hell yes
this is the best possible result of kludging together a spreadsheet, honestly
3 Likes
God I am… months behind on actually putting stuff in that spreadsheet, if I’ve got some free time this week I’ll have to put in notes for the few dozen games I’ve neglected to jot something down for.
Also since it is fair to wonder what exactly one does game-wise after something like this… I’m running as hard in the opposite direction as possible and playing Far Cry 5 next. I hope all the characters are as moronic as the previous games convinced me they’d be and I can just go lawnmower a very pretty map for a while.
4 Likes
Out of curiosity username, do you think your skill in playing videogames improved after this? It’s one thing to get better at a single game by playing it for 100s of hours, but I imagine jumping from game to game 400 times rapidly over a year improved your abilities.
I mean, probably the opposite if anything? I was never one for game mastery in the vast majority of cases to begin with, and I never played this many visual novels or narrative games before which aren’t exactly skill heavy experiences. That said I guess I might have gotten better in terms of time to internalize mechanics, which while not making me better perhaps speeds up the early part of the learning curve.
Of course dealing with buggy releases or broken mechanics is probably a kind of skill, I did figure out how to edit a save game to get past a game-breaking bug and that counts for something.
If I had to guess I’d said most of my “gains” would be in terms of perspective and such more than anything else. Saw some cool gimmicks explored and hopefully playing through dozens of games with LGBTQ leads should ideally help me be more empathetic or understanding of their experiences.
6 Likes
I thought Fugue in Void was real cool. But I get in the mood to just hang out and look at stuff.
1 Like
You glorious bastard.
1 Like
Oh yeah, I still have a whole folder full of screenshots of games I meant to write at least a few sentences about.
Secrets of Raetikon
Raetikon is basically an exploratory non-metrovania (in that there are no gained abilities and you could probably go to later areas first if you knew how to get there) collectathon where you have to get every golden trinket to activate a weird mysterious machine. There is combat but you have very limited abilities so it is generally best to just avoid it, what is present is more “dealing with the food chain and things trying to eat you” than anything else. I dig the look of the game and the world does a good job of not being too big but convoluted enough to maneuver through to keep things interesting enough for the few hours it likely takes to complete. There is no spoken story although there are ruins with text in a unknown language that you can translate via finding each of the 26 letters around the world; I did not do enough of this as I was content to have a “fly around for a few hours collecting things” chill experience. The side effect of this is that the ending seemed so very out of the blue, mean and utterly bizarre, but in truth I don’t know that even bits of text scattered about could have made those last choices much better or more sensical. Overall the game does lack a certain something to elevate it beyond alright, but if one wants to fly around a decent looking place for a bit it does deliver on that.
Ticket
Ticket is a 2d platformer made by the guy behind New Ice York that… well lots of games go “look how wacky I am!”. Ticket commits to this bit so completely that it works better than the majority of them. What do I mean by this? Here is a pic from one random stage:
As noted in the screenshot before this one this isn’t a claymation game, and this look never appears again outside of this stage. They literally made all the normal sprites out of clay (you play as a sneaker BTW, don’t ask) and animated them (poorly) for a one-off goof. There are all sorts of random gameplay digressions so that you are never quite certain what is coming up next, even the whole platforming core goes away at times. Are the controls good? Not really. Would you describe the level design as a mess? Yes, and that one late game stage can burn in hell. Is it a hell of a ride? No doubt. It is purposefully ridiculous as that is a central tenant of the experience, and is done so with a good energy while staying very true to its very indie (as in a few people going “fuck it, I got some ideas and am gonna toss them all in here because I like them”) roots. The ending screen suggested I missed all sorts of secrets and I could just as easily see that being true as them not existing and it being one final gag for the road.
Dimension Drive
Dimension Drive is what I’d call a beginner-friendly shoot 'em up. It doesn’t throw a thousand bullets at you, let’s you save your progress after each stage and in fact gives you three lives per stage. I believe there are harder modes that take away these niceties, I’m probably too old to try to “git good” at shmups any more so I never tried them and assume that hardcore shmupper wouldn’t care much for it anyways. That’s fine there are plenty of games for them and my former self, current me is glad to have a more forgiving experience.
The central gimmick of the game is that you can switch between two sides of a splitscreen at the press of a button, so there is a lot of “hey this side has a giant rock wall or laser in front of me, I should go switch to the other side”. It’s a decent little idea that also allows you to say “gee there are less enemies on the other side I’m gonna head over there” or “how do I optimize my switching to get the most possible points”. It can take a few stages to wrap one’s head around switching back and forth and when it gets hectic it can be hard to keep everything straight, but after a certain point you gain the ability to slow your scrolling speed and that can basically trivialize almost anything that comes afterwards (perhaps too much so if I am honest). There are some decent stage ideas built around this but if I’m honest it never seems to completely click as well as one would hope. There is way too much story but I think there is a mode that removes all of that, if so definitely choose that one. I don’t think by any standard this is a great shoot 'em up nor a very good one, but it is solid enough while being inviting for casual play and that has some worth.
5 Likes
Pixel Sessions Vol. 1
Fun fact: I almost picked this as my community high score chasing game instead of Breaker.
