November 2024 Backlog Burner: Week 1 Discussion
The blaze has officially ignited!
The November 2024 Backlog Burner is officially live. Use this topic to post about the games that you play.
Quicklink: Backlog Bingo
Etiquette:
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It is fine to make multiple top-level posts throughout the week.
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It is also fine to respond to your own posts.
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If you are playing Backlog Bingo, you can share your table either by markdown or through screenshots.
Gameplay guidelines:
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Goals for this event (if any) are entirely individual and self-determined.
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Playing Bingo is optional and not required.
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You do NOT need to finish games unless you want to. The point is to try out games and have fun, not force ourselves to play things we're not interested in.
Backlog Burner FAQ
What exactly is the Backlog Burner?
Your "backlog" is all those games you've been meaning to play or get around to, but never have yet. This event is an attempt to get us to collectively dig into that treasure trove of experiences, scratch some long-standing itches, and knock a few titles off our to-play lists.
It runs every May and November. New discussion topics will go up once a week during those months.
You do not need to sign up in advance -- the topics are open to all. If you would like to be included in the notification list, comment in this topic to be added.
How do I participate?
- Choose some games from your backlog and play them.
- Then tell us about your experiences in the discussion thread for the week.
That's it!
Optionally: you can play Backlog Bingo which is a fun way of cutting down the choices you have to make and playing games you might not have normally selected on your own.
Do I need to finish the games that I play?
Nope! Not at all.
There aren't really any requirements for the event so much as this is an incentive to get us to play games we've been avoiding starting up, for whatever reason. Play as much or as little as you like of a given game.
Try out dozens for ten minutes each or dive into one for 40 hours. There's no wrong way to participate!
Can I make multiple posts in the same topic?
Yes! Each discussion thread stays live for a full week, so feel free to make multiple comments in the topic as you play different games. This isn't considered noise -- it's considered valuable participation in the event!
Backlog Bingo FAQ
Important: All data for your Backlog Bingo card is stored on your device, not the server. Clearing your browser data will irrecoverably delete your card.
I'm a returning player. How do I reset my previous card?
If you've already created a card and wish to start over, click the Edit Rules button in the header to access your card settings. Then click the Reset button, and confirm the prompt. This will irrevocably delete your present card, allowing you to start fresh.
Where is my data stored?
All data is stored by your browser in local storage. There are no accounts, and nothing is sent to the server, so it's privacy-friendly by design. This does mean that you are responsible for not deleting any browser data on wescook.ca, either manually or through automatic cleanups performed on browser close.
Backlog Bingo is open-source, and licensed permissively under MIT.
What is the difference between the "Standard" and "Golf" modes?
In Standard Mode, each square on the bingo card corresponds with one single game. Duplicate games cannot be entered into different squares. A winning card would have a row of five different games that each filled in one square.
In Golf Mode, duplicates are not only allowed -- they are encouraged! The purpose of Golf mode is to try to find a single game that will fill multiple categories at the same time. For example: Stardew Valley might fulfill You got it on sale, A solo-dev project, and Has romanceable characters all at the same time. A winning card would have all twenty five squares filled, but possibly only six or seven different games.
What is the star space in the middle?
That is the "wildcard" or "free space."
In Standard Mode, there are no requirements to fill it. You can choose any game you want! Anything goes!
In Golf Mode, it does not need to be filled. Because Golf is all about stacking up categories on a single game, any game used in Golf would fill it automatically, meaning it has no real function. As such, the square will be pre-filled for you if you play in Golf mode.
Can I create custom bingo categories for this, or other events?
Absolutely! The Backlog Bingo app reads in simple JSON files which define the available categories. We've created a couple prebuilt lists for this event, but you're free to tweak our categories, or create completely new ones. You could even use them for books, anime, movies, recipes -- anything!
If you are interested in learning more, you can find documentation on the wiki, and use an example JSON category file. You can also ask for help in the topic!
Pinging all Backlog Burner participants/conversationalists: the event has begun!
Notification List
@Cannonball
@CrazyProfessor02
@Durinthal
@Eidolon
@Evie
@hamstergeddon
@J-Chiptunator
@JCPhoenix
@SingedFrostLantern
@Wafik
@Weldawadyathink
@Wes
@WiseassWolfOfYoitsu
If you would like to be removed from/added to the list, let me know either here or by PM.
Also, general announcement: as we go through the Backlog Burner, if you think of any categories you would like to see in Flux or Flow, please let me know! I’d love to incorporate some of those for the next event.
I’ve already started a list myself because new Flow ideas keep popping up for me as I browse my library.
CrazyProfessor02's Bingo Sheet
Part of a trilogyBeholderThoughts about the game
I was vaguely aware of the Beholder series, with the only one that I knew about was the sequel because I watched gameplay about it, and I thought this would be a good game to start this series off with. The basic premise of Beholder is that you are a government appointed landlord that has to spy on and report on your tenants. And the government will get a lot more annoying bans, such as a banned on foreign music. I was going to with any endings that you can get. So, I could move this over to the You can complete it in only a few hours because you can get a ending within two hours of play time (guess how I know this). It is a interesting game and a interesting concept, that I might go back and try to get the other endings besides the one that I got.
Posting my base bingo card here. I'll update it as I play games this week.
kfwyre's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 2/25)
Empathy✅ Sea of Solitude
Fleeting✅ Windward
Windward - Fleeting
Am I allowed to make my first entry a pun? I'm going to make my first entry a pun.
I saw
Fleetingin my card and wasn't really sure what to do with it, but as I was browsing my library, I saw this game about navigating a ship. I then wondered if my ship would be part of a group, which would make me part of a "fleet", and then I could justify cruising around with my ship buddies as "fleeting."Sure enough, I got to cruise around with my ship buddies in this game. I was fleeting! We fleeted!
Is this the kind of player freedom we wanted to allow with these abstract Flow card categories? Or am I taking the concept too far and exploiting their lack of guardrails? You decide. 😂
Anyway, this game has a cool concept. You procedurally generate a water map populated by islands and coastal areas (broken up into different sections -- it's unfortunately not one contiguous open world). You then choose a particular faction to sail under. Then you can go around sailing from port to port, taking on quests, making trades, buying cheap goods in one town and selling them in another, etc. There's also ship-to-ship combat between factions and with pirates.
