#Game Review

[slitherpunk]

games i liked in 2023 (And Other)

I like games ! You know that ?! and I played a lot 2023! and I liked a lot :). They aren't in any specific order, it's just a little highlight of games that stood out to me this year. I've attempted to write a few thoughts on each so I hope take a look. I wrote playtimes for some also but that is very subjective.

-Ones that actually came out 2023-

Lunacid https://store.steampowered.com/app/1745510/Lunacid/ I think I mentioned enjoying this in 2022 but it officially released so I can say it was one of my favorite games in 2023 :3! I like to feel around this game's walls for secrets. I like the npcs that are full of hope and whimsy despite the bleakness of its world. Chill and occasionally spooky first person dungeon crawling around moody caverns and ruins varying from underground forests to vampire castles and blood lake. (Blood lake!!!! Lake of blood!!! Big creature there.) Lots of fun weapons and spells to find, I like the one that lets you turn blood into coffins.

~20 hours

Orbo's Odyssey https://feverdreamjohnny.itch.io/orbos-odyssey If you played the massively popular demo for "Peeb Adventures" by feverdreamjohnny then you know that Johnny makes some fun and funny games and this is certainly one of them. speedy and satisfying platforming! funny dracula moments! short and sweet.

~2 hours

A Walk in the Woods https://mooncaller.itch.io/a-walk-in-the-woods Quaint little GBStudio game :) Made by some friends of mine for a jam :) It's cute I like it. There's minigames where you catch bugs and birdwatch.

~30 minutes long

Undertale Yellow https://gamejolt.com/games/UndertaleYellow/136925 I've only completed the pacifist run and checked out a neutral run so far. as the title somewhat implies, this is a prequel to Undertale where you play as the fallen human who had the yellow colored soul. This Undertale fangame has a lot of charm!!! A lot of battles really feel like they could have been in the original, with quite a bit of extra flair in some circumstances.

~10 hours

vs really cool bird https://bobacupcake.itch.io/vs-really-cool-bird you know that really cool bird that rob bobacupcake made well you can fight it in undertale and it's really fun. yeah two undertale fangames. . . wat of it …

~30 minutes

Misericorde: Volume One https://xeecee.itch.io/misericorde I wont lie the main draw for me into this was cute anime nuns I sure didn't know a whole lot else about it when I dug into it. But it's (the first part of) a VN murder mystery! And I enjoyed it a whole lot. All the characters are memorable and I really enjoy how all of them have differentiating designs. The protagonist is so failgirl. She sucks so much and I love her. I'm very intrigued by the mechanics of the game's world, it clues you in near the beginning to expect something a bit supernatural/fantastical, which gives you (and later the protagonist) a curiosity about what's real and what isn't. The music is all very impressive too, with the ost reaching past 100 tracks varying through post-rock, folk, drum & bass, and others. (Remembering when the track "Scandal" played and my friends and I took a moment to be like- okay hang on this track pwns.) Big fan of its haunting locals and how the aesthetic of the game fits them well. Also the humor is a lot of fun, and I love all the moments getting to know the different characters. Very excited to see the eventual continuation of this.

~12 hours

Absolutely Perfect Specimen https://chambersoft.itch.io/absolutely-perfect-specimen It seems like a lot of people are craving toxic horror yuri lately. Here's a recommendation. It's a VN about the android maid "Pan" and the mad scientist girl who created her. Horrifying & gut wrenching & largely about having other people define you. The art and music is haunting & poignant and matches the ever increasing feeling of dread throughout. It's yuri with the chunks. Peak robotgirl horror for those who can stomach it.

~90 minutes

Wordhopper https://kokoscript.itch.io/wordhopper Very quaint word search type puzzle game for ms dos! I think its style is very slick and that's pretty impressive to see. Chill game with nice vibes and eyecandy visuals. also it was so cool to have played this and then ended up seeing the dev's booth at Vintage Computer Festival Midwest. I was like omg woah I just played this.

~bunny

Bossgame https://lilyv.itch.io/bossgame This game is yuriful as f*ck. Delightful humor and fun character dynamics! A simple-to-understand-difficult-to-master boss rush battle system that makes you satisfied to get it right, and enticing to get just a little farther if you get it wrong. There's a lot of detail and charm to this game's menus and dialogues and win screens, I remember noticing that once you beat a boss there would be some marquee text that would pass by with some prose on it. I love how it balances its silly moments with its heartfelt moments and its high octane moments. I like the character development and revelations had throughout the plot. & I like how good the protagonists are for each other :) It's very sweet. It's hype as hell. if you want some boss rush action paired well with that sweet sweet girl's love, you *will* play this game.

~5 hours

Elly's Adventure https://bikwins.itch.io/ellys-adventure Very cute and witchy!! You are the little witch girl "Elly" on an adventure to get your toys back!! Feels like a pretty authentic gameboy type experience, it takes a lot of design cues from Kirby's adventure and the like. I am a big fan of how playful it feels.

~1 hour

Nour https://store.steampowered.com/app/1141050/Nour_Play_with_Your_Food/ This was a treat for me, but I understand that not everybody is going to get it. It's a game where you play with food(and food accessories). And that's it. It knows what it was going for. I think a lot of people were expecting something else for some reason. It's a cute little toy game and I felt satisfied with my time with it.

~food

Hi-Fi Rush https://store.steampowered.com/app/1817230/HiFi_RUSH/ Do I have to say this game is super fun? It's a big one everybody probably already knows it. This game's dopey humor made me laugh a lot and I'm not afraid to admit it.

~12 hours

WHISKEY.ST2007S https://bonicle.itch.io/whiskey-st2007nes One of the last games I played in the year because it released super last minute. Does anybody else get a rush when running a shopping cart down the parking lot? This emulates that feeling. Short game where you collect whisky stones in the whisky stone dimension because you forgot to go christmas shopping until the very last minute. it rules. It's very short you can go play it right now & get a highscore.

~5 minutes

re:curse https://devpalmer.itch.io/re-curse Discovered this one near the very end of the year also. Fun little rpg maker horror/humor game about a weird scientist lady, her butch, and an evil clown computer virus that figured out how to warp reality. I got a kick out of it. and also enjoyed digging through the game's files, which was actively encouraged by the dev, which I thought was very fun.

~90 minutes

-Didn't technically get to until 2024 but released last year-

SWOLLEN TO BURSTING UNTIL I AM DISAPPEARING ON PURPOSE https://1207.itch.io/swollen-to-bursting-until-i-am-disappearing-on-purpose People love to dunk on a lot of indie rpgs for being "quirky Earthbound inspired and about depression" or whatever. Earthbound's great. If people can nail the kind of humor and absurdity it likes to pull off while also balancing difficult topics I think that deserves a high mark. SWOLLEN TO BURSTING was fun. Bizarre and charming places to explore & distressing secrets to find. I like how it blends meander-around-the-town gameplay with Yume Nikki sort of exploration and effects. Also I'm a big fan of the music. I like how it has the lofi sound which matches the early 3d look of the game.

