This post has been 9 months in the making. 1 day for playing the wonderfully-illustrated city builder that is LakeSide by Massive Galaxy Studios, 1 day for trying to capture pixel-perfect GIFs, and 9 months for agonizing over the fact that it’s sometimes impossible to capture or post pixel-perfect GIFs, therefore, it’s better to not post anything at all until you feel so bad for your blog hiatus that you say enough is enough, get over it, and post this beauty of a game and talk about it because, really, that’s what matters. Apologies to Gonçalo Monteiro, the main developer, for waiting this long.

LakeSide is a bit of a rougelite in that you’re not building one eternal city over many sessions. Instead, it offers quick turnaround and replayability as you receive different building upgrades each time and experience random events. It’s currently in Early Access on Steam ($11 at 25% off right now, Windows-only) with new features coming out regularly, most recently the addition of armies and sieges. Oh, and if you’re wondering why the game looks this pretty, it’s simple: art is made by @kirokazepixel.

YES, I finally got my hands on a game with @kirokazepixel’s art in it!

For The Warp (@forthewarp) is a spin-off from another project Kirokaze is doing art for, Massive Galaxy (@massgalaxy). The core crew is in fact the same: Gerardo Quiroz on pixels, Martyn Stonehouse on audio, and Gonçalo Monteiro as the main coder/designer/mastermind behind both ideas. During development of Massive Galaxy (a space exploration/trading point-and-click adventure, still in development), the space combat mechanic grew into a life of its own and broke off as a standalone roguelike deck-building game. Gonçalo sent me a copy of the alpha last week when it released into Early Access and boy did I have some fun with it! Granted, I haven’t built any decks since my middle-school years of Magic the Gathering fandom, but my deprivation for card mechanics was equally matched by the coziness of the colorful-yet-dangerous universe that keeps pulling you back in for more dueling.

The goal in the current alpha is to make your way across 5 levels full of fighting encounters (and other less lethal ones). Unless you pick up some hull-repairing drones on the way, the runs generally end up very fast and you’ll be replaying the game often (with pleasure, that is). After 3 hours in the game I explored barely half of the possibilities and the play style did feel quite different based on the cards that I had. The variability still has some rough edges though—once I lucked into some very rare cards, I was able to defeat all stages in one go. But that’s why it’s in Early Access, so things can get balanced as more cards and ships make it into the game. It’s a perfect title to start playing in alpha as it’ll be exciting to see how things change with each update.

If you’re into cards, strategy, space, pixel art, weird sci-fi tech … head over to Steam or Itch to get your spacefaring runs started ($15, Windows only).

There is hope for the galaxy yet – Retronator Magazine – Medium

medium.com Retronator Games Watchlist

Here’s the extended feature of @massgalaxy​ (art by @kirokazepixel) in Retronator Magazine.

Could I be more excited about a game than I am for Massive Galaxy?

Not only am I deprived of pixel art games where the only point is not killing enemies, I could also use some sci-fi that’s not grimy cyberpunk with the world going to shit.

So what do you do if you’re not shooting? It’s a point-and-click … business adventure? Your goal is to trade goods to buy better ships to explore more not-going-to-shit planets.

Keep reading