SingedFrostLantern's recent activity
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
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Comment on November 2024 Backlog Burner: Conclusion and Recap in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkThank you @kfwyre and @Wes for hosting, and everyone for joining in! As a first time participant, I appreciated the addition of Flow style and being able to go off vibes; I think I already do...Thank you @kfwyre and @Wes for hosting, and everyone for joining in!
As a first time participant, I appreciated the addition of Flow style and being able to go off vibes; I think I already do enough research during sales looking at bundles, historical lows, gameplay, total hours, hard drive space/hours ratio, if it's on GOG, if I should also install on steam deck, etc etc that while I totally get the hunt of Flux style, I personally prefer the simplicity of "check concept, boot game". I expect I'll be back for more next time, by which I mean I've already cracked under the Steam Autumn Sale and Jingle Jam, but hey, progress is progress yeah? A little busier than expected for the month, but I was able to devote a weekend afternoon to each game to give them their due and having a steam deck certainly helped for completing Keylocker and Rabi-Ribi during my work downtime.
Final Card, Standard/Flow, 10/25
Mode: Standard Winning Bingo! Finished 10/25 Humor Connection Synthesis Morality Progress
✅ Xenoblade Chronicles XHarmony Love Erosion
✅ Cavity BustersCausality
✅ Eternal ThreadsTrust Pride
✅ Touhou Hero of Ice FairyResistance
✅ Keylocker★ Wildcard
✅ Rabi-RibiJustice Sound Fragmentation Change
✅ Darksiders GenesisChoice
✅ Project Warlock IICommunity Light Threshold
✅ Vampire: The Masquerade - BloodlinesSymmetry
✅ A Dance of Fire and IceIsolation Happiness Fear Games Followup
Completed and Liked:
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Keylocker: This one does have New Game+, but it's still fresh and I'm thinking of the Virgo replay first, and wow even completed games can be on the backlog again to try other routes.
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Touhou Hero of Ice Fairy: The only steam achievement I'm missing is taking 999 damage which I expect I'll gain from attempting to complete full Challenge Pacifist No-Hit (I've gotten it for the first 2 bosses, Clownpiece and Marisa). As for the roguelite/boss rush mode, I'm currently attempting difficulty 4, of 5 I believe. I'm invoking all the additional optional challenges so I'm at 3 starting hp that can't be refilled whatsoever and with flight disabled so I get the fun of relearning the patterns but only being able to dash through them. Admittingly, that's the joy of ascensions, isn't it? To see how far you can go with all the challenges and numbers rising and to keep trying in the face of failure (as long as you trust that the system is balanced).
Actively Continuing:
- Xenoblade Chronicles X: I've described this to a single-player MMO and yeah, things are still obtuse to me. I've finished chapter 6 so I finally have my giant mech after a lot of additional side-questing for it, but I haven't customized it yet and since it's so big, it's considered enough of a threat to aggro big kaiju monsters that very much out-level it. I've unlocked Servant Sacrifice for the Mastermind class so now I have a chance to mindcontrol an enemy and another chance to instagib it while recovering HP and TP.
On the continue list, but I'll get there when I get there (Read:Back to the Backlog)
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Rabi-Ribi: Technically I've completed this in the way that one completes Nier:Automata with Ending A or beating the first playthrough of Devil May Cry/Bayonetta; the credits rolled but it's certainly not over at all. It's kinda hard to pull up the motivation to explore since all the potential story stuff is now placed waaaaaay past all the difficulty spike postgame stuff. It's like if I've got the time to trudge through that, I've got the time to try something new that feels more fair and doesn't 3-shot me.
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Darksiders Genesis: So after continuing my save on PC, I tried loading it up on steam deck afterwards and the resolution got all weird there, wasn't able to fix it. I mentally thought of this as a steam deck game to play, so it's prioritized below stuff that I could only play at home I guess.
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Cavity Busters: Did a few more runs, but I'm still not feeling it. Games generally run on story, style, and gameplay, and this game's style is lots of pixel flesh.
Completed, but below expectations:
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Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: The game is very early 2000s PC, rough for a modern audience.
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Project Warlock II: Well I'm waiting for Episode 3 since it's still in Early Access and it's a playable game, I just don't vibe with the redesign plan they're going with.
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Eternal Threads: Leaving aside the story and whether the timeline format was worth the confusion, there's a distinct lack of payoff to all of it and the setting, little closure to the characters themselves besides a paragraph or two of epilogue text and a cliffhanger ending because of course they have to set up a cliffhanger.
Please, I beat Crypt of the Necrodancer's full story, why is this rhythm game so hard:
- A Dance of Fire and Ice: I am a rhythm game casual. This game does not like that.
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Comment on November 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 5(ish) Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentI know just enough about Touhou to know that the official shmups are made by just one guy, ZUN, so all the gameplay, music, and characters is him. I guess it just hit a critical mass in popularity...I know just enough about Touhou to know that the official shmups are made by just one guy, ZUN, so all the gameplay, music, and characters is him. I guess it just hit a critical mass in popularity at some point which inspired the decades worth of fanworks since.
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Comment on November 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 5(ish) Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentPride - Touhou Hero of Ice Fairy Playing Rabi-Ribi put me in the mood for more bullet hell and coincidentally this game has a fresh update today introducing a roguelite mode. Last time I played...Pride - Touhou Hero of Ice Fairy
Playing Rabi-Ribi put me in the mood for more bullet hell and coincidentally this game has a fresh update today introducing a roguelite mode. Last time I played this was in Early Access July last year back when there were only four bosses so I had that and the full release content to look forward to.
This is a Touhou fangame with Cirno as the protagonist though instead of vertical shump, it's a side-view boss game with 7 bosses, their hard variants, and the true final boss after beating the hard variants. I say side-view because Cirno is on the ground and the main way to dodge bullets is to use the stamina bar to dash or fly through them with i-frames; probably easier for people to learn dodge-rolling stamina management rather than bullet-weaving. To encourage good play, there's a Courage meter, gained by dealing damage and lost by taken damage, which passively boosts the main attack for each level or used to fuel the two spell card slots. There's a lot of customization options too: the main attack slot and badge slot which basically don't take space, and then the 2 spell cards slots and 3 passive items which take up different amounts of points and must stay within the combined total (10 points by the end of the game).
My loadout's on the defensive side:
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Main Attack: Ice Grenade. 1 Point (they all cost 1 point unless you're planning to unequip for some reason? Weapons still have a use on pacifist runs for courage gain I think, and getting rid of adds). Does have a slight arc, but it deals good damage and has a slight AoE which helps in case of summons.
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Badge: Red-Eyed Cabin Manager (Reisen). Increased max stamina for dodging.
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Spell Slot #1: Absolute Zero. 2 Points. Basically the smartbomb option along with only costing 1 Courage to cast, though it doesn't affect lasers and doesn't instakill summons.
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Spell Slot #2: Empty to have more points for passives.
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Passive #1: Bunny Ears. 2 Points. Slows down nearby bullets to give more time to react or recharge stamina.
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Passive #2: Gourmet's Hitaikakushi. 3 Points. Flying through bullets eats them and grants Courage. Very useful to get rid of seeking bullets or bullets that remain on the field.
