re: DUSK the 2nd and 3rd episode are significantly better than the 1st from my experience. some bits about it are a bit annoying/cringe to me but there are some really good levels in there.
7 Likes
Yeah I was unimpressed with Dusk at first, the first episode just felt like a cool Quake/Build tribute but nothing amazing, but episodes 2 and 3 (especially 2) knocked the shit out of me, it owns
4 Likes
yeah i agree about the 2nd episode being the best, or at least the most consistent. also DUSK and AMID EVIL are kinda going to be always compared in my mind because i played them both around the same time. and DUSK is the one with the real standout moments but also some James Rolfe-style âwhat were they thinking?â cringe moments (i.e. several of the bosses). whereas AMID EVIL is just an even level of pretty good throughout. i think i ended up liking them both about equally though DUSK has more memorable moments.
3 Likes
Amid Evil is more memorable for me only because it literally destroyed a set of speakers I was using when I played it.
10 Likes
@ellaguro , @Sykel , @VastleCania : By your powers combined, I am Captain Planet having a pretty good time with Dusk. Two more levels in from where Iâd quit it really hit a good stride. I canât play more than a handful of levels at a time. Like Quake it loves to hit you with ambushes and I find being at this level of tension the whole time pretty exhausting. Itâs funny to contrast this with so many modern FPS games where youâre generally doing stealth-until-you-blow-it or someone chatters in your ear about how youâve got incoming hostiles, etc.
Rage in Peace is one of those masocore platformers where you die constantly to âcomically unexpectedâ hazards, forcing you to just die over and over again and commit the traps to memory. This is probably one of my least favorite types of game, and this is an especially obnoxious example that has a bunch of unfunny dialogue at regular intervals too.
Ley Lines is a student project thatâs free to play on Steam, itâs basically an action-puzzle game where you use powerups to solve traversal puzzles. Not groundbreaking, but itâs got a good vibe. Hope these kids got an âAâ on this project.
The Marvelous Miss Take is a fun little sneak-em-up where you play as a young woman trying to steal back all the artworks that were supposed to be left to her as part of her inheritance (my, what a nice problem to have). Itâs played from an isometric perspective and its a fairly standard affair of luring guards, staying out of their (and security camerasâ) vision cones, etc. Eventually youâre required to go back to each level with a different thief to steal a different set of art from each gallery in order to progress, and his deal is he walks with a cane and is slow but has a reusable lure-gadget to help distract guards. (But he wonât leave a level without it).
Fun stuff, nice aesthetic and a fun jazzy soundtrack.
12 Likes
Iâve never heard this turn of phrase, I love it
1 Like
damn this sniper elite 5 is pretty good
2 Likes
i still need my retribution from that 2017 match when you handed me a broken stick for the american version of ST
9 Likes
got some Good Matches in ST, 3S and Real Bout 2 with @anonymous 
7 Likes
The Signal from Tölva is sort of a ponderously-paced Far Cry. The whole deal is capturing bases, with occasional pitstops to scan mysterious signals (in an effort to find the titular one) Metroid Prime style.
You play the role of someone (perhaps an AI, or just a human at a terminal somewhere) who remotely operates drones (robots) on a planet where you and several factions are attempting to locate said signal. It provides a nice little in-fiction justification for the ability to fast travel and respawn. Youâre just taking control of a new chassis. Each one gets a unique ID and has a different randomized look, though you maintain your loadout.
You can tell the devs limited their scope intentionally to avoid getting in over their heads. It does mean the game is a little spare. You spend a lot of time walking, with a very satisfying mechanized clomp-clomp-clomp complete with a bit of camera sway that really sells that youâre in a mechanical body. There are occasionally firefights and youâve got your choice of a few weapon types, basically pistols/assault rifles/sniper rifles, plus some AOE effects and a module that lets you boss around robots from the one friendly faction.
The art direction is great, I stumbled upon a giant robot skull and body parts in one place and that felt like a real highlight.
But ultimately I didnât feel very invested in the quest. Not enough to clomp-clomp-clomp around for hours and engage in samey firefights. I think this might be leftover fatigue from playing a few Far Cry games â Iâve done this before and I donât want to do the slow version of it now, even if I get to be a neat robot.
8 Likes
After stone face trying random 68000 games each one with anime schoolgirls in states of undress making it extremely awkward since you know I have a family, asleep, but still there, I thought I should actually play a video game and loaded up Chrono Cross (which my save from my anbernic works which is such a joy.)
After feeding some animals I got into one random battle then was informed my bluetooth headset was out of battery. Oh well⊠maybe the world is saying go to sleep early today.
8 Likes
Tölva sure is a weirdly-put-together game. a hard sci-fi setting and Roadside Picnic plot MacGuffins, how could I resist?
the dynamic area control of fast-travel/save points are great when itâs a skin-of-your-teeth struggle the first few times, then rote exploitation of the enemyâs AI for the remaining 40-odd times. really suffers from level scaling, so the game is a smooth beige mush of difficulty
another game thatâs more fun to think about how to make it better than to play (though itâs fine to play as-is). would have liked some variance between the different factions, mob rush tactics vs sneak and snipe vs vehicles??
4 Likes
Played a little bit more of Floppy Knights and Iâm enjoying its Fire-Emblem-but-actions-are-cards thing quite a bit. It definitely has a bit of that⊠I donât recall who was talking about it here but the weird tendency for any game, once constrained enough, to sort of start to become a puzzle game instead, which does leave it feeling a bit more like Iâm constraint-solving more than actually making little guys fight. But itâs good! The levels are mostly bite-sized enough to just play a few here and there without getting too dug in.
