1. A Dark Room is not actually the rudimentary idle clicker game it initially seems to be.
2. You could be forgiven for thinking that though as the opening minutes of gameplay consist exclusively of clicking on buttons in order to get more buttons to click, which matches well to what seems to be the goal of collecting resources in order to be able to collect more resources.
3. Text prompts appear to the side of the play area which bring to mind the status messages you get when playing the original Rogue. Over time, these begin to tell the story of your encampment, which starts as the titular dark room and gradually blossoms into a village. Random wanderers. Eventually, you start getting an image of the bleak, destroyed world in which A Dark Room is set.
4. The only graphical elements are ASCII characters and some very simple effects but in spite of or perhaps because of this, A Dark Room manages to be quite evocative. I found images of ragged survivors and savage battles dancing though my head as I played. One advantage of such limited graphics is they never get in the way of your imagination.
5. Another advantage is you can play this at work w/o being totally obvious about it.
6. As mentioned, this appears to be an idle clicker on first glance. From there, it branches out into a management sim and then keeps branching from there. The next step is into a Roguelite adventure and switching between this and resource management will be how you spend the bulk of your time playing.
7. Essentially, you use the resources your encampment produces to supply your exploration. As you explore, you discover things that allow you to harvest additional resources that let you explore further. It's a good loop.
8. There's some combat as you explore. You click on various actions all of which are on cooldown timers until you win or die. If you die, you lose the consumable items you happen to be carrying which can sting a bit but it's easy enough to get back on your feet. You can also die buy running out of food or water--which took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out so please don't tell anyone I told you that.
9. You do acquire resources if you just leave this running in a browser but there is some material that is very helpful in the end game that can only practically be had by going out and finding it while you're exploring so that keeps the gameplay experience pretty active.
10. On a similar note, if you keep your resource management under control, there is very little waiting around. For some of the more expensive structures, it may take some time to build up resources but you can generally keep it such that you have what you need to do some exploring in the meantime.
11. As you scratching out a living and then building a larger and more productive village, aspects of the game's wasteland begin to reveal themselves slowly. You don't get so much a story as a world that unfolds before you. Many hints to the true nature of your situation require a pretty close reading of the text and so are easily missed. The game doesn't lean to heavily on its story though so don't worry you're missing anything too important.
12. You eventually find a thing that let's you finish the
game. You are scored at this point based on the amount of resources
you've produced. I am not sure if the developer has weighed in on this
specifically but the community surrounding A Dark Room tends to
play by the rule that lower scores are better since they mean you've
been more efficient in your quest. Do what you want though. Nobody
cares.
13. A Dark Room presents a huge depth of play and touches on tons of different genres while keeping to a graphical style used by the only the most ancient of PC games. It's engaging while still being the kind of thing you can just keep open in a browser tab to come back to when you get a chance. It works really well on many levels and something about it just strikes me as creative and refreshing. Definitely a must play game.
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
13 Points on The Long Dark - Hinterland Games - 2017 [PC]
1. The Long Dark begins w/ a disclaimer that it's no substitute for survival training. Don't get me wrong, The Long Dark provides some harrowing moments but how a person could mistake its mechanics for realism is beyond me. You can't permanently heal a sprained ankle by taking an aspirin. If you have to be told that, maybe consider playing a different game.
2. The Long Dark contains a story mode which they have given its own title: Wintermute. It provides an interesting twist on game play vs. a straight survival sim.
3. Actually, Wintermute is a bit like the story campaign in a Call of Duty game. A lot of time and effort was put into it but it sometimes comes across as an extended tutorial. This is in part because, as of this writing, only two of five episodes are released. You don't need to play it at all if your main interest is playing survival games and you'll get a full experience from The Long Dark even if you skip it.
4. Even unfinished, Wintermute is a pretty substantial game in its own right. The two episodes span several distinct areas, all of which have substantial content on their own, and you will have to use most of your survival skills to get through it.
5. The Long Dark's wilderness feels cold and beautiful and its lovely artstyle is possibly its greatest appeal. It is naturalistic but slightly abstracted. Snowflakes and sunlight play together in broad brushstrokes that bring to mind Claude Monet at times. The one exception to this is the actual characters in games who have skin of pure titanium white w/ bright cherry blossom cheeks and noses. I get this is a stylistic choice to convey the coldness of the environment but it just looks goofy to me.