~6 hours

HalOPE https://starbage.itch.io/halope Another for the fans of sweet little rpg maker games that have a lot of heart. HalOPE is about an incomplete little angel wondering through worlds. Each has a theme, usually to do with an emotion or feeling, and they do well at evoking that feeling as well as its antithesis. a lot of the music is very homey and charming at moments and unnerving at others, sometimes lonely, all doing well in their corresponding chapters to further the feeling of its specified theme. There are so many delightful characters and designs in this & I found myself feeling really attached to their tiny little stories. The narrative at the core of it all hit me. If I may be vulnerable, I cried a whole lot at various moments in this game. It was really cathartic. I feel very excited for people to experience this game.

~5 hours

-Favs I finally got around to that didn't come out 2023-

An Outcry https://quinnk.itch.io/an-outcry Kind of sad it took me so long to get to this one, but glad it meant I got to play the "definitive" updated version of it. Apartment wandering RPG maker horror. Bum smokes from your neighbors and use them to save the game. I wish I could unwrap a lot more of what I like about this game than I can without spoiling too much. But if I could, I'd probably go on for too long. Let me attempt to be succinct & not giving too much away. You can tell pretty early on that An Outcry is about taking action when necessary & not turning a blind eye. What it explores about player vs protagonist agency is very fascinating to me as well, and I enjoyed learning about the inspirations for why the game's narrative works the way it does. The character Anne is such a sweetie and I love her a whole lot. This game has a very tangible feeling, this apartment complex is dirty and crumby, it smells of smoke, and there's a surrounding desperation you can feel.

~5 hours

Pigments https://punkcake.itch.io/pigments Honestly I had gotten this game in a bundle and while I was playing it I hadn't looked at the name and I just kept calling it FRUIT. On call with my friends I'd be like "hey im gonna play more FRUIT". I straight up didn't read the title screen. But it's called Pigments. You play as a fruit and you try to paint the whole floor and not get sliced by buzzsaws. Fun little arcade type game.

~fruit

Bridge, October 3rd https://lowpolis.itch.io/bridge-october-3rd Very short vignette. I like it. It's what it says it is. I'm not going to overexplain.

~like a minute

-Other Games I Want To Mention-

Pseudoregalia https://store.steampowered.com/app/2365810/Pseudoregalia/ I think a lot of people might have already known this one but I felt like it was a pretty fun 3d platformer. There were a few issues I had with it (boss fight at the beginning was frustrating, and I got lost a lot [but it looks like there's been a map patch by now, so, perhaps for some that is a fix]). I enjoyed it but sure felt weird that the only accessibility option was to give the protagonist pants. What kind of joke is that?

~5 hours

Mushroom Musume https://mortallymoonstruckgames.itch.io/mushroom-musume (Disclaimer, this game is still early access, but I saw a lot of people talking about it last year. SO I will mention here?) Haven't played much of this yet, but I have enjoyed what I played so far!! As of writing I've gone through 6 playthroughs, I feel like I've hardly scratched the surface and I've been so impressed by its depth. It's very charming, you never know what sorts of fairytale shenanigans are going to happen, and it's very cool to see how your different stats will affect things. It very much plays out like a roguelike vn. Which is not the sort of thing you may expect to make much sense but it pulls this off well. Also all the mushroom girls are very cute and I love them very much. I hope the sad goopy one who had bugs in her skin rests in peace.

~mushroom

Knuckle Sandwich https://andybrophy.itch.io/knuckle-sandwich -_- Hm. Where do I start with this one. I was pretty excited for this one since the demo and kickstarter in 2018. I felt like the demo was a hell of a hook that got me curious & horrified. As time went on, it seemed to be shaping up into something really cool. turn based combat with action commands and wario-ware-type microgames?? with a banging soundtrack?? like, count me in!! Then it released and well, the gameplay, art, music all delivered. It was very fun and engaging in those aspects. But the story… oh it just devolves into disappointing nonsensical randomness. The whole hook at the beginning seemed to be completely thrown away for the wild goose chase plot that ensues, leaving you to wonder if it was ever going to be relevant again. It felt like it had no idea what it was trying to say or do. It disappointed me that a game that has so much good in so much else about it gets brought down so much for me by this plot.

~12 hours

Rhythm Doctor https://store.steampowered.com/app/774181/Rhythm_Doctor/ (Putting this one in mentions because it is early access.) I really enjoyed the act 5 release. When I first saw this game, I kind of shrugged it off, thinking "that base mechanic doesn't seem like it will last". I thought it was basically just that one ghost shooting game from Rhythm Heaven which I Hate. Well let's just say I am now seeking penitence for my previous transgressions. It's really fun. There's a lot more to it that I didn't know when I first took a look. Also, consistently amazed by people's custom levels, I had no idea that its level editor allows people to do so much in it, I look at some levels and think "This editor seems as complex as an industry standard video editor". I'm looking forward to what they're planning next, very curious how they could possibly one-up the last update.

~rhythm

El Paso Elsewhere https://strangescaffold.itch.io/el-paso-elsewhere This was really fun & funny so far but unfortunately I had been encountering an issue with a certain level where the game would crash. I reported the issue, got a response, and there has been an update since then so I think there's a possibility that it got fixed but I have not tried yet. I would like to return to this sometime but having to relearn controls midway through is always daunting to me.

~?

-Things that looked good but didn't get around to-

Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood https://store.steampowered.com/app/1340480/The_Cosmic_Wheel_Sisterhood/ Still don't know a whole lot about this. But there are witches, and I like witches.

Casette Beasts https://store.steampowered.com/app/1321440/Cassette_Beasts/ I haven't felt thrilled about Pokémon lately. I know a lot of people seemed to really enjoy this little monster-collecting-rpg. The style is appealing to me as a die-hard gen 5 fan. I started playing it but haven't set aside the dedicated time for it yet, but I'm excited to dig in more when I do.

Little Goody Two Shoes https://store.steampowered.com/app/1812370/Little_Goody_Two_Shoes/ Started watching a friend play this, and I'm certainly curious.. Some sort of horror fairytale but also there's yuri? Yum. Enjoyed the style and animation in the nightmare segments that I saw.

Venba https://store.steampowered.com/app/1491670/Venba/ I've picked this up a while ago but still haven't gotten around to it, but I'm eager to, I've heard nothing but good things.

Goodbye Volcano High https://store.steampowered.com/app/1310330/Goodbye_Volcano_High/ I think there are gay dinosaurs in a band and it's going to be the apocalypse? I have also heard nothing but good things about this.

-Things I watched friends play-

Signalis https://store.steampowered.com/app/1262350/SIGNALIS/ This was a pretty big one. You probably already know it, right? Watched a friend play this and I missed various parts but I understood a solid bit of it. hey. robotgirls are always getting put in these fucked up situations. have you noticed this? one time i got really high and cried about it. it isn't fair

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk https://store.steampowered.com/app/1353230/Bomb_Rush_Cyberfunk/ This one was also probably big enough you don't need me to sing its praises. but it looked really neat. swag.

-Various Thoughts-

Lately I've been thinking more about design and narrative. I feel like I haven't been doing as much analysis as I should be when it comes to games. I want to dissect more what games are saying and figure out meaning. Also attempt to see how the mechanics aid in that. I feel like most of my own work is pretty abstract & random. I simply make what I like. While that's fun and all, I still want to improve in a lot of ways, especially in having more of a theme or message. Figuring out how other games accomplish this is obviously a good step toward this.

