"Fate Tectonics is the puzzle meets God game that makes compromise exciting and rewarding."
Disclosure: I received review code for this game from Alex Bethke, one of the developers. He has over his history helping to run the Toronto Game Jam assisted me in my coverage of TOJAM
Fate Tectonics is the puzzle meets God game that makes compromise exciting and rewarding.
Fate Tectonics grants you control of a world you create out of tiles. The tiles are made up of different landscapes, with each tile usually comprised of at least two different landscapes. my job as the maker is making sure they fit together. You can rotate the tiles in order to find the best fit. When you stick tiles that don’t match up the tile you places gets corrupted and may fall into the eternal darkness below. As you play on you can provide stability by laying down cities on the corrupted tile.
That is where Fate Tectonics breaks from simple puzzle game to God-pleasing zen-like chaos. The first Fate, Penelope you meet, is an entity that is shown floating over your world. She is pleased when you build fleets, unfortunately the second fate that comes out as you progress called Barnacles hates fleets. But his additional powers let you expand to build more water based tiles.
So the progression goes on with more and fates being unlocked and more of their preferences and dislikes coming into harsh contrast. All the fates are quirky and have their hang ups but as I progressed I found ways to appease them all, except for Pestur, fuck that guy.
The Fates themselves are loving animated and prone to be so adorable I wish that there were plushies to buy in real life. Catlas and Auroara are timeless cuties. Leveling the different Fates gains abilities that had me manipulating other Fates moods nearly expertly near the end.
Starting the game you are given two modes. One that puts you on a timer to end the world and the other that includes a timeless version more for playing around. Much like Minecraft create mode I much preferred the timed version as it added the essential stressed that spurred me to get better and willingness to make mistakes.
I fell into a zen like haze playing through some parts of this game while others had me throwing tiles away out of fear of misshaping my world. There is some technical issues when the booting in and out of the save screen when I was late in the game. I only had one crash but the game mostly held together.
My main piece of advice is be willing to fail. It has some of the best game over gameplay since sim city of old.
I found getting into the groove of the game was essential with the music going loud. Robby Duguay excellent soundtrack acted as the reflection on how I felt about about my current situation in the game. Whether is was the hopeful intro tunes to the post disaster music that felt as though I was playing a Final Fantasy from the snes period.
The music is alone worth the price of entry and I heartily endorse picking it up for the $7 Canadian here.
Fate Tectonics retails for 21.99 on steam