Announcement!

Today is my birthday and yep, I got one of those now! Along with a selection of 6 games already. So, you can definitely expect some reviews of Switch games in the future! And not in the far future, either. Perhaps even one of them will be covered this year, who knows?

Which games? Well....

-Octopath Traveler

-Pokémon Legends: Arceus

-Saints Row IV: Re-Elected

-Super Mario Odyssey

-Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

-WarioWare: Get It Together!

And likely more will come!

Quick Review: Dimension Jump

(should've posted this yesterday, but I forgot!)

It’s weird whenever I stumble upon a game in my collection that’s no longer available for sale. Makes me wonder why. It is the case for today’s game.

Change the dimension, and that floor blocking the way
no longer exists.

A creation of Redpoint Games released on March 15th, 2017, Dimension Jump is an 8bit puzzle platformer. You move left and right with the arrows, jump with up. The game’s main mechanic involves swapping between two “dimensions” by hitting either Z or Space. A level can change quite a bit between dimensions, and you quickly learn to swap even while in motion, mid-jump often. The game uses very simple color coding: Pale grey is a free space to move in, black is a wall, the goal to reach is green, and touching red is instant death. Doesn’t matter how you get to the green area, as long as you get there and don’t die on the way – you have only one hit point.

The whole game is comprised of nine sets of 10 levels, and each set adds a new mechanic to the mix. The first ten levels set the basics. The second set of 10 remains close to the themes here, adding + and X buttons that force you into one of the two dimensions and blocks your ability to swap by yourself; however, you can hit a button with the symbol opposite the one you last activated in order to swap back. Following this, the next additions are standard puzzle platformer fare: Squares that, when hit, spin the entire level around 90 degrees; blocks that our character can break by falling from high enough; boxes to move around; a power-up that gives a one-time ability to instantly teleport to the other end of the room in a chosen direction or through a wall; and so on. You get the hang of the new mechanic quickly, with only the increasing difficulty standing in your way.

Dimension Locked? Looks I'll have to make do.

Is beating the 90 levels not enough? For an added bonus, you can try out the Challenge variants to each of them. Not enough? Each level comes with two collectible stars, one for beating that level in a certain amount of time, another for picking up a star that appears in that level after you’ve beaten it once.

Coming through! ...Literally going through the wall, yes.

That’s… uh… about it, really. As simple as it gets, and that reflects in both its look and base gameplay. Despite the simplicity, the game shows its true colors in difficulty quickly enough. Piling on new mechanics while you still have to think in two dimensions. It quickly becomes a meat grinder (…pixel grinder?) as you die over and over trying to figure out how to reach the goal. Some later stages require pixel precision – and the fan-made levels are even harder in that regard. In the end, the game merely suffers from not being notable in any peculiar way in the tough competition of Steam's puzzle platformers. (Seriously, do you know how many of those I reviewed?) All in all, not bad, but not quite the memorable experience.

I’d say try it out if you own it and haven’t tried it… I can’t really say “buy it if you wanna”, since it’s no longer for sale… dammit, what am I to do now?

(The Quick Review I was planning for Friday has morphed into a full-length one, so it'll take me some time to finish it - expect it Friday next week. I'll try to slip in another Quick Review until then in the meantime. Also, I might have an announcement this coming Saturday, which also happens to be my birthday. Stay tuned!)

Quick Review: Chime Sharp

Not your average music game, in that the music is more like garnish – but that’s okay if the idea is novel enough.

Squares! Ever-bigger squares!

Developed by Ste Curran and Twistplay, published by Chilled Mouse and released on July 19th, 2016, Chime Sharp is a game that’s like… er… no combination of existing titles does it justice. Let me try to explain it, as it’s a bit tricky to discuss even with screenshots on hand. In short, while the stage’s song plays, you set on a field of square a succession of pentominoes. (You know tetrominoes, the figures made of four squares, most famously used in Tetris? Same, but with five squares.) Each stage has its own set of pentominoes, and those available can differ from a stage to another. You have to place these pieces on the field and form "quads", squares with a minimum size of 3X3.

The pale blues are sections where a quad once stood.
Meanwhile, two quads still exist on the grid.