The game has a decent number of systems and what seems like a lot to offer. For example, when you dock at a town, you can read "rumors" from the townspeople which help hint at potentially useful information, and if you complete quests for that town, your relationship increases so you get better quality rumors. You can also help towns build defenses so that they're less susceptible to pirate attacks. There's honestly a lot to love here if you want a mostly chill sailing game.
I unfortunately don't think I'm going to keep playing it though.
My main issue with it is the controls. Instead of the joystick turning the ship relative to its current location, the joystick's position is always absolute. Pushing the joystick to the right will always make your ship sail to the east; pushing it up will always make your ship sail north. As someone who enjoys smooth movement in games and was looking forward to swooping around on the seas in my schooner, this kind of makes it a non-starter for me. Even after playing for half an hour, I never got used to the movement and didn't find it enjoyable.
Additionally, the game is slooooow. Going from place to place takes a while, especially if you're sailing against the wind. It reminded me of Valheim a bit in that way.
Now, like Valheim, I think this game is actually intended to be played multiplayer, rather than single player. That would make its pacing a lot easier to stomach, because everything is more fun and goes faster when you're coordinating with friends.
But combining the game's slow movement with un-fun controls meant that I didn't really enjoy the moment-to-moment gameplay, despite conceptually liking what the game had to offer. I'm wondering if it plays different on a desktop with a mouse and keyboard, but I'm also not too interested in trying it out that way, because the game is exactly the kind of thing I want to be able to play in the comfort of my bed with my Steam Deck.
Also, if I'm being really honest, I'm thinking that I'm itching so bad to dive into the deep end of the Backlog Burner immediately that the idea of playing a more chill, relaxed, slower-paced game isn't vibing with me at the moment.
So, my verdict is that it's not a bad game by any means, but it's also not the right game for me at this moment. I'm glad I tried it nonetheless!
And I wholeheartedly apologize for sullying this good event with terrible wordplay. 😁
Oh I fully intend to stretch every category to its limits. Every one will be prefaced with "Technically...". It's going to be complete pandemonium.
I've played a bit of Windward, and I agree about the game feeling slow. Sometimes I like slow games, but for whatever reason I didn't jibe with this one. The gameplay loop needs to offer some kind of hook to keep me interested.
I actually had a chance to test it in multiplayer. It's a surprisingly hard game to host a server for! I remember needing to forward ports, and I think communication with the local server even required telnet. Definitely more work than I felt it was worth, and we fell off after an hour or so anyway.
It looks like a game I should like though, so I don't know. Maybe it would work better with a tighter design and clear objectives.
Sea of Solitude - Empathy
Windward gave me a hankering for sailing, so I tried another boat-themed game.
I originally planned this for "Isolation" but was hoping I'd be able to slot it elsewhere, since that felt a little too on the nose. Sure enough, over the course of playing the narrative, it became clear that the game is much more about empathy than about isolation, so I adjusted my category accordingly.
The game is an artsy narrative-driven game about a girl named Kay who finds herself in a fantasy water-world inhabited by monsters. She, too, is a monster, and her journey involves learning about why these monsters are here. It reminded me of Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls.
The art direction is really well done, with great use of color. The gameplay itself is alright. It's a mix of boating, swimming, exploration, light platforming, and monster avoidance. The controls weren't great. The sailing felt better than Windward but still wasn’t what I wanted. Plus, the game generally has some rough edges regarding its “feel.” Collisions with objects don't always feel right, jumping can feel finicky, and even the omnipresent footprint motif (your character leaves dark footprints wherever she goes) is noticeably and distractingly inaccurate.
Of course, this sort of game isn't really about the gameplay, it's about the narrative. I stuck it out to the end to see how things turned out, with the gameplay being more of a chore between story segments than something I enjoyed playing.
Without getting into spoilers, I thought the narrative was well done and resonant. The game tackles mental health issues directly, and I thought it did so in an interesting and unusual way. I also appreciated that it has some metaphorical depth to it that the game doesn't spell out directly. In fact, I'd argue that there's a lot more that the game implies than it says directly, and I think the bulk of its meaning is left up to inference. This means there's a lot of surface area for rich analysis that you could do in intertwining the game's themes, settings, imagery, and mechanics.
The game took me three hours to beat on my Steam Deck. I ultimately liked it and think it was richly made, but I did have to look past some elements of it in order to appreciate that. Still, if you’re the kind of person that likes short, slow-paced, reflective, and visually impressive story games, then this one is worth a look.
J-Chiptunator's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 2/25)
Abundance✔ Mushihimesama
Friction✔ Jotun: Valhalla Edition
Mushihimesama
Mushihimesama, a danmaku-style shoot 'em up, marks the explosive start of my Backlog Burner journey as a perfect fit for the
Abundancetheme. This insect-themed bullet hell game steadfastly emphasizes projectile avoidance, with higher difficulty modes like Ultra pushing this concept to astronomical levels.My introduction to the franchise came over a decade ago through a blurry YouTube video titled "THE HARDEST VIDEO GAME BOSS EVER!" While slightly exaggerated due to unlimited continues outside the Score Attack mode, it perfectly captured the game's overwhelming bullet-dodging challenge.
Despite the unrelenting chaos, Mushihimesama employs clever design choices to keep the gameplay manageable:
Although these elements ensure that careful manoeuvring remains fairly possible amidst the barrage of bullets, the player character can be difficult to spot at times.
The Switch port I played offers four variations, each with three difficulty modes. Even the Novice version's Original Mode is no walk in the park, as it gradually ups the challenge by introducing players to increasingly complex bullet patterns. For instance, stage 2 features an interesting sequence where two lines of bullets confine the player to a tight space, requiring quick and precise dodging.
I found the intense focus required by the core gameplay loop to be a bit much for me in a casual playthrough, despite only losing one life in the first two stages. Still, the engaging gameplay has me eager to attempt a one-credit run on Novice's Original and Maniac modes after I’m done with my Backlog Bingo.
Mushihimesama's strategic difficulty curve and compelling gameplay make it an excellent entry point for newcomers to the bullet hell genre, while still offering white-knuckle depth for experienced players. While the Switch port is delisted, you can at least still get it for PC or Steam Deck, albeit with a separate Mushihimesama V1.5 DLC to purchase. Mushihimesama Futari, however, is locked behind the expensive Xbox 360 region-free port.
