Hardspace: Shipbreaker - Organization

I've seen this game mentioned a couple of times on Tildes -- most recently by @zakhar in the "chore games" topic (which is what prompted me to finally play it -- thanks zakhar!)

This game is sort of the opposite of organization -- it's a disorganization game.

You start with an organized, fully constructed space vessel.

You then strategically cut different beams and supports holding it together, causing the ship to break up in to pieces, which you then fling in zero gravity to different destinations depending on what those pieces are.

Is it cheating to put a disorganization game into the Organization category?

No -- but only because you also work for an organization named Lynx. Lynx is your prototypical dystopian corporation which has increased productivity by creating a way to resurrect workers from their DNA, so that they can continue working indefinitely, even after death. The corporation also has you, one of their workers, in a Tom Nook-style debt that you're trying to pay your way out of (and that you can't, obviously, dispel upon death). You get plenty of money for salvaging ships, but you also are charged for pretty much everything, including the oxygen you breathe. It's a long hill to climb, as so much of your income gets siphoned away by the greedy company (sound familiar?).

The loop of the game is that you repeatedly salvage ships to try to climb your way out of debt, all while leveling up and gaining access to new and better tools. I'm still in the early stages of the game. I've officially completed the tutorial, but even past that point the game slowly introduces new mechanics and hazards. I definitely haven't seen all the game has to offer yet despite being about 4 hours in.

In terms of how it plays, the game is a relaxed, slow-burn clean-up game. You fly into a ship, look for cut points that are holding it together, then take those out and slowly dismantle the ship piece by piece. In terms of pacing and goals, it reminds me a lot of PowerWash Simulator. It's perfect for playing while listening to podcasts/audiobooks.

Getting used to the zero gravity and moving around takes a bit of time, but it works well once you're accustomed to it. Also, there's something viscerally satisfying about cutting all the interior connectors and watching the ship slowly break into pieces and drift apart. The game feels good to play. It's definitely going to feel a bit "samey" over time, but I pretty much always have a mindless, listen-to-audiobooks game in my rotation at any moment, and this one is one I'm definitely going to keep playing.

Also, with this box filled, I officially have a WINNING BINGO!!! 🥳🎉

Assemble With Care - Restoration

I’m sure all of us have been in a situation where we’ve taken something apart, only to realize that we didn’t really do it in an organized way, so getting it back together is harder than expected. Which piece went in first? Did the small or big screws go here?

This game is, naturally, all about taking things apart and putting them back together. So, I picked this title to try to fill the Organization tile on my card and go for a win.

After playing it, however, I simply have to slot it in Restoration. The game is so heavily themed in that direction, both mechanically and narratively, that it would be wrong not to.

You play as Maria, on a trip to a town called Bellariva. Maria is a repairperson, and the townspeople ask her for help repairing different items. Each item is its own scene, and each scene is bookended by storybook-style narrative pieces about the characters.

The game is cozy and wholesome. It’s got good art, good music, good voice acting.

It also feels pretty good to play. I’m glad it ended up slotting well into something else, because you don’t actually have to keep organized as you work. The game does it automatically for you, laying out all the parts and tools and pieces — even saving all of your screws in a bowl for you. It’s very effortless and simple in a good way. It feels like a premium mobile game that I was playing on my Deck instead of my phone.

In terms of gameplay, I was reminded a little bit of The Room, where there’s a sort of centralized focus on a puzzle item that you have to dive into to figure out how it works. Vibes-wise, however, it’s nothing like The Room. It exchanges that game’s foreboding Lovecraftian atmosphere for something, brighter, cheerier, and far more human.

It’s also much easier than The Room. Many of the items can’t really be called “puzzles” at all. There’s usually a very obvious problem with a very obvious solution, but I think that’s what the game is going for. Without getting too spoilery on the narrative, a good theme for the game would be “repair is easier than you think.” I think the devs wanted to make the game about the simple joy of fixing something, rather than the perplexing head-scratching of troubleshooting.

While I did like the game, my one complaint about it is that it is simply too short. Just when the repair tasks feel like they’re getting interesting, the game is over. And the short runtime doesn’t give the player enough time to get invested in the characters and their relationships. The changes in them over the course of the game end up feeling forced and heavy-handed, rather than organic. It took me only an hour and a half to beat, and I even think some of that was the game idling while I took my dog outside.

