Exploring the Itch.io Collection #4

I’m in-between big articles, so I figured I’d do one more of these in the meantime.

However, I must bring up something important first, while I’m at it. Earlier this year, online gaming platforms such as Steam and, yes, itch.io, faced a major problem. An organization known as Collective Shout wrote an open letter to all payment processors, lobbying them to act against online gaming platforms that housed video games containing heavy topics such as incest, rape or child abuse. Payment processors (PayPal, credit card companies, and so on) acted with a swiftness, threatening to pull their services from Steam and itch.io unless adult-only games with those themes were pulled or impossible to purchase from now on. A request that Steam and itch.io agreed to follow!

Okay, so let me start by saying that these topics are horrible things in the real world. Do I really need to state such an obvious? However, video games are a medium for fiction, and as such they, too, should be allowed to cover these topics, in the same way that movies, TV shows, music and novels have for decades. Imagine if, at the height of the popularirty of Game of Thrones, VISA or MasterCard decided, "Nope, some people don't like the stuff in there, therefore we won't let you buy that Blu-Ray set or subscribe to HBO!"

By the same metric, we can assume that people who purchase and play those games consent to experiencing these themes (bonus points if the game does come with a trigger warning just in case), and have enough of a head on their shoulders to understand that what’s going on in the game is NOT glorification of those themes. (If a video game seriously advocated for rape, incest, child abuse, whatever, you’d be able to tell, and such a game would be rightly called out for it.)

Tons of games were stricken down that had nothing pornographic about them, and were either portrayals of LGBTQ+ experiences and/or were autobiographical in content. Experiencing something difficult safely through the medium of fiction can mentally help those who have lived through similar things in the real world, with the barrier of fiction giving some distance. Use of these themes in fiction can also help others recognize when such situations are, in fact, happening in real life.

That payment processors suddenly get to decide what the average person can and can’t do with their own money is outrageous, ‘cause last I checked it wasn’t illegal to buy fiction. The response from the Internet has been to organize campaigns and mass-call the credit card companies and PayPal’s phone lines to tell them to reverse the decision. As far as I can tell, a first step was made by the platforms enacting their own rules to circumvent some of the payment processors’ new requests, and even today I don't think all the games are back for sale. Despite the Internet rersponse, don’t be fooled; if Collective Shout's ploy has worked once, even temporarily, it will be attempted again.

Call it what it is: It’s censorship. It may benefit a small group in the short term, but it will penalize everyone in the long term, and we can NOT let this slide. We must never forget that this happened. We must not let up in calling the payment processors who took part in this, and admonishing them for it. They do not have a right to block legal purchases, based solely on their content. Nor can we forget the gaming platforms that bowed. Slippery slope is a sophism, fair; but we must be prepared for the possibility that another group tries to make this happen once more. I did not address it until now because I just didn’t have the time to write about it at the height of the issue in July; I figured I’d use this article to talk about it in the intro, since the itch.io platform was affected in a significant manner due to its creative community being struck hard by that controversy. Anyway, in short: Prepare yourself, just in case this happens again, because it could.

Sorry about the downer starter. Anyway, here’s a bunch of games under 13 minutes long.

Experiences

Yeah, that thing ain't right.

ring ring: A mysterious phone found on the beach, which functions without electricity or a phone line. Calling any 4-digit number leads to odd discussions, but something’s off. Someone contacted, named George, tells you that everyone you’ve spoken to is trapped in the phone, and so your goal is to avoid getting taken as well (which is a Game Over) while looking for a way to defeat the evil spirit it contains within that's causing all this. This one’s simple, you use the rotary dial to make random calls, occasionally get proper phone numbers to call and further the plot. The only thing on the screen is that clay sculpture phone, so it’s minimalist yet does things very well. Be aware, there may be jump scares!

ZOMBI

For once, on Halloween, I wanted to be on topic! At the start of the year, I select which games I might like to play across the following 12 months, and back at the start of 2025, I had two horror picks in my list; today’s game, and Resident Evil 4 on the Wii. I will try to cover the latter in November – however, for now, I have Ubisoft’s zombie game to get through. I can’t chicken out of this!

Uh oh, here comes the horde.