Jotun: Valhalla Edition
Another day, another tough game that’s ideal for the
Frictiontheme this time around. Jotun: Valhalla Edition, the first ever release from Thunder Lotus Games, is a short action-adventure game that mainly focuses on pitting the human-sized Viking Warrior Thora against humongous damage-sponge bosses.Being primarily a Nintendo gamer back in 2015, I first acknowledged its existence due to it being among the more notable indie eShop titles to grace on the struggling Wii U. Particularly with its challenging gameplay, and visually stunning environment, character design and frame-by-frame animation inspired by the Norse mythology. Years later, I got its Steam version from The Thunder Lotus Collection bundle at a significantly discounted price back in summer 2022.
Thora can perform a combo of up to 2 swings, or 3 when finished with a dodge and a stab. She can also perform the much stronger ground slam, albeit with a much longer buildup time than the already lengthy animation time of the axe slashes. And that's it, save for the occasional assistance of a limited amount of consumable spells.
Such delays definitely got me to consider positioning my character, being much more deliberate at picking the right moment to strike, and having an intimate knowledge of the boss patterns. Although her restrictive movesets and pedestrian moving speed lent very well to the simple matter of attacking and dodging, it were also at the expense of dragging the demanding fights a tad too longer than needed.
There's also a jarring disparity in difficulty between the bosses and the sparse and longish level design with minimal environmental puzzles and challenges.
For instance, the forest area did teach the player about how the poison’s Area of Effect, aggressive spiky vines and tree roots work in general and would be reused for the main boss fight. Despite barely managing to not die even once during that part, the way and frequency setpieces were laid out earlier didn't quite adequately prepare for how complex, swift and somewhat messy the boss attack patterns are with all those combined alongside exclusive slam attack patterns and a meaty health bar.
I might play Jotun again someday for the David vs Goliath dynamic behind the boss fights, but the rather glacial and inconsistent pacing alongside a significant difficulty spike puts quite a damper to my motivation of finishing it.
"Abundance" seems like the perfect fit for a shmup!
I've never quite been able to quite click with shmups - my experience basically began and ended with Axelay for the SNES - but I do appreciate just what they're trying to do. As a genre, they are one of the purest forms of gameplay. I imagine that's because shoot 'em up was one of the earliest available in gaming, but they got enough right that they still exist today in almost their original form. It's all down to pattern matching and reaction times, with very little filler.
I find that almost refreshing while modern games are straddling lines like "Metroidvania with souls and roguelike mechanics", or "Async extraction shooter with PvPvE". Meanwhile, the shmup guys are constantly iterating on making the meanest and baddest scrolling spaceship game they can.
I watched a little bit of Mushihimesama gameplay on YouTube to get a sense of this one, and you're absolutely right about the intentional design choices. Despite not being the one playing, I quickly picked up on the purple bullets providing contrast which allows for dodging in the periphery. I imagine a lot of consideration must go into that type of design, at both the macro and micro level.
I've picked up a few shmups over the years thinking "Maybe I'll finally give this a go", and well, maybe I'll finally give this a go.
Cannonball's bingo card
★ Wildcard✅ Monster Hunter: Wilds beta
Has a top-down perspective✅ Ikenfell
Off to a decent start! So far I've been playing Ikenfell on my switch. It's a good fit for many categories but I'm tentatively listing it as top-down because I play very few games with this perspective. I'm tentative about it because navigation and puzzles are all top-down, but the combat switches to a side view, so maybe it's a bit of a stretch?
You play as Maritte, an "Ordinary" (think muggle) who suddenly develops magical powers so she sets off to find her magical sister, Safina, at a Hogwarts-type school, Ikenfell. However, Safina's unleashed some sort of ancient magical something and shit's gone down at the school, so it's up to you and the friends/frenemies you make along the way to solve the mystery and save the day. It's a turn based rpg with battles and puzzles. There's a timing element you use to boost the power of your attacks, but the game also lets you adjust that setting or turn it off completely which I really appreciate. The soundtrack is banging and the pixel art is cute and surprisingly expressive. The game is, however, longer than I expected. I'm about 15 hours in and apparently still have 4 chapters to go. The basic grunt enemy battles are starting to drag so I might skip most of them at this point so I don't burn myself out. Still enjoying the game though and hope to finish it.
I also decided to use my wild card space on the Monster Hunter Wilds beta because it felt fitting. I am one of the lucky folks not getting the hilarious polygon bug (which had me cry laughing and even spawned a new art style in the community) and the game is thankfully running pretty well on my rig. I had a blast with it but they are going to have to pull off a miracle with optimizing before release because it is undeniably rough around the edges
I'm glad you reminded me of Ikenfell, because it's a title I was initially interested in but unfortunately forgot about. I followed Chevy Ray (its creator) back in the day, but his visible presence sort of fell away after Flash died on the web. So I appreciate the reminder!
I love magic systems in games. When given the choice of class, I almost always choose the wizard character. They often get more moves and utility options than club wielders, and not to mention cooler backstories. Moreover, there's just something about being a squishy weakling at the start of a game, then growing in power until I can destroy everything in my path, bringing down the very Fires of Hell onto others as part of my reckoning.
Okay, Ikenfell probably isn't like that, but it's definitely led to my appreciation of the wizard class and magic systems.
I'd probably still like the game. Like many, I read Harry Potter while growing up and dreamt of wizarding schools, and the kinds of mischief one could get up to with such powers. The HP GameBoy games offered a small glimpse into this kind of gameplay, but even then it was very limited.
Ikenfell looks like more of an original story, with some traditional turn-based combat, but I think I'd still jibe with it. I'll definitely keep an eye out for some deals.
One hitch - Ikenfell was published by Humble Publishing. Previously that would've meant that it's likely to show up in a Humble Bundle or two, but with Humble Publishing going under, now I'm not so sure. There's always the risk of it being delisted in the future, or maybe just sold off to another company. Hopefully it remains accessible for some time to come.
I'm also glad to hear Wilds ran well (enough) for you. I gave it a try as well - detailed in the week 2 thread - but did not have such luck. I'm actively working on upgrading my PC though so I can give it a proper go when it releases in February!
