Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4 – Part 5

For the record, I have been working on this review for a month and a half, so it is entirely coincidental that I am publishing this on the exact week where the proper teaser trailer for Kingdom Hearts IV was released. Hey, timing did its thing again!

It's funny how quickly you get accustomed to the mix of
American animated animal characters with humans that
have a clear anime feel to their designs.

You’ve seen that title, so you know what’s coming. If there’s one thing the Kingdom Hearts franchise is known for, it is its interconnected story told over… oh, with the number of remakes and new games retelling events of past games, I’ve sincerely lost count. This story is harder to untangle than a Gordian knot. Especially if you haven’t been following the franchise closely, or missed an episode or five, which is bound to happen due to its entries being scattered across several consoles! And they’re usually action RPGs, so they tend to be story-heavy.

Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, developed and published by Square Enix, was released for the Nintendo 3DS on July 31st, 2012 in North America. Before this one, the only other KH game I’ve played (and reviewed) is Re:coded on the Nintendo DS. Well, I was glad to see that today’s game is a direct continuation of that one! It is also, according to sources, the last game in the chronology before KH III. Thus, it ties up a few loose ends in preparation. Then again, I’d bet that KH3D creates more unanswered questions on its own; that’s how it goes.

Again: I’m jumping in with very little frame of reference. Everything I know is from Re:coded, and the biggest plot point that game showed was that even non-living entities, like characters made of code, were still capable of becoming real Keyblade wielders, all it took was displaying heart and heroism. That game on the Nintendo DS also went over some of the events of the first Kingdom Hearts game, which helps but still leaves me with large gaps in knowledge. Bear with me, especially if you’re far better acquainted with this franchise than I am.

The Exam

Full disclaimer: Since you might not want low-quality images
for the cutscenes (and there are many of those), I will be
picking these off a playthrough of the 2.8 Final Chapter
Prologue version of the game. Big thanks to
SevuhnElevuhn for the longplay video. Check it out here!

The first scene takes place at a villainous lair, ten years prior. Some guy (named… Braid, I think?) is asking the POV character, whom he calls Xehanort, whether he recovered his memories, or never ever lost them. The POV character summons a dark blade, stabs Braid with it, and says his name is Ansem.

I don't even know if that will make sense after playing this game. For the record, Ansem here is Terra-Xehanort, which is Xehanort, possessing the body of a guy named Terra. This is the first minute and I already had to explain some lore, for Pete’s sake!

I use high-quality stuff for the cutscenes, but for gameplay,
this playthrough is what I will use, in order to show the
proper look on a Nintendo 3DS.

When we meet up with our heroes, Sora and Riku, we are seeing them much younger, on the beach of their home world, Destiny Islands. They are staring at the ocean, wondering how far they could go on a raft. They try it, and encounter a storm, during which Ursula, the sea witch, emerges. She speaks as though she has a score to settle with these two specifically. Too bad we don’t have a ship’s bow to stab her with; we’ll have to take her down the old-fashioned way. With Keyblades. …Wait.

A dash of hack 'n slash.

This tutorial boss introduces classic KH action RPG controls: A to attack, B to jump, Y to block when still or roll when moving, X to use a command from the command deck, be it a special attack or an item. The attacks in the command deck have attacks that charge over time; and thus he can use one as soon as it is fully charged. The starting loadout has Fire, Blizzard, a combo move known as Quick Blitz, and the possibility to use a potion to heal. You can change the active special move with Up and Down from the D-Pad. Part of the tutorial teaches to lock on to faraway targets, attacking them from a distance with ranged attacks, and how to execute combos (by attacking repeatedly with A).

Ursula goes down easily. She disappears, and the boys end up in the water due to the storm; but they reach a keyhole underwater, seal it, and travel to a different world. A hooded figure had been watching, and mutters that this world has been connected. Only Riku notices the figure, senses a threat, and does… something to protect Sora. It's unclear what yet.

He's just standing there, menacingly.

These two have been through, like, 6 entire adventures,
and apparently that's still not enough.

We cut to a flashback showing Sora and Riku in a meeting with Yen Sid, King Mickey, Donald and Goofy. They get a recap about Xehanort, the Keyblade Master turned Seeker of Darkness, who threatens this entire world, and all the worlds that comprise it. The wizard says that for Sora and Riku to be ready for what is to come, they must be recognized as true Keyblade Masters. However, since they learned their skills through past adventures, they never had the formal training, which they will need. Thus, they must pass through an exam known as the Mark of Mastery, to properly claim the title. Damn bureaucracy, ruining everything! Though Sora objects, Riku agrees to it, as he still harbors a small part of darkness in him.

Some Drops are more fun than others. We are starting easy.

Their exam will involve visiting worlds that are separated from each other due to being in some sort of stasis/sleep, and which were never quite rescued. The way Sora and Riku can help these worlds is by reawakening them through activating “Sleeping Keyholes” that will be difficult to find.

