No!
6 Likes
Before Cards Against Humanity was the party game du jour that always made me die a little inside, it was people trotting out Guitar Hero
3 Likes
En Garde! finally went on sale so I got that andā¦has this not been done before, til now? A fun, goofy swordfighting brawler?
The whole vibe of it (looks, music, voice acting, approach to combat) is so damn fun and playful. Not enough games out there let you throw a bucket over a guyās head and kick him down the stairs, vault across a table and then kick it out from under the guys chasing you over it, but this one! It does that!
Probably oughta replay the first level, though. Part of it is my compulsion to see through all tasks in a level, but the other is that I apparently skipped half the level by jumping over a wall partway through (they pretty cleverly continue the tutorial through the detour area, and the character youāre chasing expresses their shock and disappointment at you bypassing their trials).
9 Likes
I may have to find A2Mās āWetā for the Xbox360, starring Alan Cumming and Malcolm McDowell.
my friends and I played Lethal Company today for the first time.
Mild, very early game spoilers if youāve not played it at all yourself, but nothing serious
3 Likes
Only a sucker would bother with the second turret section in Entanglement after playing hl2 like 10 times. I prefer to prop climb up here
and hide in a dark corner so I can get a snack until alyx tells me sheās coming down
10 Likes
Thereās a secret code to reduce the flicker in both the Space Harriers, I forget what it is (maybe just hold up and press Start). Mostly all it does is makes enemies and bullets invisible more often though lol.
Most of the previously unreleased games on the MD Mini2 definitely feel like they were unreleased for a reason. Star Mobile is interesting but feels like half a game. The pacman clone with the tricycle is kinda fun though.
3 Likes
No regular group of human beings has ever had fun playing Guitar Hero for more than 2 songs maximum.
2 Likes
Iām in almost totally agreement, though I will admit to having a soft spot for Donkey Konga.
1 Like
DROD: TCB day 17
So the new area is you having to deal with the new enemy type with the eye beam that freezes you in place, except that since you have a sword you can either block said if you point it directly at said beam or reflect it back at them if your sword is perpendicular to it.
I didnāt finish this area as I was short on time and one room was āI literally donāt know how to even begin to tackle thisā level hard soā¦ not a lot to write here. This specific room is you on one side with some of those ever growing briar vines and two of the new enemies I mentally view as wizards on the other. There is a set of vertical gates that block their view of you that are held open by some mirror blocks on top of the pressure plate tile. There are similar pressure plates on the other side that they need to be frozen on (remember, if their beams are reflected back to them they are frozen in place) to make it to the other side of the room to kill them but moving the mirrors so that this is possible takes them off the pressure plates holding those central vertical gates open, and with them closed their eye beams donāt make it across.
I tried to get around this by moving the mirror blocks where they needed to be to reflect and freeze the enemies and just waiting for the briar vines to spread far enough to push down the pressure plates themselves, but this seems like a doomed endeavor; by the time they spread far enough to do so there will never be enough time to get to the other side, kill the enemies and make it back across before the briar blocks the route back (there are mirrors on the other side that I assume must be moved onto the pressure plates after said enemies are killed). My best guess is that Iāll have to figure out a way to get them to turn their views diagonally which will hopefully freeze them on the right spots while the mirrors can still stay on the pressure plates, but that feels like it is gonna be a pain to actually arrange. I guess thatāll be tomorrowās problem to sort out.
4 Likes
finishing up Oktrollberfest games:
āZZTortureā by Jeremy Kaufmann
This was an odd one, especially at first. It was a 4 megabyte download that came with an installer that I could not get to work for the life of me. I tried the 32-bit version, the 64-bit version, different DLLs, etc., and the most I could get it to do was delete some files. Baffled as to why a ZZT game would need some bizarre installer, I manually peeked at the larger, more suspicious files, and instantly recognized them as plain old zips.
It turns out that this submission was a collection of 4 different games, and the intent of the āinstallerā was to have it so you randomly received one of the four games (it was all part of the troll). I have no idea if it worked as intended for anybody, but I appreciate the high concept.
letās run down each game one-by-one
Summary
ZZTorture
This channels the energy of a forgotten mid-90s game made by someone under 12, and recovered within the past 3 years. Nothing about it seems particularly torturous though, aside from the several rooms containing various bones of the (presumably) largest skeleton ever.
Verdict: Itās cute.
Fire 1000
You play as Swim Teeny, CEO of Epic Megagems, developers of the obscenely popular shooter Two Weeks. Your goal is to fire 1000 people, just because you can.
I think I exercised a bit of compassion early on that locked me out from getting the ending. I guess thatās why in real life they leave these CEO jobs to the experts.
Verdict: On-the-nose is an understatement.
Super Wall Puncher
You punch walls:
Whether you like to punch no walls, all of them, or something in between, this game has something for you.
Verdict: Feels like a short little concept world someone would have released in the latter half of the 2010s.
A Dink in the Grass
A silly little Zelda 1 parody. Goes up to the first dungeon. Has an approximation of bump combat. Still feels strange and mysterious, despite the many similarities between it and the original.
Verdict: Feels like a nice proof of concept, with the sort of ambition/scope that a ZZTer would have had after trying a MegaZeux game.
Overall Verdict: Nice little collection that covers a very wide gamut of ZZT experiences. Aside from Dink, nothing here is at risk of knocking your socks off, but they all work quite well as tone pieces.