I expect we'll have lots of discussion on Tildes about new mechanics and monsters closer to release.
Using magic to summon the fires of hell is not crazy far off from the main character's ability, so it might be right up your alley :) I'm stuck in a grindy section at the moment and debating if I want to continue. I have enjoyed it so far and I've heard the ending is good, so I hope I can find the energy to push through. I believe there was a limited physical release for switch if you're concerned about it being delisted, but it's obviously more expensive than a digital copy.
I'm sorry the Wilds beta didn't work well for you. Not sure what your pc specs are but the game seemed to be more cpu bound than most if you're considering upgrades in the future. I agree with you about the palico character creator being slightly lacking - especially compared to the crazy nice version we got for our hunter! At least we got a poofier fur option this time around
My PC is recent-ish, with the exception of the graphics card. I'm still rocking a GTX 1080. No DLSS for me. For the CPU, I bought a lower-tier but still recent Intel i5-12400. I figured CPUs are rarely the bottleneck these days, and so far that's mostly proven true.
Honestly, I think Wilds is both CPU and GPU-heavy. I did some testing and found little difference between 720p and 1080p resolutions, which definitely suggests a CPU performance floor. I saw some FPS loss when moving up to 1440p, or when going above Medium settings. So beyond that point, I think it's just my GPU not keeping up or possibly vram issues.
Capcom actually lists my CPU under the recommended specs, so hopefully it's considered enough. Though they also say that recommended just means "60 FPS with frame gen", which is groan-worthy. Honestly, I don't understand how with all of today's processing power, we're moving backwards in performance. I just want a stable framerate!
Anyway, for budgetary restraints I won't be upgrading to anything top-tier, but I've got a lead on a GTX 3070 and I'm hoping the game will at least be playable with it. It's the same 8GB vram as I have now though, so fingers crossed.
Sidenote: I gave my palico a little heart on his butt. Thus I'm already attached.
I'm really hoping they work some magic on the optimization side of things but I'm also trying to be realistic about the timeframe. I'm sure they'll get it running smooth, just maybe not by release. I'm not a fan of frame gen in general due to the lag and in this case it really made the game ugly so I turned it off. Managed a pretty stable 80-90 fps on my 7 7700/7800xt combo with the exception of electrical sandstorm hunts and running around base camp.
I LOVE that your buddy has a heart on his booty! It didn't even occur to me to try putting the markings on places other than the face. I gave mine a mustache and called him Meowrio
I have very little spare time so am really just dipping my toes in here and going for one bingo line across the middle of my sheet.
★ Wildcard - Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition (original 2002, enhanced released 2017)
Imagine if there was a mash-up between two games you loved when you were a kid that you stumbled upon 25 years later completely unspoiled and with tons of content. Well, this happened to me recently and it's been one hell of a nostalgia trip.
I have vaguely known that the game existed for quite a while. Hell, the Enhanced Edition has been on my Steam wishlist for years and it's thanks to a kind Tildes user that I got a copy. But somehow, I hadn't clocked that the first game was made by Bioware until a month ago. And what a shame, as I would have otherwise been introduced to the Dungeons and Dragons universe much earlier in my life. I attribute my ignorance to relying too much on game demos from my Dad's PC magazines - we didn't have internet back then so just played what we liked without any context of the developer or the game development process.
Neverwinter for me is a mash-up at a 4:1 ratio of 3 parts Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR) 1, the game that Bioware developed after Neverwinter, and 1 part Dungeon Siege 1, a bare-bones hack-and-slash RPG by a different studio. KOTOR adopts the RPG text-based experience, level design and DnD combat mechanics of Neverwinter and uses its precursor engine Aurora. Dungeon Siege was released a few months before Neverwinter and has a similar camera, inventory management system and shares music composers Soule (and Zur who worked on KOTOR 2). The music is truly a mash-up with Dungeon Siege style for non-combat and KOTOR for combat.
I have no doubt that had I known about this game as a child, it would have been one of my favourites. I suspect I won't feel that way now, although it's early days. Neverwinter Nights isn't really a game though, it's a game-making system which has created a whole ecosystem - hence its longevity. There's a long campaign, expansion packs, premium or other user-made modules (some regarded as being much better than the original campaign) and persistent and relatively active multiplayer servers. Beamdog, who re-released the Enhanced Edition, is still releasing updates. They botched the console ports, but the PC edition is running perfectly fine and has various modernisations (including a UI scaler) and other quality of life tweaks.
So what's been my experience thus far with the original campaign? The game has a slow, lumbering start as you are stuck within city limits, similar to your lot in KOTOR. And like KOTOR the 'good' and 'bad' choices polemical, with the 'bad' being often comically extreme. The world is gloomy, it looks dreary and washed out, the citizenry are pretty much all suffering. The combat is turn-based but real-time, so you get pronounced pauses before every move and movement is quite clunky. The loot is repetitive and un-inspiring. On the other hand, the story is reasonably compelling, you can make in-game notes, there's no quest-markers or hand-holding, combat can be difficult (though I've had to raise it as I've gotten more powerful) and it's not strictly linear. But most of all, the nostalgia makes it a bit of a trip - right down to incredibly nuanced and specific things - the annoying lapse in time for loot to appear on corpses and various game assets that KOTOR re-used and sounds Neverwinter ripped from Dungeon Siege.
Will I continue? Probably, just to see it out and provide closure to this quite unique gaming experience. And I kind of want to try one of the community's most recommended modules to see what the fuss is about and check out the RP servers. And maybe even check out NWN 2 at some point, made by Obsidian. But given my limited time, I'll be moving on to the next game in my row and will report back next week!
Standard Bingo (Flux) Card
★ WildcardI've probably bought these titles three or four times across the different platforms now. First on GOG because they were classics, then on Steam, then again for the remastered versions... I wouldn't be surprised if I have a copy on the Beamdog launcher either, if that still exists. One day, I hope to actually try them!
I've always heard good things about Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, but honestly I knew very little about Neverwinter Nights. I didn't realize it included tools to create new dungeons and campaigns. With such a long history, I'd guess there's tons of quality content available by now.
I think it's interesting you started with a Wildcard selection. If you wanted to slot that in elsewhere, it could also work for "Came out more than 6 years ago" (just barely for the remaster, easily for the original). It's definitely okay to move things around if you want!