This is a collection of five simple Pico-8 arcade style games where the sole goal of each game is to last long enough to get a high score. It actually only starts off with a single game unlocked, and you have to get a b-rank score to get the password to unlock the zip file that contains the next game (although in the game’s folder there is a cheat sheet that lists all those passwords if you do get stuck). The thing that leaps out initially about all the games is the aesthetics, let me steal a gif from the store game…
The dev does a very good job wrangling a dynamic colorful aesthetic out of the pico-8 engine. Each of the five games is built around a single distinct mechanic, none of which are particularly deep but that are fleshed out just enough to mess around with for a bit, or at least until you get a decent enough score to try the next game. I could see many putting an hour into the collection and finding that to be enough, but it’d be a pretty neat hour.
Chipmonk
Another Random Game Names alumni! This is a remarkably simple game to summarize: it is basically a Golden Axe fangame starring chipmunks. On one hand I was never the biggest Golden Axe fan and this game is likely a bit rougher than those games were. On the other I do dig the aesthetic and if one was a fan of those games then this is probably a no brainer to at least try. If one has a soft spot for old belt scrollers it may be worth trying for a credit or two but the combat to me felt rather basic. Still, it’s a nutty enough idea for a game that I’m glad it exists.
Word Forward
This is a word game where you have to create 3+ letter words out of touching letter tiles on a 5x5 grid (diagonals count as touching). Whenever you do this those tiles are removed from the playing field, and your goal is to clear the grid completely. There is a bit of strategy to this as forming a word that then leaves a tile cut off from the rest of them or that leaves only two tiles left (or several tiles that don’t form any words/are all consonants) means you have failed. The game does often let you take back your last formed word and more importantly has five special tiles at the bottom of the screen you can use as you see fit. Two are replacement letters you can switch out any existing tile for, one blows up any tile, one lets you change the letter on any tile, and one randomly changes every letter left on the grid. If you use less than… two or three of these (I forget) you get a gold star when you complete the grid. As you play more and more tiles have requirements placed on them such as arrows that show the only direction they can link to other tiles or a minimum amount of letters a word that uses them must have. It is far from revolutionary but it is a solid killing time puzzle game and with 500 puzzles included it’ll last you a long time if you decide to use it as such.
7 Likes
Hammering more of these out as some games still deserve at least some acknowledgement.
Water’s Fine
Others mentioned this before so let me just add my voice to the chorus that thinks it is neat. Roguelike diving game where you basically want to grab money and avoid getting hit by objects/enemies before making your way back to the surface before your air runs out. The deeper you go the higher the moneys you will find, you can purchase permanent upgrades that make a big difference and there are some nice secrets and twists and turns the deeper down you dive. I don’t think one could play it forever even with the randomization, but it’s engaging for how long it does end up lasting.
Tanglewood
Tanglewood is one of those “new games developed for an long dead console” deals, in this case for the Sega Genesis. Fortunately it also has a PC version so I could actually play the darn thing. It is a puzzle platformer that feels very much like both a platformer and a puzzle game, but while I give it full marks for feeling very much like a true Genesis game it also feels like one with a bit weaker stage/puzzle design than one would ideally hope for. There are some decent little ideas that switch things up such as an AI partner that only rarely screws you over and enemies you have to flee from ASAP, but ultimately beyond the whole Genesis thing it doesn’t do a lot to really stand out. That said I mention it because I know some of you dig said Genesis so hey, this is a thing.
Gun Rounds
Gun Rounds is an odd turn-based shooting roguelite. You stand at the bottom of the screen while various enemies are randomly arranged towards the top and take turns firing at one another. You have a few different shot types (aside from the starting single bullet in a straight line shot these are also shuffled before each run) that require different amounts of ammo and behave significantly differently that you line up and fire at your leisure. When this is done every enemy left standing gets a turn to fire back, with you having to basically time your block (think of it kinda like a parry) in order to avoid taking any damage and gain some ammo back. The enemies attack in different ways with different timings so this becomes a significant part of the game, especially since for the most part you are a glass cannon. Mixing a fairly strategic offense with a mostly timing-based defense isn’t the most common mixture but I think it works here for the most part.
It has a bit more depth than one would initially imagine but like most roguelike games IMO luck can play an outsized role and any mistakes you make can be punished very harshly. For many people that is a “well yeah, that’s the genre silly” deal, it’s a bit of a turn off for me but I still had a good hour or two worth of fun here. If it is actually a turn on for you then I can say there is definitely something to the game.
FWIW I could make it up to right before the final area on normal difficulty (I switched to easy and beat it on my second attempt after) so it isn’t super difficult but those last couple areas have some bite to them. Also as the screens hint at heavily it is also available for phones and it feels like it’d work well in that environment.
ANNWN: The Otherworld
This is straight up The Sentinel. I remember a video game magazine decades back running a preview for Sentinel Returns on the PS1 and thinking that it sounded odd but neat and always wanted to try it out yet never got around to doing so. Thanks to this game I finally got that chance!
The basis of the game is that you start relatively low on a randomly generated map with a giant slowly rotating Watcher in the middle of said island that will drain you of energy if it sees you. You cannot move via traditional means, instead you can absorb energy from trees in the environment and use said energy to transform other trees into totems that you can send your presence into. Generally you do so to higher ground, although you can’t jump straight to the highest ground as you need to be able to see the tile the tree is on to either take or send power into it. Eventually you make your way high enough that you can absorb the Watcher itself and you win that round.
