Remember when you’d walk into a local music, book, or video store and there’d be an adorable section where the employees would recommend what they were interested in that month?
Welcome to our little version of it, called Remap Recommends.
The staff and contributors that make up Remap play all sorts of video games, and you hear us talk about most of them on weekly episodes of Remap Radio. But even with nearly three hours of banter, some games don’t make the cut, or simply do not fit into the flow of conversation. We also don’t do a lot of “reviews” here at Remap, so we needed to find something that fit in-between.
Every month, Remap Recommends gives us a chance for each of us to sit back and reflect on a game that’s continued to sit with us, to the point that we want to tell you, in writing, why it’s interesting.
These aren’t traditional reviews. They’re not long essays. This is “Hey, check this out. I liked it.”
Patrick Recommends...Arco
Platform: PC, Mac, Switch
Genre: Delightfully violent anti-colonial, anti-capitalist fantasy tactics RPG
Finally Finished: Months after I started, but over the recent holiday
What If I'm Bad at These Games? You're good. I'm bad at them, too
The video game industry has never felt more tumultuous, and yet, if you had no understanding of the business of making video games, you would simply sit in awe at the sheer number of incredible video games released seemingly every day. I understand the business of making video games (or, at least, I try), and I'm also in awe at the sheer number of incredible video games released seemingly every day.
One of my goals towards the end of 2024 has been to drill down on a handful of independent games. Over the recent holiday, I spent significant time with some impressive and interesting games, like 1000xResist and Arctic Eggs. But the game that I want to tell you about, the one that's lingered in my mind, is still Arco.
It's a game that caught my eye when it was released in late August, and I have been slowly plucking my way through it. I have an (in)arguably unhealthy obsession with finishing games, one I'm trying to kick, but Arco is a game where I felt guilty for not seeing it through, because I've loved it's demanding. push-and-pull combat system, which rewards players for aggression, rather than cowering in the shadows. I love its strange world, which pulls from ingrained "western" iconography, but pushes back on our celebration of such images. And that's before you start talking about the interesting supernatural elements on its fringes.
I get why so many folks haven't given Arco the time of day. Another tactics game in a sea of tactics game, where near every niche is catered? Oh, and it has pixel art?
(Honestly, these days, I feel like pixel art might be a turnoff for some people.)
But Arco is good—very good. It's thoughtful and smart and violent and considerate and does not waste your time. There's a lot of video games released in 2024 that feel like they'll be the subject of a long YouTube essay in a few years, and I suspect Arco will be among them. So in the meantime, why wait for that YouTube essay?
Rob Recommends... Diplomacy Is Not an Option
Platform: PC
Genre: Base-building survival RTS
Light-weight survival strategy is one of my favorite genres. The rhythm of "explore map, prepare defenses, fend off hordes, repeat" is one of the surest ways to keep me glued to my monitor, and Diplomacy Is Not an Option delivers pretty much exactly what you want and expect from a game like this.
The game gives you the option of being a decadent noble fending off rebelling peasants while building ever more elaborate cities and defenses, with some familiar elements from They Are Billions like making it imperative that you send your army out to clear the map to prevent the recurring waves from growing too powerful when they arrive. The tension between expanding your base and bringing new resource patches behind your walls versus upgrading your existing forces and keeping your defensive lines smaller and stronger is familiar, but it's done well here and the powerful magic spells you can cast bring some real novelty to the action. Special shoutout goes to a lightning attack that follows your mouse cursor, which carves and incredible swath through enemy hordes.
Cado Recommends... An Old Favorite
I don’t know about you but I've had a hell of a month. November hit me like a ton of bricks on both the personal and external scale.
Between putting on Save Point, the added anxiety of the election, a rapidly shifting political climate that meant I could no longer put off coming out to my family, and my grandfather passing at the end of the month, it all left me very little time to check out new releases. But it also left a need for some comfort in the small moments that I did find myself with free time.
For me, this specific mix of circumstances meant I played about 15 hours of Slay the Spire in 10-15 minute chunks throughout the month of November in order to keep myself sane.
I have dipped in and out of the game many times before and enjoyed it but never really drilled down and did any ascensions, the game’s escalating challenge modifiers, because I never thought I was good enough at the game to warrant the extra challenge, despite having unlocked the first ascension ages ago. The last time I played the game in any real concerted way about a year ago, I still had a few cards to unlock, so I just did normal runs until I finished out my collection for my favorite class, the Silent. Once I’d done that, it really felt like I’d “beaten” the game, and didn’t see myself coming back to it anytime soon. Alexander wept.
As this past month got more and more hectic, however, I found myself grasping for something that could sooth my soul, so I booted up Slay the Spire. In an attempt to wrestle control back from the world, I set myself a new goal: lock in and climb the ascension ladder. Turns out that the steady, incremental addition of new challenges each ascension offers was exactly what I needed to properly return to Slay the Spire. A perfect mix of the familiar and the challenging, a warm blanket of gaming fresh out of the dryer during a particularly nasty cold front in my life.
My recommendation to you is: give yourself space to return. As a culture, we can favor newness to a fault, but sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves is to be retrospective. You can’t always move forward without taking stock of what you’ve left behind, so make sure to give yourself the space to do so when you need it. You never know when something old can still surprise you.