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NEKOJONEZ'S GAMING BLOG

My Gaming Timeline

Primary Menu
* Home
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* Previews
* Gaming History
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* Game Quickies
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* Overview (BETA)

GAMER’S THOUGHTS: LET’S FIND THE DIFFERENCE EXTREME EDITION

Today I wanted to talk about a totally new type of game that’s gaining a lot of
popularity. In late 2018, a totally new type of game called I’m on Observation
Duty got released on Steam. Recently, these type of games are exploding on
Steam. A spin-off called The Exit 8 gave a totally new spin on the formula. The
games are actually a scary spin on the spot the difference style of gameplay.
But, what does attract players so much into this formula? Let’s talk about a few
titles, and maybe we find an answer to that in this article. Now, feel free to
leave a comment in the comment section down below with your thoughts and/or
opinions on these games, similar games and/or the content of this article.

Two main gameplay styles

There are actually two major styles in this genre. A lot of streamers call, one
style Observation Duty and the other style Exit 8. Both styles have the same
core concept. You need to first look at a room and then notice if anything
changes or anomalies appear. The way how you deal with these anomalies differs
in both styles.

In Observation Duty style games, the idea is mostly always that you are a
security guard watching camera’s. You have to flip through camera’s and report
the anomalies before there are too much present in the area. In Exit 8 type
games, you play through them while walking through the rooms themselves. You
have to walk one direction when there is no difference and another direction
when there is a difference. The difference is that you have to make a certain
amount of correct judgements in a row. One wrong judgement and you are sent back
to level 0.

The gameplay is tricky to explain in words and in an article. I wanted to write
this article several times, but I was unable to describe it properly. The best
way to describe it in my opinion is a non casual spot the difference game.

Ever since, “I am on Observation Duty” and “The Exit 8” hit the scene… A lot of
horror game streamers played through them. They gained a lot more popularity. A
lot of new titles came out in a rapid pace with different spins on the genre and
interesting innovations. I think it will become more clear when I talk about the
games I played through or watched my favorite streamers play through.

The Exit 8 – The Platform 8

During the summer of this year, Klamath and I streamed through these two titles.
The Exit 8 is one of the earliest games to my knowledge in the 3D style.

The idea is that you are trapped in a looping metro hallway where you have to
reach the 8th exit. Travelers are advised to continue walking when nothing out
of the ordinary happens. But when suddenly a poster changed or something else
changed, you need to turn back.

Like I said in the introduction, when you make one mistake, you start at level 0
again. The first passage through the hallway is always safe. After that, you
have to do 8 correct answers in a row. Now, at least 8, since if your 8th run
has an anomaly, you need to turn back. You can only win if you have a hallway
that has no strange thing, and you are above the 8th hallway.

Something really nice that this game does is, it doesn’t repeat anomalies. When
you defeat a certain anomaly, it won’t repeat until you see all of them or reset
the game. This makes the game more unpredictable and replayable.

The anomalies in this game range from extremely obvious like suddenly the
hallway flooding… But others are sneaky, like a camera that moved location to
the other side of the hallway. So, it was a puzzle. Is this room really the
same, or did something change. Since you couldn’t go back to check. And there
were various details that added to the complexity of the game.

In May of this year, we got the follow-up to this game called The Platform 8. If
you thought that was more of the same, think again. This time, you are in the
actual metro, and you have to survive 8 carts. The big change is that you can’t
fail with an anomaly this time around since the exit door is locked if you need
to find the anomaly first.

It’s a change that didn’t sit well with me at first, but I totally understand
why. This game is now turned into a more tense game where you have to survive
the crazy things that the game throws at you. The game is shorter than The Exit
8, but I’ll say… This game had me spooked and jump several times.

That’s Not My Neighbor

At it’s core, this game is an Observation Duty game. But with a big twist. You
are a security guard at the entrance of a building. There are imposters out
there, trying to look like your neighbor, and you have to keep them out.

This game tests your reasoning skills and tests you if you can look at all the
clues. The best I can describe this game is: a mixture between Papers Please,
and I am on Observation Duty. The added layer of difficulty is that you have a
lot to keep track of. Who did you let already inside? Who is on the list and for
who do you better call their apartment first?

This game is getting frequent updates with more lore and more modes. Each time I
see this game being played by the streamers I watch, the new update impresses
me. And I totally understand why this game got so big.

There is this extremely catchy song by longestsoloever. The amount of times I
played it on repeat is just getting silly. Give it a listen if you like
electronic music, but I warn you. It’s an earworm.

Confabulation

Confabulation, noun. Confabulation is a memory error consisting of the
production of fabricated, distorted, or misinterpreted memories about oneself or
the world.

This game does a very interesting take on the actual formula. Instead of
explaining the differences and anomalies with unexplained events, in this game
it’s caused by a mental illness.

The flow of each play trough of this game is the same. But, the puzzles, the
changing objects amongst other things are randomized. It’s up to you to make
sure that you avoid you going insane and finding the truth of what happened.

This is an Observation Duty style game, but you can walk around in the area
instead of watching at camera feeds. There is an extra layer added with the
puzzles that add more information and lore of what happened.

I could talk about it more, but I highly recommend you play this game as blind
as possible. The story, scares and impact is that much stronger when you don’t
know what’s coming and let yourself be surprised. Watch the candles since they
give you amazing hints on where to look next.

ATTA -Spot the Oddities in the Strange Hotel-

What if you have to count the amount of differences in a hallway instead of
deciding there is a difference or not? Well, then you describe “ATTA, -Spot the
Oddities in the Strange Hotel-“.

This game is an Exit 8 type of game with multiple rooms, where you have to count
all the errors in a hallway… While various strange things happen. Like a train
suddenly appearing and you have to duck for cover.

The atmosphere this game has, where it leaves you with an open ending that
raises more questions than it answers, is the cherry on the cake. It’s a more
intense game than your usual games. It may be a short run, but it’s a wild and
pleasant ride all the way through.

Hospital 666

The final game I want to talk about today is called Hospital 666. In this game,
you try to escape a cursed hospital. The first level has you running down a
looping hallway. The second level, has one side room open.

Now, an impressive option that the game gives you is that you can choose if you
want anomalies in the hallway or not. So, if you are in the second level, you
can choose if you want things in the hallway to change or only focus on the new
room.

Something impressive that this game does as well, is when you make a mistake,
you can go back to the hallway to see what the mistake was that you made. You
still start from the lowest floor of that level, but being able to see what got
you is amazing. Since this game has very crazy anomalies but also various very
sneaky ones. Like one is that some smiles faces appear on the wall.

In between the levels, there is a boss fight/puzzle that separates the floors
from each other. They can be a bit janky, but the developer has updated and
optimized the game quite a lot, and it is a lot better. Now, he is currently
creating a sequel taking place in a school. And as somebody who works in
education, I can’t wait to play through that.

Final thoughts

These games are only a handful of games in the genre. I have given a quick
rundown of the games mentioned in this article, but if you are interested, I’m
willing to talk more in depth about these titles. My intention with this article
is to promote these titles.

Each game listed here is between 5 to €10 and is an amazing ride. These games
are short little romps but are bursting to the seams with creativity. I always
think, now, I have almost seen everything this genre has to offer. But, then I’m
surprised with a new gameplay mechanic or a new setting that changes the
atmosphere completely.