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Passive #3a: Tengu's Fan. 2 Points. Can use flight another time before landing and reduces stamina for it. Basically giving myself more margin for error.
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Passive #3b: Rainbow Mushroom. 2 Points. Boosts damage and courage gain in exchange for dying in one hit. For instant feedback on no-hit runs.
So where does Pride come in? Aside from Cirno being the strongest and the need to take on each boss' Challenge Stage for the ending, the game also keeps track of whether a Challenge Stage no-hit run was completed which rewards some different post-battle dialogue & achievements (yes I did all of these), and Challenge Stage Pacifist no-hit runs which are a matter of timing out and surviving each boss's phase until they move on to the next one (haven't even attempted it yet, no steam achievement for these, this here is purely for pride).
Then there's the roguelite mode. Doing well on runs grants more metacurrency to invest into increasing and upgrading the starting loadout options. After defeating each boss, there's the option to choose 1 of 3 rewards, skip for money, or a once-per-run(?) option of taking all 3 rewards but invoking a random curse on the rest of the run. The floor between bosses has a shop to spend money on (more money for doing better against the bosses) and some random rewards or options. Haven't completed a full run here yet, I'll choose to cope by saying that I haven't grinded enough metacurrency and that I'm too used to the challenge variants of the bosses now.
For a game that's $5 rounding up on sale and $7 regular price, I think it's pretty dang polished for what it is even without knowing much about Touhou. I will mention though that the post-battle dialogue includes defeated dialogue art for the bosses with clothing damage and suggestive poses, and the game's cover/main menu being oddly focused on Cirno's legs.
Has a standalone demo under Touhou Hero of Ice Fairy: Prologue which has its own scenario and bosses.
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Comment on November 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 5(ish) Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern (edited )LinkSingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 10/25) Mode: Standard Winning Bingo! Finished 10/25 Humor Connection Synthesis Morality ✅ Xenoblade Chronicles X Harmony Love ✅ Cavity Busters ✅...SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 10/25)
Mode: Standard Winning Bingo! Finished 10/25 Humor Connection Synthesis Morality Progress
✅ Xenoblade Chronicles XHarmony Love Erosion
✅ Cavity BustersCausality
✅ Eternal ThreadsTrust Pride
✅ Touhou Hero of Ice FairyResistance
✅ Keylocker★ Wildcard
✅ Rabi-RibiJustice Sound Fragmentation Change
✅ Darksiders GenesisChoice
✅ Project Warlock IICommunity Light Threshold
✅ Vampire: The Masquerade - BloodlinesSymmetry
✅ A Dance of Fire and IceIsolation Happiness Fear A bingo for the road!
Wildcard - Rabi-Ribi
I was thinking Disco Elysium or Persona 5 Strikers to be thematic. Instead I'm using the free slot to talk about the game with the anime bunny girl and the half-naked fairy on its cover.
Rabi-Ribi is a 2d platformer Metroidvania with a focus on bullet hell bosses and since the game is so upfront about it, lots of anime girls in fanservicey outfits; just questionable enough to raise some eyebrows, but otherwise relatively tame as far as anime standards go (or the equivalent term for a dev team based in Taiwan).
Runs fine on steam deck, though the in-game achievement icons didn't show up on the pause menu for me. Binded Down + B to R4 for easier Bunny Amulet access.
Now it is very open-ended; the only thing the main story progress cares about is Erina & Ribbon beating X amount of bosses so they're convinced to help power the otherworldly teleporting stone tablet and you're completely free to put off the chapter progression fights to just keep exploring wherever you can reach. As a result of this openness I've finished chapter 5 (the end of the main story where the credits play, though there is an extensive post-game) with 20 townsfolk (read: bosses, more than strictly necessary I think), 66% map, and 54% items. That last part is the most critical because I'm still missing some key items; I never found the wall jump item for example and I've been (inconsistently) inputting the hidden tech for manual wall jumps to get around. Also as a result of this, I can't actually progress in the Halloween DLC area because I don't have the verticality to scale up the wall.
The difficulty I played on was Normal and Standard (bosses scale with you, game says you're fine without grinding) instead of Alternate (bosses are at set power levels and the game says you'll need to explore to keep up). I'm not a 1CC player or anything, but I thought the bosses were generally manageable at my skill level with only a few resets for the harder bosses. There's a stamina bar for Erina's hammer attacks and a mana bar for Ribbon's charged attacks (but not her rapid fire button mashing) so there is a bit of attack optimization I'm sure, but I just stuck to basic hammer combo to up drill + down drill, and the slide bunny attack when the attack penalty for repeated uses for that move wears off. The yellow laser beam for Ribbon usually, green staff for charged seeking if the bosses are out of positioning and just a little healing though the healing amount doesn't scale up late-game. Otherwise yeah, per the bullet hell genre Erina has a small hitbox at the center of her model (holding the hammer button slows her down and shows it) and there's an i-frame button on a timer with up to 3 charges.
That's my experience with the main game though. The postgame immediately stops holding back with a boss that dealt about 100 per hit + Burning to my 600-ish HP which took quite a few tries to get through. This is just the starter boss guarding the way to the Hall of Memories where even the normal enemies there started dealing hundreds of damage and there are weak copies of bosses mixed in with them. I think I need to explore the full island again and empty out the shop before daring to try again.
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Comment on November 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 4 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentProgress - Xenoblade Chronicles X (Wii U) In the year 2054, Earth is completely obliterated from being caught in the midst of two warring alien factions. The human race sends up several ark ships,...Progress - Xenoblade Chronicles X (Wii U)
In the year 2054, Earth is completely obliterated from being caught in the midst of two warring alien factions. The human race sends up several ark ships, but only a handful manage to escape; The White Whale is one such ship that managed to drift by for two years before being shot down by alien pursuers and forced to crash land on the planet Mira. Two months later, the customizable amnesiac blank slate protagonist "Rook" (as in rookie) is found and awoken from their stasis pod and recruited into BLADE to secure mankind's future on their new home.
Welcome to Xenoblade Chronicles X, a spinoff to the Xenoblade saga that's getting a remaster next year. Yes I dusted off my Wii U for this. Unlike the rest of the series, this entry is open world and kinda plays out like a single-player MMO? You've got all the ability cooldowns on a hotbar, the main quests are level-gated & based on exploration progress, and there are enemies that are several times your level no matter where you go and your choices are run or die if you aggro them. Also like a MMO, I looked up strats and still barely know what I'm doing; I've just finished chapter 5 as a Psycorruptor class and I would not be able to tell you anything about actual gameplay intricacies. What I can tell you is that after chapter 3 ended and the world opened up, I ran everywhere I could planting data probes which grant passive income and reveals info about the area around it (which I don't know what the icons actually mean). It was surprisingly thrilling running around all the different biomes, jumping up mountains Skyrim style when possible, running like crazy once something big got aggro'd, and re-routing after getting insta-gibbed and respawning. Honestly, I think I like the feeling of "yeah you can ignore everything, just run around if you feel like it", kinda feels better than getting one-shotted in Zelda BotW/TotK to me because you'll at least know if it was supposed to be a fair fight or not and not have to find some Great Fairies to upgrade basic defense.
