Noitu Love 2: Devolution

I played through all three currently available acts of Kentucky Route Zero yesterday, but that needs time to percolate before I can write anything other than "it was brilliant".

A palate cleanser, that's what I needed.  Noitu Love 2 is 2 hours of manic, SNES era homage, combining excellent brawling, shooting, and some fantastic boss design.  Crushing a robotic orchestra conductor with giant piano hammers is something I'll remember for a while.

I expected the controls to be awkward, forcing you to use the keyboard and mouse for a game straight out of a traditionally joypad-only genre.  In practice, it works perfectly.  Clicking an enemy to not only hit them, but to dash to their location anywhere on screen means that the rank and file mooks turn into grapple points for zipping around the level.  You can go an awfully long time in this game without ever touching the floor.

The story is pleasingly nonsensical, and the game finished just as my clicking finger was getting tired.  Great stuff.

Dungeon Hearts

Dungeon Hearts is a match-3 style puzzler, where the coloured blobs to be matched float steadily down 4 separate tracks.  Like a puzzle version of Guitar Hero, sort of?  Anyway, this should, in theory, be a game I enjoy.  JRPG trappings, upgradeable characters, a neat variant on a classic puzzle formula.  Sadly, it's hampered by the decision to dole out upgrades at a glacial pace, presumably a hangover from its mobile roots.

This wouldn't be too much of a problem if it wasn't for the annoying route the game takes to ramp up the difficulty.  In order to match 3 of the blobs, you have to drag them around the screen, and other blobs block your path.  The higher difficulties just clog up the play area with grey blobs that you can't get rid of.  So, not more difficult, just more irritating. 

McPixel

Point and click games have a long history of utterly illogical puzzles, and here is a game that gives you one of these every 20 seconds.  In every level of McPixel, your only job is to stop the bomb going off.  Whether this is done by just throwing the bomb out the window, or angering god so that he punches the bomb into oblivion, McPixel is up front about how arbitrary the puzzle solutions are. 

Fortunately for a game whose main selling point is humour, McPixel is mostly very funny.  It also pulls the same trick that The Fast Show did; it doesn't matter if a joke falls flat, there'll be another one along in 20 seconds.

Crayon Physics Deluxe

I get the feeling that Hexcells is going to cast a long shadow over any puzzle game I play for a very long time.  Crayon Physics sounds like a great idea for a game.  Drawing pulleys, hoists, bridges and ramps in crayon to guide a ball past various obstacles is great fun, and mechanically the game is excellent.  However, where Hexcells shines, this game stumbles:  level design.

About half way through the game, there's a level that introduces you to the idea of dragging the ball over an obstacle by fixing a pulley to an elevated position, building a cage around the ball, and then hooking the cage up to a weight with a length of rope.  The first time you make this work, you feel like a god of engineering.  The problem is, I was then able to use this method to complete all but two of the levels in the second half of the game.

So, I had fun drawing nonsense machines while listening to some podcasts, but this never got beyond the point of being a pleasant distraction.  Hexcells has ruined me.

Super Amazing Wagon Adventure Turbo

Take Oregon Trail, rebuild it as an arcade shooter, amp up the random events ad absurdum,  and you get Super Amazing Wagon Adventure.

The narration and special events make this a very funny game but eventually the jokes start to repeat themselves.  Unfortunately, this happened to me before I got to the end of an adventure.  It's a pretty unforgiving game, and occasionally will just randomly ruin a good run.  Not wanting to sour my initial enjoyment, I decided to leave it while I was still having fun.

I'll keep it installed, because I think I'll enjoy watching my friends play it, but for now I'm just removing this from my backlog.

Blackwell Unbound

I couldn't help it, a couple of days break and then straight into the sequel.  What's this, it's the 70s?  And we're playing as Aunt Lauren?  Now you're talking.