So, depending on how well this article does… I might write more of these. If you
found amazing titles like this, feel free to send them my way or leave them in
the comment section down below. But, for now, I’m going to leave you with my
usual outro. Thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed
reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in
another one, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

SHARE IS CARING!

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Posted on November 11, 2024 by NekoJonezPosted in First Impression, Gamer's
Thoughts, ReviewsTagged 001, 666, 8, all, am, arpegi, ATTA, Authogin, binge,
buttonsmashers, Confabulation, difference, duty, exit, free, game, games,
gaming, horror, hospital, hotel, i, IDEA FRUITION, in, insym, jea, Jonez,
jonez001, jonezjea, KOTAKE CREATE, laterlevels, lokin, mage, more, nachogames,
neighbour, neko, NekoJonez, not, Notovia, observation, oddities, on, pixels,
platform, puzzle, red, reed, review, school, simply, spoiler, spot, Strange,
thats, The, Video Games, walkthrough, well. Leave a comment

FIRST IMPRESSION: THE LEGEND OF ZELDA – ECHOES OF WISDOM (SWITCH) ~ RENEWING
THE ECHO

Wikipedia – Nintendo Microsite

After the release of Tears of the Kingdom, I was afraid that we would never see
a new game in the style of the 2D Zelda game. Yet, I have been proven wrong when
this game was announced. To be very honest, I didn’t have very high hopes for
this game. Especially since this game was announced this summer and released in
late September. I felt that this game going to be a game to fill a gap while the
developers are working on a much larger game. Now, the game is released, and I
have played through a fair chunk of it. So, what is my opinion on this game?
Well, that’s what I’m going to tell you in this first impressions article, while
I all invite you to leave a comment of your thoughts and/or opinions in the
comment section down below.

Renewing the Echoes

After a short introduction where you play as Link, the main story of this game
is introduced. There are all consuming interdimensional rifts appearing all over
Hyrule, and it’s eating various people in the kingdom.

Link gets eaten by one of those rifts while freeing Zelda and when Zelda tells
her father, the king, about these rifts… A new rift appears and replaces the
king with an evil clone of himself. Zelda gets thrown in the dungeon and there
she meets a fairy named Tri. This fairy gives Zelda a special staff where she
can summon objects into the world using echoes. With those echoes, she escapes
the dungeon and sets out on an adventure to save Hyrule from doom before the
land is fully consumed by the rifts.

Something I always love about the Zelda games is that there is a different core
mechanic at the base of the game. In this game, we get two things. We got the
rifts to another dark world, but we also got the magical staff, which we can use
to summon various echoes into the world. These echoes mean you can tackle this
game in various different ways. But I’ll talk more about that later in this
article.

In terms of story, this game is hitting all the same beats as your typical
Legend of Zelda game. It might be disappointing, to some, that in this game
there is no voice acting anymore apart from the grunts and various emotional
noises. Personally, I think it adds to the charm of this game. That’s because
the characters in this game are way more expressive. While the story isn’t going
to leave you at the edge of your seat of “what’s going to happen next”, it’s
still well quite enjoyable, and the more expressive characters add quite a lot
to the charm and atmosphere of the game.

Something I really like is how in this game, you are free to explore the world
at your own peace. This game isn’t limiting you to go in a certain order. While
this game isn’t fully open world like Breath of the Wild or Tears of the
Kingdom, it’s somewhere in between. You can tackle parts in a different order.
Like the first two major dungeons can be done out of order. Each area is its
self-contained puzzle, and everything you need can be found in that general
area.

In my introduction of this article, I said that I was afraid that was afraid
that this game would be a short one where you were able to beat it in a few
hours. That it was going to be a game that’s supposed to hold players over for
the “next big 3D Zelda title”. To my surprise, this game is rather lengthy for a
2,5D Zelda game. It clocks in at 25 hours of casual playtime, which is, to my
knowledge, one of the longest 2,5D Zelda games.

Climbing with beds

Something I find myself doing quite a lot while playing this game was climbing
the area with beds. I summoned various beds stacked on top of each other to
climb a wall. Since, I wanted to know if the developers hid a secret on that
cliff face.

The exploration of this version of Hyrule is a blast to do. While you visit a
lot of familiar places and meet your usual suspects like the Zora and the
Gerudo, it’s a treat seeing them again. The only thing I missed a bit is showing
the impact of the rifts. Something that this game only tells through dialogue
was how things got impacted by the rifts. I wish it was shown a bit more
visually. Like different animations of the characters before and after. But
maybe, Tears of the Kingdom set the bar a bit too high for those expectations
where each major area had a certain curse.

In terms of gameplay, this game really leans into the echoes mechanic. It also
remembers that Zelda is a princess and didn’t really have combat training. So,
you have to use summoned enemies to your advantage to let them fight for you.
Now, you do have a sword, but you can only use it when your power meter has
charge. I always reserved that for the dungeon bosses or when the situation got
pretty dicey. Since recharging that meter is either done with potions or by
defeating monsters from the rift world. These enemies aren’t exactly common in
the overworld, and the energy bar drains fast.

In general, this game hits the same general gameplay beats as all other Zelda
games. You go from dungeon to dungeon, learning a new technique or skill,
defeating the boos and moving forward to another dungeon. There are also side
quests in this game, that give you a nice reward. In this game, you also have a
nice system to keep track of these side quests, like in Tears of the Kingdom.
Something they also brought over from that game is the cooking system to a
degree.

That’s something I personally feel mixed about. Maybe it’s me, but I feel the
ingredients are quite rare to come by and there is no real way to farm certain
ingredients like in Breath of the Wild. I have to admit that it adds a certain
charm to this game, but I feel it’s a bit under implemented here. Like when you
first meet the potion creators Deku shrubs, they talk about recipes… And I had a
hard time finding any.

Like in Tears of the Kingdom, you can also eat most of the ingredients without
cooking them. While I personally dislike the fact you have to do two clicks to
consume an item, I do understand why they did it. To avoid you consuming them
too much. Yet, this is a change from the two previous games and I honestly
really feel it’s a set backwards. A fine solution would be to give the player an
option to switch between both systems.

Grezzo playset

This game was co-developed by Grezzo. Their previous original Zelda game was Tri
Force Heroes. But, this game looks very similar in graphical style to the remake
of Link’s Awakening on the Nintendo Switch from late 2019.

This game looks like a plastic toy set and it looks amazing. While I was playing
this game, I felt amazed at how expressive they were able to make everything
without breaking the illusion that this is a toy set brought to live by our
imagination. I don’t have a lot of complaints about the visuals and animations.
And most of my complaints aren’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of
things.

Just like, I don’t have any complaints about the music and sound design of this
game. If you take the music and sound design in a vacuum, you would say that it
sounds just like very other Zelda game. It sounds like a remix of the familiar
melodies we all know and love from the Zelda games. But, this isn’t a problem,
since it sells the illusion that you are a child playing with a sort of
Playmobil toy set of Hyrule and trying to recreate the sound effects and music
of the game.

In terms of controls, this game plays like a dream. I rarely had problems with
the controls and something I really like is the fact that with one press of a
stick, you can see a view from on top when you feel the camera is blocking
something. Now, there is one thing that I do have some things to criticize
about. And that’s about the jumping.

