Quick Review: Rakuen

Hey, I know how to make that hat! It's an easy origami model.

Feels a little colorless, but then again, it's a hospital.

Created by Laura Shigihara and released on May 10th, 2017, Rakuen is a game made using RPG Maker XP. That’s my one for the year! You play as a young boy during a long hospital stay. While waiting on a visit from his mom, he is given permission to leave his room and walk around. He realizes that the book his mom reads to him, Rakuen, is missing from his room. He meets the other patients, has a chat with the personnel and any friendly visitors, and finds his book.

The next day, while exploring the hospital with his mom, the boy finds a portal that leads to the world of the storybook. The two can explore it and talk with the catlike Leebles that inhabit the forest village. Morizora, the guardian of the forest, can grant someone a wish, but he has fallen asleep due to shadowy spirits. Morizora can only be awakened with a song, of which the boy will have to learn the parts if he wants his wish granted. Many humans at the hospital have their equivalent character on the other side. As he explores both sides, the boy will discover the personal stories of the other patients on his floor, and learn the parts of the song.

We're gonna have to earn that wish.

I liked this part of the game, we were playing waiter to get
information on a robber. It was creative and fun.

Although it was designed on software intended for RPGs, this is more like a point-and-click puzzle adventure. You walk around with the arrows, interact with things with Space or Enter, and get prompted to use items from your inventory (from the pause menu, opened with Esc., which includes a save button) onto décor elements to solve puzzles. Though you will be told which item to use when you have it, instead of doing trial and error! This is combined to a complex world you can explore, and you unlock areas as you find new tools and passageways – not to mention more doors leading to the fantasy land.

Interactions you have in one world impact the other; watering a plant in the hospital creates a climbable beanstalk in the village. Vice versa, resolving the issues of a patient’s fantasy land version will have repercussions on said patient. Objects freely travel to and fro. Both halves influence each other far too much for this to be just a dream, but the truth is left ambiguous, like many other elements.

A story of love, not of loss.

Nowhere is that made more obvious than when you investigate the past of other patients on the boy’s floor. Their stories are told through the inhabitants of the forest, with the boy witnessing setting-modified versions of events that get the point across, and yet they are nonetheless brutally clear as to what happened. Stories of racism, estrangement, bullying, or loss of oneself, to name a few.

One example is Tony, the grumpy old man. He and his family are represented by bears in the Leebles’ world, showing through animals the broad strokes of what happened to make him so embittered. Through the magical doors, the boy and his mom access Tony’s old home, which allows them to discover the realistic details… and those don’t leave the player with much doubt. I am staying vague, because it is worth seeing on your own. While you are investigating, flashbacks will put away the boy and switch the playable character to one relevant to the current backstory.

Ohh, I was not looking forward to the moment we play
one of these bears. And I was right to dread. Not spoiling!

Dangit, I'm just coming back for screenshots, re-hearing the first
song... is that tears coming back?? Oh, Laura Shigihara also does
music, by the way!

The music is great (shout-out to the climactic song of every patient’s story). The maps are detailed and beautiful. And the game is programmed to include a ton of puzzles and gameplay twists that make it surpass the average game made with this software. One example is the labyrinthine cave that’s explored early on, with its own mini-puzzles; this “dungeon” provides a handy map. When the boy’s mother is somewhere with him, she can be called with the Q key for a chat or to provide a hint if you’re not sure what to do next. This can be very handy!

Such a lovely space for the child patients on this floor.
We all hope they'll get to enjoy it... No, I'm not sobbing.

My one critique would be that a few side-quests, especially those that involve gathering materials to make new tools for progression, can feel a bit like chores unless you quickly get it into your head to pick up every necessary material as soon as you see it. Another important point is that, the rare times you CAN get a Game Over, you aren’t warned beforehand (since most obstacles instead warp you back to the previous room). Thankfully, the game lets you save almost anywhere, and includes an autosave so that you don’t lose too much progress if you land a Game Over and haven’t saved in a while.

