this is the first time ive read one of your posts in the master chief voice
6 Likes
Dragonās Crown Pro is 4 bucks on PSN
I am replaying Dragonās Crown
it turns out Dragonās Crown is a good video game and has not gotten appreciably worse in 12 years
Iām starting to think itās cheating when your studio is headed by a guy who worked on Capcom arcade games in the 90s
9 Likes
i think axyn adventure is some combined nostalgia for like, tail concerto and ps2 collectathon-ish stuff. oh right, itās also, obviously, a porn game. or at least partially. this stuff is kinda just casually there but not (so far) a main focus. you run the entire tutorial naked. i also appreciate the protagonist gets to have a distinct bulge even when fully dressed. i think if pseudoregalia goat had a bulge iād appreciate the game like, 5% more. i am always a little bit bothered that you can show the sexualized (cis) female form in almost explicit ways and this can be sfw, but if a girl or remotely feminine presenting person has the distinct shape of a bulge thatās immediately in the porn bin. and yeah, this is a porn game so it does nothing for that, but i just appreciate running casually around doing the mostly non-pornographic stuff while he just has that.
anyway, itās all right. kinda charming. being a collect-a-thon places it in a distinct junk-food category and thatās fine.
hereās a sfw screen of the starting town that you can jump around collecting various gems and gold in
8 Likes
oh, also, canāt believe i forgot to mention, you get ātreasure mapsā which from the only one i got are photoās of places in levels that has a secret treasure. it lacks the diy fun of gravity rush 2 but itās still that, kinda. and also, thereās a few places i havenāt figured out how to platform to but which evidence suggest should be possible. thatās fun.
6 Likes
wanted to like ultrakill but the ~ emphasis on bosses that can one shot you in a circular arena ~ meme is getting very old
5 Likes
PicoMix even has a Wilmotās Warehouse clone. Only youāre on a train making deliveries instead of in the warehouse.
I also tried the haunted house game but I am very bad at it.
Edit: Iāve been conditioned to be hesitant to try harder difficulty settings in video games but Hard and Very Hard in the flooded caverns game are not in fact very hard. It would be fun to see that turned into a bigger game.
4 Likes
I played the demo of ultrakill and went from āthis is neatā to āok yeah, not for meā when it became clear that I was going to need instant relexive reactions that were nearly impossible to comfortably map to the number of keys on a mouse and keyboard that I even had.
Maybe double tapping works better on mechanical? IDK.
1 Like
I did like rift of the necrodancer but thereās something very sawtellian about its style that crawed at me especially towards the end (final minigame reached the highs of rhythm heaven at its best so all is forgiven).
3 Likes
yesterday i played a bunch of Steam demos on my stream for Next fest. you can find video of the stream here. my impressions:
Axyz
not to be confused with Axyn Adventure mentioned above. itās basically exactly what youād expect from the screenshot - itās a Kula World-style action puzzle game with vaporwavey visuals and lots of breakbeats on the soundtrack. i know of Kula World but have never played it outside of a minute or two but i always have a soft spot for ball rolling games. it seems like it basically just is another version of Kula World from what i can tell. you roll the ball around an abstract 3d space and try to pick up all the items as quick as you can. maybe the levels get more interesting later on like Kula World seems to but i only played around the first world, which was just standard navigating and collecting. as far as recent y2k era throwback action puzzle games go i preferred Vividlope, but this basically does its job fine and i could see people who like Kula World getting into it.