It is neat to mess around with for a bit but the randomly generated campaigns ramped up in difficulty rather quickly to the degree that I just hit walls I couldn’t get past. This may not have been in the original Sentinel but you carry over the energy you had left over into the next map, so I ended up in a situation where I finished all the easy maps available but was left with very little starting energy with which to tackle the massive harder ones. I could have started over with a new campaign but felt I got a feel for what it had by then. I don’t know that I can fully recommend it but I am legit happy that I got to finally try a game like this.
Boa Retina
I feel like I have to mention this game for one specific reason. There are a lot of “trans” games in this bundle that try to at least give a peak into what it is like having to deal with said transition and all the things that come along with it; this game is the harshest of the bunch I came across. It isn’t done in a cheap or exploitative way in the least and I think there is a definite value in showing how harsh and cruel people around you can be due to this, but I could see this being a legitimately triggering thing for certain people to have to play through.
Bubbles the Cat
Bubbles the Cat is basically a cross between an autorunner and a Super Meat Boy-esque precision platformer (which I think they actually made one of now that I think about it). It works better than I expected it would by shifting the focus heavily towards precision timing in terms of pressing jump which on the surface doesn’t feel like enough to build 125 stages around and yet somehow it is. It is aided by a series of temporary power-ups that change how your jump works pretty dramatically and rather solid level design that is often similar but does switch things up enough to prevent it from feeling too samey. Each stage offers one star for completing it, with an additional one for collecting every bauble (a few of them always require you taking a harder course or visiting an otherwise optional area) and one for beating the par time. I know that last one sounds odd for an autorunner but when you hit a wall you turn around and run the other way and there are different ways to tackle several obstacles in your path.
The stages ramp up from “that’s pretty easy” to “…you’ve got to be kidding me” by the time you get to the late game/bonus ones. On the surface this feels very much like a budget “enthusiast” game but I thought it was solid and enjoyable enough that I bothered to 100% the entire thing even though the final bonus stage alone probably took me two hours to complete due to the absurdity of it. If you did precision platformers I say it is definitely worth trying out, I’d say it is among the better ones in the bundle (ignoring Celeste which is a ringer).
Equaboreal 12.21
A pair of brief narrative games that sort of lack any actual narrative, basically being five to ten minutes of set-up before abruptly ending. I mention it solely because I kinda dig the design of the plant people and wanted to share a screenshot of them.
Micro Mages
A new “NES” game that can run on an actual NES if one wanted to go through all that hassle, it is odd as it very much feels like it is built with modern design sensibilities which feels like it misses the point. Regardless of that it is a solid if unspectacular action platformer. You start at the bottom of each level and have to wall jump and climb your little character (as I said, not very NES-esque) up to the exit and out the top, with a boss battle theoretically spicing things up every few stages. I enjoyed the stages, they were nothing revolutionary but good enough for what they were; the boss battles were generally on the weak side with every boss taking way too many hits to kill. The game also claims to have 26 levels but you have to play through each level twice (second time through is the hard version) and is mandatory so that feels a bit cheesy. The altered enemy placement does change up the experience of making one’s way through them a good bit, but it still is a bit of a let down. I enjoyed the hour or so I spent with the game, I don’t think anyone is missing anything remarkable by not playing it, here is the knight king boss who I think looks swell.
11 Likes
The White Door
I had heard of Rusty Lake for some time prior but had never stumbled upon any of their games before. Fortunately The White Door, their first premium title, was included in the bundle and I got to remedy that. Sort of a cousin to the point & click adventure (and perhaps room escape) genres you awaken in a medical facility where you seem to be undergoing treatment and have to perform several scheduled actions each day. What exactly it is you are suffering from/being treated for isn’t quite made clear and things slowly start to become stranger as the days pass.
I am often not the biggest fan of point & click adventure games but this one impressed me. Much of the game takes place in the same room and the game takes advantage of this by subtly (then less subtly) altering aspects of it and playing various tricks with your familiarity of it. The game has a fairly unique split screen set-up where the room is always shown on the left side of the screen with the right being left blank until you interact with something at which point your view of that object takes up that half of the screen. This feeds into the presentation that is very clean and yet striking in its own way, appearing initially black and white due to how… austere things are yet color appearing where it needs to.
It isn’t a particularly puzzle-heavy game but they are there and are fine, sometimes they involve just examining everything until you realize to click on A, B and then C but enough have you having to figure out much more than that, with some of the later ones taking advantage of how far beyond the initial set-up you have gone (fortunately it is an inventory-free game). The story is confidently told in that it has the confidence to not grab you and rub your face in what exactly is going on, it is a bit piecemeal and let’s say symbolic and while it doesn’t spell out exactly what occurred it gives you enough to figure it out on your own.
I feel like one of the better compliments I can give these bundle games is when they make me want to track down what other games the developer has worked on, and that is definitely the case with The White Door. I look forward to seeing what else Rusty Lake has in store for me in the future.
10 Likes
Cope Island: Adrift
Cope Island is for lack of a better term a short jrpg with light roguelite properties. The only real randomization element is that at the start of a run you are assigned two random weapons that have moderately different effectiveness (target multiple enemies, how much damage, etc.) with everything else being very determined. The map is always the same, the battles are in the exact same place and feature the exact same enemies each time. Fortunately you have to die three times for a run to be failed, I appreciate the mercy.