Oh, and if you play this game, keep a box of tissues nearby. This is not a joke; each story will get you teary-eyed. Or, more likely, you’ll bawl your eyes out. This game made me a crying mess, you have no idea. The storytelling is excellent, some of the best I’ve seen in gaming, period. Absolutely. In the realm of incredible RPG Maker games, it’s a little less famous than To The Moon, and yet it’s just as heartbreaking. Need I even say that I recommend this one? Because I do.

Only barely exaggerated.

Rakuen is available on Steam for 14.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

The voices – she hears them everywhere…

Before you can enter Hel, you must find the portal to it.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice was developed by Ninja Theory, published by them and Xbox Game Studios, and released to Steam on August 8th, 2017. We play as the titular Senua, a Pict warrior left traumatized after an invasion of her village by Vikings. Now on a quest to resurrect her fiancé Dillion, who died during the invasion, she lands her crude boat onto a mysterious island. This goal will force her to fight mythological Norse figures on the way to Hel, forcing her to confront her own past on the way to meeting Hela.

Everything is messing with her mind.
Including her mind itself.

When it's not voices, it's flashbacks. Reminding her of why
she is doing all this. Who, around her, actually tried to
help her with her struggles... and who didn't.

But is it even real? Senua suffers from intense psychosis, exhibiting many traits of schizophrenia. She keeps seeing faces, she keeps hearing voices, some mocking, some encouraging, some wondering what she’s doing. The voices color the entire experience. True silence is rare across this adventure. Psychiatrists didn’t exist in the 9th Century, so everyone else calls it “the darkness”, or “the curse”, as if it was something she had to overcome… The game recommends playing with headphones, as the game uses 3D Binaural sound that makes every voice feel like it comes from a specific spot around Senua.

As for seeing faces... Hellblade does something clever,
where it superimposes live-action heads onto stone faces.
It's... unsettling. The face seen this way is Senua's mother,
who encourages her. Other cutscenes use live-action instead,
which gives them an otherworldly feel in the setting.

That's one found. Now to find the other. I sure love an
environment with random sigils existing around!

Calling this game just a walking simulator does it a disservice. Yes, you’ll be walking around with WASD, exploring, looking for lore stones to hear bits and pieces of mythology. You’ll face areas with specific puzzles that require observing something by focusing with E, or interacting with something with F. Closed doors will require you to find sigils in the wild, which you’ll have to focus on from specific standing points. That part is lenient, as you don’t need to be aligned perfectly, and the game further helps by flashing the nearest sigil when you’re approaching it. Other puzzles play with your perception to make things like bridges and staircases appear.

Why yes, this is, in fact, a river of blood, with malformed
bodies making up the banks.

This is also classified as a horror game. First, you have the constant presence of the voices discussing your every move. They disorientate Senua (and, by extension, the player), and yet, the longer the game goes, the more you learn to ignore the defeatist or mocking voices, and focus on the encouraging ones. You’ll need all the determination you can find, while hunting down Surtr in a forest that catches fire every time you solve a puzzle, or encounter any of Valravn’s illusions, to give two examples. Aside from the unnerving places we visit, the game's scariest moments are often in cutscenes. There are jumpscares, but the game more often utilizes atmosphere to unsettle you.

Ugh, the shield guys. Never quite got the hang of
beating them quickly... until the very end, anyway.

Took me until AFTER a long story break without fighting
to find out I could use Focus against any enemy.
Plus, Focus makes your sword shine like a lightsaber.

Then there’s combat. I wished there had been a tutorial since those controls are more complex than the rest of the game. You slash with the left mouse button, or do a stronger slash with the right button. You can block with Crtl, block with the left Crtl, change target with C or Z, or dodge with Space and WASD. I felt unprepared when the first fight was sprung up on me, but I picked up everything else quickly by checking controls in the pause menu. Other features of the game come in handy – the voices warn you when an attack is coming from behind, and mention when an enemy is almost defeated. Although these two features make combat interesting, there aren’t many enemy types, and the repetition becomes obvious early. However, the bosses are memorable, not just where they’re fought, but all the tricks they use against you. Special mention to Garmr/Fenrir, whicks blocks your view of the arena with Senua’s own traumatic memories, forcing you to constantly dodge its attacks.

Using Focus in battle slows down time and creates a really
cool effect around the fight. It won't always save you,
but it IS a lifesaver against bosses and enemy groups.

