Quick Review: See No Evil

I don’t recommend playing this one with your eyes closed.

Good work, you called the monster humans
towards your position!

Developed by Gabriel Priske, published by Noetic and released on August 26th, 2014, See No Evil takes place in a world where mankind has willingly chosen to abandon the sense of sight to rely on everything else instead. Those who open their eyes are called Seers and are hunted down. After seeing a dead Seer fall through his roof, a Seer child ventures out into the wild to solve that mystery, in spite of the almost cult-like devotion the rest of mankind has gained for keeping the world in darkness. …And this, in spite of all the obvious and blatant issues it causes to them and society at large!

Crate-pulling, crate-pushing action!

But like many puzzle games out there, the plot is mostly an excuse. In this game, enemies hear your footsteps (denoted by a circle around your steps on the floor), so you have to be careful where you walk. If you are spotted, you’ll be chased. And of course, per puzzle game tradition, the kid is slow like a snail. You have to play around the enemies’ senses. Not just hearing, though; if you step in garbage, they’ll spot your odor, and you’ll have to walk in a puddle of water to remove the smell.

Is sound supposed to travel like this?
I doubt it, but hey, puzzle game logic.

Some puzzles involve dispersing the dark fog
by lighting up some glowbugs.

Seer has a second ability: He can scream. He can use that to make his presence known to enemies in order to lure them in a corner and trap them. He can also use this to startle old grandpas sitting their asses on pressure plates so they’ll activate said plates – with some later puzzles all about redirecting the sound with horns to gain the desired effect. And yes, like I mentioned, pressure plates are a thing here, and they’re usually needed to make precise colored walls retract into the floor. Sometimes, you can also use a crate to either keep a plate activated, or to keep a wall section in the floor.

The flowers can also emit sound?
This is a damn weird world.

As is mandatory of a good puzzle game, new mechanics are slowly introduced to you and explained before you are taken into levels where they’re involved with increasing difficulty. As an example, later, deadly cannons with laser sights are thrown into the mix.

If they're now literally shooting at the people
who decide to use their eyesight, something's
seriously wrong and freaky with that world.

Props to this one, it uses a lot of interesting elements. It tries new things and that’s pretty cool. The graphics are nice and the music, if I can call it that, is mostly ambiance. And the puzzles can be challenging at times, especially when they start to combine multiple elements from past levels (although, admittedly, that recipe is standard of most puzzle games on Steam). You catch bits and pieces of a story as you venture through this dark world, and can learn what happened to that dead Seer. Although it might be that I’ve played so many of them, I wasn’t wowed by this one as much as I thought I’d be, but I do think it’s a clever game overall.

If you want to try it, See No Evil is on Steam for 0.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Saviors

I’m kind of a shmuck at shmups.

Always gotta have a tutorial.

Saviors, also known as Star Saviors, was developed by Sharpened Edge Studios and released to Steam on May 6th, 2016. In this world, the human race was contacted by an alien species that appeared benevolent at first. They thus traded technology secrets, but unfortunately, the aliens later betrayed mankind. All that stands before total annihilation is a secret project developed by John, a scientist gone rogue (who TOTALLY SAW IT COMING) who created fighter ships with tech the aliens don’t know about, as well as three pilots (one of whom is John's own son Jonas) to destroy the enemy armadas.

All three of them look like empty, soulless shells.
Their ships, however, pack some massive firepower.

Red means "Coming to the screen".
Nice, we know what's about to show up!

This is a fairly straightforward shoot’em up game in which you control your ship and go pew pew (with Z) at everything that comes your way. Each ship has two weapons, as well as a Bomb-type third weapon with limited uses in each level (shot with X), that’s standard for a shmup. There’s a leveling-up system based on the score you accumulate, with multipliers, as you kill things, and it allows you to upgrade the ship’s stats. One nice addition is the possibility to change the ship’s secondary weapon from aiming forward to shooting left and right with C, which is useful against enemies who may come from the sides or bottom of the screen. Speaking of, the enemies appear in red on the screen before they properly show up, like a warning that they’re coming; it can allow you to prepare. As for health? Your Hull, as it’s called, can be depleted, but only after your shield has gone down, so you don’t start taking damage from the start and the ship can survive a lot of blows.

Biiiig ba-da-boom!

Another thing that’s pretty cool is that, after every level, you gain new versions for both your main, secondary, and Bomb weapons, so you can experiment with different sets among all the options you’ve got for those three. It’s also nice that the levels play with camera angles to give the impression that your ship isn’t always just moving in a straight line. Lastly, you can freely change the difficulty setting between levels.

