Exploring the Itch.io Collection #5

It’s been a while since I last did one of these! I figured I would do one to fill in while I make my way through larger games that take longer to finish.

Last month, I spent an entire week re-making the list of games in my collection over on itch.io, because I felt the original was incomplete and I wanted to make it feel right. The result? Well, instead of about 800, I actually have 1269 games to check out. That’s without counting the 80 I covered last year, or the other 26 I already had on Steam and which I have either already played or will play in the future, for a grand total of 1375 games. …I know, that’s a lot. And more than 500 of them don’t have recorded times on HowLongToBeat.

Most of today’s article was written last year. I added to it after every super-short game I played. A few of the ones covered here, though, have been played this past week. I can’t promise to cover 80 games like this once again in 2026, but any progress will be good. Especially with those revised numbers.

As stated in the Index, I have this page where anyone can see the games I have already tested on the platform. You can always go back to it to see how much progress I’ve made in that collection, or which games are coming up in the next article. I still include a link to every game I discuss here, since I am giving visibility to everything I cover in these articles, and you can go check out each one. Even if I didn’t like one of them, you can go check it out for yourself; maybe YOU will enjoy it!

Experiences

Can I at least get a glass of water to help that
block of brick and sand down?

The Indifferent Wonder of an Edible Place: In the fashion of taking a metaphorical image for a real issue and making it literal, in this game you are someone who eats buildings to make them disappear. This is accompanied, and inspired, by a poem from 1960, translated to English in 1983, about the historical erasure done by the state of Bombay. In the game itself, you are told to eat specific numbered pieces of a large tower. If you don’t eat the correct piece, your character gets poisoned and is incapacitated for a moment. You can use the scope with the right-click button to figure out where the next “correct” piece is. Either way, this is history you’re making disappear, with no way to get it back.

If you see a giant green eye under war trenches, I think you
may be suffering from something worse than PTSD.

Please follow: A walking simulator/horror/puzzle combo in which you play a lone soldier venturing into the tunnels dug by the enemies and find… something. Deeper into the tunnel, there are puzzles involving worms, giant leeches, and other supernatural stuff. This short exploration ends with a freaky acid trip. The game’s look is very “early 3D” of video games (think N64 or PS1), the sound design grossed me out the entire way through, and the visuals…. Jesus, that’s freaky. It’s horror alright.

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 4)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

The Wii edition of Resident Evil 4 includes all prior DLCs from previous editions of the game, and I felt my coverage wasn’t finished until I discussed all of them, too. This time, we focus on Ada Wong, the mysterious spy that Leon keeps running into. First in Raccoon City, then here… What was she up to? Time to find out.

Separate Ways

    Oh, she knows how to use those just as well as Leon!

Ada’s quest isn't a 1-to-1 adaptation; it follows the events as she witnessed them, and her part in them. She’s responsible for a few problems Leon encounters, and saves his life more times than he knows. She can meet the merchant to buy weapons, upgrades to her attache case, and first aid kits, but the menu to upgrade guns is not available. You remain at a disadvantage since you can get all the guns you want but no improvements in firepower and efficiency. Ada has a knife too, but she starts with a Blacktail and a Shotgun, and can buy a unique weapon, the Bowgun (a crossbow, powerful but its ammo is rare and takes up inventory space). Her unique skill is the grappling hook, which she can use to reach high ledges or jump through windows; it’s only usable in specific places, though.

We see from the start that Ada is working under Albert Wesker. Does she know about his plans? That he wants to create a virus that will wipe out several billion people? She sneaks into the village from the first two chapters of the original quest. She’s there at the same time as Leon, who is already mowing through zombies. Ada is tasked by Wesker to ring the church’s bell, which will calm down the Ganados. Logically, Leon should be hearing a second shooter in the area, but he doesn’t.

Sorry, I'm not dressed for church; that's okay, I'm not here
to hear the hymns anyway.

