Quick Review: Iris and the Giant

Introspection is rarely this mythological.

I'd better deal with the archers, or they'll all attack. And then.
there's the minotaurs at the back...

Developed by Louis Rigaud, published by Goblinz Publishing, Maple Whispering Limited and Mugen Creations, and released on February 27th, 2020, Iris and the Giant tells the tale of Iris. She’s not doing well; bullied at school, emotionally shut down at home, barely finding joy in her pastimes of  creating card games or studying mythology. One day, at swim practice, she falls from the diving board into the water, and goes unconscious. This lands her into the world of her imagination, where her problems manifest as Greek mythology monsters, and she must fight with her own cards detailing various weapons and survival tools. The source of her inner turmoil is represented by a giant weeping at the top of a mountain, and it is only by confronting it and winning that she’ll return among the living.

Beware of boss enemies that can spur their troops to
attack twice each turn...

This is a roguelite deckbuilder. The game is split into floors, on which Iris plays her cards to fight enemies. Most cards are weapons that strike using different mechanics; swords (can use all the swords in your hand on the same turn), bows and arrows (attack backrows), whips, and so on. And then, magic such as bombs or fireballs. You'll find other special cards with effects, like Confidence, which restores Iris’ Will (her health), or a shield that protects from all attacks and negative effects for a few turns, and more to discover over time.

Soon enough, I'll reach the top. You just wait, Giant!

Fire everywhere, and Cerberus' three heads. Fun!
Now I just need an axe to kill all three at once.

Ther enemies appear in a grid pattern of 2 to 4 rows, and they attack after your turn has ended. Just like cards, enemies all have their own mechanics (as an example, archers and other spellcasters can attack from the back), and bosses having features that make them a lot harder to deal with. (I especially despised the boss based on Pandora’s Box…) The best you can do is attempt to adapt to whatever’s being put in front of you. The loadout also includes treasure chests, which allow you to grab extra card packs, all of which contain one or many cards of a specific type of weapon/spell/item. You can also pick up crystals on the floor.

If you no longer have the perfect cards to fight Pandora's
Box, you're pretty much done for. And it's a very late
boss in the first Path.

There are four "upgrade" systems to this game, two of which are used during a run, while the other two are accessed from the main menu, in-between runs. The two within a run involve crystals and stars. When you collect enough crystals, Iris gains a new ability for a specific weapon, allowing for different builds depending on what you find. Alternately, enemies grant stars when defeated, and after enough stars, other abilities can be unlocked to increase Iris’ base Will or regain some when doing specific actions, or perhaps influence her hand or other helpful things (like drawing extra cards each turn, or increasing shield durability, etc.).

During this adventure, Iris can find symbols pointing to events of her life, detailing all the issues that took her to this point. Reconnecting with herself grants Memory Points that can be used in their section on the main menu to unlock more perks. The other is Imaginary Friends, which must first be discovered, then unlocked by completing a side-quest. You can only have one at first, but with the right Memory perks, you can have up to 3.

The Memories tug at your heartstrings.

I need more good cards. Gimme gimme.

It’s a Roguelite, so the point is to keep trying as you learn all the mechanics, lose repeatedly until you know what you’re doing, then continue trying until you win. The game keeps track of everything you’ve discovered, so there’s something there to scratch that completionist itch. Even better, there are higher difficulties for those seeking a challenge, AND after beating the Path of the Giant, you unlock two more paths, for the Ferryman and Chronos, with new encounters in both.

The final challenge, time to confront the Giant.
Or rather, its apparent infinite sadness.

Great game, had me hooked for the couple days it took me to beat the first Path; I couldn’t try the rest due to time, but I certainly wouldn’t mind revisiting it later. I love its unique visual style, its tone, its story. A strong recommend for all roguelite/roguelike fans.

Iris and the Giant is available on Steam for 17.99$ USD.

Quick Review: The Inner World

An odd duo taking down a dictator!

The first screen of many. How can we get to that darn bird?
Maybe the shady guy in a trench coat has a solution.

Developed by Studio Fizbin, published by Headup and released on September 27th, 2013, The Inner World is a hand-drawn point & click game. Asposia exists within a planet rather than outside, and gets its air from large wind tunnels guarded by monks. All Asposians have pointy, striped noses, except Robert, whose nose instead has holes, allowing him to play it like a flute. He works as a disciple under Conroy, the only wind monk whose tunnel still works; Conroy elevated himself to spiritual leader of Asposia due to this. Worse even, large flying monsters called the Basilians often pop out of the tunnels, turning Asposians to stone with their stares. The story kicks off when a pigeon flies into Conroy’s home and steals a pendant, and Robert falls down the garbage chute chasing it, landing into Asposia's streets. He meets Laura, a sarcastic Asposian with plans of her own. Robert will learn that in this world, very little is as it seems…

Still not sure (yet) why the barmaid gave us a beverage that
feels like it could be more of a pipe degreaser than a drink.

