Summer Saliens Review: Clicking for Bargains and Carpel Tunnel Syndrome (PC, Mac)

    The Summer Steam Sale is here, and with it comes a variety of deals seeking to empty wallets. I've personally managed to snag several games for $50. There's nothing in there that's particularly new, although I could review something if I really feel like I'm running low on new stuff to review. However, Steam itself has a new game I can review, and I'm going to review it, simply because I can. It's the deal-giving tower defense game Summer Saliens!

    According to this game, it turns out the 2015 Summer Steam Sale's minigame actually had a story. Back then there was a evil overlord called Goldhelm the Spicelord who wanted to destroy all games. The Steam community managed to defeat him and banish him and his minions through some wormholes, but some aliens known as the Duldrumz, purveyors of boredom of the highest order, came through, stole our games, and send them off to far-off planets so we'll never be able to play them. Not that I've noticed in my Steam library or closet of old games. Luckily, some friendly aliens have come to help. Known as the Saliens, they're a race of creatures that have developed a love of Earth culture via intercepted Internet broadcasts. So that means we've got an entire race of Freakazoids helping us out. For those of you too young to get that reference, I'll say "Hope those broadcasts didn't involve the worst parts of Reddit!"

    The game has a pretty basic interface. You start off with your Salien on the left with a selection of five planets that change as Steam users clear them. You can customize your Salien a bit by clicking on it. You can choose between a variety of eyes, mouths, arms, legs, and body types. You can also get hats and shirts, which you get by gaining levels in-game or buying them on the Steam Marketplace. My loadout is a crown from Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia and a Blahd shirt from Streets of Rouge. The hat and especially the shirt are put on the Salien model pretty cheaply, and you can really see it with the shirt, which oftentimes can clip through the Salien's side.

That lower-left planet is the 'Planet of Jumpless Platformers.' What a specific name. Wonder what the creatures that live there are like.

    When you're on a planet's surface, you choose a quadrant to get into the actual game. In the game, waves of Duldrumz attack your Salien's 'Deal-tection Station,' which slowly gives you experience points as long as it doesn't run out of health. You defend the base for two minutes by clicking to shoot a laser that does a bit of damage and using the number keys for a variety of abilities. 1 is the Salien Special, which lets you use a projectile that aesthetically changes based on your Salien's body type. 2 freezes all enemies for some time. 3 is basically an upgraded version of the Salien Special, with more damage and area of effect. 4 calls in a black hole to suck in enemies, and 5 drops a meteor on your foes. These abilities unlock as you hit levels three, five, seven, and nine. Unfortunately, the experience scaling isn't very good, so I don't have the last two abilities as of the review.

    Overall, the tower defense doesn't really feel that interesting or great. Your basic cannon (which deactivates if the Deal-tection Station runs out of health) is as quick as you can click, with no option for auto-fire. Because of this, playing for too long might give your clicking finger some real pain. Thank goodness you can hold the 1 key to keep tossing projectiles at your foes. Experience scaling is also a problem, as I mentioned. The first few levels can be gained relatively quickly, but from five onward, it takes several tens of thousands of experience points to gain a level. Since there are only three difficulty levels (with a rare fourth I first discovered today) for stages (visible on the planet surface screen,) you're either breezing through a stage with little reward, or struggling to keep the Duldrumz back, missing out on experience while your Deal-tection Station is knocked out. And experience given is based off of stage difficulty. At my point, Medium stages are somewhat manageable, and they only give a bit over a thousand experience, so at level 6, I'd have to do ~50 Medium stages without losing the Station to level up. I don't think my pointer finger could handle that much.

"Don't mind me, friends. I'll guard the beer and chips!"

    So, what do we get out of playing this game? Well, there's the classic "Get 3 Steam trading cards for participating daily." You get a card for the first three stages played every day, which is nice. However, the main draw is the ability to earn free games. By participating in at least one battle on a planet, you'll be entered into a drawing for four themed games based on the planet, with your chances increasing based on how much time you spend there. You can visit the Planet of Memes, where you can win Goat Simulator (legitimately fun,) Ricochet (never heard of that one, but probably not great,) Secret of the Magic Crystals (okayyyy,) and... Bad Rats.

    You know, when I was younger, I remember a blog that's no longer up called 'Head Injury Theater,' and one entry showed off some of the more stupid monsters in Dungeons and Dragons. I vaguely remember at one point, the blogger mentioned how maybe Sauron was right in that some fantasy races shouldn't exist (or something like that. It's been a good while) upon seeing a race of intelligent squirrels with bows and little Robin Hood garments. I feel like Sauron's belief also applies to some of these games. Surely it wouldn't be too big of a loss if something like Bad Rats was lost in space. I mean, Steam has a lot of garbage, and if the Duldrumz stole every game, maybe we could let them have some of them. I bet they'd love something like Raywin, Iron Soul, or Uriel's Chasm.

"If I give you Afro Samurai 2, will you leave me alone?"

     Unfortunately, I'm not fully certain there's much reason to give more than a token effort. Apparently you can affiliate with a Steam group and claim quadrants and planets for that group (I went with the official Quill18 group, since he's a cool Youtuber,) but they're inevitably claimed by the biggest groups or ones that have exploits and auto-playing scripts. like Steam Universe. What are they getting out of this? I'm not sure, and others aren't either. Those who have the most tiles "will get to plant their flag as conquerors, undoubtedly gaining Saliverse-wide fame in the process." I don't know what the entails, but it probably something purely cosmetic, and unless you're the kind of person that loves achievement spam games or is fine with carpel tunnel, I don't really see the value.

    Summer Saliens doesn't really have that much to offer as a game, and possibly less as a sale incentive. Having only three difficulty levels really makes the game become repetitive quickly. The Steam Trading Cards are a fine incentive, but the special stuff offered in this sale are either too easy to game or don't seem to be worth it. I'm obviously going to play it since it gives me easy stuff, but it's not a game I'll be playing more than I need to.

    By the way, be sure to check out the Kickstarter for Edmund McMillen's new project! It's a 4-player card game called Binding of Isaac: Four Souls. The stretch goals involve doing a variety of activities in order to unlock new content in the game when it releases.