The structure of this follow up game is markedly better than the original.  Running two cases in parallel, with minor overlaps, means a lot more options for what to do next, and a lot less getting stuck. The writing remains very good, although the voice acting is a bit more hit and miss. Still, for an indie game like this to have full voice acting is enough of a surprise, so picking at the quality seems a little churlish. The story behind the two ghosts is just as interesting as in the original, and once again I ended up genuinely invested in putting them to rest.

One thing I'm less keen on is having to ask people multiple times about the same clue in my notebook in order to get the next bit of information I need.  When I play voiced adventure games, I like to try and avoid making characters repeat themselves, but in this game, reaching that point in the dialogue is the only way to know you've got as much as you can.  The identical delivery lessens immersion, and with a game as heavy with noir atmosphere as this, that's a crime.  It's also high praise, of course.  If the atmosphere wasn't worth soaking in, I wouldn't care about the occasions where the cracks appear.

The Blackwell Legacy

One of my clearest memories of childhood is of sitting in front of the family Amiga, with a huge stack of floppy disks next to me, playing The Secret of Monkey Island 2.  Obviously, I played the first game too, but that came on a mere four disks.  The sequel came on eleven, and you never forgot it, especially when you misclicked an exit and had to change disks to load the room you didn't even want to go into.

I was obsessed with point and click adventures, and playing The Blackwell Legacy immediately gave me a pleasant feeling of familiarity.  The art style is very much influenced by Lucasarts, and for the most part the puzzle design is cut from the same cloth.  Even when I found myself resorting to using everything in my inventory (or notebook of clues) with everything else, I had a nostalgic smile on my face.

The writing is smart, and the story had me hooked straight away.  The game did a good job of wrapping up its story without overstaying its welcome, and has definitely got me interested in playing the rest of the series. I've got the first three Blackwell games in my backlog, and looking at the developer's Wikipedia page I'm pleased to see a couple more games on there that I own.  I'm looking forward to finding out a lot more about the Blackwell family, so I imagine the sequel will be up next. 

Hexcells Trilogy [Finished]

What a beautiful, elegant series of games.  My brain hurts from level 6-5, so I'm going for a lie down.

Hexcells

Wholly abstract puzzle games aren't usually my thing.  I'd seen Hexcells on Steam, and read John Walker waxing lyrical about it over on RPS, but it all looked a bit sterile and unexciting.  I cracked in the end though, so well done Mr. Walker for an excellent sales pitch.

I've just completed the second game in the trilogy, Hexcells Plus.  In the process I've intoduced my mum to the wonders of Steam family sharing, streaming games on Twitch, and got her thoroughly hooked on this wonderful game.

The mechanics are solid and are layered gradually throughout the games, but it's the level design that really makes it.  Each new puzzle is like a maze to be explored.  You find a fragile little starting point, and gradually you begin to chip away at the landscape of hexes.  Early levels are generous when it comes to progress, offering up explosions of new territory.  Once you reach Hexcells Plus, this gives way to an excruciating drip-feed of information, as it shows you that the first game was really just an extended tutorial.

I'm probably going to get stuck into Hexcells Infinite very soon.

Eets Muchies

I'm pretty sure everyone using Steam has some games in their library of unknown provenance.  Humble Bundles are usually the culprits here, and I suspect that's how I ended up with a copy of Eets Munchies.

It's possible that I played puzzle games before Lemmings on the Amiga, but I certainly don't remember any of them.  Eets is one of those games where you have to get one lemming through a level by carefully placing objects, winding him up, and watching him go.

I knew that this was a short game before I started, so I was happy when the main puzzles could be completed in around an hour.  A fun little puzzler that didn't outstay its welcome was just what I needed to get back to the backlog.

Kittens Game

A browser-based game, in a similar vein to Candy Box and the like.  You start with one kitten in a catnip forest, and I'm to understand that the endgame involves interdimensional space travel.  My kittens are currently lounging  around in furs, smelting iron, and struggling towards the first glimpses of industry.

The main thing to note is that, unlike many incremental games, here it is possible to overextend and crash your fragile economy. This generally happens as a result of seasons.  In Winter, food production takes a 75% hit and you can suddenly find yourself spiralling into the red.  As the first snows fell, I decided to build a hut for my kitten.  The hut attracted two more kittens to the village, they tore through the food, and starved to death.

