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Crawl is a game that just recently got greenlit on Steam, and it's a really fresh concept that will inevitably cause countless real-life friendships to meet their violent ends.

It's a dungeon crawler where one person controls the hero, and up to three others control the enemies (from grunts and traps, to bosses), but a nice competitive twist is that whichever of the hero's adversaries manages to kill him gets to become him. Whoever was playing as the slain hero is out of the game, and that "round's" victor gets to continue the journey.

The trailer doesn't specify whether the killed heroes get to exact revenge by becoming monsters as well, but I think it'll be fun either way. Hopefully they get online play and a release date confirmed soon!

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Deemo is free for a week!

This is my favorite iOS rhythm game; really cute art that tells a little point-and-click story in between solid rhythm gameplay, which this video should give you a good indication of.

Also, the artist of this particular song is releasing her first full album in September and she's really really great. Check out her Youtube channel.

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Played: Shovel Knight

Shovel Knight is a very rewarding action-platformer that manages to feel like an original NES title in every way. The trend among most NES-styled games is to capitalize on your nostalgia by throwing in as many references to and jokes about old games as they can, and hope that they attract enough attention to make a profit. Even if the game itself is good, it ends up being weighed down by all of this reliance on knowledge of old games.

Shovel Knight, on the other hand, is full of puns. No memes, no references, just puns. Achievement titles and song tracks are puns. There are two different NPCs who trigger large dialogue trees consisting of nothing but puns. It's incredible.

The gameplay is very solid, and even though I just beat it I immediately find myself wanting to revisit it on New Game Plus, or try to beat it with some limiters in place. For instance, it rewards you for breaking checkpoints (rendering them useless), or completing the game without using any special weapons. 

Every sprite animation is beautiful, and you can just tell how much love went into this game. At no point does it feel like a cash-in, even if it is stylized to attract people who grew up with the NES.

There's a "diary" in the Wii U version of the game that shows up on the gamepad and draws messages from other players who were in the same room as you, a-la Dark Souls. It serves as an ingenious hint system, and it also made me smile quite a few times seeing messages from young kids experiencing it for the first time. These are kids who never grew up with the games from which Shovel Knight draws inspiration, playing it with innocence and inexperience and loving it all the same. And THAT is a sign of a well-made retro-style game.

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Having now played a good amount of Game & Wario and Nintendo Land, I can safely say I'm optimistic about the system's future. But, maybe its far future.

The Wii U is kind of a confusing entity. Why is it also a Wii? There's already a Wii. Is it just an add on? Is the Wii U the gamepad, or the system? What does the controller screen do? Why does it also use Wii Remotes? 

These are all common questions from people who've never played one, and it's totally understandable. It's a weird device that is being marketed like the middle ground between the Wii and itself, when it is actually a completely new system. It is attempting to ride on the coattails of the Wii's success, and actually doing much worse because of it.

On its own, the Wii U is a ton of fun. Game & Wario and Nintendo Land are essentially tech demo collections (albeit genuinely fun ones), but they make it obvious that the gamepad is a real innovation with fun applications.

The Wii wasn't successful because it was some brand new unheard of technology; before the Wii Motion Plus came out, the remotes barely did more than mapping your random controller flailing to a button press. But, with the right PR, that was all it took to attract a crowd that doesn't normally play video games.

The Wii U, on the other hand, has this daunting beast of a controller, and most people are unsure as to what it even does. It's an amazing device, but I think it's still going to be quite some time before people are accustomed to it. It deserves to succeed, though. It's easily my favorite console of this generation.

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Alone With You is being billed as a "psychological romance adventure", and it's definitely caught my interest.

Details about it are sparse, but a dating sim that involves exploration gameplay in addition to the dialogue choices, especially one with a gender-neutral protagonist, is an idea that earns a spot on my radar right away. I've got a soft spot for characters falling in love with AI programs.

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Recent Mario RPGs are so disappointing because, despite STELLAR dialogue writing and fast-paced fun battles, they have gone back to relying on the most boring stories. The original Super Mario RPG, Thousand Year Door, and Super Paper Mario all did wild and risky things with their plots and characterization, and I miss that.