Actually, I notice the game's name is missing in the table below. Just wondering, did you copy the markdown after adding the name in the web app? If so, there might be a bug where it's not updating for some reason. That'd be my job to fix, so feel free to shout if there's any problems with the bingo app and I'll get right on it.
I don't think it's bugged - I completely missed the memo and have been writing out my bingo cards on paper...I have updated mine now and will post it in next week's update. Thank you.
And yes I haven't played Balder's Gate or Icewind either...but I've barely played any of the 'classic' RPG titles so am working my way through them, slowly.
As for the Wildcard, since I won't have time to complete the card, I planned my bingo line in advance. I was already playing Neverwinter Nights so it was a lazy choice for the Wildcard!
Ah, gotchya! If you prefer to play on paper and update entries manually, that's 100% okay. In fact we'd love to see the final result if you wanted to share. I was just sniffing around to make sure no tech problems crept in from any last minute changes, so I'm glad to hear it's all working as expected.
Makes perfect sense on the pre-planned bingo line. I tend to meander as I go with no real aim, which is admittedly not the most efficient strategy. Will be curious to see what else you've got picked out along that line.
I'm already posting my sheet each week so it makes sense to utilise its full functionality, but thank you! I fill out all my candidates in advance on my sheet, so I guess there is some level of bias informing what line I go down, whereas having no aim is probably more useful for getting through the dusty recesses of one's backlog.
I'm going to do something different than the last time (or two?) and go with a non-golf card, and I'm also using the one-word prompts. Shake it up!
My card
I'm still processing the card and going to look for some games to start matching to words! This is a cool new set of categories @Wes and @kfwyre - awesome addition! Thanks to both of you for getting the ball rolling.
Durinthal's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 1/25)
Choice✅ Slay the Princess
Updating this over the course of the week as before, I got an early jump on a game that I wanted to revisit from May's event.
I considered flipping my Flow card to Golf mode, getting 100% on one game and then declaring a blackout with just that since I think I could argue it for every square I have (some better than others).
Slay the Princess is a game I first played in May's event, but with a new update out last week I wanted to return and continue my exploration of its many paths. Each choice leads you down a different route, with the complexity of the game coming from how many branches exist by in total and what you need to do to reach each.
I feel like it's a story best experienced with as little foreknowledge as possible so I'll put the rest of it under a spoiler tag.
Slay the Princess spoilers
As I mentioned with my first time through it's a game built on repetition where you're meant to play through it multiple times and pick different options the next with the progress coming from your increased understanding of the characters rather than anything mechanical.
Your decisions lead to a transformation of the Princess, each chapter a new increment in that particular journey. For example if you want to display empathy toward her and don't bring a weapon when first encountering her, the Princess is one of tradition, the kind of beauty you'd normally show up to save rather than slay. If you think you're following a path of justice and try to free her, you may end up with a love that is ultimately fleeting after the light of a smothering love is (quite literally) extinguished. For once the Princess passes the threshold and leaves her prison, she cannot remain in the world.
Aside from the damsel you may choose a path where you enter the cabin in silence and kill the Princess outright. Or depending on how you engage in the struggle she may emerge with an incredible power over you if you give in to fear, able to command your body against your will. That kind of friction can be fun too.
The path of uncertainty is an interesting one as well, as leaving her locked up for eternity is something you can try. The resulting connection between you in the following chapter can be rather nightmarish.
One of my favorite routes is one of absence where you choose to not visit the cabin at all. That ultimately leads to a fragmentation of reality as the Princess doesn't know which form to take and instead becomes every version possible. The same goes for you on your inevitable journey to reach her and you're both lost to infinity.
While it is just a visual novel and the only inputs you have are selecting an action for your character, at one point you're presented with a long list of actions to choose, all identical aside from one. My first time playing through my precision was off and I accidentally bumped my joystick to select one of the many same options rather than the unique one I wanted, which lead to an interesting outcome in its own right.
SingedFrostLantern's Bingo Card (Standard/Flow, 2/25)
Causality✅ Eternal Threads
Change✅ Darksiders Genesis
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.
I had no idea the Darksiders games were different genres for each. I only ever played the first and was kind of indifferent about it, but this new information might get me to check out some of the others.
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.
I hear nothing but applause for Darksiders. I'm not sure why I haven't given it a go yet. I included it on my shortlist of games to try for this Backlog Burner, but I've already got a few downloaded that will take a long time to venture through.
I love that you used "Change" to describe the genre shifts between games. It's a pretty bold move for a game to make, but I actually really like it. It lets them take completely different views on the same universe, and tell their story in exactly the medium that fits it best. I'm sure it adds a ton of extra work to their development by having to redevelop the game each time, but it keeps things fresh for players.
Genesis seems even more different than the others though, and I suppose it's considered a spin-off. From the overview I would have described it as "pocket sized", but hour+ long levels are definitely stretching that definition. It's good to see the addition of multiplayer though, and I wonder if that will be considered for future titles, too.
Any guesses on the next Darksiders game? I'm going with a bullet heaven rhythm shooter.
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.
JCPhoenix's Bingo Card
Has a lives system✅ This War of MineHas both combat and puzzles✅ SignalisReview - This War of Mine
I imagine a “Lives System,” conjures up thoughts of Mario games, where you get 1-Ups. Instead, I took a broader angle with it. Because I don’t think I have a single game in the backlog with a true “Lives System.” I don’t really play platformers.
However, in TWoM characters can die permanently, while the game continues. Unless everyone dies. So to me, that means there’s a “Lives System.” Maybe I should’ve chosen this one for the “Has Permadeath” category.
Right off the bat, this game reminded me of “Frostpunk.” And whadyaknow, it’s made by the same developer! While “Frostpunk” stems from climate catastrophe, and TWoM starts with a civil war, both are 100% survival management games. Though from different heights: Frostpunk is about keeping a village or town alive, while TWoM is about a small group of people, essentially a household, surviving.
With not even an hour and a half of playtime, I didn’t get terribly far. Only to Day 6. There was no tutorial, which was a little surprising, but I wonder if that’s intentional. In a real life situation, trying to eke out a living in a city under siege, there’s no tutorial. I imagine you make it up as you go along.
