kjorteo: Screenshot of the SNES game Family Dog.  The titular dog is smiling widely and looking ecstatic, despite the fact that Family Dog is not a very good game. (Family Dog)
2019-12-22 11:41 am

COMPLETE: I Became a Dog 2

This review assumes you've read the first one.

I Became a Dog 2 is, in many ways, about what you would expect from "Like I Became a Dog, but 2." Same formula, same eating and learning to speak dog, collecting bugs as currency, same trading puzzles. Same bleak tone where the more lost memories you uncover, the more it turns out that almost every major player in this sordid tale is an asshole, even (especially) you.

It does offer some enhanced quality of life adjustments. There's a tech tree now, where you pay to boost your skills in a way that carries over between play-throughs, with a cap that rises with every New Game Plus. It's a new scenario with new characters, though certain old faces do return. It's longer, meatier, the puzzles more involved.

I feel like there's a lot to like here, and I did enjoy this enough overall to go through it a zillion times and get 100% ending completion. However, two things kind of drag it down for me. One, the sheer rampant villainy going on around this household. Two, even when I ended up being able to all but speedrun this game toward the end, puzzle and plot progression still remained mysterious in a lot of ways. You end up spending a lot of your time talking to everyone, running out of leads or things to do, talking to everyone again, and then mmmaybe one of them finally remembers it's their turn to give you the next quest or item or whatever your progression was hinging on? It's very confusing.

Still neat enough that I don't regret playing it, though? I guess? It was decent, unlike its cast.
kjorteo: Ukiyo-e woodcut-style portrait of a Skarmory. (Skarmory: Ukiyo-e)
2019-12-21 01:44 pm

COMPLETE: When the Past Was Around (Prologue)

We were a little unsure whether to count this one. Is it a demo? Should we wait for the full version and just write up that when it's out? Is it a separate stand-alone piece, like Wurroom to the upcoming Ultra Strangeness, or Longest Night to Night in the Woods? Is it worth possibly counting twice? It bills itself as a "prologue," which may or may not be a part of the main game. I'm just going to write this, though, because it's really good and I want to share. If I end up covering it twice, so be it. It probably deserves it.

When the Past Was Around (Prologue) is the prologue chapter of an upcoming point-and-click game by Mojiken Studio (A Raven Monologue, She and the Light Bearer.) It's a sort of... it's not a room escape in tone, but gameplay-wise it has a very similar sense of "ransack the screen looking for things to use on other things to reveal the password which unlocks more things to use on other things." It also has a kind of artsy but serenely beautiful visual style, gentle piano music, and a vaguely hinted at story that feels like some kind of kind of abstract loss metaphor(?) that's more about images and moods and feelings than concrete plot beats. I have no idea what I just played except it had a slight Indie Game About Death aura and it was really good and I loved it.

In other words, to the surprise of absolutely no one, this is in fact exactly what happens when the Raven Monologue team makes a puzzle game.

Anyway, we're very much looking forward to the full version. If you're curious, the prologue is free in the meantime.
kjorteo: Screenshot from Daedalian Opus, of a solved puzzle with the text "GOOD" displayed on underneath it. (GOOD)
2019-12-14 07:47 pm

Woodling Gameblogging Awards 2019

Celine:
Award time is upon us once more! After how well having Sara around last time went for both her and everyone in the audience, we're doing this together once more. 2019 sure was a thing (more on that in a post to come,) but we still managed to work some really good games in there. So, let's honor them!

Sara:
We decided do use simple "Celine:" and "Sara:" (and "Xyzzy:") tags this year rather than the icons, both for accessibility and because it's just easier. That gives us more time we can spend talking about games. :v

Awards within! )
kjorteo: Screenshot from Heiankyo Alien, of an alien engulfing the player character's head in his mouth. (Tasty humans)
2019-12-08 12:08 pm

COMPLETE: Plants vs. Zombies

After bouncing off Plants vs. Zombies 2 because of how aggressively EA the series had become, I noticed a few comments lamenting that even the original had gone that route these days. This struck me as odd, because last I checked, my copy (an Android version I picked up from one of the original Humble Mobile Bundiles like a kjhgpillion years ago) still seemed fine?

I loaded it up to check if they'd ruined it in a patch or something, and no, this was still the same unspoiled PopCap version. I tried a couple levels just to make sure. And then a couple more, because this is a fun game when it's not microtransaction'd to death. And then a cou... aww hell, I fell back into this again didn't I.

So I've sort of been picking at it, a stage or two before going to bed here and there, and this morning I finally cleared Adventure Mode (again.) Other than it taking me back to the main menu without playing Zombies on Your Lawn, everything was exactly as I remembered it. And now here we are!

Plants vs. Zombies is a line defense game where you plants and they zombies and blah blah everyone knows this game. It's really good, enough that even I love it and I hate tower/line defense games, and it has an endless amount of personality and charm. And then EA brutally murdered it later. But hey.