I wish I had more to say, but it's a slow start and a slow burn about humanity's survival on this new planet, though I'm certainly booting up my Wii U daily again. We're marking Progress on several levels:
- Real life progress in this game getting a remaster.
- In-universe progress of humanity exploring the regions around them and securing their place.
- My game progress in raising my exploration % by running around like a headless chicken and planting probes everywhere.
- Backlog progress as we're closing off the final week of this Backlog Burner event.
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Comment on November 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 4 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentGosh, I'm a little embarrassed at that one because I could've sworn I imitated the light size interpretation off someone else, but I tried CTL+F'ing the past discussions for "light" and "size" and...Gosh, I'm a little embarrassed at that one because I could've sworn I
stoleimitated the light size interpretation off someone else, but I tried CTL+F'ing the past discussions for "light" and "size" and didn't find anything. I think the closest one to possible inspiration was aphoenix saying that Wilderless was 900MB in comparison to Sea of Thieves being 120GB during Week 2.And it's funny how my bingo card worked out. I was aiming for a diag from the start, but as is appropriate for a backlog event, it's the last week and I'm only playing the Progress game now. Well like many things in my life, at least I'm making the deadline.
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Comment on November 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 4 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentWell it's definitely a benefit of Flow style to be able to grab so many concepts and define how they mean for the bingo's context, along with me liking Keylocker enough to have a grasp for how...Well it's definitely a benefit of Flow style to be able to grab so many concepts and define how they mean for the bingo's context, along with me liking Keylocker enough to have a grasp for how everything matches up to my board. A filled out board with 5 games in Flux style is seriously impressive to me though.
IsThereAnyDeal shows that Virgo popped up on a few recent Fanatical bundles, I imagine it'll show up again by year's end.
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Comment on November 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 4 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentWell I was inspired by @Durinthal using all their bingo words in their Week 1 Slay The Princess writeup. Keylocker was a filling experience to me and once I noticed how many of its concepts mapped...Well I was inspired by @Durinthal using all their bingo words in their Week 1 Slay The Princess writeup. Keylocker was a filling experience to me and once I noticed how many of its concepts mapped out nicely to the bingo card I had, I thought it'd be a fun little (unofficial) exercise to try and fill out everything.
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Comment on November 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 4 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern (edited )LinkSingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 8/25) Mode: Standard Bingo! Finished 8/25 Humor Connection Synthesis Morality ✅ Xenoblade Chronicles X Harmony Love ✅ Cavity Busters ✅ Eternal...- Exemplary
SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 8/25)
Mode: Standard Bingo! Finished 8/25 Humor Connection Synthesis Morality Progress
✅ Xenoblade Chronicles XHarmony Love Erosion
✅ Cavity BustersCausality
✅ Eternal ThreadsTrust Pride Resistance
✅ Keylocker★ Wildcard Justice Sound Fragmentation Change
✅ Darksiders GenesisChoice
✅ Project Warlock IICommunity Light Threshold
✅ Vampire: The Masquerade - BloodlinesSymmetry
✅ A Dance of Fire and IceIsolation Happiness Fear Resistance - Keylocker
How can this be on my backlog when it's a 2 month old game? Answer: I backed this on Kickstarter in 2021 because I really liked Moonana's previous game Virgo Versus The Zodiac and by all means I should've been playing this on launch. Well now I've got Dissonance ending A & B after about 20 hours and I can say I like the full experience here too. I finished the Mutable route in Virgo and I plan to play another route at some point before I attempt New Game+ for Keylocker and go for the Resonance endings.
Both games have demos, please do give them a try.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/920320/Virgo_Versus_The_Zodiac/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1325040/Keylocker__Turn_Based_Cyberpunk_Action/
Runs well on steam deck, though I remember running into 2 points with consistent crashes: once at the intermission set between chapter 3 & 4, and once during chapter 4 I believe. Had to continue on my PC to get past those points.
The full title is Keylocker | Turn Based Cyberpunk Action; like its predecessor, it's a JRPG with action commands in a weird setting laden with mythology based off the cosmos, Saturn and its moons in this case. Where Virgo had frontline/backline positioning, color triangle, cooldowns, buff/debuff management, and a strong emphasis on counterattacks, Keylocker has a hex grid for positioning and the electricity bar which acts as the first health bar against electrical attacks and as fuel to amplify the damage/armor of physical moves. There's a lot more gameplay to chew through, but let's go over the basic story.
So the basic plot premise: music is banned on Saturn, it generates electricity which is of course controlled and sold by the reigning, uncaring Satellites. But Bobo... she can sing, she can throw concerts with her band to generate electricity (to sell at a markup with her brother Dealer, but nobody's perfect). This makes her entire existence criminal. On her way out escaping from prison she finds Rocket, an ancient jukebot who can play music, which sows the seeds of rebellion in this tale of Bobo, the rebel, Rocket, the loyal robot, and Dealer, the man who'll do whatever it takes to make sure he and his loved ones have a peaceful life. This marks Resistance, both as a fight against the system, and as electrical resistance from citizens being denied the basic resource they need to live.
The game has 4 classes for Bobo and Rocket to choose from, one to represent each action on the field: Juggernauts for physical attacks directly targeting health, Samurai for temporary armor points to protect health and enable counterattacks, Hackers who siphon electricity with excess damage hitting health, and Sequencers who generate electricity for themselves and their allies along with dealing electrical counterattacks until their next turn. Bobo gains the ability to multi-class at the start of chapter 3 (Dealer is a Hacker and gains the ability to multi-class here as well) while Rocket is able to multi-class a third of the way through chapter 4. I chose Sequencer for Bobo which is apparently the most popular choice according to global steam achievements followed by Samurai; I assume this is some combination of Sequencer being the most fitting for a singer, them being the defensive classes which are easier to work with, and/or simple aesthetics due to Juggernaut and Hacker having bulky diving helmets/TV heads. Multiclassed with Samurai for Bobo to have the ultimate counterattack experience teleporting around with the baseball bat while I had Rocket become a seige sniper with Juggernaut/Hacker and Hacker/Sequencer for Dealer to minmax the electrical stat for him.
Let's go over a few more differences between Virgo and Keylocker:
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Virgo's full party of 3 is assembled quickly by chapter 2 and is the standard (from what I remember). Keylocker has the party being a pair for most of the game due to various story circumstances keeping one person or another out until the last chapter finally allows all 3 of them to be used at the same time.
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On normal difficulty, perfect parries in Keylocker fully negate damage instead of just reducing it, but armor here is completely used up after a single counterattack unlike Virgo (unless investing in one of the Samurai skills which retains 20% armor)
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Virgo has standard RPG levels while Keylocker has the enemies drop keys, in lieu of EXP, which are spent on each character's skill tree(s) to level them up. This led to a much more uneven experience for me since I gave the lion's share to Bobo which made her my hypercarry, but also led to me having to play much more carefully during the segments without her.
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In Virgo, characters could only have 1 type of buff and 1 type of debuff active which led to cute things like curing poison by casting taunt on the character to swap debuffs. In Keylocker, there are Digital Effects which activate the buff instantly, and Analog Effects which are buffs/debuffs that stay on the field tile. This can lead to crazy stuff like say, using a Siege or Massive range weapon to flood the entire field with a debuff which then activates one of Samurai's passives for having a debuff active.
