I am Not a Monster was an extremely good surprise, mid way between a puzzle game and a tactical squad game.
https://af.gog.com/game/i_am_not_a_monster_first_contact?as=1649904300
This looks interesting. Thanks for bringing it up.
Yeah, it is a very smart game. The beginning of the game is a bit too puzzle and the enemies are only one type and melee so a bit boring, but from the moment the other side starts using guns it is REALLY cool, and sometimes you pull some beautiful Into The Breach move in the middle of an otherwise tactical combat (the game is WEGO so for instance you may do a « swap teleport » with an enemy that will suddenly on the receiving side of his buddy grenade AND put you in a position to hit several enemy at the next time with the laser weapon that go through anything).
It is a chain of scenarios along a (very cool) story, so no strategic decision, the only thing you carry over is your equipment.
Each character has 2 weapons 2 support items but then combination of weapons and support item creates « special action » for instance if you have a grenade launcher and a kinetic rifle as weapons, and a teleporter and healing kit as support items, you can have as special action :
- Healing grenade (grenade launcher + healing kit)
- Healing dart (rifle + healing kit)
- Explosive teleportation (you teleport leaving an explosion behind you, beware FF) : grenade launcher + teleport
- Swap teleport with another character enemy or not : Rifle + teleport
Since the game is WEGO, some turn resolutions can be really funny, especially those based on teleports (or even better swap teleport), mind control or blocking enemy movements.
They are a lot of weapons, quite a few support items too and thus a lot of special actions (though items of the same general category will create the same effect : both the kinetic pistols and the kinetic rifles will create the same effect with a medical kit, but not the submachine gun or the laser rifles).
You keep finding new equipments until almost literally the end of the game, though sadly it also means that part of the early equipment becomes fully obsolete (the pistols in particular have no advantage vs their rifle version, except the most powerful handgun). Some of the « special actions » are based on super rare combinations though and you will find new effects until almost the end of the game.
Except for obsolescence, the one problem I had was that weapons and items have an initiative order that is indicated nowhere and that you will have to learn as you play. For instance, EMP weapons shoot first, then teleports play, then shielding, then the rest of the weapons. Mind control and other psy powers are somewhere in between but not sure where.
In addition to the weapons, each character that you can play (you play from 1 to 6 characters in missions, plus sometimes AI allies) have special skills going from boring (like the only skill of the nurse is a bonus to her heal) to the gamechanging (double damage but half the range) or just really cool (ruthless => « does not lose morale when humans die »). Same for the unique items that go from « why do you waste a slot on that shit » to game changing (one of the character is an actress that has an item that allows her to change character... the character she chooses to act as determines her skills).
Combat is as I said WEGO : one shoot action one move action IN THAT ORDER (or two move actions). Everyone has 100 hp, all hit are deterministic (if you attack an enemy you will hit it and you will cause your weapon damage... except if the target teleports before you shoot that is). Cover means half damage, and other items/skills decrease or nullify damage even more. Lots of civilian casualties to avoid. You can sneak, and ambushing the enemy from ambush position is double damage. A PC that drops to 0 hp becomes unconscious but can be revived during the combat, a NPC at 0 HP is dead. Enemies, at least those who use weapons, are smart and will use cover, grenades, flanking and healers, but not teleport).
Finally, I should state that the campaign is really cool :
- Relatively well written, a parody of Star Trek and the pulp stories from the 50ies,
- All aboard a starship, some of the locations of that ships will be visited several times but will be more and more degraded as time passes. Human survivors will be rarer and rarer,
- You have a cast of PC characters, maybe 12 of them in total, with new characters appearing and other, well, dieing as per the scenario. They are real tropes of Pulp Action characters so fun (the brainless actress, the dashing spaceman, the corrupted mercenary, the pointy-ear warrior-race alien,...)
Mission design goes from the incredibly good (eg : heavy combat mission where you have a limited number of turns to reach the air purifier while under fire from all sides BUT not by an infinite number of enemies so you can really balance “killing as much as possible and reach the air purifier just in time “ vs “beeline or possibly sneak to the purifier then kill everyone”) to the really boring (bad puzzles where you must sneak around, or where you need to cross area where everything gets destroyed every three turns),
Missions can also go from the trivially easy (defend a position from attack when you have a machine gun, cover and NPC characters on your side) to the insanely hard (save humans before they all get killed AND bring them to the evacuation point where they still can get attacked). For super difficult missions like this, keep in mind that you can create turrets and order spider bots to guard a place with some of the fairly accessible « special actions »).
In short, I had a lot of fun in roughly 33% of the game, some good fun in another 33%, and the rest was either boring (for boring but easy missions) or dreadful (for boring but hard missions).
