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[justasmolliv]

L3: Black Heaven: A Necromantic Dating Sim

An ambitious visual novel which takes advantage of the medium, but cannot escape equivalent exchange.

I always appreciate a visual novel which understands that you'll play it multiple times, and makes your choices have a lasting impact across its narrative. While usually this manifests as a number of different endings which have to be navigated to reach a "true" final ending, Black Heaven: A Necromantic Dating Sim takes this a step further with its Fractal Madness mechanic to a mostly brilliant effect.

In Black Heaven you play as Uzo, a former scholar at Itzon Academy, a magic school dedicated to research on attaining immortality. Unfortunately, Uzo and his mentor Ru accidentally created a plague which caused uncontrollable growth and eventually destroyed most of the world. After the outbreak, Uzo fled underground and attempted to continue to find a cure, and it's here where the game begins.

As Uzo continues his own research, he is approached by a masked man who calls himself No-Eyes. No-Eyes offers Uzo a deal - if Uzo brings him the ghosts of Ru and his classmates Izagi and Lyse, he'll create a time loop for Uzo to relive his happiest memories of Itzon forever. No-Eyes will use the three ghosts to pursue his goal of chronomancy, a taboo area of necromancy research within the academia circle, and promises Uzo the luxury of forgetting about the death he helped to cause.

As Uzo travels back overground and towards Itzon, you play through his memories of his time there. You go to class, try to socialise with the other students, and attempt to woo Ru, Isagi, and Lyse. Despite my choices heavily leaning towards Izagi, I ended up romancing Ru. This was confusing to me, and I was disappointed by the lack of impact my choices seemed to have within this first third or so. 

I'm putting the fewest number of spoilers I can get away with in this review as Black Heaven is certainly a visual novel I think should be experienced. As Uzo explored the ruins of Itzon, it became clear why my choices couldn't have much impact. The true deplorability of his past actions is revealed as Uzo revisits the memories of his friends. This plot twist was one I hadn't seen coming, and it had me genuinely shaking my head at how cleverly I'd been duped as Uzo sat in front of a panel and was confronted by what he'd done.

Once you learn the truth about what happened, it's up to you how to deal with Ru, Izagi, Lyse and No-Face. Do you hand them over as he asked, or set them free and return empty-handed? There's definitely bad endings, and even worse ones, but there's an obvious good path which the game encourages you towards.

This is where I feel the Fractal Madness mechanic lets Black Heaven down while still enhancing a playthrough. Fractal Madness accrues as you reload the game to revisit choices, something I'd been doing a lot to attempt to get myself onto Izagi's romance route. I'd try out all available options to see what the characters' reactions would be, before reloading once again and choosing the one I liked the most. The more you revisit decisions, the more things become distorted. As Uzo was sneaking around the burnt husks of the lavish buildings I'd once seen, the music started to stutter upon itself. Memories would start to become distorted and gruesome, before Uzo reminded himself those events didn't really happen. I really enjoyed this effect, as I never knew when it could kick in and start to make me question whether what Uzo was really experiencing and remembering was the truth.

But the caveat is that all the reloads and choices happen in a single playthrough. As I explored the knock-on effects of earlier choices, I ended up with a lot of manual saves which I had to remember the order of, whereas other visual novels might handle this with a branching map you can dive back into. Overall, I was quite nice to Ru, Izagi, Lyse and No-Face, and I could explore their endings without really needing to change the choices I had made during the game. Replayability is tied into a single playthrough, where you're encouraged to reload and try different options, rather than a branching narrative which acts like a reiteration of events.

I'd have loved to see Fractal Madness go even more unhinged and bring in more horror and uncertainty, but in general I think Black Heaven is a well-written, engrossing story which uses the medium of visual novels and the habits of its players to great effect. Its own mechanic somewhat becomes its own limit, and one plot twist in particular is quite easy to figure out early in the game, but I have to commend Black Heaven for attempting something new with the meta of visual novels.

As I said before, I think Black Heaven is a visual novel which should be experienced. Its characters are well-written and relatable, the music is haunting, and the way it tries to tell its story is ambitious. If you're also looking for a good old musing on metaphysics and philosophy then Black Heaven is one I'd recommend.

[A copy of the Steam version of Black Heaven: A Necromantic Dating Sim was provided by developer and publisher Occult Triangle Lab.]

[justasmolliv]

L3: Thronefall

Tower defense made approachable and replayable.

I'm not usually one for tower defense games, but put some action gameplay in there and give me a free demo, and I'm more than willing to give it a go.

That's exactly how I got hooked on Thronefall, and having played through what's available in Early Access, I'm very eager to see what else developer GrizzlyGames has planned.

Thronefall is all about expanding and defending your kingdom. The game is split up into levels, each with its own challenges. At the start of each level, you must first place a castle, after which you can expand into a variety of other buildings and features to aid in your defense.

Each building and subsequent upgrade costs money, meaning you have to be very careful in deciding what to buy. Do you buy a house, to increase your income over the long term? Or do you invest into some barracks to have foot soldiers to help fight back waves of enemies?