It’s pretty difficult sometimes to judge how high Zelda can jump. I had moments
in combat where I wasn’t aware I could jump on a higher ledge until I saw an
enemy jumping backwards on that ledge. I also got tripped up several times with
how far Zelda can jump. Her jump is shorter than I think, and the amount of
times I jumped into a pit misjudging the jump is quite a lot. Something that
would have helped is something a small landing shadow when Zelda was coming
down. Then again, that must have been a nightmare to implement… So, maybe I
should keep her shorter jump just better in mind.

Now, something else. Something I really like is how this game has two difficulty
modes. I’m playing through this game on the normal difficulty setting and I have
to say, I’m happy that I did. This game can lure you into a false sense of
security. I wouldn’t say that this game is hard, but it isn’t a cakewalk either.
You really need to keep your wits about you and think fast sometimes.

Being aware of what’s around you is also quite important since this game loves
to hide things in little side area’s and using the map system is a must. I love
how you can put pins and such on the map. Yet, I have to admit that I still keep
notes in my phone like: “treasure in Gerudo dungeon, need to check later”.

The more I play through this game, the more I realize that the critiques I can
make about this game are more on the minor side. Like how it feels like a waste
of time when you are scrolling through a long list of echoes when you just want
to find one. An easy solution would be to give the player an ability to favorite
certain echoes. But then again, the sort function in the quick menu has “most
used”, “recently learned” … So, it’s kinda that.

Now, you have two save slots in this game. So, you can play through this game
and let a friend or a sibling play through a different slot. Now, this game also
autosaves for you frequently, in case you forget to save. The game also keeps
like several autosaves in case you want to return to an earlier point.

Something I really like is how this game also has a quick travel system. The
system works similarly like an owl statue in Majora’s Mask or a water vane in
Link Between Worlds. It makes it easy when you feel stumped by a puzzle and want
to return later. The fast travel locations are very fairly placed all over the
land.

While I went quite critical in this game, the more I played it, the more it won
me over. This game is a new 2,5D Zelda adventure game I hope we were going to
see again. The last new, non remake 2,5D Zelda game was released almost 11 years
ago. And, I’m so happy to see a return to this style. I’d love to see a this
style also making an appearance very so often since it’s clear there are still
various unique ways to explore Hyrule and tell a story about the Hyrule legend
without going fully 3D.

Apart from a few small complaints you read in this article, I honestly don’t
have any major complaints about this game. This is a game I’m going to finish
for sure, since I’m enjoying my time with this title quite a lot. If you are
into the series, I highly recommend this title to you. If you enjoy exploration
and playing with unique mechanics, I also think this game is for you. This game
is totally worth it’s price tag and it pleasantly surprised me.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for
now. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I
hope to be able to welcome you in another one, but until then, have a great rest
of your day and take care.

SHARE IS CARING!

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Posted on October 20, 2024 by NekoJonezPosted in Articles, First
ImpressionTagged 001, 3DS, action, adventure, arpegi, as, awakening,
buttonsmashers, demeo, demo, development, different, difficulty, ds, echoes,
endings, first, force, free, game, gameplay, gaming, gerudo, grezzo, heroes,
history, impression, information, jea, Jonez, jonez001, jonezjea, laterlevels,
lege, Legend, link, mage, more, neko, NekoJonez, Nintendo, nintendo-switch,
normalhappenings, null, Of, play, portable, remake, review, rifts, screenshots,
spoiler, spoilers, style, The, toy, tri, video, Video Games, walkthrough, well,
wisdom, Zelda. 2 Comments

PREVIEW: CAVE HIKERS (PC) ~ POINT AND DRAG

Trailer – Steam store page

Today, I want to talk about a new game that’s going to come out later this year.
It’s called Cave Hikers. It’s being developed by Porcupine Parkour. This small
Croatian based studio reached out to me to review their demo in July. I would
have written an article about it before, but I have been suffering from a
writing burnout. Thankfully, I’m slowly getting back in the groove. And I’m
going to make it up to the developers by publishing an article on their game
today. Let’s take a look at the demo together, shall we? And I have a small
surprise in store later.

Demo review

In this demo, you get an introduction to the gameplay. If you ever played a game
like My Brother Rabbit, you will feel right at home in this game. This is a
point and click game where you go from screen to screen. Each screen has a small
puzzle or hidden object moment for you to take part in.

This game feels like playing through a children book. The voice of the narrator
sounds like a (grand)father telling a story to their children. It’s extremely
charming, and the story book art style really helps to sell this story.

Overall, there is no real tutorial in this game. Yet, the gameplay is quite
simple. You learn quite quickly that this game is controlled with only the
mouse. The menu system exists out of icons that make the game a lot easier to
localize.

The demo is rather short but gives a very good impression of the full game. This
game looks like it’s something I’m going to play. It’s a charming
point-and-click game with hidden objects that feels nostalgic. Since the demo is
so short, I don’t have a lot to talk about in terms of feedback.

The art style, voice acting, animation is all pretty well done. I only have a
few minor complaints. The first complaint is that clicking to unmute the music
or sound effects can’t be done right away. It doesn’t always register right
away. And the second complaint is the in some rare spots, like with the red
crystal at the end of the demo, the hitbox of placing it in the crusher is too
tiny.

So, the game describes itself as:

> Cave Hikers is a relaxing and humorous 2D interactive cartoon mockumentary
> that follows three characters through a cavernous world, on a quest to find
> the mystical “cave with an infinite ceiling”.

And I think it fits the game pretty well. Like I have been saying, the humor and
charm of this game is there, and it’s pretty clear that maybe from some very
minor things, this game is going to be an extremely charming game.

Now, how interesting would it be if I asked some questions to the developers of
this game? Well, I had a few interesting questions in mind, so I went and asked
them. Here are their replies.

Interview with the developers

– What games inspired you take to make this one?

It was mostly HOPA style games, which are usually made by much larger companies
with inexpensive artists and a pseudo-realistic and kitsch-y style. So we went
more in line with our own kind of art style, with some inspiration from Amanita
games.

– What’s your process in creating puzzles?

It’s a strange process. As we started making the game in our free time for fun
between odd jobs and more “serious” projects, we made a number of locations,
creatures and simple mechanics. First we take a look at what already exists on
the screen, then we intertwine the narrative with some clicking and potential
puzzle elements. Then we play around with it until we are happy with the amount
of “work” the player needs to do before accomplishing the goal.

Sometimes it includes a bit of moon logic. First, we make it clearer through
conversation clouds and drawings. Then, whatever is unclear or hard to find for
testers, we explain further through the Narrator.

– What are the funniest bugs or whoopies that happened during development?

For a while, we had a splash screen that looked exactly like the main menu,
which created a lot of confusion! That was because the engine was upgraded, and
also we started working with a much better programmer, we consolidated it into a
coherent menu.

As for actually funny bugs, at one point we had Valeriano’s secret twin showing
up at the cutscene. It took a while to realize we accidentally put two
Valerianos of which one was outside the camera view.

– What engine did you use and why?

It’s Construct 3. At first, we made this project for fun and the Animator wasn’t
exactly a programmer, so he used a really simple engine. (Un)fortunately, the
project got out of hand and got some funding. Now we have a real programmer, but
he had to learn Construct with all its limitations, but it’s also a really
simple engine so we can still make a lot of the game without much hassle.

– What are some things you learned during developing this game?

