Quick Review: Untitled Goose Game

Once more, let’s close a tough year with a very funny game.

Freedom (and mischief) lies beyond the gate!

Developed by House House, published by Panic and released to PC on September 23rd, 2020 (and released to other platforms, the Switch most famously, the year prior), Untitled Goose Game is about a Goose… who’s an utter asshole. The avian, a flightless one, has only one (apparent) goal: To wreak havoc. For this, in every area, you have a to-do list with objectives, all of which you must complete in order to open the path to the next area. The game itself is described as an adventure game, but there is heavy focus on puzzles (as you must use the items around in order to achieve said objectives), and stealth. See, most villagers really hate the goose for some reason, so it has to be sneaky.

Nope! The radio is mine now!

This is one of those games that are, on PC at least, designed with unusual controls on purpose. You left-click somewhere on the screen to make the Goose waddle there, or double-click and it’ll run there instead. Hold down the wheel to zoom out, which is useful to see what the humans are doing in the vicinity. Right-click to grab an item with the beak. Press the left Tab to check the to-do list. Hold Crtl to bend down, as items on the ground cannot be picked up otherwise. Hold X to flap the wings, which serves very little purpose other than to annoy and attract attention. Last but not least, press Space to HONK! You got that right: A dedicated HONK! button.

What? Geese need to shop too!

The game is spread across four “levels”, each with its to-do list. Some quests are pretty simple, others are tough; each area has a “collect X items and bring them to place Y” mission. There are paths between the levels that you can open to create shortcuts to previous areas. And, let’s be clear: You have to fulfill every objective to move forward. No skipping. You know the meme, “peace was never an option”? Yeah. You have to scare the boy into a phone booth, drop a bucket on a guy’s head, and make a human destroy a vase. You are, indeed, a horrible Goose, and there’s no denying your nature. There’s no pacifist run possible here.

This sign can't stop me because I can't read!

Even after completing the main story (which packs a nice twist, for the record), you unlock multiple new pages of to-dos. Most of those involve interacting with items across levels. One mission involves putting on a show in the fourth area, with an item that can be put on the Goose in the third. You also have speed challenges, where you have to complete each original to-do list on a timer, with the ringing of church bells denoting when the time has run out.

Hide the duck statue out of sight, then take its place.
She'll only find out once it's too late (or she sees you
while you're doing this)

Ring the bell while the guy is drinking.
You know you want to. No, wait - steal the
soap! Or take the duck's place again!

This entire package of comedy and mischief is delivered through an utterly adorable art style, cute and pretty, with just enough detail. The music is also cleverly applied, consisting solely of a piano that doesn’t play one precise track, and instead accompanies or “reacts” to what’s going on. It’s a trend of old cartoons that I didn’t think would translate well to a video game, and yet this one pulls it off. Also good to mention is a two-player mode, added on September 23rd, 2020, where a second goose with a redder beak can be controlled to come and aid the first in making the villagers’ lives Heck.

I am allowed one (1) wholesome moment that
actually fulfills a quest in this adventure.

I can hardly think of a flaw in this game – it’s all brilliantly executed. It’s comedic, it’s plenty fun, the puzzles are interesting, and there’s some genuine challenge, especially in the post-game quests. The final to-do in the main story is a perfect closer to the story, as well. It’s fun to interact with the humans, even though most of them are dumber than bags of rocks. Okay, perhaps it’s a bit on the short side, even while taking into account all of the secondary missions. I would have taken more, but as it is, it’s pretty great entertainment. I recomm

Hey! Get back here with the end of my review, you little bastHONK!

Untitled Goose Game HONK! is available on Steam for 19.99$ USD, but currently for 9.99$ due to the Winter Sale-HONK! You come back here!

Quick Review: TSIOQUE

This princess don’t need no savior!

I don't care if the wizard said not to make
noise. I'm gonna, because he's a meanie.

Developed by OhNoo Studio and Smiled, published by the former, and released on November 7th, 2018, TSIOQUE (pronounced “chiock”) is about a young princess in a difficult situation. Her mother the Queen left to hunt the monsters endangering the Kingdom, leaving the castle in charge of the court wizard. He immediately took over and transformed it into a dark place, full of demonic guards, and imprisoned Princess Tsioque into the dungeon. It’s up to her to escape and flee, always while being careful with her every step… for the wizard, hard at work on his nebulous plans, requests the utmost silence.

Reminder: This very young princess is fighting
some guy that throws other soldiers at her.

