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Door Reviews: Where The Water Tastes Like Wine (2018)

A funny story: I apparently bought this game years ago for a friend of mine. She liked the gesture, talking about it even years later. But… the thing is, reader, I forgot why I bought her the game! Let this be a lesson I guess to people constantly buying games because they’re on sale: you might find a good game you only manage to play years later! Anyway, let’s talk about this game called Where the Water Tastes Like Wine.

What’s it about? You lost a game against a powerful being, and now you have to serve them by going around America and gathering its stories. Stories of the downtrodden, the jubilant, the hardworking, you will hear and experience many stories and spread them yourself across the land, growing the myth that is America itself.

STYLE (Gameplay, Graphics, Music)

You are dropped into the world after a game of cards where you tell stories and listen to them. The mission given to you is to go around the continent of America and listen to all the stories people have to offer. And there are so many stories around, at least two hunred! A lot of them beautifully written and wonderfully voice-acted.

The dulcet tones of the narrator’s voice set the vibes of the game really well. It makes you feel like you’re in the American midwest, having to fend for yourself in a rough world.

The art feels like they are from storybooks. They can be mature, they can be spooky, they can be thrilling. Mostly though, they set the tone well for the story to come.

The music is great and very fitting. It also helps set the tone of the game. It’s folksy, bluesy, with a lot of forlorn feeling and yearning for something better.

I love the general art direction of the game, the creative energy buzzing from it. Which is why I feel so conflicted when I see the gameplay proper. The traversal between towns, between stories you get can become so sluggish. In order to walk faster, you have to play a sort of rhythm game where you whistle to the beat of a random song. You can hitchhike as well, but it brings you to a random city, and it’s one-way so you don’t get to where you want most of the time. I ended up walking most places.

It’s frustrating because on one hand the gameplay itself is slow and sluggish, but on the other hand I feel like the slow and sluggishness is the point. It is intentionally slow to represent how much of a slog it is to go through the land of opportunity, how much work it is to navigate this new world. And with the forced slowness, you are forced to appreciate the stories better, the wonderful music, the impactful art and words, the great voice-acting. The jankiness of the gameplay helps the the other aspects of the game shine more.

Aside from traveling, you also get to talk to interesting characters from all walks of life. Your collected stories are key here: these characters share their campfires with you, and both of you share stories with each other. You give them the kind of story they want, and you are rewarded with more stories from these characters. It’s a wonderful way to show a bond.

SUBSTANCE (Story, Characters, Impact)

The storytelling of this game is great. Really, it’s hundreds of vignettes and storylines collected in a single game. So many stories, so many perspectives, I feel so enriched with everything I read. There are hopeful stories, thrilling ones, scary ones, and so on. And these stories can even grow into mythologized versions of themselves. I see firsthand how a story evolves from place to place, person to person.

And the characters! Each character is written by an author, with its own style of storytelling and its own art. They all have their own perspectives to share: a porter, a war veteran, a preacher, a con-woman, and so much more. I have yet to meet all of them, there are just so many!

I very much like the stories of this game. It feels like an anthology, a well-made anthology in terms of the stories. I find myself trying to flip the metaphorical pages whenever I can.

VERDICT

Despite the janky gameplay (or maybe even because of it), this game delivers superbly on vibes. I really felt like I was wandering through the land of opportunity, witnessing all the downtrodden and hearing their stories. The voice acting is great, the music is phenomenal, the art is wonderful. I wholeheartedly recommend it if you’re a gamer who prizes story over gameplay.

Door Rates Where the Water Tastes Like Wine: 4/5!

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Door Reviews: No Case Should Remain Unsolved (2024)

I found this game’s name being mentioned every time I trawled through the web finding good detective games. I finally decided to give it a go. I enjoyed it enough, and now I’m here to write a review on this visual novel of a game. So let’s get to it, shall we?

What’s it about? You are a police detective, haunted by a single cold case you left unsolved back in the day. A ghost comes to you and tries to jog your memory. How did that case go? You go through your memories, your indexless library of a brain, and sort through the jigsaw puzzle to make a fully formed picture so that you can finally solve the case.

STYLE (Gameplay, Graphics, Music)

Gameplay revolves around going through key conversations and finding notable hashtags that lead to other key conversations that let you get a fuller picture of what happened with the case. You have to 1.) find and read the conversations by clicking the hashtags, 2.) find out who was involved in that conversation, and 3.) order each conversation by date and time under who said which.

It sounds overwhelming, because it kinda is!

The beginning feels fun, because there’s so much to discover, so much info to get. It’s the part where you try and look for clues, and boy that part feels fun for me.

It’s the part where you try and bring it all together that is difficult, because in some parts, you have to look for the correct clue that will unlock more clues. It can get overwhelming leafing through all the conversations and finding the correct line that will help unlock more conversations.

I think the skeleton of the gameplay feels fun enough, it just needs more improvement in readability and presentation. I got so overwhelmed that I ended up relying on a guide. I had enough fun nonetheless though!

The art and music were nice as well. The music felt chill and somber enough for the occasion wherein you try and remember a bad memory. The art is simple enough.

Overall, I respect the style of this game, but wish the gameplay was less dense in terms of leafing through clues!

SUBSTANCE (Story, Characters, Impact)

The story is wonderful. Uncovering the beats themselves, the winding twists and turns, it makes your heart turn every which way. It’s a complicated story with some nuanced characters which the story uses well.

I like a lot how they presented the beginning. Even at the start you are drawn in with the title screen, and the way the pseudo-tutorial plays out, it does double duty guiding you through the story and guiding you through the gameplay. It’s a dense-feeling story, so many words! So much to leaf through that it can get overwhelming. But it felt worth it to get to the end, even if I used a guide. I liked the story and its presentation a lot, but I mostly give more props to the presentation, as the devs made a good impactful start to the game.

VERDICT

This is a solid game with a great story but gameplay that could be better. The skeleton of the game is solid, the actual content just needs to be tuned a bit better in terms of denseness of information and presentation of data. It gets overwhelming going through everything, but it feels worth it just to get rewarded with the story beats. I like it!

Door Rates No Case Should Remain Unsolved: 3.5/5!

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Door Reviews: DEAD LETTER DEPT. (2025)

It’s easy to send messages nowadays. With the advent of the internet and cellphones, we have technologies like e-mail, SMS, and even instant messaging via various apps. Before all this, and even during their nascency and yet still even now, letters and messages to far off friends were sent via mail. It’s a bit of an involved process, with you having to put your letter in an envelope, writing your address, writing the address of your recipient, putting a stamp, and going to your local post office to have it sent. And once you’ve done all that, it might take days or even months until your letter gets sent to its intended recipient.

Sometimes though, letters don’t get sent to their intended recipient at all. Maybe it got smashed up during processing, or maybe you wrote the addresses in a manner that makes them unreadable, or maybe you put in the wrong stamp. These then become dead letters, forever stuck in purgatory, unread.

In this game, however, you are a Data Conversion Operator who can help get these letters sent. Who can help free them from this purgatory that robs these letters of their purpose. Here, you’re part of the DEAD LETTER DEPT.

Let’s get to it!

What’s it about? You have just moved towns and taken up a data entry job as a Data Conversion Operator for the post office, assisting their Optical Character Recognition Artificial Intelligence (OCRAI) in processing letters. Whatever it cannot read, you read and type up for it. Sounds all well and good, but well, this is a horror game, and horror WILL ensue. So be ready for it.

STYLE (Gameplay, Graphics, Music)

You won’t see people at all in this game, not even your own sprite. You’ll just see environments, backgrounds, various room assets, and the most important thing: your computer.

