I’m not entirely sure yet what I’m supposed to be doing in this game, but the atmosphere is great (as you’d expect in a Lilith Zone game) and there are a lot of places to explore.
i’ve only had a chance to play a little but i love it so far… i guess i wasn’t sure how the “one big game” was going to come out tonally, i really liked all lilith zone’s smaller recent projects and the old crypt underworld demo from the fundraiser a while back was beautiful but almost felt swallowed by a sense of melancholy that the shorter games just touched upon. i could be projecting but i think it’s something i associate particularly with huge games by small hobbyist teams (particularly when they’re kind of mandated to remain a certain size due to being crowdfunded, like barkley 2)… the sense of ambivalence at an endless sprawl, wandering like a ghost through all these stratalike accumulated build versions, piling up past any human ability to manage. endless development work, the underworld theming, a death-in-life
i think that can be beautiful sometimes BUT it was also such a pleasant surprise that the final wrapped up version of CU felt so different. the dense lighting is gone (i think will be released some other time as like a special frou-frou build due to the performance requirements), iirc the original framing story from the demo around entering the underworld is now moved or removed, all the empty spaces are loaded with chaotic videogame maximalist stuff (piss equipment system!) which means rather than moving as a ghost through the dioramas you’re sort of blasting through them like a hurricane, spraying piss and cowboys, knocking things over and causing them to explode into a pile of hotdogs that you gobble for more piss. sort of a surprisingly funny and invigorating feeling. the rustle of spring…!
i’m looking forward to digging through more, also if people get a chance and liked it they should leave a nice comment about it on the itch page or something… right now all the replies to this delirious decade long artgame are people just posting bugs or decisions that they think are bugs, as if this stuff were Hades. and people wonder why kikiyama stopped replying to emails!!
I don’t know whether the main goal is to resolve the vampire’s curse, but so far I’ve destroyed only one of the five statues. I know where another one is but I have no idea how to reach it.
I started this last night. It’s doing the charleston with “Video Games.” It takes one step into currency, loot, and questlines before dipping back into large, inscrutable environments and koan-delivering denizens.
I started to feel like I had the world under control, that every door was opening to me, but then a funeral happened and now I’m not so sure. I kind of feel bad whenever I barf on someone until they explode into meat and bones but I sometimes voluntarily piss on people to the same effect. There is no crime in the underworld.
I reached a sign that said I beat the game lol. After getting upgrades for my paperdoll, I realized I could jump up indefinitely.
I love the mystery of lilith zone games. I will never feel like I’ve seen everything even if I play four more hours. What caused the funeral to happen? Did I piss on too many villagers? Was it simply scheduled for that date? Did I enter the wrong room at the right time? The mystery is everything.
I’m watching my niece play roblox and it just occurred to me that the little ones raised on blox of ro may be able to intuit the realm of crypt underworld better than even me.