Although I've started tinkering with a new project. This was mostly just another lazy week of trying out some new games in my spare time. Unfortunately it was a week with a lot of unsatisfactory backlog clearing, and revisiting of games I'd previously bounced off of.
Apparently some time in the early 2000's there was a free clone of Boulder dash called RoX that completely passed me by. OxRox is a remake of that game, which is free on Steam. I wouldn't recommend it unless you wish the original Boulder Dash was too fast, controlled too well, and behaved too consistently. I looked up video of the original RoX and, while it's not Boulder Dash, it's not nearly as awkward to control as OxRox is. I'm not sure what went wrong here.
Tiny Rogues is closest to a dual-joystick shooter, with a significant influence from the vampire survivors and roguelike-like-likes of the world. It's currently in early access, and still seems to be quite early. You run around top-down dungeons killing enemies, collecting items, powering up, etc. The game is fun enough but I ran into a lot of annoyances along the way. As an example, there's a robust and/or overly complex inventory with a quick select bar for weapons AND a weapon swap button, these systems are incompatible and the swapped-from weapon can't be on the quick select bar. I also had issues restarting the tutorial after pausing halfway to rebind. There's also a lot of needless gating of content as well, such as an overly intimidating (obviously mandatory) meta-progression skill tree, but the potentially interesting "quest" system seems to jumps immediately from "play one level" to "finish the game". There's the core of a good game there and I'll be interested watch the game develop, but I probably won't revisit it until it's finished.
I grabbed A-Star Theft in the Steam sale. It's a top down stealth(?) combat game that seems like a slower paced version of Hotline Miami, with a bit more emphasis on staying hidden. I've only played a small amount so far, but it seems pretty neat in some ways. Some of the actions seem a tad clunky and cumbersome, but there wasn't much punishment for losing stealth. It's not frustrating, but I'm not sure if that's a winning combo.
Last Stand Delivery is a sokoban variant, with the addition of Desktop Dungeons' puzzle RPG combat. Set in a mythical sanitarium, you have to push incapacitated warriors and demons into each other so that they mutually annihilate each other. It's a really neat variant on a theme that could be done to death. That said, I'm not that far into the game and already they've piles on so many mechanics to the combat that I've lost track.
I returned to Rymdkapsel briefly for the first time in most of a decade. It's a slow, stylised base builder with the added gimmick that you have to build in tetrominoes. After a bit of replaying I'd forgotten why I disliked it initially, then I remembered how inordinately slow it is. In the tutorial, it's actually possible to set up a game over several minutes in advance if you take any initiative before an unexpected "build your defenses and start combat" tutorial, due to a lack of resources.
Cosmic Collapse is another small fun Apskeppet Pico-8 game. This is a Suika Game variant where you drop planets instead of fruit. It's exactly what it seems, though friction and gravity are lower (not zero), and probably better than the original.
I finally finished a run of Star of Providence. It's still a fantastic game. That said, I was getting frustrated in the late game taking damage on a lot of the inconsistent variations in the game, (eg CELEBRATORY "THE THREAD IS OVER" EXPLOSIONS upon enemy death vs DEADLY DEBRIS EXPLOSIONS upon enemy death. or one-pixel SHMUP hitboxes vs seemingly much large/pixel perfect(?) hitboxes.) It was also a bit annoying to suddenly have several interesting features suddenly unlock the ability to unlock the ability to maybe get in a run only after I finished the game.
Wonderputt Forever is an interesting set of animations and pop-artwork. Unfortunately they decided it needed to be attached to a golf game. At one point a tutorial advised me to use a button that isn't in the game. It has a similar energy as Three Fields constant "Teehee, this is a golf game for people that don't know golf!" refrain around the incoherent Dangerous Golf.
I started on The Tartarus Key. A first person puzzle game about waking up in a haunted puzzle mansion beset by Playstation 1 texture warping. It's very decent so far, with a fun plot and (near constant) text conversations between the protagonists. I'm definitely looking forward to playing more.
I also went back to Umurangi Generation after bouncing off it violently the first time. I think I'll persist with it this time, but only to prove a point. The inordinately long multi-page text tutorial is the most effective way to ensure the player absorbs nothing. And for a game that has a chilled out vibe, it's one of the most frustrating to control and meet the required goals. There's only so many times you can fail to meet a goal, only to realise the solution was that you had to be so close that the item was an out of focus blur.
I also continued to play more RAMP2024 maps, and play the rest of Anthology of the Killer. I'll write more on them in an addendum again. But suffice to say Anthology of the Killer more than lives up to its reputation, and this specific package adds a nice little bonus to the game collection.
All Games Played
- Leaf's Odyssey: Great
- Star of Providence: Great
- RAMP2024: GREAT (Notable)
- Anthology of the Killer: GREAT (Notable)
- OxRox: Disappointing
- Tiny Rogues: OK
- A-Star Theft: Good
- Last Stand Delivery: Good
- Rymdkapsel: Disappointing
- Cosmic Collapse: Good
- Wonderputt Forever: Disappointing
- The Tartarus Key: Good
- Umurangi Generation: OK