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Using drinks in Keylocker doesn't take up the turn which makes for easy revives.
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Virgo has 4 equipment slots and 4 slots dedicated for counterattack moves. Keylocker has 4 equipment slots and an alternate loadout to swap between freely during battle for different ranges, attacks, or stats.
Something I like about both games is that equipment is never obsolete, all of them fill different niches and are perfectly usable from start to finish. I kept the Old Vintage Disc for Bobo simply because one of its stats was +1 Move which is very nice considering default movement is 1 tile; this movement stacked nicely with the Attorney Cap's +1 movement up until I equipped the L. Def Baseball Bat which let Bobo teleport/swap to whatever tile she wanted on the field, but that's more on the sheer utility and power of the bat.
As for flaws, I would say that there were a few spots I didn't realize I could jump towards or that talking to Save Dinosaur was necessary to advance the story in quite a few locations. I also missed out on the romance system; the only location where I knew I could gift stuff was at the train during the end of chapter 2 and Bobo was otherwise out of luck in romance on my run.
Pretty happy with this overall though.
Keylocker Spoilers - Hole-In-One Golf
Just for fun at cramming this game into every slot golf style. Possible and likely spoilers!
1st row
- Humor: Absolutely. All the different interactable objects have unique lines for examining them with tons of humor sprinkled in.
- Connection: Aside from the literal wires forming all the synthetic beings, it's Bobo's music that's forming a connection everywhere she goes to spark rebellion against the current system.
- Synthesis: Doppelgangers are a species of synthetic beings modeled after humans.
- Morality: Are Bobo and Dealer good people? Both of them commit murder, not in the JRPG way but in the raw coldblooded logic way. Dealer would do whatever it takes to secure a peaceful life for Ivy and Bobo, and Bobo is an eat the rich, burn it all down revolutionary.
- Progress: Aside from Bobo inspiring people through music to rise up against the caste system, the game could be considered an evolution of the gameplay found in Virgo vs the Zodiac.
2nd row
- Harmony: Bobo's in a band that adds more members as time goes on, they're harmonizing.
- Love: The 4 loves are seen: familial between Bobo and Dealer, friendship between Bobo and Rocket, the different Satellites being in a romantic relationship that manifests as a gameplay invulnerability mechanic, and the love for all that shifts Bobo's motivation from fame and glory for security into rebelling against the system to grant everyone equality.
- Erosion: Not sure if I'm remembering this fully correctly, but the three decades of rain mentioned in backstory was a(n intentional) breach that more or less caused the liquid layer to rain down and spread the Hydrogen Plague to kill off the remaining humans.
- Causality: As revealed near the end, Bobo's journey was set to happen at one point or another to due it being very planned out by outside forces.
- Trust: The trio all trust each other, but I wish to highlight Dealer who constantly betrays that trust to secure a peaceful life for himself, Ivy, and Bobo, but not Rocket.
3rd row
- Pride: Bobo has male and female romance options. One boss is part of a doomed yuri pairing and another boss is a yaoi pairing fighting in sync.
- Resistance: Bobo has been a rebel and the game is a long journey of her burning down the caste system establishment.
- Wildcard: Bobo and Rocket are able to spec into 1 of 4 classes, and then multi-class during Chapter 3's start and 1/3rd of the way through Chapter 4 respectively.
- Justice: Most of the Satellites Bobo faces are corrupt beings who take delight in abusing all the citizens in their zones. Bobo bringing them down is a clear act of justice.
- Sound: Chapter 3 takes place in a city forcibly choked into silence with Bobo and Rocket being the ones to bring sound back into it again.
4th row
- Fragmentation: This one's the biggest stretch, but all the protagonists could be considered as temporarily being separated from something of theirs. Bobo's memory of what happened to Yu was locked away, Dealer lost his sense of peace until the end of the game (and his arm for a bit), and Rocket lost his memories of his previous owner and later on, his floppy disk.
- Change: Bobo is a force of change, bring both music to the masses and the downfall of the reigning Satellites.
- Choice: The game has 2 ending routes and 2 sub-variants for 4 endings determined by major choices made in the end chapters.
- Community: The residents of the Scrapyard Zone are all tight-knit, especially after they're all slated for execution and forced to flee together.
- Light: The game's 662.62 MB according to Steam.
5th row
- Threshold: Bobo passes the threshold of each zone and never gets to look back.
- Symmetry: Doppelgangers (the species) are made in pairs with them having a Doppelganger (non-identical twin)
- Isolation: There are several points where Bobo, Rocket, or Dealer are separated or lured away and have to fight on their own against the enemy.
- Happiness: Many of the Djinn are happy being enslaved and granting wishes to their owner; maybe half of them express confusion and dismay at Bobo wishing for their freedom as they're aware of what happened to other Djinn who sought individuality.
- Fear: While Dealer is a calm person, he exhibits an irrational hatred of Rocket because of the threat he represents to the calm, peaceful life Dealer wants with Ivy and Bobo. Rocket pokes fun at it being jealously at one point, but him being a jukebox bot is also what caused Bobo to really decide to take a stand against the establishment.
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Comment on November 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 3 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkSingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 6/25) Mode: Standard Bingo! Finished 6/25 Humor Connection Synthesis Morality Progress Harmony Love ✅ Cavity Busters ✅ Eternal Threads Trust Pride...SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 6/25)
Mode: Standard Bingo! Finished 6/25 Humor Connection Synthesis Morality Progress Harmony Love Erosion
✅ Cavity BustersCausality
✅ Eternal ThreadsTrust Pride Resistance ★ Wildcard Justice Sound Fragmentation Change
✅ Darksiders GenesisChoice
✅ Project Warlock IICommunity Light Threshold
✅ Vampire: The Masquerade - BloodlinesSymmetry
✅ A Dance of Fire and IceIsolation Happiness Fear Busier than I'd like to be unfortunately. I did end up completing Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, but the endgame kinda devolved into spamming super speed and uzi/aug/deagle spam for me. I can say I've finished it now, though I'm not particularly appreciative of it.
Erosion - Cavity Busters (itch.io)
Brush your teeth twice a day and floss once a day to maintain your teeth. My dentist stopped being disappointed in me once I actually learned how to floss. Floss sticks work too!
So this is a roguelike, very clearly inspired by Issac, where you're playing as a gum socket that's firing teeth at enemies while ascending through the levels and that's about all the plot I've understood. The main weapon is a charge attack that fires teeth which are then manually recalled back to the user for a second attack and like Isaac, it's about collecting a bunch of passives to become an unkillable god, though I think it's more skill-based like Gungeon. There's a dodge roll here that can shift into a wallrun with initial i-frames, and rolling into a flashing enemy allows for a free jump up into the air for a tactical pause/view and stomping down for bonus damage. There's an on-demand jump on a timer, mildly akin to a smartbomb/blank, which doubles as the fast travel system out of combat.
One of the game's selling points is the "diseases", basically cursed items. Leave the room without them, and the run as a whole gets harder via various dungeon stat modifiers that the game shows. Take them, and you have to deal with the positives and negatives until finding the purifying NPC who deals 1 damage and takes 2 mints (money) to purify each disease's negatives (though some can't be cured).