If you saw games here that interest you I highly urge you to take a look, many are pretty short, and I pretty explicitly wanted to highlight some smaller titles. If you know me you know I like to uplift small games. (Save for the occasional big game, but that's rare these days) I think it's healthy for you to play and support independently developed & published works. I don't want to ramble too much this time about why that's important, but I hope that you might have found something you may enjoy here and if not then I encourage you to find small stuff that you would like. And I would like to encourage everybody to share their findings as well! Little games need our help to be seen and talked about! They don't have the budgets the big ones do for advertising, and advertising on your own is a whole ton of work. If you like something, spread the word! I'm sure the developers would very much appreciate that.

#indie games #video games #game review #ramble #GOTY 2023 #idk what to tag these as #gonna tag with all the games so i guess? #don't read the rest of the tags if you want to read through the post first lol #lunacid #orbo's odyssey #a walk in the woods #undertale yellow #vs really cool bird #misericorde #absolutely perfect specimen #wordhopper #bossgame #elly's adventure #nour #hi fi rush #WHISKEY.ST2007S #re:curse #SWOLLEN TO BURSTING UNTIL I AM DISAPPEARING ON PURPOSE #HalOPE #an outcry #pigments #Bridge October 3rd #pseudoregalia #mushroom musume #knuckle sandwich

[viceandmature]

Us reviewing the KOF 95 bosses (it's true.)

#King of Fighters #KOF #kofedit #The King of Fighters #KOF 94 #KOF 95 #KOF XIII #Vice and Mature #Mature and Vice #Our Stuff #Our Memes #Our Gifs #Saisyu Kusanagi #Omega Rugal #Rugal Bernstein #Rugal's Secretaries #Game Review #Gaming #gamingedit #We said what we said #Saisyu is frustrating to fight against #And Omega Rugal is a hot pushover that we can easily beat until he blows up #Canon #Us

[actual-haise]

Every 10/10 game review should have a section below where the writer has to convince Gollum that it truly is a 10/10

#lotr #gollum #gollum game #meme #shitpost #game review #this game is a ride

[stemmmm]

Close to a year and four rewrites later, I present to you...

Stem's Thoughts on the Game Design of Harvest Moon on SNES

I’m not going to lie, if you don’t like farming sims, you won’t like this one. At their core, every farming sim (at least in the rpg genre) is nearly identical, and that’s because of this game. In a way, I might dare to say that Harvest Moon for the SNES is the perfect farming sim because it has every one of the usual elements in their most simplified form and it just works straight from the get-go. It works so well in fact, that after this game came out in 1996, four more entries to the series were released before the year 2000.

If you are someone who does like farming sims, I can’t recommend this game enough. It’s simple and to the point, with a fast pace and enough random events and points of intrigue that the game kept me relatively engaged for my whole playthrough.

Also, by nature of this being the first game and therefore hard to cover concisely and by nature of taking so long to write this... it's long as hell! Enjoy! :) <3

I can’t say my appreciation of this game doesn’t come with a few caveats. I’ve intermittently played HM games all my life, starting with the GameBoy port (GB1) all the way to Pioneers of Olive Town, so while I don’t know exactly how the series has evolved, I’ve seen it at some of its earliest and at its latest. My vague childhood memories of GB1 (a game I didn’t own and didn’t play much of) were that it was pretty sparse and bland, so knowing that this original game was allegedly the same thing but with a little more content, I was expecting the bare minimum. I was prepared to never even be able to leave my farm, but the first thing the game did was shuttle me off to the nearby town and blocked the exit until I talked to everyone there. 

(Maps of the town, mountain, and farm via The Spriters Resource)

You learn everything you need to know about the game right here at the beginning; Firstly, that this town is small as all hell and has hardly anyone in it aside from the five girls you can marry and their immediate family members. The next thing you’ll learn is that there’s a fence on your farm, and you need to be taking care of that. Of the few repetitive lines of dialogue any given person in town has to share with you on any given day, a fair amount are devoted to reminding you to fix your fence, to make sure it’s in good repair. There was just a big storm so watch out! Remember to check it every day! Are you chopping enough wood? Because you’ll need it for that fence!

I’m being dramatic of course, you aren’t reminded about it that much, though the thin variation of dialogue means it comes up a lot. The emphasis on your fence does exist, and it isn’t for nothing: while it doesn’t matter as much if all you do is grow crops– if you keep animals, the game tells you that the ideal thing to do for yours and the animal’s happiness is to put the animals outside to graze. Animal feed bought from the livestock shop will keep them fed, but it's nothing compared to fresh grass grown on your farm. You can’t even buy animals without a certain amount of grass planted! And sure, you can cut the grass to store for later, but it’s at its best straight out of the ground. However, the way the game is programmed, the animals only eat when the day rolls over, so putting animals outside for the day and taking them in at night isn’t an option, and on top of that, there’s things that come out at night that can hurt your animals. This is where your fence comes in.

The Utility of Fences

At the entrance to your farm is a cluster of buildings: your house, a small lumber shed, a barn, coop, and silo, a tool shed, and an old, dried up well. Just barely surrounding all of these is a little wooden fence that looks more like a row of upright logs than anything else. Despite this farm having presumably been abandoned, the fence is in perfect repair. You’ll quickly discover that the fence as it is won’t work out; there’s hardly space to plant anything within it, and with the well dried up, you’re forced to hop it to get to a water source to fill up your watering can. It’s pretty clear that you’ll need to expand your fence, and it’s easy to do with all of the tree stumps littering the massive field that it’s blocking off. 

On top of needing to expand the range of your fence, the individual planks eventually will rot away and leave useless stumps. They show up more frequently after rain or a large storm. The posts don’t rot away completely so they have to be manually removed, but replacing them is as simple as smashing the old post with a hammer or ax and popping a new post in its place. It becomes a very natural part of your daily routine to run a lap around the farm’s perimeter before you go to bed to make sure everything looks safe and secure. It’s a good way to ensure your animals are put away and debris is cleared out, too! It slotted very nicely into my daily schedule until a certain point.

With how much time you have to spend hopping over the logs to get to the rest of the area too large to fence in, you might be tempted to leave one out of place for easier traversal. When night comes, it’s clear why that would be a mistake. Sometimes when you go to bed, you’ll hear your dog barking. It’s a small detail, one that took me a long time to notice because I didn’t always play with the sound on. There are wild dogs that prowl around the wilderness surrounding your farm, and only at night do they dare to come close. Your dog, if left outside, isn't able to do anything other than warn you of their presence if they show up. There’s nothing to notice during the daytime if it happens, unless you happened to leave one of your animals outside. There was one night that I left my chickens outside, having thought my fence was in perfect order and repair. I went to bed and heard the dog barking, followed by a horrible crunch. When I went out in the morning, I saw where my chicken had been before, it had been replaced by a pile of feathers. On the north side of my farm was a rotted fence post I’d failed to fix. 

The Reality of Fences

After losing my chicken, a cluster of pixels on my screen it may have been, I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my animals outside. I didn’t want to take a risk again, the sound and sight of feathers was upsetting enough. On a more logical note, the chickens didn’t even lay eggs if left outside so there was no value in it. Cows were a pain to put back inside the barn too, because of some silliness with the game’s collision. As much of a disappointment as it was to not have my animals roam around, it was just easier. At the time, I was focusing on upgrading my house anyways, so I didn’t have time to take care of my animals outside where time would pass when I could use that time gathering wood, and everything I had was being saved up for the house so I didn’t have any extra materials to repair my fence with. My fence was all rotting away. Because it was inconvenient for getting to my crops, I started smashing all the old posts as they went, too. That’s when I noticed something: the wild dog wasn’t coming anymore.