The game is separated into two parts: your travel to work, and your actual work. In your travel, you get to see your surroundings: dingy apartments that haven’t been cared for enough, grimy hallways that have barely been maintained, lights that flicker on and off as if they need replacing. All of these combined make for a feeling that you’re trapped in a liminal space, not unlike the backrooms. The feeling it induces makes you feel just wary enough to keep you on your toes, as if at any moment someone could leap out and rob you of your valuables. It’s a good precursor to the next part of the gameplay loop.

The next part involves you on your computer doing your data entry job. You have to type in the highlighted text, inputting them the best you can despite any smudges or struggles with reading them. If you are struggling at some parts, there is an Auto-Suggest functionality built in that can help you complete what you are writing, correcting what you’ve written to the best of its ability.

On its own, the gameplay is nothing special. It’s a bit cute even, as it hearkens back to typing tutor games we played during grade school. But combined with the horror elements, it gives a unique horror experience. I’ll discuss more what I think of the horror and its impact in the Substance section.

With regards to the style itself, the game does a good job of showing the griminess of the world. It really beats down at you, the small things, especially if you get to see them everyday, as if you’re being worn down by a thousand cuts. The sound design is impeccable, with random noises keeping you on your toes, making you question where they’re coming from and why they sound so anguished.

The style sets the tone of the game so well and primes you to be properly horrified. I like it a lot!

SUBSTANCE (Story, Characters, Impact)

You start out as someone writing a letter to someone who was important in your life. In the background, the road speeds through, streetlights zipping past as you move towns. This is a fresh start for your character as they attempt to survive in a new city, bringing with it all sorts of opportunity.

The overarching story is your character trying to survive the days and make rent. You go to work, you process the letters, and go home. Simple, right?

You work in the night shift, so you don’t interact with your neighbors. You’re all alone, going to work, taking the subway, seeing the darkness of the city, passing through dilapidated hallways, and arriving at your small office with only your computer as company.

Isn’t it lonely?

To make matters worse, you experience the occasional disturbing letter. Letters that, for some reason, describe some gruesome happenings and factoids. Makes you feel like a moderator of a social media app. It can be harrowing.

The letters themselves have their own stories. Watch out for continuity between letters; a keen eye will be rewarded with small stories of loss and tragedy, and sometimes some pockets of love and happiness, and a desire to connect. Isn’t that what letters are for, after all?

The horror is in the routine and its disturbance: the quiet horror of being stuck where you are, doing the same thing over and over again, and the violent horror of some things being not quite right. They are presented as jumpscares, but they’re not your typical in your face ones: they are there to jolt you awake once you’ve settled into your typing routine. It leverages the capacity of horror to subvert expectations by letting you get used to the gameplay loop, then throwing a violent wrench into it.

Be wary. All is not what it seems.

I was scared enough of this game’s vibes that I had to have a friend play for me once I got two-thirds of the way. Maybe I should have stopped playing, but I had to see what made this game good. And I see it. It manages to create a unique and modern horror feel that clings to you. It reflects modern anxieties and puts twists in them.

These are horrors you are used to. And yet, why are you still scared?

I love the game’s depiction of horror, and I love the impact it had on me, a person who does not like horror all that much.

VERDICT

DEAD LETTER DEPT. is a masterclass in modern horror. It reflects on the current anxieties of the world, and depicts them so well and makes you feel them in your bones. If you love horror, you definitely should play this game.

Door Rates DEAD LETTER DEPT.: 4.5/5!

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Door Reviews: Chants of Sennaar (2023)

I like games that play with linguistics. I’ve talked about The Gostak (2001) and Counterfeit Monkey (2012) in this blog as text games that play with the nature of words really well. Now it’s time we talk about a non-text game for a change! Let’s talk about Chants of Sennaar.

What’s it about? You are a nameless protagonist, awoken from a long slumber. You discover that you are at the base of a tower, and your goal is to get to the top. The only problem is that you barely understand what anyone says! With your pencil and paper, you keep track of each word, each glyph, and make an effort to understand the languages you encounter, so that you may find it easier to go to your goal.

STYLE (Gameplay, Graphics, Music)

If I can describe this game in a word it’d be: Intentional. Each NPC, each word, each color, each brush stroke was chosen for a purpose. Even the point of view you see the area through is chosen carefully. The game looks simple with its 3d isometric view, but a lot of care has been put in the smallest of details. I appreciate that!

The art is simple and lovely. It’s the colors of the game that I really like. Solid encompassing colors are chosen to represent each area. It’s as if each area shines with character.

What I really want to talk about in terms of graphics are the glyphs. They definitely took inspiration from real-life languages to make their artificial languages in-game. Seeing the similarities tickled my brain! It shows the care the devs had to craft these glyphs to match the languages they wanted to show.

The music is nice enough. Sets the vibe without being too overpowering. It sits in the background making sure you are cozy, and changes up when it wants you on your toes.

The gameplay itself is a fair amount of exploration, a lot of puzzle solving, and a lot of thinking about what certain glyphs and words mean. Linguists would really love this game, and as part-time enthusiast, I really liked the gameplay.

All in all, I loved the game’s style and the care it took to show its work.

SUBSTANCE (Story, Characters, Impact)

The game does a lot of “show, don’t tell” to get its story across. It is necessary, since this is a game about discovering language, so you will be confused for the most part until you discover all the words of a language. It has you poring over each interaction, each word, so that you divine meaning and in turn divine the story.

I really liked the story. It is heavily inspired by the Old Testament story about the Tower of Babel, where man’s desire to build a great tower caused God to disperse humanity into different parts of the world and force them to speak different languages as opposed to just one. Here, the tower and the language feature heavily, with your character ascending through the tower and learning each language. It asks the question: how do you unite peoples who have been forcibly torn apart? And the answers it puts forth are interesting and lovely.

The Old Testament stories have always been so severe. With the story of Lot’s being turned to salt after looking back towards the ruined cities of Sodom and Gommorah, God has been depicted in this section of the bible as powerful yet prone to severe punishments. So it’s interesting to see how a game explores what happens after God’s wrath has been inflicted onto a group of people.

That might be a bit of a tangent. Overall, I like the story. You can have multiple interpretations of it, as it leaves a fair bit of room for player imagination. But it does have a clear message, and I hope you get far enough in the game to appreciate it. I really loved the ending, and I hope you will too.

VERDICT

Chants of Sennaar is a wonderful puzzle game that linguists will love. It’s well-made in a lot of aspects, and has a tight enough story. I very much recommend you play it!

Door Rates Chants of Sennaar: 4/5!

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Door Reviews: Nine Sols (2024)

Honestly, I forgot how I heard of Nine Sols. It just reached me somehow, and I wishlisted it. It went on sale one day, and I snagged it. I’ve heard it was a soulslike metroidvania, but I wasn’t prepared for how FUN I’d end up finding it!

What’s it about? You play as Yi, a Solarian who was left for dead. Now you live again, and now you must exact your revenge. With your skill in swordsmanship, qi manipulation, and the art of parrying, you will navigate through this 2D soulslike and do what you think is just.

STYLE (Gameplay, Graphics, Music)

I enjoy the style of this game. It feels so self-assured, like it knows what it is right from the get-go. It’s somewhat cutesey while managing to be violent and dynamic. It balances all of these vibes and presents itself with such kinetic energy. I like it a lot! There are also a lot of Chinese influences in the backgrounds and artstyles and even in the very DNA of the game, which makes sense as the devs are Taiwanese.