She finds the Insignia key on a rooftop and the emblem for the church’s door. Yep – she’s the one who rung that bell that made the zombies go away while Leon was fighting them. In-between chapters, we get a recap showing that everything Leon learned on his own, Ada (and the organization she works for) already knew. She knows that Las Plagas are controlled through sonic frequencies, akin to dog whistles. It’s implied that all the key items that Leon took forever to find were so because Ada was using them first. She'd hide them off the beaten path, so Leon would take longer to finish his mission – otherwise, his heroic resolve would mow everything down before she could fulfill her goal.

She may not be the one to deal the finishing blow to the big
players of the Las Plagas conspiracy, but she still deals
with major threats in each of her chapters.

She must get into contact with Luis Sera, who has been captured by Los Illuminados. He's the one to will hand over to her the master Plaga sample. Ada starts in Mendéz’s home, follows Leon's path, and ends up saving him from the village chief. Bullets through the window, right in the guy’s back. This leads to her getting knocked out by Ganados and almost offered as sacrifice, but she kill her captors and finds her way back. She gets the key in the barn, reactivates the lift and heads over to the shack, killing an El Gigante on the way for sport. She arrives right after the cabin brawl, and confirms with Luis that he's her contact. However, he doesn’t have the sample yet…

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Chapters 4 and 5 today? Let’s try. There’s a LOT here.

The Terminally-Kidnapped Girl

IT'S HOT IN HERE! Why does a castle in the modern age
need a foundry?

The last piece of the chimera insignia is at the end of a foundry over lava, accessible through a cart. I’ve stopped wondering what isn’t in Salazar's castle. The insignia is placed and the blocking columns goes away; Leon and Ashley access a second cart, taking them to yet another building. More exploration ensues, including areas where Leon can partake in “shooting range”-style minigames to earn bottle caps. Mostly bragging rights rewards. There's 5 of those and they’re alright, but I was focused on finishing the plot for these articles.

You can't even do anything with the bottle caps afterwards.
Can't even sell them!

Good thing those armors are old and break with just a few
bullets, huh?

Further down, the two encounter more suits of armor possessed with parasites, some of which animate and attack. This is the only section where this enemy appears properly, by the way.. One thing I noticed while watching the longplay I use for screenshots is that when you know what’s coming, you can easily tell Ashley to stay somewhere safe while Leon deals with approaching threats. However, when you don’t know, she’s by your side as you destroy various horrors, and she becomes another variable in the fight. Her smaller health bar makes her a prime target.

Ah yes, the classic difficulty spike of "Just throw more
tough enemies at the hero".

More traps around the castle, like a falling ceiling that can be stopped by shooting at four red lights. And what about that giant drill taking up a hallway? One tower contains a giant Novistador nest. As she ventures through that room alongside Leon, Ashley gets taken (again!!) by one of those flying insects. We chase her captors through a tower with a giant mechanism, over a long bridge, and into another castle area where we fight TWO Garradors. This game has a pattern with major mooks; introduce them in a fight with just one, have a second battle with another on harder terrain (like a small cage, or a tight ravine), and later, pit Leon against two of them.

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 2)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

We’ve already gone through the basics, so I guess we can focus on the plot starting here – unless we have new gameplay elements coming soon…

Rescuing Ashley

If you need a better look at those... uh... growths,
go back to my title card in Part 1.

While making his way back to the village church, Leon finds Los Illuminados' insignia behind a waterfall. He had to kill a ton of Ganados to get to it, too; but it will let him open the church and save Ashley Graham. This chapter sees our first encounters with enemies who, after their head has been blown off, will have it replaced by a squirming creature popping out of their body with eyes, scythe arms, and limbs moving erratically. Those fucked-up things are the actual Las Plagas. In every crowd of enemies, there’ll always be a few that will pop out. These “heads” have long range due to their tendrils, so it’s best to stay away and shoot them; using the knife means being within stabbing distance, and they freaking hurt.