It's not clear if this sense of fragility will persist.  Already I'm at the point where it's running in another tab and I just check back every now and then to buy some upgrades. 

Kittens Game is here if you want to try it, but I accept no responsibility for the lost hours.

Hearthstone

I was desperate to get into the beta for Hearthstone when it first went out to Youtubers and streamers.  I'd been among those who found the idea of a digital Warcraft TCG profoundly uninteresting when it was first announced.  Then Blizzard did what Blizzard do, and took an idea that's been around for years, polished it, stripped it down to its core, and made it a pleasure to play.

Occasional bugs aside, Hearthstone is a masterclass in interface design.  From the bombastic pack-opening, to the ritual of hovering over cards before identifying them, hoping for that legendary glow, and then handling the cards themselves.  They feel like physical objects, which goes a long way towards offsetting the slightly odd feeling of collecting cards that don't really exist.

As time went on, and the metagame calcified, I got bored of seeing the same few decks, and ended up playing much less.  The Naxxramas adventure was great, and I enjoyed both the new cards and the puzzle-like heroic bosses.  However, many of the new cards made the strongest decks even stronger, and variations on the classic decks were everywhere.

The first expansion, Goblins and Gnomes, was released a couple of weeks back, and I've been playing ever since.  The new mech cards are fun and really sell the theme.  I think my favourite aspect of the new cards, though, is the increased randomness.  Piloted Shredders are showing up in almost every kind of deck, and bringing with them some rarely seen minions.  Unstable Portal can get you access to any legendary card in the game, and can lead to some ridiculous games.  I played a 25 minute mage vs. priest game, which I won on pretty much the last draw of the game.  The player sent me a friend request, and I accepted, ready to screenshot the latest rantings.  We ended up chatting for about 10 minutes, laughing about the twists and turns the game had taken.   So well done Blizzard, you've made Hearthstone fun again. 

Divinity Original Sin [co-op night]

Divinity is really starting to click now.  The combat is getting more intricate and more fun with each fight, and we're able to pull off some decent combos.  I'm especially partial to using my teleport spell to snatch an enemy mage from the back ranks and dump him on his backside between the party's two fighters.

We also finished watching Attack On Titan.  It's been a fun series, lots of visual flair and some likeable characters.  It's going to be a long wait until the next season, but the anime list is long and plentiful.  Next up I think we've got one of Blood+, Psycho Pass, and a couple of others that looked half interesting on Netflix.

Next week's co-op night will be all programming and that, as we're doing Ludum Dare the weekend after next.  I'm sure I'll continue to derail the theme of this blog by posting all about it, along with a link to whatever hideous mutant we birth.

Desert Golfing, and Idle Oil Tycoon [all bloody week]

Sometimes, I just need a game that calms me down.  Both of these games are a little like obscure forms of meditation, and, since IOT basically plays itself with some occasional nudging and prodding I can flit between them at will. 

I am slightly worried that IOT might be reprogramming me through subliminal messaging.  I started playing it for a bit, then continued playing it while watching There Will Be Blood, and I was half an hour into the film before I realised both are sort of about oil.  

Co-op night tonight, so we might see another two-post day!  Even if we just watch Attack on Titan I'll ramble about that for a bit.

Oh, and if you're reading this, Mum, I don't really think Android games are sending me subliminal messages.  Please don't worry.

Divinity Original Sin [co-op night]

Wednesday evenings, a friend and I enjoy a curry, some anime, and some co-op gaming.  He very generously purchased two copies of Divinity Original Sin, and we started playing a week or so before I made this blog.  Last night was play session number two.

I was just the right age, I think, when Baldur's Gate came out.  I was 19, in my second year of uni, and had a lot of free time to sink into a game of that size.  I'd played some D&D at school, so I had a basic understanding of the rule set, but no idea of the type of stories that could be told.  My experience with that game was so formative that I give most of my characters the same name as my first BG character.  Suffice to say that I am almost certainly the kind of person Larian had in mind when they ran a Kickstarter for a new Divinity game.