The music is great. It suits every area, and when it’s time to fight it pumps up the adrenaline. And the boss fight songs are great! I especially love the song for one of the mid-game bosses with the yearning shouts and the forlorn vibes. The Chinese influences also shine through in most of the songs.

The gameplay itself is the main draw of the game. I have seen people describe it as Sekiro meets Hollow Knight, and I can see it: hack and slash with parry mechanics. The game makes me wanna keep hack and slashing because of how kinetic it feels, but you have to be careful as well with enemy attacks. This is where parrying comes in: with each parry, you are rewarded with qi, a resource you can use to fuel your talisman attacks. These talisman attacks are very powerful, which is why you have to parry when you can, especially since parrying reduces or even outright nullifies damage. It’s a game that wants you to balance being aggressive and being careful. And if you can balance it right, you can keep hacking and slashing while parrying at key moments without losing that kinetic feeling.

The boss fights are well made. They give you sequences that feel satisfying to go through. Successfully dodging, parrying, and counterattacking enemy attacks feels great, and finally beating these bosses feels well earned.

Overall I love how the game presents itself. I love the art, the gameplay, the music, everything!

SUBSTANCE (Story, Characters, Impact)

The story starts explosively. You end up learning about Yi, then Shuanshuan, then the rest of the world. You get a better sense of their characters: Yi, a stoic and knowledgeable man who is determined to make the Sols pay, and Shuanshuan, a carefree child who grows under Yi’s guidance. I love their relationship and how it grows as the game goes on. I love how they influence each other. It’s one of my favorite aspects of the game.

The storytelling is also great. It opts for a more direct approach as opposed to most metroidvanias, which I like. I like the themes and the different point of view afforded by the different background of the devs. I feel like I play a lot of games from devs with Western backgrounds so it’s nice to have devs who have Eastern backgrounds this time. And you can see it shine through with the aesthetics, the character quirks, the Taoist themes, and in various other small ways.

On the whole, I love the story a lot!!!

VERDICT

Nine Sols is a very much worthy addition to the metroidvania genre. I’d want fans of the genre to play it as a requirement, and for others to play it because it’s just a damn good game! Very much recommended.

Door Rates Nine Sols: 4.5/5!

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Door Reviews: Counterfeit Monkey (2012)

I’ve reviewed a text adventure game on this blog before named The Gostak. It was a fun game that made me want to explore more of the genre. That desire led me to this game, as it topped one of the charts of the Interactive Fiction Database, where these text games are hosted and talked about. I liked this game! Let’s talk about: Counterfeit Monkey!

What’s it about? You are Alexandra, and you are in the middle of a heist. Your job is to finish said heist and come away unscathed. You only start out with one thing: a letter remover, one of the weapons produced by advances in linguistic manipulation.

Wordplay as Worldbuilding

This game is built on the concept of wordplay affecting reality itself. Pluck away the letter B from the world block and you have a lock. Manage to apply this to a literal block somehow and you turn a physical block into an actual lock. It is very meta, and very interesting. And Emily Short, author of this game, has managed to use this concept to build an entire world around it. If this technology existed, this is what she thinks it will look like.

And it is quite the fascinating world! Stalls that have games involving wordplay. Histories on how warfare is conducted with large-scale word manipulation. Pages thinned down into one page just by removing the letter S, and fully stretching the implications of such a possibility. There’s so much here that I managed to become so immersed in the world and the unique way you interact with it, with various objects able to be affected by your letter remover and all the upgrades you can gain for it.

Solving Puzzles with Wordplay

You are given a tutorial in the beginning teaching you how to use your letter remover, pointing you in the right direction with regards to being on the lookout for various objects to use your remover on. You have to be keen in looking at all the possible words some objects can form, and how they can help you in your task. It is very much a good exercise in wordplay as you have to find out what kind of thing you can get from what you have.

You explore the city of Atlantis, not quite a mythical city in this world, but a strategically located island. Each area has its own blurb and its own objects, and you have to be keen in finding them and using them to the best of your ability.

Final Thoughts

I like it! It’s a wonderful game that leaves a lot to the imagination. It’s a nicely made world that fully explores its premise. I recommend it!

JUDGMENT: With a well-developed world and fun linguistic tricks, Counterfeit Monkey will delight fans of the text adventure genre. Recommended!

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Door Reviews Quick: The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog (2023)

So this game got released a couple years ago, as an April Fools thing by the Sonic people at SEGA. And it’s FREE! How can I not try? So: let’s go ahead and talk about The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog!!!

Gamplay is similar to the likes of Ace Attorney and other Visual Novels. What tickles me about this game is the wonderfully drawn art and the cutely depicted characters!! I love how my player character tries their best, and how Tails is a good detective to do this with, and how Amy is a fun rival of sorts in this detective game!! It’s just all sorts of cute.

I enjoyed it a lot!! So many cute blorbos. I’m not into the game series, but I liked this game for what it was: a fun, no stakes game that is just cute and explores the character dynamics of the people in the series!

JUDGMENT: how is this free!?!? A short and fun romp through the world of Sonic.

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Door Reviews: The Gostak (2001)

Ah, here we are. In a game review about a text adventure, ready to talk about its nuances. A special little text adventure that feels like you got dropped into a foreign land… and tragically, you don’t understand the local language! A text adventure that asks you: how will you play a game that you can’t understand?

This is what The Gostak is all about. And I’m excited to talk about it with you. Let’s get to it!

Keep in mind by the way that the magic of playing this game might be lost once you read this review. So… I’m gonna slap a big fat SPOILER WARNING here. Read at your own risk!

My Foray into Text Adventures

The Gostak has been in my radar for a while, starting when I saw one of the substacks I followed talk about it. It felt interesting: a text adventure that forces you to think what the heck is happening. What’s a delcot? What’s a dosh? And… glauds??

I looked for it online, seeing it’s archived in the Interactive Fiction Database. And in seeing it, I discover the site itself: a treasure trove of a genre of games unexplored. The closest I’ve played a similar game is from a quest in Kingdom of Loathing: a browser game that parodies so many things. It was kind of funny and okay when I was young (I played it when I was in high school and all of 13 years old), but now that I’m playing a different text adventure, I feel like maybe I’m skipping a few steps in the genre. Nonetheless, so far it is an interesting look into it.

It’s a genre that is completely based on text. No graphics, just a command input and some words to describe where you are. Your imagination is the engine that turns the text on the screen into a running game. You input commands like go left, go right, pick up object, talk to person, then let the text engine churn out the response to your actions, then let your own imagination parse that into a dynamic scene.

I love it. I like letting my imagination run wild with these things. It makes me want to explore more text adventures.

Which makes me feel kind of weird that The Gostak is one of my first of these games, as I feel like such a game would be better appreciated if you have played a few text adventures beforehand. This specific game subverts the expectations of the genre, throwing you into it blind and forcing you to reorient itself. The very words you rely upon are no longer usable here, and you must scramble for purchase as you reckon with yourself how to chip away at this game.

Distimming the Doshes

I’m gonna peel back the curtain here with the game. Final warning! You might enjoy it less if you read on!

The game has a lot of nonsensical words. And it doesn’t give you much in the way of help right out of the gate. So here’s what the game is: the game is figuring out what the words mean, so that you may find out what’s going on and eventually win the game!

But then you have to ask yourself: how exactly do you win the game? When going left or going right doesn’t work, what should you do? What you should do is understand the language the game speaks in, and speak it back! What is a Gostak? What is a dosh? How do you distim? Slowly, you will understand as you put commands into the client: some will give you nothing, but some will give you more insight into the world in the game.