Ubisoft has many famous series, but also quite a few standalone games. Today’s title was first released as a Wii U launch title, with the title ZombiU, in November 2012; but then it was given a second life as a port made by Straight Right, retitled ZOMBI, and released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on August 18th, 2015. Although… calling it a “second life” may be a little gauche; we are talking about survival in a zombie apocalypse here. This game is known for doing something never seen before – fresh, new ideas, those are rare nowadays, especially those that directly affect gameplay. Enough beating around the bush, let’s see what this is all about.

London has Fallen

Well, can't say it's a great living arrangement, but...
it's not like there are better options right now.

The zombie apocalypse is underway. Your survivor is surrounded by undead, but a voice from the metro PA tells them to run into the station. They race through and end up in a Safe House designed by their new friend, the Prepper, who will help them survive. Out of the goodness of his heart, sure, let’s go with that. Before the survivor can go on missions, they need to get a weapon – a cricket bat – and a Bug-Out Bag (BOB), with room for the survival tools they’ll gather. You also get a handgun, with limited ammunition (for survival horror, that’s par for the course). Finally, you get a Prepper Pad, which scans the area and detects anything of interest: Dead bodies, containers, doors, hidden items. Scanning doors with this can often allow the Prepper to hack them and open the way for your protagonist. Similarly, scanning security cameras can reveal the map in their areas.

Your first mission is to scan a grocery store’s CCTVs at Brick Lane Markets. After getting a key card, you gain access to London's sewer system, which serves as quick travel between areas. Be careful when you explore, though; your only save points are beds, and though you can find some aside from the one in the Safe House, those are few and far between.

Zombies, if you come back, you get the whack!

Project: What Are The Top 12 Most Obscure Games I Covered?

Hello everyone! I've got something ready for Friday, but I also have a project for December that I've been planning for a month... and it's a project that you can help with!

For a little while now, I've been trying to have my regular Top 12 lists in December, as a bit of a closer on the year. I remember loving all the research I had to do in order to get accurate information in my previous lists about bad video game marketing campaigns, and so this year I had the idea to dip into a different facet of research journalism: Data collection!

What am I planning to do for a Top 12 in 2025? Well, I was hoping to do a list of the most obscure (or least known) games I hae ever reviewed on here. I covered a lot of games that I've never heard of anywhere else, so making such a list on my own would be very difficult. This is where you come in!

Do you want to lend a hand? I've plugged into a Google Form the my entire Index of games reviewed (up to the last games for this year's Quick Reviews). Now, for every one of these, you can say whether you:

-Have played it (owned it or not isn't relevant);

-Own or have owned it (I know a lot of people with humongous game backlogs, and I include myself in that category; you probably own games you haven't played - or maybe you recognize games you have once had, but no longer have);

-Have heard of it (never played nor owned, but the name rings a bell; seeing someone else play such a game counts in this category); or

-Have never heard of (if the game's title is entirely unknown to you).

At all times, you can use the Index to help you with this, if you choose to fill in the form. Whenever possible, I included links to Steam pages (since 75 to 80% of the games I reviewed are on Steam) to jog your memory.

You can access the Google Form here! Please help me, I hope to collect over 25 responses, and I would be incredibly grateful if I could get a hundred! The more responses I get, the more I can narrow down the list to just the 12 I need, but the remainder of the information could be used for other observations.

See you on Friday for a Halloween-themed review!

Quick Review: Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York

Oh hey, nice coincidence covering this game in October.

I went for the artist. Didn't even know he was gay.
As an outsider, I'll say, I do appreciate VtM having
decent LGBTQ+ representation, and general diversity.

Developed by Draw Distance, published by Dear Villagers, and released on December 11th, 2019, Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York is set in the universe of the Vampire: The Masquerade RPG. I’m not too knowledgeable with most tabletop game universes, including this one, so I’m learning and discovering that world as the game progresses. This is a visual novel, so there’s little “game” to speak of, aside from getting to choose how some interactions go and the order in which to do the quests.

Feels like I'm  being kidnapped by Vampire John Wick.

