Embedded Files
This is each review I've written for DigiPen student games on Steam. My goal is to journal my particular experience, then divulge on genre analysis through the use of wild ideas for future projects and famous game designs to cite. I hope that with my writing, the developers are able to reflect on what made their game fun and what could have made it more fun. Use the picker wheel for a random game or make a tier list of your favorites!
I anticipated playing this one even without a review someday, just as I feel about Nightreign and Shadow of the Erdtree while having yet to play either. I'm fairly out of practice, but the early designs of levels felt like a polished and considered imitation of the Undead Burg that flows really nicely. I have somewhat mixed feelings about the usage of one-time enemies blocking checkpoints; it's a nice shorthand for a "boss" arc in the design, but it's consequence weighed against its novelty is a heavily out of balance for initiating a return to the "boss." The final boss has a serviceable Smelter Demon phase that pays out in this regard, but due to certain bugs with my death markers, as well as my own admittedly faltering controller, Nafaset seemed to have the ability to take away my ability to move, attack, or dodge, and sometimes all three at once.
The game is exactly as much of the kind of game it could be, which is a more pretentious way of saying what everyone else does in the reviews. Over the years I've become somewhat oversensitive for the small Land game elements like a zone title card, which doesn't appear for the Aqueduct of Purple Goo despite being one of the more striking environmental contrasts. Unfortunately the design of level encounters also somewhat deteriorates at this point, but that could be described as almost inherent to the checkpoint mechanic.
Demon's Souls is the most brutal with the "runback" mech, since the philosophy scaled more towards providing shortcuts or treating the entire trail to the boss as part and parcel with reaching the next checkpoint, i.e. healing resources did not necessarily correlate to a tangible buffer for success apart from any other particular resource that the game expected of you. For a scope that is unable to accommodate the complexity of systems in From Software games, it seems prudent to focus that scope toward more simple & direct styles like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, where combat execution doesn't have a character statistic; it's simply a consequence of whether or not the enemy is hitting you or in range of being hit.
9/27/2025 - Infiltrate & Extract
Nerve Mazer
C for Conjunction Without Distinction
I had to assert one of my rules to myself for another playthrough once I unlocked first-person mode. Already by then I was displeased with the particulars of what I experienced from a fixed point of view, but I would resolve myself to at least complete this mode, as it does seem to be the feature that sets it apart as a whole experience. Unfortunately the first person mode detracts further, as the camera seems to have been perched directly onto the model's head, giving it an uncomfortable jitter and sway even when standing still. I'll have to refrain from subjecting myself to "Sudden Death" mode.
The game is an uncomplicated Nerve maze trailer fodder; the level design may have been the focus, but it feels divorced from every other element; ultimately game design is a sum of parts that compliment each other, and a level's design can only be as satisfying as it is to move through it.
Compared to Ransack Raccoon's identical structure, it has the feeling of trying to be something that it isn't, including extra game modes that add up to very little. Certain designs feel polished and tuned, but to such a slow pace that it pushed the limit of my fun grade. Solo projects like Aftermoor or Beach Island Deluxe display a more unified theory of design, and intricacy in level design emerges out of their character design and freedom of movement.
I feel a bit embarrassed to have died as much as I did in overestimating how fast I could go, both in the sense of reviews and the games. I found myself running too quickly off a ledge expecting a coyote jump and falling directly into six inch spike pits, and the maneuver for jumping into a wall rather than onto one was quite tricky due to the different sliding speeds in either case. The detail of statistics at the ending reflects the attention to those details broadly, as an explicit motivation to observe and internalize how they work for a better score.
The game is a Nerve based jaunt through a spiky cave, with as many platforms as necessary to take the name of "platformer." Sarcasm aside- although the central mechanic lies rather flatly, it's clear that polish and presentation took precedence over game design and perhaps to a much more intentional and commendable degree than the curriculum's mandate. Placing an abundance of cookies may have turned into a frustrating question without an answer, but placing just one provides me a perfect semiotic balance between idea and reality; whatever kind of game design was buried as a result ultimately functions better as an exclusion. There may yet have been some opportunities for polish with what remains, namely typical qualities of life such as the aforementioned coyote jump.
New Super Mario Bros actually designing intention into their "fifth player platform" mechanic is a space still ripe for exploration, since it was delegated to an auxiliary feature that was basically not meant to be used skillfully. When that level of skill is presented to the game, the player's abilities are quite astounding to see as they skip and hop over the majority of obstacles, solely interacting with the created platforms. Seeing as Mario and several others have locked down the cultural current of platformers for decades now, looking for his boundaries and going beyond them is a simple way to invigorate the artistry of the genre.
I had chosen my fate before my hiatus of reviews, and little did I know it would be such an impetuous return; despite the game's minuscule length, I was repeatedly interred by its simplicity and non-partisan cheese. Combat is a slippery slope of stun-locks and spacing; if ever I found myself in the top left quadrant of an enemies range, I was as good as dead. This difficulty was exacerbated by my lack of dashing vertically, and moreover the ergonomics of 'WASD' and L-Shift is given too much credit, although that's a feature of the broader culture that I don't necessarily fault you for.
The game is a mash-fest beater, a style of Nerve gameplay that's actually quite fun the more mindless it becomes; scrawny gamers love to feel physically validated by Mario Party mini-games, but if those were to add so much as a movement component to those games, it quickly loses its flavor and becomes too precise for its own good. Landing combos on a group of enemies might do well to give even more control of the situation so as to feel less managerial and essential to survival, and enemies could be given better ranged options to counteract that control rather than steal it upfront.
Running through waves in Castle Crashers instills a sense of endurance rather than mindfulness, and without the sunk cost coin-op of arcades like Turtles in Time or The Simpsons, that endurance has been eased into modern sensibilities. This is a similar mood to the "musou" style of Dynasty Warriors, which is certainly a more playful, less serious tone, but a heuristic flow of fun nevertheless.
I started a few times due to overestimating the ability to alternate between tabs, but this also gave me the time and space to understand what I was actually doing rather than blowing past the introductory levels whose designs led to automatic solutions. The last few levels required some consideration, although areas that provide a challenge are mostly boiled down to the correct point of entry. I was unsure of the purpose of the fire emblems and I still am; far too many of them seemed too easy to acquire, where it almost feels as though they were at one point meant to add an extra layer for the puzzle, only able to be acquired once I start the red path.
The game is a Mind mazer in a slant-sokoban style, where exiting brazier tiles forward or from the sides determines success along with avoiding contact on the snake tail of previous lights. The simplicity of the concept seems to produce a balancing act for the design; levels are in a binary state for whether or not they require any consideration. A single feature would likely alleviate this issue and open more space for design, such as a brazier that teleports you to its twin once you step off, or a set of braziers that use a different color frame, requiring you to draw both loops simultaneously.
I don't consider myself to be an expert of this sort of puzzle by any means, but what I have played of the genre tells me that this basic system has strong roots with a little fleshing out, yet the most difficult part of puzzle design seems to be an efficient and novel spread of mechanics to keep the player engaged with finding the solution. Baba Is You is the poster child for a sokoban with a powerful concept that also has breadth in its application; this also makes it a very hard game, but it's ultimately what a puzzle player is looking for, so don't be shy to stump.
I had a misconception for this one after being very familiar with the promotional videos played in the school's lobby, since I thought this game and an animation project with a spray paint theme were connected somehow. After that disappointment at my own blame I endured a couple crashes and slid (and bounced and stuck) through the game. Movement after bouncing felt especially lethargic if my trajectory wasn't set in advance, and the camera movement after sticking was about a full second late to feel appropriate, or else it could have had a more exaggerated collision and stickiness to accommodate for the delay.
The game is a Mind mazer that seems to have had an opportunity for more Land moods that it didn't take; whether it was a technical issue with persisting painted locations in a larger map or simply just tunnel vision on the aspiration to make a puzzle game, it aches for a more open-ended design with crevices of puzzles and collectibles, something akin to the credits level but perhaps the size of a Jet Set Radio level or two.
Ok, so... I wrote comparisons before the realization that this game came before Portal 2; I want to blame the steam release date misinformation but I have no one to blame but myself for not simply looking further into the idea. That said, I feel that my earlier statements are true, in that the system and feel of the game are fast and loose which runs against the precise and actuated level design of Portal. Even within such a superb game as Portal 2, it feels out of place and just as stilted as it ever did, reigned in by an even more restrictive implementation into puzzle solutions.
