Games you’ve played today: Fourteen by Kazuo Umezz

[aislesgrises]

also played next fest demos tho only three

cicadamata - haven’t played neon white. this looks and sounds more appealing to me. something about the stages and style and movement when you don’t dash makes me feel like im playing jumping flash. im interested.

three verses - tile based dungeon/typing game in which you deliver bible verses to poets and do rpg combat where you have to know the word to cast the spell. its possible its not for me but the style and atmosphere is cool.

annihilated - very cute. i thought all the characters were girls but apparently only one of them was so its like that, huh. bring one of the annihilated members of the hero’s party out of the dungeon, do randomized runs with turn based fights using items with limited uses this is not my kind of game.

ran with the warrior who got his soul transferred into a pretty but physically weak doll, because of course. feels borderline fetish game but probably without the bravery to actually go there so like… idk. didn’t get the option to choose the priest who might be slowly making you insane if you hang around him too much. there’s potential to the setting but all i got to do was play numbers to win fights.

[azurelore]

this is, like

almost as long as a steven universe

[thecatamites]

i got one of the gregory horror show: soul of roses kickstarter shirts as a gift for xmas and it arrived yesterday along with a code for the game so i’ve been checking it out. with a little apprehension, bc the tone and characters of the show are really fun to me but the ps2 game feels pretty unimpeachable as far as adapting “get to know these dangerous weirdos” into a game structure goes. and so it’s felt a little like this depressing index of the State Of Affairs to see that the next ghs game was a gacha one for phones, and this one is… i guess a run-based action game? one of the ones where you have to pick between three random upgrades between stages and there’s metaprogression with some of the upgrades and you talk to people in a big hub between levels etc. is this “hades”?? it’s my first time playing one of those so there’s kind of a mix of enjoyment and horror at how slick the formula is for this type of game by now, as all the enemies explode into coins and the upgrades are all things like “20% cooldown removal + 1.1sec poison swamp burst damage (15hp) on activation)”. at last, just what i thought was missing.

on the other hand it’s also kind of kirbylike, you kill guys and transform into outfits with their powers which is nice. i like that there’s some minimal route selection for the levels but they’re not randomised and are super blocky and dry in appearance, really gamemaker-esque in a way i actually find enjoyable. it’s a little sad they made the lizard so svelte but sometimes the odd cross between genres leads to some enjoyable sentences:

i also liked this guy

there’s like a “bond deepening” system where you befriend people by feeding them snacks between runs so if i keep playing i’ll do my best to attain kinko marriage route. him or hell’s chef.

[aislesgrises]

from the annihilated store page

the anti-hype of promising it’s not gonna be too scary or gross

[vodselbt]

Weird West is really bad. It sells itself as an immersive sim, an RPG with meaningful choices. You can kill any NPC you want and use water to electrocute, heal yourself, or put out a fire. But these and other mechanical interactions are just empty signifiers with nothing to support them in the way of interesting reactivity and consequence. The heart of the game is walking into towns, mines, sites of random slaughter out in the desert, and choosing to either shoot your way through them or slowly choke out everybody in the camp. Maybe it’s my fault for thinking this would be an RPG, but I was very surprised that talking through conflict hasn’t really proven to be a third way except as a bespoke option in one or two scenes. The shallowness of this immersive sim is constantly on display as you bounce between settlements and combat encounters, doing little different in either, which just draws your attention inevitably to the prefab feeling of these supposedly different spaces. The loading screen will frequently remind you that CHOICES MATTER, and that you can KILL EVERYONE, EVEN THE IMPORTANT ONES, but I just don’t see why you would do do anything so drastic when the systems don’t really incentivize you to. It’s like the game set up a setting for roleplaying but there aren’t any real stakes or pressures forcing you to engage with it meaningfully.

And it’s just very awkward feeling to play on the moment to moment level. I enjoy rolling around and climbing. But since most of this game you are sneaking or shooting, it may come as a shock to hear that in the 12 hours I’ve played of this game in the past week that the rules for stealth and the twin-stick shooting controls never made sense or were something I, at best, could only awkwardly intuit in flashes before immediately forgetting everything.

Nothing sticks with Weird West.