You pick one of three protagonists – they have preset names, but you can change them. A good chunk of the visual novel remains the same, but elements will differ, such as the inciting incident and specific personal elements. The three are [Eric], a hot-blooded Asian American; [Amanda], a businesswoman; and [Lamar], a gay African American artist. One way or another, they are bitten by a stranger and transformed into a vampire (a kindred, as the secret society calls it). The character is then found and taken to the Camarilla, the leading caste of vampires in NYC, and forced into this new life. Not that they have a choice; it’s not like there’s a cure. You character is basically a dead person walking.

Again, not much of a choice. You can leave this room
undead, or dead dead.

The Camarilla have a strict set of rules regarding the Embrace (the act of turning someone into a vampire); if the act was not permitted by the Camarilla, final death (since vampires are already undead) for both the childe (the newly created vampire) and their sire (the one that transformed them). However, before your character is executed, they beg for mercy and are taken under the wing of Sophie Langley, a member of the Camarilla that advocates for this childe to stay and become a valuable member of the secret society.

Welp. Gotta pick someone to assault for blood.
Just gotta hope we don't run into another secret vampire here.

Your character will need to learn to control their thirst for blood (the Hunger). They’ll learn to hunt; they’ll have to keep themselves in check by feeding regularly, but never to the point of overfeeding, as both it and underfeeding have dire consequences. Once the character is settled into this unsettling new life, they’ll be told by Sophie to assemble a team, a “Coterie”; basically, go out and make friends. Her suggestions involve four vampires from other clans; there’s 13 such clans, of varying levels of threat and trustworthiness. Create your friend group, prove your worth, learn about all the inner politics of this society. Still, through all this, one question will remain: Who turned the protagonist into a vampire… and why?

It takes a while before you finally have your entire
nights to yourself, with a lot of possible quests to take on.

You can worry about vampire nicknames later.

As you can see from this plot-heavy description, there’s a lot to take in. This game is more of an interactive story with moments where you can occasionally pick the course of the plot. Your choices do matter in the long run; it all depends on how you interact with the other characters. The story is set over a specific number of nights, one that makes it impossible to recruit all four potential members of the Coterie in one playthrough; thus, you have an incentive to play through the game multiple times.

You will often need to use your character’s new abilities to turn events to your favor, but this may cause their Hunger to grow and they’ll need to suck blood from a prey – however, the chances you have for feeding are limited depending on the current scene and which options pop up. It’s limited to very specific points, with only your character’s first “hunt” being the one time they have freedom to choose a “victim”. It hardly comes up otherwise, aside from dialogue options that either close or open depending on whether they feel the Hunger or not.

Yep, I needed that dictionary to properly write some of the
paragraphs in this article. Hey, it served its purpose!

If this priest truly knew who he was talking to, our character
would be on the receiving end of a Vade Retro Satana.

You even have access to an in-game dictionary of terms specific to this world, since they add up over time. Once you can choose what you do each night, you get more freedom, with occasional quests adding themselves on top of your search for a Coterie. Some nights you’ll be able to pick two plotlines to follow, but usually you’ll have one mandatory plot event and then just one of your choosing. Hey, nights are short, and you can’t stay up till dawn. And, well, as soon as you finish one character’s story and begin a new one, you’ll notice just how similar all three end up being – you have some agency in what you can do, but everything builds up towards the same climax, even if the events leading up to it, and its resolution, can differ based on your choices.

This guy looks intense, but then again, most vampires do.
But don't worry, gathon is a good dude, if you can disregard
that he's basically a wizard doing blood magic.
Hey man, wanna join a Coterie?

That said, there were two DLCs added that I’m told diverge a lot more from the base game’s three scenarios. Personally? I might do one scenario and be satisfied with it. If you already like this TTRPG series, or are intrigued by it, I could see this as an interesting purchase, since it has a good story, and explains a lot for beginners.

Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York is available on Steam on sale for 3.99$ till the end of October!

Alright, gonna be back to regular-sized reviews soon enough – I might take a week off, these Quick Reviews took a lot out of me.

Quick Review: Transistor

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These things don't look friendly.

