Decided to knock out a couple more!

Recettear: An Item Shop Tale is, as the title suggests, a game about running an item shop. It's an oldie and said to be pretty good. I haven't played much of it honestly, because for some reason, the music isn't looping. Like, it plays through once, and then... silence. But the sound effects and voices still work, which make the lack of music more jarring. So, haven't played much. Honestly just happy it works on the Steam Deck, since it's technically not supported.

It's cute though (and has VERY dated moe anime art style, given it's from 2007), and haggling prices with customers for each sale seems like an interesting mechanic.

Then there's Wandersong, which I got from @aphoenix during the big holiday key giveaways! I just booted it up today, and got to Act 3. It's pretty fun, and did a good job incorporating singing into the gameplay! So far I've used singing to make plants grow in certain directions, and to direct wind to carry me. Part of me keeps thinking how much more this game would suck for colorblind people though xD

I'm booting up Wizard of Legend next, which I also got from aphoenix after mixing up the key for Wandersong. I figure I might as well check it out since I checked out Wandersong xD

Congrats on the bingo! I didn't know GameFreak made anything outside of the Pokemon factory. That sounds like an odd premise, and is actually more interesting to me because of it.

When I accidentally skip intros in games, I usually go find a YouTube version. There's usually one that's uploaded without commentary, but if not you might be able to find a Let's Play which includes it at least.

Congrats on the Bingo!

You have inspired me - I'm going to grab a copy of Another World and give it a whirl. I haven't played it in 10 20 jeez 30ish years. Your point about backtracking awakened a core memory, I think.

From your list of games: were there any surprises to you? What did you like the best?

Tonight's the last day of Backlog Bingo of the month, and I sadly ran out of time to actually get a bingo. So, I'll go ahead and show my last bingo card.

Since I posted it at the very last minute and that I'll take a very long while conjuring with my detailed thoughts for the games I played after my previous report, I'll post about those on the final recap topic.

Slay the Princess uses "light and dark" in a literal sense, as the game's mostly monochromatic. It's also a thematic thing as you're tasked with saving with world via the titular action of killing a princess, but things are more complicated than that and there are both lighter and nightmarish paths to take along the way. I got to the credits once after about 3.5 hours but it's a game that's designed to be replayed quite a bit and I'm looking forward to exploring other routes soon. I'm not saying much more about it since I think it's a good kind of game to go into blind, but it has some quirks about it that I quite enjoy.

While I had a SNES when I was younger, I was more into Chrono Trigger and Secret of Mana so I missed out on some of the other "classic" JRPGs of the era. Final Fantasy IV is one of them and even if I didn't play it then and it wasn't as big as VI or VII, it was still a good part of online discussions in the late '90s/early '00s to the point where FF4's main/overworld theme is one of the first that comes to mind for me in the franchise because of how much I listened to MIDIs of that and other themes from the game back then.

Compared to FF3's realization of the job system acting as the capstone for the NES era of the franchise while the main characters themselves remained interchangeable, FF4 decided to take a very different approach in locking each playable character to a single class while giving them full story arcs. Putting narrative first is clear from the start where you begin with Cecil the Dark Knight questioning if they're the baddies after he's ordered to kill a town of innocent people. While it trades flexibility in party composition for well-defined characters I don't think that's much of a downside and it makes some of the fights a little more tactical, particularly with the change to a semi-real-time battle system rather than it being fully turn-based.

Overall it's a great ride if still rather cliché in its story and FF4 is the earliest entry in the franchise that I'd say is worth playing in its own right outside of a historical curiosity in the franchise.

I figured a good pick for the wildcard would be a game that wasn't even available at the start of the month but it's still the one I've put more time into than any one other entry on my board. Hades II hit early access and I just couldn't resist.

After 100+ hours in the first Hades I'd be happy with just more in the same vein as the original and it delivers there while tweaking things enough for Melinoë's play style to feel fresh. 25 hours in I've gotten to the limits of what's currently available a few times and I think I'm good to put it back on the shelf for now until it's complete.

So far my only entry for this week is Lumino City. I wasn't able to play much from bed, and I mostly just slept or listened to audiobooks (currently Death's End by Liu Cixin). However, while tinkering on my phone I did find that I'd previously bought Lumino City on Android. I looked through my available categories and "Known for its art style" fit perfectly.

You see, Lumino City doesn't just use hand-drawn art. It uses hand-modeled art. The environments are actual dioramas that were created for the game. It's a proper art piece that shows the kind of creativity the indie scene is capable of. You can read more about its design in this RockPaperShotgun article.

Now I have to say, the game isn't perfectly adapted to mobile. A lot of the tap targets are very small and there's no zoom feature. It also didn't actually work for me at first, until miraculously an update dropped that mentioned 64-bit support. Strange timing, but sure enough the update did allow the game to start working.

The game is also available on desktop and that's probably the better place to play it. I think it'll be easier to interact with the puzzles, and to observe the unique environments that they've created.

The puzzles themselves are... okay. I think they rely a bit too much on the included guidebook which just gives you the answer, and it has some of that "try random interaction" logic that is prevelant in point and clicks. But I'm more interested here in seeing what's on display than feeling clever after solving a difficult puzzle, so I don't mind too much.

Lumino City is actually a sequel to their previous game, Lume. Though I haven't played that one, so I can't make any comparisons.

I have to admit that I have not played a very strategic game of bingo. I have lots of random entries that are nowhere close to making a new line. But taking a meandering path and seeing where I ended up was sort of my goal. I'm happy to have found an opportunity to play a game like Lumino City, even if it didn't net me much "progress".

If you're looking for a cozy point and click puzzler with a very unique art style, I think it's worth checking out!