The variety of options available with upgrades for buildings combined with the three different weapons and abilities you can choose provide you with plenty of gameplay styles. Take into account the various perks and modifiers for each level and there's tons of replayability to be had.

One thing I particularly enjoy about Thronefall is the size of each level. As the camera follows you around, it ends up cutting of parts on the other side of the map. This really makes you focus on your choices, as if you end up moving over to the left, you'll have no idea what's happening on the right. You need to have faith in your strategy, as you can't oversee everywhere all at once.

There were a couple of times I felt frustrated, which occurred when I played levels for the first time. Before you start each wave, the game shows you icons and numbers to represent what enemies you'll face. If you haven't played the level before though, you won't know what it is, meaning you have to blindly set up your defenses and hope you have something that's effective. This happened to me a couple of times, where I was caught out because I didn't know what type of enemy was about to come, making the process feel a little bit like trial and error rather than thought-out planning.

Another issue I ran into with Thronefall is the UI. I found it difficult to see the ability cooldown whilst I was commanding soldiers, which ultimately led to a bit of button mashing. The issue is even worse on Steam Deck, though performance-wise it's stable - if you're going to play Thronefall in handheld mode I highly recommended going into the options and increasing the UI size.

Thronefall is a game you could easily whittle away the hours with. It took me around five hours to clear each level, but I can easily see myself putting in another 20 to tackle all the challenges and unlock every perk. I'll be sticking to it on my desktop, though.

[justasmolliv]

L3: Venba

This cooking, narrative puzzler is more of an appetiser than a main meal.

This short piece contains spoilers. Do not read on if you plan on playing Venba without any prior knowledge of plot and gameplay.

After attending a digital preview event for Indian cooking and narrative game Venba, I was intrigued to see what the overall experience would bring me.

Having now played the game, the immediate feeling I came away from Venba with was one of warmth. Its colour palette, rich with reds and yellows and greens, really help to convey a feeling of comfort throughout, even when its characters are feeling something that's the exact opposite of comfort. Its homage to Tamil culture and attention to detail is astounding, something which I touched on in my write-up of Venba's preview.

The gameplay is split into two halves - first, the narrative is told through a cutscene, before we're presented with a cooking puzzle to solve. The story follows Venba and Paavalan, a married couple who emigrated to Canada from Tamil Nadu, and their son Kavin. The game spreads its narrative across three decades, and I feel that this allows developer Visai Games to use its puzzles to cleverly reflect how connected Venba's characters feel to Tamil culture and their ancestry.

We start off playing as Venba in the 1980s, who has to rely on memories of her mother's cooking to work out the recipes in a slightly destroyed recipe book that's been passed down to her. Sometimes it's unclear what order to add ingredients, or how much of each ingredient we need to add. As we experiment with the order of steps, Venba will offer up observations on what went wrong, and how your end results differs to the dishes she remembers. It's a great way to seamlessly include a hints system in a puzzle game.

Fast forward 20 years, and we're now playing as Venba in the early 2000s. The game removes the puzzling element of the cooking here, instead highlighting what the next ingredient to add or what the next step is. It makes sense within the context of the game - by this point Venba has spent years restoring her mother's recipe book, and is experienced in cooking these dishes - but it peels away a lot of the "puzzle" from the game.

The game progresses to the 2010s, where we then step into Kavin's shoes. Kavin posesses Venba's recipe book, which she left to him once she returned back to her hometown, but his problem is different. Although the recipes are restored, he can't read them as they're written in Tamil. He's able to translate little bits here and there, but it's up to us to experiment again and figure out each step.

I ended up feeling like I was almost replaying the same puzzles I had done half an hour ago. Even though the obstacles faced by Kavin were different, I was able to use my experience of playing as Venba to help Kavin cook. By fast-forwarding to playing as Kavin and stretching the narrative across such a long period, Venba touches on themes of generational trauma - how the decisions and actions from our parents can affect us, and how culture is passed along down generations of immigrants - but only manages to scratch the surface.

I'd estimate Venba would take around two hours to complete at a stretch - I was done in just over an hour. This short runtime isn't enough to properly characterise Venba, Paavalan, or Kavin beyond their grapples with culture and identity, nor is it enough for the game to delve deeper into these issues.

Overall, I enjoyed the cooking puzzles and atmosphere of the game. The sound design is brilliant - each sizzle and crackle of ingredients frying is sharp and crisp - and I love the soundtrack. I also appreciate how many nods to Tamil culture and history have been packed in. But the game is unable to truly explore its themes of immigration and reconnecting with culture in its 90 minutes.

What I will say is if you're interested in playing a game which tackles the treatment of immigrants of colour in a western country, Venba is a great game to play. If you're looking for something short and cosy to play through on a rainy day, Venba is perfect for that - it's a game that's been lovingly crafted and that comes through with its presentation.

For me, the lack of characterisation given to Venba's cast, particularly Kavin, is regrettable. Visai Studio's decision to not show the characters grappling with culture and identity, issues which are inherent to the experiences of immigrants, beyond a brief "10 years later, they all lived happily ever after"-esque ending for Venba and Kavin left me wishing the game had been just a little bit longer, and a little bit more willing to give its characters space to really get into the meat of these matters.