Skin Deep
itās the long awaited new game from Blendo! from what i played it feels likeā¦ a Blendo game. a friend was mixed on this one because they didnāt like the voice acting and felt like it was kind of busy/overtutorializing design wise. i think to me it just felt like a Blendo attempt to be more maximalist and mainstream-accessible. basically like a sort of cartoonish mini immersive sim. youāre a woman who works with a cat resistance group to take down some space pirates. you have to save the cats that have been captured on each level. the cats are done in Blendo style tho the space pirates and other characters arenāt.
the main mechanic involves stunning people using various makeshift items and beating them up and then taking their heads and flushing them out to space which is a pretty wacky premise. like a typical immersive sim, there are a bunch of different pathways and approaches you can take. the levels were small and fairly linear so i didnāt really see the impact of that in the demo, but i can imagine they get more complex later on. the writing can either be cute or grating depending on what mood youāre in. it is a little soy bantery and obnoxious at times but i also just donāt like a lot of game voice acting in general. and there are other bits in the writing that i found amusing. some of the emails were kinda funny and i like that ābojoā is the default insult that gets thrown around - sort of like ātafferā in Thief.
overall, itās a bit wackier and more maximalist than other Blendo games but i still enjoyed the demo i played and iād def come back to it whenever it comes out.
Navicula Meatus
i wanted to play something horror-adjacent and this is one that i found via i think just through the eek3 stream that had a demo and looked interesting enough. youāre this horrible crustacean monster and you wander around a world talking to other horrible monsters in some indecipherable language and they ask for things. if you keep the HUD open thereās some language there, but i donāt think itās decipherable. really itās basically just one big fetch quest where figure out how to attain and deliver different items to different characters.
i complain about some of these haunted ps1-style games being a bit too much in attempting to do full on gamey things that are kinda half-baked and donāt work, and that a lot of these games would work better as vibey walking sims. this is a case where the game is more minimal and depends heavily on the cool visuals and sound design but the game part is just kind of uninteresting and tedious. i at least picked up more as it went on because i was interested in staying in the world for awhile, but i just donāt think fetch quests are really a great thing to anchor the design of a game around unless there are substantial other things to keep people interested. i guess itās another one of these retro lo-poly 3d horror-adjacent games where i liked the vibe but it wasnāt enough to hold my interest in the rest of the game. cool character and environment design though.
Mythic Mire
another game from the prolific developers of Salad Fields and Mibbibliās Quest. this is an Earthbound-style RPG that promises to be weird and feature a lot of furry characters like their other games. the demo was short and it really wasnāt anything too out of the ordinary other than one or two slightly weird combat mechanics (the pool playing and some occasional cool 3D rendered scenes). a lot of their games are quite long and have a lot of different things going on in them so i imagine this one could get more interesting over time. i definitely need to go back and check on some of their other recent stuff - but in the meantime, this was a pretty standard JRPG work in progress demo and i really didnāt have much to go off of.
Airframe Ultra
canāt even find shots that accurately reflect the demo that is available right now.
this is a really cool looking PS1-style motorcycle combat racer made by the Rain World dev. that may sound like a totally left-field thing to come from this developer until you play the demo. the biker characters have a similar sort of style of movement/control to the Rain World slugcat character, and also the world design seems to sort of loop in and out into a bunch of different pathways sort of like Rain World.
unfortunately the demo is not very far along at all and seems like it might have been designed more for multiplayer? my assumption was thatād be more focused and singleplayer so i was a little confused about that. i really couldnāt get a sense of the totality of the experience other than it just giving me stuff to mess around with in a sandbox. there were a huge variety of cool weapons there too (almost every type of gun and melee weapon you can imagine + some more), and i love the look of the world. so i could definitely imagine this being very fun in the future! but what was here was really not enough, and iām probably going to have to wipe my memory of it and start afresh whenever the full game actually comes out.
