oh wow those custom controllers are way better than the real vectrex ones, even though the joypad thing on the real controllers is novel and fun
Yeah, I was kind of bummed i didn’t get the full real experience but those custom jobs felt really nice
them going with a bat stick instead of a ball is definitley in the spirit of vectrex
Now you got as far as I did in Dark Void!
It’s being delisted from Steam next week.
Also Dark Void Zero, which looks…intersting. maybe when i figure out how to hack my 3DS to play everything i’ll check it out.
A lot of people seem to agree the premise and ideas are good but the execution leaves something to be desired.
I keep playing Ring Racers, but even on easy mode the CPU races are so brutal. I finally had the combination of the right power up at the right time to do a shortcut, but a lap later a CPU sent the game’s equivilant of a blueshell at me - which also blocks coin collection and item use, so I couldn’t use rings to outrun the bomb - the only way is through drift boosting. Once you are around any other CPU you get stunlocked by multiple enemy attacks which really sets you back. This is what happened after getting hit, erasing my lead after getting so far ahead. i am not sure why hitting someone from behind instantly stunlocks your car.
In the start phase of a race it’s possible for other racers to bump you over the starting line which causes you to foul and start a few seconds after the rest of the racers start. It’s so mean
my only guess is weight, which is hard to judge unless you know the other characters stats or theyre clearly bigger or smaller. but uh thats only a guess. i dont remember it happening in srb2kart
You’ll need to forgive me, I need to ramble for a bit.
I played through the remainder of Typo the past few days. I talked about it briefly earlier in this topic, all you really need to know is that it is a random game that seemed interesting and whose creator went “I’m making it free so that at least some people can experience it” which often works on me. Anyways it got added to my backlog and then the random selection option on my backloggery page picked it out of the 500+ unplayed mostly smaller lesser known PC games I have listed on it, so here we are.
I mention this as while this website as a collection of people is more likely than most to give… let’s say less heralded games a shot even here most don’t go down to this level of small/unknown/janky… and you’re really missing something. Now that something isn’t necessarily good, but it is something.
Like I said before, game is a 2d puzzle platformer where you type a few select things into consoles that appear in most puzzles to have that object appear or action take place. The problems started in stage 4 of 5 where they decided to split inputs between multiple consoles (i.e. one may have the letters B and O active while the other only has X, so you switch between the two without hitting confirm to spell BOX). The issue is that there are a few consoles that have no letters active themselves, so all you do is type in the term at one console, go to this second one and hit confirm there to have to activate at this second location; said on-screen keyboard does not appear at consoles without active letters when using a controller. The first instance is possible without it but the second a bit further in is impossible. I checked the one LP/guide for the game, figured out this issue and decided “I can play without a controller, I will push on”.
Push on I did to the 5th area and I had some minor hopes as the 4th ended with a cool thing (you eventually activate the console in the central area you kept crossing where for the first time you type in FLIP and gravity reverses and brings you to the door out hidden on the ceiling of this place you’ve been several times). In this fifth area a fact became very clear: so few people have played this that there was not enough for any kind of effective bug reporting or even general purpose quality control. I had the player character disappear when I threw a switch never to return even if I hit the respawn key; fortunately reloading the game itself fixed it. I had the game decide to place a checkpoint someplace that repeatedly either dropped me to my death or to someplace with no way out of; fortunately reloading respawned me back at the start of said puzzle. I even once had the game double up all the moving platforms and such in an area, moving over each other all out of sync.
I decided to check the guide to see if they were having the issues I was, translating from spanish the intro more or less said “this was a fun game until a bug made it impossible to complete, have a wonderful time until then” as they hit a different bug at the end of stage 4 that prevented them from reaching the exit. I went and checked and some people did get the steam achievement for finishing it so I pressed on.
The thing I believe most of you are missing is that in general you take it on faith that the games you are playing are capable of being finished, but in the random small spaces out there from time to time that becomes much less certain. I’ve heard some people use the term the game within the game before but this is the opposite, this is sort of the game beyond the game, wondering not if I am good/stubborn enough to beat this game if I put my mind to it but is it even going to hold together to make that an option? Are one of these softlocks that a hard reset gets me out of eventually gonna stick? How much worse are these bugs gonna get, already some bits have barely functioned if not outright broken. Am I gonna have to open up the save file and try and figure out how to skip one checkpoint ahead if something goes wrong, which I’ve done at least a few times in my life already.
