Yesterday, none of the arcade games I listed were released in actual calendar year 2024. At least one of them, I hadn’t even played in 2024. I can do better! I will!
Simulation games are those games which let you build or manipulate some sort of system which then runs along with its own rules. Some of them even have the word “simulator” in their names. The simulation can be as hands-on or hands-off as you like. Our first entry is very hands-off.
Placid Plastic Duck Simulator (2022)
As the pandemic wore on, my home office grew a bit lonely. I had cats, but they usually slept for the day. Everyone else in the house had jobs that didn’t allow them to work at home. So it was just me and a glowing computer screen. I had two glorified screen savers I’d put up on my second screen. One was a Star Trek LCARS display that would beep and show graphs and occasionally shoot stray Klingons. The other was Placid Plastic Duck Simulator.
The game simulates plastic ducks of dozens of different designs (some of them are very bizarre) swimming around a variety of pools. They drop in at a consistent pace. They get pushed around by the current; some can swim under their own power. And then in a few minutes, another one — plaid, or flying, or a submarine one — drops in. And that’s it. Expansion packs bring new ducks and new environs. For what it is, it’s pretty cute 🙂
Hardspace: Shipbreaker (2020)
Daring starship captains travel the galaxy on exciting adventures. When they upgrade their ships, someone has to salvage the old husks. That’s your job. Struggling to make ends meet for your family, you sign up for a tour of duty salvaging old spaceships in orbit. Unfortunately for you and your family, you are killed within the first few minutes. Your clone is then required to pay for their own resurrection, which should take ten or so years, assuming no more inconvenient injuries or deaths. You’ll never see your family again. All there is, is your fusion torch and the next hulk to dismantle.
Once you accept you’ll never pay off your ever-mounting debt, it’s oddly calming, just floating about, cutting things free, separating out the valuable salvage from the junk, unlocking new and better tools (which, again, will add to your debt). Don’t worry. Be happy. The Company has your back. And your every other part.
Worshippers of Cthulhu (2024)
Yay! Finally a game that was actually released in 2024! I have to admit that, even though it has been officially, fully released, I have only played the demo. The full game is on my list! But, it’s a long list.
WoC is a city builder, of a sort, where you play the head of a Cthulhu cult that has traveled to the distant, risen island of R’lyeh with the aim to summon increasingly powerful demons, Dagoths, Old Ones, Elder Gods, and finally the old tentacle face, Cthulhu, to destroy the world and bring about the return of the eldritch horrors once thought sealed away forever.
The gameplay spins between requiring mundane things like ensuring your cultists have enough clams and wheat to fattening up willing cultists who yearn to be thrown to the demons below in order to unlock new buildings and structures. When your cult has become strong enough, it’s time to spread the joy to the hapless, but not entirely defenseless, islands in the area.
It’s Age of Empires, but the empire in question runs through Miskatonic University.
Starship Simulator (unreleased)
Some dream of being starship captains, zooming through space on grand adventures. Some dream of disassembling those starships to pay off an enormous debt. And some dream of just being crew, doing your incredibly necessary job of keeping the ship running so that Captain Wonderfulness can hog all the glory.
If you always wanted to wear the red shirt, this is your game. The current demo opens with you bringing the starship online, a process that easily takes fifty steps. As you work your way through the checklist — warming up the reactors, tuning the matter/anti-matter flow, adjusting the grow lights in the hydroponic chambers, turboing the lifts — the ship comes alive around you, and it ends with you cold booting the bridge consoles and setting your first destination.
There are other, simulated, crew members on board, and they will happily take on whatever jobs you don’t feel up to doing. Want to just stay in Engineering? You can. Want to be Mr. Sulu up on the bridge? You can. Want to sit in the middle chair and be the one to say “Hit it”? When the game is released, you’ll be able to do all that, plus away missions, plus see planets nobody else has ever seen, do first contact with aliens, and more. It’s an ambitious goal. But the joy of running through that checklist and turning a dark ship into a home and workplace for hundreds was amazingly compelling.
Manor Lords (2024)
My number one simulation game that I played in 2024 was Manor Lords. There have been hundreds of medieval city builders, but this one strives to be more realistic than the ones that have come before. Households provide workers, but everyone contributes and most residents have a side hustle — weaving, smithing, brewing and so on — to help out while the main breadwinner is off tending cattle, harvesting wheat, or foraging in the forests.
You are the Manor Lord (or Lady), and while you can dive into the village and walk around, your main job, as the ruler, is to defend your town against bandits and the rulers of other towns in the area. You’ll negotiate trade routes, hire mercenaries, train homegrown militia, clear the bandits and then search for new land to grow your village even more.
It’s a fun, addicting game. The difficulty level can be tuned down to a very casual experience, or one where your village is constantly attacked.
“Once you accept you’ll never pay off your ever-mounting debt, ”
Sure you can! I paid mine off! I loved Shipbreaker!!
OMG you did??? I thought it was deliberately unable to be cleared up.
What happened when you paid it off???