Las Plagas control their hosts, which is why Ganados have enough intelligence to devise simple plans like taking ladders to sneak into houses from the top floor or sneak behind the hero for an attack. These aren’t “zombies” by the modern definition of a risen undead. They’re zombies in the traditional voodoo meaning of people who've had all their free will ripped out of them. Yikes. I’d argue it’s even darker than zombies who are just undead or diseased.

These things can't even go "Gigante Smash!". 0/10.

Leon uses a boat to get back to the holding area seen before, and follows a different path that leads him to camps surrounded by cliffs. He witnesses a bunch of Ganados pulling out something large using ropes. The thing reveals itself to be an enormous, human-shaped monster, nicknamed El Gigante, which kills every Ganado that brought it out. Wait, how can Las Plagas cause the existence of monsters this fucking big??

Waggle to kill! Waggle! To! Kill!

Dealing enough damage to El Gigante causes its parasite to erupt from its back. Since the monster falls to its knees, Leon can climb on its back and slash at that weak point with his knife! This isn’t an easy battle, but El Gigante is killed. (For bonus points, if you saved a dog in Chapter 1, it comes back to help you in this fight.) Leon follows the trail back to the church, enters using the insignia, solves a color puzzle, and finds the girl’s cell. First mistaking him for her captors, Ashley throws a plank at him, but he explains that he’s there to save her.

Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

This is an M-rated Wii game, so expect a lot of
family-unfriendly violence and horror.

This year, I had another Wii game in the plans, and as time went on, I wondered if I would have the time to play (and finish!) it in time. But! I got lucky; I finished the game, and now I can cover it. There are Wii games that I’ve owned for a long while now – almost as long as this blog has existed. Some games have waited in the collection, untouched, for nearly 10 years! One notable title in there is today’s title, the Wii rerelease of Resident Evil 4; I bought that one at a convention in… uh… early 2016. Yeah. I was long overdue to give it a chance. RE is one of those franchises I haven’t touched at all yet, and I recall that was my specific intention when buying that game, way back.

And yet, it took this long. But here it is! Finally! And I can experience this franchise through one of its best games! Only one issue: Since I don’t know much about the franchise, if this is the fourth (…technically sixth) game in the series, I probably need to read up on a bit of lore. But thankfully, not too much, as the story here is removed from much of the connections with the Umbrella Corporation, which stands front and center of the first three games.

However, we are still dealing with zombies (but not the type you might think), and we have the protagonist of Resident Evil 2 making a comeback, with a new role gained through his status as a heroic survivor. However, do note that I am covering the original version of 4, not the remake released in 2023; my research revealed that there are many differences between the two, some minor, some significant. I’ll stick to the story in the original.

One Hell of a Promotion

Let’s recap Leon Scott Kennedy’s backstory: On his very first day in the Raccoon City police force, the promising rookie ended up in the middle of a zombie outbreak caused by the Umbrella Corporation. Their experimentations on biological manipulation and viruses of all kinds had the side-effect of creating zombies, which broke out and attacked the Midwestern city. The infected destroyed everything, with Leon as one of the few to make it out alive.

Is just one guy really enough to save the President's daughter?
I mean, when that one guy survived a zombie apocalypse...
BTW, big thanks to the World of Longplays YouTube channel
for their playthrough.

For these efforts, he got a significant promotion; he was recruited as an elite agent for the US government, usually assigned to missions that involve similar cases of bioweapons and other bioterrorism. Sounds like a fun life. The events of RE4 take place six years after RE2, with Leon being driven through the woods of Spain by two local agents. His mission? Rescue Ashley Graham, the President’s daughter. She was kidnapped in the area, and he knows roughly where to look. He can handle this on his own, as long as he stays in contact with mission control Ingrid Hunnigan, who’ll send a helicopter as soon as the girl has been rescued. Leon is dropped past a wooden bridge, with one shack nearby and a remote village down the road. Ingrid helpfully sends him (well, you) a “playing manual” to learn the basics.