3 Likes
Itâd have been great if when you spawned in different chassis if maybe some of them had different characteristics â some a little more fleet of foot, others more tanky?
3 Likes
Putting Wario aside for now, figured I should check out some of the games accumulated in my âindieâ folder, some of which I donât even remember acquiring but:
M.Stain is a 20 minute low-poly PS1-a-be first person adventure in which you go to the big city for a job interview with a demented boss
who throws you in a dungeon and you have some multiple choices presented to you that donât always have enough context in the moment to mean much but you just go with the freaky flow and if (slightly different) multiple endings turn you on, you can figure out how to answer certain situations on a subsequent playthrough to get them. Along the way you may inadvertently kill someone in a jail cell with a moving wall of spikes, watch a BDSM video on a TV screen in a grody little cell, sacrifice a nude secretary
and have a knife fight with a flying demon head. Nothing mind-blowing but an enjoyably morbid little trip. I like the grotesquely textured faces, especially the sallow choir boy billboard sprites at the Pazuzu black mass. And the sax track that plays at the bar (named BAR).
Untitled Dungeon is about 25 minutes of moody and minimalist top down dungeon wandering that looks like this
You collect items to unlock some doors while avoiding roving skeletons and things. Very basic, maybe a little too minimalistic for my tastes⊠I got a bit bored and thus impatient and sloppy and thus frustrated being warped to the entrance of each room every time I hit a baddie I didnât care to carefully synchronise my steps around BUT that might be my problem, it was nice enough. Thereâs some enigmatic âloreâ fragments that I didnât really piece together with the end. This oneâs all about the music for me though, goes a long way to making this feel like a glimpse into a slice something mystical and maybe much larger than what you experience.
That Night Steeped by Blood River is idk how long because I lost track of time, it is phenomenal. A psychedelic shader parade that really did make me gasp and grin at the visual wizardry going on. I need to get better at shaders. I want to be this good at shaders! Action-wise, you walk and click. You can sprint too (and because Iâm game-brained why not have jumping at that point (I get it though, things become complicated and require more testing blah blah blah when you start introducing things like that and this one is focused on doing its thing and it does it very well I just canât help but daydream about like rocket jumping and Q-clawing through some Quake levels that are this pretty)). You also draw on a bunch of notepads with the mouse, because this is a hotel and you keep signing in to different kaleidoscopic room realms (âŠI think). Highly recommended. I didnât take any screenshotsâŠI was too immersed. And you have to see it in motion really. Some spaces will stay with me. And the music ainât no slouch, very nice. Play it!
I donât really ârateâ these games or care to be terribly critical. Theyâre free. Sometimes they only took a few weeks to make (one was a break from the developerâs bigger project (maybe I should try thatâŠ)) I just appreciate their existence and effort to make something interesting, theyâre not trying to cash in on a trend or make something commercial, theyâre pure that way. Which isnât to say I feel that way about all games of this scope. Some are too pretentious/cloying/frustrating/derivative/incompetent etc. but these were short and concise and engaging and in the case of That Night Steeped by Blood River something really special.
17 Likes
i discovered that through jurying for IGF and the jury i was on ended up nominating it that year. anyway - fully agree with what you said! it was one of my favorite games i played that whole cycle. i put it on the list of ââart gamesââ i made in this thread because of that.
kinda surprised more people havenât heard of it. i honestly prefer it to something like Paratopic though i guess itâs not explicitly a horror game.
5 Likes
I bought a game by Chillaâs Art: The Convenience Store.
I guess the first thing that stands out is how it demands you play it on its terms.
The controls are WASD + the mouse.
There are no other control options. Those are the controls.
There is no save/load feature.
You can start the game, you can quit the game.
It has to be played in one sitting or you start over.
I played it for a few minutes and it seems kinda neat.
I guess I should wait till I feel Iâll be up to playing the full game before playing again.
Playing the first few minutes over and over probably wouldnât be fun.
The idea of cheap games that are only an hour or so long is appealing.
8 Likes
I liked this game but it crashed and I didnât feel like starting over. Still curious to see where it ultimately ends up going.
I liked this game but hit what seemed to be a game-breaking bug (I fell off the edge of the world, if I remember correctly) and I didnât feel like starting over. Still curious to see where it ultimately ends up going.
I guess I should give both another shot.
9 Likes
Now, nearly all the way through Dusk, I really appreciate all the places its gone. Chapter 2 definitely is the best but chapter 3 isnât far behind. Although thereâs one level in Chapter 2 which I think might be my least favorite in the game.
Iâve been save-scumming my way through, and have found a way to cheese basically every boss. Mostly by ducking into some hallway and taking potshots until they die. Although Iâve gotten a few to kill themselves, and one I booby-trapped his entrance with a bunch of exploding barrels and lobbed grenades at him because his AI wouldnât âwake upâ without putting eyes on me. Fuck 'em.
Also my favorite thing in the whole game is the bars of soap that deal 1 million damage, I have no idea how I would have gotten past one boss without that lol.
edit for further thoughts:
Itâs interesting to me that the game introduces a fair number of pretty weak enemies later on, mostly for what I think is the purpose of world-building. Also that the game dips into the bestiary and brings back early-game enemies a lot. I appreciate that they all seem to have a specific weapon which is most effective against them. Forces you to use all your weapons, and not just because of depleted ammo in your favorite gun.
5 Likes
I tried this again, and I really like it. I managed to avoid doing what I did last time to get stuck (driving the car in a random direction).
Progress so far: Iâve lit up all of the triangles but I havenât yet figured out how to get the sun and moons. I also have one more piece of the bow (?) to get.
2 Likes