Something that we re-learned time and time again… a game is easier to build if
you have the whole team and a proper plan. Because otherwise you leave a lot of
work and frustration for “future you”. We also learned that Construct can be a
lot stronger than we initially thought… but also that it can be really stubborn
in some areas.

– How many people worked on this game?

It first started with Sven the illustrator and Zvonimir the animator. At first,
we were building a completely wordless game. But some testers were a bit
confused at what the characters are really doing. So we hired Tom Bennet as the
narrator and also Lea Konjetić to compose original music for the game. In the
last six months, Fabjan the programmer also joined the team and superpowered our
development process. All in all, five people, excluding all the translators.

Final thoughts

I’m very happy that games like these are getting more attention. Hidden object
games have a strange reputation of being “too casual” or “boring”. Yet, I dare
to argue there is something to love in these games. Especially when a game is
created with this much passion and love.

I want to apologize to the developers again for taking such a long time in
creating and article about the demo. But, I’m happy I did today. Since, if you
have any interest in playing this game after reading this article, go and play
the demo. Or share this article with somebody you think will enjoy playing this
game. The demo takes roughly 15 minutes to finish.

I wish the developers a lot of luck and success with their game and when it’s
fully released, I’m going to play this game and most likely review it on my
blog. And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game
for now. Thank you so much for reading this article, and I hope you enjoyed
reading it as much as I enjoyed making it. I hope to welcome you in another
article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

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REVIEW: SHADOW GAMBIT – THE CURSED CREW (PC – STEAM) ~ THE CURSE OF GAMING

Steam store – Official website – Wikipedia entry

Some game genres are so rare, it’s a miracle when a new game releases in that
style. I personally call this genre: stealth tactics. The actual genre is
Real-Time Tactics, but I find that name doesn’t really cover this (sub)genre. If
you have ever played games like: Commando’s, Desperados, Robin Hood – The Legend
of Sherwood or Shadow Tactics… You know what sort of game I’m talking about. A
game features a rag tag group of heroes. Each hero has unique abilities. They
must get through big groups of enemies. They do this one by one to progress the
group’s goals. The game I want to talk about today is called Shadow Gambit: The
Cursed Crew. This was the last game by the studio Mimimi. Is this game the
swansong to close down this studio, or is it a game that’s better left
forgotten? Before that, I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section
down below. A comment with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the
content of the article.

Promises of amazing treasure

In this game, you play as the crew of a special pirate ship named the Red
Marley. Each main member of the crew has a black pearl in their chest, granting
them unique supernatural abilities. These unique abilities come at a cost of
being cursed to a sort of undead status.

The Red Marley’s captain fell in battle, and now the Inquisition is after the
biggest treasure of the ship. Now, the Red Marley’s crew doesn’t want this to
happen. So they do everything in their power to avoid this from happening.

The story in this game doesn’t take itself too seriously. The story is written
like it’s a Saturday morning cartoon. A story arc can be contained in one or a
handful of episodes, but always has an ending. While almost everything in the
story ends well for the main cast, the story and writing never looses its charm.
I felt like I was transported back into the time I woke up for the weekly
Pokémon episode. I knew that the main problem of that week’s episode would
resolve by the end. Still, I kept rooting for the heroes.

One of the biggest reasons I kept rooting for the main characters is because of
the voice actors. Their performances are extremely well done. They bring a lot
of personality and life to each character. They make the characters stand out
like real, actual people. This script must have been immense, since the
characters sometimes react on the actions you preform with other characters.
There are 8 main characters, and more if you buy the DLC packs. If you start
counting how many unique voice lines that bring to the table… And that’s the tip
of the iceberg. The enemies for example, when they come together also have
unique dialogue between them.

It’s possible to write an article by itself about the world building, story and
voice acting in this game. I can also assure you that when I write this article,
I’ll keep gushing about it all. A great example is how the save & load function
fits into the story. It enhances the world of this game. Yes, you read that
correctly. When you save, you store a memory in the Red Marley. When you load
one of your saves, the Red Marley uses its powers to restore that memory. Your
characters also respond to your saving and loading action and this brings even
more charm to this game.

In these types of games, the replay value is quite high. Especially since you
tackle all missions in various ways and each playthrough is going to be
different. In this game, it’s taken even a step further. You can choose the
order to revive your crew. You can also choose the order to finish the missions
of that chapter. I can assure you that your playthrough will look nothing like
mine.

The main quest is quite enjoyable to play through. I actually became really
immersed in the world of this game. At the moment, I’m playing through the final
missions of the game and the DLC missions. I’m having a blast. Thankfully, I can
easily start a new playthrough of this game. Then I can experience it all of it
over again and take a totally different route. And maybe I can do the little
side quests and pirate tales as well. Since, that’s content, I haven’t gone into
too much yet.

Your playthrough of this game will take you somewhere between 27 to 37 hours.
That is, if you want to beat the main story and DLC’s. But, if you want to fully
finish this game… Oh boy, then you’ll have a game that’s close to 80 hours on
your hands. I already mentioned the crew tales. But there are also
mini-challenges you can go for during the missions to earn badges. Let’s not
forget the achievements you can earn. Well, most of the achievements are related
to the main campaign.

Now, I have one complaint about the badges in this game. Earning some of these
badges is extremely tricky. Sometimes, you don’t get all the information you
expect to. For example, there is a badge on each map for using all the landing
spots of that map. But guess what, there is no easy way to see if you already
used a landing spot or not. It’s a shame that some badges work like that.
Especially since some of these badges make you go out of your way to play in an
unique way. A more challenging way to spice up your normal routine.

Apart from bragging trophies, these medals don’t really add up to much. But, I
honestly don’t really mind that. Since, it’s fun to gather these medals and have
some bonus challanges during my playthrough. It keeps me on my toes and it’s
really enjoyable.

Mindblowing abilities

I’m still quite impressed at how balanced this game is. Each character has their
own unique abilities. It’s best that you always have a character with an ability
that can move guards from their position. If you don’t have that, the game will
actually warn you. You are going to make it extremely challenging for yourself.

Personally, I’m playing through this game on the normal difficulty setting and
your decisions actually matter. Before starting each mission, study the map
well. Try to remember each map as well as you can. Since you are going to
revisit each map at least once or twice. It’s extremely important to choose the
correct landing position.

You would think that the game will be a bit boring if you always bring the same
crew into missions. But, the game rewards you using different characters for
missions. You gain more vigor if you play with certain crew members during
certain missions. If you earned enough vigor, you can upgrade one of the unique
abilities of your characters. This upgrade will give you more and better tools
in your arsenal. Now, these upgrades can make the game much easier. You can
always turn off the upgrades while on the Red Marley.

In the introduction paragraph of this article, I quickly explained how this game
works. So, let me tell you the gist of it. In this game, you go from mission to
mission, completing various goals in each one. These goals can range for example
from rescuing an informant or stealing an artifact. In each mission, there are
various enemies patrolling the area. Your goal is to find the weakspots in their
patrols and dispose of the enemies without getting spotted.

Now, getting spotted isn’t the end of the world in this game. Depending on where
you are spotted, it’s possible to escape and hide somewhere. You just have to
avoid taking damage, since your health is limited, and you can’t heal during the
mission. If you aren’t careful, it’s easy to get swamped or overwhelmed with
guards. Especially when a guard with a bell spots you, the traces you leave
behind or sees a dead body. When this happens, you have a limited amount of time
to kill that guard before the bell is rung. When the bell is rung, more guards
will emerge from nearby barracks and swarm to the location.