I didn’t pay much attention to it until I was looking up a completely different mechanic and discovered a forum explaining how the fences were broken. Rotted posts attracted the wild dog, they said. It didn’t matter if you had gaps in your fence, or even a fence at all–in fact no fence was the best kind to have because the mere existence of posts that could rot was a liability. 

I was hesitant at first to test this concept, after all there wasn’t much I could gain from it. My chickens wouldn’t lay outside, and my cows would be too challenging to get back in if the forecast called for rain. The thing that got me to finally try it was when I was trying to hatch more chickens. My coop felt like a nightmare to navigate due to its current population. I wanted less animals inside that I had to feed, so I threw a couple chicks outside–they weren’t laying yet anyways. Lo and behold, the dog didn’t come. More days passed and more animals were left outside, and it never came. My fence had rotted until there was nothing left at all. No dogs could ever come to my farm again. And I realized that the game’s own insistence on its mechanics was all a lie.

How You’re Told To Play - How The Game Lies

Of course, my animals didn’t stay outside. For a minute it was fun having a crowd of cows milling about while I tended to my crops, but letting them wander free and uninhibited made it impossible to find and milk all of them without any trouble, and there were the rainy days to watch out for. After the novelty wore off, they went back inside and stayed there. The thing is, that didn’t make a single bit of difference in how much they liked me compared to how they were living in the barn. On top of that, they didn’t seem to care whether I was feeding them grass or store-bought food either, though I mostly stuck to the grasses since they were cheaper and easier to get. Nothing about how I was told to care for animals really mattered past feeding them every day, petting it and maybe brushing it, if it was a cow.

It gets worse. The most basic aspect of the game is the fact that time passes. The story takes place over 2 and a half years, running through each day until the end, and these days last from 6AM to 6PM according to the game’s own internal time setting. After 6PM, all of the shops aside from the bar will close and you lose the ability to sell anything as you’re told it would rot in the shipping bin overnight, so there’s nothing to do but sleep until the next day. Issue with this is that when the days stop at 6PM… they just stop. Time doesn’t flow anymore. The game doesn’t give you any kind of clock to know the exact time it is until after you’ve upgraded your house, so all you have to go by before that is the color of the environment and whether or not your character has played an animation to eat something (you’re automatically fed when you wake up, at noon, and at night). I discovered this because I was curious if I could actually see the wild dog by staying out, and left the game running for probably 20 minutes in real life only for nothing to happen. Because of the time freeze, the time after 6PM actually becomes really valuable for farm logistics. You can’t sell anything, no, but you can pull up all the weeds on the farm, water your crops, fix your fences, feed and care for animals if you hadn’t already, and harvest wood for fences and house upgrades which would have taken a lot of valuable time to get during shipping-hours. The only thing that gets in the way of doing all that is you running out of energy.

Your energy is what allows you to use your farming equipment like your ax or watering can. Running out of it doesn’t mean you fall unconscious or anything, but your character will play an animation of them stumbling over and will fail to use any tools. The most obvious fix to this is to simply go to bed, as sleeping gives you a full recharge. You can also, however, recharge it by going to the hot spring on the mountain, or by eating food bought at the restaurant in town or foraged for in the forest. You can’t tell easily how much is refilled, as there’s no visual indicator like a health bar, but you’re able to eat more than once, and jumping into the hot spring seems to count whether you did it or not more than how much time you spend in there, so you can hop in and out a couple of times and call it good. 

Individually, time freezing at 6PM and energy being endlessly replenishable aren’t bad things. Even together, they’re not the worst. Having free time to focus on profitless chores is nice, and I think it’s important to be able to replenish your energy in case you have a limited amount of time to do things like for example, cut all of your grass before winter kills it. What makes an exploit out of these is the fact that the resources in the forest will never run out. Every time you re-enter the forest, all forage items and tree stumps are respawned. The infinite amount of forage makes for infinite energy refills, and could also make for an incredible money exploit if you didn’t have a very limited amount of time to ship things. You don’t have a limited amount of time to cut up tree stumps though. If you wanted to, you could run up to the forest after 6PM, chop every stump, then simply reload the area, and everything’s back. You can get all of the wood you would ever need to fully upgrade your house in one night. It’s a bit of a grind to do all at once, but it’s a grind you’d be doing over time anyways. It’s not the worst exploit in the world, since you still need money to pay for the house upgrade, but arguably because of how you have to focus your energy elsewhere for most of the game, the wood is the harder thing to get. Additionally, when the game has very little to do in both fall and winter due to the lack of crops, this exploit takes away just about any reason to play those two seasons other than to take care of animals. It’s an optional exploit of course–as all exploits are–but once you learn about it, it’s hard to resist the desire to get the grind out of the way all at once and mess up the pacing of the game.

The Charm of the Game

Learning that the fences were completely broken as a mechanic was a huge disappointment for me. From the moment I got a grasp on how the game was supposed to work, I wanted to eventually surround my whole field with fencing and keep my animals outside so I would have some life on my farm while I worked. I didn’t just want this, I was excited for it! This was something I’d never done in a farming sim that didn’t already manage putting animals in and out for you like Stardew Valley or newer Story of Seasons games do. My routine is always the same: I go into the barn and coop to tend to each of my animals, I take care of my crops outside, then run straight to town to talk to everyone, and go to bed. The change in routine that would come from taking care of the animals outside and patrolling the fence every night felt fresh to me. It made me feel that even though this was the first game of its kind, it was different and required new things of me. But in the end, I played it exactly the same.

Harvest Moon is still very different from all of the games that followed it, though. In many ways, it’s because it has less “stuff” in it– both in terms of items and things you have to do. But I wouldn’t say that it feels incomplete. Harvest Moon runs over the course of 2 and a half years before your work is evaluated. Until that happens, you have the ability to farm four different crops, you can raise both cows and chickens, you can upgrade your house to have more features, upgrade your working tools, build relationships with the townspeople to a small extent, go to town festivals that happen each year, and you can get married to one of the five girls living in town with whom you can have up to two children. Everything that you would come to expect as a fan of games like this is already here from the very first iteration. The most notable lack this game has, and one that seems to be completely unique to this game, is that there aren’t any crops in the fall or winter, which means that unless you have animals, there’s a whole half of the year that you don’t have anything to do. The game is clearly aware of this though, because in an average playthrough, this is where you’ll start to run into the story events.

There isn’t much of an overarching story in the game, past the general concept that you’ve run away from home to work on an abandoned farm. The conclusion rests on how good of a job you actually do. In between those two points are smaller events, usually tied to when you get tool upgrades or special ones for each of the romantic interests. The first event you’re likely to run into happens on the very last day of summer, where one of the woodsmen comes to your house in the morning to ask if you’re okay because he heard a huge crash at night and you should check your farm. What I found was that a tree in my field had fallen over, and its remaining stump had a big empty hole in it. When I inspected the stump, I was suddenly underground in a cave filled with loud and industrious music, and I was faced with two, little green people–Harvest Sprites, though I don’t know if they’re called that yet here. One asked me if my scythe worked well, and when I said yes, told me that they had made it and that I should check my shed tomorrow for a better one. Other tool upgrades are obtained in similar fashion; one comes from feeding a starving sprite a mushroom and another comes from another hole in the farm opening up to reveal another part of the cave system that has a couple of hints on how to unlock other things. 