MINDWAVE
very high effort fusion of Warioware-like microgames in a kind of offbeat visual novel with a premise sort of similar to Psychonauts where you enter into other peopleās mindscapes. it has sort of webcomicy sensibilities and feels very Gen Z in the general aesthetic and way the characters talk (in a positive way tho). someone in my chat described it as a bit Invader Zim-core except more teenage.
your main character is a goth teenager who has reluctantly entered this Mindwave contest and is not really good at it. after an initial tutorial, the first part you can wander around and talk to different people who you may or may not be fighting later, and then you enter one full on Mindwave battle(?) with what appears to be a very twee pre-teen. from what iāve heard the microgames sort of reflect something in particular going on in the story with each of these characters, and thereās a pretty catchy pop song that plays throughout.
the really high effort thatās gone into the entire thing, esp the really unique visual design is kinda the reason to play this game. i hate the word āpolishā but it really is very polished and has a really unique sensibility. i really enjoyed what i played and i can imagine it catching on whenever it comes out. i guess thatās probably why itās already received a lot of attention. def one of my favorites of the bunch.
ChainStaff
this is another game from Mommyās Best Games, creator of the bizarre and compelling Pig Eat Ball and a very fun arcade game iāve played a lot of at Wonderville in NYC recently: Bumpy Grumpy. he apparently had a lot of games on XBLA back in the day that looked a bit similar to this one.
the XLBA-core appearance and the 2000ās flash game edgelord level of blood might make you think this game is super jank but itās actually quite well put together! the game is Metal Slug/Contra style but revolves around you using the titual Chain Staff for a quite versatile series of tasks. it seems like it would be a bit unwieldy but i actually got the hang of it as things went on, enough to the point where i wish more games had a weapon like that.
the giant enemy designs are very fun and varied too - particularly the boss pictured above with the giant skull. the demo could get quite difficult in spots - particularly the final boss battle - but in a way that felt rewarding to get through. the sci-fi story of your main character grunt who has a bug stuck on his head thatās keeping him alive was appropriately pulpy and the perfect sort of tone for this kind of game. you even have the choice to save other soldiers or kill them for resources throughout, which might have narrative effects down the line (it does make other soldiers shoot at you instead of help you in the levels).
all in all, a good time! itās probably worth checking out some of the other games by this guy because this was a really creative platformer i think some people on here would like. i also really like Bumpy Grumpy a lot so maybe worth checking that one out on Steam if you want something that feels like an early 80ās arcade game.
Moves of the Diamond Hand
itās another new Cosmo D game! i actually saw a playest of this happening after one of my classes at NYU a few months back but had no real sense of how the game actually felt to play from that. continuing on in the lineage of Betrayal at Club Low, this one has a lot of dice rolling and RPG mechanics. it is also thankfully back in first person, which i honestly appreciate a lot as someone who def vibed the most with his early couple games.
i wasnāt sure how iād feel about this as a continued direction of leaning on dice rolling as someone who likes the vibey wandering of Off-Peak and Norwood Suite in particular. but i really got into it! it kind of makes me think that just wandering around a train station or another public space but with D&D style checks on basically everything is a surprisingly nice format iām surprised more stuff doesnāt do. it makes something that would otherwise seem mundane a lot more compelling, and the design sensibility of the dice fits with the off-beat feeling of the world and dialogue, so it fits in really well.
anyway, this was also one of my favorites and iām definitely looking forward to the whole thing when it comes out!
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overall, the ones i liked were MINDWAVE, Moves of the Diamond Hand, ChainStaff and Skin Deep. ChainStaff is the one iād be least likely to return to because itās not really a style a game i get into as easily as the others, but i still thought what i played was very well done. both Mythic Mire and Airframe Ultra def seem like they have potential to be interesting down the road but i didnāt have enough to go off of yet so iāll just have to wait and see on those. Axyz was very solid but maybe slightly unremarkable and Navicula Meatus had cool visuals but i didnāt really like the fetch questy nature of it.
21 Likes
Played the Mindwave demo some time back as I have a soft spot for Wario Wares, I am a touch wary on it as I am unsure that a VN/microgame mix really works for me as it felt a bit āgo! go! go! ā¦now read a bit too many words per interactionā but it is one I will keep my eye on.
I did not know Mommyās Best Games and Resnijars had new demos out for this! Probably have to pass on Mythic Mire as I just have no patience for most jrpgs anymore but Iāll have to make a point of getting to ChainStaff while the demo is still available.