On top of that, there are also some unique enemy types outside your regular
patrol goons. The first type I want to talk are the Kindred. These annoying
buggers bring something quite unique to the table in this genre. Kindred are
always connected with each other. If you don’t kill these all at the same time,
they will revive each other. But, this is only the start of your troubles.

You also have Prognosticar. And let me tell you, these are even more
challenging. To defeat these enemies, you need to have two units ready. One unit
needs to be spotted or attack the Prognosticar. Since as soon as that happens,
your unit gets trapped. This trap will go on and damage your unit until the unit
either dies or is rescued. When the Prognosticar is using his trap, he can be
attacked and killed. But do it quick. The trap is damaging your unit. You are
also stuck in place. This situation is dangerous.

It also matters if the mission is taking place during day or night. The big
difference is that in the daytime, the enemies have a bigger field of view.
During the nighttime, some enemies will carry a torch on their patrol. This
gives more light to other units. They can spot you sneaking by if you aren’t
careful. There are also various torches dotted around the map, and you can put
them out. The enemies can’t stand torches that are put out and will go out of
their way to light them again.

It’s also important to know if an enemy stops in their patrol to talk to another
enemy. Since if you kill one of them, the other enemy will start looking for
them. They will start running around and if you weren’t careful, will find your
tracks and spot you.

Learning those little mechanics is essential in this game. Never forget the
tools you have in this game! This ranges from the abilities of each character to
how for example view cones work. There is something called view cone surfing. If
you want to dash to another place past some enemies… Understand that a full
color in the view cone means they will spot you right away. Stripped sections of
the view cone will cause you to be unseen if you crawl by. Also, it takes a few
moments of you being spotted and the alarm being raised. You can run quickly
enough past an enemy. Alternatively, you can run from view cone to view cone.
It’s possible to get past unseen.

If you are afraid that you will get overwhelmed by all the information of all
the little mechanics, don’t worry. The difficulty curve in this game is perfect.
This game also has solid character tutorials. Each character tutorial guides you
through 2–3 rooms, teaching you the abilities of each ability and their unique
use cases. At the end of each character tutorial, you get a puzzle room. Putting
to the test if you can use that character correctly. During the game, you can
always open your logbook from the pause menu, where all tutorials can be watched
again.

This brings me to the abilities of your characters in this game. If you have
played similar games, you’ll recognize certain abilities and others will be
quite new and unique. Now, some of these abilities will have a unique spin to
it. For example, your sniper only has one shot. But, when you retrieve your
sniper bolt… Your sniper can shoot again.

There are also extremely unique mechanics, like your Canoness has very fun
abilities. She can pick up dead bodies in her canon to launch them at enemies to
knock them out. But, you can also pick up allies. You can fling them over a
group of enemies. This will give them a better hiding spot. Or your Ship Doctor,
she can create one hiding spot out of thin air. Or your navigator, she can stop
time for one enemy, allowing you to easy sneak by. And your ship cook can throw
a special doll. This doll allows him to teleport to that location. He does this
as soon as you click the button. Oh, and if you place that doll on an enemy, it
sticks to that enemy.

You might be annoyed that I somewhat spoiled things in the above paragraph. But
I have only told the tip of the iceberg here. I have left out several characters
in that little summary and they have mindblowing abilities as well. Each map is
created in such a way that it doesn’t really matter which characters you take
into battle. Since you can finish it using any of your characters.

The Swansong of Mimimi

When Klamath and I started streaming Commandos, I wanted to play a similar game.
One I haven’t played through. Since I first started playing through Desperados
III again, and that was beaten in a few days. Since, I really enjoyed Desperados
III, I bought the next game from the studio.

As somebody who enjoyed Desperados III quite a lot, I was happy to see things
return in this game. I can’t tell you how much I love the speed up button. While
I wish you can adjust the speed of it… The slow wait can be annoying. Sometimes,
you have to get an enemy right where you want them. On top of that, you also
have the showdown mode. With the press of a button, you can stop time and plan
out your units their next move. Once you press the enter key, either still in
showdown mode or not, the actions will be executed. It still feels amazing when
you execute a well timed attack to take out difficult set of enemies.

Something that’s extremely useful is how you can rotate the camera in this game.
Sometimes an enemy walks behind a building or some rocks… So, if you can’t
rotate the camera, you wonder from where you are taking damage. Also, the
ability of outlining the enemies, ladders and hiding spots help with that as
well. As you can see from my screenshots, I always play with that feature
enabled.

Sadly, there are a few ladders that don’t get an outline. Most likely since the
developers forgot to put a certain tag on them. I remember one in Angler’s
Grave, at the top right. It’s not too far from one of the mission objectives,
the informant. Thankfully, these very minor oversights rarely happen. Overall,
this game is extremely solid and blast to play through.

The controls are extremely solid. I had to get used to one thing. To execute
certain actions, I had to hold the left mouse button instead of just clicking.
This sometimes tripped me up but a quick reload fixed that problem. I only have
one minor complaint about the controls. Depending on the camera angle, there
were rare moments where your character refused to go to a location. I suspect it
has to do with where you click. Your unit always wants to look for the shortest
way to reach where you click. Sadly, this trips something up in the pathfinding
and your unti refuses to go to their destination. Thankfully, a quick camera
movement can fix these moments. And also, I’m glad that these moments are quite
rare.

Something that’s even more rare are some minor visual bugs that can happen
sometimes. Sometimes an UI-element refuses to dissapear. I had that happen
twice, when I shot an enemy holding down an exit rift with the Canoness. The
stars indicated that the enemy was dizzy. They hovered above the enemy’s head
after the rift opened. Even after I killed the enemy, these stars remained
visible. There are sometimes minor visual bugs happening like that. Thankfully,
they are extremely rare and sometimes are quite funny. One time, one of my units
was standing perpendicular on a ladder when I stopped it going up the ladder.
The only annoying bug was that I couldn’t retrieve two bodies. They lay in a
remote part of Angler’s Grave. It was almost impossible to get rid of two
bodies. Maybe, it’s possible. I don’t know, I honestly gave up and earned the
badge of hiding bodies on a later revist.

In such a big game it’s to be expected that sometimes things can go wrong. But
it surprises me how little goes wrong and how polished the overall game is.
Scrolling through the patch notes of this game, I noticed that the developers
fixed many issues. They also added a lot of new content to the game. The last
update to the game was even a modding tool for this game. These mods go from
chaging your character models to adding new maps. I think I’ll play around with
the mods after I have fully beaten the game. I’m extremely close, since I’m in
the final missions of the game.

Now, earlier I talked about the UI. The UI is quite easy and helpful. There are
several unique icons to inform you where certain things are. For example, where
you left the paper doll when using the ship cook. There is only one thing in the
UI I dislike. And that’s the list of save games. You get a little screenshot of
the location of the save and a time stamp. And that’s it. You can’t give a
special name or note to them. So if you are looking for a certain save… you
either need to make notes OR just go through all them until you het it.

It’s the only real complaint I can give about this game. There is just a lot
that this game does right. Like how you can scroll to zoom in or out. When you
scroll again at the max zoom level, you see a live map. This map shows where all
the enemies are. The only minor complaint I have about the map is that ammo
chests aren’t marked on there. Also, quick note on the ammo chests… Almost every
character has the same visual for their gun. Now, if another visual appears
above the ammo chest, it doesn’t matter. The ammo chests are never character
specific.