This game follows the formula of point-and-click titles: Look around a room to pick up items, make items interact with the surroundings, solve puzzles to progress. The difference, here, is that most of the game is done without dialogue. Some characters talk during cutscenes, especially the wizard and the framing device of the story book, with the tale told in rhyme. However, no word is ever said by the princess, though she does offer commentary and advice, the usuals from a point-and-click: “Nothing left here”, “I am still missing something”, “this won’t work”, etc.

Why does this guy remind me of a villain I've seen before
in a cartoon from the 2000s?

I don't think she signed up for helping the guards
training with crossbows.

It’s also fully animated in 2D. The game looks fantastic, I have no issues with the look itself. The downside is that, as this is a point-and-click, you’ll be going back and forth a lot, looking for the next item needed to solve a puzzle, and none of the animations can be skipped, making the game a tad slow to play as a result. It’s also not always clear where you can go or what you can pick up or interact with, unless you carefully inspect every detail of each screen. It is, however, very interesting to watch, especially as the castle changes through Princess Tsioque’s quest.

She's going to need that magic bag very soon!

Several puzzles are clever; in one instance, after getting a broken magic bag that can hold anything, you have to repair said bag, leading to a sewing mini-game. In another instance, a chase down a staircase becomes a skill test in which you click buttons on the screen like QTEs. One thing I wished I had known early on (and only learned with a guide) was that, in some animated sequences where the inventory isn’t available, sometimes it will appear mid-scene… and as a result you have a very limited window of time to react with the right item. That sort of scenario comes up a couple times, usually in response to attacks from enemies.

This one is such a charming title. Between the hand-drawn animation, the engaging soundtrack, and the various challenges, we have here a high-quality product that offers a pretty singular experience – not without its small number of flaws (some which I’ve covered in previous paragraphs), but not enough to detract from its strengths. The plot seems simple at first, but it has a couple surprises in store – and the ending is excellent. The animation is really cool, and impressive in places.

First rule of a wizard duel: Don't be in the middle
of a wizard duel.

Suddenly, QTEs. Good luck!

It’s fun to see the young princess overcoming those incredible odds. There are scenes that are quite tense as well, because of the dangers she finds herself in. some of those scenes are possible because they're fully-animated, compared to other point-and-click games out there. Some screens are large – the Courtyard, as an example, has roughly 10 places the princess can go to, so part of the challenge will be to figure out which item to grab in which sector, and then, what to use it for. (Heck, the first time I got to the Courtyard, I can think of one or two paths I didn't know about – in part because there didn't seem to be a way for the Princess to go there, so I had dismissed them as unreachable, and yet they were necessary to progress.)

Alchemy For Children: A Beginner's Class.

You’ll be seeing some death/capture animations a lot, but thankfully the game is lenient and will take you back to the previous screen. The game is fairly short as well, and can be completed in about three hours, which is still pretty respectable for a hand-drawn title. There's a nice variety to the puzzles, and some recurring motifs help ground the story and the world it's set in. It’s a good gaming experience and I recommend it.

TSIOQUE is usually available on Steam for 13.99$ USD, currently for 7.69$ during Winter Sale.

Quick Review: Tower of Guns

That’s a lotta guns.

Lotta guns, and now a lotta enemies.

Developed by Terrible Posture Games, published by Versus Evil and released on March 4th, 2014, Tower of Guns is an attempt at combining three genres: First-person shooter, Roguelike, and shmup (sort of, for that last one). Its story is fairly simple: A mysterious tower filled with robots and weapons appeared out of nowhere in the middle of a village. What happens next in the plot? Doesn’t really matter, it’s randomized. What matters is that you must try to reach the top of the tower.

The game plays like a roguelike: You destroy enemies, finish the rooms, and collect upgrades to your stats. At the end of a level, you fight a boss, then move on to the next level. Before starting a run, you pick a weapon among those unlocked, then you can choose a perk that changes some details about the character. The first perk available allows you to jump in midair twice, the other cancels fall damage. You will see new rooms on each playthrough, per the randomized nature of roguelikes. The game keeps track of your number of deaths, upgrades collected, items found across playthroughs, and so on. On a playthrough, you can find coins to unlock new items; collect red orbs to replenish your health; blue orbs that counts as EXP for your gun, which increases in power as it levels up (getting hit will decrease its EXP, however); and so on.

Kill the turrets, too! Yeah, you can do that,
they're destructible.

The difference is that, unlike a lot of roguelikes, you play in first person, aiming at enemies and shooting to kill them. The shmup part comes from the sheer number of enemies that can attack at once. Several of those enemies are turrets that you can destroy as well. The boss at the end of each level even has a health bar! Unlike a regular roguelike, this game is split into proper levels instead of having a continuous world to explore (thus limiting exploration a bit), but the feel is close enough.