I had my guys scavenge a bit, cooked some food, even had one guy kill a beggar (and I felt bad after as he had nothing on his corpse). But then I kinda got bored. I know I didn’t get deep into it, but I was expecting a little more danger or something at the start. Or I don’t know, some direction. I thought this game would be more scenario-like, like Frostpunk. I need to survive X amount of days, and do at least Y and Z to achieve that goal. Instead, it’s more like a sandbox. I don’t hate sandboxes, but I feel like having some explicit direction would help, other than, “Survive.” Maybe this is why I don’t really play survival games.
Would I get back to This War of Mine? Yeah, probably. I didn’t dislike it. Just got bored. Maybe just wasn’t in the mood for it.
Decided to try another game this weekend. Maybe I'll even try one more.
Review - Signalis
I don't play horror games. I don't play scary games. I'm a wuss! So why did I buy Signalis? Because it looked cool. Anime, cyberpunk, and that original Playstation-esque art style? Sign me up.
And I’m so glad I finally gave it a try.
I loved the ambiance of it. The music, of often lack of it, really helped set the scenes. Often, all I hear is the drone of the facility we’re in. But when something like an enemy notices me or surprises me, the near-silence is cut by a shrill scream — not sure if it’s my character or the enemy — and this nervousness-inducing music starts playing. My heartbeat definitely speeds up.
Visually, there’s lots of darkness and dimness, some parts of the screen are occluded by beds, shelves, walls, etc. So it keeps on my toes. Ooh, what’s around this corner? My character will have her gun drawn, as I slowly navigate her around.
I do like the juxtaposition between dark and grimy environs and cute anime girls.
At its core, this is a mystery game. Why did we crash on this planet? Why are we searching for this other woman? Why is she at this facility? And what in the fuck is going on in this facility, where people are disappearing or dying? What did they find underneath the facility? Luckily, I love mystery games, so this is right up my alley.
One of the things I learned is that I have to be intentional about engaging enemies. Because my character has limited ammo. Like VERY limited. At one point I had like 25 pistol rounds. But it takes 2-4 shots to incapacitate an enemy. And so far, there’s been more than six enemies in an area. I think I’m now down to less than five rounds. Yikes. Very reminiscent of my time in “Alan Wake.”
I do actually enjoy games like this, where you can’t just always go in guns blazing. It’s necessary to plan and strategize moving around the facility. Maybe I can ignore this baddie, but then kill that one in that hallway. Or maybe I can try outrunning all of them. But I can’t kill them all.
I’m just under three hours in. I’d be further along, but other than the first session (about an hour), the others have been like 15-25min. Because I’m scared! So it’s like “OK, let’s do this…Oh god, almost died! Let’s save and take a break!” Lol.
But Signalis does keep reeling me back in. I’ll definitely keep playing it.
Horror isn't normally my genre either, but I really enjoyed playing Signalis. As frustrating as the inventory management can be, it's essential to the experience. Choosing between carrying a key, extra health, or bullets can feel like a really important choice, and I found myself packing light to try to allow for picking up new items found out in the world, too. Just as important is choosing when not to engage, and running past enemies instead.
Really interesting game. Not super long, either, which I appreciate more and more these days.
Agreed. Not saying I want these kinds of system in every game. It's certainly convenient to be able to carry a metric ton of items and gear in Minecraft and JRPGs and such. But it's nice to see these restrictions, that force a player to think and play strategically/tactically, once in awhile. And I think Signalis is the right kind of game for it. It creates more pressure, more suspense.
Out of curiosity, what difficulty settings did you play the game on? It's been quite a while since I last played This War of Mine, but I remember it being pretty damn difficult and rather engrossing. I might have just had the difficulty settings cranked up a lot higher than you or something though, since I play a lot of survival games (like Frostpunk, which I have 100%ed ;) and love absolutely brutal challenges in those sorts of games. And losing people in This War of Mine, which I did on several occasions, even though I was tying my absolute hardest to keep them all alive, made the game feel way more compelling (and sadly, more realistic too).
So if ever you do decide to give it another go, I would recommend considering playing with harder difficulty settings, since (much like Frostpunk) I think the game gets way more interesting the harder it is and the more you partially or even completely fail while playing it.
Making good progress this week so far.
Evie's bingo card (Standard/Flow)
DarknessDead Space (2023)
CollaborationHolocure
FreedomA Short Hike
Mild spoilers follow. Tl;DR: The game is very well made, but I don't really like it.
*Dead Space* (2023) -- Darkness
Probably Dead Space's greatest strength is its tactility. I use this term where I might, for another game, use the word *immersion*; more than anything, the USG Ishimura, the enormous space ship where eleven of the action-horror game's twelve chapters takes place, felt like I could reach through the screen and *touch* it; my many interactions with the failing ship's engines and power subsytems and tram stations and mining equipment felt *real*. This is facilitated, most of all, by the game's cinematography. Dead Space is styled as a oner, and with one minor exception that's not worth going into it, it really is. Not in the God of War (2018) sense, where it feels like there's a cameraman present, handcam shake and all, but the 'shot' is frequently broken by pause screens and UI, but in the true sense, where all of the UI is diagtetic. There's no fancy cinematography here -- even in the game's half dozen short cutcenes -- as a result, the presence of the camera isn't felt, and I was really connected with the main character Isaac.Further contributing to this feeling of solidity is the verbs available to the player. Most of your combat toolset -- and all of the fun parts of it -- is made up of nontraditional guns; specialized tools like a circular saw or a plasma cutter or a kind of magnetic telekinesis: things that Isaac would plausibly use in his work as a repair technician. And you actually use these things to actually repair the Ishimura -- solve its mechanical failures, resolve the crisis, hopefully escape alive -- almost as much as you use them for combat.
For the first maybe sixty percent of the game, Dead Space feels like the video game version of those Andy Weir novels -- a story about a competent guy (and his teammates) stabilizing a dire situation while looking for a way out. I will, shortly, stop praising this game and say that that's a bad thing, but for now it must be acknowledged that it is very fun, and different, to play a game where you're a competent guy who fixes thing (not just a killing machine); it feels satisfying (and, again, delightfully tactile), to reroute power from administration to asteroid defense, to swap out a damaged tram car, to get the centrifuge back up and running. One of the game's neatest mechanics, which it occasionally uses to great effect, is that power rerouting. From time to time, you'll be presented with a breaker box, and a decision: to move forward, do you want to turn off the lights, or the oxygen (and, with the oxygen, the sound)? Or, more dreadfully, no decision at all: to unlock that plot critical door on the other side of the room, you have to turn off the lights, and fight your way back over there in near-total darkness, relying on your memory of the space, and the echoing sound cues from the game's intimidating monsters.
