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Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
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Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentDuality - Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles (Epic Freebie) Astrea is a draw 4, dice are free but negative effects must be played, roguelike deckbuilder. Duality is present in how there are two damage...Duality - Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles (Epic Freebie)
Astrea is a draw 4, dice are free but negative effects must be played, roguelike deckbuilder. Duality is present in how there are two damage types: Purification, healing allies and lowering enemy HP, or Corruption, damaging allies and recovering enemy HP. Since the player has 3 hearts with 7 Max HP each and Corruption dice have to be played, the obvious answer is to play them on the enemy since they have way more HP right? The issue is that applying corruption to them increases their overcorruption meter which allows them to pull off their special move the moment it maxes out, even during your turn or right after they've already attacked, which can lead to overwhelming burst damage or them scaling much faster. On the flipside, the player has access to Virtues, special moves that can be used whenever the player's HP falls below a certain threshold, so the player is incentivised to have just enough defense to survive to access the full arsenal and then heal back up (and yes, it looks like being damaged then healing then self-damaging again refreshes the Virtue. The 2nd character has a build doing just that).
Dice come in 5 Variants: Starter, Safe, Balanced, Risky, and Epic.
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Starters should be the first to go at the Remove 2 Dice tiles or the shop. However, they can't be removed at the Broken Shrines which allow for trading 4 non-starter dice for a Star Blessing (aka relic).
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Safe dice have all positive sides, but are lower impact.
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Balanced dice are either 3/3 or 4/2 good/bad ratio and are middle of the road in effect.
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Risky dice are either 2/4 good/bad ratio or all sides have a good and bad effect at the same time.
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Epic dice can only be found as a boss drop, from events, or for 300 shards from the Epic Shops. Epic dice are always high-impact with only positive sides, but can't be duplicated.
Dice can have their sides turned into another effect through the shop or specific forge dice (excepting dice with unforgable faces) and all the characters have a reroll virtue bulit-in, so the riskier dice can be worth grabbing provided proper risk management. There are also opportunities to duplicate good dice, whether at the duplicate tile or paying up at the shop.
Per deckbuilder norms, a small deck is usually better for consistency and getting to the good dice faster. Since enemy encounters drop 2 dice, it's usually better to ignore the dice chest tiles in favor of money tiles (skipping a die gives 10 shards while the shard tiles give 50). The destroy 2 dice tiles and shops give the opportunity to trim out the starter dice and the broken shrines can take away 4 non-starter dice after deciding a deck's direction and course-correcting.
There's more to it of course, but the game's intuitive and I had fun. The low max hp with healing and dice rolling makes for a nice change of pace from Slay the Spire 2. I've had a win with each character (required to unlock the 6th character and then a win with him unlocks the true final boss) and 2 wins against said true final boss so I can at least say I've has a decent look at the game so far.
Character run notes
Moonie: 1st character. Won the run through stacking Doom which increases the value of Corruption dice and then converting them to Purification dice for tons of damage.
Cellarius: 2nd character. Had 3 runs:
- First run was a Waves build which does full AoE once the Waves status exceeds enemy HP. Lost against the 3rd world elite that had infinite HP, dies in 4 turns, and needs to deal damage to in order to reduce its damage. I didn't have enough normal damage or dice scaling off of Waves, so the run ended there.
- Second run won with a basic self-damage build, helped by having a boss relic that gave strength up with each hit taken.
- Third run went against the true final boss with a Waves build. This time I had more options for regular damage that scales off of Waves.
Hevelius: 3rd character. Starts off with 2 random Sentinels which normally drop from the boss or are available for purchase/upgrade at the sentinel shop for 150. In exchange, he only has 2 hearts so he can't cash them in as often at the shrines. Felt more defensive and campy, and I won through scaling up the Sentinel damage.
Austra: 4th character. Very, very RNG in having a lot of effects be random targets and/or a 50/50 between dealing Purification or Corruption. Also the only one with a dodge and crit stat. Can't say I enjoyed it being even more random.
- 1st run lost from not playing safe enough and just losing hearts due to losing the 50/50s.
- 2nd run I went for safer dice and focused on buffing up multi-hits.
Sothis: 5th character. Has a lot of mechanics including Soul Heat which builds up faster with multi-hits but resets each turn, Relief which is basically after-turn poison/healing, Affliction which is DoT Corruption that doesn't fade away, and Chanting is kinda exclusive in that it scales up, but its stacks reset if any other type of direct damage is used. My favorite so far.
- 1st run won due to getting lucky with AoE Affliction stacking and the accompanying bonus effects off it with a side of Chanting.
- 2nd run went to the true final boss with AoE Relief and more Chanting stacking.
Orion: 6th character. Imagine the Watcher if she was stance-dancing between 4 of the Defect's orbs instead. There's the damage orb, the shield orb, the Astrium orb which is a resource that automatically bursts at 10 stacks, and the Karma orb which deals 6 damage to self (out of 7 max HP) after gaining 6 Karma stacks.
- 1st run was focused on Rotating between orbs, but I didn't have enough damage mitigation against all the karma that built up extra fast from the rotations.
- 2nd run was shield-focused in the sense that some dice deal damage that multiplies based off of how much light shield stacks the enemy has.
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Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern (edited )LinkSingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 4/25) Flow Standard bingo 4/25 Perspective ✅ Pyre Identity ✅ Berserk Boy Threshold Synthesis Peace Familiar Resistance ✅ 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim...SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 4/25)
Flow Standard bingo 4/25 Perspective Fleeting
✅ PyreIdentity Transformation
✅ Berserk BoyThreshold Synthesis Peace Familiar Resistance Connection
✅ 13 Sentinels: Aegis RimPrecision Increment ★ Wildcard Causality Unorthodox Duality
✅ Astrea: Six-Sided OraclesColor Silence Faith Friction Tradition Morality Freedom Knowledge Empathy Fleeting - Pyre (GOG)
Supergiant Games is known for quite a few titles: Bastion, Transistor (my favorite), Hades, and Hades 2 (waiting for sale). But there's the middle child (metaphorically and literally), the odd duck out, Pyre. You, as the in-game capital-R Reader, were exiled to Downside for the crime of being able to read. A band of fellow exiles, The Nightwings, found and nursed you to health before asking if you're capable of reading the Book of Rites. You are. You can follow the stars and direct the Rites as the ritual to freedom. In less flowerly terms, you're the manager of a 3v3 fantasy basketball team to win your right to be unexiled.
Freedom is a central theme. Everyone is fighting for their chance to be freed from a lifetime in Downside. Who deserves that freedom? Amongst the other teams? Amidst your own? The game advertises that win or lose in the Rites, the narrative goes on. Of course, to provide some narrative structure and incentive to keep winning, the team's benefactor has a Plan in mind, one that relies on your teammates being sent back to the Commonwealth with their crimes absolved. His words on freedom deserve to be quoted:
To be able to indulge one's curiosities and passions, at least the ones that cause no harm to others, without the constant threat of judgment and reprisal. Freedom means not being made a criminal for what you know, or whom you love, or what you choose to think or not to think.
Fleeting - Technically an actual spoiler, but I don't really consider it one?
After a season of playing to qualify for finals, the Liberation Rite only allows for a single teammate of the winning team to ascend. They have to be deemed worthy (read: have enough exp) and be sent out on the field for their win. It's a Fleeting feeling to train them up and then have to say goodbye, no longer able to learn more about them or use their moveset. With each win, the main cast is gradually reduced; it's a bittersweet hope to see them ascend, yet still wonder if those who remain will get their chance to leave.
Actual Spoilers
The stars are going. Each season has less and less rites before the Liberation Rite. There won't be enough left to free everyone on your own team, let alone the other ones. It is the last, fleeting chance for freedom. Everyone who remains will be trapped in Downside for the rest of their life. Choose who goes and make peace with the decision.
Having now played Pyre (or well, giving another go at it), I can see how it ended up not discussed as much as its sibling titles. Bastion and Transistor have a small core cast with the constant presence of their narrators in the protagonist's personal journey. Hades has a larger cast that Zagreus meets in his journey to break free from the underworld and find his mother, but its roguelite structure means there's always some new dialogue or story beat to follow when he's making friends with everyone. Pyre meanwhile lacks a central figure to follow or fight against due to its narrative, with the story arcs dependent on who you use and challenge. It gives an openness to the choices taken, but in doing so it cannot truly give emphasis to anyone. The gameplay is also balanced since there's a Versus mode whereas the the other games are PvE and constantly give new toys and combinations to play around with. It also doesn't help that the lore book is written in ye olde fancy english which adds another degree of friction to it all. It's just a different experience altogether in the Supergiant repertoire.