ZOMBI

For once, on Halloween, I wanted to be on topic! At the start of the year, I select which games I might like to play across the following 12 months, and back at the start of 2025, I had two horror picks in my list; today’s game, and Resident Evil 4 on the Wii. I will try to cover the latter in November – however, for now, I have Ubisoft’s zombie game to get through. I can’t chicken out of this!

Uh oh, here comes the horde.

Ubisoft has many famous series, but also quite a few standalone games. Today’s title was first released as a Wii U launch title, with the title ZombiU, in November 2012; but then it was given a second life as a port made by Straight Right, retitled ZOMBI, and released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on August 18th, 2015. Although… calling it a “second life” may be a little gauche; we are talking about survival in a zombie apocalypse here. This game is known for doing something never seen before – fresh, new ideas, those are rare nowadays, especially those that directly affect gameplay. Enough beating around the bush, let’s see what this is all about.

London has Fallen

Well, can't say it's a great living arrangement, but...
it's not like there are better options right now.

The zombie apocalypse is underway. Your survivor is surrounded by undead, but a voice from the metro PA tells them to run into the station. They race through and end up in a Safe House designed by their new friend, the Prepper, who will help them survive. Out of the goodness of his heart, sure, let’s go with that. Before the survivor can go on missions, they need to get a weapon – a cricket bat – and a Bug-Out Bag (BOB), with room for the survival tools they’ll gather. You also get a handgun, with limited ammunition (for survival horror, that’s par for the course). Finally, you get a Prepper Pad, which scans the area and detects anything of interest: Dead bodies, containers, doors, hidden items. Scanning doors with this can often allow the Prepper to hack them and open the way for your protagonist. Similarly, scanning security cameras can reveal the map in their areas.

Your first mission is to scan a grocery store’s CCTVs at Brick Lane Markets. After getting a key card, you gain access to London's sewer system, which serves as quick travel between areas. Be careful when you explore, though; your only save points are beds, and though you can find some aside from the one in the Safe House, those are few and far between.

Zombies, if you come back, you get the whack!

Exploring The itch.io Collection #2

I've already got three articles' worth of stuff from itch.io, so you know what, I think I'll get through them right away. Still very short games here, all requiring under 10 minutes to finish.

Experiences

One of my biggest issues with these itch.io articles, right
now, is how I keep having the reflex to say these games
are short. They still take under 10 minutes to finish
at the moment!

Good Morning Hon: A game that I believe was made on RPG Maker. The story of Ash, who lives in her apartment with her fiancée Eve. That morning, she cannot shake the feeling after getting up that something’s not quite right. Sweet, yet with a devastating twist. “Why do I feel like I’m forgetting something?”

Homing: A 3D game about how carrier pigeons always find their destination. The letter being sent is recited as we follow a pigeon on its journey towards the letter’s recipient. You can control the pigeon to fly left and right, but once you let go it will always course correct towards the goal. You can get new bits of text based on which blue buildings you fly over. Clever!

It may be low-poly, but it's still looking nice.

HubWorld: In first-person view, you travel around four hub “worlds” (hence the title) while accompanied by vaporwave-ish music. The worlds are dubbed Island, Forest, World and Sky, and moving around is all you can do. Want to see the next level? Just left-click, and you’re there. The game ends after the fourth level. This one kind of hurt my eyes after a moment, and the lack of interactivity with anything meant I didn’t feel a need to spend much time playing it.

This one is a classic, for a good reason!

The Majesty of Colors: I loved this one! You play as someone’s dream, in which they were one giant underwater creature with three eyes. You control its lone tentacle, and it becomes aware of the human world after grabbing a balloon. From there, you can choose to befriend humans, rescue people or toss fish into fishermen’s boats. Or you can be hostile, kill people by dragging them underwater, and see the armed response with bombs and torpedoes. I’m told this is a remake of a classic web game? This one has five possible endings depending on your choices, so although it can be finished in five minutes, there’s enough to discover by replaying and trying different avenues to make it worth coming back to.