Another thing this game does is treat the max hp boost from bosses as a currency. Up to 8 of these can be stored with the elevator NPC which provides passive macrogame boosts or can be taken back later/on another run, or to use 4 of those on death to revive. They can also be given to the item room NPC for another random item, but it's certainly not on the level of Isaac's devil deals.
I do appreciate that this game shows the hidden rooms on the minimap. The choice here is using up a shovel to gain access to it or sacrificing 1 HP without the shovel. I also appreciate that there are item descriptions, albeit the first time an item is seen it says unknown.
I've said a lot about what the game does, but little about how I feel about it. I've only spent a few hours and reached the final floor a few times without clearing, still in that initial roguelike state of adapting to what the game is doing for its identity. The game design does seem competent and there's been updates up to this April, but I don't feel attached to it, like I'm not feeling its soul. Maybe I'm just not matching up with its aesthetic which is a lot of pixel fleshy mouth bits for the sake of pixel fleshy mouth bits, like if everything was variants of Isaac's womb levels and I've put more than enough hours into Issac.
Gonna cheat a little with the Project Warlock II choice since there was an update for it. Also gonna complain a lot.
Choice - Project Warlock II (Steam Early Access)
Gonna be real, I was planning to try out Repella Fella for Choice, but then life got a little busy and now I'm putting in Project Warlock II because it got an update earlier this month revamping the Episode 2 chapters and now I will force a square peg into a round hole. Choice in this case is me ranting a lot about how badly the game presents its abundance of upgrade choices due to some options being clearly better/worse than the rest. Is there really a choice when things are considerably unbalanced?
Now I will preface that I liked the original Early Access launch of Project Warlock II. Sure the Necrogirl enemies could 100-0 you with a single burst of seeking projectiles and the devs were weirdly vocal in the Steam Forums about refusing to enable manual reloads at the time and told people to reload by swapping weapons per their vision and the magic sword beam upgrade was completely useless for example because it could only hit a single target and the hitbox was wide enough to always get eaten up by walls, but it was simple. Grab guns, shoot demons, choose a weapon upgrade at the obvious perk stations each level. Secrets were pretty optional and was only a small boost for finding a gun early, extra armor, or bestiary entries.
Fast forward a lot of development and now there's a bunch of low-impact busywork walking and pixel-hunting everywhere to increase the character's power level. There's treasure placed everywhere to pick up in order to level up along with 3 different types of perk tokens to find to trade in for upgrades. There's a sidequest system to augment weapons with elements, but you can only pick one weapon at a time and it's usually dependent on killing certain enemy types with the weapon and that's of course dependent on the enemy spawning in (*cough* SMG *cough*). The whole system feels bad to me because the upgrades cost different amounts so it always feels like you're missing enough tokens for the next upgrade for not going over everywhere with a fine comb. It's just hanging over everything else because it's in the back of the mind that all the missed currency adds up.
Now I have to also say that the weapon upgrade UI sucks because it hides the Alt Fire upgrade until you've selected which weapon upgrade path you want. All this does is force people to save & load to check/test out the different upgrades or alt-tab to check the wiki. Why do so many games think hiding gameplay information for making decisions is good design? Anywho, weapon upgrades are subjective, but I thought there were some pretty obvious choices for Episode 2:
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Kunai: I kept this unupgraded because it's an unlimited spammable projectile that can be used to kite and gives a 50% chance on headshot to regain 10% max hp. Meanwhile, both upgrade options turn it into a melee weapon. Why?
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Pistol: Chose the sniper magnum path because it retains the "no ammo used on headshot" trait which basically made this my primary for everything and the scope let it burst down big targets. The scope had a weirdly long initial delay in order to fire though. I think this scope issue also happened with revamped Episode 1's laser rifle.
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Shotgun: Turned it into the perfect accuracy lever action rifle instead of the auto shotty. Basically a stronger backup to the pistol with piercing, didn't even need the alt fire upgrade for it.
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SMG: Too inaccurate and low damage compared to dishing out headshots with the above two weapons.
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Dynamite: Explosive self-damage basically instagibs and the throwing arc was too low to be useful in my opinion. The fireworks path was at least a little useful for trash mob area denial when I remembered it existed, but not much else.
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Crossbow: Boss sniping weapon, went for the tri-shot path because the charge up path's alt-fire is an explosive shot that instagibs self in close quarters.
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Agility Spell: Went for 2x duration instead of invincibility when used with melee. This was 100% to run around faster and there are so many better options to just kill everything instead of running around trying to melee.
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Poison Spell: Additional clouds on impact instead of initial blast on self on-cast. Simple DPS boost instead of an unnecessary panic button.
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Crystal Spell: Stun & Piercing instead of explosive shot for the crowd clear.
Stat upgrades were basically putting everything into vitality for max hp and just enough in the other stats to unlock the min requirements for perks because the guns are lethal enough. For passive upgrades, the 2 obvious choices are Stabilizer (incoming damage becomes DoT instead of instant) and the one that grants +10% damage for every combo point which resulted in absurd crowd clearing into instant boss kills with not much else mattering or needed.
Speaking of bosses, both of the big Episode 2 level bosses are stationary, don't attack, and invincible until pushing a button to make them vulnerable at which point you offload DPS at them and then have to hit the button again. Terrible design in this day and age and even weirder because Episode 1 did have proper bosses.
I think the game is playable, but it feels like it just falls into the trap of wanting to make a sequel, though not really having a plan which led to them shifting over to poorly copying the first game's homework midway through early access. Project Warlock 1, which I'd recommend over this and for cheaper, had a bunch of weapons and spells so choice there felt like specializing. Here it's trimmed down to 6 weapons and 3 spells so the power gap is a lot more noticeable for failing to find enough perk tokens for upgrades.
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Comment on November 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentOh well that explains a lot; I impulse purchased Rhythm Doctor earlier this year by reputation and I can see all the DNA shared between them. The one-button rhythm gameplay, the visual effects to...Oh well that explains a lot; I impulse purchased Rhythm Doctor earlier this year by reputation and I can see all the DNA shared between them. The one-button rhythm gameplay, the visual effects to screw with people looking for the visual cues, and the general difficulty. Rhythm Doctor at least feels more accessible: story mode, accessibility options, a health bar, and gameplay grading.
I had gotten as far as 2-X here. I am getting skill issued.
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Comment on November 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentSymmetry - A Dance of Fire and Ice (itch.io) Symmetry is definitely not a category I would normally think of, had to search a bit for this. In this case, A Dance of Fire and Ice is a 1-button...Symmetry - A Dance of Fire and Ice (itch.io)
Symmetry is definitely not a category I would normally think of, had to search a bit for this. In this case, A Dance of Fire and Ice is a 1-button rhythm game about a pair of planets circling around each other and pressing the button in time with the beat to have the planets walk along the path. Once you hit the button for the planet to land on the path, the other planet continues orbiting to land on the next tile and so on until you reach the end of the map.