Visually, this game looks breathtaking. The attention to detail in this world
gets a big thumbs up from me. The world really feels alive and somewhat real.
The little animation details for example when an enemy stops at a prison cell to
talk to inmates… This is just amazing. The immersion level is even higher with
that.

The soundtrack is very catchy and a joy to listen to. It made certain moments in
the game even more thrilling. The music has been created by Filippo Beck Peccoz,
he also created the music for Desperados III. The soundtrack really fits the
game like a glove. I’m so glad I bought the soundtrack DLC,. Now I can add the
music to my music library to play while I’m at my dayjob.

This brings me to the sound design of this game. The sound design of this game
is amazing. I’m playing this game with a good headset and I don’t think this
game is playable without sound effects. A great example is, when you get
spotted. You not only get a great visual hint of a yellow line turning red of
the enemy spotting you… You also get some sound effects informing you that
things are about to go down. On top of that, the sound effects add so much extra
impact on taking down enemies. This makes it even more rewarding when you
finally take down that one pesky enemy.

One thing I haven’t talked about yet is how flexible this game is. I have
touched upon that by talking about how you can only choose three out of 8
characters per mission. And you are encouraged to experiment with different
combinations. Now, when you open the options menu, you’ll be blown away. You can
change almost everything. The controls like the shortcuts for abilities can be
tweaked to your liking. You have quite a lot of control to tweak the volumes,
the controls, the visuals… Even tweak certain game mechanics to your liking.
Don’t like the save reminder? You can turn that off.

There is still another thing that boggles my mind that was added in this game.
You can create a custom difficulty. The only complaint I have there is that the
UI fails to explain the differences. I find it challenging to understand all the
settings. You get a short explaination about the setting, and then you have a
slider you can set. But, what’s the difference between 1 and 2 on the slider?
That’s something the UI doesn’t really tell.

When I was writing this article, I kept looking at my notes and thought: “Oh, I
forgot about that.”. There are just so many things in this game. The fact that
in some missions, you must kill enemies in unique ways. In one mission, you have
to lure enemies to a certain location. You need to do this 4 times. You do this
instead of killing them. It’s a breath of fresh air. You’d think that having
only a handful of maps would make this game boring and repetitive, but no. The
maps are not only large but also used in extremely interesting ways. Revisits of
a map make it easier to start, but each area is used in a mission. So, there is
still a lot of challenge in the revisits.

Oh, there is one more thing. The question if you should buy the DLC’s or not.
Let me just tell you this, I bought the game on sale with the DLC’s included.
I’m so happy I did! Since the additional content in the DLC’s adds so much more
to this game. They come highly recommended.

Now, I have left out a few things for you all to find while playing this game.
This article is already getting quite long. I want to leave some things as a
surprise for people interested in playing this game. I think it’s high time to
wrap up this review and give my conclusion and final thoughts on this game.

Conclusion of this treasure hunt

The negatives:

-Unable to add notes to quick saves.
-Some minor (visual) glitches can happen. Thankfully, they are rare and
rarely/never gamebreaking.
-The UI of custom difficulty could have been executed better.

The positives:

+ A masterclass in it’s genre in terms of gameplay.
+ Extremely flexible with options.
+ A modding tool.
+ A love-able cartoony story.
+ Amazing voice over work.
+ Superb soundtrack.
+ …

Final thoughts:

When I started playing Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, I had extremely high
expectations. Mimimi blew me away with the amazing Desperados III. With this
swansong of a game, they not only met my expectations, they blew them out of the
water. This game showcases the achievements of passionate people. These
individuals are dedicated to creating the game they love.

It didn’t take long before I fell in love with the cast of this game. The charm
drew me into the world of this game. Apart from some minor things, it’s hard to
find things to critique about this game. The only thing I can critique are small
bugs that barely impact the gameplay of this game. This game really feels like a
finished product and it’s a thrill ride from start to finish.

If you really want to find things this game does wrong… You’ll either need to be
extremely nitpicky or just have the game not clicking with you. If you find this
game too easy or too difficult, just tweak the setttings to your playstyle and
voila.

If you enjoy games like Commandos or Desperados… You’d do yourself a disservice
to not check out this game. Give the demo of this game a try, and see what you
think. I wouldn’t be surprised that this game sinks it’s hook into you like it
did with me.

It’s a shame to see that this game studio closes. Thank you to everybody who
worked on this amazing title and I hope to meet your work in other games. This
final game you all created together is a real piece of art. It’s a masterclass
in game development and shows how well you know the community for games like
this. I’m so happy that this game exists. Since it wouldn’t surprise me that
I’ll play through this game several times now.

Before I ramble on and on about this game, I think it’s high time I wrap up this
article. Otherwise, I’ll keep praising this game to high heavens and back. So,
with that said, I have said close to everything I wanted to say about this game.
I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope
to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then… Have a great rest
of your day and take care!

Score: 100/100

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INDIANA JONES AND THE INFERNAL MACHINE NOW SUPPORTS CUSTOM LEVELS

Everybody has several games that mean quite a lot to them. For me, one of these
games is Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. I not only grew up with this
game, but I also have a lot of memories of this game. Outside of that, I also
met some amazing friends through the community behind this game. I even did
several speedruns of this game, and I’m an active member of the community. Now,
color me surprised that 25 years after the release of this game, we got new
fan-made content for this game. Not just fan made content in the style of fan
patches to solve bugs with the game, a whole new level and promises of a level
editor to create even more new custom content. This blew me off my socks and in
today’s article I want to talk about it. So strap in and let’s get ready to play
new content for one of the best Indiana Jones games ever made.

The new level – SED

There is a speedrunning discord server for this game. Well, it was a
speedrunning discord server but for a few years now, this server has grown into
a server of people who appreciate this game. If you want to join this discord,
here is an invite link. When the server started to grow, several modders joined
our server. One of these modders is going under the name of Urgon (currently)
and what we didn’t know is that he was decompiling the whole game. Not only
that, he was creating a level editor based upon an existing level editor.

This existing level editor is for Star Wars Jedi Knight & Mysteries of the Sith.
Those games used an engine that formed the basis for the Jones3D engine. While
he was developing that editor, he tested his skills by creating a new level. So,
basically, parts of this new level are tests of the new level editor and what
you can do with it.

Now, information about this new level and the download link can be found at this
GitHub repository. If you want to download the actual level, you have to go to
this page and click the green button named “Code”. In that dropdown, you can
choose “download zip”. You’ll need that later if you want to install/play this
custom level. Now, if you read the pre-mod or the installation instructions for
this level, you might feel overwhelmed if you aren’t very technically inclined.
That’s why two community members wrote two special tools to aid you in preparing
your game.

You might ask yourself, like Klamath did in at the end of our stream of this
custom level, why are there two tools for basically the same? Well, let me tell
you the history about it. When I wanted to play the custom level, I had a bit of
trouble myself while figuring out the tutorial. I also found that the required
steps were quite a lot to do. So, I decided to start writing a PowerShell script
that did all the steps. I announced that in the Indy3D discord that I was
writing this. When I almost completed my tool, the_Kovic dropped his version of
the tool.