Sora travels to the next sleeping world that needs help. This is done through a free flight sequence known as a Drop. To open the portal to the next world, the character in a Drop has to fulfill a specific request, like collecting stars or defeating enemies. Sora can slow his flight, or speed forwards, the latter of which can also allow him to attack enemies that pop up in the flight tunnel. This ends with his arrival in Traverse Town.

Cameos and Creatures

Sora really is the type to try and befriend absolutely
every single person he meets, isn't he.

When he lands, Sora realizes that Riku isn't with him. He’s still looking young (though older than at the Destiny Islands), and his clothes have changed. Odd. He yells out for his friends, but gets told by a teen who shows up in the area to shut it. The new guy, a redhead with headphones and a collar so large it eats half his head, behaves as if he is playing some important game in the area. This guy is… Great, another franchise I know nothing about: Neku Sakuraba, from The World Ends With You, modified to fit the new setting, like one plucking fictional characters from various sources and just adapting them into OCs for a fanfic. With the already common occurrence of Final Fantasy characters cameoing in Kingdom Hearts (like Cloud and Sephiroth did in Re:coded), how long till Square Enix starts throwing in peeps from the rest of their output? It’s just a matter of time till they add someone from Octopath Traveler or something.

High-speed rail grinding! No wheeled item needed!

Neku has a game timer on his left hand, and lost his Game Partner in town. Sora offers his help, because that’s who he is. Neku reluctantly agrees, if Sora can catch up with him. And we can, thanks to a new ability called Flowmotion. When rolling with Y towards walls or environment fixtures like street lamps or stair ramps, Sora or Riku dashes forward. He will gain energy, and when he moves away from the fixture with Y, he’ll go at super speed. He can keep the momentum going by hitting more fixtures that aid Flowmotion. This can even be used to wall-jump! Lastly, it can be very useful in battle to attack enemies, chain up combos, and even trap larger threats into combos by spinning around them.

Another new skill here is Reality Shift. Visiting dreams grants Sora or Riku new abilities, which can be triggered by slashing downwards on the touch screen at specific times. Every world’s Shift is different. In Traverse Town, your hero can activate this near barrels to use them as projectiles.

He's just a little round goober!

We learn both while fighting creatures known as Dream Eaters. After that fight, Sora learns from Neku that they can use Dream Eaters! We cut back to the meeting with Yen Sid, who explains that while these worlds are not infested with Heartless, they contain a different type of darkness in the form of Dream Eaters known as Nightmares. Benevolent forms of those monsters can be created, raised, and trained for combat against the Nightmares. By defeating evil Dream Eaters, Sora and Riku can collect Pieces and use them to create good Spirits.

I am informed that Nintendo is angry of learning about this and again trying to get their patent about catching creatures and making them fight re-approved. (Seriously, I know I talk about Nintendo a lot, but this story on their part last year is grade-A bullshit.)

The goober likes belly rubs.

The Spirits can be played with, gain experience, level up, and earn new perks and abilities to make them better in battle. The way you care for the Spirits is very reminiscent to me of Pokémon-Amie from X and Y, the big difference being that you are training them for Action RPG fights. In combat, if a Dream Eater’s HP falls to 0, it will become dazed and stay in place for 30 seconds; this gives your current hero time to run up to them and press A repeatedly to rescue it. If you fail to rescue a Dream Eater in those 30 seconds, they die, disappear, and leave a crafting fragment behind.

Sora catches up to Neku and they encounter a cloaked figure. It attacks Sora, while Neku says that this wasn’t part of the deal. However, before anything can happen, Sora faints.

The Riku Side

Joshua sure seems to know an awful lot about Nightmares
and Dream Eaters, for someone crossing over from
another Square-Enix franchise!

Riku awakens in Traverse Town. His clothes have also changed. He meets a different character from The World Ends With You: Yoshiya “Joshua” Kiryu, who quickly teaches about Dream Eaters. A little afterwards we meet yet another character from TWEWY, Daisukenojo “Beat” Bito, who challenges Riku to a battle of Spirits.

Riku enhanced by his first Dream Eater moves and attacks
at a much greater speed! And his attacks become elemental.

This fight teaches a new mechanic: Fusion. A Dream Eater user can have a team of up to 3 creatures, with two of them on the field at a time. The Spirits have pink gauges that fill up during battles; when one’s gauge is full, you can hold down L and R and then press a button to have Sora or Riku “fuse” with that Spirit for stronger attacks. However, the method differs; Sora will team up with that Spirit and they’ll use a new move together, while Riku absorbs the energy of his critter and uses it to enhance his existing moves. If both Spirits’ gauges are full, you can press L+R+A and your hero will fuse with both and be even more powerful.