Gameplay amounts to the Rites and then the narrative choices with unknown bonuses/penalties made when traveling between the Rites. To simplify the 3v3 gameplay, only one unit on each team can move and act at a time with control (and the ball) being passed over. Each unit basically has a dash, a passive aura around them that temporarily banishes opponents, a ranged aura cast, and a jump to go over auras (which can be bodyblocked by intercepting with a jump). Possessing the ball disables the aura attacks though, so whoever's holding it has to move around the enemy, pass it to an ally, or just throw the ball on the ground so they have access to their offense. Dunking the ball into the pyre is the main way to score, but completely banishes whoever scored until the next goal, while throwing the ball requires charging it up but allows the scorer to still be active for the next round. I played on normal so I didn't have any problems with bumrushing the ball with fast units and dunking or just steadily walking forward with bulky units and using their bigger aura to steadily banish foes and clear a path. Normally I prefer M&K for these types of games, but I started on my Steam Deck (and set up Syncthingy as a save transfer between it and my computer) so I ended up using controller (and also couldn't really depend on the ranged casts without M&K).
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Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentConnection - 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim 13 Sentinels is comprised of 98% VN Sci-Fi thriller that's about 13 Japanese highschoolers raised in 5 different time periods (1945, 1985, 2025, 2065, 2105)...Connection - 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim
13 Sentinels is comprised of 98% VN Sci-Fi thriller that's about 13 Japanese highschoolers raised in 5 different time periods (1945, 1985, 2025, 2065, 2105) who end up in the "main" era of 1985, the last remaining zone unattacked by kaiju, to pilot Sentinel mechas in humanity's last stand against the swarm. Each of the 13 have their own story route which takes place in the weeks before the final fight with a drip feed of revelations as each protagonist's tale provides more details and context to the overarching saga and the sheer scope of everything. While it'd be easy to look at the different stories and call it a change of Perspective, it'd be much more fitting to see the Connection between everyone. The cast shows up in each other's stories, whether as key players or background bystanders, but not everyone is aware of the kaiju threat or even each other until the time of the final battle. To help keep track of everything, the game provides a chronological order timeline of when each scene takes place along with a glossary detailing key events relating to each person.
Connection also shows up in how everyone is motivated by love; some platonic or familial, but mostly romantic. The cast is mostly highschoolers though, so a lot of the romance amounts to them falling in love at first sight with not much reasoning into why they're in love or any further development to their bond. As such, the only couples I could take seriously were the adult couples and Ogata with Kisaragi because they actually have scenes showing where it comes from or even just hanging out at all. This isn't helped by two of the characters, Yakushiji and Shinonome, being schoolgirls who are motivated entirely by their romantic feelings and thoroughly manipulated because of it. Hijiyama isn't manipulated, but he becomes Okino's willing goon after falling in love with his girl disguise at the start of his route and having lots of gay panic moments (Hijiyama being from 1945) and Okino just teasing him back over it. I guess it's just a big case of telling instead of showing with more emphasis on the reveals rather than the character buildup.
To that end, I think I consider the game compelling, but not resonant; that I spent the weekend binging it, but have no desire to engage with the bonus levels or pick through the full timeline after the credits rolled. The game is held up by having reveal after reveal to hook the player in through the information delivered through each story, but what happens after? The conclusion is already stated at the beginning of the game: that the 13 pilots will fight the kaiju. Once all the cards are laid down, that's it. Having 13 protagonists and related side characters makes for much differing levels of focus between them which leaves a haphazard narrative once all the pazazz is taken out. Heck, two of the stories aren't even about their protagonist, but the person they're hanging around with instead. I guess I just feel unsatisfied from a character standpoint. That said, I guess the characters I liked would be Ogata (delinquent with a heart of gold underneath), Takamiya (ditto), Minami (for being proactive and fun when she thinks her story is playing out like a sci-fi movie), Kisaragi (for being outspoken and surprisingly important to everything), and Shinonome (her storyline involving her continuously waking up in the nurse's office with amnesia and trying to piece together what she knows).
I do also have to complain about the game requiring the player to keep mashing A for the characters to exhaust all their dialogue during a scene instead of just... playing all the dialogue. Ditto for having to go through all the thoughts in the thought cloud before new dialogue pops up.
The remaining 2% of the game is real-time tactics with pause when a unit is taking their turn. I highly doubt anyone's playing the game primarily for this, it's just mostly to gate the story content while going through what little gameplay there is. The levels amount to kill all kaiju (or defend the terminal for 2 minutes on non-boss missions, but all the kaiju should be dead by the 1 minute mark at the very latest) using 6 of the 13 pilots. Units are forced to rest after going on 2 missions to encourage rotating through everyone. Despite one of Vanillaware's signatures being their sprite work, the graphics here basically amount to 👾 for everything. I could say more about it, but I honestly do not feel compelled to.
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Comment on May 2026 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern (edited )LinkSingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 1/25) Flow Standard bingo 1/25 Perspective Fleeting Identity Transformation Threshold Synthesis Peace Familiar Resistance ✅ 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim...SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 1/25)
Flow Standard bingo 1/25 Perspective Fleeting Identity Transformation Threshold Synthesis Peace Familiar Resistance Connection
✅ 13 Sentinels: Aegis RimPrecision Increment ★ Wildcard Causality Unorthodox Duality Color Silence Faith Friction Tradition Morality Freedom Knowledge Empathy Life suckerpunched me during November so I didn't have the energy to join then (and also some new games popped out during then), but back to the burner we go. I see the non-steam direction, so I'll try to pull from the hand-me-down Switch, PS4, GOG, itch, and Epic freebies.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkDeathbulge: Battle of the Bands It's a whimsical RPG that introduces its tone by having the party open doors via kicking them across the room. All the doors. There's also the thing where all the...Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands
It's a whimsical RPG that introduces its tone by having the party open doors via kicking them across the room. All the doors. There's also the thing where all the bands unknowingly sign up to fight to the death and are cursed to be able to fight and heal with music, but it's mostly humorous. It's about 10-ish hours, a bit more time for completionist grinders for the RNG beat drops and money for upgrades, with 6-ish dungeons (and a superboss in each dungeon +1 tutorial area +1 final area that doesn't really feel like a dungeon). I had fun with the game's vibes, but it definitely feels short for how customizable everyone's loadouts are and no postgame areas to really push a build's limits, though the game was apparently kickstarted which would explain that.
The game does that initiative thing where characters with higher speed takes turns faster, but it does a few neat things with it.
- The initiative meter for each team is divided into 4 slots for status effects that apply when the character goes through it with each slot getting overridden with whatever buff or debuff was applied last. Of course, some classes work off of applying or benefiting from self-debuffs plus some skills allow for inverting a status effect.
- As a consequence of the above though, pets feel kinda awkward since they use up one of the slots to summon them and they disappear if their slot gets replaced. Status effects usually apply 2 or 4 slots at a time so it creates an odd amount of applied slots to avoid replacing the pet. Only 1 pet can be summoned at a time too which negates a lot of its appeal as much as I liked the spider summon.
- Whoever's the active member applies their speed and tanks all the single-target damage while the other party members gain increased hype regen. This actually led to moments where I just basic attacked because I had too much speed and not enough hype to use any skills.
Then there's the customization aspect:
- Consumable item types are collected and only have a stockpile cost to use them. A single battle provides enough funds to refresh the whole stockpile, so this game's very friendly about item usage.
- Each character has a beat slot (the basic attack that enemies drop), 3 skill slots with the first slot determining the character class and statline and half hype cost for that class' skills, and 1 accessory slot (2 after buying the slot expansion in the second town).
- Builds really depend on finding/purchasing whatever skills/accessories are available, but I ended up having Faye as a Headbanger for Noise damage and speed, Ian as a Distorter for Melody damage and debuffs, and Briff using the Sampler class to use beats to cover up the remaining gaps, specifically equipping him with the chance of multi-hit attack from the ghost legend, an accessory that gives a chance to AoE heal with each action, and the remaining beats to provide haste and shield the status effects to prevent them getting overridden.
I thought the ultimate class mods were a bit of a noob trap though since their skill costs 66% max hype to use which in turn requires having a dedicated hype battery to justify bringing them along.