Now that I have an Adventure clear, I can try the endless stuff, try to grind for the more expensive twiddlydinkies, etc. or just play through Adventure again someday. I'm probably done for now, but the option is nice to have. If you happen to have an original copy of PvZ1 lying around anywhere, treasure it. It's a constant reminder that, at its core, there is something great here, and that there's a reason this game is so popular and missed.
kjorteo: Portrait of Celine making a o.O face. (Celine: o.O)
2019-12-03 06:17 pm

COMPLETE: Wurroom

This is around the time of year where we gorge ourselves on "it was in our discovery queue and it's short and free" esoterica, I guess.

Wurroom is... uh... um....

*Gesture helplessly at trailer*

That. It's that. It's that but it's fourteen minutes long and you point and click at things. Almost like a puzzle when you need to find the right things to click on? Sometimes? Though it's usually fairly railroaded. Mostly you're just here to click on things to keep continuing on with the... that.

In all seriousness, I have no idea what I just played, but it's visually gorgeous. Everything is done in brightly colorful surrealistic claymation, like if a Tool music video had access to antidepressants. For something short and free, it's definitely a visual spectacle, an experience to have and boggle at and nevertheless greatly enjoy. The whole thing almost feels like a stealth advertisement for the developer's next (upcoming) game, the aptly named Ultra Strangeness, which bills itself as "what if Wurroom were a full length actual-point and click adventure." Which, heck yes, instantly wishlisted right there.

In the meantime, feel free to enjoy whatever this is!
kjorteo: Portrait of a happy, hopeful, wide-eyed Bulbasaur from a doujin. (Bulbasaur: Hopeful)
2019-12-02 08:57 pm

COMPLETE: This Is Fine

Okay, at less than five minutes long and barely interactive, this is really stretching the definition of what's substantial enough to even be considered a "game," but I'm including it because I want to (it's our blog) and it's a positive message that badly needs to be spread and heard.

This Is Fine is a short little narrative pixel game based on that one KC Green comic. It's about love and friendship and making your own little corner of the world cozier together, even as the rest of the world burns outside. It was made in 2016 when 2016 happened, but it's still incredibly relevant in 2019. It's also the most accurate Clan Sugardoom simulator I've ever seen, and recommended extra hard to them.
kjorteo: Screenshot from Uninvited, of a closeup portrait of the Mysterious Lady attacking the player. (Mysterious Lady)
2019-12-02 08:10 pm

COMPLETE: 3 Blind Mice: A Remediation Game for Improper Children

Saw this one in a queue dive, it's ten minutes long and a free download, so I was curious enough to bite.

3 Blind Mice: A Remediation Game for Improper Children is a short little creepypasta-looking barely-interactive quiz game with a heavy dystopian undercurrent. The hidden cameras have judged you to be lacking in intelligence and proper obedient behavior, and so you must go through this short ten-minute remediation game. Failure to do so may result in being removed from society.

The game is just a progression of listening to the mice give a speech that eventually leads up to kindergarten-level quiz questions with a creepy flavor to them ("What is the shape of an eyeball?" "What color is this severed finger?") like an edgy haunted episode of Sesame Street. The voice quality is what I would consider deliberately poor; the microphone pops, the acting is incredibly wooden and stilted, there are unnaturally long "no person would ever talk like this" pauses, but all of this feels like it's for effect, like it's trying to convey that the mice themselves are just badly reading a very forced script. It gives the whole thing an unsettling vibe even when nothing overtly menacing is happening, like a Salad Fingers video for much the same reason. Minor jumpscares (they screech at you) if you get anything wrong, otherwise you just go through ten minutes of this and then they congratulate you and the game closes.

It's... there's not a whole lot there, but it's kind of neat. Very atmospheric. If you're intrigued then you may as well check it out. If you're not then you're probably not missing a whole lot.
kjorteo: Screenshot from Daedalian Opus, of a solved puzzle with the text "GOOD" displayed on underneath it. (GOOD)
2019-12-01 01:30 pm

Woodling Gameblogging Award Nominees 2019

It's that time of year again! (With a dash of "Aaaa is it that time of year again already, what do you mean this entire post is due today" as usual.)

Game Year 2019 is officially closed; anything we play, complete or abandon, or otherwise write up starting now counts toward the 2020 awards. The 2019 field is set, and... things feel a bit mixed? I feel like the pickings among some categories might be a bit lean, while others have some of the strongest and greatest competition yet, worthy of contesting even among the previous years' winners.

2019 by the numbers: 26 complete, 7 abandoned, 2 ongoing, for a total of 34 game reports in 2019. (Bugs and Kisses was dual-classified as Complete/Abandoned.) This puts 2019 with slightly more gaming activity than 2017, but significantly less than 2018. Still, anything that gets me to write 34 mini-articles in a year has to be considered a success. I know 2019 itself hit our clanmates pretty hard, such that we're the only ones left still doing this this year, but we're still having a good time with it.

Speaking of which, because we both had a blast doing this last year, Sara and I will resume our co-hosting roles. As always, some of these we agree on, others we'll split our votes, some we have no idea what we're going to pick and others are a foregone conclusion that we're just trying not to spoil in this post. Speculation and predictions are welcome and highly encouraged--who knows, you might even change our mind if you make a good enough case.

