itch log part 2, going back and adding links into these
COPPER ODYSSEY - by now it’s like there are two distinct subgenres of offbeat rpg, the Undertale kind and the Hylics kind - the first is more characterful, intentional, with more emphasis on internal consistency even if it portrays a goofy world - the latter is more abstract and textural, twistier on a moment to moment level and willing to chop it all up on a whim. and i think the main appeal of copper odyssey for me is that i can’t place it quite in either line. the npcs and setting (of an enormous art school where you’ve been tasked with recovering supplies taken by the other students, to build their own megaman fortresses with) feel cartoonily legible enough, and the game systems sometimes seem to be taking themselves seriously enough, to imply it’ll be the first kind of game - but all the cute characters talk in such a broken, flattened way, and the areas are often strangely broken up and videogamey in their assortment of hidden paths and things to find, to give the feeling of something played by ear. i liked the effect even if i spent most of the time just wandering around to put off having to go to the dungeon biomes (something the game supports by having extra party members and upgrades just be things you kind of stumble across wandering through the hub??). my favourite example of the game’s back and forth so far - starting off with $0.00, hearing from someone in the library that people sometimes leave money in the books, resigning myself to having to check invisible walls for a while… then walking into the next room where a character immediately gives me $500, says “sometimes it really is that simple” and then turns into a rock. good!!
Spirits Mirror: Digital Possessed - a bit too shaderlabs for me… i know this is like the videogames version of “rockism” or something but i’ve just never been able to get very much out of a goopy neon shader on a lowpoly model. the Shader Guy / Tile Guy dichotomy in videogames. anyway this has some good areas and the developer’s own music carries a lot of the mood, it’s more spritely and offbeat than you’d expect and does a lot to offset any monolithic sense of mood you’d expect from the visuals. i enjoyed it but did bail at the part where the game was seemingly expecting me to roam around a big, dark room in search of coins. i get enough of that at work.
Sleuthhounds - The Valentine’s Vendetta: why did i play this? listen… i’m a specific type of person who makes videogames, but often i wish i was a different type of person who makes videogames. and the type pf person i can imagine myself being happiest as is whoever makes the Sleuthhounds games, these endearingly dorky and earnest games about someone’s likeable and lightly drawn anthro OCs wandering around solving genteel crimes in classical adventure gamey ways while sexlessly flirting. solid B-tier webcomic stuff in a way which can feel weirdly rare in this format (where stuff reading as “sincere” is mostly just engaged in fetishising the recieved image of sincerity). i liked it and played it all in 40 minutes even though imo one of the puzzles was bullshit, there are other games in the series and i may play them too. “the question is not who is going to let me, but who is going to stop me” - ayn rand.
Planetoids / Prisencolinensinainciusol - grouping these together as they’re both more Marek Kapolka joints, the same glorioustrainwrecks person who made Dondgynns. these are shorter 3d experiments but i liked them both a lot - in Planetoids you’re just some kind of bug with a proboscis scuttling slipperily around a big circular ruin world. you left click to stick eggs on things and then touching the eggs launches you around like a rocket jump. there’s nothing to do beyond seeing how high out of orbit you can launch yourself but that has a weirdly mesmerising Jumping Flash energy to it. also wait, i didnt know until i checked that link again that you could generate extra planets!!!
Prisencolinensinainciusol is more of a jet set radio homage about gliding around as a bird while a street party plays out below and music plays, and it’s kind of dangerously on the cusp of having the exact same energy as like a commercial about people dancing in the streets because of a 2% reduction of car insurance premiums, but somehow pulls it off, the looseness and the colour and the song and the music, there really is something of the feeling of just a hot day when people are outside having fun and you’re just drifting past, watching, enjoying the moment.
N O NB - good, dense, sludgy textures and some impressively nauseating 3d sound design, but weirdly this one felt a bit too dry and on the nose for me to get into… you’re in this plain populated by either joyous furry raver creatures or sadsack little nub guys, who recite depressive realist sentences at you when you try to talk to them, and most of the nub guys are crowded around two vaguely gendered statues on either sides of the plain… you can pick up archetype shapes off the ground (squiggly thing, cross, and my favourite, 3D Hoop) and put them on the statues and sometimes weird things will happen, like they’ll start emitting lights or else will throw everyone up in the air and rain them down again… there’s probably a lot more to see but i didn’t get there bc (a) motion sickness!! and (b) one of the sad little nub guys had a texture that was just the word “AGENDA” repeated over and over.
KateLabs - this is sort of the glorious trainwrecks equivalent of roblox or something, it’s an easy to use 3d level creation tool populated with premade objects and behaviours (incl an avatar who, gratifyingly, does a goofy version of the mario 64 triple jump if you time the bounces right) and with really easy to share levels. i tried a few of them and they were slight but fun, my favourite being a collection someone made of their recurring dreams which included a big empty 3d airport filled with escalators to nowhere in particular. the kind of stuff 3d game editors are made to represent!! so i hope this takes off more, for the sake of the dream airports of tomorrow.
beemis: the curse of god - for the WETGAMIN heads among us, this is way too hard for me but is so pretty and full of goofy details and little side stuff that i had a very good time with it regardless. games with completely optional fishing areas… fine, ok. games with an optional fishing area that gets abruptly interrupted by a seagull attack quicktime event: yes!!
Cursedom - imo, this may be the most straightforwardly beautiful game i’ve ever played. structurally it is one of those dungeon crawlers where you rotate at right angles except gratifyingly all the monsters seem to have been replaced by those enigmatic wandering encounters from wizardry or something where you can either attack someone or ignore them or talk to them or answer their riddle or something and it’s never quite clear whether any of the choices is the best or necessary action. i think i just played a demo, it turned into an endless black screen when i went through a door that was also just the mouth of a giant creature, if that was just the game’s way of letting me know i fucked up and was being digested then i respect that too.