Outriders
A third-person cover-optional looter shooter with 4 classes, 3 active skill slots during combat, and a skill tree that branches between gun power, skill power, or survivability. The storyline and all the sidequests are pretty much about humans being bastards, enough that Earth was destroyed and abandoned in the prologue lore before humanity found a new planet and screwed that up too. I'm on apocalypse tier 12 with my main being a pyro with enough skill leech to tank and heal to full instantly as long as any enemy is on fire plus a huge damaging laser on a 7 second cooldown. By all means though, I don't know how I got 39 hours or 2 more alts of the other classes that finished the campaign. FOMO of how the different classes play? The campaign being easy to mindlessly speedrun as a podcast game with the loot/difficulty tier tured down for the alts? The dopamine of extracting mods and resources from postgame expeditions while playing an unkillable phoenix? The game simply running well enough and gotten cheaply from a bundle? A mix of not playing a cover shooter or looter shooter in a while? All of the above?
That said, it's also an always online game with no pause. Whatever gear I get is probably gone and pointless once the plug gets pulled on the servers. This is one reason I don't gacha.
- The initiative meter for each team is divided into 4 slots for status effects that apply when the character goes through it with each slot getting overridden with whatever buff or debuff was applied last. Of course, some classes work off of applying or benefiting from self-debuffs plus some skills allow for inverting a status effect.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkKulebra and the Souls of Limbo The epilogue chapter for this game released this week! Previously it had the indie game sin of basically ending on Act 1 and things feeling unresolved when the...Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo
The epilogue chapter for this game released this week! Previously it had the indie game sin of basically ending on Act 1 and things feeling unresolved when the credits rolled. Now it ties up some of the loose ends in a grander resolution, though it falters by having the major action take place before the lower-stakes action which abruptly fizzles out with the side character gaining her character development to face the future, followed by the realization that that's all after being sent back to the world with no other objectives. There were a few more new sidequests too, so it added about 2-ish hours to the 9-ish hour base game.
I guess for context, the game is about a silent protagonist skeletal snake going throughout limbo and helping souls out which leads to them moving on. The closest gameplay comparison I can come up with is a mix of Paper Mario (without the RPG combat, but more stealth/running away segments and pop quizes for the bosses) in so far as overworld controls and chapter structure, and Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask for there being a Day/Dusk/Night cycle "timeloop" (the souls resetting their memories after a day unless something with a big impact makes them remember) and a notebook to keep track of people/objectives/sidequests. I got this for $4 from the Humble store, so I can't really complain, but I also hadn't really thought about it at all after finishing it until the steam news section displayed the update. It's not bad, I was sold from the Next Fest demo it had, but I guess I consider it more like something to fill a free afternoon after playing through it.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate
A Hades-like, but turtles. I didn't have a good impression from the Next Fest demo it had, but the game went <$5 in a recent sale so I picked it up. It is exactly as grind-heavy as I expected: tons of meta-currency needed for every little thing like basic stats with multiple levels for them to purchase and bullet sponge bosses which require said upgrades. I lucked out my first run by getting a legendary duo that restores HP on basic attacks with Mikey which basically enabled face-tanking. After that point though, it just feels like a slough to get through. Multi-hits and stage hazards just instantly shred through the turtles' hp (I sincerely hope this isn't a case of high FPS increasing damage ticks because there isn't a frame rate option nor do I know how to 3rd party that for Bazzite). Since hard mode Karai has tons of area poison, my current runs are ending there and I get about 500 Dragon Coins and 350 Dreamer Coins a run to spend before jumping back into the fray. I suppose the smart thing to do is not take the boss challenges or the Pact of Punishment-equivalent portals that appear during the run, but they're also required for higher tiers on the skill tree. It is TMNT though, so for now, I'm still putting this as my mindless podcast game in the hopes that there'll be something worthwhile after the grind.
Mikey feels the best to play, though I'm also partial to Don for his i-frames tool and range despite most online comments considering him the worst on the tiers.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentIf you're interested in more AA-style games, I highly recommend of the Devil. It takes place in a cyberpunk world (actual cyberpunk, not just window dressing) and Morgan is quite... unique as a...If you're interested in more AA-style games, I highly recommend of the Devil. It takes place in a cyberpunk world (actual cyberpunk, not just window dressing) and Morgan is quite... unique as a protagonist within the genre. It's very stylish and rife with casino imagery within the rebuttal UI as Morgan loves to gamble. Episode 0 is the free demo and it's an episodic game with 2 of 5 full scale cases released so far.
Other AA-style games I've played
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Murders on the Yangtze River: 1900s China with the overarching story being about Shen trying to find the full truth behind his brother's death. There's a "it's clearly translated" quality to it, but I do remember liking it. The game is pretty conscious of letting the player succeed by offering a 2-hint system (the hint and then giving the answer with no judgement), and each chapter has a gimmick pop up, though anything too far from the main mechanics is freely skippable.
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Aviary Attorney: 1840s France with animal people. Aside from that, it's other draw is that investigations are time-limited which makes it possible to not have the decisive evidence needed for trial. Win or lose, the story continues on and there's 3 separate finales depending on how the second to last case ended. I haven't played this since 2018 apparently so I don't quite remember it, but I do have it marked in my library as "would recommend".
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Nina Aquila: Legal Eagle: Made in RPGMaker. It's lower budget as expected because of that, but it tries to make up for it in being very anime and earnest about it, and each chapter aside from the tutorial case has its own unique minigame. I've posted about it before, but my main conclusion is to play at a deep discount/if you already own it from a bundle. Having played Case 4 since then, I don't quite recommend that particular one because the main duo spend the case angry at each other because plot drama, the beat-em-up minigame in this one being iffy, and the general vibe that there really isn't a finish line for the overarching story in sight.
It's interesting for me to see someone else' opinion of Tyrion Cuthbert. Personally I thought the original cases before the story rewrite/rework were better (posted my own thoughts before), but it is hard to find another AA-game of its quality regardless.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkPutting things on blast this week I guess. Winds Of Arcana: Ruination This is a 2.5D metroidvania that I picked out to fill a fanatical bundle. I uninstalled the moment I completed it because it...Putting things on blast this week I guess.
Winds Of Arcana: Ruination
This is a 2.5D metroidvania that I picked out to fill a fanatical bundle. I uninstalled the moment I completed it because it is a janky mess.
So many complaints
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The character softlocking from trying to cast a spell or enter the fast travel too fast is common and requires an enemy to hit you out of it lest you're forced to reload to the last save point.
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Parry timings are finicky and can't be relied on.
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2 boss fights have bosses with super aim tracking which makes their projectiles nigh unavoidable (and the second encounter has two enemies doing this at the same time). Tying into the above, it's hard to tell if they're unparryable or if the parry timings are really that bad and there doesn't appear to be any parry resets in case of multiple projectiles at once.
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No mercy invincibility for respawning from an environmental hazard which lets an enemy spawncamp or worse, respawning in the same trap and getting caught in a death loop. It is not uncommon to fall through the floor either.
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Spikes always have a hitbox that's just a little too big which provokes an insane amount of frustration for not visibly touching them, but still respawning.
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The traversal abilities are activated by holding down the modifier button first (Default R1/RB)+face buttons. This naturally plays hell with platforming when the special wall toggle ability uses the same button as jumping and dashing is disabled when holding down the modifier button. On the same subject, I've had a lot of moments where my double jump just got eaten instead of the initial jump.
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There's no indication where to get the walljump ability. The world opens up story-wise and map-wise right after getting the ability to toggle walls and the first fast travel point finally being discovered half-way through the game, so there's no guidance to backtrack to a very specific point to truly open up the world and continue the game. The game's so obscure, I had to skim through a playthrough on youtube to find out the ability is at the tree icon in the forest. For that matter, there's not much prompting to exit through the front doors of the ruins to get to the forest area either.
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The ending amounts to defeating the final boss and then getting a "You win!" screen. The story is obviously not the strong point, but there's at least a bare minimum of gravitas to finishing a game in this day and age.
Mostly I got through by using the chakrams for range + attack speed for aether regen and abusing spells via missiles spam from the first spirit idol and then shield/healing spam from the fire spirit idol.