Onward to the nominees, then! )
kjorteo: Screenshot from Daedalian Opus, of a solved puzzle with the text "GOOD" displayed on underneath it. (GOOD)
2019-11-29 03:08 pm

COMPLETE: Hidden my game by mom 2

Hey, remember when I beat Arcade Spirits and that was the big fitting epic grand finale to Game Year 2019? The cutoff is December 1; anything played on or after that counts toward the 2020 end-of-years instead, and Arcade Spirits was already a last-minute entry. Surely we weren't going to squeeze in a last-thirty seconds one or anything. Happy Game Year 2019 everyb-

Hidden my game by mom 2 is... you remember the first one? It's literally just 30 more levels of that. Same song and everything.

We're visiting parents for Thanskgiving and got too snowbound to travel on the day we were originally supposed to head back, so we're sitting here just kind of idling, and it was there. Either I've gotten a little more used to the way this series thinks by now or this one seemed mostly easier than the first? Or mybe this one just had more of a hook. I was just going to do five levels and that was fine, that was plenty, and then next thing I know I'm staring at the congratulations screen the way one looks at a now-empty bag of chips they were only supposed to have a couple of.

I dunno. It was breezy and fun! This series is cute.
kjorteo: Screenshot of the snake from Snake, Rattle & Roll looking excited, with the caption "Hooray for video games!" (Hooray for video games!)
2019-11-17 09:58 am

COMPLETE: Arcade Spirits

This came as an extremely high recommendation from [personal profile] xyzzysqrl. She played it, adored it, and pushed it on me. She bought it for me as a birthday present, and then periodically leaned on me with "Hey I know you have a lot of games in your backlog to get around to actually playing someday buuuuut *sad puppymog eyes*" reminders afterward. She believed in and fought for this game like it was your player character's in-game hopes and dreams (more on that in a bit.) Because I knew it meant so much to her, I promised I'd cut Arcade Spirits in line and play that one next as thanks for saving our otherwise-doomed efforts to get this whole CD-i thing off the ground. (Seriously, it is thanks to Xyzzy's work connecting us to her "Hey I found this CD-i in my closet and I'm looking to sell" friend that we now have the only footage of Lost Sheep on the entire Internet. That is important and something I will likely never forget. That's the kind of huge game-changing favor that gets an "If this works I will play Arcade Spirits to show how grateful I am" promise.)

You can read her review here and probably should. It covers a lot of very important details better than I could.

So, Arcade Spirits. Here we are, after all this, with what is... *eyes calendar* probably the last game in Game Year 2019 unless some 15-minute thing sneaks in. Xyzzy pushed this. Was it worth it? Did it live up to her hype?

Yes. Absolutely, emphatically yes. Honestly, her getting me to play this was a favor almost as big as the CD-i thing.

It is the semi-future year 20XX, and you are a mess. Advanced holographic life coach cell phone apps exist, but so does the same old human condition of day jobs and rent payments grinding you down. You're a hard-luck sort whose family has always had to do what they could to get by, such that you refer to it as a "family curse" in all seriousness as you go from uninspiring minimum wage gig to uninspiring minimum wage gig. You can't have nice things. If you do, that's just the universe taunting you and getting your hopes up just to dash them later. Having expectations only hurts you. You're here to settle. It's what you've always done, what your parents have always done.

Depressed and between jobs (again), you find yourself in your latest attempt: a small local mom-and-pop arcade, itself struggling to keep afloat. In this game's universe, the game crash of 1983 never happened, and arcades have continued to be a major industry. Working in an arcade is hideously risky, not because arcades are dead, but because they're so alive that the industry is fiercely competitive and cutthroat. The game itself compares arcades to the restaurant industry, where everyone wants to be a world-famous five-star establishment but getting off the ground is an entirely different story. This is Ratatouille but with video games, up to and including an Anton Ego-like Evil All-Powerful Critic who becomes a problem later on.

This is a story about hopes and dreams, about when to have them and when to settle, about what's worth fighting for. It's about getting by versus seeking fulfillment and happiness. The arcade is more than a job; it's a family, and everyone there is there because they truly believe in something. What about you?

Unique to the VN genre, Arcade Spirits doesn't force you into routes or romance options. You can certainly date your choice of supporting cast in this game, or you can not do that--Just Friends (and Family) is valid, too. You're here to help out at the arcade, after all. You can do your job, or you can try to find your "why" and/or possibly find love along the way. You can forge your personality with responses ranging from "hot-blooded Super Robot Wars protagonist" to "Care Bear" to "Dad-joking goofball" to "Vulcan", and attract or repel other personality types accordingly. What kind of person are you and what do you want out of this story? What kind of person are you and what do you want out of your life? There are no wrong answers, just risks and rewards to consider.

