【Weekly Game Log: 2024-11-18】




A flat and low energy week, with a bunch of anticipated and underwhelming releases.

The Sapling is an in development evolution based world building sim. I purchased this on a whim, and it seems fine. It seems to have actual evolution apparently, but I only encountered Spore-style manual creation/alteration of species. The sandbox (actual gameplay) mode is also locked behind the first story mission, which is itself a collection of ~5 story missions. Once I unlocked it, the extremely cumbersome 3D navigation seemed to get gimble lock or something and I could only move the camera in one direction. Needless to say, it needs work.

Approaching Infinity is a game I've owned for a while and decided to give a proper shot. It's a space roguelike with separate ship and planetside systems. There's a lot of variety in classes and entities in the game, and while the gameplay is not that varied I could see it lasting. The bigger issue is that it's a game that can be played ~80% with the keyboard only, or ~80% with the mouse only, but there's always something you can't do with one or the other... And it's normally not labeled either.

I played more of Mask Quest and enjoyed it up to the point where it got too hard/annoying. The breathing mechanic continued to be an innovative challenge throughout, with the exception of the spectacularly inconsistent way exhaling affects the environment. But it's the regular platforming, particularly the ledge grab mechanic, that got me in the end.

The Rise of the Golden Idol is the sequel to The Case of the Golden Idol a game that is incredible for most of its length, then becomes a bit cumbersome at the end and through it's DLCs as they tried to move the puzzles beyond the limits the interface was built for, and um'd and ah'd about whether cases should be strictly independent or rely on past knowledge.

The good news for The Rise of the Golden Idol is that they have codified the overarching plot into the gameplay, and added additional sections to manually solve the grand mystery. The bad news is that have also decided that the interface will be terrible and unsuitable from the start. The art is suitably unsettling, and the music does a great job building tension. The puzzles themselves seem decent enough, but they're so intertwined with the terrible interface that it's hard to tell. I also think that some of the leaps of logic are so absurd as to make Usborne Puzzle Adventures look like rigorous deductive logic. When I stop playing this game, I just want to fire it up and solve more puzzles, but then I think of the interface and stop.

Sorry We're Closed is a supernatural mystery game, mixed with lengthy fixed camera survival horror sections. It has an incredible extremely queer aesthetic. There's a diverse cast of strange and interesting characters you spend most of the start of the game socialising with. As the game progresses, you encounter a supernatural side of the world, featuring even more bizarre and fantastic characters. It's one of the most compelling and fantastic worlds I've encountered in a game...

... Then you encounter the combat in Sorry We're Closed, which can be summarised as "Killer 7 but worse". This annoyed me at first, but then I realised I was an idiot and I should just be avoiding combat due to it being a Survival Horror. The game strikes back by insisting you engage in the combat via bossfights and similar. Eventually I managed to grind through the combat and the game became enjoyable again. But I'm not sure if I like the rest of the game more than I hate the combat.

Tetris® Forever is the latest Gold Master game collection and documentary from Digital Eclipse. Which is a series I've though has been satisfactory, without every really being compelling. This one covers the origins of Tetris, or the story of all of Tetris over nearly 40 years, or both, or neither, depending on what footage, interviews, and commercial rights are available. There was a minor blowup between the developers and their target market of people who like the idea of treating a games history with reverence more than the actual act, and a scene of extremely niche online weirdos obsessed with a single subset of games who have no concept of history or how a normal human beh... Anyway.

I went into Tetris® Forever with extreme cynicism. Which is a shame, because I've found the documentary footage to be quite compelling, thorough (in certain areas) and interesting. Far more than any of the previous entries in this series (including Atari 50). I immediately sat through ~2 hours of interview material when I first loaded it up. Like previous Gold Master entries, the actual included games are fine, though way too limited even among the versions that could easily have been included without rights issues, (and the online weirdos do raise a good point about the absence of Tetris Grand Master.) Also like the previous entries, there are weird inconsistencies or factual errors (eg. There are two different origins of the name "Tetris" in this, both attributed to Pajitnov)

A note: This week's entry might seem very rough, and needlessly cynical. But I'm struggling to find the effort to right these at this point. And at this point am only seeing out the year as I initially resolved to in January.