It took me about an hour to finish my first run through the game (much shorter for later runs), the difficulty level isn’t that high by jrpg standards. Beating the game that first time opens up some other aspects of the game/map and you begin to realize that there is some more depth here than it initially seems. Getting too specific would be spoilery but there is enough to justify a full second run through it, and enough stuff hinting deeper secrets if one truly wanted to dig deep enough for them. I wasn’t hooked enough to go that far, but I was satisfied with the few runs I put into it.
The story is tricky to rate as it is clear that it meant something to the dev and that is worth something, but it did not strike me as particularly tremendous in and of itself. Maybe I just wasn’t on the right frequency for it. Still I thought it was a clever enough concept.
reky
Often times when I describe something as minimalist it can be code for “didn’t worry much about the graphics/presentation”. Reky is clearly a minimalist puzzle game (it describes itself as such on its store page) but I swear it’s title screen is worthy of Wipeout.
I think I might give that my best title screen of the bundle award if that was a thing that actually existed. The game itself also has a clean, simple yet stylish look to it.
Fortunately it also has the benefit of being a rather well crafted puzzle game as well. The goal in each of these stages is to craft a path that lets you maneuver the little hopping black dot you control to the exit gate. Any colored block will move a certain way when you click on them (as long as you are not currently standing on it), for example on a given stage a red block may move two slots to the left when clicked on before going back to its original location two spaces to the right if you click on it again. If you move your little dot onto a colored block you can absorb said color and bring the color and its behavior to a different uncolored block, or just put it back on the original one to reset its movement (have said red block move two spaces to the left, absorb and return the color to it and it’ll move two spaces left again). It’s a clever concept that scales up well, adding more colors per stage, more complicated layouts and even vertical elements.
I do wish that the colors were a bit more consistent between stages in terms of how they move but that is likely impossible given how many different movements are in the game. Other than that is scales up fairly smoothly from fairly easy to “okay, I gotta think about this for a bit” by the end. It is hard for me at times to tell what would be a decent puzzle game to recommend to someone who isn’t a huge fan of them, but this one seems like a good option given how well considered, executed and attractive it is.
Quible Sphere
Has no spot on the spread sheet so I’ll mention it here, Quible Sphere is a fairly standard ball/marble rolling game that is executed solidly. The focus is on controlling the ball along courses of narrow platforms to the goal, complicated along the way with various obstacles such as doors that require keys, things that shoot at you and various “power ups” that exist just to make things more difficult. I found it pretty tricky by the end (and in truth I only made it past the “controls are now reversed” sections by holding the controller upside-down) but I am fairly inexperienced with the genre. I give it a full bonus point as with the controller the speed with which you could adjust the camera was glacial (I once timed how long it took to rotate the view 180 degrees and it was between 6 and 7 seconds) and when I mentioned it on the game page the dev was responsive and released an update that let you adjust it. Thanks dev!
A Wish Upon A Star
On the surface A Wish Upon A Star feels like a budget Monument Valley but upon playing for a bit it reveals itself to be rather distinct mechanically from its obvious inspiration. The thrust of the experience is a puzzle game where you have to raise and lower bits of the environment in order to create a path to the goal. This base concept has a bit more depth than initially seems as the game offers some solidly crafted puzzles to take advantage of it, unfortunately there are also some puzzles where I am much less a fan of their design. There is a story but it is basic enough to not really worry about. Still given the game’s rather short length I felt it was worth sitting through to see the positives it did offer.
8 Likes
See what happens is every so often I remember to jot down something about one of these games in a word doc, and then I go “hey that’s getting a bit long” and sometimes remember to then post them here.
And All Would Cry Beware!
This is one of the bundle games that surprised me. It is a couple hours long FPS metrovania with a retro PS1/N64 aesthetic which will either be a turn on or turn off for some, I think it looks swell. After a prologue section you end up outdoors on an alien world and this is where it slowly reveals itself to embrace one of my favorite aspects of certain early 3d games in that it often takes full advantage of what 3d space can offer. Various paths wrap in and around themselves, what appears to just be high walls to keep you on a path are later revealed to be upper paths themselves, it isn’t an obviously “vertical” game but at times will take full advantage of those possibilities. While very different games I almost want to compare it to the original Tomb Raider in this regard, if that makes any sense to you then you’ll understand completely.
There is a decent amount of combat in the game and for the most part it is fairly basic and okayish, enemies are often the most alien-type things imaginable: geometric shapes. The few boss fights are a bit better, nothing noteworthy but clearly having had a bit more effort spent on them than the rest of the combat (FWIW enemy placement within the world isn’t bad). There is a good amount of platforming for a first person game, for the most part it didn’t give me much in the way of trouble. The story is a bit better than I expected but it is almost entirely told through logs you find throughout the world so… yeah. That said the real draw here is the world itself and its layout, and it more than pulls its own weight while making up for shortcomings elsewhere. If this kind of 3d space intrigues you then I recommend this fully.
Bleed/Bleed 2
A pair of run and gunners with an almost twin stick shooter-esque control scheme, I am of the opinion that both are short enough to try but if one only had time for one the second game is the clear pick. I cannot put my finger on the specific reason why but while in the first game I found the controls to leave a bit to be desired (particularly the double jump) I found the ones in the sequel to be much tighter and responsive, although both game mapping jump to a trigger was maddening to me. Both games are much more focused on the boss battles than the levels themselves, the first game having more level sections while the second having fewer but better executed ones. Both of them capture the “gotta shoot everything, oh crap now there’s a giant machine trying to kill me better shoot it before it shoots me” adrenaline rush this genre is capable of producing but again, if you’ve got time for just one go with Bleed 2.