It’s a nice linguistics game of sorts. Having played Heaven’s Vault, a similar game involving understanding a long dead language, I think this game is more direct in its approach to translation and understanding. I like it a lot! I love the eureka moments in discovering which word does what, which words are commands, which words help me explore more of the game.

In Closing

I enjoyed this game!! Though you may want to play some other text-based games first, so that you may be able to appreciate the genre better. I encourage you, reader, to explore the Interactive Fiction Database so that you may be able to find more games to play in this genre!

JUDGMENT: A text adventure that will tickle your brain once you understand it. It creatively uses the medium and makes you work for the win.

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Door Reviews: I Was A Teenage Exocolonist (2022)

A friend recommended this game as a cozy game. And me, needing to play a cozy game to chill out, tried it. It… actually was very much what I needed coming into the Holy Week. And now, I want to talk about this game. I am going to try a bit of a new format here, a bit more freeform. Let’s see!

What’s it about? You are a ten-year-old child, born to parents who are part of the Vertumna Group. This group has flown into the open galaxy to find a new planet to colonize, hoping better for their children. The game follows your life in this new planet: from your childhood, to your growth through your teen years, all the way to your entry to adulthood, as you decide what you do and how you grow month after month. How will you spend your time? What will you discover? Who will you become?

Living a New Life

I Was A Teenage Exocolonist is a science-fiction game that paints a more hopeful society, where children are given more agency in their future, where the family unit is more dynamic, where everyone has more of a hand in building a community. Babies are taken care of in a crèche, with a Steward taking care of them. Children can choose how to spend their time; their parents won’t force them to go to school (though they can give them stern words if the children choose to do things they don’t agree with). It’s an attempt at a more utopian society, and it’s wonderful to see.

You start out in character creation, dictating your character’s name, gender, the gift they got when they were young, and their best friend growing up. Your choice of gift and choice of friend will affect your character’s starting stats, of which there are about 12, separated into 3 categories: Social, Mental, and Physical. Each month, starting at 10 years old, you get to choose what activity you will do, and those activities affect your stats. So thus, you are born, you enjoy a unique childhood, and you grow in ways expected and unexpected.

Growth, Memory, and Card Games

This growth is represented by each activity. You choose out of various possible actions to do for the month, and then the game narrates to you what happens for that month. You could attend class, play sports, help with the farm, or even rest. A lot of activities improve your stats, but they also increase your stress levels. Resting resets your stress all the way to zero, refreshing you and letting you be ready for more adventures.

Activities come in the form of narratives that the game delivers. With these, they also present challenges that come in the form of card battles. Your goal in these card battles is to beat the stated score with your hand of cards, arranging them in a way that maximizes that score by arranging them into pairs, grouping them into cards with the same colors, sorting them as you would a straight, etc. As I played this game, it honestly felt like… Chill Balatro, where you choose the highest scoring hand while listening to nice music and experiencing a good narrative.

The cards you have in your deck represent various childhood memories. Memories of you learning to walk, of running around, and various other things. As you play the game, you get opportunities to add more cards to your deck, with each new card representing a new memory. It’s nice to look at a card and think: oh, this was the time I did this!

The Curse of Choice

As time passes, you discover more of the trials of living in a foreign land. There are difficulties with regards to food, security, morale, and the entire colony has to think up of ways to deal with food shortfalls, breaches in defenses, and various other problems. And you… continue to live your life. You may find yourself helping out directly, fighting off any wild animals. You may find yourself being a friend to people, hearing them out, giving them gifts. Or you may even find yourself doing nothing, just sleeping in the lounge and being a layabout.

You are a child brimming with potential. You can be anything you want to be. And as you change and grow, so too does your environment. Your friends grow with you, becoming soldiers, diplomats, explorers. Your elders become more experienced, becoming leaders, mastering the planet as best as they can. And your actions affect them all, the intricate web of possibility being weaved into a reality that you choose whether you’re aware of it or not.

Nonetheless, it is still your life that you live. It is still your choices that you make. This is a game that throws you into a new chance at life, with all its trials and tribulations, and makes it so that you have a community behind you that tries to be better than what the past has molded them to be. It is a game that asks you: how do you want to grow up?

VERDICT

The vibes of this game are pretty chill. The music puts you in a calm mood, the art is wonderfully made, and the story feels hopeful, with the right amount of tension. It felt nice to work through the card battles, and when I’m feeling lazy with them I can just turn them off in the options, auto-completing any activities with either a success or failure based on your stats.

It feels like a nice little cozy game! If you’re into good sci-fi that is hopeful in themes, this is for you.

Door Judgement: A Good Cozy Game! Recommended!

[doorplays]

Door Reviews Quick: The King is Watching (Demo, 2024)

Author’s Note: I’m starting a new review format of sorts, where I just quickly ramble on about games that I think would be better for shorter reviews. I hope you enjoy!

A friend recommended me this game. They played a fair amount of it and enjoyed it a lot. Seeing that it was free, I thought to try it as well. And I had fun! Let’s talk about this game a bit.

The game is about building resource generators and proceeding to use said resources to train units which protect your empire. The catch here is: you can only have a certain number of buildings active at a time. At the start of the game, you can only have three buildings active, and all of them have to be near each other. You can upgrade how many buildings can be active with enough resources.

This mechanic represents the king’s gaze. Whichever set of buildings the king is watching (WOO TITLE DROP), they’re the ones that will either generate resources or train units. The gameplay here is balancing which buildings to make active at which times in order to generate enough units to protect your empire, while having good enough economy to sustain your military presence.

It tickled my brain! There are also events in between waves that give you some benefits, like giving you resources or giving you units. These events are funny, as the pictures that depict the events are usually some form of meme reference. The aesthetics are nice enough, and the UI is understandable enough.

All in all, it was a fun introduction to the game, and I can’t wait for full release.

JUDGMENT: A game to watch out for! Try the demo 👁️

[doorplays]

Door Reviews Quick: GUNCHO (2024)

Author’s Note: I’m starting a new review format of sorts, where I just quickly ramble on about games that I think would be better for shorter reviews. I hope you enjoy!

Hello! In this post I talk about GUNCHO (2024), a tactics game I played on mobile!

This was recommended by one of the podcasts I listened to, and it is decent fun. It’s like Into the Breach, but as a western. You are placed in a hex grid map along with other enemies, and your goal is to shoot them down with your six-shooter. Each bullet is aligned with one side of a hexagon, and it will shoot in the direction it points to. Once all bullets are exhausted, your gun will reload. The nuance here is that you have to carefully choose where to move and where to shoot, as you have to act in a way that lets you kill every enemy without being killed yourself.

The music felt aptly western, and the vibes really let me feel like I was a gunslinger. I like this game because it’s simple enough and I can play it on my phone during commutes. What I like most though is the fact that it’s playable in portrait mode! I don’t have to tilt my cellphone to play it! It’s a small thing, but it’s very convenient.

JUDGMENT: A decent mobile game. Not great, not terrible, but it’s decent fun.

[doorplays]

Door Reviews: The Roottrees are Dead (2025)

Evil Trout is a man I know specifically from one game I played in my youth: Forumwarz. It was released in 2008, and was very much a product of its time. A browser game about being an internet stereotype, it had a decent playerbase for a while. I eventually fell off of it as I became busy with college, but I have fond memories of hanging out with a bunch of other nerds online, making jokes, discovering IRC, doing guild things, and roleplaying on the internet.

