Games You Played Today VIII: Journey of the Cursed Poster

[aislesgrises]

hazama_queen does not work with the steam ui so i don’t have the screenshots i wish i had but this game is a cute and funny literal arcade shooter. do it in one run or you’ll just be rejected. the lowest difficulty is for CUTE girls and does not have your health bar draining all the time. i can’t just accept being cute at that cost tho. draining health is a GOOD mechanic that ENRICHES. i did not quit on shinobi (ps2) at the last stage (i totally did). keep on killing, killing, killling if you want to stay alive! keep dashing! shoot faster! the enemies are super dumb but its still super hard because you have to do everything fast! i think it’s probably like… somewhat similar to post void except i like the game that mashes together violence, cute girls, and the murder of teddy-frog hellspawn.

i traded my gun for a severed girls head with a spreadshot who looks at me and empties my lifebar everytime i need to reload. died very fast. i believe this might be moe…

[VastleCania]

@aislesgrises

similar to post void except i like the game that mashes together violence, cute girls, and the murder of teddy-frog hellspawn.

sold

[aislesgrises]

oh, i lowered to normal and powered through. i got the killer7 style revolver and destroyed things at a rate that made my laptop chug. hazama_queen was over in minutes. but there are still higher difficulties

i like that the character is part of the hud, but unlike doomguy is placed like a vtuber to the right and is very animated. extra funny that i don’t have time to look at her or i die. she sure keeps commenting a lot too

[parker]

I got a 3 month code for the xbox pass thing in case anybody wanted to play sea of thieves or something on there. It’s disgusting how convenient the xbox app thing is compared to every other store front. it tells you whether your computer should be able to run everything and you can sort by not only co-op but crossplay co-op. I’m mainly using this for man who erased his name and ishin. and they got payday 3 on here so I’ll be trying that out.

[smbhax]

LOVE 3 (PC/Steam)

A precision platformer with immaculate single-button control–just regular jumping,

no wall jumps, I don’t think; a delightful minimalist widescreen 8-bit aesthetic

with thoughtful details like animated meters built into the platforms that show the recycle time of animating hazards; really inventive platforming challenges, almost a new one with each level;

a new chill electronic tune for each level; and the friendly central gimmick of being able to place your respawn point on any solid, hazard-free (the respawn point is as vulnerable as you!) piece of ground,

so (combined with the infinite lives setting, my only way to play haha)

you get to challenge the stages mostly in nice little bite-sized chunks.

Just wish there was more of it–just under 1 hour play has put me 24% of the way through the LOVE 1+2+3 Remastered campaign.

So ~64 stages total (all stages from the previous games plus the new LOVE 3 stages). The developer, Fred Wood, has seemingly moved on to working on a somewhat more conventional precision platformer, Mort’s Dream Jump–there’s a demo on Steam–and also Deltarune.

I’ll just have to enjoy LOVE while it lasts. : ) (MAYBE if I manage to clear the campaign–and possibly the two earlier versions of the first LOVE, also included here, which have slightly different challenges)

I’ll be able to groove on chained random stage select in ENDLESS LOVE mode?)

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Mort’s Dream Jump Demo (PC/Steam)

A maybe more conventional precision platformer by the developer of the LOVE series. Full game still in development. (They’re also working on Deltarune so maybe progress on this is going a bit slower.)

Single-screen(?) full-color cartoonish graphics, perhaps not the most attractive style so far.

Still a single-button jumper a la LOVE, but no set-your-own-respawn-point gimmick, so you have to clear the whole stage in one go. And in this there are single-use powerups, like a single double-jump, or single air-dash; make good use of them to clear the stage’s obstacles, and reach optional bonus stars.

[wourme]

@Tuxedo

Chants of Sennaar
We need a term for the new genre of game where you get to fill your little notebook with guesses and if all your guesses are correct the pages fill and you win
In this genre we have Obra Dinn, Curse of the Golden Idol, and now Chants of Sennaar that I know of, Heaven’s Vault is also very close.

Chants of Sennaar is so far less great than these classics, it’s a lot more normie than you’d expect from the aesthetics, it even has stealth sections and sluice lever puzzles in its first hour. But I really like filling my notebook

This started out great, but then what I thought would be a short stealth infiltration sequence went on and on until I reached a particularly annoying room and quit. I might return to the game and use a guide to get through that part, but don’t they know that’s one of the worst things you can include in a video game? It’s what ruined Observer, too.