Normally I like shorter games that don’t overstay their welcome, but this one felt like it was still earning its welcome before it left.

I feel a little bad for being down on the game, since it’s clearly well-made and wholesome. It also manages to be positive and optimistic without feeling saccharine or disingenuous, which is a hard thing to do — particularly in gaming. Ultimately though, I felt like I played the prologue to a game rather than a full game itself with this title.

Mighty Switch Force! Collection - Duality

This collection is a re-release and re-master of four different games in the Mighty Switch Force! series.

The first game was originally released on the Nintendo 3DS. The second game was originally released on the 3DS and the Wii U. (sidenote: I love seeing former Nintendo exclusives, especially those on the Wii U, getting ported elsewhere for posterity's sake)

The third game is actually a remake of the first game that was also released on the Wii U, which overhauled the game's pixel art graphics into a more hand-drawn cartoon style and added new levels.

Finally, the fourth game is one that was released for the PC only and, while playable single-player, was more intended for local co-op.

I chose these for Duality because the central mechanic of the games is that you can switch levels between two different states. Some parts of the level are interactable in one state, while others are translucent shadow blocks that won't come into play until you toggle them. When you do this, those become active, while the others go into the shadow states.

It's a simple mechanic that the game does well with. Initially, it seems like a standard run-and-gun style game similar to Mega Man with a twist, but then the game starts throwing more puzzley, exploration-focused levels at you. At times it feels more like you have to make sense of a machine that you're in rather than an action platformer.

In each level you're tasked with rounding up five women and then exiting the level in your mech. (Do I need to mention that the game is clearly anime inspired?)

This setup was my least favorite part of the game. It's very fan-servicey. Upon completing the first level, I was "treated" to a cartoon graphic of the women in swimsuits washing a car. In the second game, the pixel art animations include gratutitous jiggle physics.

I don't want to yuck anyone's yum -- like what you like and don't be ashamed of it! Also, I'm a gay guy, so I'm clearly not the target audience. Still, I just find overly cartoony sexualization off-putting, especially in what, by all other accounts, should be a family-friendly game and one that's great for kids. This belief would still hold if my character was rounding up men and they were, say, bending over in speedos in the level interstitials, by the way.

Besides that one sticking point, the Collection itself is very well made. The level design is interesting and robust. The levels end up doing a lot more with the Switch mechanic than I was expecting. The game has the feel of those high quality experimental puzzle platformers you would find on Flash gaming sites in the late 00s. I really do like the game mechanically, and I'm not sure whether I want to push past my aesthetic reservations and keep playing it.

Hourglass - Causality

Following suit from @SingedFrostLantern, I chose a time-travel(ish) game for Causality (it really does fit well, doesn't it?).

Hourglass is a first-person puzzle game in which you can create a limited-time clone of yourself, record some actions with them, and then perform actions alongside that recording as your regular player character. This lets you do things you, of course, wouldn’t be able to do on your own — except you are doing them on your own — you’re doing them in collaboration with yourself — because you traveled back in time to accompany yourself — so it actually kind of definitely is you doing things on your own.

Isn’t exploiting time grand?

Anyway, if you've played The Talos Principle, you're already familiar with the concept.

Visually, the game is evocative of The Witness with bright colors and flat, stylized, polygonal environments.

Puzzle-wise, the game feels like Companion Cube: The Full Game. Many of the puzzles involve locating and manipulating blocks that you can set on switches or use to climb up on ledges. Your recorded self can manipulate these, and changes to the blocks will persist past the end of the recording.

There are three clearly telegraphed acts to the game, and I completed the first one. The puzzle difficulty ramps up nicely, and there was a puzzle in the final part of the act that used a particularly clever twist on the mechanics that took me a while to figure out. The game is genuinely good in terms of both concept and execution.

Nevertheless, I'm going to stop playing it.

During the hour and a half I played the first act, I kept asking myself: Am I having fun? Is this game actually satisfying for me to play?

And the answer to both was: not really.