Dream Team was still a lot of fun, but it felt too content with simply keeping the status quo; it never surprised me.

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Whoa, some of you are still here!

I checked this blog on a whim recently and that Super Paper Mario post has a lot of notes! And it’s still going around! I had no idea.

I haven’t been using tumblr much, but I am still on my main blog occasionally, and that’s where I post my latest videos.

Rather than typing about games, I’ve been talking about them during Let’s Plays! So if you enjoyed the text posts on this blog, you’ll probably enjoy those even more! Go have a look!

I’ve been playing things like Bloodborne, Sonic Adventure, Undertale, and today I just started The Witness. I talk about social issues and make lots of mistakes. It’s a good time.

Thanks for following this blog! This will probably be the last post on here, so I hope to see you on youtube or on my main blog! <3

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I actually do want to talk about that video, because when I first saw it in Indie Game: The Movie, I got upset about it! The fact that someone could "miss the point" of Braid made me feel genuine anger, and now I couldn't feel sillier.

Games should always be about interpretation, especially one as vague and open-ended as Braid. It's wonderful to see someone enjoy the game so much without needing to delve into its deeper meanings. It's proof that you've created a multifaceted game that is capable of appealing to people with drastically different worldviews and interpretations of events, and that's not something to get upset about.

There's no "right way" to enjoy something; that's the fundamental concept on which I originally started this blog. "Play Braid without worrying about whether or not the Princess is a metaphor." That's a unique way to play.

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The Kirby franchise had such a big impact on my childhood, and the kind of horror that has ended up becoming my favorite type of fiction.

Mostly I mean Dream Land 3 and Crystal Shards, games that start off entirely colorful and innocuous, but which contain unsettling final bosses that deeply contrast the rest of the game's tone. They are monstrous in a beautiful sort of way, and make all that much heavier of an impact for the fact that they have been hiding beneath the otherwise-sweet surface of the game that whole time.

It sparked something in me when I was little; the idea of a horrible darkness masquerading as something average and cute has stuck with me as one of my favorite fictional tropes throughout my life. It's a twist, not in plot, but in tone, like when Moral Orel stopped being a comedy and started making you cry. Things like that hold a lot of importance for me.

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Anything you can tell us about Drakengard to get someone completely unfamiliar (like myself) interested?

That depends on how much you’d be interested in a game that contains sidequests such as “murder every child soldier you see”, enemies that resemble giant eye-less babies, and multiple endings where each one is bleaker and more desolate than the last. 

The story itself starts off as a typical one of revenge and salvation. Dragons killed your parents, yet you are forced to ally yourself with a dragon in order to save your own life and defend your kingdom from those who would conquer it. Even from the beginning, however, the protagonist Caim is regarded with fear by his comrades and enemies alike. He is an antithesis to the typical action “hero” who slaughters thousands of people while making sly one-liners, and still gets the girl and a happy ending. Caim is the story’s hero, but he is also a murderous monster, and the game never shies away from reminding you of this. His pact with the dragon costs him his voice, yet the silent violence only adds to his overwhelming aura of dread.

If I’m being honest, I would more likely recommend you watch a playthrough of the original Drakengard, rather than go through it yourself, because the gameplay is kind of dreadful. But if you want to get a taste for it, and a more accurate representation of what Drakengard 3 is going to be like, I suggest you play its spin-off title: Nier. 

The final and most difficult-to-obtain ending of Drakengard 1 is the strangest, most interesting thing that happens in the entire game. And, oddly enough, its events pave the path for an alternate universe in which Nier takes place, approximately 1350 years later. Nier is a much more genuinely fun game, and its story is an emotional roller coaster that I will never forget. This answer has gone on long enough, so I think I’ll save a more detailed analysis of Nier for its own post on another day, but I can say without a doubt that Nier is the first game I would recommend to anyone looking for something different and unique. It can also be played with absolutely no knowledge of Drakengard, but experiencing that game’s ending makes Nier even more of a wild ride than it is on its own.