"Intimidating" is maybe a strong word. My biggest frustration with Dead Space is that, for all its heavy atmosphere and darkness and jumpscares and gore and monsters, it almost never actually scared me. Part of the problem, I suppose, is that this is an action game first and foremost, which prevents any of the monsters from really posing a credible threat: you have to be able to dismember and kill them and throw them around! It's the primary game loop! And it's fun as hell -- but the horror aspect suffers, I think. As does the resource economy, which, on Normal difficulty, felt a bit fucked. For significant parts of the game I seemed to vacillate wildly between having an embarrassment of ammo and health and none at all, almost at random. So at some point you realize that the economy doesn't matter at all, and you can just use all your resources with wild abandon, knowing that the game will detect that you're low and cough up some more; after all this is an action game, with mandatory combat encounters; you can't exactly be allowed to run out of health and ammo! Maybe I'd have a better time on a higher difficulty. But I refrained from raising it because, at times, the difficulty hit a sweet spot for me, demanded just the right amount of efficiency and care and skill to make it out of a tough encounter. But at other times, especially in the late game, it felt trivially easy -- but spongy, with miniboss enemies taking far too long to kill long after any serious threat they presented had been neutralized. This poor balancing detracts from the strength of the combat's main verbs, the dismemberment and the launching shards of bone and the useful environmental hazards that make the core loop so fun. And this all reaches its perihelion with the absolutely dogshit final boss, a big gore monster with no interesting mechanics that can be trivialized by slowly strafing left to right, for like five entire minutes.
There was one chapter of the game -- Chapter 10 -- that I found really compelling and scary. It takes a while to build any serious character drama, or incorporate any interesting psychological elements, but by the time the Ishimura is stable by the end of the second act, Isaac has discovered the source of the disaster, and the horrible muations on the ship: a strange manmade relic called the Marker, which exerts profound psychological effects on everyone around it, Isaac included. With these hallucinations comes some compelling dramatic irony: Isaac sees and touches and works with his wife, who, it should be immediately clear to the player, is like super dead. His mission markers are sometimes written in an incomprehensible language. He hears whispers from his dead friends and coworkers. He's forced to work with and against other survivors, who are just as if not more corrupted then he is, while not being sure of their motives or his own perceptions. He learns how the crew of the Ishimura, all sleeping on top of each other, experienced the same thing and fractured because of it; some killing themselves to avoid becoming monsters; some killing themselves out of a religious desire to be reunited with the dead -- and becoming monsters in the process. It's compelling, if limited, stuff -- sure, the commentary about religion and colonialism and grief and indoctrination is broad, but not nothing! Sure, suicide is used purely as shock imagery, in a way that I found distasteful, but at least it's contextualized and makes sense. Too bad that it took basically like nine chapters of rerouting power and being the competent repair guy -- with minimal diversion to do a light bit of setup that wouldn't pay off till you'd almost forgotten about it -- for these interesting narrative tricks to come into play. And shame that the game doesn't stick the landing, with a narrative resolution that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny -- no matter how much I try, I just cannot make any sense of certain characters' actions from what we know of their motives.
I suppose it doesn't help that I've seen this done, better, before.
In Square Enix's Guardians of the Galaxy (2021) you play as a crew of heroes fighting an antagonist known as the Universal Church, who are using faith energy harvested from other planets to trap people in a hive mind that promises reunion with lost loved ones, forever. This bears a striking similarity to the broad strokes of the plot of Dead Space (2008), where an antagonist known as the church of Unitology uses a relic from the core of a planet to trap people in a fleshy hive mind that promises reunion with lost loved ones forever. One level in GotG even sees you boarding a ship called The Rock and, if my unreliable memory serves, recreating almost beat for beat the opening of Dead Space -- with less gore, and more Marvel-y quips, but about the same amount of power rerouting. What I'm saying is that the influence is clear, but GotG has lifted some of Dead Space's core premise and improved upon it by focusing on the characters, their experiences, and how the Church's 'Promise' affects them and works on them. I found myself deeply invested in the story of the characters, despite not being a Marvel fan, and was moved to tears by the resolution of the plot, which hinges on those characters, their relationships, and the love they have for each other. Sure, there's a crappy boss fight at the coda, but the characters are what's important to this story, and they're what the climax ultimately hinges on.
Charitably, you could say that the characters aren't what's important in Dead Space. The Ishimura, and the monsters, and the plasma gun are what's important, and the character are mostly functional until the third act where we do get some movement. That's where the Andy Weir comparison comes back in, by the way. But when Isaac unquestioningly follows his dead wife's instructions to "make us whole" and reunite with his dead mother (a Unitology slogan? or a command from the Marker that just sounds like one?) it strains credibility. Like the main thing we know about his wife Nicole is that she hated the church, and tried to get people out of it, which is how she and Isaac met. So why isn't Isaac questioning her? Well, because the Marker's making him crazy, I guess, but that's the extent of things. There's no grounded character explanation, no conversation between Isaac and 'Nicole' that explores why Isaac wants to believe that his wife is alive so badly that he erases her identity. No, just bland obeisance. It's disappointing. It makes the obvious reveal that his wife is dead feel weightless, because it's hard to connect with Isaac's emotions: without knowing why the illusion was so seductive to him, how am I supposed to care that it's been shattered?
Some of my favorite games, the ones that have scared me the most, in the most lasting ways, are action games with psychological horror elements. I think of the Astronaut and the house sequences in Returnal, or the Hiss chant in Control. I guess I was hoping Dead Space would be that; would lean more heavily on the psychological and narrative aspects then the gore and monster aspects. Maybe my dislike of this extremely well-made and well-received remake is just disappointment; the game wasn't what I wanted it to be, and its audience loved it. I guess I'll put this one in the 'Not for me' column. But damn, did I want to love it too.
