiful art. Soul Hackers doesn’t give me that; it’s a dark and mostly unattractive world that just doesn’t interest me. Sure, EO4 was set in a fantasy world while Soul Hackers is ostensibly set in a realistic one, so maybe the art has to match that. And sure, I can understand why the office building, hotel, and airport stages appear plain and empty. But when the planetarium and even Paradigm X, a virtual reality city, lack color and character, they all mesh together in your head and become the same place.

What Soul Hackers does have is a much deeper plot than most RPGs in general. Our hero lives in Amami City, which is basically the city of tomorrow. In this cyberopolis, powerful networked computers are in every home and on every street corner. This makes hacking quite the useful trade; which is why you’re a member of The Spookies, a hacker group that just stumbled upon a strange gun-shaped PC. In addition to its impractical design, this Gun PC turns you into a Summoner, capable of recruiting demons, storing them as data, and calling upon them in battle.

But go figure, some people want to use demons for evil. The Phantom Society is not happy with an outsider having a summoning PC, so they want to take our whole crew down. At the same time, an animal spirit named Kinap takes you on a series of “Vision Quests” to let you play out the final moments of other Summoners. These will help you solve the dark mystery behind the creation of Amami City and the demon who wants to devour its residents’ souls.

Dungeons & Demons

This sets you off on a series of first-person dungeon runs along with Nemissa, a demon who’s taken up residence inside your love interest. It’s pretty standard RPG stuff, with random battles and your usual assortment of attacks and spells. The battles are a little tougher than most games, however, as most demons have near-immunity to one type of attack or another. This forces you to pay attention in battle. Boss monsters especially require a bit of planning as they can usually wipe out a party member or two with a single attack. Only through proper exploitation of weaknesses and tactics (or a lot of grinding) can you take them down.

What really adds an interesting element to it all is the fact that you can choose to talk to just about any demon you battle. Depending on how your conversation goes, you might convince them to go away or even join your party. However, they are just as likely sucker punch you while you’re talking. Every type of demon has its own personality, and after a few attempts at chatting, you should get an idea of what they want to hear – even if that’s just your screams of agony.

Once you’ve collected a few demons, you can start fusing them together to unlock higher level demons. Since demons don’t gain XP, you only have to worry about raising your level along with Nemissa’s. Though collecting enough demons to fuse along the way doesn’t hurt.

While this system certainly makes encounters more interesting, I don’t feel the demons are different enough. Each  just feels like a bunch of stats and a portrait. The first person view means you don’t really see your team in battle, which further distances myself from my demons. Plus, frankly, a lot of the demons just look dumb. I just wish more of them had something unique or interesting to utilize in battle, or that I could keep my favorites with me longer.

The Human Touch

The human characters were pretty hit and miss with me. Lots of them come off as gimmicky and annoying. The few serious characters grabbed my attention though, thanks in part to some impeccable voice acting that breathed an amazing level of nuance into each character.

One of my biggest detractions was just how empty the world felt. There is almost nothing of interest to look at while walking around an environment. You only know when an NPC is near because an icon pops up as you step on their square. This is especially noticeable in Paradigm X, which is supposed to be a virtual world brimming with activity. But you only see a barren walkway lined with grey buildings. Just give me a set piece that’s more interesting than my work place, or at least throw something in the dungeons other than walls and doors.

Soul Hackers was obviously not made with me in mind. Heck, it wasn’t even made with my country in mind. But I’m not sure who to recommend this title to other than people who are already fans of the Shin Megami Tensei series.

RATING:

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New Pokémon revealed for Pokémon X/Y, a new game announced for 3DS in Japan, and an awesome unofficial Pokémon noir comic finally goes live. Warning: You may never look at your favorite pocket monsters the same way!

New Pokémon X/Y Details

There was more chatter about the upcoming Pokémon X/Y games for the 3DS last week. Corocoro Magazine released images and descriptions of 4 new 6th generation Pokémon.

The panda looking one is a fighting type called Yancham. I really like the way he looks — definitely going to be on my team. The bird is Yayakoma, based of the Japanese Robin. This looks like its going to be the obligatory Flying/Normal type you find in the first patch of tall grass in the game. The yellow lizard is Elikiteru, an Electric/Normal type.

The one off to the side is Gogoat, the Riding Pokémon. As in, you get to ride on it like a Yoshi. I think that’s pretty awesome. He looks kind of similar to the sacred sword trio.

I like the style of this new generation so far. Definitely getting me more pumped to play the game.

They revealed a small picture of the Karos region the game is going to take place in, which appears to be based off of France, although that’s been assumed since the games were announced.

They also released pictures of box art and revealed that X and Y will actually have some limited customization options for your trainer character. It seems you can change things like their hair color and skin tone. It’s about time Nintendo gave us a little freedom in that area.

In addition to all that, there is supposed to be more info released on X and Y on May 19th during an episode of Pokémon Smash. So keep your eyes out for that. It’s about time Nintendo started whetting our appetites with X/Y info. Hopefully we’ll get more and more as October rolls near.

Pokemon Tretta Lab Announced

Last week, it was announced that Pokémon Tretta Lab was coming to the 3DS in Japan this summer. This is a portable version of the arcade game Pokémon Tretta that was released in Japan last year by Nintendo and Marvelous AQL.

It involves collecting plastic pucks – called Tretta- that have Pokémon on them. The Tretta are scanned by a machine and it allows you to use those Pokémon to battle opponents in 3-on-3 battles and possibly earn more Tretta in the process.

Pokémon Tretta Lab will come with an attachable Tretta scanner for the 3DS and a few pucks. In addition to 1-on-1 battle options, there will be a Tretta Lab mode where you can look at 3D models and stats of all the Tretta Pokémon you have, much like the 3DS Pokédex.

This new attachment seems a little too bulky, and the game is a little too gimmicky to work well. And there’s no news that it will ever leave Japan. But it still seems like an interesting concept, and it shows that Nintendo is still trying new things.

Viridian City: Pokémon’s Dark Side

After a long time in the works, artist Ray Bruwelheide has finally released the first chapter of his comic that puts a Gothic spin on the ever-sunny world of Pokémon. It’s titled Viridian City and you can read it on Brunwelheide’s Tumblr blog.

This is a very daring and mature take on the franchise, which long-time fans of the franchise will either appreciate greatly, or be disturbed by deeply. I’m definitely in the former category.

The art so perfectly captures that ’50s vibe that contrasts so well with the near-future world of the games; almost as much as the blood and realism contrasts with the happy-go-lucky cartoons. Most importantly, this is the first time I’ve seen Team Rocket depicted as a competent criminal organization that actually scares me!

We’ll let you know about any further releases down the line.

Catch ya next week!

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It also has a memorable story that’s told from two separate points of view; a device the game uses exquisitely to tease events.

If the art looks familiar, it’s the same style as the upcoming Dragon’s Crown for Vita. But here, the artist George Kamitani manages to stay sexy without looking like he’s just doing fan service. Now, if they can just bring Odin Sphere over to the Vita, we’ll have all his best works on one console at last!

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