I can use this funnel as a helmet now! And I should also
take back my doll from that creature.

Most of this point & click's gameplay goes through the mouse, selecting elements on the screen to observe or (try to) take them. Holding down the left button reveals  dots over every décor element that can be interacted with. You can combine items in your inventory, accessible at the bottom of the screen (ex. Putting together a reed and a hook to grab something from afar). You can also take combinations apart when their pieces are useful again later. Only a few items are carried between chapters, most notably a Conroy doll that gets destroyed over time (deservedly).

I saved this little mouse! It just took me putting three items
together! Now, little guy, you're going into an ear horn.

I could clean this shield... but only if the shield, and the rust
itself, are useful elsewhere afterwards!

You usually play as Robert, aside from one section where he is captured, and we play as Laura instead. The only difference is that Laura is snarkier (compared to the sheltered, naïve, sweet Robert), and she doesn’t have the flute nose, which you play to solve a few puzzles, through an option in the inventory. The flute nose has its own “mode”, a single mini-game accessible from the main menu. (Good luck getting a decent score on it.)

Flute-Nose Hero

Please ignore the openly propagandist messsaging of the 
"play" that Robert manipulates to find an open passage...

This game has the classics of a point & click: Puzzles with solutions that make marginal sense, even if you figure them out by yourself. A cast of silly characters with their own stories, and all sorts of shenanigans to inflict on them. Detailed scenes and backgrounds; if an area keeps being available once you’ve done everything, then you’ll have to go back for something else later. Just gotta figure out what. There’s even a hint system for players who get stuck, though there are achievements to unlock if you can play through the whole thing without them.

My favorite moment: Repeating to a sin confession machine
a sin heard from someone else, and it's so outrageous that
it instantly breaks the machine. Fuck, that was hilarious.

The story is rich and interesting, with tons of worldbuilding to find (and some puzzles hinge on utilizing knowledge gathered during the story). The tone is humorous, with some edge to be found in several gags; some of them get saucy, implications-wise. Our main characters form a fun team, and it’s great to see their relationship develop as they unearth their world's greatest secrets. Cutscenes and many puzzle solutions are fully animated.

The only true negative I have about this game is that, during a few sessions it tended to “break” in ways that forced a restart, during the pause menu or after combining items, with one specific instance being a total crash forcing a game restart.  But with that aside, all in all, good stuff, really.

The Inner World is available on Steam at a big discount till tomorrow at 1.49$ USD, usually 14.99$.

Quick Review: Human Resource Machine

The day I thought I was done delivering numbers in a factory, they pull me right back in!

Only one employee to do all this? Geez, big companies
and their stupid staff cuts...

A game by Tomorrow Corporation released on October 15th, 2015, Human Resource Machine can best be described as a “programming puzzle game”. You are not quite in control of your character; the crux of gameplay is setting up a series of commands, and then seeing whether they yield the desired result. Then, if the solution didn’t work: Extensively test each step, correct the bugs, make sure you don’t create ten more by accident (the joys of programming!), run, playtest and debug until you get the right combination of events to solve the puzzle.

In this game’s context, you start as a new employee in some nebulous delivery company, and you are tasked on each floor with delivering specific numbers from the Inbox area, and to the Outbox. The requirement changes every time. Your first commands are Inbox and Outbox, obviously, and starting at the second level you obtain the Jump command, which you can set after any other command and place the jump destination anywhere in the program, even at the very start, to skip steps or create a loop.

Still not sure why they added letters here, other than to make
your tasks even harder to deal with. Congrats to this game for
making me dread/hate letters, somehow.

If you think that's a lot of arrows going up and down
and all over the place in the command line... Ha. It gets
soooo much worse later on.

Past these are the Copyfrom and Copyto commands. Your worker can use the square tiles at the center of the room to set down numbers from the Inbox for later use, or copy a number already set there. Well… numbers, or letters. After which you can deliver to Outbox a copied number. After which, you get increasingly complex requests, such as Outboxing a set of two numbers in the reverse order (set the first on a square, deliver the second, pick up the first with Copyfrom, deliver it). After this? We get commands for addition and subtraction. And new Jump commands with conditions (jumping to other sets of commands if the number is 0, or negative).

Why the Hell does the program thinks letters count as a
zero anyway?? Shaking my damn head...