I have to admit to almost skipping over this one due to the spoiler warning, but I'm very glad I read it in full. This is a fantastic write-up!
I've seen a lot of discussions of the game design in Dead Space. Things like the lack of exposition, and using environmental storytelling to explain key concepts to the player. I didn't know much about the wider story, but it's apparently quite a bit deeper than I first gave it credit for. Even if they didn't quite stick the landing, they clearly focused on some lofty ideas.
I also think it's very interesting that they nailed the tactile/immersive HUD before virtual reality came on the scene. In VR, it's very hard to have floating menus or pointer controls, so most interactions are with in-world objects. It seems that Dead Space stumbled onto the same approach not out of necessity, but with the goal of adding their own sense of realism.
Of course now that I say that, I'm wondering about a VR port of the game and just how terrifying that might be. Pitch black is very different when it completely surrounds you!
I'd originally dismissed Dead Space as a game for horror fans and not very notable outside of some early design decisions, but I'm rethinking that view. It seems like a game ripe for interesting critique and analysis.
Again I just want to say that I thought this write-up was beautifully written, and could easily be mistaken for a professional review. Nicely done!
There's not that much to say about
Holocure -- Collaboration
Fundamentally what this is is a very sound Vampire Survivors-type game with an ultralight Animal Crossing-style farming and fishing sim grafted on, and a lot of in-jokes that I don't get, having never really watched Hololive sreams. It's a free and totaly unmonetized fangame made for an international VTuber corporation, and I've occasionally heard that it's the best Vampire Survivors successor. I don't agree with that, but it is a more relaxing and varied game than this subgenre usually plays host to; taking a few minutes to farm and fish between runs does wonders for the pacing and probably the long-term replayability of the game. I expect to play it more throughout the month, whenever I need to lay off the more story-driven games and listen to an audiobook or whatever. There are some interesting twists to the Survivors formula here: there's been a great effort to give every playable character a unique kit and playstyle, which is a great source of differentiation from run to run. But nothing super groundbreaking to write home about. It's a well made fangame; if you like Vampire Survivors, probably worth at least a couple hours.I'm kind of cheating by listing it for "Collaboration," by the way. Because the playable characters are all modeled after streamers, the weapon ascension mechanic -- where you combine two maxed out weapons into one even stronger unique one -- is called the "Collab" system. This is a stretch if I've ever seen one, considering the gameplay has no sense of collaboration and indeed, no multiplayer component to be found. But it's in the same row as Darkness on my Bingo card, so we're counting it.
After the comparatively very heavy Dead Space, and with the election looming, this was a nice palette cleanser.
*A Short Hike* -- Freedom
A Short Hike is the leanest open world exploration game I've ever played. It's a game about exploring the tiny provincial park surrounding Hawk's Peak, where the ultimate goal is to summit the peak, get cellphone reception, and make a phone call. You play as a flightless bird -- a penguin? and the main mode of progression is collecting these golden feathers, which each add an additional double jump (wing flap) to your arsenal. You do this by exploring, talking to other parkgoers, completing small quest lines, etc. There's no map, and no markers, so you have to rely on your memory of the space and your compass and the helpful in-world signage to navigate.
So this is all very pleasant. I kind of expected the game to be a walking simulator going in, but was delighted to find that a lot of the game hinges on its smooth movement system. There's the feathers, the climbing, the gliding, and the jumping, which all feel intuitive and responsive. And the structure of the game world -- an archipelago surrounding a peak -- means that as you climb, it's easy to glide back down to almost anywhere on the map. That map felt pretty big at the start, but I was surprised by how much it seemed to shrink down as I understood its interconnectedness, unlocked shortcuts, and expanded the movement toolset.
The dialogue here has a sort of slice-of-life feel. Characters do have problems and worries, but they're all very small and human and everyday. There's no big plot twists or drama or even really conflict -- apart from the sinister corvid who monopolizes the feather market -- nothing that can't be solved with a little climbing, fishing, or gathering seashells. There is perhaps something to be said about the fact that most of the characters you meet are young children, but we're told that the player character, Claire, is entering adulthood, and the phone call she makes at the end is comparatively a very emotionally fraught, adult phone call. Maybe the game could be read as a bildungsroman? But this is a work that doesn't really lend itself to that kind of analysis. It's simple, sweet, fun to play, and about two or three hours long if you're exploring thoroughly. Really worth it in my opinion
I played A Short Hike during the last event, and also went in with the wrong expectation, but came out loving it.
As you said, the movement really made the game. It was fun to get around the mountain and the world in interesting ways. Climbing, gliding, even boating at times. The traversal connects the slice-of-life storytelling, which I recognized but couldn't quite put my finger on when I played. In this one, you're not the fabled hero of the world. You're a bird with typical
peoplebird problems, just like everyone else.I picked up A Short Hike from Epic Games during one of their free giveaways, and I recommend others who did the same to give it a try. You might also have it from one of the various Itch.io megabundles. It's a short experience, but very charming and worth putting a couple hours into. Check it out!
So, I dusted off Frostpunk 1 from my backlog, and played through the main
campaignscenario. It's a fun little game! The stress and anxiety of having to care for your people, dealing with calamities and resource management, was significant -- yet fun, somehow. I like being given moral choices and dilemmas in games, and FP delivers in that respect, but only somewhat. Semi spoiler: The scenario was shorter than I expected, and I honestly expected for it to keep going after that ending event. I failed in the first playthrough, and I'm glad it (spoiler) ended in exile instead of you literally seeing the last few of your people actually die, as I was dreading the incoming (albeit simulated) guilt and responsibility. Having become familiar with the mechanics, and how useful (or not very useful) certain parts of the research tree are, the second playthrough was... well, kinda easy.Somehow, I don't feel compelled to play any of the other scenarios, though, and there are 3 or 4 more in the menus that I can see. I feel like I got the main thrust of what they were trying to do with this game, so I actually feel kind of "done" with it. I think I got my money's worth. Although it's a relatively short play (Steam says I have 45 hours on it), I'd recommend it, relative to your personal budget constraints.
Not sure what my next backlog game will be. Am currently just revisiting Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1, and wandering nostalgically. (I remind readers that KCD2 is scheduled to come out in early 2025, and is already available for pre-order.)