A square or rectangle created this way will fill up with a timer bar, and while it isn’t full, you can keep adding pentominoes to any side of it to increase the size and score value of the area you’ve made. With each successful size increase, the in-piece timer resets. But wait! What about the music? Well, here’s the interesting part. Once a successfully-created area’s timer has run out, it will stay in place. Meanwhile, as the music plays, a beat moves left to right across the playing field and deletes the finalized squares and rectangles, leaving empty squares of a new color in their place instead. You thus have access anew to that space to create new squares. Any bits from pieces placed that weren’t part of a square will stay there, becoming roadblocks in your attempts at placing new pentominoes to make more points. The game keeps track of the percentage of squares on the playing field whose color has changed, with a base goal of 60% necessary in each stage in order to unlock the following game mode. The BPM of a song playing in one stage influences the speed at which the beat/wave moves through, and the playing field can also be different at times, with spaces in which you cannot fit any pieces.

Music's pretty fine, at least.

The end result involves a lot of spatial puzzling, a lot of quick thinking, and pretty good reaction speed as well. Everything is done with the mouse; left-click to place a tile, the wheel to spin it around. Can you grow a square big enough for a major score, and keep it big before it vanishes? Can you actually fill up 60% or more of the grid?

Other modes further play around with the concept, upping the difficulty. As an example, the Sharp mode, unlocked after getting 60% coverage in a song’s Standard version, has the “beat” going left to right instantly deleting the squares created, rather than giving them time to solidify. And so on; to unlock a stage’s Strike Mode, you need to get 60% coverage on Sharp Mode, and for Challenge Mode, 60% coverage in Strike Mode. As for new songs and stages, those unlock the more you play.

As you can see, I haven't unlocked all of the
songs yet. Not sure I ever will, to be honest.
I still feel like I gave the game fair dues, overall.

I always get a little leery when discussing games that I don’t think are bad per se, just not to my interest. It happens! Decent game, and though it’s disappointing that it didn’t grab my attention more, I can at least recognize the effort. Maybe I’m lacking a little too much in musical theory to actually notice how the music changes to the squares you add to the playing field. Good concept, pretty fine execution and a lot of modes for each of the 15 stages… But that’s about it. The game notably doesn’t come with options regarding sound and volume, and you can’t add your own tracks for a customizable experience. That said, it’s perfectly fine for what it is and accomplishes what it wants to do. By all means, if it intrigues you, do check it out.

Chime Sharp is available on Steam for 9.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Carto

I’ve heard of games where you make your own maps, this takes it to the next level.

This is like the start of an animated film.

Developed by Sunhead Games and released by Humble Games and XD on October 27th, 2020, Carto is the story of the eponymous young girl, who lives in an airship with her grandmother. The lady owns a magical map, which she can use to remake the world below to her whim by swapping around square pieces of land. One night, Carto sneaks behind her back and plays with the artefact, accidentally causing a nasty storm that throws both herself and the magical map out of the airship. Now equipped with nothing but said map, but able to modify the world to a reality-warping degree, the little girl embarks on a quest to go home.

One map piece after the other, till we've put the world
back in one piece! (....That never happens.)

    That girl by the lake wasn't there earlier! Hi, new girl!

Carto moves around with the arrows, picks up items with Space, and uses items with W. Press Tab to enter Map Mode, where you can move map pieces around with the arrows, rotate them with A and D, or add some of the newly-acquired pieces with W. Map-making follows a few rules. The big one is that you can only stick map squares together if their connecting sides are identical (plains with plains, forests with forests, water with water, etc.) This extends to special elements such as roads and rivers.

I found this place (and this sheep) by making a + shape
with all the patches of white flowers pointing to the center.
Suddenly, new square!

A major puzzle element here involves not only making a path for yourself, but often placing tiles in a specific manner to make something appear – either a brand new tile, or an NPC. Last but not least, swapping a tile with Carto or an NPC on it will also teleport them around. One example in Chapter 3 involves making a circle out of four bending river paths, which causes an NPC to appear inside it; but then you also have to move Carto around so that she ends up within the circle, since she cannot cross water otherwise. Several clever takes on that idea are employed throughout.