On this sort of edge I went back to Typo’s final stage and I would love to talk with the few people who made this game. There is one point where I clearly skipped a whole bunch of puzzles and I did so because the puzzle before gave me something that also activated the elevator out of the next area without having to bother with any of it. It often felt like no one even playtested these as…
Okay the last word you learn is CLONE, which drops another you into the playing field and the game in its last stretch becomes on of those control two characters at the same time games. This is a very common “oh I got a neat idea!” idea in the indie space, I keep trying them and it only works when whoever puts a ton of effort into all kinds of aspects of it. This by contrast was a “I don’t think anyone playtested this ever” games and…
There is a bit near the end where you type CLONE into the console, a second you pops out and you have to lead both of them at the same time through a laser grid that is only the first part of the puzzle, the second being a run through a double level “spikes pop out of the floor tiles a second after you step on them and also a couple other lasers fire on and off” gauntlet that I’m sure in their mind was a cool synchronized set piece. The issue is that the console itself is active over let’s say two tiles in length, and you can activate it at any point along said two tiles. The laser grid nearby is alternating and spaced in such a way that you have very little room for error i.e. spacing is absurdly important. Because the clone always drops from the same part of the ceiling… the spacing between the two of you can vary by almost two whole tiles and after much experimentation the laser grid is only passable (and even then just barely, I’m talking late game precision platformer margins here) if you are standing at a very specific point in front of said console when you type into it.
I eventually by the grace of god got through it, but even now I’m still not sure it was actually possible. There were other bits in this section that were also very rough (one with three rows of blocks offset slowly falling down the screen where you must jump two of you up them so that one can activate the switch at the top left so that the other one can escape through a door at the top right which lead to a room so half functional am I thankful for the bug that let me skip part of it). I stumbled through a few more puzzles where I felt less like I was aiming for any kind of intended solution but instead just trying to cheat the system enough to let me pass and it happened, I got to the end screen and saw the credits and do you know what greeted me there?
The achievement not only for beating the game, but for beating the game without dying a single time. I easily died a hundred times on that laser puzzle alone, so I assume that was for me in the real world surviving the playthrough.
And I gotta say… that was a satisfying as hell game clear. It’s one thing to beat a game, even a challenging one, but one where you legit have no clue if it is even gonna hold together long enough for that to be a possibility? I feel bad that many of you will never be unfortunate enough to experience that.
Typo is free to play on steam, my review is don’t, reading this post is enough.
This is no joke why I fear and stay away from lesser known indie games.
took a while before I clicked with the trick
Finished The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask for the first time in forever!
I remember liking this more than Ocarina of Time and I decided that I still do, though they are also very different games in the end… for one they have very different vibes, with Ocarina feeling more “country” and open, while Majora has more of a dense “city” feel and is focused on the social aspects, like finding yourself in a new place with customs you’re unfamiliar with.
They also explore different themes, with Ocarina being more about coming of age and self-discovery, while Majora is more about what you do with the time you then have. You can’t do everything in the short time you have (without using time travel), people die (or become cursed) from being too reckless, and it’s full of people having existential crises. It sounds all pretty dark but the game also has a very silly sense of humour that I love. Like, this game is WACKY.
It also plays with 3D space a lot more than Ocarina, especially in the Dungeons and with the different body forms you can take. It also has fewer camera problems, at least in my experience.
It also hates the player much more than Ocarina, which I appreciate despite some frustrating spots here and there where I felt it wasn’t very clear with what to do.
In short, Ocarina is a much more straight-forward epic action adventure, whereas Majora is more of character-driven adventure about understanding the world and the inhabitants.
Both still fantastic games today, I think!
Played a few games in a stream on Discord. The Nintendo Switch…what a console, what a trove of treasures for the pickin’…
Tales of Djungarian Hamster: A game by Success (the Cotton folks!) where you, uh, rub hamsters, or get them to chase down seeds, and pair them on dates so a new hamster springs forth.