8/18/2025 - Return to the Skyway
Mind-Nerve Mazer
B for Bug Plucking Rock-onnaissance
I was getting worried I wouldn't be able to complete this one after I encountered my first void box, wherein most or all of the graphics were completely absent, leaving me to guess about the terrain. Luckily a restart allowed me to reach far enough to learn about throwing, for which Chad was also invisible. The combination of these two bugs created an unexpectedly delightful opacity to what would otherwise be very easy. Bruno the dragon, as well as the main character to a lesser extent, has a tasteful incorporation of visual design for the robotic kinematics somewhat inherent to Spine animations.
The game is more or less split between its two mazer levels for Mind and Nerve motivation. In the first, the aforementioned difficulties in navigating the terrain provide a pace of acclimation for the movement speed, although I'd still say that Ezra accelerates just a touch too slowly. In the second, "crittervania" is all gone to make room for the big boss lizard, who offers quite a captivating chase.
Games that take "mazer" mechanics to a truly intricate level, i.e. "metroidvanias," are an interesting challenge for making as small as possible, which in this case boiled down to an accidental opacity, but could be channeled into an intention for maximal density and difficulty similarly to Rain World or the most difficult puzzles of Animal Well and Fez. Since the core aspect centers around chucking animals, the next logical step in design is twirling Bruno around like it's Mario 64.
I ran through the trials quite nonchalantly despite the timer; perhaps it was a mixture of the ability to stop it indefinitely and the effective yet deleterious sound design that led to me playing it so luxuriously, although it also has enough going for it that a repeat visit is an intriguing proposition. The later levels provide an engaging finale at any speed, yet for as minimal as it was, the micro-narrative in the help info felt left behind or truncated without as much as an Aperturian goodbye.
The game is a Nerve proposition as old as time: maneuver a maze of platforms and obstacles with a timer stuck to your back. It's so ubiquitous it had to have been one of the earliest games ever invented. Pausing time, however, is different from pausing a timer, and I think the conflation of those two things needs reconciliation, because if your intention was to implicitly allow the player to not care about the timer, then the design of levels and the pace of the game could have executed on that rather than entirely retaining the tone of a "Time Trial."
Something about the mechanical feel, specifically the discs, feels reminiscent of wonky free-form solutions in immersive sim games like Deus Ex, while also perfunctorily keeping up with Portal-esque tonal traditions; I think either lane can work for this vehicle, but picking one will save you the effort of trying to design both a story and a system all by yourself.
I was growing scared of encountering a perilous boundary for puzzle games, which is that the concept is so novel that all the bandwidth is taken up with introductory levels without ever getting to a combined challenge. I'm grateful to say that it's not the case, and even if it were I think the novelty and creativity of the concept's applications were interesting enough that it wouldn't have been a deal breaker. After exceeding my expectations for level design, the environmental progression and cheeky ending made for another welcome surprise that rounded out the experience perfectly.
The game is a Mind spotter that uses the baseline of its puzzle system to the fullest. I think the difficulty of future designs comes from attempting to add concepts that keep the flow fresh and fluid. Moving platforms and obstacles was introduced late enough that it feels like there could be a bit more to do there, but otherwise fleshing this out into a bigger game will inevitably require "the next step" for design.
The Pedestrian comes to mind first when trying to draw a comparison (even though this game had come before each of these), but the true perspective-based gameplay and the overall tone is spiritually more identical to The Witness. That basest element of a spotter mechanic that creates mazes is, as Logan Feith put it, "overpowered;" the possibilities for such an idea have been iterated yet again by Viewfinder. Narbacular Drop directly fed into Portal, which inspired this game and hopefully the cycle continues with a wealth of innovative puzzle games in the century's second score.
8/15/2025 - The Princess's Dragon
Mind-Heart Mazer
B for Beating Up Monsters and Ennui
I grew a quick attachment to the story and banter mechanics since writing is such a difficult thing to put out confidently, yet when the first floor taught me that most items have a randomized pool of dialogue, all of the burden of intrigue was placed onto the before-and-afters of each combat encounter, as well as the ending, which did reinvigorate the charm, despite being inescapable since 'Restart' only placed me at the start of the ending and 'Quit' did nothing.
The game is a dungeon crawling mazer wrapped in the affectations of a Mind-Heart banter, yet these sections are too easily winnable to claim mechanical prominence. Implementation of the mazer elements such as the locked doors and repeating projectiles derive a simple and pleasing flow; however, the paths of magma are an odd element, since I'm able to be damaged by them but not cross over them. Imagine further incorporation into the mazer such as an item or upgrade that allows me to traverse the magma, or allowing me to do it at the risk of damage and the reward of a correct or quicker path.
Pokemon's dialogue strikes a delicate balance against its text based combat in being largely inconsequential, which places more tension on the combat interactions. There's something to be said about the shift in priorities as the series has gotten gradually easier with each entry, but my point is that if the story beyond the game is consequential, it ought to try and match that energy everywhere else. I imagine the instructors wouldn't be satisfied with the combat taken out in place of nothing but environmental descriptions and level design, but its something to consider once you're free of a grade and bound by a budget, because it'd definitely satisfy someone like me.
I find the idea of "tank controls" to be strangely captivating for some reason, although not quite in the sense of characterizing it literally as seen here or in other games which have actual tanks. On my second run I was instead paying more attention to the environment, which has a descriptive color language up to a certain point; most blue objects are passable objects, orange is real obstacles, and purple is objects that have a mix of both, but this pattern isn't fully consistent and is really more of an imagination on my part, and one that might have made the game a bit too easy. On that note, a harder difficulty where I don't chart where I was could've been an interesting addition without much extra work.
The game is about as minimalist as a Land motivation can get, which is actually refreshing for something which is often so maximalist. Although the game is short and its visual cohesion is lacking for my taste, the design concept and execution are solid enough to weather the storm. Shout out to the music and sound design for their effort carrying the "tanky" execution.
Chibi-Robo! is one of those games that somehow cemented in my memory within the month or so that our family rented it through GameFly (BlockBuster for video games), and now years later it and its older cousins are some of my favorite of all time for their joyfully surreal aesthetic similar to Katamari Damacy. Cleaning as a prelusory goal for video games is an underrated concept; games like House Flipper and PowerWash Simulator have substantial cult followings, so perhaps the resurgence of "janitor platformers" is only a matter of time.
I immediately caught on to the homage and anticipated my fate, but I didn't quite expect the game to hold up a sizable difficulty to match. After a few losses, I had begun to master the precise trigger-and-sweep movements that makes the laser the only weapon you need for the rest of the game. The Eater of Stars also took me a couple of tries, until I learned that the laser is still the most effective weapon when used in even quicker bursts to snipe the vulnerable segments from afar, while simultaneously clearing the path of incoming asteroids.
The game is such a convincing clone of another famous Nerve beater that it could probably pass for a legitimate spiritual successor. The momentum and object density are as hectic as ever, but a chunky pool of health counterbalances these design elements. The weapons feel fine conceptually, but throwing bombs is so much less reliable than lasers and the pacing gets somewhat fumbled before the boss.
Sinistar is probably only as famous as he is because he yells at you saying he's going to eat you, and you'd be so lucky to make it far enough to encounter him anyway. Here, I enjoyed reading in a meta-narrative about wiping out all the smaller bugs for an enormous bug to get lured out. I may be a sucker for Terraria, but I think The Destroyer is one of my least favorite bosses, and so I appreciate the OHKO on the worm's segments instead of a ridiculous health bar that you have to whittle down on one remaining segment that you can barely hit each time. -_-
I played my first couple rounds with keyboard, but given the name of the genre I suppose it necessitates getting my sticks out. Little did I know that the cheat toggles on the face buttons would cause me to feel much better about my groove than was actually taking place. Before and after I noticed this, it would seem quite often that a glider or parabola would spawn on top of me and kill me instantly. On the other hand, I was able to observe the different weapon patterns without as much stress applied to acquiring them; contrary to my expectations, the weapons don't gain extra power with each cycle, leaving this secondary objective mute once you get an optimal weapon pattern.
The game isn't much more than the classic Nerve beater roots that it takes mechanical inspiration from, spruced up by the aesthetic of another icon for Gen-X computer nostalgia. Adherence to the rules of Conway's game would fundamentally come at the cost of Asteroid's rules. Because randomly spawning gliders are not only the leading cause of death, but it also makes them aesthetically incongruent.
