Yogscast Jingle Jam 2017 (Days 11 to 13) : Chainsaw Warrior, Team Racing League, Gurgamoth & Painters Guild

Welcome everybody on this new update post for the Yogscast Jingle Jam 2017 advent calendar. I'm happy to announce that even though the first day looked more than catastrophic, the two other days were nice with actually enjoyable games. I'm trying to keep up with the new games and to give you detailed descriptions at the same time but it keeps getting more and more complicated to do, I think I should be fine until the end of the bundle though. I hope you will like this post as well as the games in it !

We start roughly with the worst game of this calendar yet. Chainsaw Warrior is the adaptation of the Chainsaw Warrior board game that got released in 1987. You are an ex-special forces soldier who happens to be the last hope mankind has to get rid of an evil intelligence known as Darkness. The big problem is that you don't have all your time, there is only 1 hour left before New York gets destroyed. Equipped with various weapons and tools you will have to go through a lot of rooms before getting to Darkness and hopefully beating it. I've never actually played the original board game so I don't know if this adaptation is faithful but what I'm sure of is that this game is far from being good. Let's take the graphics out of the critic for this one because I don't consider them to be important for a board game, we should look at the gameplay instead. Each game you start will require you to roll the dice multiple times to set your stats which are your health, your default attack strength and your default attack speed as well as another stat of which I forgot the purpose. One of the rolls will also be used to know how many radiation or bleeding points you should get hit with before instantly losing the game. Finally, the last dice roll and probably the most important one will decide how many credits you get to buy your gear. That is where I see the first problem, if you don't get enough credits the game becomes pretty much impossible and you will have to start another game. However, if you get too many credits the game becomes boringly easy to beat. The most important weapon to get is the head to head one since it's the one you will have to use in most cases. Which is a big problem too, the game is way too repetitive, so much that you will probably be clicking the "head to head" button without any thought put into it after some time since your default attack will be really strong after launching the game three times. After all, why would you continue playing an impossible game if launching a new one is as easy as clicking twice (contrary to the real board game) ? I frankly can't see how any of the next games could be worst than this one.

An early access game already available in a bundle is never a good sign and indeed, Team Racing League has a huge problem. It isn't what you would expect though as the game is actually really good. The big problem is that the servers are sadly empty which is a pity for a game focused on its multiplayer mode and not allowing to play with bots. When I say empty, it is to be taken literally since nobody was connected when I played this game. I had no other choice but to test the only solo modes available which are the time attack mode and the tutorial. The latter is really intuitive even though being kind of slow, I could have learned as much as I did in half the time. The time attack mode is perfect, there is honestly not much to say about it other than I really enjoyed it. The cars themselves feel awesome and drifting on this game is really satisfying. However, the time attack mode isn't sufficient to judge this game so I decided to look at some videos on YouTube and see how the online mode is played. I was surprised to see that Team Racing League is actually a competitive game focused on teamwork which is something I have never seen on that kind of game. Two teams of three cars compete in a race in which all shots are allowed, but here is the twist: the first car to get to the finish line wins for its team. The name of the game suddenly makes a whole lot of sense, doesn't it ? The actions range from simply pushing your ennemies outside the road to merging with one of your teammates to create a barrier between you. The graphics are nice for the style they belong to and I like what they did with the colors even though shadows could be slightly darker so we can avoid hitting walls every time. The only big real problem this game has is that maps are too similar. Let's just hope the team behind this game will manage to improve that just like Rocket League did ! What we've got here is an awesome game that sadly suffers from what I believe to be a not good enough advertising campaign, that's so sad...

Gurgamoth is, like many games lately, a party game. Don't think I say that pejoratively, I love these kinds of games and it's the case for this one too. It is only playable in local with a maximum of 4 players, which is completely understandable since it requires a very short reaction time to be played correctly. The game is beautiful, I love those kinds of graphics and I was absolutely charmed by what Galvanic Games did here. What really matters with such games though is the gameplay, so is it good ? It is perfect, you can get used to the controls in literally less than a minute. With a controller (which is strongly recommended), you will have to attack with "A", to dash with "B" and to stun by pressing "B" two times. You can only attack three times in a row before having to wait for your attacks to reload, it isn't the case for dashing and stunning though since you can do those infinitely. In Gurgamoth, your attacks won't kill anybody but it's their consequences that will decide of the death of your enemies. Most of the gameplay is indeed centered around the maps. Each map has its own way of getting played, there are a dozen of them and they all play really differently ! Some of them shrink with time, some are equipped with moving lasers and some even hide spikes behind breakable walls. Your attack is the only way to push your enemies into those dangers which will kill them and therefore sacrifice them to Gurgamoth. Strange balls will also float around in the maps, if you attack them they will go in the direction you are aiming at or they will transform into something deadly. I have only played with bots so far but I am looking forward to playing this game on LAN with some friends !

Despite the two awesome games that came before this one and its mixed reviews on Steam, Painters Guild is my favorite game of this update, and I was far from convinced while downloading it ! I first thought it would be a game taking advantage of the success of Passpartout: The Starving Artist to make some money but it's not the case at all (it got released before anyway) ! After playing it for two hours without noticing time pass, I would say that Painters Guild looks more like Game Dev Tycoon in its gameplay. Is it as good as this indie gem ? Not at all, it is way too good for Painters Guild to rivalise with , but it doesn't mean that it is a bad game ! You play as an unknown painter who sells his art really cheap, your goal is to make a name for yourself while keeping improving, which will help raise the prices of your paintings higher. You can't paint forever though so you will have to sleep if you don't want to take too long painting and to make some paint if you don't want to run out of it. You understand that doing all that by yourself can be difficult, which is why you can take some apprentices under your wing to get some help but also to learn them what you know. Several objects can be bought which will allow you to boost your own knowledge as well as the one of your apprentices, helping to paint faster and to access more difficult painting requests. We can't live forever, that's why you should imperatively help your apprentices to grow so they can follow in your tracks after your death. I really like the graphics from this game. I could feel while playing it that the guys behind this game really love art thanks to all the references that are in the game. The only problem that I could find was that it is too easy which makes it repetitive after some time, you can still remedy this by having more apprentices though. Overall a really good game in my opinion which made me realize that I shouldn't care that much about the Steam reviews before buying a game.

This post is finally over, you can get back to whatever you were doing ! As always, I hope that one of these games is of your taste. The calendar's content apparently got leaked some days ago and it looks like it is real. If you want to know what's in it before deciding to buy it, just click here. Be aware though that there is no way to be sure that it is fully true ! Well I'm really done now, see you next time, hopefully tomorrow !