Now, he has returned after what, 17 years? He has adapted someone’s entry into a game jam. Jeremy Johnston made The Roottrees are Dead for the 2023 Global Game Jam. I haven’t played this version because of its reliance on AI art, which I do not like on principle. So I’m glad Evil Trout helped make an adaptation with actual art. The two of them together also included a bonus mystery with this game, Roottreemania, which is essentially a sequel of the original mystery. Various quality-of-life improvements were also made.

As far as adaptations go, this one is pretty good. I heard a lot of murmurings on the internet saying that this game scratched that detective game itch. So with me being a fan of such games, I HAD to get it. And now, I’m here to review it!

What’s it about? An airplane crash is reported over the news. In it were the Roottrees, a famous family known for their old candy company. And they just died. A mysterious person now comes to you, requesting that you map the entire family tree of the Roottrees, from their great great grandparents to their current generation. Why this person asks this of you, you do not know, but you DO know that they’ve come to the right person for the job.

STYLE (Gameplay, Graphics, Music)

As a person who is great at mapping genealogies, your job is to identify each and every member of the Roottree family. You have to find a picture of a family member, find their name, and find their profession, slotting these into their right place in the family tree. You find the information you need with your trusty turn of the millenium PC equipped with a cutting edge 56K modem. You search sites, trawl through periodicals, scan online libraries, print evidence, burn CDs of relevant audio, and whatever else you need to complete your job. When you see familiar faces on the evidence, you can click them to add them to your records and slot them into potential entries.

Once you get three (3) Roottrees right, the game automatically locks them in. This act validates your assumptions and reduces the effort you have to make on future guesses. Jeremy Johnston himself cites Return of the Obra Dinn and Her Story as influences, and it shows.

This gameplay makes for a nice experience. It felt like I was clicking through Wikipedia links, finding all the connections, getting lost in the sauce. It’s a uniquely internet experience, hyperfixating into certain topics and clicking every relevant link, and this game manages to replicate it.

The aesthetic of the game feels very Y2K. You have the 56K modem, the burning of CDs, and a lot of the action of the game happens in your computer. There’s also the aesthetic shown by older evidence, a peek into the 70’s and earlier eras. You get to see how each generation differs from the last. It gives character and color to the game.

The music is um… a lot of copyright-free jazz? Which is fine. There are also a few songs that embody some eras, and some are actually relevant to the game as hints. There are also some voiced lines in the game, which surprised me, as I didn’t feel it necessary. I like that they still made the effort for it.

The art is distinctive enough that each person can be identified. I had a bit of trouble with it, but that’s par for the course for detective games like this. I definitely appreciate the devs moving away from AI art.

Of note is also the hint system. You can consult your own rubber ducky for hints that start out light and progress to more obvious hints until fully saying the answer that will help guide you further in your quest to fill the tree. The hint system itself is a reference to rubber duck debugging, and it’s a nice little thing to set up.

The gameplay of this game is the draw, as the devs included a lot of things to make the detectiving be more comfortable to do, like the capacity to highlight some lines, a sort of notebook you can take your own notes in, a History tab within browsers that lets you go back to past sites you visited… it’s a lot of quality of life stuff. And they make it a much tighter experience that had me not wanting to put the game down. High marks for the style!

SUBSTANCE (Story, Characters, Impact)

This game’s story is so fun for an inveterate gossip like me!!!

It’s like you are thrown behind the scenes into a will reading, and now you have to support your patron in finding all the possible people getting a slice of the pie. And now you’re digging your heels finding out all you can about this old money ass family, and you just find out SO MUCH HOT GOSS GUYS, SO MUCH. The stories won’t be out of place in a Filipino teledrama, and that’s why it’s so fun!! I did not expect this kinda story to be in a detective game!!

You get to know more about the lives of each Roottree, and you see that they have different mindsets to things, different ways of coping with the times. It’s nice seeing all these small stories weaving together in this tapestry of a family tree, disparate yet connected together by blood.

The humor in this game is so fun for me. There’s a fair amount of stories parodying some real life people and some real life experiences. I wanna say it’s rather tongue-in-cheek? I found myself laughing a lot.

I liked the story a lot, and I liked how the gameplay let me discover the story bit by bit. It tickles me a lot how this feels like such fresh ground to explore. The case isn’t really a whodunit and more of diving into a mess of a family, and I think more detective games should be fun like that without resorting to be cutesy cozy games. Those games are still fun, I just think there’s a lot more to explore in this genre. Maybe I haven’t explored detective games much, but this game’s topic feels fresh to me. I loved experiencing this game!

VERDICT

This game is FUN. A refinement of the Obra Dinn formula and the Her Story experience, The Roottrees are Dead does a lot of experimentation with how detective games implement their gameplay. The discovery of evidence, the way you ascertain the answers, all of it feels fresh enough to me that I ended up enjoying my time with it. It’s a modern hit for the genre!

DOOR JUDGMENT: A fun Detective Game that pushes the genre forward. Recommended!

[doorplays]

Door Reviews: Slay the Princess (2023)

I’ve been on somewhat of a visual novel phase lately, with playing Perfect Tides, the Ace Attorney trilogy, 1000xRESIST, and similar games. I’ve played a lot of games with phenomenal story. So it’s no surprise that I queued up Slay the Princess as my next game, with how everyone has been raving about it.

Well really, I only bought it because it was in a bundle together with 1000xRESIST. And I only got reminded to play it because it was included in a Balatro Friends of Jimbo DLC.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. Gaming marketing can be weird. I don’t wanna think about it anymore. Read my review instead:

What’s it about? Slay the Princess is a visual novel with hand-drawn art and full voice acting. You start in the woods, and are beckoned by a voice to slay a princess. The question is: will you do it?

STYLE (Gameplay, Graphics, Music)

Going into the game, I am immediately drawn to the artstyle. There’s something about it that feels like it knows what it wants to be. It’s hand-drawn black and white, with shots framed very well. The cabin framed top center in the distance, to evoke the feeling of a destination, the door framed dead center here, as it beckons, even demands you to come in… And aside from that, all of it is well-drawn. I could take any shot and put it up as a desktop wallpaper!

It’s a great style. There are shots that leave you with a sense of wonder, but most shots give you an uneasy feeling. This sense of foreboding is further amplified by the great sound design. Creaking wooden floorboards, the shwing of your knife as you pick it up… all these little details help immerse you into the narrative.

Not only is there great sound design, there’s also full voice acting! It’s really apt for this game. Hearing Jonathan Sims’ voice is a welcome surprise, as I loved his performance in The Magnus Archives. And Nichole Goodnight does a wonderful job voicing The Princess.

The music is great too. They accentuate the scenes well. It feels… bittersweet? For me to hear the main menu theme. Like there’s something missing that I need to find.

The gameplay is typical Visual Novel fare. The story is narrated, choices are presented, then you choose the response that you want. In this regard, this game gives you a lot of choices. The fact that there’s so many choices and branches can get overwhelming, but I recommend choosing what your heart tells you to choose. The wealth of choices isn’t there for you to fully explore: it’s there for you to be able to exercise your own agency. The game tells you that you have to Slay the Princess, but it also gives you the choice not to.

There are dialogue options that let you explore more of your situation too. These will be marked with the word Explore right before them, in parentheses. I love these kinds of choices because they help in fleshing out the world more. You get a better sense of your situation, and you get more information to help you decide your choice.

This game gives narrative weight to your choices. They do this even more than your typical Visual Novel. I like the way they went about this, how they give importance to both the impact of your choice and to your own agency in choosing. It’s a wonderful way of integrating gameplay and story together.

