henke on 11/10/2023 at 17:15
Quote Posted by qolelis
Might be worth trying the demo for (
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1977170/Jusant/)
Jusant if you haven't already. I'm not a climber myself, but when I got into it, I felt like there was a certain rhythm to it. It's not purely about climbing, though.
Somehow I didn't play Jusant last time it was in the Next Fest, so thanks for the reminder. Yeah, it was lovely! :)
qolelis on 12/10/2023 at 08:03
Nice!
I have a couple of demos lined-up for playing.
Already played:
The Beekeeper's Picnic, cute point'n'click about Holmes and Watson as they get older and less agile.
Between Horizons, investigative sort of side-scroller in space. Not exactly point'n'click, but kind of. Yep. Similar gameplay as in their earlier game, Lacuna.
Europa, Wholesome, relaxing, third person exploration game with some platforming and flying, jumping, gliding, sliding.
The Inspector, cool in a weird kind of back to the roots kind of way. Mhm. Made me think back to a golden era when I was still new to the whole indie-scene. I liked this one especially. Some language issues here and there, but I'm seeing past that.
Urban Explorer, has issues, but also potential. More stealth than urbex. The title feels misleading. Some parkour thrown in too. The devs seem to be still deciding what kind of game they want to make.
Yet to play:
The Midnight Crime, ...
My Work Is Not Yet Done, ...
Simpler Times, ...
Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley, ...
Three Minutes To Eight, ...
Sulphur on 15/10/2023 at 05:50
Asura the Striker: A Space Harrier-'em up, and if you like that, you like that. You slide
Asuka Langley Asura all across the screen to hit enemies with your attacks, avoid theirs, and not bash into ravine walls. Asura is a 'humanoid battle weapon' shaped like a Japanese teenager's wet dream in a robobattle suit, and her abilities include being able to shoot shit, slow down shit, and knuckle shit, the last one of which I didn't figure out until the final boss. After ~12 minutes, I reached the end of the demo, which had me slapping around a dragon, getting pummelled by another dragon, trading air with a wicth (not a misspelling - not mine, anyway), getting bounced into the screen by balls, and knuckling a battleship for the coup de grace. Groovy tunes, looks all right, will probably never play it again. I rate it 7 knuckles out of 2 and a half fists.
My Work Is Not Yet Done: Okay. I dunno. I have zero nostalgia for 1-bit aesthetics, so I usually approach such things with an attempted tolerance flecked with tempered distaste. This seems to be a survival horror survival adventure simulation game exploring the 'imbrication and dissolution of human identities/meanings', according to the store page.
So, you start off this thing in the middle of something having happened, that being a member of your expedition disappearing, probably down a cliff. Immediately, problems present themselves: there's a sort of VHS tape overlay on the visuals with a bit of chromatic aberration, which is fine; but the visuals are monochrome pixels, and the thickets and woods you're in are densely illustrated, and so also nearly impossible to navigate. What's traversable, what isn't? Fuck knows, find out by rubbing your dude with a super slow walking speed against everything, and then tediously walk around a rock, a tree, a bush. Sometimes, what looks like a non-traversable rock face ends up just being a level rock floor. The second problem is that trails and paths aren't always clearly marked out, so finding a screen exit is a chore. Screens also loop back around, which is realistic given how geography works, but also highlights that the signposting for paths is non-existent. Yes, if you liked King's Quest and Hugo's House of Horrors and all those games from that era along with the old Apple 1-bit things, you're probably gonna be nostalgic for the bumbling around. I ain't.
Anyhoo, in the middle of all this groping around a forest, it starts raining, And when it rains, the screen - that is to say, the camera overlay you are perceiving the game through - gets progressively more and more blurry, until you can barely see anything. In a game that's already hard to navigate, this cheesed me right the fuck off. Anyway, I continued, because I was supposed to get to the 'camp', and not having a map, that means you just plod into scenery until you find something. I found a bunker, camera footage, and the blossoming realisation that I may in fact have ADHD. Anyway, you eventually find the camp, and then you change your clothes, decontaminate, change your clothes, take a shower, go to bed, and then the demo ends with a video of abstract viz that goes on for so long I got to check my phone for new messages and consider my next grocery order.
