syntaxturtle

[syntaxturtle]

OddyTree

You are a birch tree and your forest has been cut down so you decide "Eff this noise, I'm out" and walk across town to the next forest. Which is reasonable, except you're a birch tree so you can't walk at all (despite having comically churning... feet? roots?) and thus the game is about you trying to maintain a walking tree's balance and direct it through a small group of houses. You will fail immediately, fail again, get a little better, fail another time, get close to reaching the end and wonder what happens next... and get told "Good job". And that's it. No new map or birch tree dance party or nothing. Feels like more of a tech demo than a fully realized game, although I'm not sure if walking tree tech is something we need demonstrated.

Enjoyed? Meh

[syntaxturtle]

Giant's Chalice

At first, I thought this might be someone's attempt to create the Giant's Drink video game described in Ender's Game but no luck. Instead, it's a janky RPG where you are supposed to collect gems to be refined in the golden chalices and also collect gold coins to progress to the next level. Not a single part of this game felt like it was working correctly: the controls and camera were atrocious, my javelin that said it could be thrown couldn't actually be thrown, combat was me standing just out of reach of opponents and spamming attacks and several times I'd complete a level but not have enough gold to unlock the fountain. The game looks as though it has a fairly extensive map of different locations to unlock and a rock-paper-scissors style elemental combat thing and a bunch of stats to level up but... I couldn't leave the third level. The graphics could be politely described as cutting edge on a 286-era PC and the music was an annoying loop. I still might have been able to overlook those if this had been fun.

Enjoyed? Nah.

[syntaxturtle]

Skin & Bones

Entertaining little platformer about the adventures of Skin, a red-capped boy, and Bones, the skeleton of presumably some other boy based on its size. Our two heroes are tasked with retrieving all the gems so each can get their fondest wish. Skin wishes to go home -- which seems like a scam if you're taken from your home to collect gems just so you can wish to go back home. Bones was still pondering his wish as the game began.

You play be controlling one or the other, switching between on the fly, and only Skin can collect gems and Bones is nigh invulnerable to the hazards in the levels including hostile monsters, water and spikes. So you try to sweep and clean as much as you can with Bones to allow Skin to do his thing. As levels go on, you'll want to position Bones to act as an island for Skin to cross water or Skin in a spot where lower-jumping Bones can stand on Skin's head and scale a wall. Friendship!

Graphics were bright and serviceable although the resolution was low and couldn't be increased. Music and sounds were good and added to the experience and my only issue with the controls was Skin overrunning his undead comrade's skull when trying to cross water. I played through the first world and a little further and had a good time.

Enjoyed? Yeah.

[syntaxturtle]

Spirit of Xanadu

Slow burn thriller where you explore the Xanadu, a science vessel drifting through space, with orders to bring it home. Obviously, it's not that easy and you find a missing crew and numerous logs and notes detailing their descent into seeming madness after bringing a mysterious item on board from a probe survey. The ship is also inhabited by numerous hostile robots who will try to kill you, although you can set the game to have them be neutral -- to be honest, they don't add much to the experience. The graphics can charitably be called rudimentary though they get the point across and the sounds work well enough to set the mood. A lot of small touches are nice although, and this seems to be a theme for me lately, I had a few technical issues such as doors that would just stop working, locking me into an area.

Enjoyed? Yeah

[syntaxturtle]

Emberlight

Roguelike dungeon crawler with an isometric look. Select a party of three champions to go on quests and advance room by room, engaging in combat, finding power-granting shrines and hitting shops. Combat is turn based and involves a large number of abilities. As you see enemies use their abilities, you gain the potential to learn their skills after your victory but at the cost of corruption to your players. Too much corruption and they will gain secondary effects -- one of my characters got some light buffs from the corruption but my tank fighter guy got hit with a 25% hp max reduction. Ouch. There's a bit of crunchy math involved since some abilities have their descriptions in the form of equations but it's not hard to figure out when you see an improvement. There's also a good amount of buffs and debuffs: hastes, heals, dispels, stat gains, etc.

Combat can be clunky. The UI isn't great and it's easy to accidentally attack an ally or buff a foe if you're not paying extra attention. Some enemies can be large boring bags of hit points taking time to whittle down. Most unforgivably, during the boss fight, the golem we were fighting cast a "reflect effect" spell on itself but the icon was hidden behind other unmovable UI elements. Not seeing it, I managed to one-shot a character with a potent, and reflected, spell blast. I liked the abilities and overall game and would be willing to try again but it probably wouldn't take much for me to write it off either if another event like that happened.