Now I must say this game feels like it was made for masochistic perfectionists which makes it a surprise to see 64.5k reviews on steam. Unlike other games which would give a % accuracy or a health bar, this game makes you reset the whole map for missing a single beat which is definitely not a casual friendly choice. The road system it uses for notes pretty much feels like a new language to process for rhythm games, faster notes on an inside corner and delayed notes on an outside corner, which contributes to the feeling of not understanding it initially and then the feeling of kinda getting it but still wondering why the game is so dang hard.
I got as far as World 6-X. I'm not prideful enough to keep going on this one.
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Comment on November 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 2 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern (edited )LinkSingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 4/25) Mode: Standard Bingo! Finished 4/25 Humor Connection Synthesis Morality Progress Harmony Love Erosion ✅ Eternal Threads Trust Pride Resistance...SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 4/25)
Mode: Standard Bingo! Finished 4/25 Humor Connection Synthesis Morality Progress Harmony Love Erosion Causality
✅ Eternal ThreadsTrust Pride Resistance ★ Wildcard Justice Sound Fragmentation Change
✅ Darksiders GenesisChoice Community Light Threshold
✅ Vampire: The Masquerade - BloodlinesSymmetry
✅ A Dance of Fire and IceIsolation Happiness Fear Threshold - Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines (Steam)
When it comes to the supernatural, the concept of a Threshold often pops up: spirits kept away through salt circles, a summoning circle built to contain the entity within (when made properly), vampires who must ask for permission to enter the premises. I don't think that particular rule applies here, but hey, vampires. Vampyr also happens to be in my library.
Installed with Unofficial Patch Plus and reached the beginning of Hollywood. I think I have to say upfront that I didn't start PC gaming until around 2010, so a lot of older PC titles don't quite mesh with me. Now this game came out in 2004, so I'm sure someone is going to say it's not that old which is exactly how I feel about Gamecube era games.
So I answered the character creation questions with charismatic choices and was offered clan Toreador (the fancy pants vamps). Went through the tutorial area, talked down the security guard there, told him to go ahead and cover me and- oh wait he just died. And I lost a Humanity point for that. I think that sums up my experience in a nutshell: it's so dark I can't see anything, there's no map or mini-map or objective markers so I'm constantly getting lost and have no idea how to proceed in missions without looking up what the quest trigger is in the wiki, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I don't fault the game for it, older era and all in a time where there's secrets everywhere without any spoon-feeding or maybe that's just me coping with its cult classic status but I don't feel quite connected to it because of the gap. Might have something to do with me not putting any points into Lockpicking/Hacking to get into places (aka me having a bunch of sidequests in Santa Monica I can't complete); normally I do, but I also know for older games to put points into asskicking because you're gonna have to fight something at some point and they won't hold back. At the least, I'm cruising through most things with maxed out Celerity (Time Slow) and 8 points of Persuade with judicious amounts of quicksaves for missions with encouraged stealth/pacifism.
There's also a lot of vampire politics with the MC being the errand boy for everything. I can't say I enjoy vampire politics? I think my opinion has been soured by Netflix Castlevania season 2 which was mostly vampire dickwaving for characters who didn't really matter which ended up sidelining the actual main characters. I don't know where I'm going with this, the title and source material clearly say the Masquerade and I'm fairly certain vampire politics is usually a thing in vampire fiction; I guess I'm the type of person to lean more towards flashy supernatural power usage instead or the human vs vampire struggle rather than vamp vs vamp.
As a sidenote, I'm getting a Fallout vibe from the dialogue, the whole upfront of the person's face and the text boxes and the dialogue check options, though that's probably from me having a very small reference pool for WRPGs.
This is going on my continue list; despite me getting lost like crazy, constantly feeling that I'm missing something from the experience, and having to alt-tab a lot to figure out how to finish a mission, it is a relatively smooth ride and I want to see how things go for the rest of the game and how it got its classic status.
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Comment on November 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentOh I would love a rhythm shooter, I have so much time on BPM and I'm waiting for a good deal on Robobeat. Given the series history, I think 4 would probably have Strife take cues from Dante ala...Oh I would love a rhythm shooter, I have so much time on BPM and I'm waiting for a good deal on Robobeat. Given the series history, I think 4 would probably have Strife take cues from Dante ala having every ammo type at the ready to swap in and some Bayonetta influence towards having dual-wielding guns, though if it went for mobility shooter vibes, that'd be a thing.
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Comment on November 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern Link ParentCausality - Eternal Threads (Epic Freebie) Causality just screams time travel, doesn't it? You make a choice in the past and see how it blossoms and spirals into a whole new timeline. Of course,...Causality - Eternal Threads (Epic Freebie)
Causality just screams time travel, doesn't it? You make a choice in the past and see how it blossoms and spirals into a whole new timeline. Of course, Choice is also on the menu though I imagine people would be thinking Visual Novels or W/CRPGS for that particular word while Causality is more specific. I do have Steins;Gate sitting in my Steam library which is a rather known time travel VN/Anime.
So the fluff of Eternal Threads is that a timeline anomaly was traced back to a house fire that claimed the lives of the 6 residents there and the POV character, #43, is sent to learn the events in the week leading up to the fire and ensuring that they survive it (and solving all their personal issues). This plays out as a first-person walking simulator where you walk around the house and choose an event in the timeline to watch and when a choice comes up, generally picking the alternate option to influence the characters to open up and trust one another. I decided to move backwards in the timeline, to see how each of them died so as to prevent it and to see the difference in the before and after of altering the timeline. Turns out most of the locked room keys are given in early events which is definitely a choice for this type of game.
That's about it honestly. The game takes place in 2015 England and the sci-fi elements don't affect the characters' stories besides hints that aren't followed up on and a cliffhanger ending that should've either been answered as part of the main plot or removed. The whole thing was kind of a blur with the game boasting almost 200 scenes, though many of these are simple timeline changes or obviously part of a bigger scene.
Took the afternoon and put my GPU on max usage. Not particularly memorable or recommended.
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Comment on November 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion in ~games
SingedFrostLantern (edited )LinkSingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 2/25) Mode: Standard Bingo! Finished 2/25 Humor Connection Synthesis Morality Progress Harmony Love Erosion ✅ Eternal Threads Trust Pride Resistance...SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 2/25)
Mode: Standard Bingo! Finished 2/25 Humor Connection Synthesis Morality Progress Harmony Love Erosion Causality
✅ Eternal ThreadsTrust Pride Resistance ★ Wildcard Justice Sound Fragmentation Change
✅ Darksiders GenesisChoice Community Light Threshold Symmetry Isolation Happiness Fear Change - Darksiders Genesis (Steam)
As I'm typing this, I realize Planescape: Torment was also an option to try out because of its famous quote
"What can change the nature of a man?". Change probably works for a store sim as well on account of giving someone their spare change. I'm also realizing that Darksiders 2 is still on my backlog too.Anywho, Darksiders is an action series about the Four Horsemen: War, Death, Fury, and Strife with their duty of keeping balance between heaven and hell and the general amount of asskicking they have to do after someone kickstarted the apocalypse early with War getting blamed for it. Where Change comes in is how each game has a different protagonist and genre: 1 has War in a Zelda-esque journey, 2 has Death and random loot/equipment drops, 3 has Fury in a Souls-like, and Genesis has Strife and War in a 2P co-op isometric action game along with it being a prequel to the other games which take place at the same time.