The translation is charmingly terrible. “Djungarian” is spelled at least half a dozen different ways, occasionally two different instances on the same screen.
Uchu Shinshuchu: A game by Success (the Tales of Djungarian Hamster folks!). You play as a lady who runs through some levels kissing enemies. There’s not much to it, but it was $2, so!
The Brazil: Still really good…
Skull Island: Rise of Kong: The game constantly (about every minute) autosaves. Why am I leading with this? Because it seems that if you skip cutscenes before a boss or combat arenas, you lose most of your controls (dash, roll, heavy attack, and the last two of your three hit combo string). This meant I had to roll back to an earlier save, where you can see the collectibles I had found visibly disappear in the menu, and I still lost my controls. So I had to restart from the beginning of the game (not too terrible, since outside of the areas where you don’t have to win fights, you can just run past everything). Big thanks to everyone who watched me beat the worm…
Plutons suck but it was always a little thrill for me running through that wave of them in Stage 2, ducking and jumping in either the top or bottom path.
I didn’t reply in the Questions thread but I’m a huge fan of the original Kid Icarus.
We got it and Legend of Zelda for Christmas in '88 so there is big-time nostalgia there.
I have a Pit tattoo!
I’m terrible at Blasphemous (some of these locked room combat encounters are…like, I know they’re doable, but they’re a pain in the ass), but I’m diggin’ it…
I get why they default to English VOs, but this is criminal. You’re robbing yourself playing this with anything but the Spanish VO.
Played the beginning of Another Crab’s Treasure on Game Pass because I saw Scott Benson recommend it highly on Twitter. It’s a very cute new game where you’re a hermit crab fighting against the enclosure of the commons by an undersea duchy.
It’s sort of half soulslike and half 3D mascot platformer. Like, you’re jumping around and navigating big areas with a lot of vertical terrain like you’re Spyro, but the combat and checkpointing is like a simplified Elden Ring. The combat is slightly awkward in the way a lot of non-From soulslikes tend to be… The animations and physics just aren’t as carefully tuned, you know? And the traversal is kind of buggy; you always feel like you’re a wrong step away from getting permanently caught on terrain (and I did, a few times, but luckily there’s a suicide button).
All that being said, the platformer/souls combo is a potent fusion, and it works.
Pretty gorgeous game, with some actually funny writing. The somewhat Spongebobian whimsical underwater world is well realized. The menus are gorgeous. I’ll play more of it!
Ok, I got a little further and it looks like the main themes are environmentalist, which I appreciate. It totally rips the typical Dark Souls motif of corruption, madness and decadence overtaking the land, but this time it’s caused by pollution. That’s pretty fun!
I just got a loading screen tip that was like:
“Fun Fact: You have microplastics in your blood right now!”
Damn! This game is growing on me.
“Do I have ADHD and it was never caught or uh” I wonder aloud as I bounce between Blasphemous, Fallout New Vegas, and now Shin Megami Tensei 3.
Still thinking about Kong, too…it’s not good, but I could do it, I could see Kong through…
god, it’s been a while
I suppose it’s time for another cursed phone game post
Soooooooooooooooooooouuuuuul Train:
Done. Dusted. Over. Fuck outta my storage.
the game simply did not elicit joy any more, therefore SEVER
Snowbreakin’:
okay probably the last time I posted about this game, it was staring down eventual End of Service, with monthly revenues of under 500k USD.
then the devs of Girls Frontline 2 did something in their game and to make a long story short, a chunk of the Chinese playerbase (GF2 has only launched in mainland China) felt cucked and moseyed on over to Snowbreak
we’re saved!
the knock on effect is that the game has gotten even hornier. unit designs? skimpier. any trace of art depicting males who aren’t enemies? memory holed. skins? skins?!?
they are putting out an outrageous skin depicting one of the units dressed up as a sexy nurse and also the skin comes with a touching minigame.
we are through at least four or five looking glasses of chasing down the most monkey brain of id. but the game lives
I am conflicted and also a little aroused
I don’t have a good joke title for Genshin:
hey did you know they added a character named Gaming
also,
they added a female character with pants
pants?
pants!
shame she’s not wearing sensible shoes