Holy Shoot
An FPS Rougelite that I got from Humble Bundle's current Sharp Shooters bundle. It's an Early Access title that launched last July, got a major update last October, and a news post this February basically saying "we're working on it and revamping stuff", though the dev account is active and replied to a review with the claim that an update would happen later this month. It's undercooked to say the least, and has performance issues that dragged my FPS down to 40-ish by the end of the first area and 20-ish by the third. It basically took me 4 runs to get a win with both characters: the first to figure out what's going on and put some points in reload speed + ammo gain on kill in the meta-tree, the second run to put some points in survivability, then the third and fourth runs were wins that also told me I saw all the variety so far. With the survivability perks in place to counteract the chip damage, the enemies don't have any attacks/patterns that really force a reaction besides basic kiting to deal with them. There are so many other roguelite FPSes out there that this one just really isn't worth it.
The gameplay loop itself amounts to clearing a room of enemies for loot and fulfilling the optional challenge, following the compass for hidden loot if that perk is taken (which adds a lot of dead time but is also necessary for early game souls), then entering the area between rooms to cash in souls at the blind box perk merchant, then the level up statue with any remaining souls, and finally the weapon chest to see if there's anything worth swapping to before going to a new room, rinse & repeat. The perks are less "builds" and more "stat boosts" and all the current perks can be taken by world 3; legendary-tier weapons spawn in by the end of world 2 too. With that in mind, world 3 incentivizes just running to the exit since the character would already be fully spec'd at that point, the enemies become bullet sponges, and there are so many of them that the challenges to completely wipe out a room can't be finished in time. The game's premise is that there are 7 deadly sins to defeat to recover 7 holy artifacts, so it's hard to say how they'll pace things out for the remaining 4 worlds. The game has a lot of cooking to do before it's ready, so it's odd that it was offered up for a bundle before it had a new update.
The explosion sounds are also really, REALLY loud and can't be turned down in audio options as of current.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentOh, seeing your comment made me take another search at King Exit and it looks like an english translation came out this year. Curious how it compares as the previous game.Oh, seeing your comment made me take another search at King Exit and it looks like an english translation came out this year. Curious how it compares as the previous game.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkBeyond Citadel This is an FPS I got from Digiphile's boomer shooter bundle. It is also pretty uncomfortable and can't really be discussed without bringing up the sheer amount of gore mixed with...Beyond Citadel
This is an FPS I got from Digiphile's boomer shooter bundle. It is also pretty uncomfortable and can't really be discussed without bringing up the sheer amount of gore mixed with anime girl horniness, though there are censor options for the gore and image gallery at least. It's also a single indie dev project and a sequel, so they're living out their best life at least.
Gore & Anime Girl Pixels
So upfront the most shocking thing blood & guts-wise would be how dying leads to a first-person view of the Martyr's body getting shredded to bloody bits by the enemy along with her head deteriorating on the bottom left of the screen. Definitely the #1 reason to turn off gore (or get good har har). Shooting/exploding the enemy depending leads to heads getting blown in half, headless neck stumps, guts pouring out, limbs flying off, defeated soldiers visibly breathing and either bleeding out or trying to crawl away with what's left of their body. The gore option also affects gameplay here because some bleeding out enemies will attempt to take out a pistol to continue firing until they get finished off which incentivizes double-tapping; naturally, turning off the gore prevents the whole bleeding out thing. Pretty much all the humanoids are feminine cyborgs too (and the enemies are irreversibly brainwashed) so there's a lot of womanly death screams whenever a foe is killed.
On the fanservice side, the game opens up with the Martyr waking up from stasis and the intro sequence shows her clothes are just some cloth over her chest and a strap going straight down. Looking down during gameplay shows off her chest and thighs and she gets an ahegao face whenever she runs out of stamina. There's also the collectible artwork of her that's definitely drawn to titillate. I'm not shy about this stuff (I'll point to my past posts about Demon Roots and Take Me To The Dungeon!!, but I guess my own stance is that there's a time and place or at least a matching tone? I don't know if it's reflecting retro FPSes or the dev including it as part of their passion project, but with the constant gore in mind, the sexiness just gives me a sense of unease about the game's world from the contrast I suppose.
I guess while we're at it, all the subtext is screaming in bold letters about the Marytr being driven by a love for her younger brother that turned incestous.
Gameplay-wise, the game features 3 buttons for reloading ammo: insert magazine, remove magazine, and cock the gun. It's less complicated than it sounds.
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For magazine-based weapons, unload the magazine first to preserve and reuse it before reloading. Just reloading will toss away the mag and waste it, though that's the benefit of having spare mags during combat. Not having any spare mags means being forced to unload and reload properly. Generally doesn't need to be cocked besides the anti-material rifle needing 2 taps to chamber a new bullet.
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For weapons like the pump-action shotgun and the lever-action rifle, the reload button can be mashed to fill them to full, but the guns need to be cocked between each shot. There's also the slamfire technique where the cock button is held down while continuously firing.
The weapons have their niches of course, but I played on hard so most of my experience was tactical corner peeking which made the lever-action rifle and shotguns my MVPS. Of the three tactical mods, I preferred the riot shield the most because of the blocking factor and how it just uses stamina whereas the slow-mo and grappling hook require an O2 canister per use. For the stats system, I prioritized 1) HP/Stamina regen, 2) Max HP/Stam/Food meters for survivability, followed by 3) Inventory Space as needed to sell excess canisters for economy and 4) Movement speed which is always good in an FPS. The rest are just QoL stuff (extra lives cap/extra armor life, reduced chance of gun jams, reduced recoil). There is a weapon durability system which causes the gun jams and mostly just forces switching around weapons or buying a replacement gun since repair points are just rare drops.
As far as performance and bugs goes, I was running this at 50-ish FPS (Bazzite Linux) and the only major bug I've had was a 99% durability anti-material rifle being perma-jammed and needing to buy a new one. After finishing the game, I decided to follow the steps to enable the cheats menu, but that started to make the game crash a lot (starting from the moment I tried to teleport back to the prologue area) until I set the resolution scaling to 50% for some reason.
I suppose the background lore is worth mentioning. After 99.999% of humans got smited by angels, the demons took pity on the remaining humans and decided to give them hope by turning themselves into cyborgs to masquerade as mechanical angels while the actual angels are labeled as demons.
Staffer Case: A Supernatural Mystery Adventure
This is a mystery VN I picked up from a fanatical bundle. I don't particularly recommend it, but its demo includes the first two cases out of five so you can judge for yourself. It's a setting with magic in the 1960s and people with unique powers are called Staffers while magical items are called Staff and have a unique ability and specific trigger for it.
Mostly the issues I have with it are:
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Translation/writing quality. There's just something off about the way everyone speaks and I just can't register anyone as an actual character because of it. It's hard to explain because I haven't run into something like this before, but the best description I can come up with is everyone having a dullness to them.
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Way too much evidence. The evidence is a lot of documents and having to point out which specific line contains the contradiction and having to combine it with another specific line on another document. This is not helped by the game going between way too obvious or way too obtuse about what you need to present and always having 2 photos of each crime scene, one for traces left behind and one for memories. There's a hint button, but all it does is highlight which document(s) need to be presented and not which statement which gets infuriating when a document contains contradicting lines.
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Asking for evidence every five seconds. Tying into the above, everyone has the memory and intelligence of a goldfish and needs that evidence spoonfed to them every few seconds to explain things so they can continue breathing instead of halting the investigation to a standstill. It's a mystery genre thing and the smart characters have to be "smart", but the average IQ of everyone is rapidly dropping.
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The suspect is usually obvious. Each case has 3 witnesses/suspects and a profile is given with their powers included at the start. Same for cases involving Staff.
There are so many things wrong with the ending.
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There's just a lack of conclusion to it. It turns out Redfins was the sympathetic murderer after we learn her backstory and then she gets away. There's a little angst and then that's it. Life goes on.
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It ends on a cliffhanger of course where the director declares that he needs another David-class individual besides Note so Bryan is getting sent to recruit them.
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It's a society where Staffers are prejudiced against, one where they're monitored at a government agency at the age of 9 and the cases go over the various amounts of discrimination, corruption, and exploitation, especially the government kidnapping and experimenting on anyone too powerful while keeping a kill collar on them and meat being provided by magically mutated animals. Throughout the game, Note pursues the truth because it's there and he doesn't need another reason for it whereas Redfins tries to cover up the truth because people get hurt knowing it and guilty Staffers are taken for experimentation. The end of the game has the director recruit the remaining team for his mission to eradicate all mana which Note accepts (with the implication they'll be killed for refusing) on the condition that he also be put in charge of human experimentation so he can be more "ethical" about it. Sure let's toss away the whole search for the truth theme. There's also an epilogue of him visiting the prisoners and they still have the kill collars for a guy who can give his past self information (which they're exploiting to make sure nothing goes wrong with Note's plans) and the young kid who can instantly create things.