Senua is said to have limited “lives” (represented by the rot on her arm growing towards her head when she “dies”), but a precise number, like her health, or the enemies’, is never disclosed. The uncertainty is part of the dread.

There's clearly something there. You're just not at the right
angle to focus on it and create the bridge forwards.

Honestly, for a product whose development forced its team
to cut corners, even transforming a meeting room into a
green screen mocap space,  it is still in the end one of the most
visually stunning gaming experiences I've had.

The puzzle gameplay can be a little repetitive (even if we get some interesting twists out of it sometimes); but the story is worth it. The horror ambiance is on point, and the story incorporates Nordic mythology in clever ways (including how Senua envisions those gods and monsters). The music helps the tone tremendously, and the graphics make this game possibly one of the most beautiful I've ever played. The plot has several beats of mental breakdown, with all the freaky visuals they induce, and you can never tell what’s real and what isn’t. Melina Juergens was merely the team’s video editor and had no acting experience when she was selected as a mocap actress stand-in before doing such a great job in the role that she was permanently cast in it. And that performance earned her a BAFTA Award! Impressive! And Ninja Theory went to great lengths to portray schizophrenia and traumas as accurately as possible, with experts helping on that front at every step of the way.

This game is an experience worth playing through. I know I made sure to play it all the way to the end! Oh, and there is a VR edition as well.

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice is available on Steam for 29.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Fluffy Horde

AKA that game where you kill thousands if not millions of… bunnies? That’s dark.

A creation of Turtle Juice released on November 7th, 2018, Fluffy Horde is the story of a kingdom dealing with a dangerous shaman. This magic user has created a horde of bunnies that multiply like crazy, and he is using them to destroy crops and windmills. It’s up to the villagers to defend themselves through soldiers, farmers, decoys, and anything else they can use.

That's a lot of rabid rabbits.

This game touts itself as a mix of real-time strategy and tower defense; you can summon units, which can be upgraded to have stronger/faster attacks, more health, and so on. Economy is vital, so you need to buy farmers who’ll take care of crops for revenue. In several levels, the goal is to eliminate all the rabbits before they reach and destroy the local windmill. Your main combat units are swordsmen and archers. You can buy guys dressed in carrot costumes, who will attract the attention of bunnies (who will kill them). You can select one, or a whole group of units, and move them at the same pace; you can even double-click to select all units of the same type.

Almost there! Hm, usually it's the cows that make the milk.

In other levels, your goal changes. Sometimes, you’ll have to make a cow cross a field to reach a plant that spits out milk (don’t ask, this is a weird universe), and kill the bunnies since the cow freezes with fear when it sees them. More often though, you’ll have to move a princess dressed like a bunny girl towards a party she wants to attend… and if the lagomorphs reach her, they’ll kill her. Maybe don’t let that happen, k?

Every level comes with three medals to obtain; their tasks can include winning in a short amount of time, not letting the windmill or the princess take any damage, or working with a limited number of summoned units. There is a fourth medal, obtained by completing all three objectives at once. Before starting a level, you can look at the whole field to figure out a strategy.

They are, in fact, good at multiplication.

My biggest gripe, gameplay-wise, is that it keeps piling new mechanics on top of each other, and you must adapt to these new elements. Which isn’t terrible, except not all of them come with proper tutorials, and eventually more focus is put on the accumulation of fancy gimmicks than on the basics. Those stick around, but they eventually make way for simpler problem-solving that’s necessary to encompass all the variables. The further in we go, the less it feels like real-time strategy and tower defense, and it becomes just a puzzle game with bits of the other two genres sprinkled in. What’s the most optimal sequence of actions.

Teen Princess: "They are eating me alive! Hellooooo??"
"When killed: "Ugh. This is literally boring me to death."
Christ, can I turn the fucking voices off?

The  pixel art style is fun for the concept, but it creates an issue; the bunnies are very small. It’s easy for one to slip through without you noticing; thankfully, there are audio cues telling you when the windmill or the princess is in danger. Then, you must reassign your units to fight the tiny threat. At the end of a level, when you’ve dealt with almost every little bunny, there’s frequently the one or two that remain that you just didn’t see. Repeatedly, I didn’t get a medal for beating a level in a record time because of those few left over. They are so small, they blend in with the world! Heck, you can also lose a level if there are too many bunnies.