I almost feel bad criticizing the plot of a shmup, because… it’s a shmup. The plot will never be the most famous thing about it. It’s pretty generic, not gonna lie. I’m actually glad that the devs put everything in the gameplay. But, in return, we have these very uncanny valley-esque faces during cutscenes, which can do nothing but flap their mouths slowly and blink! It’s creepy.

Creepy AF.

Besides the Story Mode, the game includes a Score Attack Mode split in two: One is a Survival mode, the other is an Arcade mode. It’s also possible to play them in two-player co-op.

Shooting sideways? I don't recall seeing another
shmup letting players do that before.

This one is pretty cool. It’s a bit difficult to find new things to say about shmups, so it’s always nice to see some that add new mechanics or try new things (that said, with my limited experience and knowledge in the genre, I can’t freely say just how innovative any of these features are). Sure, the plot is forgettable and presented in about the most awkward way possible, but that’s not what we’re here for, are we? We’re here for the gameplay, and it delivers in every aspect. So yeah, if it’s your genre of predilection and you haven’t, feel free to check this one out.

Saviors is available for 1.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Save Jesus

Looks like I'm too early for Easter. Oh well!

The story of Jesus doesn't normally start this
way... but things aren't very stable right now.
(I'll see myself out for this pun.)

Save Jesus, made by Almighty Games and released to Steam on August 4th, 2016 (not even a holy day), is a puzzle game in which you must, well… save Jesus. He’s surrounded by Roman centurions, which you must defeat (read: kill) by sending all sorts of heavy balls at them. Spiked steel balls, burning rocks, spherical cows… if it can roll and destroy, then it can help in rescuing the Lord and his loved ones from Roman tyranny... or kill them by accident.

But this is nowhere in the Bible, you ask? Well, some nerd from the future arrived in this era in a flying time machine, and is seemingly trying to change the past. He’s the one behind all these puzzles. We have to defeat him! Rest assured, however, that Jesus will remain non-violent himself. And also non-moving. The guy will not move whatsoever, you have to plan around him so that he isn’t struck by the big ball you’re throwing at the enemies.

Holy cow!

Now that's dealing with legionnaires in a much
better way. Downed with a ball of pure light
of divine retribution!

In each level, you have two goals: The first, which is mandatory, is to kill all of the legionnaires. Only the ball can kill them, and they go out in a big splotch of blood. That’s metal! To redirect the ball, you make use of the physics engine to control where the ball goes. At times, you can also make use of explosive crates to send the ball flying. Be careful not to kill Jesus with it, though! The second goal is to control the ball in order to collect the three stars on the screen. Those start out pretty easy, but they get trickier as the game progresses, especially when it comes to getting the last few stars. Momentum, angle, moving parts – yep, this is a physics puzzle game and it shows.

Jesus, God gave you a brain, if you're not gonna
fight, at least move out of the way!

The game has 60 levels, but the last 10 are bonuses; the “plot”, in which you outsmart the nerd from the future, ends at Level 50 with a boss battle. And you really want to punch him in his glasses, as said nerd is made to be as unsympathetic as possible. And also very limited in his speech lines, too. In levels where he appears, he shuffles between a small handful of recorded sentences, such as “You think you can stop me? I got a time machine!”, “Why don’t you mind your own business?” or “What’s the big deal? Jesus’ gonna die anyway.” Makes you want to crush him under his own machine. You just want him to shut up, he’s so annoying.

Not gonna lie, I wasn't a fan of the puzzles that
involved sand blocks moving in circles.

Anyway, that’s about it. The game plays with its own physics from time to time, but is ultimately very straightforward and simple. Very few levels will actually prove tricky to finish. If you get stuck but can’t die, you can press the Space bar or click the Restart button. Killing Jesus is kinda funny, though. (I hope I’m not going to Hell for saying that.) The music is alright, the graphics are pretty good, and the idea is just… heh. It does make me chuckle. The last 10 levels offer something that’s more akin to pinball, as while they retain a bit of a puzzle edge they’re more about sending the ball flying left and right to break blocks and kill legionnaires without harming Jesus (which, admittedly, can be a tricky thing to do).

"Crushed by boulder" beats crucifixion any day.

I'm not really pro-killing nerds, but that one
has it coming for trying to murder Jesus
50 times.

A minor issue is that, while I do like that the ball is generated at random from one of seven different balls (one of which is a COW), several achievements want you to beat 50 levels with each ball. That would mean playing through most of the game 7 times. I liked it fine, but I don’t see myself playing it this much!

So yeah. Alright game, nothing revolutionary, good for a laugh or two and will puzzle you for maybe two hours. Get it if you think you’d enjoy it. (Or just want to see Jesus crushed under boulders… Good thing we don’t have to wait three days to try again if that happens!)