My main problem with the game is that it's equal parts solution-driven and execution-driven. You can know what to do but still fail to execute it properly. This is frustrating on its own but not too bad, but it's also combined with the fact that whiffing an execution attempt often means having to do re-do a lot of the setup to get the puzzle back in the state you had it in for that attempt. Being careful isn't a workaround to this either, as the puzzles often have tight timers on account of the short duration of your recorded clone.

There was a puzzle that required me to get myself and a clone in specific places on a moving platform, with enough time in the clone's lifetime to be able to do something afterwards as well. This meant that I had to start the recording while the platform was already moving, with relatively tight timing for all the different pieces. Coordinating all the pieces of this took several attempts, with short resets between each attempt. A few times I messed up the timing. A few times I missed the jump. So, despite knowing what to do, it was still probably a minute or three before I actually succeeded in doing it. That saps a lot of the fun of the game for me.

If you have more patience than I do and are interested (rather than bothered) by the execution aspect of the game, then this is a definite hidden gem (less than 300 reviews on Steam). It wasn't for me personally, but I do think there is a good game here.

Gearshifters - Conflict

SECOND BINGO WIN! 🎉

I’m officially at the part of the Backlog Burner where I’m now seeing how many wins I can chain together before time runs out. I have enough on my board that I’m always only one or two away from another win.

I went with a car combat game for Conflict, which feels like a pretty easy category to fill given how many games revolve around combat and nearly every narrative has a built-in conflict.

Gearshifters seems to be a modern game with retro-sensibilities. It feels like it could be a remake of something that came out on the SNES or Genesis. You've got a top-down perspective of your car and the road it's racing down. Driving is automatic, but you have freedom to maneuver around the screen. Enemies appear on the road from behind or in front, and you have to shoot them down. They drop powerups and currency, which you can then spend to upgrade your vehicle between missions.

As you progress through missions, your car also gains additional abilities, such as the ability to shoot diagonally instead of straight forward, which helps you evade enemy fire while still attacking.

In terms of play, the game doesn't feel all that different to a horizontal scrolling space shooter, with the main exception being that you are bound in by the edges of the road at all times. I do appreciate the car theming though. It feels more fresh than spaceships shooting other spaceships.

There are also boss battles, which are a lot less mindless than the general gameplay. For these, you have to learn attack patterns and target weak spots.

I played the game for an hour, and liked it well enough, but I don't think I'll continue right now. The game is pretty mindless and same-y. That said, I probably will save it for my upcoming holiday flights, where I'll need something I can play while I'm exhausted from my holiday travel and social schedule.

Sticky Business - Creativity

This is a really cute and wholesome game.

You start out with a few different clip art icons in a few different categories. There's a simple-yet-robust editing mode where you can lay out the different icons, adjusting their placement and size and whatnot to create a sticker. You then print off pages of the stickers and sell them to eager customers.

As customers buy stickers, the icons used on them level up, giving you heart points that you can spend on new icons to flesh out your library of images (and subsequently level those up). You also get money from your customers as well, which you can use to upgrade your shop and products (for example, buying shiny paper to print the stickers on).

At the beginning of the game, there wasn't an option to freehand draw/write anything on my stickers (I don't want to say there isn't one at all, because it might unlock later -- I'm not sure). I was limited to only using the icons. At first, I felt like that meant the game was going to be a whiff for the Creativity square, but it turns out constraints are great for coming up with ideas. I ended up cobbling together some cool looking stickers (and some flat out ridiculous ones). It was genuinely fun -- way more than I expected, to be honest.

My favorite? A stegosaurus wearing a top hat on the trans pride flag.

Did I mention that the game has TONS of LGBTQ rep? Genuinely every imaginable pride flag is available. I can see a lot of queer people in particular falling in love with a cozy, lovey little game like this one.

The gameplay loop is super simple: design stickers, print sheets of them, then pack the right stickers in the right boxes for your customers, which lets you buy more icons and better stuff for your stickers. The game is deliberately cute, with great pixel art throughout. It's a bright, relaxed, feel-good game. No notes. Great stuff.

Also, this was in a recent Humble Choice, so if you're a subscriber, you might already have it in your library.