What was that all about? Who knows. It's either set on an alien planet, or Earth being beset by something alien. There's a lot of unnecessary detail that you can glean by inspecting items around you. This seems to also be the primary way the developer provides you with backstory, but it also leads to ridiculous parts like this:
Inline Image:
https://i.imgur.com/6ZqrTJ2.pngThat, folks, is the game's description of a kitchen sink.
There's an attention to detail here that speaks of a level of nerdery beyond belief, and this extends to the (actually really fantastic) sound design. The wind rushing through the trees, the rain pouring down all around you, the sequence of unbuckling your belt, unzipping your pants, pulling them down, hearing stuff plopping in water, and then the flush, and then putting your pants back on when you use the toilet. It's all there, in gratuitous detail. Very impressive!
But also, Sutemi Productions: hire a second designer and get an editor, please. And get me one while you're at it... how long is this fucking post, jesus.
Sulphur on 15/10/2023 at 05:51
And qolelis: I guess all of that game might actually be up your street. Take it away! (from me, that is)
qolelis on 15/10/2023 at 16:39
Hehe, yep, I've played it now and liked it. Maybe not every little bit of it, but I'm always up for an experience like this. Something out of the ordinary. Someone who dares make a game like this. The developer is mentioning the art scene of where he lives, so I'm guessing he might be coming into this more from that than a gaming scene.
I'm still waiting for Memory of a Broken Dimension, but in the meantime, this might scratch that itch a bit. And look at you, it made you write all that. I mean, it was a good read. I can definitely see where you're coming from. The language is so purple that even Marcel Proust would have had a hard time with it. It's like the sentences never end even when they do. And yes, the art style makes it hard to navigate. I bumbled around quite a bit before finding that station. I wonder if not the scanner tool could have been put to more use other than finding the surveillance equipment. That could make the place easier to navigate, but still keep the sense of being lost—if that's what the developer was after. Maybe that's part of the nature of that place and its... other presence. I could swear the tiles had shifted around the second time I played the demo. I actually quit my first run prematurely and never found a way back to my camp until my second run.
If the developer's intent was to project the character's confusion and bewilderment through the screen onto me, I'd say they made a good job out of that. I like that feeling—although only so far as to eventually start making sense out of things, figuring out the rules governing my surrounding, however alien these rules might be. The rewards seem few and far between here, though, testing my patience a bit.
While the minutia of everyday life might turn into a grind, I might not be able to stay away, because of the pure mystery of what's out there, waiting for me while I'm on the shitter, plopping a big one. I will definitely keep an eye on the full game when it releases.
Sulphur on 16/10/2023 at 05:08
Thanks, and for all my criticism, I do in fact appreciate the game for the same things you've pointed out. It's a bold and idiosyncratic vision, rendered with the sort of detail that shows the dev's really pouring a lot into it. It's worth appreciating for that alone. But I'm also not sure it's for me, really. I don't like friction when it persists through the entire experience just for the sake of making the game more deliberate, but I can see that as a design choice, and something that might work with a different player's temperament.
Re: the prose, I'm actually not that fussed about it, even if it's quite florid. The thing that sticks out to me is, in a traditional adventure game, you click on items to get a short description of what the thing in question is, situated within your current context. It's both a practical thing for playing the game, and a narrative thing to add detail and richness to the story (usually through your character giving a short quip on the point of interest). The issue is that clicking on an item or an environmental interaction spot often gives you an entire page's worth of writing, which is not only an immediate disconnect with the expected practical use, it also kills your interest in what the item is if for each thing on the screen (and in the camp there are many) it takes an essay of historical context to work them out; viz., it shortchanges you on the expected use of practical information, and longchanges you on narrative information. I don't think that's a good balance. Maybe since they're written as musings, they should be kept in a diary that can be read at will.
I posted my ramblings above in the Steam forum, and the author replied with a lot of good points to it. I'm pleasantly surprised, and am keeping an eye on this even if it may not, in the end, be for me.