And boy oh boy, do the risks hurt. The thing about depression is that sometimes it's a protective shell because opening your heart hurts. Getting your hopes up hurts. This game can easily bring you to tears, both the "happy moving" kind and the "everything comes crashing down" kind. (Heck, the one time I legitimately cried was a happy moving regroup-and-rebuild scene after everything came crashing down.) But with that pain comes... well, life. That "why" you were looking for, and maybe (hopefully?) an end to the family curse.

Side note: This game uses one set of androgynous-looking player character artwork plus your choice of He/She/They pronouns, rather than attempting to draw distinctly "male" or "female" player character bodies. You have options for hair color, skin tone, etc. but you will end up with either a somewhat feminine-looking man, a somewhat masculine-looking woman, or the best non-binary #bodygoals representation ever. It may take a bit of getting used to at first, but it should be fine once you adjust. Honestly, if you're the type of person for whom that sort of concession is a serious objection, then there's a good chance this game isn't for you anyway.
kjorteo: Glitched screenshot from Pokémon Yellow, of Pikachu's portrait with scrambled graphics. (Pikachu: Glitch)
2019-11-10 06:48 pm

COMPLETE: Farnham Fables episode 4: Little Dog Dreams

This write-up assumes that you've read my take on episode 3, because there's a lot of "Okay but I can explain" in this series and I already explained last time. *sage nod*

Also, for the sake of full disclosure: Not only did I get a free copy of this game from knowing the author, but I also contributed to it during development. The author wanted one area to be a graphical recreation of ZZT, and he thought it would be a funny gag to have every room of this ZZT area look like poorly drawn My First ZZT Board (By Billy, Age 6) fodder except for one room that's inexplicably gorgeous with full STK graphics and shading and everything. He commissioned me to make the "good" ZZT room. It was a bit of an unusual task for me; even though I am a ZZTer, art boards and graphics/visuals were never really my strongest suit. I considered myself more of an engine person, you know? Still, I'd like to think or at least hope that my contribution turned out all right. And hey, I was paid very well for this and it gave me a chance to slip a graphical Easter egg into the scenery, so why not?

Anyway! Farnham Fables continues to be a thing. Not on Steam yet (the author didn't like the way it handled DLC for future episodes that aren't done yet, so that's coming later) but the itch.io collection is still in full swing.

As before, this is a point-and-click adventure with enjoyable gameplay and sweet, low-tension plots, if you can get past some questionable content. This one has the least stakes of any of them so far: the plot as a whole is nothing more than "one night, Theresa has a weird dream." What this means in practice is wandering around the land of bizarre dream logic solving puzzles to uncover the six rainbow keys that lead to the endgame.

The setting is pure dream nonsense because the player character is in an actual dream, which means the author has an excuse to just throw in whatever he finds funny. The end result is a bit hit or miss, but I don't feel like I have room to say anything here because undoubtedly my hits were other people's misses, and vice versa. Personally, I loved the whole ZZT area, "Mount Sierra" was great as well, and the visual novel parody had some lines that definitely got a laugh out of me. Maybe other people out there wouldn't get the same kick out of those that I did (let's face it; ZZT is a deep cut,) yet they find clown butts funnier than I do. Who knows? This game has a lot of monkeycheese, and maybe at least a handful of it might be to your tastes.

And on a less comfortable note... (cw: lots of musing about works with fictional children in questionable, risque, or lewd situations) )

By Farnham standards, this game is a massive leap both in size/scope and difficulty compared to the rest of the series. I actually got lost at first and stuck a couple times toward the end of this one, neither of which has happened before. I did get frustrated at one or two specific puzzles that I felt were poorly clued. However, all the rest were fine and even rewarding. Like any good adventure game, it feels good to solve a puzzle and it feels like an accomplishment to reach the ending, and this game captures those feelings brilliantly. The land is fun to explore, and the visuals are among the best the Farnham Fables series has yet produced. Areas that recreate old game references (ZZT, "Mount Sierra") use perfect authentic style that really shows just how much care and dedication the author put into this. Things like the sci-fi graphic novel world are just plain pretty, both the landscape and its inhabitants.

Overall, I feel... mixed isn't even the right word for this, because I did enjoy it overall. It's just a lot to take in, you know? Like, this was the most Farnham Fables Farnham Fables game I've ever played. It's Farnham Fables but everything is bigger and more. The good and bad points are magnified. This is concentrated Farnham Fables. There is more Farnham Fables per Farnham Fables than every previous game in the series combined. Does any of this make sense? I don't really know how else to explain it.

I will say that I had fun with this overall, and I'm very much looking forward to episode 5.
kjorteo: A 16-bit pixel-style icon of (clockwise from the bottom/6:00 position) Celine, Fang, Sara, Ardei, and Kurt.  The assets are from their Twitch show, Warm Fuzzy Game Room. (Default)
2019-11-03 04:01 pm

Final IFComp scores 2019

Five games have been vanquished, and so IFComp 2019 comes to a close. All that remains is to give them number scores, provide some closing thoughts about IFComp itself this year, and submit everything. We still have a couple weeks to play an extra game or two for extra credit, but I'm confident calling this this "Final IFComp scores 2019" post because if we play more, I'll just go back and edit them into this one.