I would like to point out the unfortunate implications of
giving a flamboyant gay voice specifically to the units
whose entire point in the game is to get themselves killed.

The worst, though, is the voice acting. Every unit has a voice, and most of them… are okay? The soldiers, archers, farmers, and the mission control warning you about the windmill and the dangerous bunny numbers, that’s fine. The princess and the decoy carrot guys, however… The decoys are given the stereotypical “gay voice”. You know exactly what I’m talking about, I bet you’re hearing it in your head. The “accent” that stopped being funny 20 years ago and should have been left in the past. The princess voice, also done by a guy and stereotypically “modern annoyed teen”, isn’t much better; it got incredibly grating and the lines, whenever she was attacked or killed, got old fast. Even if you start off finding those voices and jokes funny, they get repeated ad nauseam and become super annoying after a while.

Oh, there’s a multiplayer mode, too. Eh. Whatever.

Would help if the teen princess didn't have the HP of a
Goomba.

Yeah, not a big fan of this one! I do think it would have fared better and been more faithful to its genres if it hadn’t been rushing to introduce so many mechanics. Though, with that said, I do have a greater issue with the game’s presentation than with its gameplay. After all, there is great challenge to be found in merely beating every level, and then hunting down every medal. It’s not godawful, but it’s in that “won’t bother to finish it” category. Those two voices were a complete turn-off.

Fluffy Horde is available on Steam for 9.99$ USD.

New Pokémon Snap (Part 2)

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

Fantastic Photo Features

Yes, Corsola! Get to the apple!

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Pokémon Snap (Part 1)

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

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

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

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

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

Welcome to the Lentil Region

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

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

Exploring the Itch.io Collection #6

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

Many games here today, some from the previous article, and
some from the next.

Experiences

Grievance: Less a game than a short interactive story. It’s black text on a white background, there is no music, and your occasional input is to choose where the plot goes or what some characters say, though I assume these do not make a ton of difference in the end. This tells the tale of three characters. A farmer, a guardsman, and a princess, all of whom have their lives impacted by a meeting with the king of the land. The store page describes this tale as a fable about power, how it corrupts those who have it, and how it damages those who don’t. No happy endings here, that’s by design.

You might see why I didn't want that pic to be the one
everyone would see when I was posting my link to this review.

A completely normal dating simulator that is definitely completely sweet, innocent and normal: Yes, that’s the title. This is… a parody of dating sims. All the characters are one-dimensional, the art is stick figures over child-level drawings, the music is just someone singing to themselves, the plot is absurd nonsense, only one minor character (an author avatar/cameo) has all their lines properly voiced, and the text is packed with spelling mistakes. And… I’m sure this is on purpose. Like some dadaist thing. I kept expecting it to take a hard swerve into a different direction, like DDLC, but nope. It’s more annoying than anything else, to be honest. Good for maybe a few laughs, though, if you can tolerate what it’s going for.

The kids have got to leave the nest at some point!

One-Eyed Lee: Prologue: A young elf wants to escape from his wheat-farming family and see the world; but all his attempts were thwarted by his parents, his two brothers, and his sister. One night, at last, he makes it out of the wheat field, only to find a shadowy creature that grants him a worrisome, yet freeing, superpower… This visual novel has no decisions to make, and is just a story you can follow at your leisure. Not much of a game, but it IS intended as a prologue; its creator DarkChibiShadow only released one full chapter for this series yet, which I’ve also received in the Itch.io bundles I purchased. Someday, I’ll get to it! In the meantime, I could enjoy the good art, nice music, and character complexity shown in this short product.

Social Reach

Yup. It's like I said. Every single line pulled right out of the
transphobe's playbook. This game may awaken sad memories
for those who did go through this sort of thing with their own
families.