6. Sound design fits the mood perfectly. It's mutedly wintery.
7. In any mode, the survival aspects are more or less the same. You start out largely unclothed and w/o any food of water and you set out immediately to rectify this situation. You find shelter, build fires, and find and craft food, clothing and shelter. Inventory is limited so successful strategies seem to push you towards building supply caches throughout the landscape so you can explore further and further w/o putting yourself at extreme risk.
8. The one thing that stands out is the incredible importance of wood and other fuels. They are not only critical to keeping you warm--esp. early on before you find or make warmer clothes--but also your source of potable water and safe food. It's heavy too so if you want to bring along a supply for safety's sake, it takes a huge hit on your inventory space. (In the Wintermute story mode, this aspect is nerfed somewhat by NPCs who have infinitely burning fires where you can stop in, have a nap and eat a snack at little cost to yourself.)
9. Actually, inventory generally has a huge impact on everything. If you go carrying every tool and weapon you can think of, you are not going to carry anything you can gather using those tools. Because when you pick what tools you bring, you are also pick what you are going out to do and that gives you a bit of purpose in the day-to-day business of not starving to death. Also, inventory weight impacts your movement speed and how much you have to eat. No matter how little you carry, you can't jump at all, which leads to you getting stuck in the terrain occasionally. Good times, good times.
10. As far as story, Wintermute has one. Your estranged wife comes to you asking her to do her a favor which, as you'd expect, leads to you crashing an airplane and losing her. Then you have to do fetch quests for NPCs until you find her. The main appeal is not in your own story line but discovering the history of the remote Canadian island you've crashed on and the greater world it exists in.
11. Developers, Hinterland Games, have redone Wintermute once at this point to make it more open but looking at the game now, I'm not sure what they might have done. Each area is open to do as you please in theory but the story is progressed by doing tasks in order for NPCs. There are lots of opportunities for player driven solutions to problems that arise but they are seldom taken. For example, there's a major plot line involving a supernatural killer bear and there is one exact specific way this must go down. There is no option to trap the bear or befriend the bear or avoid the bear entirely. An NPC instructs you exactly what to do and you do it. It's not bad as it is but having the story railroaded to such a degree clashes w/ the more open ended nature of the survival mechanics.
12. There's a variety of difficulty modes which range from just finding everything you need hanging out all over the place to getting almost nothing. The various maps you can play also substantially impact how difficult the game is. All these options, ironically, kind of make me wish there was even more granularity. It'd be fun to play on a map w/ tons of easy-to-find shelters but almost no food available w/o hunting or one where guns and ammo are plentiful but so is bloodthirsty wildlife. It just seems like even though they've done a lot here, there's a lot more they could do.
13.The Long Dark is ultimately worth playing as The Long Dark and also as Wintermute. The experiences are related but distinct and both are compelling in their own right. I do hope in the future, the two styles of play could meet more in the middle to make for some ultimate version of Wintermute but you could easily view either mode as bonus content to whichever mode you prefer now so I can't really count that against it.
2. The Long Dark contains a story mode which they have given its own title: Wintermute. It provides an interesting twist on game play vs. a straight survival sim.
3. Actually, Wintermute is a bit like the story campaign in a Call of Duty game. A lot of time and effort was put into it but it sometimes comes across as an extended tutorial. This is in part because, as of this writing, only two of five episodes are released. You don't need to play it at all if your main interest is playing survival games and you'll get a full experience from The Long Dark even if you skip it.
4. Even unfinished, Wintermute is a pretty substantial game in its own right. The two episodes span several distinct areas, all of which have substantial content on their own, and you will have to use most of your survival skills to get through it.
5. The Long Dark's wilderness feels cold and beautiful and its lovely artstyle is possibly its greatest appeal. It is naturalistic but slightly abstracted. Snowflakes and sunlight play together in broad brushstrokes that bring to mind Claude Monet at times. The one exception to this is the actual characters in games who have skin of pure titanium white w/ bright cherry blossom cheeks and noses. I get this is a stylistic choice to convey the coldness of the environment but it just looks goofy to me.