Asteroids can never really surprise you with anything except for the accumulation of your own consequences in the form of tiny debris closing in on you. To me, an immutable system with brevity can be more interesting than a random one; rather than the player discovering miracles by chance, they discover facts and patterns that are just as unexpected and miraculous.
6/28/2025 - EFO: Escape From Outerworld
Nerve Mazer
B for Beacon Battery Beam Bug
I immediately escaped onto the cloudy roof, which is as surreal and perilous as in real life, although I was, of course, expecting Super Mario to take me to heaven, not to get trapped in an invisible pit. Take two, I'm running along too quickly to read that there's a time limit and you gotta what the where before they blast the thing; not too much of a problem with the amount of replenishment along the way. The last challenge put me so close to the wire that collecting the last pillar gave me just enough to win and lose at the same time. Selecting restart only returned me to the earth to ascend higher up unto a white screen, and finally...Super Mario...
The game is a relaxed Nerve mazer, such as one can be; all challenges are derived from the movable platforms, but their difficulty mostly only scales in one direction. Creating a challenge out of strange, narrow passageways that only certain platforms will be able to fit through would strain the resilience of the physics system, so it was both a conservative and liberating choice to call attention to the periphery of scope with a jittery dog pile of platforms blocking my way.
The ability to "create" a platform in a platformer has been used at least since Mega Man 2 but still feels underrated and underutilized. The Wii U's plumber debut even included a patronizing support role at best and an invincible wall troll at worst. I think more games deserve to center this feature in their design, along with Tears of the Kingdom's physics as the "bar to clear" at time of writing.
I feel especially divided on the grade of fun for this experience, which is all it is by the way; I'm not actually rating quality, per se. The threshold from 'A' to 'S' definitely has to do with the difficulty, though not necessarily that were the game easier it would be more fun. Each level was perfectly ramped up from the last in my opinion, but the difference between a failed and successful attempt can be rather sticky and unearned. There's a floating feeling that lingers in the basic kick action, which I could honestly see being remedied somewhat with haptic feedback on a controller. Untangling from flies also feels anticlimactic by being divided into two stages of inputs, although I do enjoy the opportunity the mechanic affords to kick flies directly into the furnace.
The game terraces a Nerve mood on spotter interaction between a simultaneous beater and mazer interface. While the root of the game's objective is bound within the mazer, I feel it makes more sense to denote a divisive challenge with a divergent genre pairing. The fun of this fusion is well produced, but small details as previously stated leave the mood unrefined from near perfection.
After giving it some thought, there are a handful of games that are part of the same family such as FTL and Overcooked. For now I'll call them "captain games," whose Nerve gameplay is focused on a localized system or "ship." A broader, more accurate term might be "single player real-time strategy," but it seems to ride the boundary from strategy to tactics, where many scenarios in such games are biased on the balance between live reaction to causality and logical predetermination. Anyway, I heartily welcome this game as an addition to the family; a perfect middle ground between Overcooked's interior playable character, and FTL's fully realized exterior systems.
I was pleasantly surprised by the structure of the session, albeit the early signs of shallow waters for combat held true. All enemy varieties except the bats are sluggish enough to be dispatched before they can try even a single attack, and consequently that exception ends up as just a moving target. Pre-rendered cutscenes are a beautiful bygone delicacy; for some reason I found the enemies' annihilation to be exceptional shots. The Friedrich's "Wanderer" composition and the emotional ambiguity conveyed at the end was cheesy and captivating; in short, a lot of the game feels like an excuse to flex some graphics on a custom engine; whether or not I broadly agree with that pursuit these days, I can't deny it to be a beloved ambition of the medium, and here it nurtures a nostalgia that not many avenues are offering except for their primary sources.
The game is testing my endurance on attributing a "Land" mood to so many games; variability of locales and a small yet magical discovery of the path of rising islands; these are present but not yet fully activated through the design. I would suspect that Nerve games are so readily abundant in the catalogue due to the instructors and their rubric's ability to fall back on the establishment of basically every famous game prior to the colloquial inception as an art form (late 5th or early 6th gen in my humble opinion). On second thought, the attributes of Land game design seem to begin and end with the members and instructors who are responsible for the artistic rubric. Alright, alright, it's a Land game; kudos specifically to Ryan Davis, Trevin Dahl, Amy Kim, Josh Bechtol, Anoop Herur-Raman, Blake Johnson, and Sierra Keeser for making me screenshot the credits for this bit.
The 2-3d style lauded in a similar manner by Bastion is distinct from the style of Final Fantasy's posterboard environments, even though they operate identically. Perhaps the difference just centers my bias around the constituent elements; preferring a world map with movement and scale rather than static challenges, for example. Even though the second level wasn't as intricate as Midgar or Esthar City, it still had enough of a vibrant distinction from the previous area, whereas the pith tones of Bastion's first few levels reveal its age more than any other feature.
I cruised through a first playthrough right up until the point where I thought the game ought to throw a bit more difficulty at me; the swordfish have particularly awkward attacks which can be even harder to dodge or parry with sharks in the mix, but each of them fills a fair role in diversifying the battlefield. Right before I found myself obligated to a second playthrough via achievements, I had decided that simply parrying all the boss shark's attacks was much simpler than dipping in and out of his range. With that bout of practice, the rest of the game was not only easier but also more engaging, yet I don't know if it was quite so engaging that I'd make an attempt for each of the full game challenge achievements, but I appreciate them all the same.
The game is a lean Nerve beater that potentially has some Land elements sprinkled in judging by hidden achievements, but from a "core gameplay" perspective those elements would be definitively negligible. That said, the sand castles are an effective cultural referent that takes your utilitarian 3d and elevates it to a more rounded and resonant aesthetic of plastic pool toys.
I admit that I'm tragically inexperienced with Hideki Kamiya's gamography, but from what I know about Wonderful 101, it feels as though the character's design here could have been further levied into the game. Perhaps something akin Pikmin where the player can shoot krill onto the enemies with different stick behavior whether you fire in solo or swarm mode? On a broader note, I definitely tend to prefer the clear box telegraphs over something dazzling and unreadable like more recent Final Fantasy, and if it is visually dazzling, then the specifics of combat should be a tertiary design concern such as in Shadow of the Colossus; or rather it is that the minutiae of the objective in combat is sensational instead of tactical. Either way, attempting to mix both priorities isn't soluble, so you'd surely need three A's to bAke thAt cAke.
6/23/2025 - Homeland: Lay to Rest
Nerve-Land Beater
B for Bullet Time, Inverse Climb
I lay myself from my own task of reviewing for about a month, and as such I attempted to second screen the first playthrough; no good. No more Mr. Keyboard Loudspeaker; grab the X-Bone and put some headphones on because this mix? This mix is so, so medium. If you know anything about salsa as you do music, mediums are a delicious but undervalued class of flavor. As for this, I'm especially partial to the pause menu's nostalgic ambient industrial current. Overall, it lends a unique neutrality and flow to what would otherwise be a straightforward boomerang simulation course.
The game is fledged and flying, fully satisfying with a controller for Nerve beater boomerang bouncing gameplay, but the Land is a cave. The earliest sections perhaps feel a bit distinct, but as a whole it's very difficult to tell a lot of areas apart from each other, much less construct an environmental narrative around them, and the ghost narrative/hint system doesn't feel taken nearly as far as it could have been, though I suppose the beauty of a Land game is that I just may not have been looking hard enough for something worth looking.
Putting aside the duodevintrilogy with the pointy green hat which was replicated well enough, the particulars of combat which draw inspiration from other beaters should run some re-evaluation. That is to say, the balance between depleting health or breaking stamina ultimately feels like a negligible system. Sekiro is heavily skewed in the opposite direction, but the diversity of enemies and combat options can still sometimes make depleting health more viable. Now, retrieving that green dork for a moment, keep in mind the fluidity of "ghost vision" was only able to be introduced to Twilight Princess with the mighty power of the Wii-U gamepad 10 years later, and yet commendably you've conquered this summit of design on the first try.