Please refer back to last year's scores to put this year's in perspective. I stand by almost all of them except that, in hindsight and as they've aged and such, I wish to retroactively bump Animalia up from a 9 to a perfect 10. Otherwise, I feel comfortable putting all of those against these.

Thus, in the context of how everything compares to last year and to the overall judging guidelines, I am scoring this year's games as follows:

Pas De Deux by Linus Åkesson: 8
(LATE EXTRA CREDIT EDIT) Out by Viktor Sobol: 6
Skies Above by Arthur DiBianca: 6
Remedial Witchcraft by dgtziea: 5
Abandon Them by Alan Beyersdorf: 4
The Milgram Parable by Peter Eastman: 3

This means that Pas De Deux is about on the same level as Re: Dragon and just barely shy of Basilica de Sangre, Skies Above is about on the same level as that stealth parody dumb-on-purpose edutainment game I embarrassingly fell for and thought was real and earnestly defended anyway, my least favorite game of last year matches up with Abandon Them this year, and The Milgram Parable is (barely, by one point) the new official worst IFComp game I have ever played.

Honestly, all of these factoids scan. So yeah. Yeah, that sounds about right.

So.

IFComp.

Whew.

This year was... a bit draining, on all of us. Last year, [personal profile] xyzzysqrl, [personal profile] swordianmaster, and Sara and I all got through at least five each, and we all had at least a fair amount of enthusiasm for the better ones in our respective piles. Animalia was a genuine delight, but honestly, Instruction Set was the only game from last year I didn't enjoy overall (and even that was an "I like the idea" effort weighed down by flaws.) IFComp was fun and we were greatly looking forward to having more fun this year.

This year was a lot darker. Real life happened and knocked Xyzzy and Sword out of the competition almost entirely (Xyzzy did play one game) and we got some really downbeat draws to start off our end. I started including the chatlogs as we were browsing for our final three to show off the copies of some of the ones we rejected, and while I definitely recall being choosy last year as well, I don't remember there being this much of a sense of "Surely there must be something good in here that can save IFComp."

Fortunately, our increasing choosiness did seem to pay off, and the games did get better as we persevered. In fact, the scores versus the chronological sequence in which we played the original five (3, 4, 5, 6, 8) are in eerily perfect order. Pas De Deux (and later Out in the extra credit round) did save IFComp, and Skies Above and Remedial Witchcraft were at least okay to decent.

So... I don't know. I guess there was a miasma this year after all. Clan Sugardoom has depression, IFComp has depression, maybe it's a miracle that at least one (or two, hi Sara) of us were able to pull even this much good out of it. But with a last second buzzer-beater of a final pull, I do consider this to have been a worthwhile thing to do and an enjoyable experience overall, and I do still look forward to doing this again.

(And, of course, you the reader are welcome to join in as well, if you'd like! Play at least five IF games, do writeups, submit scores, help make Dreamwidth the somehow active mutual gameblogging circle it has become.)

IF is good. IFComp 2019 may or may not be, but I think that's the "2019" at fault more than the "IFComp." Huge thanks to Xyzzy for getting us into this, as always. See you in IFComp 2020! Hopefully everyone is okay by then.
kjorteo: Screenshot of Doomsday Warrior with a portrait of Amon, a fighter in ostentatious heavy metal attire. (Heavy Metal King)
2019-11-03 03:09 pm

COMPLETE: Pas De Deux

IFComp continues.

This is our fifth IFComp game, so unless we feel like hitting any small nibbly ones for fun and extra credit, this satisfies the minimum for IFComp this year! More on how this year's batch turned out overall in the separate post with the number scores, to be done separately. For now, the obligatory log of browsing that led up to this selection and actual review.

Celine & Sara Kalante, [25.10.19 00:41]
" The brave companions enter the old wizard's tomb in search of wealth and adventure. Many have done so before but no-one has ever returned. Direct barbarian, cleric, mage and thief towards great wealth and survival of the trials of Arram's tomb.

Content warning: Contains some strong language and graphic violence."


Celine & Sara Kalante, [25.10.19 00:41]
is this... is this a Fighting Fantasy book

Celine & Sara Kalante, [25.10.19 00:41]
did someone submit a MUD to IFComp

[Cue very long with [personal profile] xyzzysqrl over how apparently, yes, this is a thing in IF! The original Zork had combat, it turns out. I never got far enough in that game to know that. Anyway, I learned something today, but this isn't our genre.]

Celine & Sara Kalante, [25.10.19 00:51]
" In the future, robots cater to man’s every want and need. That is, unless you’re a lowly line cook like Irene Turnsole. After Irene travels to her late father’s home, she discovers that her sister has gone missing and nobody is coming to help find her. Turnsole suspects the cultists of The Light of the Future, her own father’s extreme futurist corporation, but proving it isn’t going to be so easy. Irene soon discovers she has just two days to track her sister down before the cultists perform an ominous-sounding ritual. To solve the mystery, Irene must dig into the secrets of her father’s corporation, a world on the edge of the Singularity, and her family's own painful past – all before precious time runs out.