We wrapped up the murder mystery opening of the game and headed off into the forest for some undead killing.  The combat is just what I want from a game like this, tactical and dynamic, with the location of the fight playing heavily into the strategy. 

VVVVVV [Finished]

After rounding off the last session with that damn escort section, the game actually got easier for a little while.  I found the rest of my crew friends, but then got teleported off into the "all the hardest rooms mashed together" zone. 

There were two rooms that made me lean back, take a deep breath and think "maybe I can't do this".  My reflexes are not what they used to be, but fortunately I was just belligerent enough to get through to the end.

I'm not sure I'll be going back for all the collectables, but I very much enjoyed bouncing around the world of VVVVVV.

VVVVVV #1

Just what the doctor ordered.  The first computer my parents bought was a C64, so the loading screen and graphical style of VVVVVV brought me right back to my childhood.

This really is a wonderful platformer.  The twist, for the uninitiated, is that there is no jump button; you can flip the effect of gravity on yourself, and only when you have your feet on the floor (or ceiling).  The controls are incredibly snappy, although there were some sections that required such pixel perfect placement that I had to put down the joypad and inch into position with taps of the cursor keys.  Zipping around the huge world is so much fun, plummeting through multiple screens, abstract chunks of scenery flashing by.

Whenever you're indoors, each room has a name, harking back to Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner. The names are mostly funny and clever, often giving you a hint towards solving the main puzzle.


The soundtrack is fantastic, and I'm happily humming it to myself right now.  Lovely, lovely chiptune.

Any game that has me calling the designer a shit, out loud while smiling, is doing something right.  Nearly lost me with that escort section though.

Actual Sunlight [Finished]

This is a very well made thing, but I probably shouldn't have played it.

Eversion [Finished]

Eversion opens with a quote from Lovecraft, and then proceeds to be a Mario clone with an eye-melting colour scheme.  It reminds me of the original Great Giana Sisters game on Amiga, all the nuts and bolts are there but none of the artistry.  The menu screen says "Press Evert button to start", but I don't really think too much about this, just means I hit B instead of A to get going.


Then, on the second level, you can't get any further.  There are clouds where there should be platforms, but you fall right through them.  Platformers have never really given us a definitive answer to the question of whether one can walk on a cloud or not, and Eversion isn't helping matters.  So, I bumble around for a bit, trying to find something that I've missed.  Then I hit B, and a section of the screen pulses.  I head over to it, and the music shifts slightly, not quite so jolly now.  I hit B again and the world changes.  Only slightly, but the colours aren't so bright, the cute little monsters aren't quite so happy.  But hey, I can walk on clouds so on I go.  

Now I'm hitting B all the time, looking for these gaps between worlds.  Every time there's an impassable object, I'm hopping through portals, and the world is getting weirder.  Demonic hands fly out of pools of lava, with a scream that sets my teeth on edge.  The screen starts scrolling forward of its own accord, the level melting behind me.  The blocks making up the platforms twist and warp, dripping down the screen.  After dying, the game used to say "Ready!".  Now it says "I'm watching".  Then I find the princess, and she grows teeth and eats me.

OK, now I understand why Lovecraft was there on the intro screen. 

Ittle Dew [Finished]

Back after a day off, then a day of dental crisis.  Feeling a little better now, so I finished Ittle Dew.

The puzzles ramp up a lot towards the end of the game, the combination of the ice staff and the portal staff creating some complex combos (create portal block, freeze it, push it over spikes, freeze the wall, bounce a portal shot off the wall into yourself to cross spikes) all leading up to a final boss fight that manages to pack all of this into a single dynamically shifting room.

There's a lot more chatting to NPCs, and the writing is sharp and funny.  Ittle Dew understands the fundamentals of this type of game, and pokes fun at them while still revelling in how enjoyable they can be.  I had a lovely time.