6/4/2025 - Beach Island Deluxe
Nerve-Land Mazer
S for Stars on Your Report Card
I observed a certain level of quality from the outside, as I'm sure many others did, and so I suppose my expectations were laid up to be lowered. The first playthrough was the expected A quality experience, but since it was explicitly offered I was also obliged to attempt speedruns. The interesting conundrum with requesting this particular motivation is quite literally asking your players to break your game apart. I wondered if the game would have any "melon skips;" clearly unintentional workarounds that bypass several game objectives. While it may strike me in the future to search for such a thing, I'm satisfied for this review to have found a way to collect "The Silo's Secret" star while also falling into the water, which allows me to utilize the time spent acquiring the star to also reload at any checkpoint that I touched last.
The game is a simple and clean Nerve-Land mazer without any narrative affronts, aside from audiovisual aesthetics which evoke a simple carefree oasis surrounded by the far-off markers of an oceanic industry. The Nerve elements are given enough polish and precision alongside the controls to properly stake their claim, and the Land elements are nicely balanced between "summit challenges" and "labyrinth challenges" to engage the Nerve elements even further.
The sort of "interpolating orthogonal" control that was used for Mario 3d Land & World isn't something I'm familiar with personally, but I think it has more right to feel right at home in a game without Mario-Luigi's 64 theses on the wall. I can imagine a case being made for the checkpoint cutscenes to be inversely conducive to a speedrun experience, such that using fewer of them will end up better for you in the long run. However, it still seems like a rippling problem that is solved with a simple omission and faith in the player to recognize the shortcuts if they need them. Sonic 3 & Knuckles, for example, would have ruined its pacing if the game stopped itself to direct your attention to special stages opening above the checkpoint; in any case, the problem also basically solves itself with infinite lives, making death the fastest track to returning to a checkpoint.
I like to think that the relatively short time required to beat the game is a huge lubricant to its quality. It seems evident that the developers were prioritizing the enjoyment of the main movement mechanic, and itinerary features like enemies or different orbs to grapple on with different effects were seemingly dropped from the budget, all in service of the fundamental game aspects, which is commendable for the production.
The game is a highly filtered Nerve mazer with all of its eggs correctly placed in the basket of level design. Okay, perhaps "correctly" is a bit too prescriptive; lots of mazers are relying on the threat of their levels' obstacles being substantial barriers to progress.
Sonic The Hedgehog 4 strangely attempted to represent the feeling of the 3d style's homing attack, itself a compromise on representation for the autonomous and precise method of consecutively hopping along a chain of bots in the original 2d. This control scheme of a 2d "homing" is better executed in a game like Celeste, yet its motivation is more concretely Nerve based as opposed to the lingering Land sensibilities found here.
I was thankful that, although there's no settings or even an informational panel for controls, the game still allowed me to play both characters with the connected controller and keyboard respectively. As I began to do so, I found fun in the awkward rhythm of controlling them simultaneously, before my play was ended by an unspecified crash. After that I decided to make use of the charitable "Teleport to Boss" button; if I was able to handle that challenge by my lonesome, playing the rest of the game would then seem to be a tedious and ultimately comparable experience. The final stage of the boss required a bit of luck and a mad dash before the spinning lasers caught up with the character I couldn't be bothered to move out of the way, in favor of winning the fight. Unfortunately, once I did win, the game crashed again, and I then resorted to the "Win Game Immediately" button.
The game is a Nerve beater with a signature helper element that defines the co-operative scope; each character's abilities effectively lead to specific combat advantages for the other. A pair of characters that can swap onto the same control scheme seems achievable, or perhaps even a keyboard scheme that controls both semi-simultaneously, which is effectively what I attempted with my left thumb on Gutz' jump and the rest on Cricket's movement.
The Ice Climbers' fate in Smash Bros. Melee is an unfortunate consequence of competitive play. Conceptually it's an interesting character, yet it doesn't actually acquire anything unique through that concept, except for having an "after-image" for all of your attacks, which has led to the infamous competitive stance "wobbling," where the climbers grab and toss the opponent to each other in an infinite loop, or at least until they have no chance of surviving. Sonic Heroes approaches a similar consequence from the opposite direction; by having each character nearly exclusive to various circumstances of level design, none of them feel especially unique at all, especially when the gimmicks are reused for each of the four teams of three. The elements here could make for a great evolution of these games, provided they were intentionally combined in this way.
I'm a bit embarrassed to have taken so long after this one popped up on the roulette. Shiner is another in the catalogue that I've played previously, and it's still my favorite DigiPen game by far. I find the voice acting in particular to have a certain style that befits the charm of the entire game and is quite unlike any sort of prim and polished voice acting that makes its way into "serious titles." My favorite character is probably Bouncer, particularly because he has the word "RANCH" tattooed on his belly, and it's unclear whether he acquired this before or after deciding to be a bouncer for the church. Of RANCH.
The game is a Mind banter of accumulating abilities to defeat each successive opponent encased in a makeshift exoskeleton of Heart elements that compliment the experience, both coming together in a potent sub-textual "schoolyard play-fight" aesthetic; kids making up ridiculous characters with ridiculous abilities that make them "invincible," only for the next kid to one-up his defenses with infinite rockets...plus one.
A comparison to the engagement style of Pokemon would be superficial at best, since those games prioritize a "Land-over-Mind" philosophy. Various "Nuzlocke" hacks, however, present very similar motivations: precise tactical options of which only a select few will manage victory. However however, the high stakes rules of those games would more accurately place them in Nerve territory. By my view, this makes the game out to be a fairly original blend of genres, in my system of genres that no one cares about (yet)...certainly among DigiPen titles, if not all games.
I started first with a startup crash; some problem with the AMD driver, but you can't get rid of me that easily. After switching to my desktop I continued on, although the subwoofer of its speakers incurred a low dusty ambience and I was too wrapped up in causality to change back to my headset. I'm introduced to the loss condition in the latter half, which is reasonable for short paths, but becomes unnecessarily frustrating for long paths with several swipe locks that usually only give me one opportunity to align them.
The game is a Nerve mazer, although pace can be deceiving in this case; most of the game is rather lackadaisical with its obstacles prior to the rings. The goal feels more about achieving flow than achieving execution, and with that I would have steered towards something closer to a sandbox rather than a linear experience, but I know that the school's requirements are hard pressed against ambient or nonlinear projects, so I hope you're able to revisit this aesthetic with freedom born out of your own minimalism, rather than that which has been dictated to you.
There is a certain charming similarity to Vib Ribbon; not only minimal visuals but also a quirky control scheme that accentuates its musical properties. Of course, the feedback here is itself a kind of music, rather than the player reacting to the music. Perhaps then we might look at Electroplankton, a game that's far more settled down to the detriment of its lasting novelty; striking a balance somewhere in-between could easily create another cult classic toy box.
I think my number of failures had afforded me an experience with each of the available upgrades, which also gave me time to understand that the poison upgrades are instrumental as they allow me to sustain damage around corners and behind walls rather than charging up a shot out in the open. For most strategies I had died on the penultimate level, but with full poison I was able to clear it with full health; ironically the penultimate "upgrade" is just a full heal, but it didn't stop me from tree-hugging the cyber-wall and easily melting through the "adds" with poison shots.
The game is a linear Nerve gauntlet blended from twin-stick and bullet hell shooters. Friendly fire is an effortless and exceptional addition that keeps the game feeling balanced on the edge of its own difficulty, but for my taste it could have been taken a step further, perhaps with a flying enemy variant who can only be destroyed from being directly shot down.
The resurgence of this style of game in the mid-2000's was predicated on the sticks de twin being of commensurate quality; the ability to move and shoot smoothly and independently was still somewhat new and Geometry Wars accentuated that intuitive simplicity in its design. The approach here is a very interesting "point-and-click" design, in that I am required to plant myself in order to shoot. I feel as though this concept has some potential along the lines of golf and Breakout, i.e. placing your position and shooting your shot to see how many obstacles you can clear. Ditch the rogue and hit the greens, my friends.
5/22/2025 - Cobble: The Stone Forager
Grain-Land Mazer
B for Building Past and Future
I got distracted away from the introduction scene trying to remember that the verse from Let It Down by George Harrison sounds exactly like this chord loop. When I let down my fixation I at least caught the important part; mushroom tasty, people hungry. After I built the farm I began to see the trajectory of building structures to get more stuff, although I never returned to see if mushrooms were growing; I was never really wanting for more after that point since they spawn everywhere. I could also never want more for the ending; its narrative pacing was unexpectedly sweet and well crafted.