Personally, I didn’t want to throw my work out the window and continued
finishing my GUI version. When I finished, I didn’t convert my tool to an EXE
and left it just as a script file you could run using a command line or a code
editor. The next day, Kovic released a GUI version of his tool and I gave some
feedback on his tool. In the days after that, I created an EXE version of my
tool and we both kept adding features in our tool. He wrote his tool in C#,
which is a bit friendlier to create an EXE. If I didn’t release my first version
as a script only and converted it to an EXE, I think it might have been less
overwhelming for people.

That said, Kovic thanked me for creating my tool since like he said on our
stream: “It put my butt into gear to create a tool and write a GUI, which I
normally don’t write“. On top of that, our tools aren’t meant to compete with
each other. I can’t write C# and Kovic can’t write PowerShell. And it would be a
shame to just delete work because somebody else was quicker or made their tool
more user-friendly first. The result now is that we both have two very strong
tools with a very similar, maybe even completely the same, feature set.

Outside a different choice of coding language, the biggest differences between
both our tools are under the hood. In Kovic’s tool, you get more files than in
my tool when you download the tool. And that’s because to prepare your game for
custom levels, you need to extract several files in the resource folder. The
tool used for extraction has a bug where instead of extracting the folders of
the archive into the resource folder, it extracts them into separate folders,
like if you would extract a zip file. Kovic packs a modified version of this
extraction tool so that part of the process goes a bit faster. In my version,
the tool just downloads the latest official versions of the tool and prepare the
game that way.

In the end, both our tools give you the same end result. They prepare your game
to install custom levels and play them. If you want to try out the_kovic’s tool,
you can find the latest version on this releases page. If you want to try our my
tool, you can find it on this releases page. Feedback to our tools is always
welcome! If you find an issue or if you have an idea, feel free to hit us up,
and we will look into it.

Earlier I talked about a stream of the level we did. Klamath, the_Kovic and me
did a live stream where we played through this level. Now, I have to emphasize
that release of this level is an impressive technical achievement. Creating a
level for a 3D game isn’t easy and requires a lot of work. It’s even more
impressive when you know that not everything is documented about the engine, and
you have to decompile a lot of it. In the next part of this article, I’m going
to talk about the level itself and critique it.

If you don’t want spoilers, I’d advise you to skip that section for now and come
back later. Now, I want to say that I start reviewing the level in a moment, but
this feedback is mostly meant for people who want to make new custom content.
What did this new level do right and wrong if you look at it as a player who
doesn’t know the technical background of this level? This isn’t meant to break
down the amazing work the modders did to make this work.

Reviewing the new level

Editorial note: this review will spoil quite a lot. If you don’t want to get
spoiled, you have to skip this section of the article. This isn’t a walkthrough
of the level either. Some sections are skipped, I’m only going to talk about the
sections I want to talk about.

The new level takes place 25 years after the ending of the original game. Indy
returns to his Canyonlands dig site. You are set loose at the tent where Sophia
picked Indy up with a helicopter to start the Infernal Machine adventure.

In terms of new content, there isn’t a lot new to see. Some ladders are missing
and some parts of the level are blocked off. Also, all treasures are missing
that you would usually find in the level.

Before I continue, I want to mention that some parts of this level are made
quite difficult on purpose. The developer wanted to give us the feeling we were
young kids again, playing this game for the first time, and have us figure out
the new puzzles by ourselves. Yet, finding a correct balance between difficulty
and unfair is a very fine line to thread. Personally, I think that in some
sections, the developer crossed the line into unfair level design.

When running on the top section, you notice that there are some new voice lines.
These voice lines are made possible with a voice cloning AI tool that was
trained on lines from Doug Lee, the original voice actor for this game. The new
voice lines sound amazing, and if you didn’t know better, you’d think that Doug
Lee came back to record the new lines. In most cases, these voice lines really
fit Indy’s personality and fit right into the game.

We come to our first snag when we want to go to the new content. I can
understand not seeing the shovel and being confused, since it’s hanging at the
jeep on top. And you know what’s even more confusing, the other side of the jeep
model has a shovel in its texture! Anyhow, when you pick up the shovel and dig
up the Infernal Machine part, it’s clear that you need to break a wall. Here
comes one of the worst parts of this level. The location of this cracked wall is
insanely well hidden. It’s in one of the last places you’d look, and several of
the first players ran around for hours upon hours in Canyonlands before it was
found. And when it was found, it made us annoyed.

It’s a clear example of how players who are used to the level, overlooking the
obvious. The wall you need to break has an actual cracked wall texture, but it’s
behind something you can’t see through. I think it would have been fine if the
location, where it is at, had a bigger ledge so you’d notice it somewhat instead
of just having to go on a wild goose chase.

Now, we enter the new area. We come to a big open space where the next set of
puzzles are. The first puzzle is actually a jumping puzzle. Now, I highly advise
you to not play this level if you haven’t played through most of Indiana Jones
and the Infernal Machine. Not that there are spoilers, but because some of the
jumps in this level are straight up difficult and not what you really expect
from this game. Kovic calls it “Kaizo Jones” for a good reason.

There are some small platforms and not having the look key working is going to
be a pain in this section. Since, there are some moments where you need to be
able to free look and not being able to see beneath or above you will make
things a lot more tricky. After you finished these jumps, you might start to
notice that the developer of this custom level added some details. Like, the
rope bridges are gently moving in the wind. This is something that isn’t present
in the original game. It’s a new “COG” script that makes that possible.

These cog scripts are a blessing for custom content. Since, this game isn’t
hardcoded at all, so if you learn how to write these cog scripts, you can
basically write new mechanics as well. It’s insane what possibilities there are
going to be in the future for this game. I hope there is going to be good
documentation so that custom level creaters know what’s possible and what’s
impossible with the level editor.

While you are exploring this area, you notice that it’s huge. This also explains
why it takes quite a while to load this level. Currently, modders are looking
into why it’s running so slow. Since, we don’t really know if it’s the level
size or something else slowing down the loading of this level.

So, after jumping around the central column, you’ll arive at the shed. Here you
notice you can actually enter the shed from the top. Kovic explains it quite
well during the stream. If you want to hear some technical explanations on how
this level works, I’d advice you to watch our stream. Since there is a lot of
interesting development talk in there. Later, Kovic and myself had a contest in
trying to quote voice lines from the main game. We got close to 200. Kovic won
that because I said a line he already said.

After you picked up everything from this shed and climbed outside, you
experience another new mechanic of this game. It’s a mechanic that gets
backported from Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb. The fact you can use your
whip to go over a zipline.

After you returned and struggled with getting across the other bridge, you will
encounter other parts of this level. Here you’ll encounter two voice lines that
straight up lie to you. The first voice line is that you need more force,
explosives to break a rock that’s blocking your way forwards. Here is the issue
with that, you get an explosive barrel later. You need to find an extremely
hidden swim tunnel in the water. It’s not the only hidden thing in the water, so
investigate behind and underneath rocks quite well. Since, these puzzles in this
water border in the unfair territory. What makes that explosive voice line even
more evil is that there is a box of TNT in the shed earlier. But what’s the
second voice line that lies to you?

Well, that is after you made your way past said boulder. You find a minecart and
interacting with it, Indy says that it will run with gasoline. And there is
still gasoline left in the shed. Sadly, you can’t pick it up anymore. Now, this
is a red haring, you don’t need this minecart at all.

