【Game Log: Mid-February 2025】
I've been horrendously unwell the last few days, which has delayed many things. I'm better now, but I'm nearly devoid of energy.
Most of my game time over the last two weeks has been more Caves of Qud. It's still awesome, I'm still dying to horrendous mistakes on my part.
I played some of Foundation, one of the early access town-builder graduates that I had forgotten I bought years ago. Like most of them, the game is entirely serviceable and functional. Everything worked as I played through the tutorial. When I saved and quit at the end I had zero interest in returning. Fool me 73 times I guess...
Victory Heat Rally is an arcade race game reminiscent of Outrun combined with more 'modern' Kart racers, and a Doom-engine stile raycaster aesthetic. It really captures the vibe of a superscaler racer, without technically being one. The controls are simple, but effective and the racing very fast. The game has an incredibly vibrant catalogue of characters with great style and art, that mostly go unused in the races, where you face "RACER01" and "RIVAL" instead. I was really enjoying it up until about 30% through the progression when the difficulty, particularly in the "challenge" side-races, rapidly became obnoxious. Fun game, but a bit of a waste.
I played more Dreams in the Witch House, it continues to be a slow burn. But the plot is thickening and I'm keen to see where it goes. The survival/sanity mechanics are starting to be more of a challenge too Something about the game makes me call it quits on a session earlier than usual, and playing it in small parts over time mostly works well. But there are certain key mechanics that don't, particularly the mechanic for studying for an exam (which the game presents as "get this number high enough and you'll get this grade" but is actually "get this number high enough AND manually answer questions that refer to a random line of text the character said, possibly days ago"), which are dragging the game down for me.
A Game About Digging A Hole doesn't let me change the controls.
Terry's Other Games is a collection of Terry Cavanagh's early works, and side-projects. It's presented as 5 "a-sides" and 5 "b-sides" (which includes a collection of tiny/failed projects). Each game hasn't had much done to it, but does have a little blurb of text describing the game and its context. The selection is a bit strange and many of his collaborative games are absent, which removes a lot of his pre-VVVVVV work. But it's still a good way to present a solo-developer's portfolio.
I touched on 5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel, which is chess... but 5D... with Multiverse time travel. The standard chess pieces in this game perform their normal roles, but can also move back in time (dimension number 3) and create an additional parallel branched version of the game (dimension 4) in the process that pieces can freely travel, which then creates a line known as "The Present" (dimension 5?) which swaps the players turn when all parallel games on that line have moves made. The movement of the pieces is extends intuitively across dimensions 3 and 4 (despite this, the instructions spend a lot of time explaining this). While "The Present" is a tad unintuitive and often progresses when you don't expect it to, or stays static when you do (there is little explanation here). Eventually I sought of got it, and had a fun game.
Strange Horticulture is a game that starts by presenting you a letter telling you to travel to a location, a meter called "The will to explore", and the instructions on how to increase that meter (watering the plants) so you can travel. None of this works, because what the game actually requires is for you to ring an unlabeled bell to serve the first customer of your flower shop. Then everything starts working. After that the game becomes a mix of puzzle/mystery solving to serve customers needs, exploration of the map thanks to contextual clues, and an unconventional approach to narrative progression and exposition. It's genuinely very good when it works. But I've played about an hour and had more times where the game demands zero deviation from a script, without giving any visual indication. Also it likes to drop out of full-screen mode on a whim.
Edit: Forgot to mention Keep Driving. Which is an RPG with turn-based "battles" (events like flat tires, or slow traffic) and inventory management themed around taking a roadtrip in the early 2000's. The premise intrigued me, but I did not enjoy this one. You get locked onto your route for way too long, the battle system seems to be designed for maximum ludo-narrative dissonance, and there's a visual filter over the whole thing that seems to just be artificially created jpeg artifacts.
Classic Recommendation
Pleurghburg: Dark Ages
A point-and-click adventure game from 2001 made by amateur developer. Notable for being one of the first games in the "Full-Length Adventure" category on the AGS website. You play as a detective trying to uncover a murderous underground conspiracy. It's extremely basic by Today's standards, but it has a lot of charm and a rad midi soundtrack.
All Games Played
Caves of Qud: GREAT (Notable)
Deadlock: Good
Proverbs: Good
Foundation: OK
Victory Heat Rally: Good
Dreams in the Witch House: GREAT
A Game About Digging A Hole: Unplayable
Terry's Other Games: Good
5D Chess With Multiverse Time Travel: Good
Strange Horticulture: Good
Keep Driving: OK