The game is a simple Grain formula with a distinct area per resource, with some resource gradient between areas to immerse the progression of Land gameplay. Relative integration between these two moods, the land and the inhabitants, could have gone a long way, such as building the sawmill in the forest or the blacksmith closer to Sage's Rock. On the other hand, the applications of this effect such as the girl's lost teddy bear feel unresolved as she never actually leaves the forest and joins the village.
I haven't played Forager but I can kind of tell without looking that story isn't one of it's main concerns; I think sandbox games are in a double bind between the "intended" narrative reducing the sandbox to an essential set of steps, and the lack of a main quest leading to emergence of the most egregious player-driven narratives possible. All that to say that while my modern senses crave more from this game, showing restraint is key for any scope, and it is easy to forget with such boundless ideas that developing a sandbox can inspire.
#%&@! I don't have friends, so my playthrough turned into more of a dissection than a playthrough. I don't want that to come across as wholly different from my standard playstyle; I'm always looking to just find whatever I find fun; whether it's explicitly given to me or I have to implicitly draw it out for myself isn't really a damnable sentence for a game, after all the most popular games by far are "sandboxes" and "open worlds" where the storytelling is linked directly to the emergent behavior of the player. I attempted to use two control schemes at once to fight myself, but seeing as I only had a single controller and KBM needs both hands, all I had left was to wait out the rounds. I encountered a "soft-lock" glitch where my character got eaten by the book at the same moment they got taken to become the new monster. The next round seemed to be stuck until I killed the other player on top of me, at which point it began properly. Between the victory screen and the credits there is only one instance of music, so use it wisely; if I let the music end in either case, it will never play again.
The game is a seemingly straightforward Nerve experience, a king-of-the-hill free-for-all asymmetrical smasher. The controller glyphs seem to suggest more features than are available, as the face buttons by themselves do nothing, and only output the two basic actions upon spamming them all together randomly. The tactical effects for the "minnow" players feel minuscule, and the books seem inclined to only help the monster; perhaps some other arena object that the players can use to try and wrangle the monster while they get a few hits in.
Asymmetrical games look to differentiate the methods of play between its two factions, and not simply their consequences; Crawl gives the ghost player a wide variety of tools to try and defeat the explorer, and their comparatively limited options are leveled out by the severe difference in health from the ghosts minions. Mario Party makes most 1v3's virtually impossible to win depending on which side you play. This scenario could easily emerge from your setup, but it seems quite unique that you have to let another player get ahead in order to have a chance of getting ahead yourself next round; what you have is a dynamic that definitely warrants more exploration and more consideration.
I didn't exactly plan on taking a week to finish this game, but it felt resonant with the game's concept to get a good long rest between returning for the next week of gameplay. Little did I know I was in for the long haul, but rather than match my in-game time of 6 weeks trying to find the true ending, I may have to give up Dean Takahashi style; I'm simply not built to get out of Groundhog Day type situations and on some level I can live with that. I assume the exit opens from getting all five stars, but after running the week several times without finding the fifth grace, I'm beginning to get far too chafed by random scenes being unskippable.
The game is in the Heart genre, which is refreshing among the school library. Even though it may be rough around the edges, it's still impressive how much was made for the game with the given deadline. RenPy can be a double edged sword, where on the one hand, scope is defined by the strengths of the engine to deliver the visual novel format, but at the same time, the Heart genre is already predisposed to a large scope due to the expectations for writing.
While I appreciate the respects to Katawa Shojo and I think you've captured a good emotional dynamic in that regard, the format and user experience of a more "methodical" VN such as Virtue's Last Reward is worth looking into, especially with the time shenanigans. Their design eschews the traditional reliance on multiple save files by showing the branch of choices itself as a menu and letting you return to any point with newfound knowledge. I also think it's quite refreshing to get a VN focused on characters that isn't a dating sim.
5/7/2025 - One Million Fatal Guns
Nerve Beater
B for Billion Times Oh (Em Eff Gee)
I realize that this game is a remaster of a previous project which has also been Steamed, and yet the picker wheel has decided my fate, here thusly I began. I completed a game up to 10 floors and about 47 guns; hopefully I saw enough to understand the entire scope of the millions of guns on display, but if not, I'll eventually take another round in the prequel. The weapons and their variants were engaging for the length of my play, though I'm surprised there isn't any reload cancelling with the different shotguns, and all guns seem to have a strange jamming effect which prevents inputs.
The game is an all-or-nothing Nerve loop, built on its namesake and likely with the sole intention of porting the concept into 3d. I think when you come into development with so many of these aspects ready-made, your task becomes heavily more focused on UI and User Experience, which even the best games on the market today will falter on in some aspect. That said, quality of life features are a true gauntlet for design; placing too much focus on them can detract from the original's core experience.
Sequels, by some respect, are very much like remasters of the original. In either case, you're hoping that the experience you get will be similar to the game with a range of improvements. Of course, many titles go further down the path of being a wholly different game rather than a continuity. Tears of the Kingdom is so critically divisive because it split its course down both avenues, but the new crafter mechanics and the technological feat of physical simulation is what finally caused me to buy the game a year after its release; everything that stood out as a copy-paste from the original was what kept me away. In other news, some remasters forget that they were meant to change anything; the blatant simp-gouging from new Skyrim or Last of Us editions is an embarrassing tradition I hope you never find yourself subjected to developing.
I began my quest by walking to GameStop to pick up an Xbox controller, since I've arrived at an impasse with the school's shortsighted controller principles upon reading about grandpa's coelacanth casserole and seemingly being unable to exit this user interface without a proper "B" button. With my controller acquired and my word count inflated, I finished reading grandpa's letter and headed outside. What awaited me was chaos in more ways than one. Putting aside the handful of incidents where Pip and/or Parcel would get trapped inside a rock or building, the controls have a lack of coordination; rather than taking advantage of the controller's properties, the two sticks are at odds with each other. Where one controls acceleration and turning, the other controls the camera with a much quicker speed, and it turns out that turning the camera also turns Parcel, leaving the left stick's yaw to be a nuisance. Parcel is incapable of jumping with instantaneous momentum, which seemed to cause most of my geometry entanglements as I leaped into crevices that prevented me from jumping back out.
The game is without question a Land-centered experience; there are a number of different regions as well as markers calling out the distinction of those regions with a directed camera towards the points of interest. The momentary discovery is clumsy by comparison, with the trinkets not feeling like they have enough to them, and the letters feeling like they overdo it; that is, I don't feel like much of a hero for reading people's mail before delivering it... As for delivery, characters' mailboxes all look identical and there's not a whole lot to distinguish the homes themselves aside from their relative position, turning a completionist challenge into a trespassing chore.
A good Land game is difficult to achieve, because the level of mechanical craft for them has had such high standards for nearly 30 years. Nintendo's icons were in large part cemented by their introduction of 3d control to the world. Even while it was just beginning, the fundamental design elements of Character, Camera, and Control were deeply considered between 3d games; Link wasn't provided with a jump button until very recently, where meanwhile it is Mario's most versatile input and has struggled to keep up with itself since then. As for more recent Land games, Death Stranding shares all of your concept and none of your tone, which is potentially to your advantage if provided some narrative polish, since the selfless deliveries of Sam Porter Bridges are at times undercut by the world's self-obsessed post-apocalyptic nihilism.
I couldn't help but be drawn to the description of this game's Steam page, which is a first for my reviews and not necessarily an indictment, but I was at least hoping for the word "triangle" or some allusion to triangles since this game has so many triangles. There was a very dramatic intro scene where the triangle lost all their shape friends, and overall the game is a lot more dramatic than I can seem to understand, as well as my Pilgrim, who blankly jaunts along as my mindless thrall in this abstract anglo-verse. Once I return the shape disciples to triang-god, the Pilgrim is begone from this camera, his role fulfilled.
The game has a smooth arc of Mind game fun by paring down the spotter techniques of the point-and-click genre into a polyomino set, which ends up putting the Land on the altar by design. Every shape and camera structure follows in service to the Pilgrim and not me; the game of the spotter rather than the mind of the explorer.