I spot a light in the distance. Must be relevant.

What Happened To Survey Team 4?: A walking simulator in which your character is investigating the disappearance of a team in the wilderness. All you can do is follow the path. Occasionally, you can find data cards with text from those you’re looking for, or glowing balls that you (ironically) can’t use to light the way as the night falls. This game has a horror vibe to it and offers good ambiance. For a game allegedly made in less than a day’s worth of time, it’s not bad, but it is a little empty.

Equaboreal 12.21: Set at the Winter Solstice in a world of sentient plants (that somehow wear clothes… don’t ask), the village is worried as a coming shipment of light, their main source of nutrients, has gotten lost in the woods. Basic controls moving around, not a ton of gameplay to be had. Putting aside the slightly absurd tone, the story didn’t feel all that interesting. Still, its creator likes the project enough to have made additional chapters.

Self-care

Yeah, just a "look out the window while listening to
vaporwave" simulator.

…might just ditch this category if I fail to find enough games for it, and add it to Social reach instead.

VIRTUA BLINDS: Blinds simulator. Not blindness; blinds. Watch the skies change as the day comes and goes outside, turn on the lamp, get rid of the clutter of post-it notes on the desk, turn on the TV and its vaporwave music, and relax. That’s all. Not much else to it. It can be soothing, but chances are that unless you’re big on vaporwave you won’t give this one much of a chance beyond 5, maybe 10 minutes.

Social reach

Well, Mrs. Goldman, I didn't expect to meet you
at this point in time!

Conversations with Emma: Your character encounters in Toronto the ghost of Emma Goldman, a famous anarchist who conducted leftist activities in the U.S. The conversation veers into the issues of modern hyper-capitalism and how bad things have gotten. Despite having parts with apparent choices, none lead to different results, so I think that was a bit of a missed opportunity. Hey, at least it spreads awareness of a historical figure that’s seldom mentioned otherwise.

falling is not the same as dying: A story told through text about the struggles of being a Chinese teenaged girl who's into girls, presented from the point of view of that character, a student playing tennis at PE class. Particularly brutal is the commentary on the preference for parents to have boys rather than girls in Chinese culture, and the impacts of growing up as a girl with that baggage – even if said girl isn’t even growing up in China. That's before even factoring in the LGBTQ aspect.

In My Friend Carrie’s Car: A text-based game in which the protagonist is reflecting on her life dealing with eating disorders, OCD and depression, and how they affected her life through school and until now. You make choices by pressing the key of the first letter of the choice you want; you can “stay in the car”, or you can divert towards other thoughts to learn the full story. This one does hit, it shows the impacts of those issues, and some of the ways in which they impact life.

Shut up, anxiety!

1365: Made at the end of its creator’s time through high school, with the title reflecting the number of days spent in high school. And how a struggle with mental illnesses – mainly overbearing anxiety, which ends up working as a vessel for other issues such as dysmorphia, depression and suicidal ideation – made it a particularly tough couple years for them. It’s a tough subject, but the integration of mechanics into the story, such as being able to keep going even after what only looks like a Game Over, is especially clever.

Okay, Nic... try to think of a funny joke... no... not that...
fuck, that one's too dark... oh Hell no... neither... ...Nope,
every joke I wanna make will reference real-life events
and I'll hate myself for making it.

The Night Fisherman: This could be just a narrative, but considering all that’s going on right now, it feels so much more fitting here. The only controls are the mouse to go through dialogue, and the left/right arrows to change the camera angle. On English waters, you play the eponymous character, who is accosted by a shadowy boat led by someone in search of migrants passing the frontier in hiding. Unfortunately, your boat hides one such migrant under the tarp, a young child. And your choice inevitably boils down to handing the kid over to that racist monster, or keep protecting the child and get murdered for it. nICE. Very nICE. It’s tense, it’s scary, and… well, right now, it will hit really damn close to home for many people.

Plain games

And the end result is pretty, too!