The one good thing I will point to is the cases having multiple endings, though that boils down to Note deciding whether he's satisfied with the case's resolution or if there's more to uncover. The side-ends are pretty short and it gives you the choice of going back to the branching path or the title screen afterwards.
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Comment on Steam Next Fest recommendations and game demos in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentReally wishing Next Fests lasted like 2 weeks or something or at least that most of the demos stay up. Well here's my last call of stuff. Alabaster Dawn: It's by the Crosscode team. Same style of...Really wishing Next Fests lasted like 2 weeks or something or at least that most of the demos stay up. Well here's my last call of stuff.
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Alabaster Dawn: It's by the Crosscode team. Same style of gameplay and the UI is definitely familiar and it's by the Crosscode team. I am HYPED.
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Schrödinger's Call: Visual Novel about making phone calls to help souls remember and move on in the moment before their death. The art and music definitely strike an impression.
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Fogpiercer: Turn-based 5-energy deckbuilder, but with grids and damage avoidance/unit manipulation ala Into The Breach. The player unit is a train so you're free to reposition an enemy car in front of you to ram it or causing a chain reaction of cars crashing into each other after taking one out.
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Solateria: Souls-like Metroidvania with parry seeming like the best option since it looks like the only way to break enemy poise points. Decided to leave off on Phase 2 Fidiel, but I liked going through it.
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Super Alloy Crush: Sequel to Super Alloy Ranger (I still need to finish that), a 2D platformer that's Mega Man-inspired with Muu as the red CQC character and Kelly as the blue shooter. This feels like going from 8-bit to 16 bit in progression with Muu pretty much having a juggle combo system. The demo level is pretty easy and there doesn't seem to be collectibles besides monies for score before shifting over to the survival roguelike shop-between-waves mode.
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Burden Street Station: Point-and-click with surreal graphics and picking out the right emotions/words to advance the conversation. Some key NPCs keep moving around after each essential conversation is finished though which causes quite a bit of backtracking.
Might keep an eye on, might not
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Galactic Vault: Roguelike FPS room clear with gun customization upgrades after every room. I feel like the rooms were all the same in my demo run, but I'm hoping the rest of it is more refined.
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Gambonanza: Chess Balatro. Your units die for real though, so you need a way to keep restocking your pieces or spawning more of them.
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Ardenfall: Indie 3D Elder Scrolls. Haven't had as much time to play around with it, but that's definitely the direction the game was going for.
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Goblin Vyke: The Thief Tycoon: Part 2D stealth platformer extraction, part shop management, both of which tickle a very specific part of my brain though the game enforces autosaving. The shop haggling is either accepting the base price or basically playing blackjack with a D6 and going more rounds with the same customer if you want to sell more stuff or get a higher price multiplier. Once you start haggling though, you have to either win the round or bust and either accept the 0.6 multiplier or reject the deal entirely at that point. Meanwhile the stealth consists of keeping out of site, hiding in bushes, or picking up coin bugs to toss as a lure. The actual stealing comes from looting a corpse or being on a timer to pass the QTE and pick out the items before the guard notices you. Most of the negative steam reviews are pointing out that the devs didn't disclose their AI art usage for their previous demo, though they've stated they have human art for the Next Fest demo. Kinda conflicted in that I've absorbed enough anti-Generative AI views to not want to deal with anything using them, but they've also replaced the art, but public AI placeholder art assets in the first place, but...
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Comment on Steam Next Fest recommendations and game demos in ~games
SingedFrostLantern (edited )Link ParentMorning woke-up Edit: Forgot to double-check the AI disclaimers, removed one of the recs with AI-assisted art, added Hordes of Fate in its place. Still working my way through the demos (went from...Morning woke-up Edit: Forgot to double-check the AI disclaimers, removed one of the recs with AI-assisted art, added Hordes of Fate in its place.
Still working my way through the demos (went from biggest size to smallest, now at the less than 2GB games). Haven't had anything quite speak into my soul yet, but I've at least got my list of top so far, following, and the maybe pile.
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LUCID: Metroidvania that's smooth to control with a seeming focus on maintaining aerial control through the various weapons (sword dashes for the demo, a spear unlocked post-demo for a 3rd aerial jump and pogo-jumping). There's also a blaster for taking out small enemies/big enemy barriers and the left shoulder buttons are dedicated to diagonal aiming. The demo has quite a bit to it and I've apparently only gotten 41% in the post-demo stats so I'm impressed gameplay-wise.
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Parasite Mutant: Survival Horror RPG hybrid which is apparently based off of Parasite Eve. There's the limited resources, saving in saferooms, and wandering around to solve puzzles and open places. On the RPG end, you get pulled into battles when ambushed at specific spots on the map and need to juke (or interrupt?) enemy attacks until your action points are off cooldown at which point you can get your own hits in. More lenient than the standard Survival Horror: you're obviously expected to win battle encounters, plenty of pistol ammo is dropped, and there's an EP meter that builds up in fights which can be used for a self-heal or a massively damaging laser. Developed by the same team as Frontier Hunter: Erza’s Wheel of Fortune which is somewhere on my "wait for a deal" list.
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Esoteric Ebb: Disco Elysium-inspired (the FAQ says it was modeled after Planescape: Torment first but then Disco happened, still need to play both of those), but in a D&D setting as a washed-up (literally fished out of a river and likely died, metaphorically described as the worst) Cleric sent in to figure out what happened to a tea shop that blew up. Politics, your stats talking to you (Dex is the selfish capitalist dick rogue, one description of Charisma is a sociopath saying whatever they need to for people to like them), absurd rolls (one of the first situations is eating through a pile of apples). I don't think I got far (decided to stop after getting to Snell's apartment for the other demos), but I had fun with it.
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Celestial Return: More noir sci-fi dice-rolling stats-talking-to-you RPG with a touch of eldritch supernatural. In this case though, it's a lot more text and art-focused instead of the typical isometric view which streamlines the walking around part. The dice are also consumed when rolling which forces some consideration for how to spend it when it's used to purchase things, spending more dice for a higher chance of succeeding, and how having no dice at all for a roll is an automatic failure.
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Prime Monster: Roguelike deckbuilder where you need to have more supporters on your side by the time the debate ends. Tactics are the permanent cards in hand that require energy to cast while 3 free cards are drawn per turn that can be used for its effect or discard for energy. You can also toss a tv at one of the opponent's voters with a 5/6 chance of not getting caught (yet).
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Croak: 2D Platformer with the main mechanic of grappling towards a wall to either do a short hop up or a long hop away. Looks good and plays good.
Also keeping track of
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The Dungeon Experience: It's... an experience. It's about a dodgy crab running a cheap LARP dungeon while promising the secrets of financial success (read:pyramid scheme) with dialogue options that are different levels of rolling with it. That's doing a disservice in describing the game, but I was fine with its brand of humor... maybe not pushing the barbarian nipples near the start though.
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Cursed Blood: Isometric Roguelike that kinda makes me think of a rated-M TMNT game if the turtles were stone ape guardian samurai who hunt down gangs to pay blood sacrifice to their shrine. It's got that feeling of sneaking around and running around rooftops to get into position for stealth kills and then the melee combat and deflecting. The shrine gives resources, but also demands a random curse be given as well which does enforce some adaptation.
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The Weeping Swan: Ten Days of the City's Fall: Chinese visual novel that's a sequel to The Hungry Lamb. This one takes place inside a city that's being raided and pillaged and the quest to survive. The protagonist Zhiyou is a scholar with mental trauma ever since his childhood friend took her own life and now occasionally falls into lapses where he sees people as beastmen. Now he has to take care of a little girl who's the spitting image of his childhood friend as the narrative goes between the present and his memories of her. Characters from The Hungry Lamb show up in Chapter 2 and it's assumed you've already played it.
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Last Man Sitting: Survivor-like 3rd person shooter, but it's unlocking different equipment and there's just something joyful about the aesthetic of office workers speeding around on their office chairs and being ordered by their corporate anime girl to kill some jank robots. Apparently developed by the same team as Abyssus which I liked the demo of, so I'll have faith here.
Might keep an eye on, might not
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Black Jacket: Blackjack Roguelike deckbuilder. While I'm not sure how to optimize a deck for blackjack, I do like the underworld aesthetic of gambling against other souls to work your way up to the ferryman.