While it is a reimagining of "hidden object" games as you say, I'd say that point-and-click adventures beat you to the punch, where the "hidden object" is a hidden context of objects across different screens. Gorogoa inverts the concept by making the panel perspectives themselves as the object to be scrutinized, less so than the diverse objects placed within them. Unpacking removes the attention from the mechanics of the spotter entirely and instead places it on a Heart game, on the revealing of an important object; what it means for the unseen characters to own it and for the player to consider such things about every object in their possession. Lots of puzzle games like Braid make a passive attempt at delivering a narrative, which more easily runs the risk of getting ignored without a writer's reputation to back them up; even if some exposition may have been appreciated, it's perhaps equally appreciated that you prevented it from cluttering a small & simple experience.
I was enjoying myself well enough; after the Bride was introduced in the dining room, I get to work trying to decipher the puzzle that I had already failed. I spent about 20 minutes swapping the dolls back and forth in their seats to no avail. Alas, I began to get restless, and stumbled upon a hidden white-box UI with the Tab key. I navigated to the "Quit" selection and found myself returning to the title screen with the soundscape of the dining room lingering. Once I tried to continue, my camera was stuck inside my own body and I had lost all my controls. After being forced to reset the game, I discovered that the doll who is already seated is meant to indicate the painting's orientation.
The game has a bit of clashing elements in the "Action" genre category, which is not often talked about in these reviews because even when there are multiple methods of input, it's more often than not that one takes precedence over the others. In this case, the spotter elements of finding key items and locations within the level to interact with have overtaken the mazer elements of running away from the Bride and exploring the layout of the house. Horror games work best when I'm winning the game, and if the losing isn't carefully tailored, I'll easily dispel the essential feeling of thrill for myself. If these thrilling elements took more precedence, it would also likely shift from a Mind game about understanding the literal and thematic riddles of the house to a Nerve game about the very real threat that progressively prowls around the house. It's clear that you aspired to both of these genres in addition to a Land game (as is the custom trio for your obvious influences) but it's a lofty goal for a student project.
Think about how the door transition in Resident Evil isn't just optimizing the game and improving performance. Horror video games frequently invoke House of Leaves; the ability to warp the conception of space in real time relative to myself is unique to video games. Your sequence befitting this trope is shockingly identical to Arkham Asylum but I won't hate on learning the greats. It's a low bar but the thematically pointed design of the environment is surpassing Resident Evil with some of Gone Home's sensibilities on the impact that such a thing can have.
4/21/2025 - Rabbit's Scroll
Nerve-Land Mazer
B for Bamboo, and Japanese Pine, Too
I hopped in without a glance at the controls, which were unconventionally elegant. I like the choice to put jumping on W rather than the Spacebar, and Period for dashing. On the third level, I seemed to have jumped over the exit gate and into the pits of darkness with no way to refund my parchment. And so restarting, I had a beat of preparation with both hands on the keyboard before I realized that the UI requires mouse input. I kept forgetting that the gate structure at the bottom of most levels is a platform and not a background element, trying instead to jump over the "gap," which seems like a feasible challenge with the distance afforded by the dash ability.
The game has a boxy affair with the Land genre; features and their quality of distinction accumulate in the adventure, but the most enlivening application of one of those features is saved for the ending. Had the bamboo stalks been programmed to be climbable on either side, there could have been a maze of them with no other platforms to rely on, creating a distinction for the features instead of just with the features. The "snowy freckles" were only an alleged feature put too far out of my way in a Nerve-focused scenario of escaping the ink blot; my curiosity did bring me out of my way to try and discern what it did, but this ran counter to what I "should've" been feeling in that moment, which was to run away and dodge the obstacles, not run straight into them.
The 3d debut of Sonic introduced a new form of movement in the homing attack, however its functionality did and always would feel like a concession for a game that wants to replicate the most skillful moments of the past. Jumping midair from one enemy to the next in 2d feels really satisfying and precarious, but it's easy to see how the game becomes so precarious as to be unwieldy if they had expected the player to do the same thing in 3d. The movement here is basically identical to a homing attack; it may feel better than Sonic due to having a narrower range of level, but in essence it accomplishes about as little of its own work in the overall design; it begins to feel like a means to an end. I think there's more precedence than people realize for a game like Doodle Jump to make a cultural comeback a la Bejeweled/Candy Crush. I see...The Rabbit's Scroll was the blueprint...on it boss. o7
I pounced along from one level to the next, and for each "runback" portion escaping the Wall of Bird I died at least twice; I wonder why there are three lives if getting a game over places you back in the same level. Perhaps some arbitrary arcane grading rubric made it so, but I'd think that a game over screen for every time you lose is well enough, and simply don't have it for "trivial" losses like falling in pits or getting hit by bird lasers.
The game scrapes out a Land category with its transitional hallways frigerating day to night, but for all intents and purposes it is a pure-bred Nerve mazer, or "platformer" if you're not insane like I am. The music between levels one and two could have lent a clearer contrast with tempo or timbre, or perhaps the level design could have been presented with more of an "arc;" jumping from thin strewn pillars in the outskirts, to navigating a snaking path in the city, to sneaking into a bird party with a bunch of birds firing from everywhere.
Imagine making a game that was just the Desert Land from Mario 3. Even within the first few levels there's quite a bit of variety: in the first, the game introduces Goombas disguised as blocks; in the third, there are lots of block pyramids and Firesnakes, and of course the fourth level has the iconic Angry Sun. These features go a long way in taking the world from "a desert" to "a desert with places in it." Speaking of classic platformers, a hold-sensitive jump height is so ubiquitous at this point that there ought to be some intentional deliberation and design in not having it, otherwise you will have the layman rolling on the floor crying like a laybaby. I think the decision for the timbres of the music to avoid middle eastern stereotypes gives it a breath of fresh air away from the plumber and pedestrian platformer.
4/20/2025 - Basil and The Isles of Spice
Land Mazer
B for Basil and, uh, her Isles.
I'm posted at the Archaic Arch, I'm smoking that Mystic Mangrove; I'm returning to Basil, as it was the first of the Red Campus games I played before I began the reviews. In case you were wondering, the correct camera speed is eight; you might think that's too fast, but I think we have to accept the fact that she's always going to be a jittery young horse, so may as well let her run wild and free. The camera also decided to take the day off when I placed the crystal, but only some patience required to debug before I head upstairs. Basil has a lot of fun on water and it's blatantly capitalized on by the end, but more focus could have gone toward making her glide also feel satisfying to fly with rather than droopy by comparison.
The game is a Land salad with a half-dozen clams for dessert. The developers may have felt somewhat like Anise, trapped within the Land genre bubble and wondering how to escape, still yet to realize that the bubble is good; the bubble will set you free, and when you are without the bubble you can remember you are within the bubble.
Around the 2000's, Spyro had undergone a reboot, where A New Beginning meant beginning to share its piles with beat-em-up tropes. It doesn't feel bad to play, but when you compare the way that Spyro moves between his old and new styles, you can immediately see that the newer has more guard rails put around it, both in the controls themselves and in the level design. Even with the beater input and Nerve genre taking precedence in the design, the new Spyro still has a fluidity to all aspects of his movement; in either case his glide is as fast or faster than his normal run.
When it comes to instruments, I agree that the more ergonomic and intuitive option usually lies in controllers rather than keyboards, but dual-shock support still remains elusive, and so I'm relegated to the Qwerty piano. I played a round on Beginner, finding that most puzzles were able to be "note-mashed" for lack of a better term, and so I basically disregarded the sprites advice about looking at the colors of objects nearby. Even when I did actually pay attention to this principle in "Advanced" mode, there was never an indication of what note to start on, and so I feel that if the intent was to complete each segment in order to hear the full melody, such a thing requires perfect knowledge of the game. I won't beat a dead horse talking about the janky movement, instead I'll advise that next time you simply put all your eggs in one basket.
The game is mostly a Mind motivated color-melody riddle, with a Land paint-over to ensure that the premise doesn't seem too nerdy and obscure. The Lirica-branded lily pads were circumvented both times because I found it more fun to use the momentum of the sequence to jump to the stationary pads rather than call them over to me. I think aside from that one accidental instance I would have preferred a game-on-rails that just delivered me to the next melodic puzzle, and all of the design could be focused into actually making those interesting. Otherwise, incorporate the ability to play the flute into the ability to move around; I can see a game like this being really expressive and funny (in a good way) if each note carried a gust of wind that had me soaring and rag-dolling through the air like a goat without a care.