I’ll give it that, the game tries to have a lot of variety in weapons and settings – since any combo of gun + perk is possible, all sorts of crazy setups can be achieved. Notably, it includes a handful of weapons with very peculiar effects, such as one that gets weaker the higher in level it gets. One issue, however, may be that as your character’s stats increase, they may become difficult to control – with a speed too high far into the game, as an example.

This thing is quite literally trying to crash into me!

Okay, it looks like I might have a chance against
this one boss...

I personally can’t say I was wowed by what I experienced, but I can see why it’d be addictive for some. Randomization, a large choice of starting combinations, and a lot of secrets to discover – that’s the formula that helps make roguelikes so popular and replayable. I’ve tried a few (Quest of Dungeons in this set of Quick Reviews, I also spent a few hours playing The Binding of Isaac), and I can safely say I felt more at ease with the usual bird’s eye view than in first person. Doesn’t make the game any easier, but it’s simpler to deal with threats coming from all sides in bird’s eye view. I at least appreciate the attempt at putting that spin on the genre. As I’ve learned during writing, first-person roguelikes aren’t common but there’s still quite a few out there.

Okay, this is a bit intense even by FPS standards.

The other issue with roguelikes is that you need to spend a lot of time playing one to really have a good feel of the entire game. In spite of that, I’ve seen the wide variety of options before starting a run, including guns that are mechanically different. The “plot”, also randomized at every run, tends to be pretty silly. Several rooms and enemies are creative, and per the genre, you’ll see new places, enemies and bosses on every run.

I don’t really have a bad opinion of it, though I don’t know if I’ll play more – although it’s fun, it didn’t do a lot to stick out in my mind, and the high number of enemies coupled with my lack of skill in first-person made this game pretty tough for me to play. Still, if that combination intrigues you, do give it a look.

Tower of Guns is available on Steam for 14.99$ USD, currently on sale with 70% off at 4.99$.

Also note that, due to the late release of this review, there won't be a review on Friday; instead, the last two reviews of this set will be posted next week.

Quick Review: To The Moon

Total Recall meets Inception meets bedside manners.

That's lucky, they didn't arrive too late.

A production of Freebird Games released on November 1st, 2011, To The Moon is a game made on RPG Maker. It features two doctors who specialize in a very odd form of service for dying patients: Implant in them a memory of a wish they never actually lived, so that they can die happy believing they’ve actually lived it. For that, doctors Eva Rosalene and Neil Watts use a machine to enter the memories of the patient, and work their way backwards in time through those memories to understand where that wish came from, so that they can implement it in line with the patient’s history. Their latest client, John, is a day or two from passing. His wish? To go to the moon. And yet, his memories are more closely linked to the lighthouse near the house where he lives…

I haven't seen visuals this impressive in an RPG Maker
game in a long while.

Unlike a lot of RPG Maker titles out there, this one does not focus on combat, but rather on exploration and taking in the story. Everything can be done with the mouse, moving and interacting with the surroundings in particular. (The menu can be accessed with the right-click or by pressing the ESC key.) Before the procedure itself begins, the characters meet the patient and investigate their home to gather information.

Sometimes, they even have to "roleplay" a
bit with the memory-people around them.

River? Probably her wife.
That's an unusual - but pretty - name.

In the memories themselves, things are a little more complex: In each scene, Eva and Neil need to gather five memory links in order to activate a memento that will let them travel further down memory lane. “We need to go deeper” and all that. Most of the time, they’ll simply have to find items that serve as memory links, but other times, merely exploring the surrounding area or listening to the characters will do. The doctors have a plethora of abilities provided by their machine while in the world of memories, like a God Mode where they can do use any effect on themselves or other characters.

When the memory links have been collected and used on the memento, the two must activate it through a tile flip puzzle. It’s the first time I see those in an RPG Maker title, and I’m impressed. Then, Eva and Neil can travel backwards in time to view older memories. And, from there, they can piece together the mysteries of this man’s life, so they can make him believe he went to the moon.

These puzzles aren't too tricky, but the further you go, the
more squares they cover, and the tougher they get -
not to mention that diagonal, which can make things tricky.

Also, several scenes are just beautiful.