6. Sound design fits the mood perfectly. It's mutedly wintery.
7. In any mode, the survival aspects are more or less the same. You start out largely unclothed and w/o any food of water and you set out immediately to rectify this situation. You find shelter, build fires, and find and craft food, clothing and shelter. Inventory is limited so successful strategies seem to push you towards building supply caches throughout the landscape so you can explore further and further w/o putting yourself at extreme risk.
8. The one thing that stands out is the incredible importance of wood and other fuels. They are not only critical to keeping you warm--esp. early on before you find or make warmer clothes--but also your source of potable water and safe food. It's heavy too so if you want to bring along a supply for safety's sake, it takes a huge hit on your inventory space. (In the Wintermute story mode, this aspect is nerfed somewhat by NPCs who have infinitely burning fires where you can stop in, have a nap and eat a snack at little cost to yourself.)
9. Actually, inventory generally has a huge impact on everything. If you go carrying every tool and weapon you can think of, you are not going to carry anything you can gather using those tools. Because when you pick what tools you bring, you are also pick what you are going out to do and that gives you a bit of purpose in the day-to-day business of not starving to death. Also, inventory weight impacts your movement speed and how much you have to eat. No matter how little you carry, you can't jump at all, which leads to you getting stuck in the terrain occasionally. Good times, good times.
10. As far as story, Wintermute has one. Your estranged wife comes to you asking her to do her a favor which, as you'd expect, leads to you crashing an airplane and losing her. Then you have to do fetch quests for NPCs until you find her. The main appeal is not in your own story line but discovering the history of the remote Canadian island you've crashed on and the greater world it exists in.
11. Developers, Hinterland Games, have redone Wintermute once at this point to make it more open but looking at the game now, I'm not sure what they might have done. Each area is open to do as you please in theory but the story is progressed by doing tasks in order for NPCs. There are lots of opportunities for player driven solutions to problems that arise but they are seldom taken. For example, there's a major plot line involving a supernatural killer bear and there is one exact specific way this must go down. There is no option to trap the bear or befriend the bear or avoid the bear entirely. An NPC instructs you exactly what to do and you do it. It's not bad as it is but having the story railroaded to such a degree clashes w/ the more open ended nature of the survival mechanics.
12. There's a variety of difficulty modes which range from just finding everything you need hanging out all over the place to getting almost nothing. The various maps you can play also substantially impact how difficult the game is. All these options, ironically, kind of make me wish there was even more granularity. It'd be fun to play on a map w/ tons of easy-to-find shelters but almost no food available w/o hunting or one where guns and ammo are plentiful but so is bloodthirsty wildlife. It just seems like even though they've done a lot here, there's a lot more they could do.
13.The Long Dark is ultimately worth playing as The Long Dark and also as Wintermute. The experiences are related but distinct and both are compelling in their own right. I do hope in the future, the two styles of play could meet more in the middle to make for some ultimate version of Wintermute but you could easily view either mode as bonus content to whichever mode you prefer now so I can't really count that against it.
Thursday, March 14, 2019
13 Points on GENDERWRECKED - Ryan Rose Aceae and Heather Flowers - 2018 [PC]
1. Given this game being called Genderwrecked, the fact that the developers stylize it in all caps and replace the Ds in the logo w/ vampire mouth vaginas, I figured it was going to be somewhat angrier in tone than it was. It's actually a nice game that makes you feel good. What a disappointment!
2. What's not a surprise is this game deals w/ gender issues. It takes a particular focus on genders involving more than one part of male-female binary or outside of it entirely.
3. The best thing about Genderwrecked is its sense of humor. It's not really laugh-out-loud funny but still sincerely thoughtful and clever at every turn. In an indie world where lots of indie games try to be indie funny, it's refreshing to find one that actually indie is.
4. The style of humor used is what is commonly called dad jokes and it is actually called that in game. You would think they'd find some gender neutral term for dad jokes like groaners or something but calling them dad jokes actually becomes story relevant at one point. This is some motherfucking science, people.
