The Jabberer

  Spark in the Dark is a dungeon-crawling action RPG made by the first-time game dev team of Stellar Fish, and recently as part of the Steam Next Fest a demo was made available. What had been showcased prior had caught my attention because of its visual similarities to Exanima , a favorite of mine, but the games are really not at all similar. The demo was quite promising, though there is still a great deal of room for improvement. The demo covers the first level of the rogue-like adventure, where after choosing a class (essentially a playstyle), the game plops you in the entry room of the dungeon. The four classes (Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, and Blacksmith) offer dramatically different playstyles that go beyond simple weapon/armor choices. The map is the same on each run, with the same item and enemy placement. From this, the presence of containers and their status is randomized, as are traps. In some runs there are hardly any, and others a secret passage is littered with the things, whi

 I've been on a bit of a sci-fi kick and real-time strategy kick lately, and as I've been meaning to play Homeworld for ages, I figured I'd buy the prequel on sale, even though prequels aren't typically recommended for newcomers. The reason for this is that typically prequels generally require or recommend prior knowledge of the franchise's plot (even if that seems bizarre). That being said, Deserts of Kharak doesn't fall into that pitfall, and as someone who hasn't played Homeworld , you will miss nothing if you play this admittedly somewhat short but solid singleplayer campaign prior to the first game. I had a lot of fun with this one, and apart from its short length with high price tag, the game is a very enjoyable tactical strategy game. While the first and second game are based in space and utilize 3D movement, Deserts of Kharak is a bit of a step backward, taking place on the desert planet of Kharak. Air combat is limited to 3 varieties of attack ru