[ellaguro]

i was similarly kinda baffled by this one when i played through most of it last year. it’s totally fine but very slight and the RPG resnijars released around the same time was even more slight-feeling from what i played. i guess they just stretched themselves too thin.

visiting a friend right now and we played through a few steam demos, two of which i hadn’t played before. i played the demo for DownSouth. it seems to be a platformer in the like Earthworm Jim/Rayman vein and the visual style is super layered and very interesting. the game itself is… fine? it controls perfectly well and i liked jumping around the stages and collecting coins. there’s supposedly some kind of morality system in this game that didn’t make a lot of sense to me in the context of the game but i didn’t experience much of. the dialogue seems to want to convince itself that it has all this character but just feels it feels kind of uncannily bland and overdone at the same time. there were some slightly cringy references too like a non-sequitir Salad Fingers reference.

i was remarking to my friend that it used to be when you saw a game this weird looking, you could almost be guaranteed the person who made it was a particular type of outsider who had this like whole philosophy behind the stuff they made. and now it’s just so often like, aspiring grindset guys with linkedin pages making these types of games. honestly very weird and kind of dispiriting for me to think about.

anyway it was like the definition of 7/10 for me. exceptional in some ways, bizarrely lacking in others but still engaging and pleasant enough to play. definitely something that should have been more of a straight platformer though, and i’m not sure i’d something i’d want to buy as a result. it’s making me miss the era of early 2010’s indie game minimalism tbh.

my friend played Dosa Divas (and i played a little bit) which is from the same studio that made that game Thirsty Suitors and we’re both acquaintances with the head of the studio, who is a nice enough guy. tbh this is the type of game that i know i’m probably not going to like so avoid playing because i don’t want to spend my time getting mad about a game that is clearly not meant “for me”. but that makes me sound like i’m some kind of anti-woke person who has an issue with the content/setting, which is definitely not the problem at all lol. in fact i just get more mad when someone is clearly trying to represent some kind of underrepresented experiences in games and then they do a bizarrely weird/bad job of it.

because - spoiler - i really didn’t like this game. the visual style is just so terrible to me. some kind of nightmare combination of bland and overbaked, this sort of bizarrely busy but still bland style i feel like i’m just increasingly seeing in games like this that kinda feels like whatever the modern equivalent of the xbox 360 excessive bloom era is for me. i kinda liked the whole mech thing you walk around in and the story seemed like it was setting up an alright campy plot around an evil villain character trying to ban cooking and your two cook characters fighting back. but the dialogue/voice acting weren’t particularly great and also maybe a bit too heavily emphasized and kinda undercut the campiness other parts were seemingly going for.

and then it’s also trying to be an RPG with timed turned-based battles? except the timing was seemingly completely broken on the battles - at least the way i was playing the game on my friend’s tv - so it was next to impossible for me to get right. and it was basically forcing me to do the timing correctly two times in a row or otherwise just instantly die and repeat the same tutorial battle over again with no way to exit or get out of it. after like 20 unsuccessful tries i just gave up. this part just seems straight up broken. and even though like - i know it’s a demo, it’s just a disturbing sign that something with clearly so much effort put in in some ways can’t get basic stuff like this right before putting it out for the public to try out. again, making me miss indie minimalism… lol.

anyway both games embodied a 2020’s trend of what i refer to as “mushy maximalism” - just a lot of stuff that doesn’t necessarily fit together to be thrown in to try and stand out i guess to attract people in an increasingly oversaturated and desperate landscape. it seems to work for some people in terms of visibility, i guess - i think DownSouth got like 50k support on kickstarter and seems to have a decent amount of visibility. but it does tend to create experiences where it just feels hard to figure out why this thing even exists, what it’s perspective is on anything, and if so many of these games are just so busy because they’re too terrified of looking ‘cheap’. the new indie version of the pursuit of AAA graphical fidelity is “make the game look/feel way too busy to keep eyes on it” i guess.

[iguferon]

weird west was over for me in the pre release interview where the devs said it was like the first two fallout games. because obviously it isn’t and obviously that’s kind of a insane thing to say. just play desperados 3, you might like it because it’s up front about being a stealth tactics puzzle game, and honesty is very nice in a game

[vodselbt]

The fallout similarities are also part of the empty signifier vamping at greater cultural clout than the devs actually deserve. My guess is they wanted people to look at the overland journeying and follower mechanics as Fallout-esque. The whole time though these things just made me want to go play Fallout again, or jump into UnderRail.

[iguferon]

underrail is more like fallout than most games

[explosion]

just got my copy of UFO 50 in the mail. Mooncat might be one of the most immediately jarring games I’ve ever played in my whole life

[jujotech]

mooncat is by far the best game on there. the only one that feels like it’s trying to be its own thing and reach for beauty instead of a Take on a Genre. (or maybe it’s a pastiche of indie platformers or C64 art games, who can know.)