Zone of Lacryma
Zone of Lacryma is a vertical scrolling shoot 'em up that simply does things differently. At the core of the game is having to balance maintaining your momentum and offense as each shot you take depletes your energy bar, with flying through the stage at turbo speeds filling said bar back up (also some floating triangles can be picked up to do the same). In addition if you fill the bar to a certain point you can exchange much of the stored energy to create a shield to protect you from a single hit. There is also a chaining system where comboing enemy kills together increases your shot power and additional weapons to obtain.
In practice much of this doesn’t matter as you can choose to just speed your way as fast as possible to the end of a stage to pass it as simply crossing the finish line is enough to do so. This gives the game a different feel than most games in this genre as quite often it is much more about simply avoiding things as attacking enemies isn’t all that necessary for success… until it is. See at some point post-release the game received a big update that added a few bosses to late stages (possibly even a new stage) and these are more of a traditional battle, except unlike most of these games nothing here really prepares you for them. I believe I spent more time replaying a single late stage/boss repeatedly than the rest of the game combined as if you don’t kill it quick you are pretty screwed. Unfortunately I think most people moved on from the game before these were added in so there was little feedback given regarding how they were balanced, or in the case not. Sadly the original version while briefer was probably better.
There is also a lot of story and an RPG-esque leveling up system (you get EXP for playing or replaying stages which can be spent on various ship upgrades that can be flipped around between stages and actually make a decent amount of difference). It is pretty by the numbers but is fine. It also writes #blacklivesmatter an obnoxious number of times which is impressive given how obviously good the message is. Overall I’m always glad to see an easier shmup (which aside from a boss or two this is) come along for those who simply aren’t practiced enough for most of them out there, ditto for one with some new ideas, this one is neat enough to perhaps give a try (and fairly short if you don’t get stuck on a boss forever) but probably lacks enough for one to sink their teeth into beyond that.
Snake Blocks
The first of two snake themed puzzle games in the bundle, this one is about connecting a line (“snake”) from a start point to a goal point within the max number of blocks it can be stretched out. As it is in 3d space this may mean for example that if the red snake has a 4 next to it you made need to move it three spaces south then one up to get to the floating red goal spot. Conceptually simple but the main complication is that there are always multiple snakes in play, from the easy “2 snake” puzzles to the hardest “5 snake” ones. Given that the puzzles take place in fairly compact spaces you must make sure that when creating a path for one snake you aren’t cutting off the path of another, and while this isn’t necessarily the most original puzzle concept adapting it to 3d works rather well… except for the controls. The controls are legit poor and something one will be fighting with the entire time, eventually they become manageable but it’s always something one will have to wrangle with. It is otherwise solid enough and an easy enough concept for most to wrap their heads around, but said controls sadly lowers the game’s ceiling a decent bit.
Fortune-499
Fortune-499 is basically a pixel rpg deckbuilder where the (non-random) battles are fought via rock-paper-scissors but the cards you play can affect the probability of what an opponent will play (among some other things like increasing damage/defense of a certain kind as well as later more specific variants). This means that while you will rarely know exactly what an enemy will attack with and hence are almost always vulnerable to attack you can generally set things in your favor well enough to survive a given “dungeon”.
I wrote dungeon but it is really department. See you play as an underappreciated office worker in a magic-based world that doesn’t quite appreciate her specific abilities, although given the rather quite hostile takeover her company is being subject to that is perhaps starting to change. The story parts aren’t super heavy but they are often present and well done enough assuming one cares to spend a few hours with a game that takes place exclusively in an office building. The pixel art isn’t super detailed but charming enough, and by the late game the tactics can get involved enough that it almost feels like it takes a brief detour into puzzle game territory. If I am completely honest I’m not the biggest fan of the genre and this didn’t make me one, but it is undeniably well considered and executed.
Puzzle Puppers
No this isn’t the second snake-based puzzle game in the bundle, the dogs here merely act like snakes as you stretch them from their origin point to a bowl of food. Has the same basic “draw lines from various point A’s to point B’s without blocking yourself” mechanic seen elsewhere and is a good bit on the easy side, but it also has one twist to the formula that was so clever it legit impressed and excited me (that was sadly underused). Said concept basically let you draw one puppy “line” to block something allowing a second line to pass through, except when the initial line is rolled back the second line is allowed to keep its location with no ill effect. This instantly makes the puzzles that use it much more dynamic feeling and I’d love to see a game truly commit and build around an idea like this. This sadly isn’t that game, the puzzles that use it are the standouts in an otherwise fairly easy, unremarkable if unobjectionable puzzle game.
8 Likes
I just finished this on a stream - it rules! I’m gonna check out the other renegade sector games later
2 Likes
I looked at the rest of their catalog after playing and while they generally maintain the same aesthetic this seemed like it might be the only first person game, I’d be interested to know if the experience holds up in the third person as that requires much more animation work.
