#and the dev has fixed some bugs and softlocks from the original games

[formicarum-rex]

thanks to the hard work of folks at scummvm, the era of playing nancy on your phone while curled up under the covers on your bed or waiting for the bus has arrived. welcome to the future!

[laytonloztew]

I Played: Verloren, Living Playground: The Witch's Puppets

I've been meaning to play the games of some cool rpgmaker game devs I've met since making my own game, so today I played VERLOREN and LIVING PLAYGROUND: THE WITCH'S PUPPETS.

I literally own merch of one of these games, so I think its beyond time I give them a try. I thought I would post some thoughts + a recommendation to check these games/devs out too.

VERLOREN

Fav. Characters: Vladimir

Playtime: ~1 hour

Version: 0.03 DEMO

https://gamejolt.com/games/Verloren/486793

@choko-flan

Chris finds himself cold and alone in a void - but Vlad, self-proclaimed weirdo and straight-up LAD, soon accompanies on our quest for the key out.

While dialogue-heavy isn't my loaf of bread, I'm interested in seeing how Chris & Vlad's relationship changes over the course of the full game. I'm also looking forward to more locales like the dreamy (and tasty) sweets dimension.

I liked the arcade mini-game, especially how it resembled an actual arcade game. I let Vlad beat it for me to get the authentic experience.

While it mostly stems from my own impatience, I did feel some back-and-forths with Vlad dragged on a smidge. I think the planned character portraits will help a lot, as well with the difficulty in keeping track of who is speaking.

I find myself asking the essential questions: WHO is Vlad? WHY is Vlad? But what no one ever asks: HOW is Vlad?

While a short and unfinished demo, I'm looking forward to seeing more of Verloren in the future :) VLAD/10

LIVING PLAYGROUND: THE WITCH'S PUPPETS

Fav. Characters: Haze, STRONG PICKLE

Playtime: 2.5 hours

Version: 1.0.1

https://gamejolt.com/games/the-witchs-puppets/425031

@game-meak

I find myself asking the essential questions: WHO is STRONG PICKLE?

Not knowing anything going into this (and having not played the original), I was pleasantly surprised (with Verloren as well) that I was into it as much as I was.

Tony, Pablo, and Octavio (or as us Living Playground-heads would say: Slide, Swing Set, and Monkey Bars) are siblings in a world of witchery and geese. Two witches are really good friends, and our heroes are sent into pocket dimensions for stealing without permission.

I liked the game show section (maybe I missed references with the other contestants), I thought it was a fun bit.

I am kind of concerned that I saw the chalkboard and thought 'oh hell yeah, hangman!'

I could definitely tell at a certain point that this game's events were of/inspired by personal experiences, so I wasn't surprised to see that in the post-mortem. The contrast in theme over time is shocking, how a character treats the siblings differently as the game progresses. I felt that I had maybe brushed off earlier signs of this change, just like a certain character did?

I do think it would have been cool to pick a side in the conflict and get a different ending, but if it’s based off personal experience then I suppose that wouldn't quite work out.

When Pablo laid there like a peanuts character, I felt that - when STRONG PICKLE told me to wash my hands, I felt that.

The included walkthrough proved vital for my playthrough, because I'm an idiot. I searched it out after thinking I was stuck when placing gems on pedestals, not knowing I could remove a gem if it wasn't correctly placed and that I didn't need a gem for the middle pedestal.

I would have probably been stuck for ages looking for items if I hadn't checked with the guide occasionally, and for that I salute this pdf document.

I did get soft locked at a point: Choosing 'O' before 'P' in the hangman puzzle prevents 'P' from being usable. A typo in the eventing is the culprit, but of course I happened to run into it naturally.

I also was curious about the slide puzzle lag, so I looked into it. I always feel a slight guilt from opening people's games with the intent to fix things without being asked - but I can't help myself.

Each unsolved piece is checked each frame if it has been solved by comparing positions of the solution spot and the tile's current spot. What I would do is have each tile check if its solved only after being pushed. I went ahead and modified it myself just for fun (so I can get the speedrun world record >:]), but I noticed something about this puzzle while doing this:

I didn't notice while playing that the puzzle pieces can be pushed on top of each other. That's kind of weird. You can push the pieces out onto the water or stack them together (I did try to 'automatically' solve the puzzle by stacking them all up and pushing the stack into each space, can't be done lol). What an odd decision, right?

Oh.

I'm guessing the puzzle isn't entirely reset on pumpkin interact because it would be real annoying to mispush the last piece and have to reset the whole thing, but with this puzzle design it means it is possible to softlock when doing this piece last. I'm not sure if the lack of collision is meant as a solution to this exact issue, but I thought it was interesting. In my build I added collision to the tiles and just made it so one of the adjacent tiles to the inner one always gets reset.

With some minor bugs and issues abound, Living Playground: The Witch's Puppets surprised me. While I'm not very attached to the main 3, I did feel for the 2. I relied on the walkthrough a bit much, but I had a good time. STRONG PICKLE/10