Performance-wise, it runs on a consistent 60FPS on Steam Deck with medium settings so far, though it's putting my desktop GPU (AMD Radeon RX 5700) at full usage and 100 degrees C for some reason.
Completed Mission 5 so far, I will choose to describe the plot as a buddy cop show with Strife as the wacky one-liner cop who keeps voicing distrust about their orders and War as the serious cop who would threaten to rip out someone's tongue and feed it to them, and then actually do it. Right now it's just them hunting down Lucifer and other demons aligned with him.
Gameplay-wise, Strife is the twin-stick shooter experience with multiple ammo types to swap between for his two fire buttons and being on the evasive side. War is the swordsman bruiser who gets different elements for his heavy attack and leans towards blocking/parrying. Both of them get to tap O/B to execute low health enemies. L1/Left Bumper (by default) is the modifier button to swap between horsemen in singleplayer, use wrath skills, summon their horse, or activate their special mode. Not exactly the paragon of depth, but it's serviceable. That said, there appears to be some RNG grind where enemies drop soul perks which are slotted into the skill tree and naturally you have to gain more of the specific perk type to level them up and raise the horseman's stats by matching the soul type to the soul slot.
Mostly my time is taken up by how there's a map for each level that shows all the hidden collectibles and naturally I feel compelled to hunt them down though it does the thing where there's stuff you can't access yet until replying the level with story-locked gear. The game is at least gracious enough to let the player choose when to return to the hub after completing a level for exploration purposes. Apparently I'm averaging an hour or so a level for this though which is probably messing with the pacing.
I think this is a podcast/work downtime game for me. I'm not particularly gripped by the gameplay or overall franchise story/lore, but it serves as a Steam Deck goal to clear.
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Comment on Announcing the Tildes Backlog Burner event for November 2024: Shrink your unplayed games list this coming month! in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkJoining for the first time so I'm posting to make sure I commit myself to this. I'm fairly weak to deals and bundles, so I've got quite the selection between Steam, GOG, Epic freebies, itch.io...Joining for the first time so I'm posting to make sure I commit myself to this. I'm fairly weak to deals and bundles, so I've got quite the selection between Steam, GOG, Epic freebies, itch.io bundles, a Switch, and a PS4 given by my brother after he got a PS5; guess I'll also make it a personal goal to rotate between them.
Decided to go for Standard/Flow: Standard because the backlog is huge, Flow for a little more freedom in the "just do it" sense.
SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow)
Mode: Standard Bingo! Finished 0/25 Humor Connection Synthesis Morality Progress Harmony Love Erosion Causality Trust Pride Resistance ★ Wildcard Justice Sound Fragmentation Change Choice Community Light Threshold Symmetry Isolation Happiness Fear -
Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkMidnight Fight Express Take a top-down beat-'em-up with decent mechanics. Add a skill tree where you gain a skill point after every level for a sense of customization and progress until the tree...Midnight Fight Express
Take a top-down beat-'em-up with decent mechanics. Add a skill tree where you gain a skill point after every level for a sense of customization and progress until the tree is maxed out after finishing the game. Mix in a typical plot about the main character being guided by a drone into going after underworld figures with bits of humor sprinkled in and finish with a ton of optional challenges for replay value.
Now ruin the entire recipe with hitscan guns and the occasional instakill in a game with zero health recovery. All they had to do was not do that or make the bullets a projectile or even just add more warnings on gun enemies to make them noticeable. Instead, it's a lot of unavoidable chip damage and the solution against gun enemies is to eliminate one and take their gun to shoot the other gun enemies. In a beat-'em-up. I dunno, the game isn't bad, but this is a pretty big sticking point for the entire thing and it's hard to look at it favorably for it.
TOEM
It has the vibes of an "explore and help people out" game with a photography focus, but I don't think that's quite accurate which is making me biased when I was thinking it'd be more A Short Hike. Instead of being open world, it's split into regions and rooms within those regions which lead to a much different feel on account of the backtracking and riddle solving in order to get places instead of wandering wherever. This region splitting also makes it feel like disconnected levels rather than an actual built up world since there are few characters that actually travel between them. In addition, the quest system shows up as a checklist with the total quests for the area and the amount needed to head to the next region which makes the vibe more about 100% completion and talking to quest givers rather than leisure exploration. Certain quests also reward gear or new locations that is necessary to progress in the zone so you're tough out of luck if you can't solve it; case in point, I've beaten the game, but still don't have access to the 2nd half of the second zone because I can't find the last spinely brother who went somewhere warm apparently.
Again, it's not bad, I did get a few hours of chill gameplay (with the occasional frustration over quest hints), but I went in with the wrong expectations, kinda like how my mom used to tell kid me that durian tastes like ice cream and I refused to eat it for quite a few years because of that superficial comparison.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
SingedFrostLantern LinkWent through this week's Next Fest, had a busy week though so it's unfortunate that this post is pretty much on the last few hours. I do at least have my Top 5 though: Silly Polly Beast: My one...Went through this week's Next Fest, had a busy week though so it's unfortunate that this post is pretty much on the last few hours. I do at least have my Top 5 though:
- Silly Polly Beast: My one pick from this fest. Stylish Horror with Twin-Stick Shooter/Side-Scrolling Action. Polly's a runaway teenager who burnt her orphanage down (her sister said she got the other kids out ahead of time. I don't believe that considering how many spirit hands were after Polly) and ends up in the Underworld where she has to make a pact to survive. There's just a distinctiveness, a purpose to its style that speaks out to me, like Polly being quite expressive despite being mute in cutscenes or when she's jumpscared. Gameplay has a basic melee combo (with a skateboard), dodge roll, a stealth mode based on proximity, and the guns which is where the horror influence is most felt. The game is relatively generous about item drops and subweapon refills, but with a low cap which generates tension from having to burn supplies to get through a rough situation and hopefully making it through with enough left for the next one. In particular, Polly's main weapon, the revolver, only reloads from dedicated fires which forces enemy prioritization and kiting in combat rooms. Definitely give it a go.
- Meat-Grinder: Visual Novel. It's weird, it's crude; the protagonist is a failure of an assassin who's deep in debt and fees from resorting to mass-murdering collateral damage all the time, her robot assistant is named Adolf and has the mustache, the maid is a person who was turned into an actual horrific moe blob, it goes on and on. It is oddly compelling in spite (or because) of the shock humor, as if the creator earnestly put their soul out on display; the best example perhaps being the demo's little finale. The demo chapter itself is basically the meme "Are you tired of being nice? Don't you just want to go ape shitt"; Obi starts off trying to maintain her fast food worker job, ends up brutally killing her manager because of a bad day of customer service, goes back to her assassin roots, then reality hits her in the face when she remembers she has no skills or education and utterly mucks up her hit and barely succeeds at it. Back where she started, an unfulfilling job with tons of debt and personal risk. Food for the nihilistic edgelord part of the soul? Oh yes, absolutely. Oddly hopeful that Obi and her odd household managed to scrape by another day? At least to me.