Crawling towards the end now…
Pulstario
Pulstario is a thruster-style spaceship game made by the guy behind LOVE, and that is exactly what it feels like. This is one of those games where you control a spaceship very susceptible to gravity and must press a button to fire the thruster to keep airborne and move forward, but not press it so much that you go flying out of control into objects and explode. You fly around ten or so open obstacle courses to collect all the orbs in order to complete the stage, weaving your way through increasingly narrow and moving arrays while doing so. Much like the LOVE games you can choose to play with infinite lives, or just a hundred, or ten, or if you are insane only one. The game’s fairly brief and the goal is more to get better and faster at making your way through stages than mere survival. Unlike LOVE it didn’t really hook me enough to continually improve in this way (I played through twice), and the gravity is pretty severe, but the controls and physics otherwise are well done which is the most important thing in this kind of game. If you dig this kind of game or want to see what Mr. LOVE is up to, have at you.
Xenogunner
Xenogunner is a bit of a heartbreaker as of all the bundle games this is one that I really wish was better than it is. It is basically an indie Alien Soldier with alright (for a tiny team) production values, a bunch of ideas, crammed full of bosses… and controls that just aren’t all the way there (at least on gamepad). It is pretty much the worst game to get stuck with too loose controls and while it doesn’t kill the experience it leaves it feeling much more mediocre than one would want. It also has a metric ton of kinda iffy story all over the place (legit 80% of it should be cut) which often kills whatever flow you’ve built up. This reads very negative and I feel bad as it isn’t awful, and there are so few games built like this that I’d still recommend giving it a shot to see if the controls vibe with you better than they did with me (plus it has multiple playable characters with their own slightly different attacks), but man what a what if.
BasketBelle
There are so very few narrative basketball/puzzle platformer hybrids out there. This is unique and short enough that I think it is worth recommending to those who are intrigued by that mash-up of ideas, but it isn’t exactly the smoothest experience. It is impossible to overlook just how janky it is, which combined with the short length is probably why it only digs into the mechanical possibilities so much. That’s a shame as I found those to be the most interesting part of the package, although to be fair the aesthetics aren’t bad at all.
Wide Ocean Big Jacket
I feel like this one is already kinda “known” so I won’t talk too much about it, but I thought it was pretty okay. It is pretty much a slice of life narrative game about a young adult couple taking their niece and her friend camping. The whole game and story is pretty much built on those four characters, and fortunately they all feel believable and “right” with the flaws and ideas one would expect them to have. Mostly a bunch of short vignettes that take place over a two day trip with a few underlying threads beneath it can be maybe a bit dry at times but for a game that threatens to fall into very “prestige indie title” writing I think it mostly avoids the worst of that due to the cast’s likability. At an hour long is succeeds in being able to have its slow moments without ever getting bogged down by them so yeah, pretty okay.
Parallax
Mentioned earlier in this topic by someone else but come on, I’m gonna talk about the puzzle games regardless. This is a first person puzzle game where at set points you step into a second vaguely parallel dimension and in doing so either bypass obstacles in the primary dimension or directly alter something in said dimension by hitting a switch in this second one. What immediately stands out is the striking monochromatic aesthetic, it is both stylish and clean which is helpful in making sure that the levels are still readable. The puzzles themselves generally break down to figuring out the right order to enter each portal and hit the switches which is fine enough fun… for the first 2/3 or so of the game. At a certain point the levels just become too big and too involved, making the act of completing them a bit too much of an exhausting grind. That doesn’t take away from the better earlier parts of the game which are legit pretty good, it just means that one should be ready to walk away when it starts to become a bit too much.
Super Win The Game
This is basically a love letter to Adventure of Link, if said game had no combat and was instead more of an exploratory platformer. Now there are a metric ton of throwbacks/love letters to NES-era games and it is safe to say that many if not most of the people who make them end up applying more modern sensibilities to them, resulting in games that superficially resemble said games but whose familiarity is only surface deep. That’s fine BTW, if a game is good or interesting enough I don’t care that it isn’t sufficiently faithful to some older way of doing things. Super Win The Game actually feels for lack of a better term odd in the way NES games often were. It looks like a NES game, the secrets are often obscure in the way ones in NES games were, the townsfolk give hints like they would, etc.
Now this game is a little less… harsh than many of those games were. The hints given have the benefit of not being translated poorly from another language and there are enough of them so that you likely won’t end up super lost (I only ended up so once). Also I’m not sure there were many open world games like this then with no combat (although it is very much open in the way games of that era were with perhaps one notable exception). If one wants to view it as a NES adventure rpg tribute with some of the harsher edges sanded off that would be fair. It can be cryptic but rarely that challenging, and if I’m honest occasionally a bit on the nose, but if one is a fan of the games that inspired this one it is faithful enough to their energy to be worth visiting.
A Snake’s Tale
Here it is, the second snake-themed puzzle in the bundle. This one sticks to 2d and simply requires you to lead a snake into a hole in order to exit the stage. While you only have to do this with a single specific snake there may be be several snakes in a given stage that you have to collectively maneuver around in order to get the chosen snake to the exit. The map is split into a few different sections which each generally have a gimmick of their own (such as snakes that can cross water, or snakes with two heads) and there is generally at least a few different puzzles open in case you get stuck on one. This is useful as while in general the difficulty level is fairly moderate there are a couple in there that are legit tricky to try and figure out. Basically it’s a puzzle game that doesn’t do much of anything wrong but sorta tops out as average, that’s fine for a puzzle head like me but there’s probably better bundle ones to check out if you are only looking for the better included ones.