The events for romantic interests happen at less scripted times, as they’re tied to how strong your relationship is with each girl. Each girl only has one event, and it only triggers when your relationship is high enough that you would ask her to marry you. The events usually take up a whole day, and don’t necessarily add much to each character. Ellen’s revolves around how she’s no good at keeping pets– something established on your second day at the farm when you get your dog from her, Eve’s hammers in her fraught relationship with her grandpa, and Ann’s is about losing the chicken weathervane, or “weathercock” which sits on the roof of her workshop and goes missing every time there’s a storm. Conversely, Nina and Maria’s scenes bring up entirely new events that bring up a number of questions while providing no answers. Nina disappears while looking for a medicinal plant because her mother is apparently sick, and Maria vanishes for days until you find her hiding away with the woodsmen for some reason. All of these events, whether they share new information or not, manage to add some greatly appreciated depth to each character by giving them more room to speak and be sincere than their short and repetitive day-to-day dialogues do.

The dialogue in this game is simple, to the point, and sparse– probably because there was only so much memory that could be reserved for approximately 15 people who all have multiple lines of dialogue, and only so much money to pay someone to write more. There is simple dialogue that doesn’t tell you much more than “hello, how are you” would, more dialogue that I’d label as tutorial text, and a few lines that I truthfully couldn’t understand well because of the sub-par translation this game received for english. The dialogue that exists to inform the world really manages to create a unique vibe though. Nina’s dialogue, almost always about plants, goes into forays about how they’re creatures with wills to live, too. Ellen’s uncle who runs the ranch shop tells you that it’s much better to feed your animals fresh grass if you try to buy any from his store, and if you decline to purchase he laughs as if he’s won something. There’s even dialogue referencing the silent player! Multiple lines exist to comment on him not paying attention, and inspection prompts have people telling you not to touch something rather than being an item description. It was the last thing I expected, to get the same level of personality out of the main character as I did from each of the girls, albeit very subtly. He went from a kind of nothing, self-insert into being what I perceive to be a hyperactive boy, akin to a border collie who was let out into a field of sheep for the first time–the exact kind of person crazy enough to take on an abandoned farm and succeed.

It’s these short little character details that bring life into the game. Each day, you’ll really only see one line of dialogue from each character, be it new or old, with that dialogue usually only changing if there’s a change in season or festival coming up. The repetitive, pretty mindless routine of the game can turn into a sort of meditation if you let it, where you spend your time working thinking about the folks in town and what they had to say to you the previous day. The developers took this concept in stride and gave the side characters loads of dialogue about life, about God and religion, and about… very basic morals, but morals nonetheless. It’s a children’s game after all. When you take the thoughts, questions and prompts the characters give you back to the farm to do your long and tedious routine, you have to ask yourself– what are you working so hard for? For the feeling of accomplishment? Recognition from your peers? For the sake of some higher power, if you worship one? For me personally, it was to write this essay, but it was also for a good grade on the high score screen at the end, so to be honest a lot of this stuff was lost on me until just now when I was reviewing the game to get screenshots.

Setting The Standard - Why You Should Play HM SNES

You may read all of this and still think, well, it doesn’t sound like the game has much in it. And you would be right, it’s a very small game, but it’s also extremely quick. On average, my days only lasted about three minutes of real life time. Everything flew by, and I think I finished the game in 20 hours or less. I barely got a chance to notice that there wasn’t much going on because every second of my day was spent busy doing something, and when I wasn’t busy, the break was appreciated. I didn’t start to run out of things to do until I was finished with the second year, and when I looked up what I needed to do to get a decent ending, I was already most of the way there. It was easy to push through those last two seasons to get to the end, and it was so, so worth it. 

As I mentioned earlier, the game ends with a high score screen, meaning it has to track all of your accomplishments. These include, but are not limited to: the number of things you ship, number of each crop you grow, number of animals you have and how much they like you, how upgraded your house is, who you married, how much all of the girls in town like you if you didn't get married, how many kids you have (which basically equates to how long you were married), your happiness score (increased by going to festivals and decreased by having animals die), and how many times you’ve pet your dog. In addition to these being tallied up and presented to you, you get special cutscenes not just for each one of these accomplishments, but additional ones for if you managed to do even better! I got a cutscene for having a cow, followed by one for having lots of cows, followed by yet another for having cows that loved me! Watching them play one after the other felt like taking a victory lap even without getting the best possible result. Seeing all of my numbers come up at the end made me want to try again to actually get those other cutscenes, not to get to see them, they’re so easy to find on Youtube, but because the game made it feel like an accomplishment! If I weren’t following this game up by immediately playing its GameBoy port, I absolutely would have started a new file right away. I’ve been playing the Harvest Moon series since I was a little kid and this was the first time I’d actually managed to beat one of these games. I struggle to think the finale of any game following this will feel as good as this one did.

I started writing this whole thing about the fences because it was an easy and silly entry point to get into my core issue with the game, and so I could have an opportunity to dig into game mechanics and the way the knowledge you have of them will completely alter your playstyle, because that’s all fun and interesting for me to talk about. Another reason why I focused on that was because it was near impossible for me to pick any kind of focus point when talking about this game. After all, I’m trying to study a whole series of games that spans multiple decades, and this is not only the first game in that series, but a game that created the whole genre of farming sims and defined that genre so thoroughly that you can see its DNA in every single game that followed.

 I didn’t expect much to come out of my experience with this game. My expectations for it before I even picked it up were that it was going to be basically featureless, as informed by my experience with one of the first games I ever played as a child, Harvest Moon GB, which I will get into next. This game was not that at all. I think that everything it did manage to get working right came together just about perfectly. Harvest Moon is exactly what it wanted to be, and where it wasn’t, it lied about how it worked to try and make you play the correct way anyways. When I believed that lie, my time playing was even more enjoyable. Maybe if farming worked just a little bit more like how you’re told it’s supposed to, and if there was just a little bit more story, those would cover the things I felt wanting for the most. But maybe a little flexibility and ambiguity is a good thing. Maybe actually maintaining a fence is just too hard, and maybe if the girls were more fleshed out, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy filling in their gaps in my head.

There are many more things I could say and wanted to say about this game, but this has grown far too long already so I'm cutting myself off here. I'm sure my later entries aren't going to get near this length. If you managed to get to this point, thank you so much for reading!

#harvest moon #story of seasons #harvest moon snes #hm snes #game review #m.txt #hm posting #i think i hit the image cap also? it wouldn't let me put in more even though i dont think there are that many. maybe it was a different cap #im happy to answer questions about things i didnt cover here too lol and i have notes from my playthrough if anyone is interested in those #those notes are the only reason i was able to keep all of this straight given how long it took me to write #anyways finally hitting post after like 3 days because i keep forgetting until weird hours

[todayontumblr]

Saturday, December 9.

The Game Awards.

'Twas the week of The Game Awards 2023, and a lot was going on. 