The game feels a bit unfinished. There is supposed to be a story mode but it's grayed out and only quests and challenge runs are active.

Enjoyed? Yeah.

[syntaxturtle]

Semblance

Take on the role of a purple blob in a purple blob world infected by a green corruption. To cure it, you'll need to retrieve glowing orbs to heal infected trees... which is all just a pretext to solving the various puzzles. The gimmick in this game is that the ground is malleable, able to be deformed by you jumping into or onto it so you can create depressions, bend platforms into hills, redirect hazards and so forth. I wasn't in love with the controls -- the speed boost and jumping was touchy in my opinion -- but there isn't much penalty for dying as you just respawn nearby. Overall, I found it playable and inoffensive though not especially gripping. The usual indie platformer game aesthetic awaits of attractively minimalist 2D environments with limited color palettes and pleasant background music.

Enjoyed? Meh

[syntaxturtle]

Laser Paddles

Sort of a full contact Pong, Laser Paddles has you and an opponent (AI or couch) run your paddles up and down your side of the screen, deflecting balls back at your opponent while also firing lasers to disintegrate their paddle. Power-ups litter the landscape between the two of you, causing the usual array of invincibility, multi-balls, faster lasers, larger balls, etc as the balls collide with them. My main criticism is that the controls were a bit weird -- both the A and X buttons on the controller were labeled as firing your laser but sometimes it was one, sometimes the other with no discernible rhyme or reason. Trying to figure out which meant missed shots which wasn't an issue the AI ever had. Aside from that, it's a little one-dimensional but not bad. Rounds don't last long when you're both down to a handful of scattered pixels to block.

Enjoyed? Meh.

[syntaxturtle]

Super Platformer Gun

The intent of this game, near as I can tell, is that you are a person (seemingly a delivery woman?) who needs to make it through each level to the portal at the end. To assist you in this endeavor, you have a gun that fires either solid block platforms or moving cloud platforms. The trailer for the game, if you were to watch it, would go further and suggest there's a story behind all this, one of lost memories and secret puzzles. There's also a dog on each level. You cannot pet the dog, for those who keep track of such things. You can jump on it, but I don't know who keeps track of that.

The actual play experience, on the other hand, was one with terrible controller support and poor collision detection where things (platforms, me, etc) often didn't go where intended and I never once managed to ride a cloud platform without just falling through it. It never felt like it was working right and thus was no fun. It also plays the same string of electronic music in a 15 second loop.

Enjoyed? Nah

[syntaxturtle]

Old Man's Journey

Nice artsy game about an old French man who receives a letter one day and starts hiking himself across the pastoral countryside. Along the way, he stops here and there to rest his bones and some bit of the scenery causes him to reflect on his past. As he walks, your job is to assist his path by terraforming the hills and roads, bending and stretching bits of landscape to give him a path to his next bit over yonder. Sometimes you have an extra barrier like needing to harass a flock of sheep out of the way but none of the challenges are difficult and I had the impression it was more to keep you physically occupied and invested than an actual puzzle game. Attractive artwork and background music and your usual assortment of "Erm?" and "Hrm!" sound effects when you click on people. I got halfway through in about 45min and it was a pleasant enough time.

Enjoyed? Yeah

[syntaxturtle]

2064: Read Only Memories

Point-and-click crime story set in 2064 Neo-San Francisco, home of android personal companions, genetically altered hybrid-people and the obligatory mega-corps. Your life of sad squalor is interrupted when a prominent scientist is kidnapped and his personally created android friend seeks you out for help. Retro graphics inspired by point-and-click adventure classics from the late 80s and 90s accompanied by some pretty decent voice acting and music. Plus the sense of humor feels familiar to the genre but doesn't try to lay it on too thick.

I went through a rapid arc with this title where I was vaguely familiar with the name but had no idea what sort of game it was, started it and thought "Bleah, point-and-click..." but then thought it came together pretty well when I gave it the chance.

Enjoyed? Yeah

[syntaxturtle]

Escape from Kabagahara

Text adventure with some ASCII art about getting lost in the forests of Kabagahara and stalked by a werewolf. The concept isn't bad but the execution was lacking. While the art box was nice and the fact that the creature could chase you in real time if you took too long to enter a command was a nice touch, the commands were a bit unintuitive by text adventure standards and sometimes seemed to not work at all. To be fair to the developer, this one of those "made in X days for a game jam" deals so it's not going to be extremely polished. To be fair to me, the lack of polish didn't make it any more enjoyable to play regardless of the reason.

Enjoyed? Nah.