[parker]

@parker

and they got payday 3 on here so I’ll be trying that out.

me trying to play with these public rando cowards

[ellaguro]

played and beat Superliminal

this came out in late 2019 and it really feels like a summation of an entire decade of gimmicky indie “one clever mechanic” puzzle design of the 2010’s to me. i almost imagine this game as being a statement about that type of game in general, in some form. but perhaps that’s me imposing my own reading onto it. more recently in this genre we got Viewfinder - a game that i talked about elsewhere. Superliminal is snappier and more innovative than Viewfinder. it’s more The Stanley Parable/30 Flights of Loving than a game with discrete puzzles like Viewfinder - there are bunch of different simple scenario designs that are run through at a rapid pace, and the boundaries between them are basically nonexistent. the puzzle design gimmicks go further than something like Stanley Parable also - there’s a real focus on constant mind bending moments. and that’s legitimately cool! …at least for awhile.

because it’s a constantly shifting reality, there is seemingly never any interest in making the place you’re in feel real and tangible. once you’re used to these kinds of design tropes being used over and over, they fail to really move you anymore. and the writing never really approaches being coherent or contextualizing anything you’re doing in an interesting way - because the game seemingly has no interest in that. it’s a tech demo designed to be “mind bending” and push buttons, and it does succeed at that - but it’s underwhelming if you were expecting any more from that. even like Portal or The Stanley Parable, which are pretty one-note in many ways, at least have concepts in the fiction that are more immediately graspable and relatable. a lot more tools in the toolbox were used to make Superliminal than those games - and they’re cool tools! it’s the kind of stuff the Doom wad “ALT” or some other weirder Doom levels (like “Myhouse” for that matter) do that i like, but in a hyper-concentrated form. there’s a lot to be gained from that. but it’s not really clear for what purpose they’re being used. it feels directionless. which is a real bummer.

there’s something about this particular approach to game design - like you’re Jules Verne unraveling the mysteries of the deep, or Werner Herzog filming in the jungle. approaching game design like it’s a kind of science, something inherent to the nature of being that you’re unraveling through your curiosity. it’s something that i find both admirable and completely delusional and un-self-aware. it’s a kind of macho attitude, but for a certain type of insulated programmer nerd. games like this offered a promise of a glimpse into something deeper, but rarely failed to go beyond “huh, that was cool i suppose” because it was coming from people who worship the idea of technological exceptionalism and were thus uninterested in the humanities or larger art history. the insights to be gleaned were all very polished gimmicks rubbing up against each other in a consumer-friendly package intent on planting the seed of Deep Game Design in the minds of players - because that, in itself, was somehow powerful. Videogames Matter, folks. Videogames Can Do Things! and all problems can be eventually brained to death. perhaps this works in some ways - Braid got me back into following games, after all. but if it does it’s less so because of the end result, but merely because they’re at least attempting to be something different than a majority of games… and that at least makes them stand out from other things.

but yeah - in that way i think Superliminal really embodies a lot of design trends of that era, many of which were on their way out by the time it came out. like i said it’s more expressive and innovative than Viewfinder - but i’ll also give that game credit, i feel like that one least it was trying to say something larger with the story that this doesn’t. even if it was clumsy. i’m not sure what Superliminal has to say about anything beyond “look at what we can do”. and that’s a real bummer, because in isolation - completely removed from the context (or lack thereof) of the game, i liked a lot of things about Superliminal.

but speaking of “My House” - i feel like that takes very similar ideas and actually does the whole thing much better, because there’s a really strong sense of angst and pathos there that never is remotely in this game. that’s perhaps the direction i can imagine more of these games taking in the future - the sort of hauntology angle vs. the “i’m a great scientist unraveling the secrets of the universe” one.

[Tuxedo]

@wourme

This started out great, but then what I thought would be a short stealth infiltration sequence went on and on until I reached a particularly annoying room and quit. I might return to the game and use a guide to get through that part, but don’t they know that’s one of the worst things you can include in a video game? It’s what ruined Observer, too.