Almost there...

Now if this desert could stop rearranging itself
every few seconds...

At some point, the challenge becomes to decipher the little clues that are given to you by the NPCs and the surroundings in order to figure out what to do next. Notably, you’re never at risk of running out of space moving squares around, so you can spread them around however much you want while you rearrange the map to get where you need to go. Later chapters introduce concepts such as undergrounds where your map doesn’t work (forcing you to figure out how to swap the squares of a floor you don’t see at the moment), moving squares together to form images (like putting a lake in the form of a fish), or having entire tetrominoes to swap around instead of squares.

Even in the cold, these paper sheets survive.
Good thing too, we need them more than ever.

It's cute even when little Carto dangerously slips ands slides
across an icy surface! Careful kid, protect your head!

Hands-down the cutest game I’ve played so far this year, bustling with charm, Carto is one of a kind. Not just in its gameplay mechanic that I’m fairly certain has never been done before – or at least never to this extent – but also in how simple its story is, and how both lovingly combine into one. At its core, the plot is all about Carto making her way through the world in search of her grandma, and meeting various new cultures with their peculiar customs. And as her horizons expand, so does her reach, hence the new map pieces. You can even gather puzzle pieces by completing side-quests, which have their own secret at the end of it all. Definitely worth your time, especially if you’re looking for new cutesy puzzle games with unique challenges to offer.

Carto is available on Steam for 19.99$.

10 YEARS OF PLANNED ALL ALONG!

Today, July 19th, 2023, is a very special day; this very blog, Planned All Along, has existed for 10 years. It's a landmark anniversary and I'm going to celebrate it, this time not with a huge review, but with a look back at these past 10 years. Quick Reviews will properly resume this Friday. There's a lot to cover, so let's start right away, shall we?

The beginning

How did this blog begin? Well, as simple as that: I was very bored one day. I was studying in Social Communications at the local university, I was between semesters, and looking for things to do. At the time, I already owned a fair number of games on three Nintendo consoles: Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and Wii. More games on the DS than the other two combined, I feel. At the time, I didn't have a job, so I had a lot of free time. 

At the time, I was a fan of many online reviewers, be it The Nostalgia Critic or others from Channel Awesome, so I had grown interested in doing online reviews, even if only as a hobby. And my original train of thought was that this would make me go through my collection of games again, which was pretty small when compared to what it is now. Hey, how hard can it be? Give it a year or two and I'll be through, right? ....Right.

From the very beginning, much like the online critics I enjoyed, my idea was to review the games, cover their entire story, and crack jokes. I wanted to focus on telling the story of the games. At the time (and still now), I believed that when designing a video game, the story had to be decided fairly early on, seeing as a lot of the development phase would then involve building the game around that story. e it thinking up gameplay mechanics, new areas to visit, the characters we encounter, and so on. Therefore, the story has been "Planned all along". Even the blog's title was meant to convey what I wanted to focus on above all else.

However, that focus would inevitably stretch out the length of my articles. Well, it's alright. As I found out, I have no problem writing articles that reach 2,000 words... sometimes, multiple for the same game. Thus, some of my big projects just... happened. As early as my first cycle of reviews, I would experiment with review length; the first Wii game I reviewed, Castle of Shikigami III, already had to have its review split in two 2,000-word parts. At the time, I had no idea I would end up writing reviews split across 5, 6, 7 or even 8 parts down the line...

A humble start

Since I didn't have tons of games at first, I just picked whichever I felt like talking about. Or those I was especially opiniated on. At times, I was forcing myself through the games I cared less about; I had bought them, I had barely played them, I wanted to give them their fair dues regardless. The very first game I went with was the GBA Crash Purple / Spyro Orange Superpack, because I had a lot to say about it specifically, a lot of it not too positive. The advantage of reviewing games I owned was that I already knew the subject matter a little, having played those games previously.

