#card shark

[vintage-tigre]

[spacevixenmusic]

Source: Ranma ½ [1991]

[karnaca78]

Inktober Day 14: Castle

Cainhurst looks like the right place to hold a lavish vampire party. Based on the lovely art style of the video game Card Shark.

[clown-paws]

> me and my gurl dont argue she takes me under her command and i flush and stimmer like a betting man.

[zincfingermotif]

underneath it all

[dai1324]

[spectre-ship]

2022 has been an excellent year for video games, by which I mostly mean the weird indie stuff I like (the only major release I played was Elden Ring, actually.) I figure I'll put up a highlights reel of smaller things I liked that came out this year:

- Iron Lung: great little spooky game by the Dusk guy. I really like games like this, little 1 or 2 hour experiences that focus on doing one thing really well. Also a great example of how budget development can be turned in the game's favor--the gameplay revolving around taking grainy photos hides the game world's relative barrenness, and the choice to use an FPS engine for a game where you pilot a submarine does a lot to make the game feel more claustrophobic than something with a dedicated interface would.

- Card Shark: a narrative adventure game telling a picaresque story of 18th century France. It's a little uneven, but it's basically Barry Lyndon's Warioware--I had a lot of fun with it. Has a really gorgeous artstyle as well as a great soundtrack.

- Trombone Champ: I know this was the streamer game du jour back in September, but it's genuinely pretty fun and has some really great jokes, as well as doing a hell of a lot with a largely public domain soundtrack. I think it's a lot more innovative than it seems--it's a rhythm game where you actually play the music note by note, instead of hitting buttons for canned soundbytes.

- The Case of the Golden Idol: a Return of the Obra Dinn-esque mystery game (I think a lot of people, myself included, heard about it when Lucas Pope signal boosted it.) Has a pretty novel method of deduction making and a really ingenious final twist. The plot is more outlandish than I'd expected but it executes some pretty interesting ideas. Also, it has an enjoyably weird artstyle--sort of a grotesque Monkey Island kind of thing.

- Frog Detective 3: I played the whole trilogy in 2 days. Very cute and has some good jokes in it.

- Pentiment: Easily game of the year for me, I beat it day 1 and then posted about it for a week straight. An ingeniously constructed visual novel* about the grand tapestry of history and the rippling effect of our choices throughout our lives and those of others. I don't want to drag this out because I've described my thoughts on it elsewhere and I'd need a whole book on its own to get all of them down, but suffice to say it's an incredible game.

Also an honorable mention to Gloomwood, a promising immersive sim that went into early access in October, and an honorable mention to Dwarf Fortress for its Steam release, which despite a couple minor hiccups has gotten me playing that game more than I have in half a decade.

I haven't finished FAITH 3 or played Norco, but those are also on my list for this year, so I'll reblog with an addendum if I get around to either before January.

*"visual novel" used loosely here. it's somewhere between Night in the Woods and Disco Elysium, but visual novel feels like the most appropriate term due to the amount of reading involved.

[chloroformhm]

the

[chrismas95]

Wait Card Shark is based

[psychiclounge]

i woke up this morning and went ‘hm. i think i’d like to look at these parts of the trailer forever, actually,’

[vintage-tigre]

[spacevixenmusic]

Source: My Dad The Bounty Hunter [2023]

[knucklejoe]

i’m sooo normal about this game

[slavicasexual]

just a small meme I made

[aotwy24244]

Haven’t drawn so much lately

[shibee-inu]

Say hello to my specialest boy and if you don't clap I'll blow you up <3