Cyberpunk noir mystery • Two hours • Choice-based • Web-based "


Celine & Sara Kalante, [25.10.19 00:51]
Mmmmmhhh probably good but long and kind of bleak, sorry.

Celine & Sara Kalante, [25.10.19 00:52]
" An interactive drama in the traditions of Soviet fiction about choosing a profession.

Mother and her teenage son live on the edge of the world amid hot springs, steam, mountains, five-story houses and rusty freight robots. Their present is routine. Their future is under the strict control of Progress-program. Which also means routine.

Making their choice they seem to be on the horns of a dilemma. But it may also be a rare chance to escape the dull grey surrounding them.

If they could only find a way to use it.

Сoming-of-age, science fiction, everyday life • Half an hour • Choice-based • Web-based "


Celine & Sara Kalante, [25.10.19 00:53]
Celine: ... Look, I'm not against bleak games? I mean, I have an entire category for Crying Bulbasaur. I love Freebird to an almost evangelical degree. I did not suddenly become allergic to this. I just... I think IFComp has depression.

Celine & Sara Kalante, [25.10.19 00:53]
And... I dunno, I guess our first two IFComps this year burnt us out.

Celine & Sara Kalante, [25.10.19 00:54]
" Striding into the spotlight, you smile as you look out over the crowd. It's a good turnout tonight. Now it is up to the Bournebrook Rill Community Orchestra and you, maestro Nevada Elmsbee, to deliver a spectacular performance.

Keep an eye on your score—or don't!—in this multi-layered parser/choice hybrid. Casually explore the interactive scene, or tackle the full puzzle lurking underneath to reach the best ending. Available for the web (recommended) and as a traditional Z-machine story file.

An hour and a half • Parser-based • Z-code (See guide) • Download includes additional content "


Celine & Sara Kalante, [25.10.19 00:54]
Celine: God if this were shorter I would be all over it. This sounds GOOD. Like, you have my attention.

Celine & Sara Kalante, [25.10.19 00:54]
Even at an hour and a half, I'm strongly considering.

---

And then we sat on that for a while and then decided, yeah, you know what, sure. This looks good. And so, we conclude this year's IFComp (maybe? Unless extra credit?) with Pas De Deux by Linus Åkesson.

It was really good and I'm glad the time to complete didn't scare us off. Emphatically worth it and highly recommended.

Read more... )
kjorteo: Glitched screenshot from Pokémon Yellow, of Pikachu's portrait with scrambled graphics. (Pikachu: Glitch)
2019-10-24 10:45 pm

ABANDONED: Skies Above

IFComp continues.

Celine & Sara Kalante, [21.10.19 22:36]
" Your plan for a peaceful day out comes to a halt when you see a person selling cats on the pavement. The cats look sick and require immediate veterinarian help! It’s all legal, but it’s also wrong. You must find a way to save the cats.

The game offers three characters to choose from and a total set of 10 endings.

Content warning: Implied animal abuse (nothing explicit); environmental damage

15 minutes or less • Choice-based • Web-based "


JESUS. No.

Celine & Sara Kalante, [21.10.19 22:40]
" Springtime, 1993. Prom night. A lonely road on the way to the big dance. This should be a magical evening, but your date suddenly seems distant and withdrawn. Is it something you said? Or perhaps something more sinister is going on...

Horror • An hour and a half • Parser-based • Glulx (See guide) "


Looking at the banner, this is very obviously a werewolf story. Looking at the "Horror" tag, this is probably not played for "anyway your boyfriend is fuzzy now and that's hot." She should not click the IF game, run away run away run away, full moon is on the sky and we've other games we should play

Celine & Sara Kalante, [21.10.19 22:41]
" Years ago, orphan Henry Smyth was saved off the streets when he was adopted by Katherine Kellner - only to run away a few years later. Now, he’s finally made a decent life for himself. His world is turned upside down when he finds out that Kellner has been arrested on the charge of being a pedophile. This knowledge brings impulsive decisions and repressed memories along with it.

Play as Henry as he struggles to make sense of his past and come to terms with it. Your decisions throughout the story affect Henry’s confidence and morality – choose wisely.

Content warning: This game is intended for mature audiences only. Contains: strong language, violence, mention of child abuse and suicide.

Drama • Half an hour • Choice-based • Web-based "


See if you can spot the exact word where I noped out of this one.

Celine & Sara Kalante, [21.10.19 22:43]
" Play minigames to get your airship flying, tour the skies, and see what mischief is going on up there.

Parser-based • Glulx (See guide) "


There we go. Yes good we'll take it.

And so, IFComp 2019 pick number four is "Skies Above" by Arthur DiBianca. It's the first-ever IFComp game I wrote off without actually finishing it, yet it still somehow managed to be my favorite one of this year so far.