Overall. I really love the aesthetics of this game. I love the art, the music, the gameplay, I love everything about it! It feels like the developers knew what they were going for right out of the gate and honed all these aspects in service of that. It’s very well done.

SUBSTANCE (Story, Characters, Impact)

This is a love story.

You start out as someone who is on a path in the woods. And from there, you control your destiny. You could listen to the Narrator or follow your own whims. You could take the blade or go down the basement unarmed.

You could Slay the Princess. Or… you could Save her.

This game is very much a Choose Your Own Adventure type of game. It explores your choices and makes you feel not just the consequences of your actions, but the benefits too. It explores a lot of the ramifications of each choice.

The story’s vibe is very… haunting. Like… I wanna say it feels Victorian-era vibes, maybe because of Jonathan Sims’ wonderful voice acting. The words feel oaken, creaky, of great import. But it doesn’t shy away from the occasional laugh or three. It’s a self-aware story, in a way.

I wanna talk more about this game, but… I can’t. It would be spoilers to talk more about it. What I can say is that the story is really great and that I very much want you to experience it.

VERDICT

Slay the Princess is a phenomenal visual novel experience. The art is great, the voice acting is amazing, and the story is something I won’t forget for a while.

Door Rates Slay the Princess: 5/5!

[doorplays]

Door Reviews: Perfect Tides (2022)

I have long been a follower of Meredith Gran’s work. I started reading her webcomic Octopus Pie since… I think, 2009 or 2010. I love it a lot. Very creative and really made use of the webcomic as a medium. I was amazed to see that she decided to make a game! I bought it soon after it was released, and it only took me… oh, about 2.5 years before I played! Backlogs amirite

Anyway! I’ve finally played this game, and I’m ready to review it. Let’s go!

(author’s note: Steam’s Mature Content Description section for this game has described it as follows: “This game contains references to sex, depictions of sexual harassment, references to self-harm, and use of drugs and alcohol.” Please be mindful of this if you consider buying the game.)

What’s it about? Perfect Tides is a point-and-click game about Mara Whitefish, a teenager who lives in the island community of Perfect Tides. In this game we witness her coming-of-age story as she grapples with her family, her grades, and her social life.

STYLE (Gameplay, Graphics, Music)

This game is a point-and-click game with you controlling Mara and having her explore her hometown of Perfect Tides. You can move from area to area, even enter some buildings. To interface with the world, you can do 5 actions: move, look at something, touch something, speak to something/someone, and use whatever item you have from your inventory, choosing one item from there. You can cycle between all these actions by either choosing your preferred action in the toolbar up top that minimizes when your cursor isn’t near, or by right-clicking, which changes the cursor on-screen to a cursor associated with the desired action.

It’s wonderfully early 2000’s, honestly. I haven’t customized my computer like that in ages in a way that changes the icons, the toolbar, and the cursor. I just change the wallpaper nowadays. The changing cursors remind me of all those cursor designs you can see on the internet and download. Feels nostalgic!

The gameplay is simple enough, but my issue with it is how difficult it can be to determine what to do next. The game feels… deliberately obtuse at times. For a long time, and more than once, I didn’t know that I needed a certain item to get through a certain part of the story. Maybe the difficulty in itself is a homage to difficult point-and-click games of old, but I would rather not waste too much time trying to progress the story. I would have appreciated proper highlighting of interactibles as well, though I guess this could lead to discovering some story threads too early. Nonetheless, I feel like I’d rather have that than feel like I’m trying to find a needle in a haystack.

The art is great. It looks idyllic in a way, perfectly showing the community of Perfect Tides. The environments are well designed, and the characters look distinctive. The pixelly looks come through more obviously with the character designs. And when characters are talking to each other, a more traditionally drawn portrait shows up with their text box as they speak.

There’s a certain whimsy to it all. It feels apt with how touristy the place is. Perfect Tides, the perfect island getaway! Even the music feels nice, going from a sedate sound emblematic of quiet island life, to boppy dance tunes, to chill music to do your homework to.

This game depicts the early 2000’s vibe pretty well. The dial-up sounds, the forums, the culture, interacting with people… it feels strange to feel nostalgic for such a time until you remember that yes, the 2000’s were two decades ago. And while I miss these simpler times, I do not miss how fast and loose people can be with their slurs and insults. And this game doesn’t shy away from depicting the bad along with the good.

Overall, the gameplay is okay but can be annoying at times. And the art style and music help with giving nice and chill vibes!

SUBSTANCE (Story, Characters, Impact)

I’ve talked about this a fair bit in the last section, but the writing really lets the 2000’s nostalgia shine through. There’s a lot of small tidbits that made me remember small memories. The dial-up sounds, the small conversations, the chats… it makes me feel fond of the past.

But with memories from the past come the accompanying memories of high school. The… awkward and embarrassing ones. And this is chiefly what Perfect Tides is all about: the coming-of-age of Mara Whitefish. We get to see all of her cringe moments, and we get to relive our own moments through her! How exciting! I am being sarcastic!

The story isn’t just a cringe compilation of the past though: it’s a very real look at adolescence. The immaturity, the insecurities, the anger, the fun moments… More than once I sighed at this child doing child things, willing her to be more mature and do something else. But she wouldn’t be a child then, would she? We have to make some mistakes by ourselves if we are to learn from them.

This game makes me remember one other game I’ve played in the past: Hypnospace Outlaw. This game also dealt with 2000’s nostalgia to tell a story. It made me think of how it feels like there is a slowly-growing trend in this type of game. Which is apt, considering what generation is growing up now, huh?

I dunno. It’s a rough game. It’s whimsical and yet too real. The cartoonish design of Mara hides the fact that she is a character with oh so real wants and needs. And her journey through this game is so well told.

I really like the story. It made all my struggles with the point-and-click gameplay worth it. I liked what it did!

VERDICT

Perfect Tides is an imperfect game. What it lacks in gameplay it makes up for with a great story and a lot of heart. It’s a time capsule for the early 2000’s, with all the baggage surrounding it. If you like visual novels with earnest stories, I recommend this game!

Door Rates Perfect Tides: 4/5!

[doorplays]

Door Reviews: The Rise of the Golden Idol (2024)

Color Gray Games released The Case of the Golden Idol in 2022. Enjoyers of the detective game genre picked it up and very much had fun with it. And in 2024, they released a sequel: this game! I’ve seen my friend play it, and now I managed to play it for myself. Let me share to you my thoughts!

What’s it about? The Golden Idol has been unearthed. The OPIG Corporation proceeds to experiment with it and see what it can do to help them. A great journey happens that shows what the Idol combined with human ingenuity is capable of.

STYLE (Gameplay, Graphics, Music)

The mechanics from the first game return, with a bit more streamlining: look at spots to discover more information and words that you will be able to use to fill in the blanks that the game presents. The spots are marked with exclamation points, which transform to downward-pointing brackets once looked into. Each spot reveals various things, books, ID’s, letters, various things that let you discover more of each case.

There’s no more separation between Exploring mode and Thinking mode: instead, you get access to the environment, and if you want to solve the case, you just click on the icons in the menu at the bottom. These open separate small windows where you can solve them. This new method allows them to have more space with solving cases as opposed to the old Exploring mode, but personally I’m not that much of a fan of having multiple windows to handle! I think I much prefer the UI of the first game.