My original plan was to divide my schedule on the blog based by console: First would be a GBA title, followed by two DS games (since I had so many in comparison) and one Wii game (I had acquired that console a mere two years prior, so I didn't have a ton of games for it yet). Following this, I would cover a game I owned on the Wii's Virtual Console or WiiWare, switching back and forth each cycle since I didn't own a lot of those. Each cycle would then be topped off by a Top 12 list covering a topic that interested me.

Why Top 12, instead of 10? Remember when I said I was a fan of the Nostalgia Critic? He would make "Top 11"s during the first part of his career, saying he "liked to go one step beyond", so I figured, why not go yet another step beyond? Especially considering the sheer length of my articles... Overall, I'm glad to stick by that decision, it feels special to have something better than just Top 10s.

Early on, I also wanted to include articles on various topics, like Editorial-style columns (which I dropped early on, barring the very occasional commentary on a gaming situation, and instead incorporated into my reviews), and articles about fun stuff related to video games (such as interesting webcomics, fan initiatives, etc.). Both ended up being dropped fairly early on.

It didn't take long for me to grow interested in making themed months. The first one, early in the blog's life (October 2013), was all about Pokémon. At the time, university had resumed, so I was now living the life of a student with some time on the side for this hobby of his. On the menu, a Top 12 about Pokémon that could get new evolutions or pre-evolutions (at the time, I never thought I would turn out right for some of them: Qwilfish, Dunsparce, Farfetch’d and Girafarig, specifically...), and reviews of Pokémon FireRed, Pokémon Snap and Pokémon Rumble (a WiiWare title). I stretched the formula some, but found it worked quite well.

Another one of my early Top 12s covered game franchises I'd be interested in trying out someday. Of titles in the list, I have since tested games in the Portal, Metroid and Kingdom Hearts franchises, and I have Assassin's Creed games sagely waiting over on UPlay. (Still no word on the other eight: Halo, American McGee's Alice, Animal Crossing, Ratchet & Clank, Batman: Arkham, Fire Emblem, Jak & Daxter or Earthbound...)

For a while, I would also end each year with reviews of musical games. I started out with Just Dance 3, because that franchise means a lot to me. It is after playing that same game, during an Easter family gathering at my cousin's place, that I got hooked and decided I wanted a Nintendo Wii. Past this, I would end up reviewing more Just Dance games in 2015, 2017 and 2022, and cover other music games during other Decembers (one example being Rock Band 3 DS in 2014), ultimately letting go of thbe concept once I ran out of music games to cover, instead focusing on more nostalgic titles (one example being the Disney Afternoon Collection, covered in 2017).

Also a thing I did early in the blog's life was the occasional Demo Review, in which I covered the free demo of a game available on WiiWare. Those lasted from December 19th, 2013 to December 26th, 2015.

2014: An important year for the blog

As the blog went on, I began settling what would become the norm. On most April 1sts, I would write a comical review befitting the April Fools theme; in 2014, I reviewed a game I didn't own but knew well; in 2015, I reviewed a song, pretending to be another critic; in 2016, I reviewed an "adult" game; and so on.

In May of 2014, something special happened: I ran out of GBA games. I knew I didn't have a lot, just about 7 to cover, so it wouldn't take too long to get through those, but I was nonetheless surprised it happened so quickly. The last GBA game I reviewed was Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards, which alkso became my longest review at the time, at a whopping 4 parts. However, that left me with a void to fill...

I found the idea pretty quickly; movie reviews! Thus the VGFlicks segment was born. My idea was to review one of two things: Either a movie that's an adaptation of an existing video game, or a movie whose general story and topic involves video games in some capacity. This meant that I could cover "adaptations" like the Super Mario Bros. Movie or Prince of Persia, as well as original stories like WarGames or Wreck-It Ralph.

Most notably, though, the first movie I covered under the VGFlicks banner remains, to this day, the worst I've reviewed: Gamer, which I still nowadays use as a regular punching bag whenever I talk about bad video game movies, and comes up frequently as one of the worst films I've seen, period. In hindsight, maybe I should have kept it for a later article... Oh well! Though I'm surprised at the space the movie reviews would eventually take on the blog. It helps that after a while, I'd just start collecting DVDs of video game movies, on top of new games to play and review...

