Pilot Quest is very annoying, yes, but neither of those specific criticisms in your spoilers are accurate in my experience. Dying in the wild area only takes away what you would have gained, not what you have at home (though I was confused at first because I didn’t realize all meat beyond the first freebie costs 500 drops). Also, based off last night and the previous day, passive income appeared to worked perfectly for me with the game turned off. Not sure what your issue might have been there.
It’s definitely an odd game for sure, and probably not one you should play for more than 10-15 minutes at a time (at least until the ball gets rolling). But it already has its hooks in me so I am looking forward to getting home this evening and seeing what I can get from a 10 minute wilderness excursion.
Devilition is basically just Diabolika. But I’m not complaining, because I always liked that game. Well, Diabolika 2 is actually the one I used to play way back in the early 2000s.
I managed to beat it. I guess I didn’t do well enough for the cherry bonus, but I can live with that.
I can’t get the idea out of my head that the designer of Mini & Max was a big fan of Amazing Princess Sarah, but this is probably just because I have zero emotional attachment to Doki Doki Panic.
Interesting. I tested it again just now, opening the game again after about four hours. No increase in anything. So for me it definitely doesn’t count any time that UFO 50 is not running.
Mooncat’s controls are so specifically fucked in such a funny way. Did any real games from this era ever control like this? I can’t remember ever encountering this style of control scheme before. It’s like they invented a new extinct control style. You know, the kind of thing like 3D tank controls or isometric platformers where you have to totally reconfigure your cerebellum to get good at it. This game makes me want to just dedicate my complete life energy to becoming the world’s foremost Mooncat twitch streamer, throwing my life away just to enjoy the one glorious month while lots of people still care about it before I quickly fade into obscurity and squalor.
My partner and I were playing it and every time we beat a level we said, “It’s been an honor, Mooncat.”
okay i got multiple full-meat wilderness runs in Pilot Quest. glad i stuck with it, because the game owns. knowing how much you can press your luck with the time pressure out there, poking at unknown corners, and delving into the dungeons is quite the thrill. even after you defeat a boss you’re still expected to walk back to town!
(also the base ingot limit was not 20. not sure what made me think that lol.)
i’m at the point in the game where i feel like i need to start taking some notes
The Big Bell Race (19) is a simple single-screen racing game. you’re a UFO affected by gravity, though since down is the only direction the thruster points it’s not quite a thrust-type, but it’s close enough that i felt at home.
you have three hit points. touching a wall removes one. crossing the goal tape refills one. if you run out you have to restart your lap. you have a side attack that can send other UFOs into walls. there are also offensive items you (or your opponents) can collect. it’s very frenetic, but as long as you can keep track of your dude it’s not too bad.
I’ve beaten two of the Zelda dungeons in Pilot Quest, and that game is definitely one of my favorites in the collection now. It’s been a while since I last died, so I’m not sure what is or isn’t lost on death (such as the gun and activated teleporters).
Seaside Drive, which slightly resembles Moon Patrol, is another standout for me. I reached what I think is the final boss on my first attempt but lost my last life there.
I was kind of surprised by how the games really offered nothing in the way of instructions on how to play them, which with just two action buttons and a d-pad and the era they’re homaging makes enough sense, but then I hung on a couple of the title screens and realized most the games have an attract mode that explains the rules
I saw that someone has mapped out all of Valbrace and wrote out a GameFAQs style guide (on Steam Guides), and it’s like… yeah that’s what’s going to happen for a lot of these games.
I don’t know enough about shmups to say if Star Waspir (39) is good, but i think it’s a neat even if I’m bad at it. you start with only 1 extra life and the game helpfully tells you “First Extend at 25000 Points”. You can select three different ships. The ships have different firing modes (and movement speeds) depending on if you mash the fire button or hold it. Enemies always drop an “E” or a “G”, and depending on what combination you collect you get different power ups (or a score multipliers).
The presentation is quite nice, and I appreciate how quickly you can restart after a game over, but I think its a tad too hard. The popcorn enemies have too much health relative to how fast the action is. I’ve only made it to Wave 3 once, and I’ve only gotten to past the score threshold for the first extend once as well.
As for Pilot Quest, I’ve managed to make a fair bit of progress. I’ve cleared out all (?) three of the Zelda dungeons, so at this point all I need to do is collect enough resources to make some ship fuel. Granted, there seems to be a fair amount of stuff in the wilderness I haven’t figured out yet, so I plan on doing some excursions to see if I can map out the perimeter. I still need to find the gun that wourme mentioned, for instance.
Combatants is a pretty good RTS. Slow and meticulous overall, though sometimes you have to act quickly. Seems designed so you need to exploit the weak enemy pathfinding, etc.
Campanella (17) is a single-player version of The Big Bell Race — just as a single-screen platformer instead of a single-screen racer. I got up to the boss of the second world before getting a game over. Seems like a lovely little thing. Gonna have to give this a proper try later when my cat isn’t prowling around on my desk.
Campanella 2 (35) the same UFO controls, but is quite a different game. The vibes are astonishingly close to the center of several mid-era NES games like Kid Icarus, Xexyz, Monster Party, etc. It adds a bit of Blaster Master by letting you exit the UFO and enter doors. The doors can have inscrutable/ginormous NPCs, monster closets, platforming shooter stages, and other such weird things. Fuel management is a much bigger deal in this one. The levels appear to be procedurally generated. There are escape sequences. I love it, but given that you only seem to have one life I’m not how far I’d be able to get.
Campanella 3 (49) looks like an 8-bit port of a super-scaler shmup, but in contrast to most attempts at those back in the day, this is quite well done. The z-axis feels coherent and the motion in general is smooth (not having to worry about flicker is a big help). The gimmick here is that once enemies or shots approach your plane on the z-axis, they can hang around and cause you trouble, forcing you to use your alternate fire to get rid of them. Despite this complication, I think this is the easiest shmup I’ve played so far in this collection. It’s kinda weird that this has no in-game leaderboard, even though the main menu shows your score.
As for Pilot Quest, I think I might (maybe) have finally exhausted everywhere to explore in the overworld. The only question is if I can defeat that weird overpowered guy that randomly appears sometimes (I’ve only seen it twice). Now I think finishing the game is only a matter of time, unless there’s gonna be some last minute surprise.
Anyhow, right now I’m thinking about how Pilot Quest is a Campanella gaiden and how it takes place on Planet Zoldath (game 08), and it really makes me want a chart that shows the fictional genealogy of all these games.
i’m also someone who has weird feelings about Derek Yu/old tigs era game dev for entirely different reasons than ones mentioned but i know Tyriq Plummer and he’s a super nice guy and i’ve been long awaiting playing this game because i love the idea. but also super broke at the moment - wanna dig in at some point tho. part of me really misses this whole sensibility being more common and is hoping for this kind of design to come back in vogue, but we’ll have to see.