[Drem]

@iguferon

It’s like someone told them reactivity in an RPG is best described as people reminding you of the choices you made in the character creator.

This was actually the literal thing that took me out of Mass Effect 1 in the first few seconds of the game. After you create your character and choose your background, you are immediately presented with two characters saying your background out loud in a conversation. It was so on the nose, as if developers were shoving in your face: “Look! Your choices are acknowledged in the game!!!”, that I immediately wrote off the rest of the writing, which I guess dropped me out of the zeitgeist for the next decade or whatever. People like the series, but I’ll hold those first 30 seconds against it for all eternity!

[lonelyfrontier]

oh my god there is nothing in this world more hype than doing an exe digivolution and hearing that fucking sweet song while stomping the dogshit out of some high level machinedramon or something

[username]

I’ve played a few Steam Next Fest demos, has not been a bumper crop this year but there is one rather good one I’ve come across named Tiling Forest. Technically the game is called Tiling Town but the dev figured that it’d be hard to pick any section of it as truly representative so he made a smaller version of it to sort of get through its various concepts in a quicker/more compact way (it’ll be included in the final game as a standalone extra apparently).

(The store page has no good screenshots sadly).

The game is of note as it is by the same dev who made Maxwell’s Puzzling Demon, which is considered to be one of the absolute hardest puzzle games released in the last couple of years (I got stumped in its demo). This fortunately initially appears to be less of a nightmare, your initial goal simply being to use the tiles at the bottom of the screen to create a road connecting the entrance to the exit (you have as many of any individual tile as you need). The problem is that you start with only a couple different types of tiles and are initially lacking things like “continue straight up” or “turn left”.

This means that you need to unlock some more tiles, and that is where the layers of solving a puzzle come in. If you reach an exit you unlock the next area/puzzle it is connected to, but you only unlock the next tile by completing an area. An area is only completed when every single space is filled in with a tile, but you can only put a tile where it forms a valid continuous path. This means an aspect of the design is looking at the several areas you likely have available to you at all times and not only having to figure out how to solve them, but which ones are even currently solvable.

The downside of this is that there are certain chokepoints where you are just short of unlocking the next tile which will be very useful but you have to figure out which one puzzle you can actually complete right now, although with practice you get better at this. Eventually you get tiles that bring new elements into play (such as dirt lots you can build out of several tiles that can be entered or exited at various points if you are clever) forcing you to reevaluate the space in several of the areas in various ways. There’s a ton of “create a path that steps on every tile once” puzzle games out there but it is rare for one to do something different and complex with them and this is that rare game that does so.

It took me just under four hours to complete this and it’s as complete and well realized as most finished games I’ve tried recently. It was clever enough where multiple times I went “okay, I’ve gotten as far as I’m gonna get with this” only to have an idea later in the day, come back and clear a few more areas out. It’s almost a bad demo as I felt like I got a full experience out of it, the back half definitely asks for a level of conceptual mastery demos just really don’t all that frequently.

…Then I finally completed that final area, was given a congratulations message and a new tile that would help me solve the last few areas that curiously remained incomplete and the realization that to truly beat it I’d have to use those new tiles to re-solve most of the already completed puzzles in a different way to meet an additional goal added in at the last moment. Like I said, there’s layers of solutions here, god knows what the full game will ask of you. As is I think I’ll leave this final challenge for the true sickos, but this was my clear demo of the Next Fest and it wasn’t even close.

[notbov]

back to the demo mines

Denshattack!: I don’t know if I like this game? I like all of the elements that comprise it in isolation and I like score/time-attack focused platforming games but this doesn’t quite click for me? I get it, I played it, I understand how it’s coming together but I think the fact that you’re literally on rails makes the game more reactive and memorization heavy and it lacks the improvisation you would get in a proper 3D platformer and I think that’s what’s getting me. it’s otherwise incredibly well made