My first anniversary review was a big piece: Super Smash Bros. Brawl, for the Wii. Split in six parts, it was officially my biggest project at the time, and set the tone for the future anniversary reviews (the big ones, at least), which would always consist of 5 parts or more. For this one, I split the review somewhat evenly between the game''s features and modes, and coverage of the Story Mode known as the Subspace Emissary.

In the second half of 2014, I would have my first job, thanks to which I acquired a Nintendo 3DS. I would come to consider the console and its games as secondary, at least while I still had a lot of DS games to review. Even nowadays, it feels like I can barely squeeze in one 3DS game review a year, maybe two (an example being this year, with Super Mario 3D Land and Ocarina of Time 3D).

Yet another important event in 2014: My review of the "worst game I've ever seen". With hindsight, that may not be all that accurate anymore, but the game still stands out, by reputation alone: Anubis II, a Wii shovelware adapted from a PS2 shovelware, that is identical to several other crappy games, all by the same company. I guess I hate this game even more for what it represents (boundless, scammy greed, above the desire to make something good) than for what it is.

In fact, Anubis II angered me so much that I started the review with something new: A title card! (Where I brandish a knife at the game...) Title cards would become a major component of the blog afterwards, with me adding them to most articles (barring some times where I would either forget or not find the time to make one). Through them, I would hone in my image editing skills... well, not so much through Photoshop than through the free GIMP 2, but still. My skills in that department remain minor, but I'm actually impressed by some of the title cards I've made.

Keep moving forward

2015 would start with me meeting the Nostalgia Critic at my first ever convention, G-Anime, set in Gatineau in January. While I loved the event (and discovered a lot of content creators from Quebec thanks to it), meeting my inspiration has left me soured. I won't go over the details. Let's just say that whenever I need to make fun of someone, he'd become my go-to. I was disappointed by that turn of events, but I realized I enjoyed what I was doing and would keep at it, no matter what happened. On the plus side, before and after that weekend, I published a review of the Super Mario Bros. Movie (1993).

2015 is when I settled on more themed months, with a Rabbids month in February, a Sonic month in April, and another Poké-Month in October. That year also saw the release of two huge reviews back to back: A VGFlicks of Scott Pilgrim VS The World (in which I compare the film to the graphic novels, AND slip in a whole bunch of musical references!), and an anniversary review of Super Paper Mario. To date still my longest review, that one included a bit of a storyline element that, in hindsight, feels cringe-inducing. Oh well, it happens! (On the other hand, a failed experiment is better than no experiment at all!)

Later in 2015, I would also purchase Kirby's Dream Collection, and thus I would decide to cover one Kirby game at each cycle until I had played through all six available games on it, a venture that ended in August the next year.

2016 followed, with more themed months. Notably, an M-Rated Month in April of that year. Also around that time, I started toying around with a new idea: "An Episode in Gaming", where instead of movies I would review episodes of TV shows (cartoons or otherwise) that are about video games. Or cartoon adaptations of games. That idea ultimately didn't go too far, with only three shows "reviewed" through it and only one instance of a video game episode from an unrelated TV show being made. 

The most important change, though, is me joining Steam in June 2016. Compared to my Nintendo games, my Steam collection would grow immensely fast, in part thanks to websites such as Humble Bundle. I started out downloading just about any free game I got my hands on. This led to a big collection from the start.

My first idea with Steam games was to review many of them at once in what I would call "Steam Packs", precursors to today's Quick Reviews. In them, I would cover four, occasionally five, Steam games that could be finished rather quickly. I would use a website such as HowLongToBeat in order to keep track of game lengths, and would focus on the short ones. I would eventually give up on the idea of Steam Packs after the 20th such article in 2019, because I felt it made cataloguing the games reviewed a lot more difficult and needlessly complicated, and each game was better off having its own article from then on.

Later that year, I would also join UPlay, and on it I would get most of my games for free thanks to various events held by Ubisoft on the platform. For the longest time I would almost forget about those, but as of late I'm making an effort to remember them. As an example, the Rayman Month from last year, or Beyond Good and Evil this year.