Save Jesus is available for 1.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken

In a world taken over by a totalitarian penguin regime, only one Hardboiled chicken takes to arms and aims to restore peace.

…Did I really just write that?

Can nobody notice this jetpack chicken?

Developed by Ratloop Asia, published by Reverb Publishing and released on October 15th, 2012, Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken tells the story of Hardboiled, an action movie hero in every single way; over-muscled, always has a badass quip to say, can punch enemies or fill them with bullet holes… except, y’know, he’s a literal chicken. His world fell to a dictatorship when he was young, and after some time on their side, he has decided enough was enough, and now that he’s ripped, he’s going to rip that Putzki tyrant to pieces.

Sneaky bullets!

Kinda dark around here, isn't it?

This game is described as a cinematic side-scrolling platformer. As I just said, Hardboiled has a lot of options to take down enemies. The game is heavy on gunfights, and you even pick up new guns through the story mode. The intro shows our protagonist with a powerful jetpack and crashing; well, you do recover that jetpack and get to use it in order to sneak onto zeppelins. Later in the story, a small puzzle dimension is added to the whole thing when Hardboiled gets his hands on little items that can steal someone’s consciousness, allowing him to take control of enemy guards around a level. (I would actually argue that this doesn’t really fit with the themes and feel of the game’s plot thus far.) There’s also the usual color keycards that force the hero to take 300 detours to find the ones he needs to unlock doors in order to progress.

"Our Fearless Leader" is crapping his pants
right now on hearing Hardboiled is coming.

What may strike the most upon playing the game, however, is the number of fully-animated cutscenes it has, as well as the very rock soundtrack accompanying them. The Steam store page proudly boasts its use of tracks by indie rock band New World Revolution. I’m already partial to rock, so… yay! The animated scenes also reminded me of the days of Flash gaming on Newgrounds, especially in their style and tone, though that may be just a coincidence.

With all that said, I have a handful of gripes. Some screens are so dark that you can barely see the platforms, to the point where it seems like Hardboiled is holding on to nothing when hanging from a ledge. The jetpack controls annoyed me and made aerial combat difficult (though these sequences are rare).

Bring on your soldiers.
Hardboiled can take them all down.

However, that main plot isn’t all. There is an additional co-op campaign, which can be played over the Internet or locally; it follows a different story in which two of these Clucking Expendables have to rescue a girl from a kidnapping. The game includes a lot of options to enhance the experience, such as the use of 3D filters so you can play with the famous double-colored glasses on. Not sure why you would, but… it exists, and some people like that.

Alright, I'm just gonna let my mind-control
slave do my work for me now...

These are avians, were you expecting
a proper dogfight?

This one was pretty cool. Pretty good too, but mostly cool. It runs on the principle of cool. This is a chicken built like a bouncer who shoots at everything and flies a nuclear jetpack. With a cool story to boot, told through pretty sweet cutscenes and a kickass soundtrack. The gameplay is about as basic as can be, as it’s mostly a side-scrolling platformer with guns and a spoonful of puzzle for variety. And to its credit, the puzzles get a bit tricky as well – you push things around, and the mind-controlled enemies often have to explore the levels in order to push buttons or levers so you can move forward. Each level is self-contained, but you mostly have freedom of exploration in each of them. However, several levels are a little too dark to see well what’s going on, which is a small but noticeable issue.

Not every piece and idea fits or works perfectly, but the presentation more than makes up for it and you’ll want to keep playing just to see another animated scene or hear another headbanger of a track. The game also had a sequel, released in 2016, in case you try this one out and like it enough to want more.

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken is available for 4.99$.

Quick Review: Remnants of Isolation

Cue my usual “I should review more RPG Maker games” talk. Anyway, here’s one more.

What a magical keyboardist.

Remnants of Isolation was made by Team Isolation, published by Degica (who also publishes the many RPG Maker softwares, as well as others), and released on May 1st, 2015. A nameless girl is playing a magical piano in a desolate, dark place. She suddenly feels that something is abnormal and leaves. As she leaves the room, she meets a guy with green hair called Melchior. They are both mages locked in this place, away from the outside world. She’s also mute and does not seem to recall much about herself, so Melchior nicknames her Celesta. He seems to know more about their situation than she does. The first powerful monster they encounter flees upon recognising the girl…

An RPG Maker character who can jump?
That's amazing!

This guy was cold as ice earlier (and weak to fire).
Now he's on friggin' fire (and weak to ice).

