I am slowly working through the collection! I don’t know how long this will take me, but I’ll keep progressing!
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Many games here today, some from the previous article, and
some from the next. |
Experiences
Grievance: Less a game than a short interactive story. It’s black text on a white background, there is no music, and your occasional input is to choose where the plot goes or what some characters say, though I assume these do not make a ton of difference in the end. This tells the tale of three characters. A farmer, a guardsman, and a princess, all of whom have their lives impacted by a meeting with the king of the land. The store page describes this tale as a fable about power, how it corrupts those who have it, and how it damages those who don’t. No happy endings here, that’s by design.
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You might see why I didn't want that pic to be the one
everyone would see when I was posting my link to this review. |
A completely normal dating simulator that is definitely completely sweet, innocent and normal: Yes, that’s the title. This is… a parody of dating sims. All the characters are one-dimensional, the art is stick figures over child-level drawings, the music is just someone singing to themselves, the plot is absurd nonsense, only one minor character (an author avatar/cameo) has all their lines properly voiced, and the text is packed with spelling mistakes. And… I’m sure this is on purpose. Like some dadaist thing. I kept expecting it to take a hard swerve into a different direction, like
DDLC, but nope. It’s more annoying than anything else, to be honest. Good for maybe a few laughs, though, if you can tolerate what it’s going for.
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| The kids have got to leave the nest at some point! |
One-Eyed Lee: Prologue: A young elf wants to escape from his wheat-farming family and see the world; but all his attempts were thwarted by his parents, his two brothers, and his sister. One night, at last, he makes it out of the wheat field, only to find a shadowy creature that grants him a worrisome, yet freeing, superpower… This visual novel has no decisions to make, and is just a story you can follow at your leisure. Not much of a game, but it IS intended as a prologue; its creator DarkChibiShadow only released one full chapter for this series yet, which I’ve also received in the Itch.io bundles I purchased. Someday, I’ll get to it! In the meantime, I could enjoy the good art, nice music, and character complexity shown in this short product.
Social Reach
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Yup. It's like I said. Every single line pulled right out of the
transphobe's playbook. This game may awaken sad memories
for those who did go through this sort of thing with their own
families. |
Boa Retina: A game by Jennifer Raye about someone experiencing gender uncertainty and finally confronting “the family” (represented by a winged monster eye) about her discovered trans identity. The eye will run through the whole transphobic script, starting at utilitarian excuses (“You’ll have a harder time finding work”) before moving on to emotional/physical abuse. To say nothing of the protagonist doubting her choice. You go through four documents re-exploring the protagonist’s self-discovery, hoping to find better arguments and defend this life-changing decision, without luck. I’m as cis male as they get; I will never live this. Thus, I could only guess that transition is tough for any person that has a family that would react like the monster eye. Seeing it firsthand through this game, however short, gives an unmistakable impression of just how mentally taxing making that choice, and especially coming forward about it, can be in some families. Something tells me that it is inspired by Raye’s real-life experiences, and as a result, it portrays this reality with eye-opening brutality.
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I use the "Social Reach" part of these articles to showcase
games that treat important social issues in some way. And
islamophobia, even portrayed through allegory, counts
as a great social problem. |
Devtheism: This game was created on RPG Maker. Its meta setting presents the tale of someone who is mocked for their belief in “Developers”, which clashes with the beliefs of other NPCs in an “Engine” that created everyone. After being mocked once again over it (“Your kind blows up people that disagree with them! Your kind can’t take a joke when we picture what you believe in!”), the main character sets out on a quest to prove the existence of Developers… or, perhaps, they will find a life truth: That what one believes in shouldn’t matter, what should matter is how good each person is. It is unfortunate how easily you can guess this game’s developer’s faith based entirely on the insults their main character receives; goes to show, those stereotypes are unfortunately still far too widespread. This is an allegory for religious persecution, so the topic is heavy; but the tone is lighthearted overall. And very metafictional.
Social Justice Warriors: The title is explained on the game’s page. Attacking, ridiculing and silencing each other online with terms like SJW or troll “not only fails to achieve progress but has an additional effect of escalating the conflict and wearing you down in the process”. Pick a class (which gets given traits pertaining to a specific online community), then battle against increasingly difficult “trolls” that use hateful rhetoric. Keep a close eye on your levels of patience and reputation; enemies have those too, and to defeat a troll, you must deplete either one. No patience means they give up, no reputation means their reach is destroyed. The same applies to your character, and casting your “spells” often costs patience or reputation. Clever and hilarious concept, with a fair bit of challenge to be found, especially late in the game when your stats have been lowered through many tough battles and it becomes a struggle for survival. Hey, you can raise an important point about society and still be funny about it!
Plain Games
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So, I guess this is in the future, because shape sorter
toys cannot be that old- ... ....right? |
(Not Escape Room): In this visual novel, three women have been trapped in what they assume is an escape room game by an AI. It is meant to be an inescapable trap for them to stay in forever. The three friends still treat it as solvable, and you, as the AI, will attempt to sow division to increase tensions. You select some of the ways in which the “escape room” game goes, to make the puzzles impossible to solve. Can you really keep these three trapped? (Probably not.) Fun little game; the characters are enjoyable, though there aren’t many choices to see how you could break their friendship. I assume there are multiple endings.
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Of course my first pick was the dog. It's easy mode.