Cosigned, fortunately in that case the army in the second section (I assume that’s where you are?) is the only group that cares about impeding your movement, so once you find a disguise there the stealth sections -mostly disappear- from the rest of the game

[falsedan]

I best Superliminal recently too, with an audience. we especially liked the bad dream level for being spooky/creepy without being scary, and could see the cutoff for its effectiveness (audience age is equidistant either side of 10)

@ellaguro

[Viewfinder] was trying to say something larger with the story that this doesn’t

do physics puzzlers need a story (imo no). “you can make a cheese real big if you look at it real close” thx Dr. Glenn Pierce. not sure if you even need to trigger radios?

[stylo]

interesting i played the original LOVE a few years back but never finished

[dogs]

what the hell this is like the exact perfect level of graphics i love textures so much

[Grandpa]

After being a huge hater unto Secret of Mana, I dunno why I thought Trials of Mana would go any differently for me, but here I am.

It’s…maybe a bit brisker, but I’m finding myself underleveled once again and just…don’t enjoy this combat! It kinda blows! Maybe it’s because my team can’t use any magic yet, I dunno.

Script also threw a dang Whedon-esque “WELL THAT JUST HAPPENED” at me…unforgivable…

Nice pixel art, though.

Finally fire up Kirby Star Allies after owning it for ages (I think I got it when Nintendo was doing those digital vouchers way back when). It’s…fine, I guess. I like the menu UI, anyway. The whole buddy and power transferral thing is clunky as hell.

[loki]

played through recettear for the first time in a long time. took about 4-5 hours!
of all the indie pc games to get ported to every console and handheld in the 2010s, it’s really a shame this wasn’t among them. so cute and fun, and if it were on a handheld, i’d probably still be dipping into the post game stuff every now and then on my original decade-old save

[notbov]

@loki

and if it were on a handheld

Steam Deck™

(note that I don’t endorse sane people engaging with Linux in any capacity)

[doolittle]

outside of desktop mode the steam deck feels more like obtuse custom firmware on a console

setting up emudeck on my partner’s deck and the openfpga cores on my analogue pocket was roughly the same kind of job

playing mouse navigation games on the trackpads reminds me of scummvm on the wii

[ellaguro]

@falsedan

do physics puzzlers need a story (imo no).

i think there’s a difference between a story i.e. text dump, and some kind of narrative context provided by the design of the world. which stuff like Stanley Parable or 30 Flights do. or even that Doom wad ALT i mention all the time does. this by comparison just felt like a bunch of nondescript rooms and hallways, and i never had any illusion they were really there for any other purpose than to set up the puzzles. which kinda broke the immersion a bit for me.

[loki]

i am not an oligarch

[Drem]

After a year of playing very few video games (I think my longest spurt was when Street fighter 6 came out), I decided to don the Playstation VR 2 headset once again to try something new.

So I played some old games like The Light Brigade. Man, that’s a fun game. I had a lot of trouble aiming when it first came out, but in hindsight I’m not sure if aiming has been improved since through patches or it’s because I now realized its WW2-era guns has two iron sights, one at the front and one at the back, instead of just the one at the back. There are lots of things I never really think about when playing an FPS that VR games, in their simulacra, now want me to take into account.

Likewise, I played from Crossfire: Sierra Squad and realized I had no idea how to re-load modern day guns. I was in the middle of the first level but the moment my bullet clip ran out, I put in a new clip but had no idea how to actually finish the reloading process (apparently it’s not that different from WW2 era guns I guess). But it’s the “arcade light gun game in VR” I’ve always been looking forward. It has the same kind of setpiece design, except you physically walk from setpiece to setpiece rather than it being a short cutscene. The way enemies constantly popping out from behind walls and obstacles, the way their animate when getting hit and dying- it’s all evocative of the era of lightgun games. There are so many shooting gallery games in VR, but most of them never looked like they had the personality I was looking for. This one seems really nice though.

It also has a cheeky difficulty level name.

[VastleCania]

yeah that’s partially what i like about it — it feels like wild west shit again. i was able to get a Vita emulator launching directly from the Steam mode and it’s about as dumb as you’d think it is. There are ways to get the Ubisoft and Epic Games launchers working directly from the Steam mode too, and it looks tremendously awful. Amazing stuff.

And then I just go ahead and play games that work fine with no extra work required anyway. I’ve played like 15 minutes of Disgaea 3