Played some Steam demos
Am I Nima kinda reminded me of reverse-Growing My Grandpa! where you play as a child in a supernatural care situation except you are the possible eldritch horror? I think others have talked here about how the situation just has you restrained talking to your probably abusive mother as you try to find out more information about each other based on your missing memories. You can combine words to form a vocabulary in your head which really just unlock dialogue options to prod and what your mother does or doesn’t know while trying to keep your own story consistent. I think the word combining mechanic feels a bit weird since it is relegated to a very small portion of the screen. The words very quickly breed, and the little brain icon gets cluttered. I worry it might have the same problem as Echoes of Wisdom where the more you unlock the more you have to scroll. I like Nima’s animations and the general art style, but I think this game really hinges on how long it is. Three hours would be the max for me.
It was nice to finally see what Baby Steps’ control scheme felt like. It’s just left analogue stick to shift bodyweight with left and right buttons to lift your feet. It is very easy to get into a walking rhythm which feels very unlike Getting Over It or a QWOP. Because of my setup I basically just alternate walking my fingers (index, middle finger on right hand) which properly makes it a lot easier but it’s also much easier to do precision steps since as long as one leg is standing you have all the time in the world to make more precise manoeuvres. I feel like the final game must eventually try to get you to do acrobatics or something like that, since just getting up very narrow steps feels like it would be relatively easy. I’m not sure what Foddy is going for if I’m honest. I like what the music is doing with sound, where all the background noise gets fixed to a pit-a-pat rhythm. I’m just not really compelled by the narrative or environment or promise of mechanical/execution depth. It’s also a bit tiring to play so I might check out if it evolves much nearer release, but I think my curiosity is fully satisfied.
Dispatch was a bit of a surprise. It feels weird to play a game which makes you nostalgic for Telltale of all things. The conceit is that you are a dispatch caller for superheroes, but your unit is built up of super villains who are being repurposed to deal with problems around a city district. You yourself are an ex-Mecha based hero. The main gameplay is just a city map with little incident icons that you then click and send a team to deal with. It gives you clues on who would be best at dealing with situations through keywords that relate to a pentagonal ability chart. So some heroes are better at conversation, strength, agility et cetera. When you send someone to an event, the events have their own pentagonal chart which the game then overlays on top of the hero’s and sends a little puck ricocheting in the overlap area and if it ends up outside of the overlap you fail and if it’s inside then it’s a success. I’m not sure if any game has ever done this system for rolling a success check? It feels good and makes a very basic resource allocation challenge satisfying to pull off. I felt very relaxed playing it.
The conversations feel similar to Telltale but are a lot quicker and punchier. It doesn’t feel like its loading dialogue scenes half the time and you’re really just watching a show. It has the framework of a sitcom, but I wouldn’t say it’s that jokey as much as it is just full of naturalistic dialogue from characters who aren’t really taking their situation that seriously. In a way that makes the fabric of the world feel a bit more like a dysfunctional workplace. It sort of avoids being Whedonesque but I don’t think it can fully get away from it. There’s a scene in a men’s bathroom with an extended debate about how hygienic it would be to brofist someone else at a urinal.