I should probably mention which demos I tried that I enjoyed, I have no clue which were technically part of the Next Fest or came out right before and I was a bit āsafeā with my choices, but what the heck.
Swoosh Cat
Making a keyboard-only precision platformer is a terrible ideaā¦ but this game has some neat ideas in it. You have a slash/dash that you control via the mouse (that fortunately has bullet time) that is recharged by killing enemies but most interestingly can have you dash into spikes to ricochet off them. I have a soft spot for precision platformers and of all the various demos this tiny chinese demo which got zero reviews is the only one I added to my wishlist.
Shotgun Cop Man
Another precision platformer (like I said, I was very safe with my picks) where you canāt jump but can use various firearms to send you flying around the screen, solid mix of combat and pseudo-platforming, will get a lot of coverage as it is from Devolver.
Qoob
This actually came out in January (has 2 whole reviews) but released a demo during the fest, I passed over it initially as it may be the most generic looking puzzle game imaginable but turns out it is actually a very well considered ārules change from puzzle to puzzleā game that deserved to at least get the puzzle game community to pay attention.
Gentoo Rescue
Simple looking mostly āslidingā puzzle game, but the demo shows enough flashes and ideas to be worth keeping an eye on.
Blobun
Solid seeming ātrace a path across every tileā puzzle game, mention it as while it comes out on a few weeks it is included in the current giant California Wildfire bundle so you might technically own it already.
SuperPosition
A block pushing game about quantum entanglement, I mention it simply because I could not even come close to finishing the demo it hurt my brain.
Hypogea
Mentioned this before, it is clearly Lornās Lure mixed with Pseudoregalia and that could end up being my jam.
Blue Prince
One of the most hyped demos in ages, almost a mortal lock to be up for indie game of the year, love abounds for it.
ā¦Didnāt care for it, is a rogue-lite >_>
18 Likes
I played Glittermitten Grove for more than 30 minutes, thinking I could get to Frog Fractions 2. I did not. I also spent an inordinate amount of time when the first game popped up, just playing that edutainment. I know how to get to it now but, wow, Iāve played too many video games this weekend.
Oh, I also beat 25 games in UFO 50, so Iām taking a break from that until I beat more of the games I have planned for the year. UFO 50 is a great collection, let me tell you. I should post a screenshot of what Iāve completed so far.
14 Likes
Tried Smash Melee on my hitbox and it sort of works. Iām losing about half the actions that would be required for competitive play but to play at my level this kind of works out all right. Also playing still leaves my hands overheating like a machine gun in a turret section so maybe the tournament life aināt for me, idk, Iām just sayinā, maybe I can get by without dreams of ranking in the top 100.
I had ordered a Glyph which was a modular controller that was kickstarted a while back, but it was delayed by over five months and my queries to the supplier kind of broke down since their customer service was so poor. Just cancelled it in the end rather than just leave a several hundred-pound debt sitting there. Iāll probably end up just buying a duplicate hitbox to make sure Iāve got a backup in case the other one dies suddenly.
Have been playing some of the Capcom Fighting Collection [Vol 1] with a friend. There is no one else online playing this, at least on steam. I assume one half of the target audience either plays this for an afternoon and never returns and the other half simply laugh and boot up fightcade.
Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo holds up. Really fun Puyo-style game. It seemed extremely easy to just dump junk on the opponent and this is probably the best Iāve ever felt of playing one of this type of game. I like the chibiness and I think I played a similar game in some arcade in Florida a long time ago but cannot remember even a hint of what it couldāve been. The fighting collection does a weird thing where every time a match finishes the game pauses and a separate result screen overlays the game that is being emulated with this crisp clear hip-hop groove which completely takes you out of the aesthetic of the game youāve just played. Not a horrible problem but just weirdly jarring.
Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix was also novel as long as you donāt really take it seriously. I think Puzzle Fighter has the greater legs of the two. I suspect the balance is completely absent with a lot of these and the range of some moves really gives the vibe that many were developed very quickly. The animators are going nuts with little nods and touches.