Central Limit Theorem: A shmup in which you control the circle at the center of the screen. Enemies come from the edges, in three different patterns. Learn the pattern and shoot fast to beat them? Oh, it’s not so simple. Each enemy leaves a color trail behind them. If an enemy weaves through that trail, it learns that other enemy’s pattern. The challenge turns into fighting enemies that constantly evolve the longer you play. I got all the way to 55 kills, not bad for my first time. Very clever idea, though I don’t know if it could ever be expanded into something larger.

Looks cool, and I don't say that just because of the field
of ice we seem to be driving on.

Derpy Deep Drive: Drive your bus as far as possible into an endless(?) field of ice with obstacles. Everything is done with the mouse – both driving the bus and controlling the camera. When you hit an obstacle, you lose health, which is regained by driving without hitting anything. The further you go, the more common obstacles become. How far can you get? I got to 2,200m. This could make a fun minigame in a larger product.

Falling Skies: Feels like somebody’s first shmup. You control your ship, destroy enemy vessels gather power-ups, get better, go through an asteroid field, then beat up the boss. All over five levels, the total of which can be beaten in under 10 minutes. It’s not reinventing anything or being super creative, but it’s just fine for a quick shmup pick-me-up.

LAZA KNITEZ!!: A game that’s more interesting for its context than for its content. Play alone or with up to three friends, and control a knight in space that shoots lasers from its spear. Kill the other knights by shooting at or ramming into them. Solo Mode calculates your number of kills, while multiplayer is more about depleting every other knight’s health bar until only the winner stands. It’s fine as far as minigames go. Just don’t buy it at its current 100$ price tag (see link as to WHY it’s now at that price).

Dunno how to describe the look of that game/animation,
but I do know I like it.

Out The Window: a car trip sim: A game about a child watching the world through the window of a car. You have an “imaginary friend” which you make jump over obstacles. If you get a good score by keeping a streak going, you earn tokens, which can be spent on snacks in gas stations. It looks cute, and dips into that odd, shared experience we’ve all had as kids imagining stuff in the world outside during long trips. This one’s sweet.

No doggo shall escape my petting hand!!

Pet The Pup At The Party: Your social batteries are running dry so you fall back on your old tricks of seeking the nearest dog and petting it instead of doing small talk. You explore the procedurally generated houses, looking for the good boi or good girl. You can look for little “Arf”s on the screen or listen to guess where those sounds are coming from. You start with a 2-minute timer that replenishes by 30 seconds at each puppy petted. There are more than 52 dogs to meet! I liked that one, it’s got a very funny tone and it’s quite challenging if you get lost easily!

Guppy: Play as a little guppy looking for flies to eat. You don’t have a ton of control in your motions, alternating between the Left and Right keys (or A and D) to move around. Find flies and eat them, then hide from predators. Repeat, go for a high score. This game looks relaxing but gets quite tense at moments. I think there may also be a few secrets and scenes to look for.

Making a moon was easier than I thought. Just a click.
Also, wow, that'Ms a funky planet.

Petty Puny Planet: Play God! Here’s a brand-new planet, now add something new to it. After every decision, you rest for 100 years. How does the world change on each cycle? Do you lead them its inhabitants to wealth? Do you advance them to the point of leaving? Do you lose them all to natural disasters? Or do you take a fantastic twist to things, ending into a Lord of the Rings-style world at best, a zombie apocalypse at worst? So many possible endings. This one was fun!

The crowd is growing, better not disappoint all these
folks. Just focus! ...if the game lets you.

Stage Fright: An odd mix of rhythm and horror, you play the piano in front of an audience, using the S/D/F and J/K/L keys. However, your character is dealing with intense performance panic, and so your playthrough of each song (there’s only 4) will change depending on how well you perform. Doing badly? The screen will blur or flip upside-down. At its worst, you can expect a jump scare. But if you do well, you may see your audience in the room grow. Decent idea on paper, but the screen effects make it harder to learn a song you may already be struggling with, not to mention you need great coordination and an eye on both sides of the screen. No way to tell which notes are to be hit at the same time, either.