Okay only a handful of screenshots left in my folder so next time I get around to this it’ll probably finish it off.
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I’ll second a recommendation to check out Basketbelle it’s weird in a lovely way, and very short.
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Oculus Evil 4 is good
One-eyed Lee and the Dinner Party
This is a pretty middle of the road point & click adventure game in a bundle that includes a bunch of them, but I mention it as it has a morality system that is actually a bit interesting. Most puzzles in the game have two ways to solve them, a “right” way where you are respectful to people, do what they ask and solve the physical puzzles in a logical way, and a “wrong” way where you bully them to give you what you want or simply break things rather than try to figure out the trick to them. As you control a pair of characters this determines which of them is taking the lead, but more so it adds a bit of a dynamic difficulty slider to the experience as if you are stuck (and I’ve gotten stuck in virtually every point & click adventure game I’ve ever played) there is often a way out of the predicament simply by being a jerk. There is the accompanying multiple endings based on your actions and I know there is a sentiment here on SB that morality systems are often dumb, but this one actually ends up somewhat solving a longstanding problem with the genre and I thought that was pretty neat.
Un pas fragile
This is basically a ten minute long slightly interactive cartoon about a frog who wants to be a ballerina. On one hand there’s not really a lot to it, but on the other I’m glad that there are slightly interactive cartoons about frogs who want to be ballerinas out there.
Plunge
I remember seeing Plunge I think back in the random game names topic shortly before this bundle was released, and was glad to have the chance to try it out some day when the randomizer decided it was time.
…It was the second to last game said randomizer picked.
Fortunately after all that wait it ended up being pretty alright. The basis of this sorta roguelite-adjacent puzzle game is that you press to move in any of the four cardinal directions and you then go sliding as far as you can in said direction. If you happen to slide into an enemy you do damage to it, and when you are done any enemies on the screen can then take their own moves (they all move in their own ways so they generally don’t slide like you do). They will try and attack you, although you can escape a screen without killing all or any of the enemies if you so choose. I call it roguelite-adjacent as there are no randomized screens, but which screens you get in a given runthrough are random.
For someone like me who doesn’t care for the whole rogue-ish “you died now start over from the start” if you make it to a new area (there are three in the game) you can then start a run from there. At certain points you will get the chance to gain a choice of three random perks which can help you on your run without dramatically altering how you’ll go about tackling said screens. You have a life bar which means you can absorb a few mistakes but said mistakes are often punished quite heavily (ex. if you get backed into a corner by a few enemies they all will get a chance to hit you), thankfully though with good play you will get enough chances to claw your way back. Each area ends with a boss fight that generally does a solid job of taking the puzzly mechanics into a more large scale encounter.
I found it to be a rather well crafted mostly puzzle game with a distinct aesthetic, it doesn’t change up enough for me to think one can just play it over and over endlessly but the randomization did spice up my time until I was able to finally take down the final boss. It took a long time to get around to, but thankfully it didn’t disappoint.
Well that’s the end of my screenshots and notes. I’m thinking of writing up a final top/fave 10 or something as given the large number of games included it might actually be useful, but no idea when or if I’d get around to it (I also deleted my screenshots after I wrote them up initially which would be a slight problem now).
Oh yeah, there was that whole other giant bundle… I got a different idea for that one, but that’ll be for some other time.
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Okay time to wrap this whole thing up with not only my personal top 10 games I discovered in the bundle list (i.e. why no mentions of Celeste or other known games) but an additional list of 5 bundle games that will stick with me for other reasons. All of these got longer write-ups previously so search the topic if you want those, but as a refresher in not much of a particular order…
Personal Top 10 bundle games
Vision Soft Reset
This metrovania might have been my top bundle game overall due to how well it integrated its “the world will explode in 20 minutes” basis into every aspect of its design. Taking lessons from the speedrunning community and various “time manipulation” games it creates a genuinely fresh feeling game in a somewhat tired genre and it is a shame that a game so utterly clever also ended up utterly ignored.
Master Spy
A 2d pixel stealth/precision platformer is a concept designed to appeal directly to me and this did not disappoint. Wonderful pixel art (with so many unique backgrounds) combined with very good set piece design made this a thrilling challenge for one wired like I am, definitely tough but not impossible so.
Dawn of a Soul
Sometimes a puzzle game just resonates with me for reasons that are hard to articulate, and this is one of those cases. Fairly math heavy with a sparse if striking look it is definitely a niche title even within the puzzle genre, but it lit up my brain in the right kind of ways. Using a calculator (eventually) to figure out exactly what was asked of me and how to accomplish such a goal out of a web of numbers… again definitely not for everyone but for what it is it is done so very well.
EAT GIRL
An atmospheric Pac-Man-esque “maze action” game that took some design lessons from the Super Meat Boys of the world. A nice variety of well crafted mazes, some nice ideas that twist the general genre formula around along with some neat post-game secrets, it’s likely less than two hours long but the time spent with it is just so pleasant.
OneShot
This was one of the bundle games hyped to me before I dug into said bundle and I can see why. It can technically be described as a narrative-heavy RPG Maker title but that fails to capture what it does so well. Mechanically it has a habit of regularly wandering well outside of the box, including in a few ways I’ve never seen anything even come close to resembling. A fairly meta story mostly works in how it ties into this, maybe I am just a sucker for novelty but this worked for me.