All Games Played


Tetrachroma: Good


Deadlock: Good


Mask Quest: Good


The Sapling: OK


Approaching Infinity: Good


The Rise of the Golden Idol: OK


Sorry We're Closed: Good


Tetris® Forever: Good

【Weekly Game Log: 2024-11-11】


A strange week of few games and 24 hours of intense travel due to a family emergency.

I played a bit more Guilty Gear Strive, finished arcade mode with a couple of characters and played some online matches where I surprisingly did not embarrass myself. It's a really great fighting game that is more approachable than it seems. Particularly given it's terrible tutorial system.

I also went back to the post-ending "Marathon Mode" of Wilmot Works it Out. Where you get regular deliveries of random pieces from every puzzle in the game, and you have to do your best to sort them out before requesting another delivery. While not as solid as the main progression, this is a really great bonus to the game. It's also extremely challenging and feel's a lot closer to Wilmot's Warehouse without any time pressure.

Elin is the spiritual sequel to classic Japanese genuine roguelike Elona. It's been out to kickstarter backers for a while, but entered a public Early Access period recently. It plays a lot like its predecessor, with an isometric viewpoint. However there's a lot more focus on "base-building" at your home area before encouraging you out into the larger world. I'm not sure what to think. I've tried a few of the many, many class/race combos so far, and while the game is good it feels ill-suited to the amount of building it encourages.

While Travelling I played through Leap Year, a puzzle platformer from Sokpop. The gimmick here is that you die if you fall more than one tile, but you can jump two tiles high. So any random jump is death unless you find a way to limit the fall. This makes for interesting and novel problems to solve, and a really excellent challenge. It's a short game (around an hour, plus a bit more for to find the last few secrets,) but it changes things up a few times that stops the formula being stale, without the new features feeling out of character for the game. I feel that the last few challenges require a precision that the game does not provide. But other than that it's excellent for what it is.

I'm still playing some Tetrachroma. I've focused on unlocking different modes in the game, many of which are extremely original and fun. Unfortunately this has meant playing just to clear lines, rather than build up score combo, which is far less interesting. Additionally, I've reached the point where the only thing to progress on is the "Console" mode. Which I believe is meant to emulate the NES tetris, but just seems to be inconsistent and annoying. Most of my games in this mode end in a tile getting stuck 2 or 3 tiles away from where I expected to be. Much like with Leap Year, the game seems to expect a precision (and obsession with obscure tetris versions) that it does not provide the controls for.

Mask Quest is a really novel platform game from Increpare (maker of Stephen's Sausage Roll amongst many others). It would be a mechanically simple platform game, if the game didn't require you to breathe manually to keep sufficiently high oxygen and low CO2 levels (and water out of your lungs.) I've only played about half an hour so far, but mostly I've found it really enjoyable. At least until the last few levels, where the frustration levels started to really kick in. I'm yet to determine if this part is something that ultimately works well with the theme, or is genuinely cumbersome and reliant on luck of the draw. I would recommend it to most people though.

I also played a bit of Deadlock this week to try out the new "ranked" mode. I'm still one match short of getting an actual rank, but I've enjoyed playing in this mode so far. I don't feel like I'm embarrassing myself, or hindering my team with NFI what I'm doing. Though in the teamfights I still feel like a player skillfully reacting to what is on screen is at a massive disadvantage to the player running into a wall facing the wrong way, but has memorised the correct sequence of 25 dota keys to press.

All Games Played


Tetrachroma: Good


Deadlock: Good


Guilty Gear - Strive: GREAT


Wilmot Works It Out: GREAT (Notable)


Elin: Good


Leap Year: GREAT


Mask Quest: GREAT

Mask Quest review: the cops don't have to breathe - https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/mask-quest-review #Platformer #WotIThink #Increpare #MaskQuest #Indie #undef #PC

Mask Quest is a deceptively gimmicky platformer where you must press A to breathe while avoiding the cops - https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/mask-quest-is-a-deceptively-gimmicky-platformer-where-you-must-press-a-to-breathe-while-avoiding-the-cops #Platformer #Increpare #MaskQuest #Indie #PC