Moving around in Goat Simulator isn't anything special, certainly not even coming close to the tactile perfection among 3d titles, but what it lacks in complexity it makes up for in freedom. The aesthetic and controls also reminded me a lot of Minnie's Melodyland and Toontown. A game about finding a melody is quite the challenge of design, which is why most music games like Rock Band just have you sight-read it instead. If you want to explore this concept, truly dig into it for the interesting and challenging puzzle that it could be.
I restarted the game for the third time after accidentally clicking onto my second monitor and crashing the game; as I detached the dead weight I resolved myself to complete the game without returning a single plant baby, i.e. without healing. Unfortunately the babies stack on top of each other rather than following like ducklings and so I mistakenly assumed I had received them all; alas. Another item which was graphically difficult to distinguish was when exactly enemies spawn, although I enjoy the tactic of shooting through another creature before it spawns to damage the spitters early. The mechanics of combat are somewhat difficult to intuit, mainly because most games in a similar fashion would implement the dash in such a way as to be following the velocity of movement input, and so many such cases wherein I dash into the clump of creatures as I try to strafe around them.
The game has a fun and classic Nerve balance for an isometric "twin-stick," but a few touch ups could have excelled the Land motivation insofar as complimenting Nerve; i.e. the ducklings could have easily designed more legitimacy into my self-imposed challenge of skill, not to say anything about distinguishing the quadrants of the map with small distinctions which are more effort for less of what you'd need here, in my opinion.
A twin stick shooter like Geometry Wars relies on the simultaneous inputs of radians and magnitude, such that shooting in any of 360 degrees becomes one continuous input. Imagine a game like this requiring you to return the stick to the dead-zone each time you wanted to fire a bullet. Allow me to shoot automatically if I want to, and reward me for realizing that I can shoot faster by making a conscious choice to do so by timing my clicks. I find the visuals of Bastion mixing 2d and 3d to clash quite a lot, so it's commendable that you tried for a similar style even though making it with only 2d visuals is considerably more work.
I'm a big fan of "archeology girl" games; I think Metroid Prime was one of the first games I considered to be truly exceptional. The curve of difficulty in rooms felt smooth, but none of them had left me completely stumped and were usually solvable with trial and error. I found that the more I started to think of the game as a sort of locksmith puzzle, the more the stone barriers began to actually take on the appearance of rising and falling tumblers. The ending of the game has a surprising amount of set-piece levels, which was a welcome change of pace to finish out on.
The game has traded a quantity of Mind gameplay in favor of cementing a Land experience, using the last three levels to escort me out and an extremely simple final level to contrast the atmosphere of the "game" part of the game with a modest jungle ambience. While I was expecting more Land development to appear in the game proper, I appreciate the dedication to the principle against the odds of scoping out a whole new area, which prompts the desire for mechanics unique to that area to contrast the gauntlet; perhaps a stray magic stone from the gauntlet lets you possess monkeys or something. Maybe Steven Universe shows up with a knife. I'm not your boss.
The "clone" is a popular trope in Mind games because of its ability to be immediately grasped by the player, but the breadth of its mechanical capabilities are still often novel in the context of its parallel features. The Talos Principle introduces the recorder machines in the second area, when they have familiarized themselves with a handful of other elements such as barriers and jammers. The small sequence of Portal where your portals are placed for you is doing some work towards the illusion that the facility predates the gun and the buttons and crates within are not necessarily for the gun, even though in a game sense this is clearly the case. Although other elements are introduced prior to the clone mechanic, elements which are introduced afterward are dependent on the casting ability and could have done with more elegant connection between each other. Switches could cause a channel of wind to blow away fog, or some of the barriers could be red herrings, instead requiring you to stack boxes and jump over them. Scope creepers aside, among the "archeology girl" games, Uncharted is one where Nate just needs to ditch the guns and stick to stunts; props to you for sticking to your gauntlet.
I enjoyed the immediate flair of highlighting UI with the crystal, but it was absent on "Quit," feeling a bit lopsided, which is also how I might describe the control somatic. The speed of vertical traversal, whether it be jumping or flying or via mushroom, feels snappy and satisfying, yet the ground movement feels sluggish by comparison; the effect is exacerbated by the "thud" sound effect for landing feeling uncharacteristic for a tiny bird character. There is a single point where I was required to slash above me to clear a rock, but both the visual and mechanical feedback for the basic slash attack obscure its role here. The camera has an intentional obscuring effect put to use in the fire flower area, although the camera's introduction of the flower itself provided the effect of appearing like a "boss room" where I needed to fly into the crevice and defeat the flower.
The game has a clear dedication to its Land inspirations which shines through in the quantity of music defining each zone, however there are other flairs that would have cemented this motivation beyond a shadow of a doubt; actions like displaying a name of an area when you arrive bridges elegantly between the enjoyment of an "open world" and an "elemental zone romp." The Nerve aspects are here largely serving the Land motivations, and the battle gauntlet area has well enough choreography that the spot-troubles in the tutorial aren't as ill-taken. If the experience is meant to feel lopsided it should also feel tailored to that imbalance, with enemies that require me to slash down on them or having that attack do more damage, rather than simply being forced into that input by the level itself.
There was a tidal wave of titles within the "streamer bait" slop sphere after Bennet Foddy convinced everyone that trash was actually cool, but he played a dangerous game himself by making his game fun to play. Despite an esoteric control scheme, it has a crunch and depth to it that goes beyond Sexy Hiking, and not many other "Sisyphus-likes" take this double standard into account. Let's contrast with the nearly identical game-feel of Kirby's Dream Land, which uses an infinite number of jumps and a low-risk combat with a two-beat rhythm: swallow and spit. Fly By Knight splits the rhythm into two "measures," slash forward and ground-pound. Of course, everyone wants more measures of music, but if your game can't compete with four-on-the-floor then let's look at the funk. *ba-na-naa-nah*
I hope I'm not alone in being somewhat unsettled by the raccoon's eyes on the title page. With that said, I was hoping he was going to get to be a little evil and creepy and opulent, but it turns out to be a rather bland heist without even a snack aisle to raid. If I had just one more button then all would have been well. Perhaps even some kind of affliction that certain items give; the crown mixes up my controls as I put it over my head and it covers my eyes, the pants make me take weird long steps as I try to walk in them, rings slow me down, you get the idea.
The game is a classic affair of Nerve gameplay to evoke a stealthy situation. A common and effective risk-reward for such a system is speeds of movement, where moving faster trades off security, usually by way of silence, but in this case perhaps it could tamper with the predictability of the spotlights, i.e. the faster you try to go, the more erratically they move and flicker.
Manbiki Shounen with more graphics...Does that make it better? Yeah, sure! But I want more. What you also basically have is the flash game called The World's Hardest Game. The last level was approaching a satisfying difficulty, but the rest of the game was moving too slowly to make up for it.
4/11/25 - Puzzle Garden
Mind-Nerve Spotter
A for Agriculture, Simple yet Enriching
I found each feature to have a smooth and tempered design, but quality of life features are absent or mismanaged; namely, the ability to quickly restart a level. Levels which use the cactus have a limited number you are able to plant; this seems somewhat arbitrary since the number of days already imposes a limitation. It could make more sense where the abilities of a pumpkin could be more exploitable, but since the levels remain the same size and nothing is able to fertilize dry land this feature only serves as an extra reminder to plant them each day, at which point I must wonder why they were included in the level at all.
The game has clean Mind-based motivations in place; each element perfectly lends itself to a tight puzzle gameplay loop aside from the central Nerve mechanic: the variable days. This feature strains the puzzle's coherence of design against the player's capacity to internalize it and execute it across an increasing turn time span. Thankfully, the game also knows to not press too strongly on this boundary with such a simple game, only ever reaching a total of 5 days. Producing excitement in the execution necessarily means producing more variability in the preparation.
A game like Minesweeper is very simple, and it's perhaps easy to get wrapped up in the idea that simplicity is always best. 14 Minesweeper Variants challenges that assumption by playing with the rules rather than the features. Additionally, it provides a drawing interface for taking notes, which would be a strange choice in most games; puzzles, however, can do with all the quality of life that they can manage, because the reality is people aren't smart, and they learn pretty slowly how to not be dumb. That said, any teacher who blames their student is an awful teacher, not because they fail to teach but because they fail to learn. Incorporating the economy past the score per level would have put this game one step closer towards the hallmarks of Stardew slop, and so I have an unexpected appreciation for the fact that there isn't a cosmetics store, crop upgrades, etc.