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Reap and Rush: Twin-stick shooter with spell modifications. Clear the objectives to get the shop open before the mob timer causes them to swarm (or be overpowered enough to farm the swarm). Kinda standard-fare but I have a soft spot for spell customization and the build crafting is easy, though the bosses are super tanky for an unoptimized build.
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Bounty Brawl: Most Wanted: Twin-stick room clear roguelike. The passives are mostly +x% thing so it's more of a skill focus instead of broken build planning. The boss that constantly transforms the hunter is BS though.
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The Magus Circle: Survivor-like, but you have to actively draw the spell patterns and pick up the mana drops which incentivizes playing aggressively just to get through. Mostly focused on duration spells and the ice spears and thunderstorm did the most work for me.
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Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War!: FPS Campaign with the demo showing an open map level with the objectives in any order. Kill bugs to recharge the resupply beacon to kill more bugs. It's also obviously satirical with the store description and FMV videos about defending humanity against these alien bugs.
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Hordes of Fate : A Hand of Fate Adventure: The Hand of Fate series but filtered through a survivor-like. Same meta-questing to unlock new things and card minigames to determine choice successes, but on the survivor end, there's objectives throughout the map to interact with and an active ability to be more proactive with.
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Comment on Steam Next Fest recommendations and game demos in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkSteam keeps recommending me Survivor-likes because I like twin-stick shooters and roguelikes. I don't enjoy Survivor-likes (too much meta-grinding and luck manipulation for builds and weapon...I'm not sure if that's because those are the games in development that tend to have demos or if Steam thinks that's all I'm interested in (spoiler - I'm not)
Steam keeps recommending me Survivor-likes because I like twin-stick shooters and roguelikes. I don't enjoy Survivor-likes (too much meta-grinding and luck manipulation for builds and weapon synergies and non-interactiveness in the actual gameplay and having to search some wiki for the stats and weapon paths and blah blah blah).
Haven't had a chance to do a deep dive into demos yet (plan to do that Saturday and update with another comment then), but currently I'd say Voidling Bound has my interest. Third-person shooter (controls like Risk of Rain 2?) with monster raising and a hub/mission format kinda like Warframe (speed loot everything for resources and complete the objective, then spend the loot on upgrades and unlocking new mons to level up too). Ended up with a fast-firing pyro DoT mon that melted things as long as I could tap reload before overheating, though I did decide to stop so I could test the other demos out.
Might keep an eye on, might not impressions
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PRAGMATA: Capcom's Sci-Fi Third Person Shooter with hacking. Dodge enemies, hack them to expose their weakpoints, then fire away. The hacking system definitely feels made for controller. Regening ammo for the base pistol while the subweapon pickups are meant to be used ASAP. Liked the gameplay flow and completing the demo adds stuff like counterattacks so I'm intrigued in how the finished game feels. Demo's story is generic, but here's hoping they'll have something passable. Pretty short demo: Opening, get the 3 locks, boss fight.
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People of Note: Music themed RPG with action commands and a BP recovery system. The skill customization seems to have potential, but the game kinda throws you into Chapter 2 which isn't exactly the best first impression for flow or pacing: lots of running around and gathering info from NPCs before getting to the dungeon.
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The Eternal Life of Goldman: Metroidvania that is very beautifully animated with pogo-jumping being the main interaction. It's also kinda dark? Visually it's bright, but the opening sequence is a forest fire where 2 animals burn in agonizing pain before the action actually starts, all the children there are mentioned to have died in the fire after the level is over, the first 2 minibosses writhe in pain when they're struck; just kinda a overall vibe thing where I don't think I personally want to engage further. Had a few frame dips at times, control is stuck to control stick instead of d-pad, and the cane customization requires opening a mini-menu to swap between parts as obstacles come up. Still, it did leave an impression.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentGood timing, Patch 1.1 just came out today. Granted, from what I can tell from the patch notes, it's got a few nerfs all around and the revamped rifts/corrupted biomes system is a huge difficulty...Good timing, Patch 1.1 just came out today. Granted, from what I can tell from the patch notes, it's got a few nerfs all around and the revamped rifts/corrupted biomes system is a huge difficulty spike because of all the late game enemies it summons and with Elite superarmor on them. Kind of an ego check to go from consistent game clears to suddenly getting whacked with surprise Mania difficulty and now needing to avoid the corrupted zones. Still a hearty recommend though (and hoping they can maybe finetune the rifts a little more).
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkGoblin Sushi Released in Early Access this week and I liked it from its Next Fest demo. It's a roguelike conveyor belt sushi bar where you put the right ratio of ingredients to make sushi, keep...Goblin Sushi
Released in Early Access this week and I liked it from its Next Fest demo. It's a roguelike conveyor belt sushi bar where you put the right ratio of ingredients to make sushi, keep the different timers going (ingredient refills, rice cooker, plate cleanup, the grill, drink mixer), and pick from random perks to keep up with the landlord's increasing rent demands. Objectively? It's a $10 game with only the first restaurant level and having any experience in roguelike synergy building will let you identify the good perks and effortlessly sweep through the 5 current difficulties/ascensions. Subjectively? I'm having fun. You get to play as a little gobbo following their dreams of being a sushi chef and kickstart your little sushi chain while keeping the customers happy and getting maximum tips. I guess it's a mix of the game's style and the ease of watching your build take off. Oh, and win or lose, the predatory landlord who keeps jacking up rent will die at the end of the run.
My Thoughts/Strategy
The 3 loadout perks I take are
- Customers eat their dishes (less maintenance and ensures customer uptime. I believe this is also one of the legendary-tier perks so this definitely adds value)
- Ingredients fill 25% faster (1st step is having enough ingredients to have enough dishes to satisfy all the customers.)
- +4 rerolls (As always in a roguelike, rerolls let you turn away bad choices and fine-tune your build.)
Sushi dishes are probably the most consistent. Drinks have too much time between making new ones and the base price is low. The grilled dishes can only grill 3 at a time and they'll turn into burnt poop (if left on the grill) or frozen poop (if they're left on the conveyor belt too long. There are poop builds, but that's a lot of volatility (since poop reduces customer patience) compared to sushi dishes which sit on the belt until they're taken and have lots of ingredient perks to boost them. Just pick whatever's got a high base price and work with the related perks. Or experiment! The game's fun and easy enough.
- The best perk is the one that lets customers take another dish from the belt instead of what they ordered; effectively, this lets you spam your best dish without worry as long as you have enough production.
- Speaking of production, the good dishes with lots of ingredients need a lot of refills, so whatever boosts the refill time and amount is good to ensure the 5 star review and higher tips. After a point and/or breaking the system, there's diminishing returns and you could likely sell off those perks as long as you have enough left to cover it.
- There's a lot of good perks towards having the rice cooker running, so that and the perk that makes the rice cooker run 50% slower but produce 100% more rice is good. The curse deal to have the rice cooker running continuously is a trap.
- I've yet to see a good devil deal perk?
- Otherwise yeah, more money and multipliers so your dishes meet rent.
Personal high score is 81 mil off of Fugu Uramaki when the final money check is 5 mil.
Rabbit & Steel
The free expansion Extra Mode released last week with more rabbits, loot, and new areas/enemies. I should probably go back to Normal after not playing for so long instead of spamming Hard Solo for the palettes, but I need the style and practice is the first step towards getting good. So far, I have all of one win in the new areas using Pyromancer and I'm trying to get a Gunslinger win. There might be something to say about the readability, but that might also be my skill issue talking. Again, the smart thing to do is go back to Normal to learn.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkTyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane It's an Ace Attorney-style game but with fantasy magic, one that I've now replayed as there was an update this month advertising a big rewrite with dialogue...Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane
It's an Ace Attorney-style game but with fantasy magic, one that I've now replayed as there was an update this month advertising a big rewrite with dialogue changes, more scenes, and completely reworking how Case 3 happened. Previously, I had considered this the most AA-like in tone and execution of the AA-like games I've played. Now I don't know if it's nostalgia (which would be odd considering this came out in 2023 and I bought/played it that November) or having higher standards, but I think I came out of this thinking worse of the game?
- The rewrite added some sex jokes and swearing which sticks out when the general tone was clean like AA. It feels more amateur-ish, like a bad fanfic writer who just adds those on to make it seem more mature when it doesn't match the characters' personality/vocabulary or the overall consistency.
- It's clearly not tested enough and should've been released as a beta branch rather than pushing it to main. There's typos, bugs (like the Eye of Horus emotion overlay sticking on screen until I reset the game at the end of Case 5), a softlock (the argument with Aria in Case 5) that I've encountered and that's just the technical side of things.