Ah, this is such a good, good game! It speaks volumes that it’s often cited as the pinnacle of what can be achieved with RPG Maker. On the design side of things, every environment has a ton of details, more than what would be needed – and as a result, they’re interesting to explore, whenever exploration is encouraged. The music also helps a lot, with the soundtrack composed of original pieces that complement the story very well. Since the focus is on telling a story, there is no combat (barring a parodic example early on), and most items are limited to plot flavor. One element I like is the system of Notes, in which the scientists write down notes about the things, people, and settings they meet during their journey through memories, and regularly update those as details become clearer.

Ah yes, the mightiest attack of all.... "other shoe".

Wasting note space on this? For shame, Eva.

The focus is on emotion, as can be expected from the concept; the main characters travel to significant events of the man’s life, several of which are heart-wrenching. One gut punch after the next. It's also a very spoiler-heavy game that I want you to check out, hence why I give so little details about the story itself in this review. The two scientists we follow aren’t on their first assignment, far from it, and as such are either clinical and aloof (like Eva) or jaded and cynical (like Neil) about their approach, which gives them a lot of personality and banter. To be honest, there are times where banter happens where it shouldn’t, causing a bit of a mood whiplash. Sure, those moments are good to alleviate the mood, but they’re often jarringly-positioned. (Though Eva writing Neil down into the Notes as the “village idiot” after he does something particularly stupid in one memory will never not be funny.) 

You even get a moment where you get to ride a horse!

In the end, a very good game that I heartily recommend. Not necessarily a master class in game design, but most definitely an example to try out if you’re interested in RPG Maker and want to see what can be achieved with it. This game comes with two playable mini-episodes, and has had two sequels thus far. Oh, and there's also apparently a movie based on this game in production.

To The Moon is available on Steam for 9.99$.

Quick Review: Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP

Don’t mess with things not rendered in your world’s style.

Developed by Capybara, Superbrothers and Jim Guthrie, published by Capybara Games, Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP was released on April 16th, 2012. It’s available on Steam, but also on iOS and Android, hence the controls suited for mobile play.

Meet the girl named Girl.

In this story in about four acts, you follow the story of the Scythian, a warrior wielding a sword and a shield who begins a quest to retrieve a book of power knows as the Megatome. On her journey, she meets various folks like a woodsman (“logfella”), a puppy (“dogfella”), a girl (…“girl”)… as well as some worrisome dark forces that awaken upon her taking the book. To remove the curse now befalling this land, the Scythian must use both the mind-reading powers of the Megatome and a new connection with the dream world to set things right.

Logfella. He chops trees. He walks dreams.

Oops. Looks like I have awakened the evil.

This game is set in a world mostly rendered in a lush, detailed, pixel art style. The characters aren’t very defined or detailed, just enough to be recognizable. The cosmic and supernatural objects in this world are easy to recognize, as they do not abide by the pixel art. The story frames itself like a fantastical epic, and yet has characters peppering their speech with modern slang and turns of phrases. The tone of the story is playful as a result. Stranger might be the framing device, in which a narrator called the Archetype introduces the game, almost like it’s a therapy or an experiment (calling chapters "sessions"), and uses terms reminiscent of psychology (Heck, Carl Jung is cited as an inspiration…).

MacGuffins normally don't try to kill me!

Use the arrows or WASD to look around; everything else is done with the mouse. You click and hold the mouse in one direction to move the character, and can double-click to see a message about an element of the game or to pick up an item or select an element of scenery or a character. You can take out the Scythian’s sword at any moment by right-clicking, and can then brandish it or slash with it. When a combat situation arises, you get the option to defend yourself with a shield as well. The toughest battles are against the Trigons, three triangles that the Scythian has to collect.

That grizzled boor is ugly as sin and it's
tempting to kill it, but... we don't have to.

This one is… peculiar, to say the least. The presentation is odd, the way the characters talk is odd (for the setting, at least – valley talk in high fantasy?), the overall design is odd (pixel art with non-detailed characters). Some of the ideas are really out there, as well. The dream world is fair enough as far as gameplay mechanics go, it’s just another world to explore with areas not accessible in the real world; the weird part is how the game treats this like… two sides of a vinyl, for some reason, hence the “EP” part of the title.

Then, there’s the focus on “Sworcery”. Yes, with a W. And what about the Megatome allowing you to read the important thoughts of every other character in the story in real time, including the narrator's? Oh, and what about the game's irritating insistence on you connecting your Twitter account and "tweeting your discoveries"? How about no.

Back when Twitter was a relatively decent
platform, maybe I would have said yes.

The moon is almost full.
Not full enough to progress, unfortunately.