I'm snagging a second bingo across the bottom with Pid for the "Has gravity manipulation" category.

I'm going to be a little harsher on this one, but unfortunately I didn't enjoy Pid. I found the controls awkward and too numerous. The difficulty was erratic, with levels alternating between trivial and technical challenges. And as it pertained to the category, the gravity physics themselves didn't feel very fun to interact with either.

I will say that the art and overall design was nice. The levels were easy to understand at a glance, and the cutscenes featured some nice low-poly art that I'm a fan of. I think a possible concern might be that they rely on colour information to convey some mechanics, but it's possible there is a colour-blind mode I missed.

I didn't play Pid for too long, so I'll keep its review shorter.

I actually tried playing another game first: Control, by Remedy Entertainment. Unfortunately I'm a bit sensitive to motion sickness and I found this game rapidly made me queasy. When sprinting the camera would quickly jump away from the character, and because the character is off-center, the camera pivots in a way I found uncomfortable too. Usually adjusting the FoV helps me, but Control doesn't offer that setting.

I might have been more enduring if I weren't already feeling under the weather this week, but I did find I needed to quickly stop playing. It might be for the better - I also found Control does the frustrating "hold X to interact" thing that games have started implementing lately, and that mechanic really turns me off for some reason.

Still, I've heard good things about this one and I'll probably revisit it when feeling a bit better. I was intrigued by the X-Files theme and did appreciate that you are essentially playing as agent Scully. I mostly-enjoyed Alan Wake 1 when I played it, and that had some of the same issues. I hope I can find some mods or tweaks to address my pain points, but as it turns out "Control" is a really tough term to Google, so we'll see.

Forgive the more negative post. I considered finding a third gravity game that I might have more positive things to talk about, but I don't think I have the time or energy to do so. I think instead I'll try to get one last entry in before the event wraps up for good.

In this comment, I'll submit an entry for the Backlog Burner event, which you can read if you've opened this thread.

Alright, so I'm submitting Overgrowth, which I instinctively almost called "Overgrowth Alpha". This is a game I followed for years through development, due to David Rosen's excellent game dev videos showcasing new changes and features each week.

At that time, game development was not nearly as open as it is today. His videos offered a fascinating look into all of the technical details of making games, like how light baking worked, what the UI considerations might be, and - in Overgrowth's case - how sophisticated the physics engine needed to be.

I think this series had a pretty big following at the time, and it always seemed to garner interest. Unfortunately, the game itself was a bit of a flop. It sits at only 5,000 reviews on Steam today, and development seemed to peter out shortly after release.

A couple years ago, Overgrowth's engine was open-sourced. Like most open-source game releases it doesn't include assets, but the license is permissive, and you can make changes and compile from what's there. For that reason I'm submitting this game for the "Is open-source" category.

As for the game itself, I enjoyed my time with it. I completed the main Overgrowth campaign in about three hours. There's two other campaigns, on of which the original campaign from Lugaru which has been ported over. Overgrowth is its spiritual successor.

The main focus is the combat, which is very fast. Faster than I have reflexes for, most of the time. I think this made me a little more "button mashy" than the game really expects of the player, but it worked well enough and I got through the game.

I did actually begin to adapt my strategy as I progressed. I got better at prioritizing enemies with weapons, and started aiming my kicks to send enemies into rocks or walls instead of blinding attacking. The game remains extremely quick though, and if you get cut with a sword it's probably game over. Whichever of you delivers the first big blow will probably be the victor.

Despite the incredibly low "time to kill" though, I think one could get extremely good at this game. It almost seems like it had potential as a fighting game, if it ever found a community. There are other modes like an arena that I didn't try out, though the campaign did include some arena-style stages.

As the number of enemies ramped up, I also started comparing the game to Hitman. There is stealth, so sneaking up on a dog and stealing their weapon can actually make a huge difference in battle. Weapons are important, and if you don't have one you should find one.

Every few levels you'd leave combat and there'd be a platforming challenge. These were longer, and a little more frustrating. I liked the areas that felt more organic. Sometimes I found my character (Turner the rabbit) would fail to grab a ledge I expected him to, or just didn't respond in the way I hoped. But that's really just a consequence of physics-based platforming. If you jump and miss, it's your fault. The game won't cheat on your behalf.

It's pretty different than Mirror's Edge: Catalyst which I played earlier in the week. It's still easy to mess up there, but the game is a lot more willing to snap you to certain platforms or actions. Get close enough to a wall run and the game says "Sure thing, we've got you!". Overgrowth is less kind. And I can appreciate that honesty, in a weird way. It's up to you to get good.

The game's story is functional but not flashy. It moves very quickly, like the game itself, and you'll be excused if you miss it altogether. It's unvoiced, but the model rigging is actually very expressive and works by itself. There's a few cute touches like the rabbit's ears will flicker as they talk.

Turner's dialogue was a bit much for me. Half of his lines are about how he'll kill those who get in his way, how badass he is and that he's unafraid of any creature. Not what I was expecting, but I guess it fits the ludonarrative of the game. And I thought it was hilarious when another character referred to us as "The war bunny".

It's an interesting game. More technical than I think most people would care for. In many ways it still feels like a game engine that happens to include a playable campaign, but I think that may have been the goal. I did appreciate the number of exposed settings this game offers, and it broke convention in a few pleasant ways like making the resolution picker a text field instead of a dropdown, and not setting Master Volume to 100% by default. A native Linux build is always welcome, too!

I'm glad to have finally given this game a proper go after all these years. I may have tested it once or twice during the alpha development days, but this one has definitely been sitting on my backlog for far too long.

That's it for this comment. If you'd like to try the game for yourself, you can buy it on Steam, or from wolfire.com/preorder.