Stealth Fishing: You’re fishing in a marine theme park tank to rescue fish. The owners, obviously, don’t want you there. Steer the boat left and right with Z/X, control your hook with the arrows. A hooked fish will fight as you pull it up; you can let go of a fish by pressing Space. You can’t let your boat or hook be spotted by the searchlights – instant game over! You get points for staying alive, 10 for fishing out coins, and 25 or 50 for a fish. Can you survive all the way to 1000 points? It’s gonna be tough.

Stay tuned, there's one more of these coming up next Friday as buffer while I work on actual, larger reviews.

Quick Review: The WereCleaner

If not friend, why friend-shaped?

Cleaning ink spills, sure. I do wonder who had
the strength to destroy the printer this bad, though.

Developed by Howlin’ Hugs, published by USC Games and released on May 7th, 2024, this free game is the story of Kyle, who works as a janitor at a big company. Just the usual: Clean up the messes around the office, wash the graffitied walls, suck up the remnants of last week’s birthday party… However, the CEO throws a wrench in Kyle’s life by forcing a week’s worth of mandatory night shifts on everyone, with no extra compensation. The issue: Kyle is a lycanthrope.

"Mental breakdown"? I call that action-painting.

At night, he becomes a(n adorable) deadly werewolf. He controls himself enough to talk, or to remember he needs to work, but if he’s seen… instincts take over and that witness is dead. Thus, it is in a state of extreme danger to his own colleagues that Kyle puts his janitor uniform over his furred body and gets to work anyway, because rent won’t pay itself. Oh, and Daryl the security guard is having a hunch about an animal in the office…

Whoops, killed the secretary.

You heard that right: A stealth game in which YOU are the danger, and it’s out of care for everybody else that you choose to be sneaky and not be seen. Ooooooorrrrrrr play evil and don’t give a damn if you’re spotted, Kyle’s just gonna have one more mess to clean, like that makes a difference. Your coworkers will also panic if they see a bloody mess you’ve left behind. Can’t leave any witnesses, either.

You move Kyle with WASD and direct him with the mouse. You press the left-click button to powerwash liquid messes or vacuum solid items, and switch between both modes with Q. You can interact with stuff by pressing E. Later in the week, you gain the ability to toss paper balls (using the right-click button) to distract other workers away from you. There's also the option, by pressing Space, to shove a trash bag onto an enemy (as the place has vermin infestations) or onto a distracted coworker (so you can sneak by; it only works if you haven’t been spotted first).

"Hey, who turned off the light?"

Call it a hunch, but I think the employees aren't fans
of those unpaid overtime night shifts...

Only seven levels, one per night, but there’s some replayability here. For starters, you can look for collectibles scattered around the office. Second, you get a special sticker on each night for not killing anybody. Third, you can aim for the 5-star score by beating each level as quickly as possible – meaning going in, cleaning every mess, and leaving in record time. Finally, you can hunt for achievements with very specific requirements (e.g. Kill everyone on the busiest night).

Ooh, someone's gonna die. Bad dog! Bad!

Dripping with black comedy, featuring very family-unfriendly deaths presented in the cutest artstyle possible, The WereCleaner is one of my favorite discoveries this year. Its story is basic, and it’s not particularly subtle in its themes – but the lack of subtlety makes the whole thing even funnier. It plays very well and presents interesting ideas and challenges. It is very short; you can beat it in 30 to 40 minutes, and take 2-3 hours for 100% completion. But then again, when a game is free, you can let something like length slide if quality is present everywhere else.

I'll tell my kids that this was PowerWash Simulator.

USC Games is the game design program of the University of Southern California, and several video games created by its students were published to Steam for free, giving them a first experience in both making and releasing a game. Through titles like The WereCleaner, we may be seeing the start of many promising game developers’ careers. So why not take a stroll down their collection of free games, and see what the creators of tomorrow have to offer?