(I also looked up his history. He made a Hotline Miami mod called Midnight Animal... and hoo boy, there was some drama there. Glad that's done, or seems to be.)
henke on 10/2/2024 at 11:07
The Next Fest has been on for a few days, and is still running till Feb 12. I played some demos. 3 of them.
(
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2380050/Star_Trucker/)
Star Trucker - You deliver cargo from station to station, and occasionally get up and swap out the batteries in your spacetruck, or do a bit of spacewalking if you need to patch up some holes. It's great. I played 2.6 hours of it already.
(
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2299080/Grippy_Golf/)
Grippy Golf - a Katamari-esque golf platformer. Plays great and is very polished. It quickly becomes addictive trying to get a hole in one on each course. This is a tiny lil zero-budget indie game that deserves to do great, so check it out!
(
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2460940/Zero_Below_The_Sun/)
Zero Below The Sun - PS1-style survival horror. Looks a lot like Fade To Black (1995). Very janky tho, can't really recommend it. Hopefully the dev gets it in a much better state by the time of release.
Any other great demos out there? I know Pacific Drive has one, but I kinda wanna go in fresh when the full game releases.
vfig on 10/2/2024 at 14:49
i was very glad Pacific Drive had a demo, because it wasnt quite the game i thought it was going to be. in my head it was Jalopy x STALKER, with similar strange and lonely vibes to them. but the vibes werent there. there were very chatty npcs always commenting on things through the radio. its not a continuous world, you have (maybe roguelikey? unsure) expeditions into separate levels from your base. theres an overwrought crafting system through which all your scavenging is filtered. and theres a ton of hud all over the screen, which further dispelled the vibes i wanted. i had fun with the demo, but im not going to be in a rush to buy the full game.
other demos i liked:
(https://store.steampowered.com/app/1373960/INDIKA/) INDIKA - the gameplay is a bit uninspired, very vanilla action-adventure, but the story and setting got me hooked: a fantasy 19th century russia, and youre a nun with a taunting narrator in your head, and the unwilling travelling companion of a wounded soldier who talks to god. ironically, i probably wouldnt have tried it if i had looked at the store page first, the description there is not compelling to me—i gave it a try solely on the strength of how odd its banner picture was.
(https://store.steampowered.com/app/2644610/Menace_from_the_Deep/) Menace from the Deep - a card-based battle game, lovecraft themed. if youre thinking Arkham Horror x Slay the Spire, thats pretty much what youre in for—although it looks like the full game might have a more overarching story rather than a pure run-based thing going. from the demo, it didnt seem to do anything particularly novel with its card mechanics, although i liked that the between-battles progression has more scope for thought and choice than simply following a slay-the-spire-like branching path.
(https://store.steampowered.com/app/1579650/nullptr/) NULLPTR - a hacking-themed action puzzle game. one of the best hacking-themed games ive ever played. the demo was twice as big as i expected. excellent puzzle design, with many unconventional and interesting mechanics. great, evocative writing. if the rest of the game lives up to the promise, then this is going to be an incredible little gem!
henke on 11/2/2024 at 16:07
Ok you spooked me into giving the Pacific Drive demo a go. Just played a little bit of it. I'm also expecting Jalopy x Stalker, but a more mainstream, accessible and slightly cartoony version of that, and yeah I think it fits the bill. There is indeed a lot of NPC chatter, but I'm expecting that's probably mostly in the opening tutorial bit. I'm sure there'll be more solitude once the game gets going.
Sulphur on 11/2/2024 at 16:51
Quelle coïncidence! I just tried it too, and nope. If the structure's basically head out, survive, scavenge, find parts, repeat <n> times until game over, I'm not sold. It's not a compelling loop at least from this small slice. The fiddly car interface is neat, the fiddly inventory is... interesting, the fiddly crafting and blueprints and car parts management and space restrictions are so not my jam that it's, uh, mustard. A peanut butter and mustard sandwich.
Maybe it works better in a longer, more atmospheric segment separated from all the craft-y preamble, where all of this starts to pay off as you explore and find yourself using these systems on the open road to make it a real adventure, but the onboarding's a bit too frontloaded for now, and I'm not a fan of fiddling around with everything in the world just to make it work.