Away we go! )
kjorteo: A screenshot of Magicant, from the SNES game EarthBound. (Magicant)
2019-10-21 03:15 pm

COMPLETE: Remedial Witchcraft

IFComp continues.

After two depressing duds and a general worry that IFComp might just be cursed this year, I was extra picky with choosing the next one to play because I specifically wanted something good and cute to save us. In fact, here's the exact IM quote as I was copy/pasting descriptions of a few possibilities we scrolled through before settling on this one:

---

Celine & Sara Kalante, [20.10.19 21:45]
Let's see what IFComp has in store...

"There's a werewolf loose on the spaceship HMCS Plagoo!"

... Hmm. If this were our first pull, you have my attention enough to try it. I may come back for it. (Enceladus, if I need to bookmark the name/look it up later.) I feel like they're probably going to go the "... and that's a BAD thing" route, though, and mmmmaybe not if we're specifically looking for a good uplifting pull to snap the streak. Sorry, probably fine game, bad timing.

"Inspired by 1950s London true crime cases, De Novo is set during an era where capital punishment is still in practice, players are given the power to decide fate on who lives and who dies."

Again, probably interesting but I want to smile, IFComp. You remember smiles?

"Be Jon Doe, secret agent at MI5, and solve the mystery about the death of scientist Monsieur Edulard and his latest world-changing invention. A story with thrilling women, sinister villains and cutting-edge tech gimmicks. Be a hero, save the world, get the girl!"

Ehhh not my genre anyway, mood or not.

"You have one job: Correct the errors in the System code. It's menial work, but it pays the bills. Only, maybe you'd rather not... What are you? Just a CodeMonkey? Perhaps you could join the Resistance, or at least get an early vacation with a special friend... Warning: No parsers, no links. In this story, you'll be monkeying with the code!"

*Inhale* Again, probably clever but I've had my fill of clever games for now.

"A twist on a sleepy old classic."

Yeah so was Abandon Them.

"Lina is a first year student studying magic. Lina isn't doing very well at her classes. Lina is apprenticing for the Witch of Howling Woods because no one else would take her.

"Tonight, Lina has messed up (she contends some blame should go to her master for giving unclear instructions). Now Lina needs to figure out what all the magical items (A wavering wand? An everfire? A *gasp* cauldron?) in her master's house do and use them all to fix her mistake, before she gets found out!

"(Remedial Witchcraft is a light, puzzle-oriented parser game.)"


There we go. An hour and a half, hmm? ... Ehhhh yeah sure okay.

---

There we go, indeed. So, for our third draw this year, the woodlings officially bumped the machine and kept rerolling until we selected "Remedial Witchcraft" by dgtziea. Was it able to save IFComp? Mmmh...

TL;DR: It wasn't bad I guess. I did enjoy it overall but was very frustrated at parts. Unmarked puzzle spoilers under the cut because I really want to talk about the gameplay design on this one, hopefully with an IF veteran who can confirm whether my expectations were off or if these complaints sound valid to them.

Snippety! )
kjorteo: Confused Bulbasaur portrait from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. (Bulbasaur: Confused)
2019-10-20 04:47 pm

COMPLETE: Vice: Project Doom

I have a Switch Online subscription and this was in their NES library. I remember Nintendo Power made it look really cool back when I was a child, but I never actually got to play it, and I've kind of always been curious.

So, how does actually playing an Aicom game from 1991 hold up to a lifetime of Nintendo Power hype, nostalgia, and curiosity?

Well.... )
kjorteo: Sprite of the dead "boss" and "Sorry, I'm Dead" speech balloon from Monster Party. (Sorry - I'm dead.)
2019-10-13 06:18 pm

ABANDONED: Downwell

There was a limited time thing where this game was 100% free on the Play store, so I grabbed it because literally why not. "Because it's a mobile port and those never have playable controls" is why not, of course, but it was free and shut up.

Anyway, Downwell is a procedurally-generated pixel action game about trying to make it as far as you can before you die. There are powerups to be earned between levels and in stores, but you start from scratch with every new run.

I tried and kind of bounced off of The Binding of Isaac years ago because this particular formula isn't really to my tastes. In BoI's case, I guess I was expecting a game with checkpoints or saveable progress that could eventually be beaten, and the "do a fresh random run and get as far as you can" approach makes it hard to feel like I'm actually accomplishing anything. This isn't to say these sorts of games are bad or that it's a failing with them; rather, I think the lesson here is just that Roguelikes are not my genre.

So it is with Downwell, which I tried a few times and then got frustrated with the controls, because of course I did, it's a goddamn mobile port. However, unlike games that I might still be interested in if they were presented in a more playable format (I recently re-purchased Anodyne on Switch; we'll see how that goes if I ever get around to it someday) I just... really didn't care about this one enough to want to bother reuniting with it elsewhere. Sorry.
kjorteo: Sad Bulbasaur portrait from Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. (Bulbasaur: Sad)
2019-10-13 05:44 pm

COMPLETE: Abandon Them

IFComp continues.

