Playing Every Game in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
PEGBRJE: ‘Space Mining Clicker’ and ‘Woodland Chasers’
Everywhere I go, I’m reminded of FLASH.
Space Mining Clicker is a casual clicking base management game created by Cold Coffee Studio, an indie studio spearheaded by a former AAA developer with help from various artists, musicians, and more. Players are a lucky lotto winner whose prize is the control of an entire mining colony. Strange prize, but it’s the future after all. Nevertheless, this colony needs to get up and running, and what better way to work at a colony than by clicking on it?
In true clicker fashion, players will generate ore at their mine by clicking on it . The amount of ore generated is determined by the level of the mine and any possible events that are occurring. Every so often, a cargo ship will arrive to collect the ore, and immediately sell it for a profit for the colony.
With this currency, players will buy new buildings to help enhance and streamline the process, like extra power for more upgrades, robots to auto-click when prompted, and larger storage for more resources.
There will also be two new resources introduced: supplies that are generated at the potato farm and are required to keep everything afloat, and a secondary spaceport that can generate ships used for defense.
The upgrade that makes this much more compelling than previously thought, however, is the radar. See, each objective is more than just goals for upgrades but also serve as a plot point. Eventually players will have to side with the Solar Empire or the United Colonies. While this is happening, events will start to trigger that can be helpful or detrimental to the player, like having three minutes of no active ore production or having it worth double on the market.
These events can be mitigated/expanded thanks to radar, with each upgraded radar system adding or subtracting time. It helps give life to the formula that many have experienced to death since the Cookie Clicker era, while also reinforcing the rather dire plot of having to fight against another league for independence.
While requiring a lot more attention than some may expect, Space Mining Clicker is the perfect kind of ‘casual clicking’ game thanks to how it blends its plot in with its clicking. It has a clear end in sight thanks to this plot, so it doesn’t feel as if you will be playing this game forever. But this also means that it does not have as many casual elements which you might be annoyed by.
I have an auto-clicker to alleviate some of the stresses of clicking on my fingers, but if you don’t this might also get a bit hard on the digits. If this is cheating, then I guess I cheated; my bad (I feel no shame though).
Nevertheless if you hate clickers in general you won’t find a game that somehow ‘fixes’ that for you. But if you enjoy a game that adds interactivity to its clicking through management and space plots, then this might be a great game for you. It’s so easy to lose track of time, so best of luck not getting too sucked in.
Woodland Chasers is an infinite autoscrolling adventure created by BladeGrip Studio, a solo indie dev in Indonesia. Players are a mischievous individual who is flying through the woods and doing whatever they please, especially at the expense at those that want to stop them.
As expected of autoscrolling games, players will try to get as far as possible in the ‘infinite’ levels before their magic runs out and they crash to the ground. By holding down the mouse button they can fly upwards, and release it to fall towards the ground. This allows for dodges and collecting coins that can be used to buy upgrades.
The right mouse button is a dive of sorts, as it plummets the player to the ground so that they can grab their broom and cast a spell (chosen before the level starts). This damages any enemies running along the ground so that they don’t disturb the fun of the run.
Once the magic wears out, players return to the main menu and begin their upgrades. These can allow them to fly farther, cast more spells, and generally play better than they had before. Each upgrade tree path has its own unique way of approaching the game, so experiment whenever possible to see which way is best. From here, players can hopefully reach the end of the first level, and begin to explore the other levels and see what they have in store.
Similar to above, this is definitely a game that you’ll know if you like or not before even playing. Autoscrollers can be a fun way to sink hours of time in to without realizing it, but they can easily lack a lot of investment outside of that. I remember spending hours with the old FLASH games. Thankfully Woodland Chasers helps to avoid some issues thanks to its inclusion of the skill tree.
If that sounds like something you’d enjoy, give it a try.