The later years

There's not a ton to be said about the blog's history from 2017 onwards. I had settled into my routine and still enjoyed what I was doing. The most notable event in 2017 involves my coverage of the last Nintendo DS game that remained: Fossil Fighters. As if to celebrate this finale, the review had 5 parts. I'm a bit disappointed that my reviews of 3DS games would take a backseat afterwards.

Perhaps more notably, however, is how I was hired as a nighttime cashier at a gas station in March 2017. This made it a little more difficult to keep up both my work life and my hobby, in no small part due to the erratic sleeping schedule caused by my employment. This would be more noticeable through longer hiatus periods at times, between reviews. 

Still, the creativity was still around. My favorite review of all was published in 2018, and it was my anniversary review of that year. Complete coverage of Undertale, both major paths. With a storyline added to it, no less! And one that I'm actually proud of, compared to previous attempts.

Themed months would keep going from time to time: A Rabbids Month and a Yu-Gi-Oh! month in 2018, another Sonic Month and a VGFlicks month in 2020... September and October 2021 had a greater focus on horror games...

Although I would try not to have hiatuses that go on for too long, I guess there was a period in 2019 where I wasn't doing too well as far as gaming goes, as I didn't post anything from July to October. Maybe that's because I was working... and also working on some bigger games. If I recall, during that time, I fell into Skyrim and ended up spending a few hundred hours exploring that Bethesda title. Though, as promised, Steam Packs ended that year, with proper Quick Reviews beginning in November.

In January 2020, my massive review of Skyrim was published. It was my first time trying out a new review format, in which I would split the article by the game's main story missions. I ended up enjoying that format enough to start using it in all of my long reviews, starting with Ralph Breaks the Internet that October.

The pandemic years

Everyone's schedule got all kinds of weird due to the pandemic that (began in December 2019 but) struck the whole world in March 2020. I had been planning to leave my night-time job that same month, and ended up toughing it out another six months because it was a necessary job in those trying times and I was guaranteed employment while others had to make do without work for a while. This did give me some time to get through a couple more games.

Fun fact: I played Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon at work, because there were much fewer customers due to the pandemic, and several tasks I had to do every night had been cut (because there were things we could no longer sell for some time, like muffins and coffee), so I had a lot of free time. Not saying I played it at work a lot, but... that I did, at all, is so strange to think about.

I eventually left my nighttime job in late September of 2020, six months later than I expected, and found a new (daytime) job exactly a month later. I stil work there at the moment. That did not stop me, at the time, from posting four movie reviews in one month!

(Word to the wise: When you start building up a collection of things to review, it gets really difficult to stop. That goes for any and all media. Before you know it, you're in over your head!)

Not sure if it is also because of the pandemic, but 2021 is the year in which I reviewed the most games, in part thanks to two sets of Quick Reviews. Final total was 65 games. That's more than one a week.

2022 was a lot more relaxed in terms of the number of games played, but I remember it as a year in which my tone was a lot more socially involved. A lot of my articles touched on difficult subjects such as fascism, mental health and transphobia. It wasn't voluntary and I don't regret it, but it did make for a very serious and heavy year for the blog. I am trying to be more light-hearted this year. Speaking of, 2023 is for now the year where I feel I've published the least. I hope to see to that thanks to the Quick Reviews I've began.

Other thoughts

There are things that I would have liked to come up with earlier, such as the Index page (set up in 2021). It lists all the reviewed games in alphabetical order, in a way that's much more practical than the Archive listing the reviews chronologically. I also added in 2023 a new page called "Year Plans" showing games I'd like to go through. Wished I had thought of that long before.

Notable events: This blog saw the end of Google+ in 2019. I used to publish links to my reviews there. It's weird to think that, with how things go, Google+ might not be the only social media to die down while this blog exists. Meanwhile, if you have suggestions as to where else I could advertise, I'll take them!

Abandoned projects: As mentioned, "An Episode In Gaming" was dropped relatively quickly, even though I made some good articles for it. I was afraid this would happen to my reviews of games on UPlay, though I've been improving on that aspect. For a while, after buying two massive bundles of games of all kinds, I was tempted to write articles about products available on itch.io, though that never manifested.