Boa Retina: A game by Jennifer Raye about someone experiencing gender uncertainty and finally confronting “the family” (represented by a winged monster eye) about her discovered trans identity. The eye will run through the whole transphobic script, starting at utilitarian excuses (“You’ll have a harder time finding work”) before moving on to emotional/physical abuse. To say nothing of the protagonist doubting her choice. You go through four documents re-exploring the protagonist’s self-discovery, hoping to find better arguments and defend this life-changing decision, without luck. I’m as cis male as they get; I will never live this. Thus, I could only guess that transition is tough for any person that has a family that would react like the monster eye. Seeing it firsthand through this game, however short, gives an unmistakable impression of just how mentally taxing making that choice, and especially coming forward about it, can be in some families. Something tells me that it is inspired by Raye’s real-life experiences, and as a result, it portrays this reality with eye-opening brutality.

I use the "Social Reach" part of these articles to showcase
games that treat important social issues in some way. And
islamophobia, even portrayed through allegory, counts
as a great social problem.

Devtheism: This game was created on RPG Maker. Its meta setting presents the tale of someone who is mocked for their belief in “Developers”, which clashes with the beliefs of other NPCs in an “Engine” that created everyone. After being mocked once again over it (“Your kind blows up people that disagree with them! Your kind can’t take a joke when we picture what you believe in!”), the main character sets out on a quest to prove the existence of Developers… or, perhaps, they will find a life truth: That what one believes in shouldn’t matter, what should matter is how good each person is. It is unfortunate how easily you can guess this game’s developer’s faith based entirely on the insults their main character receives; goes to show, those stereotypes are unfortunately still far too widespread. This is an allegory for religious persecution, so the topic is heavy; but the tone is lighthearted overall. And very metafictional.

Social Justice Warriors: The title is explained on the game’s page. Attacking, ridiculing and silencing each other online with terms like SJW or troll “not only fails to achieve progress but has an additional effect of escalating the conflict and wearing you down in the process”. Pick a class (which gets given traits pertaining to a specific online community), then battle against increasingly difficult “trolls” that use hateful rhetoric. Keep a close eye on your levels of patience and reputation; enemies have those too, and to defeat a troll, you must deplete either one. No patience means they give up, no reputation means their reach is destroyed. The same applies to your character, and casting your “spells” often costs patience or reputation. Clever and hilarious concept, with a fair bit of challenge to be found, especially late in the game when your stats have been lowered through many tough battles and it becomes a struggle for survival. Hey, you can raise an important point about society and still be funny about it!

Plain Games

So, I guess this is in the future, because shape sorter
toys cannot be that old- ... ....right?

(Not Escape Room): In this visual novel, three women have been trapped in what they assume is an escape room game by an AI. It is meant to be an inescapable trap for them to stay in forever. The three friends still treat it as solvable, and you, as the AI, will attempt to sow division to increase tensions. You select some of the ways in which the “escape room” game goes, to make the puzzles impossible to solve. Can you really keep these three trapped? (Probably not.) Fun little game; the characters are enjoyable, though there aren’t many choices to see how you could break their friendship. I assume there are multiple endings.

Of course my first pick was the dog. It's easy mode.
Not that there's much difficulty to be found here.

Eternia: Pet Whisperer: In this visual novel, your character is looking to adopt a pet to liven up their empty apartment. The shelter they visit has six pets… and they all talk! You can some time with them every day, and then adopt them. You are even given the option to time travel in order to adopt all of them! Or you can end at just one pet, too. Either way, this is a no-stress game, you can let the story play out. You can tell the Hatoful Boyfriend inspiration here. It’s pretty good and the art is neat, though since the choices are never too difficult, it’s very much an “autopilot” kind of game where you can just be in for the ride, without having to do much in the way of input outside of choosing which pet to focus on during each loop.

The gate is open! Quick, go through!

Eves Drop: An arcade-like game in which you control a hacker’s digital self, breaking through many barriers of a Big Brother-esque program on the eve of the new millennium. The digital self freefalls through a corridor. You can float towards any sphere using WASD, spin it around with A and D to aim, and then shoot by holding down and then releasing the sphere with S. The goal is to shoot spheres to destroy the gate to the next level, and then float down and pass through. Careful, though; enemies get increasingly frequent and dangerous the deeper you go. Tricky game to figure out and play at first, but I reached the end on my fourth attempt. It’s an energetic game for an interesting idea.