Baldur's Gate 3 won big with six wins, The Great Gonzo himself was there in a dashing black suit, Hideo Kojima materialized (of course), lots was announced, Alan Wake 2 picked up some prizes, yet more was announced, and the ~actual~ ModdedController360 (sometimes known as Timothée Chalamet) dropped by the close the ceremony. 

You came for the awards, you stayed for the trailers. We hope you liked what you saw. In the meantime, let's put this little weekend aside to look back on the week that was: #the game awards, to be precise. 

#today on tumblr #the game awards #game awards #the game awards 2023 #gaming #video games #tga 2023 #tga23 #game awards 2023 #goty #game of the year #BG3 #balders gate 3 #game review #gamers

[annamarabella-grumble]

quick and dirty game review: KILLER FREQUENCY

it's really good!! why?

it's all your favourite 80s/onwards slasher flicks rolled into one

the premise is ropey as hell but it's self-aware enough to know that and make it FUN

the references are gonna be really obvious to horror connoisseurs but tbh for me they were subtle enough that they weren't overpowering the experience; it's not just fanservice held together by gaffer tape and string

there's one (1) jumpscare right at the beginning, so be aware of that, but it didn't send me running for the hills and while i haven't finished the game yet, it's fair to say the rest of the game does not rely on cheap thrills and scares

that said, the fact that there's a crouch mechanic deeply worries me

but still: without giving too much away, you experience the game by manning the radio station and taking calls from people being pursued by a serial killer. there's no narration or visuals, the tension relies entirely on voice acting and sound design -- and i think they did a spectacular job with that

there were so many moments where i (and chat, i was streaming it) was on the edge of my seat

the puzzles are absolutely doable but still really satisfying when you work them out; and there's timers only on some dialogue choices, so you have enough time to work things out in steps -- also makes it easier/more fun to let chat help hehe

when you do fail, you don't feel railroaded or tricked, which is important, though once or twice a lack of information can be a little frustrating because you're just gonna have to go with your gut

the characters have really interesting backstories, i can't wait to find out more 👀

according to the devs, the dialogue and backstories were all written collaboratively across the team, and the game somewhat responds to how well you do in keeping people alive

there's also clues throughout the story so you can try and put it together as you go -- delighted to find out what's the biggest red herring

devs say all players will get a satisfying resolution re: the killer's identity, but players who do well get a more complete picture -- raising the incentive for multiple playthroughs

there's moments of instant karma that are just *chef's kiss*

the environmental storytelling at the radio station ohmygod

is something lgbt happening to Peggy 👀👀

the dialogue choices match up with the tone of what your character actually says, so it's easy to mould his personality a little bit (and the bits where they get creative with punctuation to help convey that tone are really funny)

i'm about halfway through and so far nothing seems overplayed; instead the game just fully commits to the bit without being obnoxious

mechanics are simple: play records, play ad tapes, take calls, and occasionally run through the station for clues

sadly, you can't photocopy your butt

BUT you can shoot hoops from your desk (with paper balls) and the game tracks how many you got

if you're a horror movie or game fan, if this sounds like you'd enjoy it, i can only recommend it! i'm not super good with horror or survival games, but i had an absolute blast with this. here's a couple of screenshots so you can see the aesthetic they're working with:

it's got that cell-shaded telltale look -- easy on the eyes, colourful. and the carpets. my god

#killer frequency #game review #video games

[insane-control-room]

Some things are meant to be remembered; for the right reasons.

i've posted this review on steam, but i think that i want to say it here, too.

Here is my review of the 'promotional' material (according to steam) Secrets of the Machine

What I liked: the art appeared to be a true return to form; the style had its original charm with updated lighting techniques and slightly better optimization than previous games in the Bendy series. The audio design was also nice, with good ambiance and nice composition.

And now, the jank.

The game handles reasonably well; but it is clearly slapdashed together and is missing important components. There is no starting menu. There are no loading screens; and it is very jarring. There are no options in the game menu - you cannot minimize the game, you cannot brighten the game, you cannot make the game run any better on your computer, and it is incredibly laggy. If you have a potato laptop? Nah, get out. No game for you. There are no subtitles that you can enable, and voices are very muffled. Additionally, the game is very dark, and as mentioned, you cannot adjust that in the settings of the game, nor in steam settings. You have to do so from your computer.

Controls are extremely janky, as you cannot run, you cannot jump, and there is no indication for interaction with any objects. There are no control settings for remapping, and you cannot even see which keys do what.

Puzzles are boring and confusing; with no guidance. There were no hints, no rhyme or reason. There was more puzzle in the BATIM chapter 1 demo release. This thing is very confusing, especially when you cannot see anything at all. You will spend a long time walking back and forth between two rooms, wondering how you can progress, because you've done everything you could: you smashed cutouts; you hit targets; you opened and closed hands; you found posters for future games, but nothing that could move forward the one you were playing at the time. If you look at the community page, you will see that most people simply spent their time clicking on the soup can dispenser to see how many cans they could get.

If you have epilepsy, nah get out. Oh? I didn't mention the flashing lights? Well the developers did not either. Not only did they not mention the flashing lights, not in the game nor in steam, but they included TWO car crashes without warning - one audio based, and another that was directed at players. This is not only rude, but it is dangerous. Warnings exist so that people can make educated choices whether or not to interact with content that may be sensitive to them. Warn people appropriately. This 'game' did not take any measure to protect its players. There are many instances of sudden loud noises, flashing lights, and jarring location switches (not to mention the car crashes).

The story was lacking, and has nothing to do with the puzzles that a player is faced with. It feels like three disjointed tracks, and none of them align, all of them crashing together in a discordant, unsatisfying, confusing mess. It brought in more new characters that had nothing to do with the original story nor interested players, and had content that went against previously established material. It was (as you can tell, from a writer's perspective) a bad story.

It was less of a demo, less of a playable trailer, more like a tech demo with a few morsels for fans to pick apart and wish there was more of, wish there was more effort put into, wish there was more love and care for them, the players who arguably were the foundation of this game. There were teasers for games that, honestly, lacked the soul that the very first game had, and here's a point to prove it: there was an easter egg that if you clicked something 414 times (very funny.) it would rise in the air and then fall down without further ado. In the game files, the name for that sound effect? Sting. Yeah. It did. Games are a collaborative work; between the creators and the players. Blatant disregard and flippancy towards half of the collaboration is not acceptable behavior. This is a development team that mocks those who once loved them most, those who poured over their coding and carefully crafted world to marvel at what they had made, and coaxed in others with the rich promise of a delightful story that anyone could engage with on any level. The spite the creators have shown for the individuals who, essentially, had given rise to their stature in the first place, is painful.

Finally, by the time that I got a chance to sit down and actually play the game- I personally could not. The developers, by constantly updating a clearly unfinished game, had made their final update - that of a wood board blocking the actual place where gameplay takes place. You cannot go to any of the places shown in the screenshots, because the game is locked on the opening area. I've seen many people complaining of it; hoping that they can play the game.

Now, in the fashion we've seen common of JDS, they have rescinded their terrible design choice - but without notifying players that it is now possible to play the game; without telling players that this was purposeful; without telling players anything aside from a big old screw you. It is entirely possible that the only reason they put the game back into a playable state was the torrent of negative reviews that spawned after their. interesting. choice. regardless, those who care about their playerbase would have informed those who complained that it was a temporary gesture for storytelling reasons. They, however, did not, and there are a multitude of reviews marking the game as unplayable.