Playing this game, I feel like there is definitely more importance in noticing everything. There are design choices in this game that toe the line between making things too obvious (and thereby making the investigation too easy) and making things too obscure (and thereby making the investigation too hard). Personally I’d rather evidence be more easily seen. I play these games for the logical exercise, not to find needles in haystacks. But I am realizing finding things and knowing where to look is also part of the genre. I imagine it feels very satisfying to spot something that’s not easy to spot. But I find more gratification in linking the evidence together and discovering what the evidence implies for the case.

Nonetheless, there were some parts where evidence really is hard to see. The exclamation points that mark the spots were usually close to the same color as their backgrounds, which makes me struggle sometimes in finding them. Some evidence is a sort of “blink and you’ll miss it” kinda deal, where you have to have somewhat keen eyes to see them. Makes me think further how to balance this kind of genre in a way that also allows for people with disabilities.

The number of cases in this came have nearly doubled in comparison to the first game. I think there are about 20 cases all in all, and a lot of them were very satisfying to solve. It is good to say that they still have the Golden Idol magic with regards to the cases!

My issue with this game is how janky it can be at times. It feels like it can be optimized more. The janky head bobbling at times, the sub-optimal graphic design, there’s a lot in this game that could be better. I think the game can settle with 2d graphics without going into 3d environments or something. Maybe that’d make it run better? Sometimes when a case loads, I try to click through to load it only to realize that it already has loaded behind the loading screen, and I’ve clicked some random stuff. It’s weird.

The whole last paragraph isn’t really a dealbreaker. It’s just me thinking the game can be much better in those departments. I think overall, the game has locked down its style, especially the gameplay, it just needs more optimization with regards to the programming, and better graphics design and UI design.

SUBSTANCE (Story, Characters, Impact)

The first game was set in what seemed like the Industrial Revolution age. It had its own worldbuilding which was somewhat expansive. The sequel expands on this, with the time period now set in what seems like the 70’s. With the rediscovery of the Idol, the game expands more on its capabilities, and introduces some more worldbuilding goodness.

I like the individual stories the cases told. Ranging from life in an apartment complex to a talent show gone wrong, there’s a lot of interesting vignettes to show. It made solving them much more enjoyable as I settled into the logic of each case.

While the overall story had its twists and turns, and I enjoyed them, this story didn’t hit as well as the first game’s story. I think it is because I do feel like the story didn’t change itself up too much. It was interesting at some points, but it did feel like the story wasn’t fresh enough overall. I wish they experimented more with the story, make it more interesting.

Nonetheless, I do still feel like it was fun. It explored what the Idol can do in different contexts. It showed more of the world. And teased some more potential things that can be done within the game’s worldbuilding.

All in all, the story is fun, but definitely could do with more experimentation. More risk. More exploration into unknown territory. But for what it is, it is an enjoyable and fun jaunt.

VERDICT

The Rise of the Golden Idol is a return to form. It showcases more worldbuilding, new characters, and more cases to investigate. While I think it could still use some improvement, it nonetheless succeeds in providing a fun gameplay experience.

Door Rates The Rise of the Golden Idol: 4/5!

[doorplays]

My Top Seven Games That I Played In 2024

Hello, gamers!

Another year, another top 10 list. But, well, it’s not quite a top 10 list. I don’t think I played enough games to justify a top 10. Nonetheless! I do have for you a top 7 list. Even if I’ve had less and less time to play games, I’ve still tried to play some, and I’ve played some enjoyable games the past year!

I’m ranking these games based on vibes, really. How much they’ve occupied my mind, how much they’ve affected me, how much they’ve influenced me as a person. I’ll be talking about how much I vibed with each game!

Let’s get to it:

7. Risk of Rain 2

Read my review here!

I had a lot of fun playing this game both alone and with friends! I like how colorful it can be, and how the various items and equipment interact with each other. Sometimes I like playing as a nigh-unstoppable katamari ball of items who’s going too fast for his own good LOL. I managed to 100% all achievements at one point (this was before the new DLC came out), so I’d say I got a lot of enjoyment out of this game.

6. Beginner’s Guide

Read my review here!

This game was interesting. Vignettes of small games shown in each chapter. The narrator talking about the artistic process of making games, his thoughts on it, and his friend’s thoughts on it. How their viewpoints clash… This game takes you on an unexpected ride. What do you make art for? Who do you make art for? It’s a good journey into game design and art nuances, and I am glad I played this game and saw its perspective.

5. 1000xRESIST

Read my review here!

A game that is unrelenting with its story, 1000xRESIST is an unexpected addition to this list. It was the last game I played for the year, and it grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. They do many nice flourishes to present their story, like a play that can only be presented via a video game. And it really made me feel for the characters. It is a very well-constructed narrative that will stay with me for a long time.

4. Mouthwashing

Read my review here!

I think in a year of indie darlings, this has been the most indie darling of them all. Its popularity spread wholly through word of mouth. I think buzz of this game started out on TikTok or something, with people cosplaying the characters. Not quite sure. Either way, people then started heralding this as a horror story that even rivals the newly released Silent Hill 2 remake. I had to experience this for myself, even if I didn’t do well with horror games at all, and barely play them. It was a hard playthrough for me, but I don’t regret it, as the game’s story and presentation really shows how you can utilize games as an art medium.

3. Balatro

Read my review here!

This game is so addictive. The gameplay itself is smart, there are a lot of ways for you to change your deck and to make it stronger via jokers. There are a fair amount of unique builds. But what makes this game pop is its aesthetic: it feels like you are being sucked in and lulled into a deep trance of poker hands and bells & whistles. The simple and swirling backgrounds, the chill and entrancing background music, the well-made sound design, and the clear UI all work together to make a game that gives you all the information you need easily so that you can continue playing those cards. Very fun game, just watch out or else you’ll realize you spent the entire day playing it!

2. Kentucky Route Zero

Read my review here!

An artpiece of a game that took almost a decade to finish, Kentucky Route Zero is a wonderful point-and-click game about many things. It’s a dreamlike drive through the long American highways. It’s a journey through memory lane, filled with nostalgia and regret. And most of all, it’s a reminder that despite hardships, communities will still persist. It has stayed in my thoughts for a while on the strength of its aesthetics, its music, and its story, and that’s why I placed this game so high in my rankings.

1. Ace Attorney Trilogy

Read my reviews: AA1, AA2, AA3

So many of my friends recommended this series. I finally sat down to play it, not thinking much of it. And I was blown away by it. The cheesiness of the jokes. The depth of the characters. The complexity of the cases. They all come together to create such a classic story beloved by all.

This is my top game of 2024. Honestly, it’s mostly because I didn’t expect to identify with Edgeworth so much. His story is one I felt genuine sadness for, and even if I initially hated him, I ended up rooting for him towards the end of the first game. He’s one of my favorite characters of all time now.

Beyond that, it’s an over-the-top court drama that’s not afraid of embracing its own eccentricities. And yet, it stays true to itself despite the craziness. That is worthy of respect.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I played a lot of games that focused more on story. A lot of the stories have stuck with me so far, especially games released in 2024.

I’ve also played a fair amount of roguelikes, with Risk of Rain 2, Balatro, and Noita. For some reason, Noita didn’t quite get me hooked. I think I prefer my roguelikes to be brainy without needing too much hand-eye coordination, or at least have them be more fun. Or, maybe, have them have a mobile version, especially now that I have a new job!

It was really hard to find out how to order the top 5 of this list honestly. 1000xRESIST, despite me having only played it in December, was such a strong game based on its themes. Mouthwashing made me buy a lot of merch. Ace Attorney made me buy even more! Kentucky Route Zero made me roll over its story in my head a lot, like a fine wine. And Balatro got me so fucking obsessed.