4. The gameplay is essentially the part of Shin Megami Tensei games where you talk to the monsters and try to convince them to join their party w/o all the being bored to death by million year long dungeons and confusing plot lines--and definitely w/o Atlus's troubling treatment of trans-people.
5. Okay, that's a bit of a stretch but all you do is talk to monsters. It's a visual novel.
6. The post-appocalypse world depicted mostly looks like ASCII art done in contrasting shades of the same color. Monsters are hand-drawn and intricate. The focus is clearly on the monsters, which makes sense. Some are twisted and grotesque to the point of being silly. Others are just silly. It's all a lot of fun.
7. In contrast to the rather loud visuals, the soundscape is sparse and harrowing. It is an endless, layered drone that straddles the border between ambiance and music.
8. These two elements play off each other well. The goofy monsters are disarming but the disquieting soundtrack keeps you from feeling too comfortable. Genderwrecked is not dealing w/ an easy subject so you don't want to breeze through it too happily. You need to take time and think.
9. Your choice in Genderwrecked is limited to three basic options. You can fight, talk to or kiss the monsters. After the first one, I opted to kiss absolutely everyone. It worked out great and was liberating in ways you could not imagine. Definitely, definitely will be kissing as many things as possible in video games from here on out.
10. Whatever option you chose, you interact w/ each monster in an attempt to learn more about its gender identity. Your mission, you see, is to learn the meaning of gender in this post-apocalyptic world. Why that is your mission is never explained. I guess someone just decided it had to be done and you were close by.
11. The game starts you out w/ a monster that feels it has no gender and moves you on through to monsters that have a clear idea of what their gender is, ones that don't feel the current norms adequately describe them and so on. It runs the gamut and that is the point. Importantly, none of the monsters seem to feel pushed into a gender role. They explore the idea w/ you and come to their own conclusions.
12. This gets to why Genderwrecked tends to give you a fuzzy feeling. Gender issues are felt most poignantly by people who are frequently dehumanized for where they fall on the spectrum. In making the characters that face the same challenges actual monsters, the developers, Ryan Rose Aceae and Heather Flowers, had to strike a precarious balance---which they did in a way that seems both somehow both effortless and well considered. This makes it feel like you can do the same in real life. It feels good to not be judgemental.
13. Genderwrecked was a surprise to me. I was expecting something personal in a specific way, a "this is my experience" kind of game, but it's not that at all. It examines a more universal experience and succeeds quite admirably in tying in an individuals relationship w/ their gender to all the other aspects of themselves.
2. What's not a surprise is this game deals w/ gender issues. It takes a particular focus on genders involving more than one part of male-female binary or outside of it entirely.
3. The best thing about Genderwrecked is its sense of humor. It's not really laugh-out-loud funny but still sincerely thoughtful and clever at every turn. In an indie world where lots of indie games try to be indie funny, it's refreshing to find one that actually indie is.
4. The style of humor used is what is commonly called dad jokes and it is actually called that in game. You would think they'd find some gender neutral term for dad jokes like groaners or something but calling them dad jokes actually becomes story relevant at one point. This is some motherfucking science, people.
4. The gameplay is essentially the part of Shin Megami Tensei games where you talk to the monsters and try to convince them to join their party w/o all the being bored to death by million year long dungeons and confusing plot lines--and definitely w/o Atlus's troubling treatment of trans-people.
5. Okay, that's a bit of a stretch but all you do is talk to monsters. It's a visual novel.
6. The post-appocalypse world depicted mostly looks like ASCII art done in contrasting shades of the same color. Monsters are hand-drawn and intricate. The focus is clearly on the monsters, which makes sense. Some are twisted and grotesque to the point of being silly. Others are just silly. It's all a lot of fun.
7. In contrast to the rather loud visuals, the soundscape is sparse and harrowing. It is an endless, layered drone that straddles the border between ambiance and music.
8. These two elements play off each other well. The goofy monsters are disarming but the disquieting soundtrack keeps you from feeling too comfortable. Genderwrecked is not dealing w/ an easy subject so you don't want to breeze through it too happily. You need to take time and think.
9. Your choice in Genderwrecked is limited to three basic options. You can fight, talk to or kiss the monsters. After the first one, I opted to kiss absolutely everyone. It worked out great and was liberating in ways you could not imagine. Definitely, definitely will be kissing as many things as possible in video games from here on out.