Rising Dusk
I still stick with my “SNES game that was never localized” summary for what this game feels like. The main gimmick is how picking up coins is often a bad idea due to how it makes certain blocks in the levels disappear, but this undersells how many different ideas and variants and everything is poured into this. Dripping with charm and never boring thanks to the sheer amount of variety contained within makes this another one of those “how the heck did this never find an audience?” games.
Hatch
I know some of you are like me, those who see a tall object in a game and wonder if it is possible to climb to the top of it. This is a game built entirely around that, even the whole “you can climb up inclined surfaces as long as they aren’t too steep” aspect fits in with how I spend so much time playing various other games. What it lacks in some polish it makes up for in that specific kind of indie energy where they narrow in on a specific idea and just go all in on it.
HexaCycle
A rather ingenious twist on the Slitherlink family of puzzle games where you have to use very limited info to figure out the correct path through a field of hexagons. These kind of puzzle games always come down to being tests of deduction and as that this excels. Even after I’ve finished the 96 included puzzles I still fire it up from time to time to mess around with its fairly robust randomizer.
Dujanah
After some time away from this game what sticks out even more than the tremendous visuals and craziness of everything is the genuine feeling anger and heartache at the core of it. It is a RPG Maker game that takes detours into various other genres here and there and we all know games like that, but rather than be consumed by how zany everything feels it instead feels like the only way they could manage to deal with the insanity of a real world that produces such horrors with zero consequence.
Blitz Breaker
I’m gonna be honest with you, this is sort of a catch-all for all the well done precision platformers I played in the bundle (also I technically purchased JUMPGRID before the bundle so I DQ’d it and needed a replacement). Blitz Breaker is as good as any of them, your inability to walk made up for by your ability to fly in any of the four cardinal directions with the press of a button. I could have also picked Color Jumper for its unique “every time your four-colored cube jumps it rotates 90 degrees and you gotta match colors to platforms for them to register” mechanic, or even Bubbles the Cat for its autorunner take on things (Or yes, JUMPGRID for its insane reaction time test gameplay that reminds me of Super Hexagon, if it wasn’t DQ’d). Basically this bundle had a lot of solid entries in this genre, so they deserve the last spot.
And the necessary coda…
5 bundle games that will stick with me for various reasons
Watch Me Jump
This probably came the closest to making the top 10 of any game in this group. It is held back by… well not really being much of a game, just a story told via not-quite-RPG Maker with amateurish graphics. I’ll remember it as the story is just better than what we generally get from games not just in this bundle but in general. Very messy with as flawed a protagonist as you’re likely to find (a female black bisexual basketball star who is facing the prospect of her life unraveling right before her eyes) who stuck with me for several days after I finished it up.
Fumiko!
A 3d platformer passion project apparently inspired by Serial Experiments Lain, the game part is very rough but I loved wandering through the aesthetics of its world. Your jumping ability eventually becomes so brokenly overpowered that you can more or less skip the actual platforming, transforming it into a different kind of almost unintentional power fantasy.
Bewildebots
A puzzle game where you have to control several robots simultaneously to several different goals without destroying any of them. It is remarkably too long (300 puzzles total) but is a solid concept executed fairly well, it’ll stick with me as the dev responded to my comments on its store page (mainly trying to fix an odd bug I was having with the game likely due to my older comp) and we eventually had an interesting back and forth about the design of the game, plus I might now be a beta tester whenever the eventual follow-up takes shape.
Emuurom
The version we have is basically a demo for a full version that might come out sometime next year, still even in this form this slice of nonviolent almost metrovania (minus the vania?) did a remarkable job of creating a sense of mystery to how it works and what is actually contained in its world and what is not. Legitimately hidden shortcuts, unexplained aspects of its design, fuzzy world barriers that might as easily be a hard stop as contain more screens beyond it, I am unsure if this experience can be ramped up into a full game but I am looking forward to finding out.
Polymute
At some point in this topic I said something along the lines of “the biggest compliment I can offer the makers of any of these bundle games is the genuine desire to see what they make next”, and Polymute is one of those games (and the dev’s next game was included in the following giant bundle, what good fortune!). An odd overhead point and click adventure game where you have the ability to mimic the shape of any in-game object you have come across in order to solve various puzzles, while this can make things rough and confusing in a few spots (I legit dislike the final challenge) it is a mechanic that held my attention and interest throughout its duration while maintaining some mysteries reserved for those who really wanted to dig down into the possibilities.
Well that’s it really I think I’ve gotten to everything I wanted to here. Even outside of this spotlighted 15 games there were a bunch of other games I legit got a lot out of that I wrote about elsewhere in here, and I hope at the very least some of you enjoyed taking a peak at all these wildly random games that for the most part passed by largely unnoticed.
I won’t be talking about the second big bundle here (in truth I haven’t even looked through it yet). I will at some point look at all the games in it and pick some amount that I want to check out (not sure it’ll be a 400 or so games long list like this last one) but I don’t think I can spend 15 or so months exclusively playing games like this without the benefit of another pandemic and various other life situations. As I stated before I got a rough idea how I want to tackle it but I don’t want to promise anything before fully committed, so let me just say that if things work out we’ll revisit something like this early in the new year.
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I am so glad you went through these, I think this is one of the coolest projects anyone has undertaken here. This ruled so much. I’m gonna play your top 10 games for sure, I’ve been looking for more stuff to stream and these seem great for that
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