Most RPG Maker games tend to feel the same, so a game has to stand out, usually by featuring gameplay mechanics that are seldom seen in others. From merely the first hour of gameplay, I could already notice a few of those, which is a good sign. The first is that Melchior can jump over short gaps, which is necessary to reach inaccessible areas and activate levers. The second is that Celesta can use her music in precise places to change tiles, create platforms to break walls; that ability is part of a new set called Innate in-game, which implies they’re abilities she has always had (Melchior has his own). The third is that, instead of learning spells on their own, the characters can find and equip Spell Cards, up to four per character, which means any character can use any (non-Innate) spell and you can experiment on that front.

Melchior's attack upgraded to hit all. Nice.

The best idea, though, and I haven’t seen it often, is that using an Innate spell first in a turn will give an additional ability to the spell the party member going second will use. It allows for pretty cool conbinations and can turn the tide in a tough fight. Note that, for this to work, the game doesn’t use the regular “quickest goes first” turn-based RPG system; you have control over the order of attack between the two.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the boss battles, which utilized strategies that are programmed into RPG Maker and can be applied to enemies, but are hardly ever used in practice. A plant-themed boss casting a spell that cancels its weakness to fire, as an example. Or a reaper boss that changes its form midway into the fight to modify its weakness. I can really see that a lot of thought went into programming Remnants of Isolation in order to use all of this software’s capabilities, and the result is a game that takes full advantage of them.

This castle goes on forever!
How big is this place??

For a moment I was afraid this place would
ask to light up, like, ten crystals or more.
No, the story is concise and doesn't overstay
its welcome. The game doses its element right.

On the topic of appearance, the game looks a lot like regular RPG Maker titles, using the preprogrammed assets for map construction (the sprites for characters and enemies are new). Even then, each room tries to have as many details as possible. Everything about this world is presented on a tone proper to legends, with the protagonists stumbling every now and then on a parchment or a sign further explaining the setting. Same goes for the items, whose descriptions use that syrupy tone to discuss their effects.

Overall, I liked this one. It was pretty creative and stood out from the crowd in a lot of ways. If you wish to create games on RPG Maker someday, this ought to be a game to try out in order to learn a few things and see what the software can do with some ingenuity.

Remnants of Isolation is available on Steam for 1.99$.

Quick Review: Portal

This is a triumph; I’m making a note here, huge success. It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction.

I can cross that one off the list of “titles every gamer HAS TO PLAY or else you’re not a real gamer” or something. That damn list has, like, a thousand items anyway.

I... I have a body??? With so many first-person
games where you see nothing of the PC,
it's... refreshing.

For those who don’t know, if any – I assume everyone is already fairly well-acquainted with this legendary title from Valve –, Portal was released on October 10th, 2007. As the source of several memes and the origin of one of gaming’s most famous villains, GLaDOS, it’s borderline impossible to say anything about it that hasn’t already been said. Won’t stop me from trying. I can start by saying, look at that release year, then look at all of the indie puzzle games I’ve reviewed for Steam Packs or Quick Reviews; Portal is one of the most groundbreaking, innovative and inspiring games to have ever been made.

So, yeah, you can go “Took this guy long enough to play it!”

Weighted cubes and pressure plates. Like in
so many puzzle games. Good thing we also
have portals to play with.

You are Chell, a test subject waking up in the Aperture Science Laboratory. You are then subjected to a series of tests involving, obviously, portals. From the start, this game strikes the imagination with its concept – because portals are a pretty cool puzzle element, yeah, but also because you can look into a portal and see what’s on the other side… including yourself. After a bit, you get your hands on a portal gun that can create portal entrances (as defined by their blue ring) and, later, you’ll get an upgrade to create portal exits (as shown by their orange ring). But you can enter either and leave by the other, there’s not actually a limit there, it only serves to differentiate the two (since you left-click to make blue portals and right-click to create orange ones).

From that point on, you deal with all the usual suspects when it comes to puzzles: weighted objects that must be put on pressure plates; buttons to open doors; places that hinder your abilities (You can only create portals on pale surfaces, as it doesn’t work on dark ones); beams or blasts that must be redirected to precise targets; etc.

Fireball thing goes in, fireball thing comes out.

I'm sending myself flying across large pits.
This technology is magic!

It’s also quite a spectacle to create effects by using the portals; as an example, by creating a loop with portals in order to gain momentum… or, as GlaDOS says for the layperson, “Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out”. Or you can just make one portal on the floor, one on the ceiling above, and fall forever. Yeah, good thing Chell can somehow survive every fall, huh? Oh, she isn’t indestructible; she dies if she falls in “water”, can die from getting hurt too much (mostly from the bullets shot by turrets)… Thankfully, each puzzle has a handful of checkpoints to compensate for the errors you can make, so the game is fair. And, in the purest puzzle game tradition, things get complicated fast.