It was a good year of gaming for me, despite everything. And I’m looking forward to another year of discovering new gaming experiences

[doorplays]

Door Reviews: 1000xRESIST (2024)

Resistance.

There have been a lot of protests and revolutions across the world: the Stonewall riots, the EDSA revolution, the Tiananmen Square protests, and many others. Not all of them were successful, but they are keenly remembered by those who relate to their causes. Their sentiments persist through time, people passing on the knowledge of the past across generations. All of these protests, these revolutions… the one thing they have in common is that they want to be heard. To be witnessed. To be understood.

I’ve always thought that games are the most empathetic visual medium. They transport you into the world that they create, in the shoes of the characters that they have written and designed. You live their life, read their thoughts, control their actions. You make the story come to life.

So now, we have a game that is about the act of resistance itself.

Let’s get to it.

What’s it about? One thousand years after a pandemic ravaged the world, a society of clones persists. Watcher, a member of this society, is charged with witnessing their history. Through her eyes, we witness how this society came to be, and how Watcher reacts to the truths revealed to her.

STYLE (Gameplay, Graphics, Music)

I’m gonna go ahead and try to describe one by one each aspect of how this game presents itself.

The aesthetics of this game feel rather sci-fi animesque. When I started playing, it gave me a vibe that the story would be about someone in their teens. Like… a coming-of-age story, only sci-fi. They remind me somewhat of Atlus games, even if I’ve never played them before. The UI doesn’t reach towards the creative levels of Atlus, but it’s nonetheless clean enough. The aesthetics themselves are clean, with the character design distinctive enough for me to identify the different characters.

The environments you get to explore range from set pieces crafted specifically for the scenes, and an overall hub that you stay in for a good part of the game. The hub can be… confusing to navigate. Many times I have felt lost, and even if there was a map, I was reluctant to check it due to the stylistic choice they made in depicting it. I relied mostly on the waypoint system, which was helpful. The environments made specifically for some scenes were crafted very well in my opinion, and I feel like they are so tied to their respective story sections that I can’t really talk about them here.

The way they present the story feels like a play. It feels very dynamic! The developers did a lot of unique seeming things in how they presented their game. Varying camera angles, varying perspectives… It feels so fresh, and adds to the emotional punches the game dishes out.

The presentation feels enhanced by the music. Pianos feature a lot throughout, and there is some sci-fi vibes in some tracks. I like the music a lot, and plan to buy the soundtrack soon!

The full voice acting felt satisfactory. It served its purpose in making each character feel distinct, and making some lines have more weight. They had different VAs come on for some character. I’m honestly surprised they even included voice acting for the lines by NPCs. It made me feel like everyone mattered in their own way.

The gameplay itself is mostly walking, interacting, and exploring. There are scenes where you can fly from one point to another with a grappling hook-like rope thing too, making for some dynamism within scenes. Mostly though, you explore, talk to people, and progress the story the game is telling.

I feel like I’m not doing enough justice to the game with how I’m describing it so far. The aesthetics are fine. The graphics are okay. The environments are great! The voice acting is good. The music is great! The gameplay is just okay.

But the thing is that all of these combined, all of these working together to form a set piece where the characters carry out a scene and tell a story, THAT is where the game is. The whole becomes much more than the sum of its parts. It shows intense scenes filled with meaning, small moments that give comfort, short jokes, expansive worldbuilding, and many other story moments crafted very well with good environment design, character placement, music, and more.

Overall, I like the way the game uses its graphics, music, and gameplay to convey its narrative. This is very much a game whose first priority is the delivery of its story, and it takes great care that it is delivered in its intended fashion for maximum emotional effect.

SUBSTANCE (Story, Characters, Impact)

Do you remember the first time you cried?

It’s probably during childhood. Maybe you scraped your knee, hurt your arm while playing outside. Maybe your parents had to take away your toy because you were playing with it too much. Or maybe you saw something really sad on TV. Whatever it was, you were overwhelmed with emotion, and your body decided that the best way for you to release that emotion would be to cry it out.

Now that you are an adult, do you remember the last time you cried?

We all have different ways of expressing our emotions. Some people cry easily, tearing up with gentle acts of kindness. Most cry at occasions of import: weddings, birthdays, funerals. And some don’t cry at all, preferring to keep their emotions close to chest. Everyone has different coping mechanisms in the face of adversity.

It makes me curious, then: why do we cry? How do we arrive at our chosen coping mechanism? Is it just a thing that we subconsciously choose as we proceed with our growth? Or is it that we all have different breaking points, in that the more tragedies we face, the likelier we are to cry?

There is no definitive answer for these questions. There may never be one. But what 1000xRESIST focuses on in this game is the path of one person: Iris. We get to see how she copes. We get to see how she feels. And we get to see the legacy she left behind.

1000xRESIST is experienced through the point of view of Watcher, one of Iris’s descendants. She is born via cloning, as is everyone in the society of Iris clones that she inhabits. This society has its own system, and her role in this system is to watch. To observe the things around her. And to witness Iris’s life and memories.

What I like about this game is that it doesn’t just tell us Iris’s story, it also tells us how Watcher herself feels about Iris’s story. We get to see a story within a story, and see how the first story directly influences the second. How does Watcher feel about witnessing a history that not everyone in her society knows? How does she feel about living in their underground bunker, the Orchard? How do we feel seeing that society, witnessing how Watcher herself reacts?

This game isn’t just about Iris. This game is also about Watcher, her friends, and the world she lives in. She gets to do something not everyone gets to do: understand a God. Iris isn’t an ordinary woman: she is the ALLMOTHER, the one who gave them all life, a powerful being leading the charge against a dangerous threat. She has sacrificed so much just to ensure their safety, being away from the Orchard for hundreds of years, shepherding her best children away from the Orchard and into the frontlines of the war. And to walk this path, she had to make some hard decisions.

Watcher gets to witness these decisions. And Watcher gets to judge them.

If I could describe the game’s story in one word, I would use the word unrelenting. The game weaves in various topics and themes with such economy, making each chapter dense with meaning. It presents all of these themes with creative scenes that feel like a play, taking full advantage of the gaming medium in terms of narrative presentation. And it uses all the tools at its disposal to make sure its story hurts.

The game has a huge cast of characters with varying roles and importance. You get to see medics, engineers, librarians, all with their own perspectives and lives. You get to talk to each of them, and see their thoughts, their worries. It’s a little peek at the culture of the Orchard, and how the ALLMOTHER has shaped them all, for better or for worse. It feels impressive that we get to talk to so many! Though it can feel a bit tiring talking to everyone, even if sometimes it’s optional.

This game is rich in metaphors and allegory, but even with all the smoke and mirrors, I would say that this game is, strangely enough, unsubtle. In fact, I would say that it is unsubtle by design. It deals with heavy subject matter and it is SICK of feeling like it has to be coy about discussing them. It invites you to understand it, desperate for you to take in its messages. It wants you to feel the weight of history, to feel the effects of resistance a thousand years in the making.

It wants you to stand and bear witness.

Even weeks after I finished this game, it is still deep in my thoughts. It is such a good story, and presented very well. It made me feel forlorn. Nostalgic. Angry. Sad.

It made me cry. And that in itself makes it a great story.

VERDICT

Sunset Visitor has managed to create an intense and gripping narrative experience. It manages to take in so many topics and themes, talking about them in a way that makes them all relate to each other. It experiments with the medium somewhat, and delivers many emotional punches.

It’s one of my favorite games that I played in 2024. I very much urge you to play this game!

Door Rates 1000xRESIST: 5/5!