I'm a little disappointed that, despite this blog being clearly a hobby, I haven't made a single cent out of it. I also never got it to get the visibility I would have liked, as it hasn't even hit the million views yet. I'm also sad that I never actually evolved towards video production, because of a lack of funds, resources and skill.

As for what gives me pride, well: One YouTuber from Quebec used an article of mine as basis for a video; some of my articles are legitimately good and unique; and it's actually been a pretty fun ride so far.

Here's to more Planned All Along! 10 more? I don't know. We'll see.

Quick Review: Business Tour

Monopoly is still a highly popular board game today, so it only makes sense that it would exist in a quick play version.

Developed by Creobit, published by 8Floor and released on July 27th 2017, Business Tour is… well, I just said it. It’s a take on Monopoly made simpler and quicker, played through an online mode against random opponents. Some elements are changed to speed up the game or add new concepts.

It is, decidedly, one of the Monopolys of all time.

We still have the eight sets of two or three properties, and the four airports (now turned into “resort cities”). Community Chest is gone, but Chance is still there. Prison has been swapped for Lost Island, serving the same purpose. Free Parking is now a Championship space, and a player who lands on it can choose one of their properties to house said Championship, which will increase the cost of that space’s rent a lot. The Go To Jail space was swapped for World Tour, a quick plane trip to any property owned either by you or no one.

Running out of funds doesn't mean you're guaranteed to
lose; you can come back from it, but it'll be tough.

There are multiple ways to win. The game has a strict 20-minute timer; if two or more players are still standing at the end of it, the game tallies the worth of their possessions and the one with the highest total wins. A player can also win if all of their opponents go bankrupt from being unable to pay a rent, even after selling their properties to make money back. Last but not least, if a player owns all of the properties from both sets on one side OR three full sets anywhere OR all four resort cities around the board, they win by default. Other minor elements of Monopoly stay, such as getting to roll again after rolling a double (and going to jail, or “Lost Island”, if you roll three doubles in a row).

Hey, look at that - I own all of the properties on one side of
the board. I win!

The trading of properties is simplified; after paying the property of a rent owned by someone else (other than resort cities), you can repurchase it, but it will be costly. You can’t set the price or haggle. If a player runs out of money to pay a debt, they can sell back any of their properties, including resort cities, to pay the debt, or declare bankruptcy. If a player leaves the game before they’ve lost, the game keeps going with a bot replacing that player. The game comes with a variety of menus, an online mode, a way to play with friends, and even a board editor to make some games more special than others where you can choose new themes, different corner spaces, and so on.

Not everybody has time for a 3+-hour board game, so a
quick version can help get that fix without having to set up
an entire evening with friends.

Fun game, but at the end of the day, it’s still Speed Monopoly. Mechanics are changed, and it has a neat little style to it, but the overall game is recognizable underneath all the modifications. That does make it a lot more approachable and accessible, though as a result some elements ramp up the speed at which everything happens – most noticeable in the rent prices that grow much faster than in the Parker Brothers classic. Probably in an attempt to bankrupt players rapidly in the last few minutes. The added means of victory also help quite a bit in speeding up the board game we all know.

Ending the game after 20 minutes means that the end tally
of properties can reveal the real winner. I lost, and it wasn't
that close, but as the timer ended I wasn't sure who would
really win!

However, there’s a free-to-play model to this one. Playing costs 100 blue chips. It’s not a steep cost seeing as you also earn chips back for winning a game. You can use real money to get coins which you can then spend on blue chips, cosmetic changes such as character skins, different dice and even some power-ups to help you in the game, like special dice that only give an even or an odd result. On the plus side, it means that none of them are necessary to enjoy the game, and therefore your only true worry would be to run out of blue chips. Thankfully, you start out with 5,000 of them, so it’ll be a while before you need more… In Free Play, at least. You do need to fork out money for an Investor Pass if you want better rewards in the more competitive Tournament mode, however.

Business Tour is available for free on Steam.

Quick Review: 11-11 Memories Retold

We know Aardman Studios mainly for their stop-motion animation. It is great to see them dip out of their field of expertise to offer another unique product. Today's game was inspired by, and is a longer version of, a short film of theirs displayed at the Imperial War Museum.