Orange portals too? Now I'm fully equipped!

AAAAAAAAAAH! (Of course I did it. You
can't play Portal without trying at least one
infinite freefall loop.)

This is topped off by the very comedic, very fun writing, with GLaDOS’ comments between levels being a source of hilarity with her deadpan delivery, her attempts at sounding professional in these “tests”. Obviously, Internet culture has latched on to that character and her memes, so chances are that you already know that there’s more than meets the eye about this entire place and the voice that’s been accompanying you throughout. Especially when she starts going wildly off-script and saying things a normal A.I. never would… Dammit, she’s just hilarious. By the way, the game includes a developers’ commentary mode as well as advanced versions of story maps, which offer a greater challenge.

"Please note that due to a lack of audio content,
the presence of GLaDOS was not made
possbzzzfrzztt this review. Please stand by and
don't touch the 'Close Windfrrrftzzzzzbzfrzz"

Portal is about as perfect a video game as can be, utilizing the medium to present something that looks basic at first, only to hide layers of meaning and story when you dig deeper. It offers an awesome spectacle and creates clever puzzles through a unique mechanic; only downside is, you can’t wave to yourself through portals, 0/10, can’t even be silly in it… I’m joking, of course. And it’s all done with a very minimalist cast and great writing. It’s a must-play game… But chances are that you’ve already played it. Or maybe, like my copy, it’s been sitting in a corner of your Steam library for a long time and it’s just waiting to be booted up. Just saying, you won’t regret it.

Portal is available for 9.99$.

Also, note that I will be taking the next week off from writing reviews in order to rebuild a buffer. Only 11 games left in this set of quick reviews!

Quick Review: Plazma Being

This guy’s on fire.

Wheeeee! Hey, if I'm stuck here,
I might as well try to enjoy it.

Made by Felix Wunderlinch and released on February 9th, 2015, Plazma Being follows the story of Zeb, a little fiery creature from space (also known as a Plazma Being) kidnapped by aliens. Taken to their planet. Then the planet basically shatters due to earthquakes. Let’s just say poor Zeb has had better days. Thankfully, the teleporters are still working, so he can make his way around this world after escaping.

This is yet another classic puzzle platformer as we see so often on Steam. It even has similar mechanics to others, although it likes to combine mechanics to make pretty cool puzzles. Things start out simple, then get complex as each new puzzle requires you to remember everything lil’ Zeb can do. Zeb starts out with two forms: His regular orange form, which can “walk” around and jump and do all the platforming things, and a blue form that allows him to grab items and move them in a perimeter around him.

I can defy gravity itself by trapping stuff in midair!

Aaaaah! Lasers bad!

There’s a catch, though; in the blue form, Zeb can NOT move at all. He’s a sitting duck until he’s done with the puzzle-solving. That said, it’s a form that can do a lot, as it can also spin items on themselves or lock them in one place (useful to create platforms over pits, as an example). Another caveat is that he can’t un-lock things locked into position, so you’d better make sure you stick every block exactly where you want it to be.

Past Level 4, Zeb gains a new purple form that lets him possess objects. He can’t move them while inhabiting them, however, so a handful of puzzles involve giving those items some momentum before he inserts himself into them. Like I said: Every ability you learn comes in handy multiple times, so you need to remember everything the Plazma Being can do. Because, trust me on that, the puzzles get tricky fast.

A-ha! Laser back to sender!

Speaking of Level 4, it has the first boss battle, set against a flying robot that shoots lasers with utmost precision at Zeb. How do you defeat it? Grab a cube and carefully drag it around to redirect the lasers back to sender. It’s tough, because the cube is very small and you need to spin it around a bit to aim. That part alone gives a pretty good idea of the level of difficulty here. It's tough! (It also crashed on me right before the boss at the end of Level 7, which was already difficult and took me a while to get through.)

I just sent myself barrelling across a large chasm
using my new powers and momentum. I'm good!

But with all that said, I do like the ideas here. The game solely introduces each aspect and then sets up a puzzle to let you experiment with it – though I think it would have earned to explain some concepts better, as I got stuck from time to time because the new mechanic wasn’t explained well enough, forcing me to resort to tutorials. It’s more noticeable in later levels, where puzzles have a lot of moving parts. The game is also fairly short, only 10 levels, but with how tricky they are, you’ll need a couple hours. It’s a pretty fine game overall, I can say I recommend it. Can’t say I’d play it again once I’m done, but yeah, it’s a decent short experience.

Plazma Being is available for 4.99$ USD.