Not that there's much difficulty to be found here. |
Eternia: Pet Whisperer: In this visual novel, your character is looking to adopt a pet to liven up their empty apartment. The shelter they visit has six pets… and they all talk! You can some time with them every day, and then adopt them. You are even given the option to time travel in order to adopt all of them! Or you can end at just one pet, too. Either way, this is a no-stress game, you can let the story play out. You can tell the
Hatoful Boyfriend inspiration here. It’s pretty good and the art is neat, though since the choices are never too difficult, it’s very much an “autopilot” kind of game where you can just be in for the ride, without having to do much in the way of input outside of choosing which pet to focus on during each loop.
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| The gate is open! Quick, go through! |
Eves Drop: An arcade-like game in which you control a hacker’s digital self, breaking through many barriers of a Big Brother-esque program on the eve of the new millennium. The digital self freefalls through a corridor. You can float towards any sphere using WASD, spin it around with A and D to aim, and then shoot by holding down and then releasing the sphere with S. The goal is to shoot spheres to destroy the gate to the next level, and then float down and pass through. Careful, though; enemies get increasingly frequent and dangerous the deeper you go. Tricky game to figure out and play at first, but I reached the end on my fourth attempt. It’s an energetic game for an interesting idea.
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I'll be right back to you, just gotta stuff the pot
with ALL the fod I can fit in it. Don't worry,
I will catch up on our conversation in a sec! |
Hot Pot Panic: Your friend is in town, so you go to an all-you-can-eat hot pot restaurant to chat over what’s new in your lives. The goal is to cook your food in the pot, eat it, and end on a full stomach before you run out of conversation topics. You must keep track of what your friend says, because she’ll ask for your input. And you must keep track of how your food cooks, because it’s only good to eat for a short window of time where it shines gold in the pot! You can lose either by not having a full stomach after running out of topics, or your friend figuring out, due to repeated wrong responses or staring at the pot too much, that you were more focused on the food than on her. Surprisingly challenging (the timing is tricky), and a great way to practice quick reading!
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Bit of SUPERHOT in there too, since
enemies move faster when you move. |
TRAINBOW: The biggest pain with this one was making it work, as I had to go into its folder and manually open the game with the actual app within the files. In this arcade game, you are Manpuck, the circle on the screen, and you are tasked with taking every flower bulb in each stage and taking it to the exit, one at a time. Careful, though; every picked flower will sprout enemies that will chase Manpuck. However, if you hide behind walls while they’re hunting you, they will eventually selfdestruct. Or you can run over a sprouting enemy to kill it before maturity.
The Primary mode is made of seven tutorial-like stages; their completion unlocks Secondary, made of 40 levels. In that mode, each stage has 8 bulbs, and the more bulbs you’ve collected, the more stages open. Still not enough? There are endless modes as well! It’s a fun little game with more depth than one could expect at first; I didn’t finish it, but I see its worth and challenge.
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Took me like 10 minutes to get up that tower of skulls.
This was not the end of the game, it was the second area.
Everything else after it was much easier. |
Cardiac: A monochromatic horror game in which you control a writhing mass of flesh that can move around thanks to tendrils. Right-click to extend the tendrils forward, left-click to be pulled in the direction of what they caught. The game begins with moving around through tunnels, then evolves to semi-platforming. The struggle is real. Gameplay is tricky, since you don’t control where your tendrils go, which makes movement difficult – that’s on purpose. The atmosphere is down pat, the music is appropriately tense, and the sound design… euuugh… all that squelching, all that wet sound… Still got chills of disgust.
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| Waving through the space snakes... |
Dragons In Space: Not actual dragons. In this abstract game, you control a ship and must stay alive, destroy enemies, and pick up the escape pods. You gain one star in a level for each task successfully completed (the “stay alive” one is earned by not getting hit at all). Eight levels, with enemies and hazards getting meaner and tougher to face. The ship you play cycles between three weapons, you don’t control which weapon you’re using in a level, and not every weapon is good in every situation (and the worst weapon is automatically selected against the final boss!). The gameplay has its hiccups, it’s not well optimized; but the abstract art style gives it a charm, in a “makes it look like it was drawn by a child” kind of way.
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Forget the ghost, I wanna know what's the trouble with that
one jackass in the chat that's crapping over everything that's
happening. Don't we have mods or something? |
LiveScream: Visiting a haunted mansion for views, how hard can it be? In this point-and-click, your character enters the mansion in search for supernatural events. You can see the chat commenting your actions as you play. You can solve little puzzles, and push through in the face of adversity. Manage your fear level (if you get too scared to continue, your character runs out screaming!) and your audience interest level (which goes up when interesting stuff happens). The point-and-click aspect is limited, as it only involves investigating across 3 rooms (+ one more, if you can find it) and performing actions (such as pushing forward when something weird is happening). There is no “true” ending, though there’s a wide range of outcomes. It’s got some in-game achievements, too!
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Better walk out of this room before I go mad
from the discovery. Yeah. |
Remnants: In this point-and-click created in RPG Maker 2003, your nonbinary character in a cool cape is investigating a hidden cave under a dying forest. The deeper they go, the creepier it gets, from abandoned sewers to a secret base and then, downright Eldritch locales. The character can find flashing items and use them to find their way to lower floors. Almost everything they can look at will elicit a comment on their part. This game focuses far more on narrative and setting an ambiance than on difficulty, but that’s to its benefit. Plus, there are many comedic moments from the character’s quips.
Next week: A full-length review!