- The reworked Case 3 really feels untested.
- The evidence has a bunch of run-on paragraphs in sharp contrast to the rest of the game, especially "The Mistweaving Phantom" evidence which adds on more and more details, but doesn't space it out. In a genre about reading and about providing information to figure out the mystery and point out contradictions, having such poor readability feels like a sin.
- There are 2 new profiles: one for the victim and one for a new character, neither of which have any portfolio description of who they are.
- There's definitely points of "Wait, this evidence fits too even after the correct answer explanation, why wasn't this accepted?" That's really the kind of thing that feels bad, especially when this is supposed to be an improved rewrite.
Rewrite Characterization - Spoilers
- Case 1 has a flashback of Pierce being grief-stricken after accidentally killing the woman he loved. In the span of a single conversation, his father tells him to get over it because she was a peasant and he was a noble and the CG instantly jumps to him having crazed evil laughter and going "YES ALL THOSE PEASANTS ARE TRASH TO BE STOMPED OVER."
- Case 2 has a flashback revealing a student committed suicide from Bellwether which for me comes off as adding cheap shock value?
- This is both new content and the Headmaster's villain flashback, so it creates a faceless victim that isn't brought up again or relevant besides that.
- Bellwether was already established as evil, so this kinda pushes her into the unbelievable cartoonishly evil territory. It is in character for her and I don't doubt the nobility sweeping it under the rug, but it still raises questions about students dying at such a prestigious academy and all the levels of "How hasn't someone snapped and tried to kill her before this?"
- I guess it raises sympathy in the wrong way? Before, Bellwether was out to ruin everyone's lives, but murdering her is still murder and the Headmaster was doing a lot to cover his tracks and try to get away with it. Now that Bellwether has indirect murder to her name, it makes the Headmaster feel more justified and more like he should have confessed once Wallace was arrested for it (yes I'm aware of Eris' influence, but this case is a lot more of her tempting rather than directly influencing). It also feels like how the original game ended where the bad guy kills all the evil nobles and then gets offed so everyone has a happy ending from the bad guy doing all the dirty work when AA-style games are typically anti-murder. It's like, what else could they have done in such a corrupt system and with everyone else shown to benefit from the act of murder?
- Case 3 transforms von Sanctus from casually evil business noble out to sabotage his commoner rival's refinery to attempted domestic terrorist who discovered EVIL CAPITALISM and wants to kill off the competition so he can replace everyone with robots. Again, it pushes things from "Wow this person's a petty classist jerk as nobles are" to cartoonishly evil.
- Lucio Steelwind in the rewrite is feared as a bloodthirsty manic who wipes out entire villages to stamp out traitors against the crown. This really doesn't work for a returning player when his new lines don't even play to that. Even a brand new player can tell that he's logical and cool-headed the first time he shows up; his shown behavior instantly banishes the told behavior and asks what the point of the new misdirection is.
- How Tyrion gets the Divine Edict ability gets half points from me. In the original version of the game, he has no evidence against the culprit and his mother who was executed 10 years suddenly talks to him at the last second and teaches him how to summon a Blood Contract as the final piece of evidence in a clear Deus Ex Machina. The new version of Case 4 has Tyrion exploring the artifacts display during the beginning and solving a riddle on one of them which attracts a celestial's attention who then empowers him; this gives Tyrion a reasonable chance to learn the ability and makes him work for it, but it's still not really integrated into the plot until the moment he needs to use it and it's still an "I win" solution introduced for the case.
- The one good change is Sibyl actually having some nuance to her which is admittingly a low bar when she was yet another casually classist noble before the update.
- The rewrite makes Aster's actions seem relatively worse in comparison which could be good or bad depending on your perspective. Before, it made sense for him to plan out murder because the Four Pillar Houses (besides the Steelwinds) hold a lot of power, get away with corruption, and are blatantly against the common class. With the rewrite though, von Sanctus already lost his power from his negative reputation and Sibyl is portrayed as a more reasonable person so it feels unnecessary to kill them from a rational/plotting/scheming perspective, though Aster's hatred of the nobility was already established in the original.
Honestly, I think the update tried to fill in the previous gaps, but that just draws attention when the gaps had been tuned out before and the pavement is still a lot bumpier than it should be. It is mentioned that the original cases will be available as free DLC in the future, so maybe I'll re-verify my opinion when replaying that. The rewrite also had more sequel baiting written in and the application name is Tyrion1 so that's happening. I learned my lesson from the TWEWY anime and A New Day and NEO:TWEWY: if I think the remake material is crap, that should be a big red flag for the sequel.
Of course, AA-style games are in short supply and this game has a demo covering all of case 1 so I dunno, judge the quality for yourself. I think the only AA-style game I can personally rec now is of the Devil.
Dodgeball Academia
This is a dodgeball game with 3 RPG stats (Power, Agility, Technique) and 2 equipment slots with a strong Pokemon influence so far as UI and being challenged to dodgeball matches. I had to force myself to finish it.
Storywise, it's a school where everyone plays dodgeball just like how Pokemon battles and Yugioh card duels solve everything. That's about it: everyone has a one-note personality, adults are useless of course, and everyone comes off as a jerk given all the rampant cheating, selective rule enforcement, aggressive taunting, and petty reasons for dodgeball challenges with the violence being both played for laughs and being clear displays of violence which is kinda uncomfortable in the "anyone can throw a ball at your face at any time for no good reason and bully you and no one will help." Am I overthinking a game meant for children? Probably. But the vibes are just wow there are so many petty bullies here who don't redeem themselves in any way and are never actually punished.
Gameplaywise, there are 6 party members by the endgame and 3 active people to put on the field. You can swap between which character you're controlling, but the other two have no AI and just copy your inputs and follow the leader in a triangle formation which effectively makes the team a stupidly giant hitbox and they just hand over the balls they pick up instead of being capable of syncing ball throws and uggggggh. This is a sports RPG so of course the other team can stack way more people, have inflated stats, read your inputs, and all of their team members can charge their individual special meters the moment they throw a ball to your side of the field so that's fun and not frustrating or annoying to deal with in every single battle. Oh and everytime you knock out an important enemy, they get to stand on your field and catch any stray balls to interrupt and chip you down across battles; your KO'd party members do the same but they're practically useless.
There's also the thing about healing. Initially Balloony heals Otto after every fight to ease a new player into the game and then he stops because... because? I mean I think after-battle healing makes sense for a sports game, but sure, let's stop by the
pokemon centerinfirmary after every battle to save money for equipment and not waste any of the abundant food drops because there's only one place with repeatable battles to grind for money starting in chapter 5. I think it's just bad design; the map isn't that big so the infirmary is both easy enough to backtrack to but also a waste of time and the player is just incentivized to hoard resources because if it.Oh and there's a bunch of locked chests and you're conditioned to be unable to open them and the game doesn't mention that the 5th party member can open them. Very nice.
Party Members
- Otto: Main character and vanilla all-rounder. Has fire DoT, the ability to charge his meter, and an ultimate that instantly hits whoever's in front of him. I just stacked my Strength smoothies on him.
- Mina: Speedster with (useless) lightning AoE. She can reflect balls at the thrower's power and her ultimate is a targeting reticle for every ball she has when casting. I stacked Agility so she could take the balls at the start of the match and steal ones near the middle.
- Balloony: The healer with floaty jumps and curved spinning throws. Yay healing.
- Suneko: Needs to hold & charge her parry, but gets multi-hit throws and an aiming skillshot ultimate with no reticle. I thought she was cool and tried to make her work but the computer cheats so they can instantly catch/parry her ball while they're getting hit.
- Shoy: I think he's a debuffer? Didn't really appeal to me during his recruitment period.
- Kyabo: Can give his health to teammates and throw lob balls. His ultimate is one of those "the attack keeps going and faster until you miss the input". Put him on my final team replacing Balloony.
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Comment on Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of January 11 in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkThe Shuffled Deck Collection is a bundle of 3 visual novels by Themisian on sale for $10 to drum up interest for their fourth game's upcoming demo The Wonderland Killings. The Zodiac Trial (has...The Shuffled Deck Collection is a bundle of 3 visual novels by Themisian on sale for $10 to drum up interest for their fourth game's upcoming demo The Wonderland Killings.
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The Zodiac Trial (has demo)
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The Divine Deception (has demo)
Upfront, there is no complete the bundle option, so if you're like me and only own The Zodiac Trial, you'd save about $4 gifting the bundle to someone you family share with rather than buy the latter 2 games by themselves.