10. Whatever option you chose, you interact w/ each monster in an attempt to learn more about its gender identity. Your mission, you see, is to learn the meaning of gender in this post-apocalyptic world. Why that is your mission is never explained. I guess someone just decided it had to be done and you were close by.
11. The game starts you out w/ a monster that feels it has no gender and moves you on through to monsters that have a clear idea of what their gender is, ones that don't feel the current norms adequately describe them and so on. It runs the gamut and that is the point. Importantly, none of the monsters seem to feel pushed into a gender role. They explore the idea w/ you and come to their own conclusions.
12. This gets to why Genderwrecked tends to give you a fuzzy feeling. Gender issues are felt most poignantly by people who are frequently dehumanized for where they fall on the spectrum. In making the characters that face the same challenges actual monsters, the developers, Ryan Rose Aceae and Heather Flowers, had to strike a precarious balance---which they did in a way that seems both somehow both effortless and well considered. This makes it feel like you can do the same in real life. It feels good to not be judgemental.
13. Genderwrecked was a surprise to me. I was expecting something personal in a specific way, a "this is my experience" kind of game, but it's not that at all. It examines a more universal experience and succeeds quite admirably in tying in an individuals relationship w/ their gender to all the other aspects of themselves.
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
13 Points on WarioWare Gold - Nintendo - 2018 [Nintendo 3DS]
1. If ever there has been a Nintendo game that stinks of low effort, WarioWare Gold is it. I am having a hard time giving enough of a crap about it to write this review. Suffice to say, had I arbitrarily decided to do 14 Points reviews, it would be too much effort for this game. Thankfully, I picked 13 so now you have to read this shit. You're welcome. Now pay me.
2. Okay, I'm being a bit harsh. WarioWare Gold is fun enough, it could just use some polish--a lot of polish, esp. in the main story mode.
3. Really, micro games kinda feel low effort by design so I'm not sure what I'm on about. You throw together some new assets and whatever IPs you are lucky enough to own. Make a couple hundred games that are two seconds long. Bam, done. I actually love this stuff so I'm just complaining in order to hear my voice echo in the void.
4. The way these kind of games work is you have to keep a myriad of different tiny games in your head and they come at you in rapid succession and it feels good to think fast and remember what you have to do for game after game after game. When done right, this establishes an addictive flow and getting on a good run gives that same rush as hitting a new high score in an arcade game.
5. WarioWare Gold's main story mode does not have this flow. That is why I complained into the void about it earlier. There are overlong (though admittedly skippable) cut scenes before each round of games and the little segments between each game take just a little too long and some of the games make you sit there and wait once completed. It is hard to explain in concrete terms but it just feels a little off and it's annoying.
6. It doesn't help that the cut scenes, while fully voiced, are cheaply animated, making you wonder why they put them in at all if they weren't going to do them right. They aren't funny and don't add anything.
7. Event this wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that the story mode also functions as an entirely unnecessary tutorial and they force you to complete it to unlock WarioWare Gold's other modes.You spend a lot of time just hoping you don't screw up so you don't have to play through that set of games again.
8. There is a little more unlocking to do once the story mode is finished but it's thankfully mostly really quick. The extra modes serve up the meat of the game and were what kept me sinking time into it after an initial bumpy start.
9. The micro games themselves are actually just fine. It is a mashup of games that worked in previous WarioWare games so, you know, nothing new under the sun but there is something to be said w/ going w/ the tried and true. They all work well enough and only very rarely feel unfair or even difficult on their own. The challenge is in how they string together.
10. Stringing them together differently is what the extra modes do differently. It is always the same games. There's a ton of variation though and a lot of it is really fun. You can, for example, play just one game over and over. You can play a mix of games in their hardest versions. There's modes where you control how fast the games go by tilting your system. One where Wario throws distractions at you. Another where you don't get any times between games. And more than that. Pretty much every one of the modes induced me to play through more than a few times to at least get to point where I was no longer doing better every single time. Some of them pushed into serious white knuckle, one-more-try over and over territory.