Quick Review: The Sexy Brutale

back at noon, ready to stop another crime.

Ooh! A show! I can't miss that!

Developed by Cavalier Games Studio and Tequila Works, published by the latter, and released on April 11th, 2017, The Sexy Brutale takes place entirely within the mansion housing the titular casino. You are the elderly Lafcadio Boone, one of several guests invited by the Marquis, owner of the mansion, to a masked soirée. What the guests don’t know, however, is that they’re targeted for murder. Awakened by a mysterious girl drenched in blood, Boone is handed a stopwatch that allows him to toy with time itself. His new quest? To prevent every murder.

I mean, if you had the ability to rewind time while living a murder plot, wouldn’t you try to prevent it from happening?

Witness every murder. How else can you later stop it?

However, you’re limited: you cannot be seen by anyone wearing a mask, or the room will go dark, and their mask will attack you. If someone is in a room you’re about to enter, a fire will appear over Lafcadio’s head. When that happens, you can peek and listen through the door (using X) instead. Alternately, you can hide into closets. Time at midnight resets back to noon. The map, accessible with the Esc key, will store any relevant information, and you can even use it alongside a time slider to keep track of every character’s schedule, provided you’ve followed their trail. You can wind clocks to get a new respawn position when looping back to noon, though it requires finding the right key for each clock.

For the record, the bell rings on every loop where you
do not rescue this woman. At the same hour every time.
Even after you did save her once. Let's just say, you
can never forget that this happens over and over.

Whenever you save a guest(s), you obtain a mask with a new ability, which will become necessary to save the next. These abilities, in turn, let you unlock more areas of the mansion, with each guest (or pair) to save being confined to one area. However, the puzzles themselves might not be confined to that area, and thus the game encourages exploring over and over.

The puzzles involve figuring out the right timing and sequence of actions to rescue each person, which means snooping on them, as clues can be found in their dialogue, or that of anyone involved in their demise. Between loops, you get to remember significant information but you lose items with a few exceptions. On top of the main quest, you can also collect every guest’s invitation, as well as all 52 cards of a standard deck.

The bottom right stopwatch also helpfully indicates who
is gonna bite it this time (by showing their masks), and
when. Therefore, you know how much time you have
to act.

For a place that starts out looking normal, time loop
notwithstanding, there sure are a lot of giant spiders,
voodoo trinkets, and other supernatural crap lying around!
That's not even mentioning the [spoilers]!

The game looks great and has excellent music; you’ll be humming the songs heard in the casino. Even better is its sound design, as a lot of events are alluded to that way, and you can use the noise of footsteps in other rooms to figure out whether someone’s coming, or significant cues related to your current mission. Then, beneath the surface, there’s a lot of smart details regarding art and literature to look for. Gameplay is unusual, since you move Lafcadio around with the right-click of the mouse instead of the arrows or WASD. It does work out in the end, though.

And yep, you can even follow the characters' movements
around the map.

Lucas, the Marquis, remains unseed and a complete mystery
up until it's time for his part in the plot. So, he's either the
final person we rescue, or the brains behind the murders.

And though it’s very strong in so many areas, nowhere is it stronger than in its plot. We could mull over the clever construction of the intrigue across the 12 hours we visit over and over, and the various character interactions we see as a result (and how we influence each loop). But there’s even more brilliance to be found here: Each rescue reveals some pieces of the wider puzzle behind this strange situation, sure. But there’s a ton of little nods and clues you can find on your own, that are hidden in plain sight, and reveal so much more about the actual twist – and some of these may be dismissed as mere gameplay or stylistic elements, until it all comes together at the final stretches. It’s so great. It’s expertly written, and if you don’t know what’s coming, you’ll be astonished. The story alone makes this game worth playing.

The Sexy Brutale is available on Steam for 19.99$ USD. With all this done, I can focus on the task at hand. Just a rewind and I’m