John Carpenter’s Toxic Commando: holy shit this is the most Saber-ass Saber game Saber could have possibly conceived, developed and released. they made Back 4 Blood. it’s B4B. like I get that “giant glowing red orbs on enemies as weakpoint” is a amazingly common mechanical trope but having it in a coop zombie shooter seems incredibly “yeah we played B4B”, which, I don’t think the people were clamoring for another B4B. I mean, I like B4B, but that’s because, you know, it has linear levels so you’re constantly pushing forward and there’s a vague sense of urgency, whereas this presents you with an open map and objectives so a majority of the tangible level design is in the paths you make for yourself and the spaces you have to defend/clear. it just feels like, fuckin’ Saber, it’s going through the motions. it’s the game equivalent of the appliance animals in the Flintstones that do their job, look at the camera and say “it’s a living”

also it’s 2026, if you wanted a B4B, you have had numerous opportunities to give future Ellison-owned company WB Games less money than it takes to get a cup of coffee for a key, so I don’t get why you’d drop 40 bucks on this unless you’re hard up for more John Carpenter music and if you’re in that boat, you ain’t giving Saber money for the pleasure

[shnozlak]

Dug out the genesis arcade stick i put a sanwa lever into a few years ago and have been getting back into magical drop 3 and fantasy zone.

Perfect magical drop stick. Im not where I was on my match reflexes. Only getting to round 10 in difficulty level 3.

Also playing arcade Fantasy Zone 2. I didn’t expect it to be this different from the genesis port. The light/dark warp is pretty neat.

I guess the dark bosses are for people so good the light mode bosses are too easy??? That or you got sucked into a warp by accident late in the stage.

Reliably hitting round 4 now.

The stick.

Doesnt quite fit the bottom plate.

I wish more sticks had the indent on the left side. its actually really ergonomic

[explosion]

I finished a run of Mooncat. I would be willing to buy this game if it was sold separately

[Rudie]

I have finished Sonic Unleashed. It created a gauntlet of emotions in me from beginning to end. It has many Bad Concious Decisions in it. When you succeed at a QTE it plays doorbell.wav . The Werehog stuff has nothing to do with the plot, really. I think they were making a Ristar character action game and forced it into Sonic. Sonic doesn’t even freak out he is normal as a Werehog. I’ve been scared for 30 years from the commercial for Mickey Mouse and the missing brain.

The werehogs have this bombastic Big Band Song that Mod Number 1 for the game is take that song out. I did the same and replaced it with the Pina Colada song. There are 4 versions of this song so I also added Finch’s “Grey Matter” and Panic! at the Disco. This caused me to look further and replaced the Sonic boss music with “All I Want” and Werehog boss music with the image song for Black Rock Shooter for PSP by One OK Rock. This drasticly made the game more bareable and fun.

The final Robotnik fight was to Millington’s Radio. Preceding that was a 41 Minute stage which finally decided what if we combine the boring combat and the breakneck razor edge platforming where death is ever present.

Everyone that saw Chip, Sonic’s amnesiac new friend, resounded with “I hate looking at him.”

When even Professor Pickle despaired at the unleashing of Perfect Dark Gaia (real name,) I knew the planet was really in trouble.

The actual game isn’t the combat or going fast or Rooftop Run. It is about moving very slowly through the levels desperate to spot coins needed to unlock the next stage. And then frustration of trying to figure out where exactly the next stage. You are given no direction as to where to go next and the world map is filled with symbols I still don’t understand.

In the words of all my friends that watched me the final boss “sucks” as in “this sucks.” “This is so bad.” “I can’t believe this sucks this bad.” First off you’re aRuin Mech . Despite thousands of zoom lines you move so so slow towards Perfect Dark Gaia avoiding fireballs and getting hit with an unavoidable laser. You’d think then you have a big fight, WRONG, You then must complete a QTE, then as Sonic you must under an impossible time limit complete a Sonic Stage. You do this 3 times. I failed this and Game Overed because a tracking laser killed me over and over again. It took a new day and collecting a 1up through locked teeth on my last life multiple tries to barrel through at 0”0”.65”.

But that’s not all. Sonic becomes Super Sonic, of course, then you…slowly move around a purple orb and play whack a mole with purple tentacles. Occasionally fireballs and the unavoidable laser blast hit you. The final attack is a QTE in which you must hit a random face button SIXTY TIMES.

True art exhibits emotions. I felt elation, despair, disbelief, befundlement, frustation, joy, defeat, white hot rage, boredom, deep fear while playing Sonic Unleashed. Truly Game Can Are Be Art.

[Rudie]

Sonic’s new friend Chip has a choke collar and at the end of the game gives it to Sonic who puts it on his wrist as a Bracelet. At the end of Sonic Unleashed, Sonic literally becomes leashed.

[HEAVYVIPER]

I knew I remembered this mod! I want to do it to mine now…