[syntaxturtle]

Starlight Shores

Visual romance novel about visual romance novel things. It's your birthday and your best friend arranged for a weekend trip at a seaside cottage. You've drifted apart from said best friend since you both went off to school and she's bringing her closest friend from school. Also, your dude friend is bringing some girl he started dating. You all wind up on the beach and work your way through the story via some drinking games, arguments and moments alone with select characters. I got the ending I expected but supposedly there's seven endings which, for you and four characters, probably leaves some surprises. I'm not especially fond of VNs, especially ones of the "tap the space bar 150 times" variety, but this one went fairly quickly at least and was generally okay but nothing I'm looking to jump into again.

Enjoyed? Meh

[syntaxturtle]

Bomsy

Multiplayer game where you and your friends (or the AI if you are currently friendless) run and jump around an arena trying to kill one another with launched grenades. Exploded bricks can drop power-ups, or drop you through the floor, you have a short grapple and can walljump to parkour around and playing rounds allows you to win the usual assortment of new skins and cosmetics. Wouldn't be a game if you couldn't murder your friends as a panda with a poop in your head. Allows for both local and online play though I only tried it with bots. The bots were pretty savage -- I once got killed the moment the round started -- so my overall experience was a bit lacklustre. Maybe better against human opponents.

Enjoyed? Meh

[syntaxturtle]

Starfighter: Research & Development

You head a starfighter manufacturing company in this game and you're woefully behind the tech curve compared to your rivals. To catch up, you'll need to build up your research and manufacturing capabilities as well as test your new products, leading to a combination of top-down fighter shooting action interspersed with base building and a tech tree to follow as you improve your ships. Doing better in the combat trials rewards you with more credits and research points which gives you better base capacity and weapons which leads to better combat performance, etc. It's a fun little mash-up and my only real complaint is that the controls aren't very well defined; I spent a bit of time going back and forth between screens trying to figure out how to really get the ball rolling. Once I noodled it out though, it was good times. Unfortunately, the base building section goes pretty fast to cap it out although you're still left with a fun arcade shooter and plenty of ship upgrades to earn.

Enjoyed? Yeah

[syntaxturtle]

Potato Thriller (Classic)

A tedious experience about hunting a serial killer who is a potato man. The first half is a parody rip-off of the Kojima/del Toro "P.T. " game and offers the few decent moments, mainly because it's just copying a better product. Then it turns into a series of long cut scenes and boring mini-games as you, a bounty hunter, and your robot son attempt to locate Potato Man in his murder tower. The humor is a uniformly dull attempt at meme-humor, voices are text-to-speech synth and graphics are canned Unity assets and sounds/music taken from some other free library. There's an "enhanced" version of this on Steam, having gone through the Greenlight program (remember that?) which stands as a testament to why democracy doesn't work.

Enjoyed? Nah

[syntaxturtle]

Pagan: Autogeny

This one started with a promising idea, exploring the "ruins" of an abandoned MMORPG, but didn't really follow through with it. Instead, you get a fairly dull plod through Unity environments as you collect tarot cards and assorted parts to reassemble and free "the martyr". Spoiler Alert: Then you need to continue on for the true ending though it's not especially more satisfying than the fake ending. There's some combat but it's pretty boring, a handful of bosses to cheese and oh so much film grain. There's also a bunch of stats and some other items that feel tacked on to give it a fake MMORPG feel but don't seem to actually do much. Strangely enough, this game has quite the devoted following who were very impressed by it but it never reached such heights with me. I finished it mainly to try and see what they saw in it but mainly I was just sort of bored and trying to reach the end. The images look worse as stills than they did in play (I think because of the frozen noise) but it was still obnoxiously blurry.

"Explore the digital ruins of a once popular MMORPG" could be a pretty cool premise incorporating the ghosts of friendships made, job/school/marriages stressed, time invested, etc for it to one day be largely forgotten but this wasn't anything close to that.

Enjoyed? Meh

[syntaxturtle]

Veritas

Point-and-click puzzle game with you awakening in a facility with no memory of what's going on (as people in video game facilities often do) and plenty of hints around you that it involves some Virtual Reality experiments. Click on things and add them to your inventory, use them to do things to other things, combine them to make third things you'll need to get the other things you need, etc. Your self-narration is a little tongue-in-cheek and a bit of a Pink Floyd obsession permeated the parts I played. Plenty of video game puzzle logic but they do give you a camera function which is nice so you don't have to try and remember the weird dot sequence on that wall four rooms ago if you can just look at the photo you took instead. Fairly nice graphics and low key background music most of the time.

Enjoyed? Yeah