Previously, this was a perma $15/50% bundle containing The Zodiac Trial and The Divine Deception, though the individual games haven't been on sale for years, which is troublesome when only owning one of the games due to lack of complete the bundle option. The bundle now includes the The Specter's Desire which has never been on sale before and the games are all 60% off for 2 weeks/Jan 28 on top of the bundle's 50%.
The Zodiac Trial always had 999 fangame energy to me so I liked it enough, so I'm jumping at a sale finally happening.
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Comment on Save Point: A game deal roundup for the week of January 4 in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkHumble Bundle has a Decked Out Collection - Great on Handheld Bundle with $5 and $12 tiers. IsThereAnyDeal page $5 Vampire Survivors Nidhogg 2 $12 ULTRAKILL Haste Creatures of Ava Deathbulge:...Humble Bundle has a Decked Out Collection - Great on Handheld Bundle with $5 and $12 tiers.
$5
$12
Personally, I'm interested in Deathbulge and Haste out of these, already have ULTRAKILL (you can parry your shotgun blast to make it go faster and flick a coin to split your railgun shot at enemies).
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkBō: Path of the Teal Lotus 2D Metroidvania, definitely Hollow Knight-inspired, but with a focus on staying in the air and Japanese mythology. Got it as an Amazon Prime freebie, took about 7 hours...Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus
2D Metroidvania, definitely Hollow Knight-inspired, but with a focus on staying in the air and Japanese mythology. Got it as an Amazon Prime freebie, took about 7 hours to finish with a 95.6% save file, the remaining % stuff is money-gated and I don't feel like farming or the postgame races/boss challenge mode. The main thing that distinguishes this gameplay-wise is how hitting anything with an aerial attack refreshes the jump and dash which A) lets you stay in the air indefinitely against a target B) kinda lets you facemash against a big aerial target (and the tooltip itself says to change attacking directions to attack faster) and top off on tea to heal off any hits/use the daruma skills without worry. Managed to not have a single death so I'd say it's easier than Hollow Knight. Kinda linear though: 2 tutorial areas before the main hub, and then the area order is meant to be right area, left area, bottom right area, bottom left area, and then it gives a collectible finder before the final area. It is quite a pretty game though and I had my fun from it (besides the no-hit item delivery sidequest).
Pizza Tower
2D platformer, Wario Land-inspired, with an unkillable hero (aside from the escape sequences and boss fights). Picked it up because it hit a historical low of $10/50% off from 33% previously and because it's a very highly rated game. After finishing it (68%), I don't think I'm the target audience though? I don't have the nostalgia for the artstyle and there's a pretty strong focus on scoring and collectible finding (and scoring by getting all the collectibles in each attempt). I really don't have the mindset for secret finding or route memorization so I guess a lot of the game's value is lost on me considering my playthrough ran 4 hours. At the least, I really do like the thrill of the escape segments so I dunno what that says about me. I'll have it marked in my New Game+ Backlog for the Noise playthrough.
Cuphead
2D Run and Gun. About 3 hours to beat main campaign (98%) and another hour or so for the DLC (62%). Picked it up because it's never going below 33% off and also because it's a very highly rated game. Also like Pizza Tower, I didn't expect the game to be so short? I mean by genre standards, it's pretty lengthy with a lot of bosses and everything being drawn and animated by hand is well-noted. It might be because a succesful stage is about 2 minutes so things feel short after the boss is downloaded and high expectations from how hyped up it is? I suppose I should take a crack at Expert difficulty and perfecting scores in the future, but right now, the game doesn't grip me on a personal level.
For my loadout I settled Converge for the piercing spread crowd clear, Spread for upclose damage, Smoke Bomb for the i-frames, Super Art 1 just because it's the least likely to get me killed, and Astral Cookie/Super Art 2 for the DLC.
Transformation - Berserk Boy (GOG)
Berserk Boy is a Megaman-inspired game; there's the basic "stop the mad scientist" plot ala Classic, the base is reminiscent of Zero, particularly with the two operators in the background of the teleport room, and there are 5
BiometalsBerserk Orbs to collect from the bosses and Transform with like ZX.The game also feels vaguely obnoxious on many fronts.
The story, characters, and world aren't set up at all. That normally wouldn't be an issue considering the era the game is calling back to, but there's just enough uninspired dialogue inserted everywhere that I started to feel the urge to mash through dialogue and skip cutscenes which never happens to me. It feels like it's just giving up and going "yeah this is a legally distinct fangame, you know how the plot goes", but at that point it would've unironically been better to just cut out the dialogue from how low-effort it is.
The hub is huge, but the only real functions are the upgrade shop and the mission select room, the latter of which is in a long hallway away from the spawning room. There is a map warp by opening the menu, but it would've been better to just not design that map that way? The hub has a lot of screens to house the NPCs that get rescued, but none of them have any changing dialogue which removes any reason to roam around and check up on them up until the path to the true final boss, which with no prompting, requires talking to 2 specific people. The hub also goes under attack after every boss fight for no narrative reason which forces the player to check every single room to take out a single monster by itself with no challenge. This is the definition of pointless padding.
There are a ton of upgrades and new moves for the first lightning form which indicates it being the "main" form, but all of the options are stupidly expensive to purchase. It feels bad to see so many potential options just locked away by the need to farm if the player wants to see them.
The controls feel a touch unresponsive to me. In any other game with insta-death pits or insta-death advancing spike walls or contact damage, I'd go "Oh I panicked" or "I rushed without looking" or "Oh I misspaced the positioning". Here it's just "Welp, walked off the platform cause the jump button didn't respond in time", "Welp, the Flame Drill's drilling and tornado lock the controls for a second, can't jump or switch forms!", "Welp these bosses sure inflict a lot of contact damage since they love to move a lot when the primary attack is dash attacking at them".
The game advertises metroidvania aspects, but what that really means is impassible obstacles blocking the side paths the first time around until replaying the mission after getting all 5 forms. The game is also pretty bad at signaling which is the main path and which is the side path.
The shoulder buttons cycle through the forms, but it's slow with 5 of them to scroll through. Meanwhile, the Form Menu allows for picking but pauses the gameplay and plays the transformation animation each and every time a form is selected from it.
Let's go over the transformations now:
Lightning Justice. The 1st form and the one getting advertised. It has an 8-directional dash to bump into an enemy and tag them for the follow up attack which is pretty reminiscent of Gunvolt's tagging system. It has a lot more upgrades then the other forms, but they're all expensive so I don't know what any of the unlockable moves actually do.
Flame Drill. The 2nd form and the Red CQC. A lot of bosses can fly though, so it can only offer its uppercut against them most of the time or the dig if you really need the extended i-frames. Its utility is all unwieldy though: The tornado dash bumps you quite a bit away from the enemy for what's supposed to be a gap-closer, the divekick dig goes diagonally when it's main purpose is to be able to dig under low spiked areas so there's a lot more self-damage from that then there should be, and as mentioned before, the drill mode and tornado lock controls for a sec after they end.
Ice Kunai. The 3rd form and the broken-ass ninja. Its 8-directional dash attack goes through enemies and starts up another dash attack for hitting an enemy; this allows it to just shred a boss by dashing back and forth through them while having i-frames the entire time. It also has spammable kunais which take out the risk of the other forms needing to get close.
Soaring Wind. The 4th form that snaps the platforming in half. It has a shield that reflects projectiles and a hover-flight mode that's freely controllable in the 8 directions; it uses up energy, but there's 2 cheap upgrades in the shop for increased 50% energy cap for all forms and decreased flight cost. As can be expected, all the platforming can be ignored with this form unless the game specifically sets up barriers with lightning or ice barriers that require those forms to go through.
Mine Buster. The 5th form that is utterly useless. It has a short-range lock-on cone which fires a weak bullet when the weapon button is released. Since it's so useless, the game starts introducing intangible enemies and platforms until the weapon cone makes them tangible and doors that require firing a bullet at to destroy. These doors are pointless time-wasters since they're in the main path anyways and the enemies and platforming can be ignored just by flying past them.
You could do a lot worse for a Megaman-inspired game, but you could also do a whole lot better. I would've gotten more joy replaying the Zero series or Gravity Circuit.
Technically speaking, I'm now on Team Motivated with this entry. However, 13 Sentinels was about 35 hours while Pyre and Astrea were 10 hours each and Berserk Boy was 4. Am I more or less motivated?