Created by Supergiant Games and released on May 20th, 2014, Transistor is the story of Red, a singer in the futuristic city of Cloudbank, where the population can vote to change everything, up to and including the color of the sky. One night, Red is attacked during a performance but is saved by her bodyguard, who takes a mysterious sword to the chest. That night, Red awakens only to realize that her ability to speak is gone, and the soul of the man has been transferred within the sword, the titular Transistor, which has bizarre properties related to computing. Something very wrong is going on in the city. It's infested by robots known as the Process, which are dead-set on “processing” everything and everyone into data. They were seemingly unleashed by a mysterious group known as the Camerata. With the city almost deserted, it’s up to Red and her companion to fight the threat and, if possible, restore Cloudbank…

Nope, not friendly. Good thing I have this big magic sword
that draws from the powers of souls!

Red moves around with the arrows, or you can give her a location to run to with the mouse on the grid-like maps. When she encounters enemies, she can fight using one of up to four Functions (keys 1 to 4), pre-set among the ones unlocked, and chosen at Access Points. (Some of these functions are collected from dead bodies, also taken into the Transistor.)

Let's see if these robots still stand after these next seconds.

The true interest, however, is the Turn() feature the Transistor has, which allows Red to go execute a series of commands in a split second. In that moment, you can move around, which costs time, and then use your Functions in any order. There’s a limit to how much you can do, but said limit will increase each time you level up. Still be careful; a fully used-up Turn() will have to cool down for five seconds, potentially leaving you in harm’s way.

And that's just early into the game, imagine all the
things you'll be able to do down the line.

At the access terminals, you can do far more than just set up your functions. You’ll unlock many over time, as well as new slots to use them. Each main function can be further enhanced with two more that will apply extra effects when used. Beyond that, you can unlock extra slots granting passive bonuses when filled. Every single function has uses programmed in when used as a main action, as an enhancement, or as a bonus – so, experiment! Oh, and every function has a cost in Memory (MEM), which means that you will have to choose wisely how you mix-and-match everything. (The level-up system can occasionally grant you additional MEM, giving you more options. It can also unlock Limiters, which will grant you more experience after each victory at the cost of making the game harder in some way, and yes, you can have all of them activated at the same time for the most challenging experience.)

In fact, some of these Process things are really strong.
Even this first boss is nothing compared to later ones.

In fact, you ARE encouraged to experiment, especially if things don’t go your way. When Red’s health bar is depleted, it will refill at the cost of losing your function that’s taking up the most MEM. You’ll continue the fight with three functions left, and losing one more if your health hits zero again. A Game Over is seen only if Red loses them all, so you basically have four health bars. Lost functions are broken and aren’t restored right away, either; it takes visiting two access terminals to repair a broken function so you can equip it again, which means that you’ll have to resort to new tactics for a moment afterwards if a battle didn’t go your way.

Learn to plan against every Process machine's eccentricity.
No need to smash a Younglady twice, they teleport after
you hit them once.

Robots that can obscure the screen with photos of Red, all
while shooting at her, and other robots whose entire goal
is to protect other Process on the battlefield. Oof!

The game is story-heavy, even if most of it has Red and her companion traveling the increasingly blocky “processed” surroundings of Cloudbank and reading reports of the worsening situation. However, progress is very linear, with nothing but the occasional reveal interspersed with battles against the Process. That said, you can find Backdoors that lead to a beach-like area from which Red can access challenges testing her speed, endurance, puzzle-solving skill, all through more battles. Also of interest is the New Game unlocked after beating the game once, which allows you to keep everything you've unlocked, while all battles (aside from bosses, of course) are now randomized.

The cutscenes look so damn great, too, even with their
limited animation. So much style through the entire game.

The Process even has chicken-like robots? Weeeeird.

I was a bit disappointed by the rigid linearity, but everything else is spot-on. The music is nice, the story is excellent, the environments are varied and impressive, and there are tons of inventive ideas to find here. I love the massive number of options in battle – once you learn to use them effectively, every one can become overpowered and tear through everything quickly. Some enemies and bosses have abilities that complement and challenge your skills in ways that could only happen with this system (the final boss is chef’s kiss). Worth playing, since it cemented Supergiant Games’ reputation for stylish titles packed with powerful storytelling, as the studio has done before with Bastion and would do later with both Hades games.

Transistor is available on Steam for 19.99$ USD.