Full disclosure: I slept very poorly due to absolutely gutting bad dreams last night, and have been groggy and sluggish all day. It's almost dinnertime and I feel like I haven't even woken up and started the day yet, let alone... like... done anything. Xyzzy seems to be a bit out of sorts too, though, so who knows. Maybe there's a kind of general miasma going around my friend circle lately. Or maybe IFComp is just cursed with all-consuming depression this year, since this is my second downer game in a row.

I will try my best to set general feelings of blurf aside and judge this game on its actual merits, because I tend to just copy/paste these reviews into IFComp's actual score submission with minor edits as necessary, and "I'm a mess today so I'm going to dock points because I'm just not feeling this one" isn't exactly fair to the author.

Anyway. Next up we have Abandon Them by Alan Beyersdorf. Its copy:

"What exactly happened during the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel? How do we separate the fantasy of the folklore from the realities of starvation and abandonment?

"While often viewed as a fantasy story, my intention was to view this story from a psychological perspective.

"If you were a character in their story, what sorts of choices would you make?"


Spoiler cut I guess, though it's one of those less-than-fifteen-minute games and it's very railroaded, so there's almost nothing here to spoil. )
kjorteo: Sprite of the dead "boss" and "Sorry, I'm Dead" speech balloon from Monster Party. (Sorry - I'm dead.)
2019-10-08 08:25 pm

COMPLETE: The Milgram Parable

Oops, IFComp is on again and I accidentally fell in.

One month, at least five IF games judged and scored for their contest. Can be more--I ended up doing six last year, because even though I'd had my five all done and turned in, I just couldn't not play Animalia. My strategy last year was a semi-random yet still interest-based selection method where I'd randomly shuffle the list, then scroll down and browse the randomly shuffled list until I saw the first one that looked like something I actually wanted to play. (There are 80+ games here and they only want you to judge 5 or more; life is too short to make yourself stick to something you hate just because the RNG picked it first.) It was a good experience, and I've been looking forward to doing it again, so this year I think we'll employ the same strategy.

Anyway, I swear I was just loading the ballot page and testing the random button to see if it still worked, with intention to actually dig into these later, but then I saw one and was like "... these are randomized. If I don't play this one right now, how am I going to find it again next time?" So, with a heavy sigh, I had no choice but to concede that I'd blundered my way into I guess we're starting IFComp now. Damn it.

Speaking of having no choice, first up is The Milgram Parable by Peter Eastman. Named after the infamous Milgram experiment, this is a game about doing exactly what you are told without question or hesitation, with a content warning that states: "Includes violence, both physical and emotional. This story challenges you to confront difficult facts about yourself." So, you know, we're off to an incredibly cheery and uplifting start.

Open discussion of spoilers within if you want to try this one -I guess- but TL;DR is it's just not a good game, so you're not really missing anything if you spoil it instead. )
kjorteo: A pixel style icon of a nude Celine looking very anxious and worried. (Celine: Anxiety)
2019-09-28 06:56 pm

COMPLETE: Adventures With Anxiety

Adventures With Anxiety is a free web game, mostly VN-ish by gameplay (pick the dialogue options,) and both incredibly Too Real and... actually really theraputic and helpful.

You are The Anxiety, here represented by a quite frankly adorable wolf. Your job is to protect your human from DANGER such as eating unhealthy foods, going outside, or not being productive enough in the eyes of society.

Full disclosure: I myself have pretty bad anxiety, and even had regular panic attacks for basically no reason (my body just physically decided it was panic attack o'clock) for a while there, until I got some therapy which... well, I don't get panic attacks anymore. I still have anxiety, but it's manageable. I have to refrain from a lot of things. (The literal first thing my therapist told me was to get the fuck off Twitter, for example.) If you have a food allergy, so you avoid the food you're allergic to, and then you're fine, it's not like you're cured because you'd still have an allergic reaction if you ate it again, you know? But you're okay as long as you don't, so... my anxiety is manageable now, is what I'm saying, and that's probably the best one could hope for.

This game... having been through the panic attacks and the therapy and all, I can vouch that it's scarily accurate, both in how having anxiety feels and the actual best way to cope with it if you have it. I went in with what my therapist told me and it's exactly what you're supposed to do here, too. This game reduces anxiety into a cute fluffy metaphor, which is incredibly helpful on two layers. It serves as something others can understand to know what it's like, and it helps sufferers themselves put their feelings into perspective and teach some healthy ways to tame that wolf.

This is highly recommended. It's free and half an hour long so it's in the "why not" pile. It's cute and adorable, educational and informative, and has a sweet and heartfelt emotional message to wrap the whole thing off. It pretty much did the Toy Story 3 thing of making me cry at the end and then whiplashing into a fun dance party credit sequence that brought me right back up again. A+ please check this out.



Sara adds: ... Not much, actually; Celine basically said it all. But just... yeah. I agree strongly enough that I wanted to go on record that I said it too. This is almost exactly what Celine goes through, except hers is a Totodile instead of a wolf. It's actually kind of eerie how spot-on this game gets it. This game is definitely an experience worth having and sharing with people who've had it.