[justasmolliv]

A celebration of the less graphically fortunate animals in video games, @lowpolyanimals is the blog you should be following for (literal) creature comforts throughout the day. 

Whenever I come across animals in video games, I have some questions I need answering. A checklist of sorts, if you will. Can I pet you? Can I feed you? Or even worse, do I have to fight you? But I recently discovered @lowpolyanimals​, which is making me ask new questions. Why is this shark dressed up like a nurse? Why is Momma Bear holding a gun?? And lord help me I’ve fallen in love with the chihuahua from Petz: Dogz 2 how can I break into this game and steal this round baby? 

I’m the kind of person who follows Possum Every Hour on Twitter, or Pig Every Hour, or Unsolicited Dik-Diks. I have never followed anyone for that sort of content here on Tumblr (because that’s what Twitter is for) but that all changed the day a picture of some Shiba Inus from Nintendogs appeared on my dashboard. ‘Cute!’ I thought to myself, and reblogged out of guilt for the abandoned dogs on my DS for the nostalgia. From there it just snowballed. Every blog that I follow was reblogging rats, raccoons, and remlits, all from the same source, and I was powerless against the thrall of these video game critters. They’re somewhat crude, either all angles or just extremely Rotund, but that just makes them all the more endearing. 

@lowpolyanimals​​ is a submission-driven blog, run by owner Mod Rat, where others like myself gush over our love of low poly animals. I spoke to Mod Rat to find out more, and also to thank them profusely for serving us the best content on this site. 

I was extremely interested in finding out what drove Mod Rat to start off @lowpolyanimals​, and they revealed a history that I wasn’t even aware of!

MR: “I was a big fan of the blog when it was run by the previous owner and one day I noticed that they had decided to stop running the blog. When I saw that the tumblr URL was free I decided to take it and take on the responsibility of what came with it. The blog was such a positive little outlet and I knew it was so well loved by so many people and so I wanted to keep it going for everyone's enjoyment (as well as my own). I knew it would be a bit of a commitment and potentially challenging at times, but I was ready to take on the challenge and give a little back!“

I’m disappointed in myself that I didn’t know @lowpolyanimals​ existed until about a month ago, but it definitely is a much loved space. Looking across the blog’s archive since the reboot, it’s clear that we've needed this small reprieve of cosy content on our dashboards. I think I speak for everyone when I say that I’m glad @lowpolyanimals​ is back.

But exactly what is it about these models that we’re all so mad about? At first, I thought it was just the element of nostalgia. It’s nice to take a moment to stop and reflect on how designers overcame graphical and memory limitations when making this content. But the more I thought about it, I realised that what I found more fascinating is what the models are made up of. Or the lack thereof. There’s a certain magic to taking a real-life object and then reducing it down to something much simpler, yet still recognisable. 

Take this sheep from Spyro 2, for example. 

It’s just a really short bipyramid with some rectangle legs, and a vague circle of a head. Yet it’s still got the exact essence of a sheep (helped along by some textures). My most recent favourite is the monkey from Stranded 2. 

His head is practically the same size as his body and his arms sort of just look like limp sausages dangling there. But when you take him in as a whole, there’s just no doubt about it - that is definitely a monkey right there.

Mod Rat sums it up quite well:

MR: “I think these models are so charming and each one has so much character. Sometimes when I see particular models that are so simple but they just nail exactly what they are meant to be, I can't help but smile.“

This isn’t a technique exclusive to older games. Splatoon 2, released in 2017, has a pigeon that is so round and delightful to look at. 

Have I ever seen a pigeon as fat as that in real life? Maybe, but certainly not often enough. It’s an exaggeration of the image of the pigeon that we’re used to, verging on a caricature, but the final result is unmistakeable. It’s extremely satisfying to look at something so simplistic and understandable - one glance and you know exactly what it is.

Mod Rat is perhaps the loudest advocate for the rat from Old School Runescape, which they have proudly stated as their favourite low poly animal several times. So I thought that I would give them something a little bit harder to answer - what is the worst low poly animal that they’ve had the misfortune of being shown?

I was directed to the gorilla from Flying Gorilla, which Mod Rat described as “intimidating”. Looking at him, I can certainly understand that sentiment. Despite this, Mod Rat was keen to assure me that this doesn’t make him a lesser of our beloved low poly animals.

MR: “I remember one tumblr user said 'cursed flying gorilla is here to protect you and deflect bad vibes' and honestly? Maybe all I needed was a change of perspective. Shout out to the flying gorilla.”

Click on the previous link to see the gorilla in all his flying glory. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether he’s shielding you from all the horrors in the world, or if he’s just cornered his next victim and you’re about to find out what it’s like becoming gorilla dinner…

When asked if they have any real-life pets, Mod Rat responded by saying that they weren’t quite ready for that responsibility yet, but absolutely adore the pets of their family and friends. I’m sure that they love them just as much as our low poly animals, regardless of their polygon count.

A huge thank you to Mod Rat for taking the time to chat with me. Please go and support all their hard work over at @lowpolyanimals!