A lot of time spent with a couple of decent games, and a little time spent with a few mediocre ones.
I've kept playing The Tartarus Key for an hour or so, here and there. I'm really enjoying its approach to horror gameplay, which has zero combat and is focused mostly on puzzles in a spooky environment. And while the writing isn't incredible and occasionally "cringe", I am invested in the story and the cast of characters. There are occasional moments of tension where characters are put in mortal danger, solved through puzzles, and these are surprisingly good tense (and failable with story consequences, but without game over). A really excellent game so far, I'll definitely see this one to completion.
Clickolding is the latest Strange Scaffold game. The game is about 40 minutes long, and is about clicking a counter for a man who is paying for your time. It is a game for sick fucks (complimentary), and the closest experience in a game that I can remember was playing The Tearoom (A Robert Yang game about sucking off guns) in a side room at PAX once. Unfortunately I ran into a glitch that prevented the post-credits ending from working properly, but having seen that I much preferred the version I had (which was different in additional ways due to the same glitch.)
I've put about 5 hours into Dungeons of Hinterberg since its release. The premise of the game is that there's a resort town in the Austrian mountains where the draw is not ski-slopes, but rather action RPG dungeons. Each day in the game starts with you exploring a mountain region in the day, socialising in the village in the evening, and doing optional pre-sleep activities at night (disabled for the first week because you've "only just arrived" to your alpine vacation).
The first thing you do in Dungeons of Hinterberg is arrive at the hotel, and if you deviate at all from the path to the front door the game slowly turns you around and walks you back while telling you "I SHOULD CHECK IN TO MY HOTEL!" Which sets the tone for the rest of the game. It's a game prepared to throw everything interesting away to prevent even the slightest chance that the player might play it wrong. It's not in any way a "bad" game, The combat is fine (albeit with a tendency to spawn combat arenas in positions where the player is looking at a wall); The single non-tutorial evening social activity I've done shows the potential for it to be OK; The games story occasionally seems interesting; And the mountain tops and dungeons themselves are quite unique and varied. But it's very much a game that feels like it sees the opportunity to be great and says "no thank you!"
I played a few more RAMP2024 maps. But I think I'll wait for the final release version to play more.
Below is what I shall call the cavalcade of irritation. Games that rubbed me the wrong way or that I didn't get at all:
Tactical Nexus is a game that seems indecipherable, but has a following and a large amount of expansion packs. The base game was recently made free. I can confirm that the interface is indecipherable, but there's a game underneath that seems similar to Desktop Dungeons.
The Indigo Parallel is a game that has been on my radar for a while. It's a first person exploration game about relationships, or something weird. It has no crosshair, and despite having no combat, it does need to be "aimed" for interactions. I'd like to try it again when I'm in a better headspace, but it made me feel unwell as is.
Card Survival: Tropical Island is a survival game using (deck-building?) card games. It was an impulse purchase that seemed interesting at the time. It very well could be, but there's a lot of cards and not much screenspace. There are also at least four different ways that "use item a with item b" happens, and there's no consistency about which one is used for what.
Be My Horde is a vampire survivor clone with a tall necromancer lady. I found the controls frustrating, and more often than not they were irrelevant as enemies followed along at exactly my pace and direction. The progression of this game is basically: you can't possibly fail until you hit a wall where you can't possibly win against an unkillable enemy. Then you unlock the ability to kill them and repeat.
All Games Played
- Star of Providence: Great
- RAMP2024: GREAT (Notable)
- Cosmic Collapse: Good
- The Tartarus Key: Great
- Clickolding: Great
- Dungeons of Hinterberg: Good
- Tactical Nexus: OK
- The Indigo Parallel: OK
- Card Survival - Tropical Island: OK
- Be My Horde: Disappointing
ADDENDUM 1 - Two Sentences on Each RAMP 2024 Map I played (Part 3)
Notes: I played these maps with the intent of completing the metagame quest and didn't seek any out specifically. Additionally I made liberal use of the Changemap command to skip anything if I got too stuck or a level broke. All these maps are good to great.
map77 - Evil Demonic Super Toys
You fight miniature toy versions of the doom enemies and when you escape that there's a regular slaughter map on top of that. Seems doable if you're the sort of person to plug away at a single map for an age.
map298 - Boxes
An ever expanding grid of box shaped rooms, with commensurate expanding arsenal and army of enemies. Despite being a tad cramped, and finding the crushers "a bit much", I found this one quite a rewarding challenge for such a simple idea.
map235 - untitled temple of the spider map
A crawl through dark caves, both natural and artificial, with a good atmosphere, though a bit cramped at times. I really liked the opening lava abyss room aesthetically, but it was a bit awkward to play (though it did reward exploration).