FACEMINER

Faceminer touches on environmentalism, AI, machine learning, crypto-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, neoliberal techno-spiritualism, business-speak, the politicization of climate activism for commercial gain, just to name a few. It's timely, engaging, and technically well executed. You could find a laundry list of little things to love about Faceminer. I do think how it ends undermines its messaging just a little bit. What Faceminer warns about is very real and very possible, but that fact isn't reinforced by the premise of Faceminer being unrealistic for 1999. The way the game ends further undermines Facerminer Corporation as being fantastically evil, as opposed to an exaggeration. Not that I dislike the ending; it's very foreboding. That works well with the forward-thinking message. My only gameplay nitpick is endless mode, namely late-game power generation. It takes a lot of time to make the money needed to get upgrades after a few hours, but you can't true idle Faceminer because of cluster node failures, viruses, and how fragile your balance sheet is that late. Needs a lot of babysitting that isn't rewarded like how it is in the main game.

I don't care about clicker games, but the style of this one had me interested. Banger soundtrack too. Took me 2.4 hours to reach the end, which I think is a good length for it not to get old. Pretty fair for the price, I think. There's also an endless mode that's unlocked when you reach the end, though I don't know if that offers anything extra. Overall, I had a good time with it. Also, make sure you enable the experimental audio player in the settings so that you get Winamp instead of Windows Media Player.

an interesting and unique take on the incremental/idle game formula whereas the goal is both to simultaneously expand your operation ad infinitum, but also temper your expansion and pace it so that it does not exceed your costs and hardware scale. it is also atypical in that the story mode is just that, a story mode. it has an end, unusual for incremental games. the narrative elements here are a bit misleading by their face. this is NOT a game like hypnospace outlaw, despite the Y2K and early-internet aesthetic being a common thread. you are NOT digging for secret info, the game explicitly places you as a cog within the machine and gives you no tools to operate outside this. you mine, and that's all you do. however, there is an interesting meta-narrative experience delivered through that system that provides a very impactful (if not heavy handed and lacking in subtlety) ending. the soundtrack, as a side note, is absolutely phenomenal. silky smooth industrial techno + jungle that compliments the pace, time period, and atmosphere of the game to a T. worth the 6 bucks and change i paid for it, and if you like incremental games for their endless nature, there is an endless mode to dabble in once you complete its campaign.