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The idea of despair and pain in fiction is conveyed perfectly by Dangan Ronpa. Some of you have probably been turned off of that game by its fandom, but it is an incredible story that pulls off exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about here. It also contains one of my favorite villains of all time.

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Played: Steamworld Dig

I actually thought I would have more to say about this game than I do. It's a great concept; a civilization of steam-powered robots lies above the ruins of the long-forgotten human world, and you play as a digger robot who ventures down below to find the truth.

There's some really cool environments, and I had fun making progress and feeling myself become more powerful and versatile with each new power. But that sense of progression didn't really come to a head, because the climactic battle was very easy (especially compared to the rest of the game), and the ending wasn't satisfying. 

So, I'm left with not too many thoughts one way or the other. It's a cool world though, so I'm glad to hear that they're making another game in the series.

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Played: Mario Kart 8

It's Mario Kart. There honestly isn't too much to say about Mario Kart that everyone doesn't already know, but it's easily my favorite racing game. Everything about it is tightly packed together in a way that is always engaging and challenging, but demands no knowledge of cars or realistic racing techniques. 

One thing I'll comment on is the highlights-sharing feature. At the end of every race, 8 gives you a little highlights reel that uses an algorithm to automatically capture the most game-changing or exciting moments, and then lets you upload them to social media. People have gotten creative and uploaded some real laugh-inducing stuff.

It's nice to see Nintendo finally embracing the fact that the internet exists. Miiverse still has a lot of issues to work out, and the fact that the Friend Code system still exists is baffling, but they're getting there. Online multiplayer in MK8 works really well, too. 

It actually got me thinking about the next Mario Party. I haven't played a good Mario Party in so long, and I really hope 10 has online play. In an age where it's increasingly easy to become close friends with people who live hundreds of miles apart, I firmly believe that nearly every multiplayer game should operate online, if it is possible for the developers.

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I will rarely talk about such heavy things or make posts like that, but all the negative thoughts I've had stirring around since playing Ground Zeroes had to go somewhere.

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Played: Katamari Forever (PS3)

[Gonna start doing little write-ups every time I finish a game!]

Katamari Forever should have been marketed as a Katamari HD collection because that's exactly what it is; almost none of the content is new, but it's been so long since I'd played any of the Katamari games that I loved every minute of it just the same.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't depressed that there hasn't been a proper new one in many years, but this one was a decent compromise. The fantastic remixed music helps give it a fresh coat of paint, too.

The only genuine drawback is the slowdown that happens whenever you're in an area with too many objects. For what is essentially a PS2 game running on the PS3, I expected much better in that department. It does pull you out of the experience, which is perfectly fluid otherwise, and happens more often than you would expect.

Still, I'm the kind of person who gets emotional every time the Katamari theme starts playing, so Forever did a solid job of easing my pain.

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I've finished Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea, and I have to say it is an excellent example of how NOT to make a game in RPG-Maker.

The story is intriguing, the art is wonderfully colorful, and some of the characters are really likable. And the problem is, a story is all it is, and the fact that it's a game actually gets in the way of that. The battles, even the later boss battles, never amount to anything more than mashing Attack and watching your party win. The strongest enemy in the game couldn't stand a chance, and this detracts from the genuine threat you are supposed to be feeling, especially toward the end. 

The locations that you visit are vibrant, but you never actually DO anything outside of cutscenes. You're just walking from place to place as the game directs you, fighting obligatory battles just because it's a video game.

I'd like to see more creators realize that games don't HAVE to have battles. Or even exploration. Wadanohara could have incorporated battles in a fun way, but it also could have forgone them entirely if that was too difficult for the creator to achieve.

I would have actually enjoyed this story significantly more if it had been a non-interactive RPG-Maker movie, like Freebird Games' Do You Remember My Lullaby, or even if it was just a webcomic.

It's clear that the creator of Wadanohara had a story to tell, and that should have been enough. No gameplay at all is a better alternative to forcing the player to do monotonous and arbitrary things just to move the story forward.