I would tell you that since you have a timer, you have to make
every battle count; but that's not how KH games work. The
enemies just... pop into existence when you walk by.

The Keyblade wielders’ quests take them to the same area of the town. From this point on, each character has a certain amount of time to explore the world; when their timer ends, they fall asleep and the game switches to the other wielder. Both characters can create Spirits and have different teams from each other, though they share the same pool of creatures. Upon switching, you earn Drop Points, which can be used to buy perks for the hero you’re about to switch to, one of which includes increasing the timer to give the next hero extra time to get more things done.

I always felt the time between Drops was short, so I almost
always spent my Points on the item that slows down the
time of the next character's drop. Just felt more useful.

Both meet more characters; Riku meets Shiki Misaki, while Sora also meets Joshua, who can interact with both Traverse Towns simultaneously, and is the reason why the TWEWY cast popped up here. He used the dreams of a young girl named Rhyme, whom Sora also meets, to do so.

Compared to TWEWY, I have no reason to complain about
the Moogle's presence; they have always been in Kingdom
Hearts, kupo.

Are these characters important to the whole game? Nope, just Traverse Town. Their presence feels like… I’m not sure how to explain it. It feels like Square Enix pushing their other franchises through Kingdom Hearts – which was excusable when it was Final Fantasy, and they were sticking to the more famous faces of that series, like Cloud or Sephiroth. Here? There’s a whole connection missing to truly justify the presence of an entire cast from a different franchise intruding. And, again, they are never seen outside of the Town, so they are just around for two chapters. I hate the sensation that I would have to do homework to understand what’s going on. This has the same feel as if the MCU suddenly had a Muppets movie.

The Giant Monster Toy Monkey

For the sake of keeping things contained, I’ll cover everything in one world before jumping to the next. This is already confusing, I am not making it harder on you all.

Hvaing played through the game, I can say that I think
the twist about this guy is obvious; it's the circumstances
around his presence that are a lot trickier to figure out. 

I do like the system KH has with boss HP and it being split
across several bars. Unlike some RPGs, it lets you know if
the battle is going well, and how far into it you are.

The trip across town takes both heroes to the same district, where they encounter the cloaked figure. Sora isn’t angry at Neku for bringing him to the bad guy the first time, because Neku had been tricked into thinking he and his friends could return to their home world by doing that. The Mysterious Figure (whom I’ll dub MF) reveals himself to Riku to be a young man with grey hair, tan skin, and golden eyes. In both instances, this MF summons a giant monster toy resembling a monkey, which attacks; the boss uses different tactics in both battles, and is fought in different arenas, making the battle feel fresh even if it is the same enemy. By this point, Sora and Riku likely have two Spirits ready to inflict massive damage thanks to fusion. The monkey shouldn’t be too difficult, it’s only the second boss.

I have questions. I have all the questions. No, looking up the
answers has not really helped.

When the boss is felled twice and the two sides of the story are completed, Joshua explains to both the KH and TWEWY characters. Their existence was about to end, so he took their memories and dreams and brought them to Traverse Town where they would continue to exist by simply being seen by other people – which was, by a miracle of chance, done by their interactions with Sora and Riku. When the Keyblade wielders ask who Joshua is, he says he’s a friend, sprouts angel wings, and flies off.

…What the heck just happened?? Again: I feel like I missed a few classes. I did the research, so I do know, but explaining this guy would take waaaay too long for what little space I have here.

This is the last time, for a long while, that they see each
other. They will be working together to solve problems
in each world, despite staying separate!

Pick a world! You have to play all three anyway.

The Sleeping Keyhole appears to the heroes, and they activate it at the same time with their Keyblades, clearing this world. After this, we flashback again to the meeting with Yen Sid, where it is revealed that there are seven worlds with Keyholes to awaken. This journey started on Destiny Islands before they were engulfed in darkness, after which the heroes landed in the sleeping Town.

The World Map opens up with three new worlds to explore: La Cité des Cloches (based on The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), Prankster’s Paradise (based on Pinocchio), and The Grid (directly lifted from TRON). …Let’s keep that for Part 2, shall we?

New Pokémon Snap (Part 2)

In Part 1, I covered a part of the plot and went over many of the game’s features. Well, there’s more to say today!

Fantastic Photo Features

Yes, Corsola! Get to the apple!

This new Snap game takes full advantage of the abilities of the current consoles, and takes cues from all the ways people have gained to edit their own pictures on smartphones. The photo edit feature is accessible from the Photodex in the Lab.

Cel-shaded is great. I would play a cel-shaded Pokémon game.

First is filters; at time of writing, I had found 15 out of 20, from classic black-and-white and sepia to greater changes like cel-shaded, a comic style, a fish-eye lens, or pixelated. Second is stickers, which can be added to the picture: Symbols, facial expressions, effects and speech bubbles. Finally, special frames can be added for extra flair. Filters, stickers and frames are unlocked through gameplay, by earning research titles and by completing pages of the Photodex.