11. You are rewarded for getting high scores and such by getting various unlockables such as terrible videos you never want to watch and things like that. Some of the stuff is okay--like additional mini-games--but really what keeps you playing is the little endorphin rush you get from beating your high score.
12. Outside of the story mode, you can always pick what kind of games you play. The ones where you turn the system side to side can be a bother on airplanes or public transit so it's nice to be able to avoid those specifically.
13. Unless you have only have one of the really crap version of WarioWare like WarioWare: Snapped, it kind of hard to justify a purchase of WarioWare Gold unless you are just crazy for playing 2D only games on your 3DS. It is admittedly a hell of a lot of fun once you get past the annoying story mode but it really adds nothing exciting to the equation at all. I typically try to avoid judging games based on price but this really seems better suited to being a budget downloadable title rather than a full-priced retail release. It goes as far as to wear the fact that its a rehash of old favorites on its sleeve and, really, just doesn't end up being too impressive a collection as a result.
2. Okay, I'm being a bit harsh. WarioWare Gold is fun enough, it could just use some polish--a lot of polish, esp. in the main story mode.
3. Really, micro games kinda feel low effort by design so I'm not sure what I'm on about. You throw together some new assets and whatever IPs you are lucky enough to own. Make a couple hundred games that are two seconds long. Bam, done. I actually love this stuff so I'm just complaining in order to hear my voice echo in the void.
4. The way these kind of games work is you have to keep a myriad of different tiny games in your head and they come at you in rapid succession and it feels good to think fast and remember what you have to do for game after game after game. When done right, this establishes an addictive flow and getting on a good run gives that same rush as hitting a new high score in an arcade game.
5. WarioWare Gold's main story mode does not have this flow. That is why I complained into the void about it earlier. There are overlong (though admittedly skippable) cut scenes before each round of games and the little segments between each game take just a little too long and some of the games make you sit there and wait once completed. It is hard to explain in concrete terms but it just feels a little off and it's annoying.
6. It doesn't help that the cut scenes, while fully voiced, are cheaply animated, making you wonder why they put them in at all if they weren't going to do them right. They aren't funny and don't add anything.
7. Event this wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that the story mode also functions as an entirely unnecessary tutorial and they force you to complete it to unlock WarioWare Gold's other modes.You spend a lot of time just hoping you don't screw up so you don't have to play through that set of games again.
8. There is a little more unlocking to do once the story mode is finished but it's thankfully mostly really quick. The extra modes serve up the meat of the game and were what kept me sinking time into it after an initial bumpy start.
9. The micro games themselves are actually just fine. It is a mashup of games that worked in previous WarioWare games so, you know, nothing new under the sun but there is something to be said w/ going w/ the tried and true. They all work well enough and only very rarely feel unfair or even difficult on their own. The challenge is in how they string together.
10. Stringing them together differently is what the extra modes do differently. It is always the same games. There's a ton of variation though and a lot of it is really fun. You can, for example, play just one game over and over. You can play a mix of games in their hardest versions. There's modes where you control how fast the games go by tilting your system. One where Wario throws distractions at you. Another where you don't get any times between games. And more than that. Pretty much every one of the modes induced me to play through more than a few times to at least get to point where I was no longer doing better every single time. Some of them pushed into serious white knuckle, one-more-try over and over territory.
11. You are rewarded for getting high scores and such by getting various unlockables such as terrible videos you never want to watch and things like that. Some of the stuff is okay--like additional mini-games--but really what keeps you playing is the little endorphin rush you get from beating your high score.
12. Outside of the story mode, you can always pick what kind of games you play. The ones where you turn the system side to side can be a bother on airplanes or public transit so it's nice to be able to avoid those specifically.
13. Unless you have only have one of the really crap version of WarioWare like WarioWare: Snapped, it kind of hard to justify a purchase of WarioWare Gold unless you are just crazy for playing 2D only games on your 3DS. It is admittedly a hell of a lot of fun once you get past the annoying story mode but it really adds nothing exciting to the equation at all. I typically try to avoid judging games based on price but this really seems better suited to being a budget downloadable title rather than a full-priced retail release. It goes as far as to wear the fact that its a rehash of old favorites on its sleeve and, really, just doesn't end up being too impressive a collection as a result.
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