These add up on the command board, and it can turn into a complete mess of orders and arrows pointing up and down and everywhere, so the game later introduces the ability to leave notes along the command line, and a few levels later, the same for squares on the ground, “naming” them so you can remember their purpose. Great idea! Or, would be if you could actually type that text somehow, but instead all you have is your mouse, a large brush, and you can only draw the letters, so good luck fitting more than 7 characters on there. For the smaller print of the floor tiles, I can understand, but the notes within the program? Come on now.

"Mult"? ...I play too much Balatro...

Ugh! Management, never happy. Why do I still bother with
this when I could be working anywhere else...

And now, the mechanic that will make you go “Oh, this is a programming game”, something you might either love, or hate, or be divided on as I was: If you come up with a functional but imperfect solution for the set of numbers you were given, you’ll be told that it did work as intended… but then, your boss refuses the solution and gives you an Inbox sequence that will make your solution fail. By running the simulation, you can follow step by step and figure out where things go wrong – and you can rewind at will, but that’s not going to help if you can’t spot the error (or can’t figure out a way to solve it that doesn’t break something else)…

Oh hey, I finally did something right!

The system for this one is robust and complex, and there’s a bunch of decent mechanics and ideas to be found. The complexity increases as you’re tasked with tougher elements to deal with – stuff like multiplication, zero-terminated strings, Fibonacci sequences, and more. If you’re looking for a crash course puzzle game on programming, this is about as close as it gets, warts and all. It’s satisfying when your solution works for every number set, but it can be very hard to get there, and when it doesn't work, good luck figuring out where you went wrong. However, if you do love these, you can go for the extra challenges where you must reach a level's solution in the smallest amount of steps and/or moves (some levels have “best” solutions that can only be one or the other).

Not one I’d think I’d finish, but I can see why someone would love it enough to strive for its completion.

Human Resource Machine is available on Steam for 14.99$ USD.

Quick Review: Headlander

Talk about a head-ache!

In the future, everything will be plug-and-play.
Even body-critical technology. USBs? Too complicated.

Developed by Double Fine Productions, published by Adult Swim Games and released on July 26th, 2016, Headlander is… well, it’s Double Fine, so it’s weird. Someone awakens on a space station, to realize they are nothing except a head in a space helmet. Bodies are so last millennium. Even worse, they are the last flesh and blood human in the universe, since the rest of mankind has long transferred their consciousnesses into "Impostor" robot bodies to attain immortality. And all the places where these Impostor bodies live are controlled by the all-seeing powerful AI known as Methuselah.

In this screenshot, my character is in the bottom left, using
an orange body - stronger than red. Still gotta deal with
the lasers from the other guards...

Any hopes of saving humanity? In this world inspired by how the ‘60s imagined the future, your helmet can plug ("Headland") into any body without a head (using Q) and take control of it. Can’t find a body without a head? Activate the vacuum (Left-click) and pull the head off a body yourself to steal it! You can use the vacuum feature to pull out all sorts of things, granting access to computers, passageways, and more. It's a Metroidvania, so you gradually unlock abilities that allow you to go further. You can collect multicolored energy that fills up a gauge, granting skill points when full; these can be spent in the menu to unlock or improve abilities. Progress is also locked behind color coding, as many doors are locked unless you control a body of the appropriate color. The armed guards in the second area, as an example, are usually red, and you need to take their bodies to walk through red doors. But then, orange and yellow doors later appear.

Hmm. Orange... Yellow... yeah, let's go for yellow.

When lasers start flying left and right and everywhere - oh
yeah, it gets hard to avoid them all. Good luck moving that
frail robot body around...

The guards are equipped with laser weapons that you can then use against other guards and threats. Lasers bounce off walls, floors and ceilings, and you can use that to your advantage to hit enemies – but they, too, can do it to hit you. Your arsenal expands over time to include melee attacks, greater vacuum pull allowing you to rip the heads off robot bodies from greater distances, a thrust that can transform your flying head into a cannonball, force shields that can be used to bypass lasers, and so much more. As a Metroidvania, the interest is to explore every nook and cranny to find secrets and upgrades, and to return when new abilities (or bodies) are discovered. The plot is split into chapters, with teleporters (sorry, “zap pads”) between areas, so you can go back without having to trek the whole way through. The robot bodies can be frail against enemy lasers, even after upgrades to health regeneration, so those pads are much appreciated.

Found another secret area with a health boost! You bet
I'll take it - the lasers are only getting stronger in every area!

Speaking of the "chess" game,  wait till you see the Queen.
Now THAT's a boss fight I wasn't expecting.