No matter what, the bottom line is this: This is not okay.

I'm not sure how much more eloquently I can put the fact that I'm heartbroken. This game, unlike any other, shows how much scorn that a developer can have for their own fans and playerbase. I am glad that there are people who enjoyed it, but I wonder - what did you really like about it?

Is it the memories?

#control critique #secrets of the machine #bendy #batim #bendy secrets of the machine #bendy and the ink machine #bsotm #bsotm review #game review

[tenebrare]

Death Stranding - Higgs /sketch

Death Stranding: "Mail delivery - the game". While interesting narrative, I bailed out before reaching "Wind Farm" (location inside so called intro area) as I slipped down the cliff and not being able to fight "monsters" yet, I found I have no time to constant sneak and V spam while the monsters can just make my cargo drop and I have to run around tree and then wait and micro manage my cargo with spray and whatnot. I factually decided to bail out of the game, when I was told to that i also have to deal with a baby stress levels besides all the other micro management. This is interesting game, but not quite for me. I still think people should give this walking simulator a try - as it is unique game in many ways and online mode has come unique mechanics how other players actions can save your life (it IS single player game, but ... it is related to games lore ... about being connected and I really loved how other players even had left signs which route is safer to take or placed ways to cross rivers. there are NO other players in your game, but their actions can have impact to your world in positive ways). Would have been curious to find out the story, but .... I am one of those people, who just do not work well with all the constant "stop all your doings and press this button because X happened in game world" - Press 3+click to drink, press F to rock your baby, press left-right to balance your cargo, drop cargo to spray it, press Q to scan, press C to sneak and press ALT to hold breath, tab to read mail, press 5 to like, press F to eat a worm, press Q to scan again, press F to pick your metals, do not forget to press arrows to balance cargo and oh... try to find shelter because rain bad. That happened in span of 10 minutes, just right after i built a bridge... yeah, got to build stuff too. Fun game to those, who like micromanaging each their step, but I am more of a Dishonored kill-simulator-kind-of-player. Still I recommend to at least try it. It's... very different from the mainstream empty-shell games you get promoted by AAA nowadays. PS! See I can STILL doodle something else than Hellraiser ..... at times!

#death stranding #death stranding higgs #higgs monaghan #dailysketch #fanart #video games #game review #quick comment #tenebrare other fanart

[strunmah-mah]

Ranking Touchstarved MC Origins

The Alchemist

Easily the most flavorful. Their background and education affects word choice in even basic scenes and can elevate the horror of the more intense scenes like seeing the red-eyed woman's scar. Plus with their addition knowledge about the Sonobium they seem the most in control and like they actually understand what's going on. Also gives good character insight ex: Every origin thinks Leander is an impressive mage, but the Alchemist actually explains why they think that, is the only origin that made me as the reader impressed with Leander's abilities.

2. The Hound

While a lot of their flavor text is subtler, it's till definitely there. Especially with how they're to most comfortable around other people and understand how they work. Every origin thinks it's weird that Ais is described as a gang leader but is by himself. Only the Hound realizes that something happened to cause Ais to be alone and so their confusion and curiosity is more poignant.

3. The Unnamed

Maybe it's because they're obviously the most sheltered, but I was really disappointed lack of insights they had about the various love interests. Like there's a line about Kuras seeming familiar, but at least in the demo that's not really elaborated on. For the most part their flavor text is just extra spooky vibes about the environment that blend in with the normal narration and end up kinda forgettable because of the MC's tendency to be dismissive of the more supernatural happenings. A habit that's more annoying with the Unnamed than other origins since being psychic is supposed to be this origin's unique ability. If the origins get unique character arcs I hope theirs is being more confident in themself and their ability.

#touchstarved game #game review #this might just be me being critical of the unnamed #because it was the origin that sounded most interesting to me #and having it as my first play through was fun #but going from that to the alchemist? #felt like a night and day difference in the things i learned

[torukmaktoskxawng]

pls tell us your opinion on Frontiers of Pandora when you get the chance. I bought it on sale, and have seen mixed reviews about it 🙏🏻

I'm glad you asked because I was about to share this small piece of the game. No technical spoilers:

(So'lek aside, I like Nor as well. This scene made my heart melt)

It's a beautiful game!! I preordered it, and due to jobs and the holidays, I haven't been able to play it very much (the scene above is close to where I left off today lol and that's not very far) but so far I love it!

I think so far, the only thing that's frustrating to me are the controls. To me, remembering controls is a struggle, but I haven't been much of a gamer until recently when I got a gaming pc, so I'm a bit of a newbie.

I've also been way too distracted while playing the game 🤣 there's so much to see and learn that I forget I'm in the middle of a mission unless I stumble into it. I'm too busy exploring.

We all know Pandora at night is beautiful, and the game reflects that! I can't stop looking around at everything at night.

Another thing I'm bummed about is the romance. You can't romance the characters 😭 If I had a choice, I would've jumped So'lek's bones so fast, especially after the most recent gift he handed me 👀 (won't specify due to spoilers)

To some gamers like my brother, FoP is too much like Horizon Zero Dawn (but for some people, that's all the more reason to play it!). And for someone who's never played HZD, it's a whole new game/concept to me so I don't have much to criticize/compare!

If you haven't played it, give it a chance! I also advise using it as a filler for the wait for the next Avatar movie in 2024 👍 we must consume as many crumbs as possible to quench our hunger and thirst

#ask anla #frontiers of pandora #avatar frontiers of pandora #nor frontiers of pandora #fop #avatar fop #nor avatar #nor fop #fop nor #frontiers of pandora nor #game review #so'lek #so'lek frontiers of pandora #ask anon #ask box #anon ask #ask

[day1717]

So I bought Palworld with low expectations after hearing some of the negativity surrounding it & honestly... Everyone is wrong. It's so fun!! Personally it feels like Pokemon, meets BOTW, meets Rust & it's scratching an itch in my brain I didn't know I had. I really really like it

#palworld #video games #game review

[homestuckdaily]

A Completely Normal, Non-Unhinged Review of GristTorrent

I could have been drawing. I could have been working on my fanadventure. I could have been writing this very article. Instead, I lost two days of my life to GristTorrent. Let me take you on a journey as I try to review this Suika Game clone developed by @flaringk in a single week-end. (click on the image source to go on the article)

#homestuck #homestuck daily #GristTorrent #game review

[doctorsex69]

half life most gruesome scene

#playstation 2 #gaming #psp #playstation #game review

[frankiesmileshow]

Crystal Project Review

Ive been having a lot of fun with Crystal Project, a well made FF5-inspired RPG. The combat is very tightly designed and the exploration aspect is top notch. The art style put me off a bit at first, but I think it grew on me over time.

The game does a great job of slowly uncovering its breadth and letting you break its sequence through curious exploring. Lots of fun to search every part of its gigantic map for secrets. This is a game that loves hiding secrets within secrets within secrets. You might even occasionally stumble into a late game area, and exploring carefully could lead to finding items meant for the end of the game, giving your party a significant early game boost.