Similarly, the game takes the trope of “moon logic puzzle” to its logical extreme, where the moon shifts exactly like in the real world, and some chapters can only be played at precise phases of the moon. That’s... impractical, to say the least. And also annoying when, like me, you want to get through short games in as little time as possible – at the time of writing, I am stuck on the third “session”, because the next full moon is the same day this review is being published. What? Cheat by changing the date on my computer? Nope – the game can tell.

Bonus of visiting the dream world:
You have some power over things around.

What I played was pretty cool, I’ll give the game that. I wished I could have seen more. It was getting to interesting places, to say the least. I did feel that a lot of the controls were clunky, probably due to being a game thought for mobile as well as PC; the combat mechanics, in particular, were pretty bothersome and made some fights a lot tougher than they should have been. As an example, you can hold up the shield to regain HP lost in battle, which is useful since you will restart with only 1 out of 5 HP a battle you’ve just lost; but that process takes several seconds and is cancelled when the enemy attacks, preventing your regeneration against an enemy that's too quick.

So yeah, more of a mixed feeling for that one, to be honest. Maybe at some point I’ll see it to the end. In the meantime, I’ll move on to other games. Still, if that sounds interesting to you, Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP is available on Steam for 7.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Super Chibi Knight

Cuteness + nostalgia + an update to a game I played long ago? Where do I sign?

The original was cute, for sure, but the new
one blows it out of the water.

Developed by PestoForce, published by them and Armor Games Studio, and released on June 24th, 2015, Super Chibi Knight is a sequel to a Flash game I used to play on Newgrounds, titled… well… Chibi Knight. Inspired by the system of The Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, that game featured a regular RPG overworld view outside of battle, only to switch to a more platform-like view whenever combat happened. And all that, in an adorable style.

This is a much larger effort with a greater story, building upon the basics of the first Flash game to create an improved product. I’ve already stated before that I love to see the devs of games played for free on Newgrounds, Armor Games, or any other Flash gaming website, moving on to new projects as proper indie studios.

Just so darn adorable.

Sandworm, huh? I've seen bigger.

The events of the original “Chibi Knight” are long past, and the great evil Monocchio was defeated. General Tso, a disciple of that demon, seeks to restore the monster to its glory; and to stand unopposed, he blinded the wizards of the world, and then easily defeated the beast masters from the mountains. On Oukoku Island, a little girl’s destiny is about to begin. She wakes up, just a normal day, then goes to the library to learn her world’s story… and sets on a path to right every wrong, solve every villager’s problem, kill every boss threatening the land, and take down Tso.

There's even some good old dungeon-crawling!

Those familiar with the original game will find a first chapter that’s very close in tone and feel. Even then, we have more quests, dungeons and bosses from the beginning, and the game starts out deceptively easy. Things change by the second chapter, where you’re given two paths: You can set sail for an island where the wizards live, and they will teach you the spells necessary to defeat the new evil; or you can climb up the mountains and learn the way of the beast masters, granting you a collection of animals to ride into battle. As emphasized by the scrolls in the library, you cannot do both – therefore, you need to play through the game at least twice to see everything. The difficulty also picks up considerably from the second chapter onwards.

A new environment, a side-quest, an animal
to capture and an underwater breath meter.
So much new stuff!

What a sweet homage to this game's roots!

As a throwback to its roots, the game features references to both Newgrounds and Armor Games. It also offers the option to customize the character with any combo of armor and sword unlocked at any point. This game and the original don’t feature a proper level-up system; instead, the EXP you earn can be used to pay for upgrades to the character’s armor (HP), magic bar, and attack power. Each stat can be upgraded all the way to Level 10. What’s more, the character can find mentors around the map that will also give her new battle techniques.

The best part of this game? Nick Pesto, the main developer of the game, lists his daughter Bella (aged 8 at the time of the game’s release) as co-creator. Father and daughter working together, that’s so sweet.

Lots of bosses, too. Like this one, as
an example.

I greatly enjoyed this one, in part because of nostalgia, but also because of the adorable art style and the fun writing. It feels like a proper improvement over its predecessor, with far more content and a lot more work put on designs, environments, and content (especially regarding the number of quests). One issue I have with the game is that content can be pretty easy to miss, and some quests aren’t fully clear. Some characters will talk to you when you walk up to them, others when you press A near them (controls are A to interact and slash, S to jump, D to use spells or summon animals), so sometimes you’ll lose information by pressing A right after a message popped up.

Right, those really aren’t big issues. The rest of the game is so endearing and fun that said issues can be forgiven. It’s a very charming and kid-friendly title, so I can recommend it for children. It’s worth your time and money, at least I believe so.

Super Chibi Knight is available on Steam for 4.99$.