La Vie Moderne IV: Je MāApelle BITE ME by Snorb
Ah yes, my kindred spirit Snorb ā another fellow that has used Oktrollberfest as an excuse to develop a Cinematic Universe 
of increasingly convoluted and self-indulgent proportions. To best understand this game, you should be familiar with the previous three numbered entries in the series, the two gaiden games, the original Best of ZZT Part I: The Secret of Headhunter Isle, and also know Snorb well enough to have a good idea for his particular nerdy fixations, in-jokes, and self-effacements.
If you got all that under your belt, then youāre all set for a rather good time (I had a good time).
Like the previous entries in Snorbās La Vie Moderne series, this is a parody/retelling of one of the official Epic-published ZZT worlds (with Snorbās cast of colorful characters). However, this time, instead of looking to the usual Town/Caves/City/Dungeons quartet, he opted to riff on the less well-known Best of ZZT, which is less well-known for good reason.
The original Best of ZZT was a collection of individual user-submitted boards, very inexpertly woven together. Owing to the nature of it being a collection of individual boards, many of the board designs trended towards being, well, um, quite maximal (volume warning). That, in combination with a handful of potentially gamebreaking bugs, resulted in a distinctly unpleasant and unbalanced experience best left in the past.
Snorb tries his best with the material heās working with, and the result is a marked improvement over the original.
In typical Snorb-ian fashion, much of the level art is very colorful and abstract (also there are lots of trees that go āBip-bo-beep!ā).
Many of the boards completely reinvent concepts from the original. For instance, what was once a swamp full of the terrible built-in ZZT sharks is now home to much wider variety of sharks, from a pool sharks to a loan sharks to a blahajs. This shark here even challenges you to a game of Baccarat:
Overall, the obvious irony of this game is that, in spite of the sheer density of trolls, jokes, and japes, this game ends up being far less trolly than its source material just on the grounds of sheer playability alone. (Granted, I wouldnāt have finished it myself if I hadnāt been alerted to the existence of a debug object to skip a surprise fetch-quest at the end.)
Verdict: If you can stand the writing and donāt mind doing some Homework (or donāt mind being confused about whoās who), then this is a good one.
Spook City by verasev
verasev is a MegaZeuxer who also likes making TTRPGs and such. Unlike every other game in this jam, this was a tabletop game.
The submission was a 13 page .rtf file with 3 pages of rules and 10 pages of the stats of various units and cards.
As far as I can tell, this is a competitive city-building simulation game. The goal (or perhaps just one of the goals) is to get 100 āprestigeā. There are a wide variety of resources. There is a combat element where you can pit your spooky minions against each other. The game is apparently played on a grid, though no dimensions appear to be specified.
After the initial submission the author uploaded a āprint-and-playā pack with like 78 images that are all this large and look like this:
ā¦thatās a bit more printer ink than Iām willing to entertain using. (Does this qualify as a troll??)
I tried reading the rules multiple times, but I had trouble making sense of them (perhaps because of my lack of genre savviness). It seems somewhat interesting, though it looks like a full game would involve quite a bit of bookkeeping.
Verdict: Iām a dumb baby who needs a computerized version of this. Sorry for not actually playing it.
ā¦and that appears to be everything, besides my own submission. I canāt speak for the quality of my own work (other than āI wrote way too much stuffā), but critics are saying things like āthis filled me with joy,ā āSamantha is my spirit animal,ā āan unexpected dose of wholesome,ā āpossibly witchcraft,ā and ādefinitely wasnāt expecting that ending lol.ā
9 Likes
Ah shit I had to stop playing because this is so fucking funny. Two gangsters are talking about which wire to cut, red or blue, before they both blow up. Then I tried both doors before the entire wall falls over like a loony tunes cutout.
The exact same loony tunes bullshit thatās inā¦ Albert Pyunās Nemesis!!! I love this shit!!!
16 Likes
Another interesting thing Iāve never seen anyone point out before is that the more militarized type of cleaners from Max Payne 2 are based off the 1997 movie āDriveā
4 Likes
NO.
8 Likes
En Garde is pretty underrated imo. One of the better indie tthigs Iāve dabbled with this year. Brings together a lot of fun ideas even if thereās some rough edges with geometry during fights
3 Likes
What are you taking about, everyone I knew in my super normie hometown played guitar hero and rock band as one of their main recreational activities for like a year. It was a fad that didnāt last, sure, but there was a moment of time it was huge and extremely mainstream and played constantly.
9 Likes
Yeah same, it was a huge hit with everyone I knew, like how beat saber was last year. Maybe you just donāt like fun!! That must be it since you donāt want to shit talk OFK anymore!! Which is fun!!
6 Likes
Yeah I kind of want the fake instruments again but they are extremely expensive here and forgot to look for them in America.
4 Likes
more ps1
GHOST IN THE SHELL
dope as FUCK verdict KEEP
METAL GEAR SOLID
pretty cool verdict KEEP
TENCHU: STEALTH ASSASSINS
another one I love the idea of more than playing. hopping around rooftops as an olde time ninja? heck yeah! unfortunately the draw distance is so short so you cant plan stuff, and the stealth mechanics are so dated and clunky, it just doesnāt feel good at all to play. maybe later installments were better? i tried tenchu z but the levels were too linearā¦ i like how in this one the levels are fairly open and you find your own path to the target. like hitman but with ninjas! someone make that game. verdict SELL
14 Likes
mods pls ban sykel
6 Likes