And of course, this is Double Fine we’re talking about, so the absurd concept is delivered with a very tongue-in-cheek writing and a lot of sarcastic characters (especially the doors when they tell you that you’re in the wrong body to move ahead – they're called R.O.O.D., that says it all). The silly concepts somehow lead into an intriguing story that keeps you invested regardless. And they have fun with it, too; one chapter even includes a twisted version of chess with lasers (…don’t question it), and one game of it must be infiltrated to steal sensitive data. the concept lends itself to a lot of special challenges, such as when you’re forced to plug into specific bodies to progress, as an example.

It's a crazy ride, a solid Metroidvania with an excellent eye for aesthetics. It's worth checking out, whether you like the genre or the slightly more comedic tone.

Headlander is available on Steam for …..

Quick Review: Guns of Icarus Online

For a moment, I was afraid I’d have two game eulogies this year; turns out, there’s only one (it’ll come later in this set of Quick Reviews), but... today's title has definitely seen better days.

Enemy on the left! Uh... how do we say left on a ship
again...

A creation of Muse Games released on October 29th, 2012, Guns of Icarus Online is a multiplayer game about operating steampunk airships and going at war against other factions. Before I start, I want to say that, like pretty much every multiplayer-only game in my collection, this one has been sitting a long time unplayed; I received it in a Humble Bundle back in February… 2017. At a time where I can safely assume the game was a lot more active. And though it’s still receiving occasional updates, unless I’ve played at a particularly slow time, the playerbase appears to have gotten low - the most I saw on my first session was 9 players online at a time.

Say hello to my friend Mortar! You've already met Gatling.

The game features multiple factions warring over a large map, taking, stealing and reclaiming territories, similar to other multiplayer games I’ve played in the past (such as For Honor). However, combat is exclusively dogfights. Each airship has a crew of four, the captain steers (forwards, backwards, turning left or right, and ascending/descending), while the other three can man the ship’s weapons or fix any machinery that gets broken by enemy fire. You don’t need to have four human PCs on one ship; all it takes is one. However, the captain must always be a human player, so if you’re on your own, your job is automatically to drive. I imagine the big interest in this one is to have a full team of four communicating and coordinating their efforts to both get to the guns in time to shoot down enemy ships that come close, and repair what needs to be. The tutorial focuses a fair bit on repairing and maintaining the ship, with piloting as its final course.

Hell yeah, I'm on fire! Wait... No! Ahh! I'm on fire! Ack!
Quick, the extinguisher! My gun is on fire!

There's a wide variety of battle types and matchups. The friend I played with and I went through two modes that could be played between the two of us; together as a team against CPU enemy ships, whichever team destroyed three ships of the opposing team won; and me versus him, attacking each other across the desolate deserts, broken cities, and graveyards of giant dead machinery. (And him wiping the nonexistent floors with me, ‘cause he has more experience with driving/piloting games than I'll ever have – but hey, I got to test the game, that’s what matters!)

Nothing a little percussive maintenance can't solve.

The tutorials cover every position, so you should know how to operate no matter where you land on a team. You have Practice options to play on your own, summoning enemy ships at will to train yourself, or playing against CPU pirates. Multiplayer has 5 modes allowing for varying numbers of players and teams (2v2, 3v3, 2v2v2v2, 4v4, and King of the Hill Mode can be an 8-player Battle Royale). There’s even Skyball in there – whatever that is.

I do wish there was a mini solo campaign to this thing, it
would be interesting to have. I could have taken more
piloting skill tests like this one at the end of the tutorial,
where we're driving through canyons.

Add to this a ton of options for your secondary tools when driving and many choices to customize the look of your personal ship (though a lot of cosmetic stuff is locked behind real money) and weaponry loadout (lots of different gun and ammo types). Like I said earlier, I can imagine what Guns of Icarus was like at the height of its popularity, and even a few years after that; the concept is interesting, the controls and mechanics take some getting used to but can make a seasoned player a definitive threat on a map, and there are enough lore and details to have players care at least a little about the story.

Hello, pirates. Time for you to go down.

However, though I still linked to it and tell its current price at time of this article’s publication, I don’t know if I can “recommend” it, not nearly 13 years into its existence and with such a massively decreased player base. Unless you buy copies for all your friends as well, but even then, I don’t know how much mileage one can get out of it at this point. Same for the update, Guns of Icarus Alliance, advertised in the base game.

Still, if you’re interested, Guns of Icarus Online is available on Steam for 4.99$ USD. I also don’t know how much longer still it’ll be available for purchase, after all this time. But hey – not a eulogy for once!