Click this pic, take a moment to look at it at full size.
The impressionist effect is really something to behold.

Developed by Aardman Animations and Digixart, published by BANDAI NAMCO and released on November 8th, 2018, this story follows two men on opposite sides of the First World War. Harry Lambert, a Canadian photographer (voiced by Elijah Wood), is encouraged to join the army in a non-combatant role as war photographer, to win the heart of the woman he’s in love with, his boss’s daughter at the studio. Meanwhile, German engineer Kurt Waldner (voiced by Sebastian Koch) learns that his son’s unit has gone missing, and he drops his work building airplanes for his country’s army to enlist, hoping to find him. Both will find themselves in the fire of action. During the battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917, both become trapped underground together and, in survival, develop an unlikely friendship. Even as they leave that predicament, they must make sure the war does not take away their humanity.

Another early scene, showing Kurt working on planes.
The scope of it, the vertigo of climbing.
The game pulls you in with these sights.

Take pictures of your new friends! Who might
not survive this damn war.

Gameplay here is fairly simple; moving around, exploring and interacting with the surroundings, to solve puzzles. There is a different focus between characters: Harry can take pictures, and the story may change depending on the subjects he features in photos. I do love me a good photography game, so I’m all for it. At times, Harry can send pictures back home to Julia, changing her opinion of him. Meanwhile, Kurt’s expertise allows him to tinker with machines to progress; on top of that, he will often write letters to his wife and daughter. You choose what to write, and you’re encouraged to interact with characters to add things to write down. Later into the story, we also take control of a cat and a pigeon.

Better tell the truth. ...right?

The style and the size of the setpieces does mean
there's a lot of stuff the game has to show; as a
result, it's very resource-intensive.

As emphasized, focus is less on inventive gameplay and more on telling an interesting story through it. What is inventive, however, is the look borrowing from impressionist paintings. Oh, you can tell it’s still CGI under all that, from the way the characters walk to how the world functions around them, but the effect astounds nonetheless. I don’t know if they manage this effect through filters or some other way, but it actually looks quite interesting! …Though it does take a moment to get used to, seeing as it often makes the game feel blurry and, thus, some things hard to make out. Thankfully, indicators of people and items you can interact with are not subject to it. I’m also not sure why, but both player characters would often swing wildly left and right as they moved forwards, with the issue being worse when they ran.

Looks like I'm headed for the wall, but I swear I was trying
to run forward here.

I mean, what are the odds of that bird becoming their friend
and comingh to their help in times of need?

In my personal opinion, the story gets far more interesting at Act 2 onwards, when our two protagonists meet and wind up having to help each other, with a language barrier to overcome on top of everything else. It gets great, seeing Harry and Kurt become like brothers, even at the darkest of the war. Beyond the story, you can look for collectibles in the form of pieces of papers scattered around the chapters. The issue with that is that due to the more cinematic way in which the game is designed, it’s often unclear where/when a scene ends, so you can easily miss out on those items. Depending on what’s going on, you can cut some dialogue short, but no cutscene is outright skippable – making potential replay a slog, and getting all seven possible endings a bit of a chore. I know, I did it.

A cat chasing after ghosts on a field red with the blood of war.
Anytime someone says games aren't art, show 'em this one.

I'm pressing! I swear I'm mashing S like my life depends on
it! Why the Hell won't it work?

The story is excellent, no doubt there. The game relies a fair bit on QTEs for some scripted sequences, though your choices rarely make a significant difference (outside of the final stretch, anyway). One issue I ran into was that the game would fail to register my key presses during QTE moments, either until it was too late or at all. One scene, in particular, wouldn’t work whatsoever until I lowered the quality and resolution in thge options enough to make it function – and I don’t know whether to blame my hardware or the game for it. Of the seven endings, most are sad, and even the best one may not be perfectly satisfying depending on how you look at it. But hey, that’s the nature of war. This game carries an important message and does so in its mix of complex characters and gorgeous aesthetics, and is definitely worth checking out.

11-11 Memories Retold is available on Steam for 29.99$.