Exploring will often lead to surprise optional boss battles that are completely out of your league - but dying has few consequences in the game (you just lose a bit of money) and dying from bosses has no consequences at all, so you rarely feel truly punished for having explored too far, and its always worth it to have a peek at a boss battle.

Don't expect too much of a story. There is one, but it keeps a very light touch, this is mainly a game about exploring and fighting monsters. It does have characters and some personality, but dont expect something dense story wise.

It manages to avoid feeling like an open world game - it feels more like a linear game that just lets you break out of the confines of its intended path if you explore enough. It strikes a very good balance between having direction and having freedom. The world map just keeps expanding as you play, leading to many little shocks about the games' scope, a feeling you might be familiar with if you played Elden Ring.

The games combat uses a very well balanced, strategic system. Battles give you a lot of information to let you choose your actions carefully - you can see any enemies' next action in advance, and you even know who the enemy will attack next (notice the dotted lines in the screenshot above). Manipulating the enemies' current target is actually one of the fundamentals of the game- enemies choose their next target based on a "Threat" system which is entirely open to you as you fight, and many classes have abilities to help you manipulate this. Some class abilities also depend on the current threat state of a character - for instance, the rogues' many powerful skills only work if they are considered an enemy's bottom threat, and will otherwise always miss, which requires careful actions on your part.

The class system will be familiar if you played Final Fantasy 5 - you obtain new classes by exploring the world and finding large crystals, each unlocking a new one. The classes set a characters' stat growth on level-up, equippable items, main abilities and all have a unique "Innate passive" which are usually quite powerful (for instance, the base Cleric class receives a significant boost to all healing spells).

You can also add the abilities of a secondary class to your characters' moveset- like adding a clerics' healing spells to your Samurai. There is a lot of fun to be had mixing one class's abilities with anothers' passive boost - for instance, one class has an ability which makes the first action this character makes in a battle always target All enemies or All allies, allowing you to either massively boost your whole party or nuke the enemy party with a powerful spell usually meant for a single foe.

There are also passive abilities you can unlock from any class and assign regardless of a characters' current class, limited by a point cost system. These can range from a boost to max HP, to adding a poison effect to any weapon attacks, to allowing your character to equip a shield regardless of their class.

You can get very creative with the games' class system, there are countless ways to mix and match character abilities and classes to figure out some powerful strategy. The endgame has several challenges that might require you to make custom party setups just for them, turning the combat system into something resembling a kind of puzzle - though one with many possible solutions.

Boss battles have a way of feeling like a desperate struggle of improvising as your strategy falls apart - then winning by the skin of your teeth. This happens a lot. At least half of the boss battles for me ended with most of my party dead, and being one or two turns away from a full wipe-out.

I think the only real misstep is the games' analogue to chocobo breeding, introduced at the very end of the game. It feels tedious, I gave up on it after an hour of wasting my money on food for the creatures and not getting anywhere. Luckily it seems to be completely optional.

All in all I recommend it to anyone who likes FF5 and who likes RPGs that have a focus on exploring. Visually it might look a bit basic, but underneath that is an extremely robust game.

#game development #rpg #indie rpg #crystal project #final fantasy #final fantasy v #game review #video games

[husbandogoddess]

Black Tabby Games' Slay the Princess is a prime example of why visual novels are one of the most powerful and hard-hitting offerings in gaming today. You can read my review over on Press SPACE to Jump! <3

#visual novel #english visual novel #indie game #slay the princess #game review #horror visual novel

[splashink-games]

Cassette Beasts?

Cassette Beasts is a creature-collecting game by Bytten Studio! Record monsters on tapes, become a Ranger, and find the way off of New Wirral in this amazing adventure!

Spoilers below the cut!!

So I had a plan to write this review before I even finished the game. It was just that good. But! I managed to hold off until I at least finished the main game. Next goal: 100% and DLC! And also buying the OST when I have the chance.

Now, I'm not putting this off until the middle of the review: every musical track in this game is a certified banger. I absolutely loved the music of the game. As one person put it (while I was looking for the OST), I just didn't get tired of the music. And that's a pretty big win for a game where you have so, so many encounters and only a handful of tracks to play.

The way they implement the music is also impressive because it's narratively important. The lyrics work their way in when a fusion happens and during big story battles. The town theme's music plays when you're indoors. Plus the lyrics just feel right with its tones and atmosphere. Also the difference between the few main battle themes is just enough for one to feel more tense/exciting than the others. Just an overall great thing they have going on with the audio.

Okay with that out of the way!

Cassette Beasts is a solid game, actually pretty high tier.

Mechanically, I've seen people compare it to Pokemon. I feel like it's like a mix of Pokemon and Persona. You can record the monsters, remaster (evolve) them at five stars, with some having having special evolution requirements. Monsters can show up as bootlegs, where they're a type other than its base type, which is just like shiny hunting but more (cause there's like 12 types). And I've already killed a plastic bootleg by accident...

The moves (stickers) are mix and match, mostly according to typing. I'm pretty into it cause I love giving my party members all sorts of type coverage. I haven't particularly gone into finding weird strategies yet other than AP Refund, but I can see some cool ones thanks to needing to battle all 12 Ranger Captains.

And then you can fuse! Which I thought was interesting, and it adds an ace to go to when you're in a pinch. But you fusing means that wild monsters (and other rangers) can fuse too. Those provide some fun challenges and opportunities to find bootlegs, plus progression in post-game.

Did I mention that this game is also like a Metroidvania? Capturing certain monsters gives up to 6 overworld movement abilities and I think that's pretty neat. All of them have their uses and none of them are niche, which is a win.

The story was pretty interesting! Dropping in onto a mysterious island and trying to find a way back home is nice and simple and all the detail added around it make it engaging. The Archangels are wildly uncomfortable which I didn't expect and I loved it. Despite loving it, it still did come out of nowhere but greatly forgiven because it was right at the start (and not some random turn in the middle).

The pacing was a bit off for me though because I got like 5 out of 8 song pieces before I even defeated 4 captains or even met all the partner characters. I also don't know how relationship progress works other than fight things and rest. Thinking about it now, there's probably a reason why there a speedrun timer in that you don't have to play through all the content (8/9 archangels, no captains?), I guess.

I liked the references to all sorts of topics throughout the story and I think it's pretty interesting for the characters to be from different timelines. It makes it easy to explain weird inconsistencies.

Funny thing I did by accident for end game's story: I switched out Meredith's Regensea with an Aeroboros cause I wanted her starter in my party. And boy did that choice bite back later lol.

Graphics are also solid. The 3D world with 2D sprites reminds me of Octopath Traveller. I appreciate the non-pixel portrait art for the characters, but I would've liked it either way. The designs of the monsters and the characters are all great! Honestly, I should take some notes from them since even if there's 15+ characters, they still all have very specific designs and personalities to match.

The detail in the world is great too, like the light reflecting off the puddle or the fog that rolls in and the rain. So like weather in general.

Also, as a note just for me, I liked the fonts and font effects that they used. Very cool.

Cassette Beasts is a quality creature-collecting game! If you need another Pokemon/Digimon/Persona, here's a game for you. Or if you just want a cool turn-based RPG with cool music, that's cool too.

As always,

Enjoy gaming!

#ink reviews #game review #video games #gaming #Cassette Beasts #love that you could see exactly when in my playthrough I took these screenshots cause the speedrun timer is on