Looking at it from a modern context itās interesting that they seem to want to make a Capcom fighter that is more approachable at least aesthetically(?) but keep basic inputs for specials the same. Kinda wish these collections had more of the Atari history to them to explain why they made these and what was driving these decisions at the time.
Red Earth I think is just genuinely too unfinished. As usual the animations are great but such an uneven appeal visually. Like Mai-Ling is such a character design/moveset whiff in a roster of only 4 characters. I didnāt really mess with the single player so Iām probably missing the main appeal but the game feels very floaty and slow. Might go back and check out arcade mode later.
Cyberbots: Full Metal Madness. I love it. Not really sure why the pilots and bots are different but we really enjoyed how mobile you are, just rocket boostinā all over. The sprites have a frenetic energy to them that mixes well with the gameplay. I could see myself playing this a lot more. Even though a lot of these games were probably developed very rapidly itās funny to see which ones feel more ācompleteā or can still grab your attention beyond a brief dabble.
10 Likes
I played the Blue Prince demo. Looks like somebody liked the board game Castles of Mad King Ludwig!
I actually kind of like the way they grafted roguelite run mechanics onto an adventure game. Itās a series of runs where you build a mansion as you explore it by drafting room tiles that have different effects and synergies. As you go, you collect resources, read little lore dumps you find in the rooms, solve puzzles, and gradually learn secrets that you can use again later, e.g. passwords to computer systems.
Itās a cool way to do a mansion explore-em-upā¦ I just wish the mansion were more interesting. So far the whole thing has been veryā¦ manored. The aesthetic is just dull as dishwater. Maybe the fun, weird stuff comes in later, but so far it all feels very Annapurna House Style middlebrow.
6 Likes
Despite ostensibly being on vacation for most of February, I havenāt really had the time to play anything other than Espgaluda II over the last month. Specifically, the Arrange mode which I set as a goal to beat this year.
Been playing for 30-60 minutes every day, practicing stages in training mode, and trying out full runs every few weeks. Today I finally got to the final stage on a single credit, but unfortunately for me, Iāve yet to beat the final stage on a single credit even in training modeā¦
Despite that, itās such a fun and satisfying game to spend time in. Bullet cancelling in Espgaluda II activates that slot machine jackpot pleasure center in my brain, and being able to cancel different colored bullets with the shot and laser in Arrange mode just adds to that feeling.
I never thought it would happen, but I think this might top Mushihimesama for me as a shmup I just like to hang out in no matter how bad Iām doing.
17 Likes
I tried the The Blue Prince demo. Itās veryā¦yeahā¦middlebrow. But my āJust one more pull on the slot machineā personality type kept me going. Debating if the boardgamesque rogulike elements are cool, or ultimately will get in the way of things.
What does intrigue me about it though, is it has that Myst/Outer Wilds style āOk what does this meanā āOh wait, it means this!ā in spades, which creates situations where you start making moves less chaotically, and more towards specific objectives.
When certain objectives become impossible, what you do on a run starts subtly shifting to see if thereās anything actually useful you can get out of it. I also appreciated that it rewarded me for poking at the boundries a to say āYeah thereās even more to this than you actually knowā.
The like, expanding psychogeography as you understand the boardgame and the puzzles is annoyingly compelling.
Iām either going to love this or curse itās name, either way I think Iām playing the full version when it comes out.
8 Likes
Yeah, despite my griping about the aesthetics and writing, the boardgamey mechanics and the ways they tie into exploration and meta progression are pretty compelling. Iām also tempted to get the full version when it comes out.
2 Likes
my only real beef with street fighter six
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FWIW I got next to none of this from my two in-game days of Blue Prince so I may have just gotten RNGād badā¦ but I was also about the worldās worst Outer Wilds player so perhaps my brain just doesnāt work this way.
2 Likes