I'll be right back to you, just gotta stuff the pot
with ALL the fod I can fit in it. Don't worry,
I will catch up on our conversation in a sec!

Hot Pot Panic: Your friend is in town, so you go to an all-you-can-eat hot pot restaurant to chat over what’s new in your lives. The goal is to cook your food in the pot, eat it, and end on a full stomach before you run out of conversation topics. You must keep track of what your friend says, because she’ll ask for your input. And you must keep track of how your food cooks, because it’s only good to eat for a short window of time where it shines gold in the pot! You can lose either by not having a full stomach after running out of topics, or your friend figuring out, due to repeated wrong responses or staring at the pot too much, that you were more focused on the food than on her. Surprisingly challenging (the timing is tricky), and a great way to practice quick reading!

Bit of SUPERHOT in there too, since
enemies move faster when you move.

TRAINBOW: The biggest pain with this one was making it work, as I had to go into its folder and manually open the game with the actual app within the files. In this arcade game, you are Manpuck, the circle on the screen, and you are tasked with taking every flower bulb in each stage and taking it to the exit, one at a time. Careful, though; every picked flower will sprout enemies that will chase Manpuck. However, if you hide behind walls while they’re hunting you, they will eventually selfdestruct. Or you can run over a sprouting enemy to kill it before maturity.

The Primary mode is made of seven tutorial-like stages; their completion unlocks Secondary, made of 40 levels. In that mode, each stage has 8 bulbs, and the more bulbs you’ve collected, the more stages open. Still not enough? There are endless modes as well! It’s a fun little game with more depth than one could expect at first; I didn’t finish it, but I see its worth and challenge.

Took me like 10 minutes to get up that tower of skulls.
This was not the end of the game, it was the second area.
Everything else after it was much easier.

Cardiac: A monochromatic horror game in which you control a writhing mass of flesh that can move around thanks to tendrils. Right-click to extend the tendrils forward, left-click to be pulled in the direction of what they caught. The game begins with moving around through tunnels, then evolves to semi-platforming. The struggle is real. Gameplay is tricky, since you don’t control where your tendrils go, which makes movement difficult – that’s on purpose. The atmosphere is down pat, the music is appropriately tense, and the sound design… euuugh… all that squelching, all that wet sound… Still got chills of disgust.

Waving through the space snakes...

Dragons In Space: Not actual dragons. In this abstract game, you control a ship and must stay alive, destroy enemies, and pick up the escape pods. You gain one star in a level for each task successfully completed (the “stay alive” one is earned by not getting hit at all). Eight levels, with enemies and hazards getting meaner and tougher to face. The ship you play cycles between three weapons, you don’t control which weapon you’re using in a level, and not every weapon is good in every situation (and the worst weapon is automatically selected against the final boss!). The gameplay has its hiccups, it’s not well optimized; but the abstract art style gives it a charm, in a “makes it look like it was drawn by a child” kind of way.

Forget the ghost, I wanna know what's the trouble with that
one jackass in the chat that's crapping over everything that's
happening. Don't we have mods or something?

LiveScream: Visiting a haunted mansion for views, how hard can it be? In this point-and-click, your character enters the mansion in search for supernatural events. You can see the chat commenting your actions as you play. You can solve little puzzles, and push through in the face of adversity. Manage your fear level (if you get too scared to continue, your character runs out screaming!) and your audience interest level (which goes up when interesting stuff happens). The point-and-click aspect is limited, as it only involves investigating across 3 rooms (+ one more, if you can find it) and performing actions (such as pushing forward when something weird is happening). There is no “true” ending, though there’s a wide range of outcomes. It’s got some in-game achievements, too!

Better walk out of this room before I go mad
from the discovery. Yeah.

Remnants: In this point-and-click created in RPG Maker 2003, your nonbinary character in a cool cape is investigating a hidden cave under a dying forest. The deeper they go, the creepier it gets, from abandoned sewers to a secret base and then, downright Eldritch locales. The character can find flashing items and use them to find their way to lower floors. Almost everything they can look at will elicit a comment on their part. This game focuses far more on narrative and setting an ambiance than on difficulty, but that’s to its benefit. Plus, there are many comedic moments from the character’s quips.

Next week: A full-length review!