- Threefold Recital: Side-Scrolling Adventure, the kind with mini-games, investigations, and hidden objectives. Asian fantasy with 3 beastfolk protagonists, don't have much about the overall plot since it starts off in media res at the finale and then the demo only goes to chapter 1 end. I did vibe with it though and I liked the little chapter end scoreboard that shows how in-character you chose to act and how many objectives were fulfilled.
- Guidus Zero: Real-Time Dungeon-Crawler/Traditional Roguelike, think Crypt of the Necrodancer but with less rhythm needed. The enemy attacks feel properly telegraphed along the grids, there's a little stamina bar for attack cancels and emergency rolls, special attack on cooldown, and relic synergies. Just everything in a neat little package.
- Alice's World: Side-scrolling Horror with the player as a fourth wall entity. There's 2 layers to this; the first layer is the girl Alice going between her life as a sickly girl stuck at home who's taken care of by her brother and her finding herself in a wasteland in her sleep where she has to run and hide from monsters and her realities steadily glitching out as the player entity guides her on both fronts. The second layer is system who is adversarial to the player entity, judging you both as an unauthorized user of the computer and as someone who is playing a game and deliberately putting a young girl in danger. Interestingly, the Spec Ops: The Line defense gets used here; system argues that the right thing to do is to stop playing the game and the player entity gets to fire back about guiding Alice/playing through the game to its end and that it's on the game designers for being so sick about the scenario they set up.
Other Stuff that seemed interesting
- Garden of Witches: Top-down roguelike with the main character being a sewing witch who's beating some sense into the other witches so they can all get rid of the corruption. Basic melee attack combo, dodge roll, and 2 cooldown skills to take. I like the aesthetic, and there's all the little mid-run optimizations to figure out from what you have, though there isn't a mini-map which is frustrating for routing and you start off a little weak with some unfortunate beginning grinding for the MC to feel not so sluggish.
- Deadzone Rogue: Sci-fi FPS Roguelike, the kind with ADS and room-by-room combat. Shoot robots in the head, elemental guns and passive perk synergies, etc, etc. Mostly the thing that strikes me here is how the macrogame skill tree can only be upgraded during a run and for 3 random traits at each station.
- Urban Myth Dissolution Center: Pixel Art Supernatural Horror/Mystery Investigations. This comes with a pretty big disclaimer that the intro shows a pretty gross example of power abuse and extortion which the game brushes over; the titular Urban Myth Dissolution Center's Director has capital-V Vision and forcibly recruits the main character, a timid university student with some supernatural sense, by setting up his office and manipulating her into destroying a cursed artifact, revealing that he knows all her personal information, and then threatening to have debt collectors go after her if she doesn't work for him with the unsubtle intent of grooming her into becoming a supernatural investigator. Seriously gross. If you can stomach that, the game does have a neat pixel style and some detective gameplay, though the "fill in the blanks with the word choices" segments has obvious issues with getting the wrong answer due to different phrasing.
Might keep an eye on, Might not
- Card-en-Ciel: 3-mana Deckbuilding Roguelike with a Mega Man Battle Network grid, movement based on discarding cards. It's by Inti Creates so it has cards based on their franchises. It is a little odd though that a turn-based game would have QTEs when using [Action] cards to parry attacks and the scoring system is based on fighting as little as possible.
- Mirage Noir: Otome game, with a detective lead and the 4 romance options being the hot-blooded gangster, sour prince, the kind cosplayer, and the hacker shut-in as their friend group tries to solve a conspiracy. It does have a little detective work, but the core is of course a dating sim.
- Toads of the Bayou: Very Into The Breach inspired, though it's swamp-themed and the objective is protecting 1-2 buildings, the win con is defeating 8 foes/the boss, and pits/map edges deal +1 collision damage instead of being an instakill.
- Undead West: Like a smaller scale Enter the Gungeon, though in black and white, simpler pixel style, and being a Western. Had an unfortunate issue where I had to unplug my controller in order to aim with the mouse.
- Spirit X Strike: 3D Beat-Em-Up that feels like a playable cheesy over-the-top Kung Fu B-movie. Does it look good? No. Is it hype to dodge, parry, and unleash finisher after finisher into a crowd? Yes.
- Mohrta: FPS, unlimited reserve ammo (at least for the revolver), and a mana system for the weapons' secondaries with mana drops from killing foes. Enjoyable enough.
- The Chronos Event: Roguelike TPS based on powersliding everywhere, grabbing fresh guns off of defeated foes, and rewinding time to have your past timeline self deal damage and serve as a decoy. Listing all that out, it reads like it has Vanquish DNA in it.
- Dimensionals: Turn-based Roguelike with increasing mana per turn. Pick 3 heroes, distribute mana efficiently to defend/attack, and pick the right synergies from relics and after-battle skill choices.
- Strategem Lost: Turn-based tactics ala Fire Emblem, but with stylish character art and attack animations somewhat akin to Darkest Dungeon .
- Memories of Bust: Deckbuilding Roguelike Blackjack. Reminded a little of The Robot from Dicey Dungeons, and they were my favorite character there so I did enjoy this.
- To Kill A God: Roguelike ARPG, like Diablo, with the vast skill tree and nodes doubling as the map routing.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate: Action Roguelike with a Hades boon system. I grew up on TMNT 2K3 so I have a softspot for more turtles, though something about the gameplay and meta-grinding rubs me the wrong way.
- Neon Blood: Cyberpunk investigation, though the walk speed is super slow, combat feels off-putting because the 2x2 UI for it is obviously Pokemon-based, and the QTE prompts are in neon green which blends in with the bar walls. By all means, I should take it off this list, but it's still fresh on my mind for some reason.
Wildfrost
Got this from the Jingle Jam. It's a roguelike deckbuilder that I've been playing on my steam deck, finished a run with the true final boss today. I think I read somewhere that it was inspired by Monster Train and I can see some influences: putting units on the field to fight and protect the lose condition, potential upgrades that can utterly break a card in the good way, and the road that splits into 2 between each fight for different item sources/stores. Instead of an energy system, each unit has a counter that ticks down after each card played so it could also be interpreted as each card played takes up a turn. Pretty smooth and fun overall, but I think my biggest peeve with it is how the run ends as soon as the leader unit goes down due to the lack of safeguards like a combat preview (which might be because Aimless units fire at random targets) or a limited amount of rewinds/death preventions; making a minor tactical/positioning error and instantly losing the run for it leads to a pretty sour feeling for not being 100% locked in.
Mostly, my victories have been due to Demonize (unit takes double damage), stacking Frenzy (multihits), and Overburn (when unit hp goes below Overburn stack, it explodes its row with the amount of Overburn). One particular victory was from adding a Balance charm to Nova to lower the turn count from 12 down to 3 with the innate ability to hit all enemies, and then copying a Lumin charmed Krono for 2 structures that added +4 frenzy total, +6 using the vase.
Spoilers - Something I like about the Final Boss
If you win against the final boss, but don't meet the conditions for the true final boss, your team becomes possessed and turns into the new final boss of your future runs. Since the true final boss isn't possible until Storm Strength 10, it becomes interesting to draft a new team to counter your old one and continuously refining the process against yourself as your teams get better. Once you do beat the true final boss, the final boss reverts back to the default one which is kind of a shame.