I guess this might be a recurring feature after all. Or at least, I've kept playing fifteen minutes of various games I've never previously touched, so I may as well keep writing about them. Let's get right into it.

Original War

Original War is - I think - an RTS about some American and Russian forces who get sent back thousands of years into the past, released in 2001. The opening cutscene that talked about how the time machine worked and why the Americans were secretly in Siberia (for time-machine fuel) was a little long but otherwise interesting. However, reaching the game, I discovered I had a "seconds-per-frame" performance problem – okay, I'm exaggerating a little, it was maybe 10 FPS – apparently this is an issue with running it in full-screen DirectX on Windows 8. It was easy enough to avoid once I found the various FAQs and updated with community patches, and I wasn't pedantic enough to count that stuff as part of the fifteen minutes, but just like after a good mod-installing session, by the time the game was actually ready to play I wasn't interested.

Do I want to continue? Yes, at least so I don't feel like I wasted all that time getting it working. But it seems decent otherwise, and if it's still supported by a community a decade later it can't be that bad.

Megabyte Punch

Megabyte Punch is a 2012 2D platformer that includes things like upgrades and fancy attacks, which is a genre that probably has a proper name. I had no problems with performance this time, and rapidly got into the game. I played through the brief but helpful tutorial and, though I didn't really know what I was doing, enjoyed myself. The movement was fluid and the combat probably would have been too if I had any skill. I played this with the keyboard, though, and though it worked absolutely fine I still felt like I should have been using a gamepad. So, I played a little past the tutorial, and then decided to put this one away until I have one plugged in.

Do I want to continue? A weak yes - getting a controller isn't a big deal, it's just hiding in a box somewhere, but I'm not super-enthusiastic about these kinds of games in general.

DarkStar One

DarkStar One is a 2006 3D space combat/trading/adventure game... but a simpler description would be "Freelancer clone". I didn't know this at first, but felt reminded of it mid-way through the opening cutscene - and confirmed it the moment I reached the game interface. Not that that's a bad thing though! I completed the first, optional, tutorial mission just as the timer expired. Much like Freelancer, the game works fine with a mouse & keyboard, but this one at least supports other controllers. On the other hand, the story exposition so far is full of cliches, and voice acting isn't uniformly amazing (but better than some, cough X: Beyond The Frontier, which didn't even have subtitles, cough cough), and despite the decent flight tutorial there's been no help at all deciphering the many mysterious UI buttons and keyboard shortcuts. The plot isn't exactly enthralling, but I don't know where this game fits in the open-world/linear sliding scale so that might not matter much. Incidentally, it has nothing to do with Darkstar: The Interactive Movie, which I also own and haven't touched, and will probably turn up here at some point.

Do I want to continue? Despite the negativity above - are you kidding? A Freelancer substitute with pretty decent graphics is a welcome surprise.

Intermission

Also unrelated.

Unium

Unium is a 2015 puzzle game about covering black squares in a grid with a continuous line. I got through the 'beginner' and 'easy' levels, a short distance into 'medium', and had a look at the one unlocked advanced puzzle; the latter two difficulty levels introduce new features, but the game itself doesn't change - those just aren't needed for the early puzzles. So far the individual levels are nice and short, but a difficulty wall is probably just around the corner. On the whole, it seems like a good casual thinking game - nice simple design, no time limits, happily resizable window, ability to skip individual levels at any time (but not two consecutive levels). I bet this is on touch devices, but it's certainly fine with a mouse. There's plenty of content still to go, and more levels available via Steam Workshop integration.

Do I want to continue? Yes. It looks like a good game to fill up a few spare minutes.

Special post-continue update: Oh boy, I hit the difficulty wall at Advanced-16.

Please, Don't Touch Anything

Please, Don't Touch Anything is another puzzle game, also from 2015, but otherwise completely different from Unium - where that requires logic, and nothing is hidden, this one is all about thinking outside the box. It's essentially one puzzle with multiple different solutions - some obvious, some much harder. In the fifteen minutes allotted I managed to get five of the 20+, but I expect most of the remaining ones would take a lot more thought. Fifteen minutes was actually a pretty decent length for a session here. Two of the endings I found were exceptionally bizarre, which was neat, and I'm curious to see if there's some deeper meaning there or it's just surreal because it's that kind of game. Also, the soundtrack is pretty great.

Do I want to continue? Yes, unless it devolves into mindless clicking to find 'magic' spots (and it doesn't seem like that kind of game).

Inherit The Earth: Quest for the Orb

I went into Inherit The Earth: Quest for the Orb knowing very little - it's an old-school adventure game where all the characters are animals. Ten minutes of exposition and five of confused wandering and conversation has helped a little. Basically, animals were made more intelligent by humans, then we disappeared, and the animals now live together in what looks like a feudal society. Each is 'themed' - boars are violent, elks are posh, and there's ferrets and rams and others I couldn't identify. You're a fox, by the way. The main quest is to find the Orb of Storms, some kind of human relic that forecast weather.

The design and polish so far have been great - particularly the custom responses to both sensible and silly actions. And everything is voiced! Until I checked when writing this, I wasn't sure if it was actually an old game, or just made to look that way. (The former - it's from 1994.)

Do I want to continue? Yes, but I doubt I will. It's probably a big timesink, and looks like the kind of adventure game where you'll need pen and paper for notes and maps and such. I don't have a specific problem with it, but, after the previous entry, I'd rather play Machinarium or A New Beginning first.