4/10/25 - Inline: Out of Time
Nerve-Land Mazer
S for Skates, Stylish and Speedy
When I receive achievements just for starting the game, it changes my relationship with it drastically (in a good way). I immediately become invested in collecting them, yet some of them seem padded, especially the low and medium score achievements. The mechanics are simple and clean, and it feels amazing to get a better handle on them and get better scores. On the other hand, the character has pretty clunky visual feedback and wall jumps; rail designs probably could have served this purpose in a more fluent manner. The second level posed a legitimate challenge that engages me to not only do well enough for a perfect score, but also to try and go beyond it. The third level was also fun, yet also a fair bit easier than the second in my opinion with 15 more seconds to achieve perfection. Clearly a lot of passion and devotion was put into the soundtrack and jukebox menu, but it feels like a severely missed opportunity that I'm not able to access this menu and change the music during gameplay. Without this feature, the extra ~15 minutes of music is essentially preventing me from playing the game if I want to listen.
The game busts out a lean and tight Nerve gameplay with just enough attention put into Land variability in order to support it without getting in the way. The achievements go a long way in giving both a more obvious feeling of intentional design, especially the secrets which on some level I enjoy more without finding them. In ending my experience this way I'm able to make the game still feel full of discoveries and entice myself to return to the world to rediscover them.
I'll skate past the obvious influences and try to give more esoteric insights, since your proficiency in replicating Sega's hallmarks is without question. One thing worth noting, however is that Sonic usually does without a wall jump, and overall its ubiquity in 3D Mario & platformers has overstayed its welcome; even in those games it turns out to be a chore for gaining height rather than an action the player performs and feels good about improving. A game like Gimmick! has a remarkably simple set of actions, but the depth of those actions has been considered and their skill ceiling is what makes the game unique; in a similar vein, it may be nice to include "mechanical easter eggs" such as jumping off a box thrown below me or including just a tiny bit of momentum so I can use them to gain speed, while also trying to time it effectively with the objectives and cool-down. Honestly, I'm getting strung out trying to think of examples for improvement, so I'll see myself out and leave you to making even more great games.
I was easily drawn to this one as evidently the art direction is impeccably coherent, which at the risk of sounding shallow goes far further than design direction in attracting users. The music also has a lot of drawing power, but it's somewhat pulled back by the overall sound design which doesn't feel as attached to the theme and characters. To say nothing good about the game design would perhaps be going a bit too far, so I'll say that it's an acquired taste which I do enjoy, but which hasn't been drawn out for its full flavor. The amount of vertical traversal begs for an aerial combat option, and the area of effect for the special attack is too small to have very little in the way of visual feedback, and the paramount strategy of kiting the enemies into a bundle to ult them all isn't so much a fun thing to do as it is a necessary thing to do. When it comes to unrepentant difficulty in video games, I think the important thing to assess is the gradient of recuperation, meaning how many different ways can I approach the situation if I fail? To what degree can I simply go and explore other parts of the game in order to let my subconscious settle into the challenge? To be more direct, a very simple implementation would have been to give healing roses a cooldown to respawn, long enough to catch the players like me who find themselves kiting half a dozen enemies at half a heart with not much else to do but run in and die, or turn on god-mode, which in terms of the recuperation gradient is a stark black-and-white switch and it hurts my eyes a little bit.
The game feels as though the Nerve gameplay went ignored in favor of the perfectly polished linear Land design. This doesn't necessarily mean that the Nerve gameplay doesn't exist; in some respect I felt myself getting more adept at wringing out a full combo exactly when I wanted it, but the ignorance of these mechanics in visual or audio design requires them to be known rather than felt. If a player starts out as I do, spamming the attack button at a moderately fast but random pace, they recieve a mix between a full combo and absolutely nothing, and the combo itself isn't signifying that well-timed inputs are far more effective.
Although their modern titles have made them far more famous, I grew to love the clunky charm of the original Witcher shortly before the third installment had arrived. This style of gameplay becomes an even harder sell when it's not clear whether you wanted the players to know it's happening. If you didn't intend for this style, then the input buffering should be as robust and reliable as Dark Souls. As I've noted several times already, the art direction is superb, on par with Gamecube classics like Mario Sunshine or Wind Waker. Don't let that get to your head; make the game fun to play, too.
The controller mandate caused a hurdle where the camera became completely bugged when connecting my Dualshock 4. With bravery and fortitude I attempted the game with PC input and found that it worked fine. The first few minutes of the game involve acclimating myself to the floatiness of Diti's procedurally generated animations, as well as the unfortunate tail that occurs frequently on the dialogue chirping sound effect. With each new ability gained, I become slightly more unwieldy, which feels well featured for combat; in the case of traversal, I found myself discovering more invisible walls and more roll-spam sequience breaks, which is par for the course with such a densely populated level design, but could do with some more forethought and "foul play." The progression system finished out at the perfect time in the narrative, although the "memory marbles" seem somewhat contrived in achieving this particular beat (no spoilers). The Overseer boss and the final twist are good, if I knew how either of them resolved, but alas, I died, and the game didn't seem to be prepared to reset that fight, nor to save my data. It seems fitting to end my journey as it began; with a bug that prohibits the game's earliest instructions.
The game is exceptional in delivering satisfying Nerve combat, although the overabundance of blades in enemy's attacks leads to a relative scarcity or tedium in some areas to collect more, which causes the Land gameplay to suffer. This motivation is also hampered by the freedom of movement that is unaccounted for in the level design, especially in areas like the "purple floor" where the player's movement on the ground becomes as unstable as midair. Title cards for different areas were doing some heavy lifting in some instances of delineating them from each other, and the value of that structure goes underutilized where I think a more strictly linear level design would have engrossed me more in the narrative arc, as well. Structuring not only the final level design but the entire world design towards fighting the Overseer would have also sold me on the "descent into hell" vibes that the story is going for.
Risk of Rain 2 and Spongebob: Battle for Bikini Bottom are both games which share your genres. Each of them has a partisan focus on Nerve and Land motivations respectively; while their counterpart may be atrophied, they are large enough to mostly accommodate the excision of these less than enjoyable elements. In your case, you've succeeded in bringing those genres closer together with the same action set for combat and exploration, but now that means when one suffers, the sum of parts suffers all the more. You've at least got a more appealing unified action set than No Man's Sky's beam-based gameplay, and while 3D Sonic has as much of an obsession with rails as you do with saw blades on rails, they've never had a satisfying rail-grapple mechanic, so nice beaten punch there, Tristan.
I encountered features of the game which were creative and thematic, but which also felt unrefined or even accidental. The orc customer throwing axes at the player are signaled with an arrow reticle on his person, and yet I feel as though it's a perfect opportunity to just signal a mechanic with your voice actors and do away with the featureless white circle. Furthermore, a sound occurs when he throws the axe; it has a twirling timbre, yet it remains fairly still flying through the air rather than visually twirling. Several customers entering at a time can lead to a situation in which one suddenly emerges from under another and I have more to deal with than I thought, however as dynamic as this makes the game, I can't help but feel it's basically unintentional due to them simply using the same pathing. This could have been thematically grafted on with couples/parties entering; they will quickly stack the workload but they'll wait longer by socializing, and uh, voice acting. Did I mention the voice acting? They have cute characters but all of their lines are stomped on by the grindset 🔥🔥🔥 meter.
The game has a strong start in establishing Nerve motivations with an explicit structural flow of items and customers, and a timer-tier-bar combo pressing you to do as perfectly as possible. This clarity, however, is somewhat befuddled by Heart aspirations which run counter to the Nerve gameplay; that is to say that characterizing the customers and giving them voices and reactions to my gameplay actually intrigues me to do worse and acquire the reward of characterization from getting a poor grade. Perhaps you could really have something quite special in revisting this dynamic; urge the player to do worse and better at the same time and allow them the simple fun of choosing. The challenge of course, is making doing bad fun, and you already have some skeleton-- er orc, in the way of what that looks like. The more I decide to not care about my fantasy tavern job, the more the game could go from a chef management sim to a bullet hell gauntlet.
While I think the more finely crafted game loop of obvious inspirations such as Overcooked and Papa Louie's Saga are more fun, the potential for more dynamic relationships with characters is leagues above Mass Effect, because rather than just a little wheel with good guy and bad guy one liners, you get to personify bad behavior and it becomes a far more replayable experience.
What? Did someone say Undertale? Must have been the wind...
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