it’s ginger ale
2 Likes
boy I much prefer to think of it as straight up carbonated water because then I don’t feel sticky dunking into it again and again
and a warm carbonated water bath sounds kind of neat
2 Likes
welcome to sodastream galaxy
It’s a me, the occupied territories
5 Likes
Also kinda wanna catch up on what I’ve played while absent from the forums. Longpost!
Picross 3D
This may be heresy but despite beating this, I found it pretty exhausting compared to standard picross. I play a lot of picross, it’s always been good for when I’m trapped in executive dysfunction and need to feel like I’m doing something. Regular picross generally asks you to finish within a time limit, if anything at all. 3D’s lategame has a lot of “make few/no mistakes” demands, and with a slightly clunky interface means there were several puzzles I spent a long time on, only to slip on a hitbox and get thrown out. I decided not to 100% this game.
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga
I livetweeted this one while experimenting with coffee for lack of energizing medication. It’s an extremely nice evolution of SMRPG’s design. Luigi wears a dress and is genderqueer, it’s canon, I don’t make the rules.
Event[0]
This had some pretty convincing Cleverbot-esque implementation going on! Nice introspective lonelygame, though I did have some hang ups with the bot interaction in the endgame. I always don’t know what dialogue choices to pick in the end of games that have them, they always expect me to be more emotionally compromised than I am.
OneShot
The cult following for this little indie game is really invested in it. They think it’s the best. It’s quite clever in how it uses metatextual elements (like Undertale did), but through the full two playthroughs it took to get to the True End, I never sympathized with the protagonist, or any of the characters tbh. The writing felt really high school level, and I feel bad saying that, because I think the dev worked very hard on it. Also, despite its cleverness, I frequently felt the dialogue choices I was given as the role and character of The Player assumed far too much about my personality. It wants the actual player to be one of the main characters, but it felt like I was playing the protagonist and The Player and just sitting on my hands when it asked how I felt about the events.
INSIDE
Way back when LIMBO came out I expected it to be unnoteworthy, and was surprised at how solid it was. Similarly, I didn’t give any attention to INSIDE when it came out. When I got a copy via the Humble Monthly bundle, I gave it a shot. This game is such a level of quality above LIMBO as a cinematic platformer that it blows my mind. The puzzles are clever without being obtuse, the tone is bleak without feeling forced, and the narrative reveals itself in ways that start out quietly disturbing and gradually become outright horrifying. It also ends perfectly, and with restraint.
Doki Doki Literature Club
Tulpa reasonably disagreed with me on this at SBCon, but I do feel that the slow first playthrough works well for it. Despite it being, intentionally, a cookie cutter dating sim for lonely nerds, it leaves little hints of the psychological horror that it gives a trigger warning for at boot-up that I spent the whole time thinking “what is the warning for? when is it coming? what’s going to happen?” and reading for clues. It has some similarity to my experience with Gone Home, where most of the heavy lifting is done by the machinations of the player’s own imagination. When I first started DDLC, I thought the trigger warning was thoughtful, but unfortunately gave away The Surprise. In hindsight, I can see that it is a huge part of why the buildup works, and may have been intended that way.
Princess Remedy 2
I liked this! Unfortunately it feels identical to the first game, which is free on Steam. I’m glad I could support the dev with my three bucks though.
Frog Fractions 2
It sure was! I like FF1+2 on paper, and even in execution, but I never really had much emotional reaction to them. I played FF after the surprise had long been discussed ad nauseum on the internet. I didn’t engage with the FF2 ARG. I’m probably not FF’s audience. I’m glad it exists, though.
I’ve also been casually playing a bit of Opoona and Etrian Odyssey 1. The former is my second attempt, the latter is an attempt after accidentally falling off of EO2 ages ago. I might stick to either, I might not. EO1 is a lot less than EO2.
9 Likes
did you play the secret mode in remedy after beating it?
[youtubes it] oh what the actual fuck
1 Like
Regarding picross games I am currently picking away at Illust Logic + Colorful Logic (a name that just rolls off the tongue). The first set of puzzles is straight picross but the second set is color picross which I had no experienced beforehand. It is odd in that about half of the same tactics still apply while the other half do not (different numbers no longer need spaces between them if they are not the same color), but I find it to be a refreshing change of pace.
2 Likes
picross is my ideal game to play while listening to a podcast or audiobook. Engages all parts of my brain except words
9 Likes
Songbringer clicked with me. I know straight nostalgia games are generally pretty suspect, but this perfectly nails the vibe of playing Zelda 1’s second quest back in 1987. This thing has triggered some really vivid childhood gaming memories, and for someone of my advanced age, that’s pretty rad.
Everything’s randomized, so you unfortunately can’t fall back on your video game instincts of spotting suspicious bushes. Hence specifically invoking the 2nd quest’s hostile re-jumble. The dungeons also sometimes so far have required finding bombable/walk-through-able walls, which feels very 2nd quest. There’s a handy mechanic to detect hidden stuff, which saves you from trying to burn every bush, yet doesn’t seem to make the whole hunt feel pointless.
So far my biggest issue is that the tougher enemies and some of the bosses are big damage sponges. For better or worse, they’ve recreated Zelda 1’s rooms of blue knights and wizrobes. And even with the invincible dodge dash, some of the boss patterns don’t seem to be avoidable. But this is a small time production, and a degree of sloppiness can be endearing.
Aesthetically it’s shamelessly ripping off Swords and Sworcery with probably a dash (haw haw) of Hyper Light Drifter thrown in. I think it hit about the same time as the latter title and probably lost some attention because of it. The execution is so good though, that I don’t mind the whole thing looking a bit “me too.”
And to seal the deal, this thing runs perfectly on my 9 year old Linux laptop (aside from the unruly 360 pad vibrations, which apparently is a driver, not a game issue).
2 Likes
i played a demo of sleeping watchdogs 2 and man, opening with a generic stealth warehouse scene followed by a sequence where you have to walk a mile to buy pants is a really thrilling way to introduce your open world hacker simulator
10 Likes
= T A L O S _ P R I N C I P L E = in glorious and authentic = C R O A T I A N =
10 Likes
Last night I was thinking that it might be fun to run through the game Love again, and I discovered that there is a more-of-the-same sequel called Kuso.
6 Likes
Damn, I liked the first a lot, I’m curious how the sequel compares
It’s very similar, just as if the first game were twice as long. It introduces new obstacles, but they are a natural extension of those in the first game. The second game is perhaps a little more challenging, but it’s never really frustrating if you are just trying to get through it.
So it turns out, after about an hour of playtime,
King of Dragon Pass is really good.
7 Likes
WHO KNEW?!