Still not enough? You can use this menu to add your own caption to the picture, upload it online to your New Pokémon Snap page, or download it to your console’s photo album, if you like it enough for that.

Most of these settings make changes so minute that only a
photographer with real experience would be able to tell.
The biggest exception is the brightness, of course.

Another feature added is the Re-Snap, which you can access after your run through a course has been scored by Mirror. You can take any of your pictures (doesn’t need to be one that the Professor scored this round), re-frame it, and change the brightness, blur, focus size, or focal point; you can even put new filters or change the caption! However, since this can only happen after the scoring’s been done, it doesn’t really matter. It’s just a pleasant extra that allows you to do the perfect shot out of a photo that wasn’t perfect to start with. It’s not pointless, but if you’re playing for scores and exploration and not for the creativity aspect, it won’t be what you’ll gravitate to.

New Pokémon Snap (Part 1)

Through the years, I’ve seen a lot of franchises attempt ideas outside of their usual perimeters – as a result, I’ve seen both crashes and burns, and massive, unexpected successes. I don’t think it’s any surprise to say that Pokémon Snap is in the latter category. Released on July 26th, 1999, the Nintendo 64 game featured Todd Snap, a young photographer tasked by Professor Oak with taking pictures of all 63 Pokémon species found on an island.

For a franchise still in its early days, this came out of left field! The game, while short, had everything going for itself. It tickled that desire for gamers to hunt for better scores. It had unlockable tools and mechanics to get different reactions from the photography subjects. And there were plenty of secrets that could be found by just trying things and seeing what happens.

Catching the three 'puff on film is fun. Pissing
them off by playing the flute is even better.

This idea took a long time to return, which always felt odd to me; just make one at every Generation, add new Pokémon and locations, and that should be it, right? Imagine the possibilities! And yet, despite many attempts, several plans for a second Snap game didn’t make it far. Photography didn’t truly return to the franchise till Pokémon Sun/Moon; that side-quest felt like Game Freak testing the grounds. Even though their fans had been asking for this for 17 years by that point! Finally, our prayers were answered, with New Pokémon Snap releasing on April 30th, 2021, on the Nintendo Switch.

With all this time between installments, surely the system has been massively updated, right? Let’s take a look.

Welcome to the Lentil Region

This time, our character is an avatar representing a child. He is greeted on the first island of the Lentil Region by Professor Mirror and his assistant Rita. They direct the Laboratory of Ecological and Natural Sciences, or L.E.N.S., on Florio Island.

A Prof in Pokémon without a tree name? That's rare!
Also, neat pun for the name of the laboratory!
P.S. These screenshots come from the playthrough by
MunchingOrange. Go check it out!

Exploring the Itch.io Collection #6

I am slowly working through the collection! I don’t know how long this will take me, but I’ll keep progressing!

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

Exploring the Switch's Nintendo Classics #4

Been a while since I last did one of these as well! It took me this long because, in-between reviews of other games, I could hardly find the time to play stuff from the Nintendo Classics service; however, I think I’ve found a system that could help me with that.

Before I start this article, I guess I might take this introduction to explain a thing or two: For starters, all I have is the classic Switch, not the sequel console released in 2025. As a result, while I do try to go through the games available on Nintendo Classics, I do not have access to the GameCube games that were announced for the Switch 2 exclusively. This also extends to whichever games on other consoles require a mouse to play, like Mario Paint. (Not that there are many of those.)

In the same vein, Nintendo began releasing Virtual Boy titles to the service in February 2026. I am very tempted to try these as well, and since many of these are short, they will fit perfectly in articles like the one here. However, I am told that they will work much better with a headset currently on sale. I do think I will be better off playing those games with the necessary equipment! Therefore, I’ll skip these for now and put them on the backburner. It’s not like I’ve got a shortage of Nintendo Classics games to cover anyway!

I was in a bit of a hurry to get this article ready for publication, so instead of waiting to have enough entries from just one console, here you have a pot-pourri of games from almost all the consoles that are part of the service. And just like my other collections, any progress is better than nothing!

Enjoy!

The NES

That is, indeed, baseball.

Baseball: I’m still not done with sport games! This game was one more of the console’s launch titles, and is about as straightforward as can be for an 8bit representation of the sport. Pitcher pitches, batter hits the ball, team on the field hurries to get the ball and throw it while the batter runs around the diamond. I’ll admit that I know little about baseball (most of my gaming experience with baseball is… Mario Super Sluggers). And this game explains very little, so I know the basics of the sport, but I was left to figure out the controls on my own. I did poorly at this one. While I can say there’s a few NES sports games I would come back to, this isn’t one of them. I can still appreciate that its release at the console’s launch helped further boost the NES’s popularity in North America.