By now, you have learned that this level likes to break the rules of how the
main game is designed. You’ll have to think outside of the box sometimes to beat
this level. But, for some jumps, you need to use your knowledge of what’s
possible and impossible to progress. This makes it quite tricky sometimes to
progress. And this brings me to a conclusion we also said on stream. I think
that the issue is that people expected a more tame level than what we actually
got and that might turn some people off. But, I’m so glad that the quick save
system exists in this game. So, abuse the quick save system and make multiple
saves since you’ll need them if you aren’t a veteran player of this game.

Anyhow, let’s get back into the flow of the level. After we completed the lever
puzzle, we go back towards to the huge open area and take the lift to a new
location. What follows is a totally new area where it’s a good thing if you
saved up on health packs and you have a great sense of direction.

So, the short minecart ridge comes to an end. It doesn’t take long before you
find yourself into a watermaze. This watermaze is unfair in my honest opinion.
Klamath had a tricky time solving it and he had to use almost every health pack
to get through it. Without Kovic pointing out the right tunnel, I think it would
have made the stream quite a bit longer. There was supposed to be a minecart
section instead of this swimming maze, but the developer had a hard time making
the minecart section to work and he gave up and made this swimming maze.

Now, I’m all fine with this swimming maze, but the map glitches out at certain
parts. I have a mediocre sense of direction and I wanted to rely on the map. The
map doesn’t always render the tunnels correctly. You sometimes swim off the map
or “in nothingness”. Sadly, I have to draw my own map. I wish I still had it,
since it would make for a nice screenshot here… But I threw it out but me and my
clumsiness… I knocked over my waterbottle over it.

After the swimming maze, we get a new section of “Kaizo Jones”. Where we get
some extremely tricky platforming. Here is where you need to use the look key
again and be sure you are playing in 4:3. If you are playing in another
resolution like 16:9 or 16:10, this will also be one of the moments where you
don’t see all the information.

The block puzzle that follows, feels right out of Tomb Raider. The initial
reviews of this game called out this game as a Tomb Raider clone. While, this
game does the formula a whole lot differently. We even talked about that during
the stream. In terms of theming, Infernal Machine is a lot better. Tomb Raider
feels like obstacle courses. But that’s thanks to a different engine and control
style. If you want to hear the whole discussion, you can watch the stream from
this point. Excuse Kovic’s internet being spotty while he was replying.

After the block puzzle, a new path opens in the swim maze. Then, some
platforming comes. Something I love is how there is even a troll hidden inside
the platforming. It caught me off guard and made me smile. This platforming
section was also love to do. It felt like a real test on how well I know the
game. This platforming section feels a lot better put together and feel less
cryptic on where you need to go next. You really start to notice that the
developer was getting more used to the level editor and made better puzzles. The
moment of having to use the whip to swing over the gap while the platform
underneath you was breaking was amazing.

After that, we get into the finale of this level. We jump into a portal and we
land in a playable area which is shown at the end of Shambala, the 4th level in
the original game. That area that’s shown to you after you have beaten the Ice
Guardian. The path that takes you to Palawan Lagoon. It was possible to explore
that using cheats and modified saves, but now it’s in a level for real.
Exploring the little house at the end brings us to something you totally don’t
expect this custom level to do. You’ll find a parchment inside with a riddle and
at the end you notice something in red saying: “MAT -> ZIP”.

There is some meta gaming now going on. You’ll need to make a hard save and exit
your game. You’ll need to go to your resource folder & then open the MAT folder.
In there you’ll need to rename “SED.MAT” to “SED.ZIP”. You’ll also need to enter
the password for the zip, since you get a new cog script to continue the level,
which you need to place in your cog folder. In there, there is another surprise.
But, that’s something I’m not going to spoil. But, be sure that Kovic is playing
with that surprise and maybe I’m going to dig into it. PS, the next paragraph is
in white with the right spelling of the password:

Marcus

The way the level ends is bittersweet. If you solve the final puzzle, something
special happens and you can beat the level. You could argue that the ending of
this level is “lazy” or “creative”… But, it’s an amazing way to wrap up the
story in one level with a nice bow.

At the start of the custom level, I felt that it was quite rough around the
edges and it had some moments that felt badly designed. In terms of game design
that is. If you look at it visually and level flow wise, I personally think that
this level would fit right into the original game as a final challenge. But, the
further you go into the level, the more you start to notice that the developer
of this level is getting used to the tools and the editor and more polished
puzzles and area’s are coming through. You notice the journey of the developer
and see it becoming better and better.

I want to give a big congrats to everybody who was involved in releasing this
custom level. It’s a blast to play and I can’t wait to see more custom levels.
The stream I did with this level was one of the best streams ever and it was
also quite a lot of fun to write the tool to help people play this custom level.
I’m curious what you think about this custom level and/or the content of this
article. Feel free to drop something in the comment section down below.

And with that, I have said everything I wanted to say about this for now. I want
to thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed
writing it. I hope to welcome you back in another article but until then, have a
great rest of your day and take care.

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FIRST IMPRESSION: CAVE DIGGER 2 (PC – STEAM) ~ NO FEEDBACK

Steam store page

One of my favorite activities in Minecraft is going deep inside the caves and
just exploring them. A few years ago, the developers behind Cave Digger reached
out to me and asked me to review their game. Not too long after, the sequel got
released and looked like it would be a VR exclusive. Until I noticed that it
appeared on the Nintendo Switch eShop. So, I thought, maybe it also released on
Steam, since after playing the Switch version, I felt like this game was better
played with keyboard and mouse. Now, a non VR version is on Steam now… But is it
worth it? Well, after playing the first sections of this game, I want to talk
about it. The latest update was on May 28th, 2024 when writing this article.
Now, before we dive right into it, I want to invite to you leave a comment in
the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the
content of this article.

Risk of Staleness

In this game, we play as an unnamed miner who is throwing into the deep end,
when his digger broke. You arrive at a mysterious valley. In this valley, a
hardy explorer once did his research. But why? Which secrets are in these
valleys and the accompanying mines? That’s for our miner to figure out. Now, the
story is being told by various comic book pages you can uncover and, according
to the Steam store page, has multiple endings. I’m quite curious where it’s
going to go.

So far, I haven’t gotten too deep into the story. But, from what I can read on
the Steam store page, I think it has potential. I have my doubts on how the
multiple endings will work. Since comic books mostly have one ending, right?
Unless, it all depends on which page(s) you find or in which order or where.
That’s something I’ll discover when I’m deeper into the game.

If this game is like the original game, the story overall will take a backseat
for the gameplay. And after 5 hours in, that’s the case. The original game
didn’t have a lot of story to begin with, but more story in a game like this can
be interesting.

There is one voice actor in this game. He does a pretty fine job and brings some
life to the atmosphere. I replayed a bit of the first game and I have to be
honest, I appreciate the small voice lines during the exploration. Even when you
quickly hear every different line, it’s a nice break since they aren’t spammed
and don’t appear that often.

One of the biggest changes in this game is that the cave this time around is
randomly generated each time you enter. So, this game becomes a rouge like to a
degree. But, you can always exit via the lifts to safety. Since, dying in the
caves means that at least half of your obtained loot is dropped. The atmosphere
this time around is very cohesive. This game presents itself as a sci-fi western
game, and it really feels like that. Something I really like in this game is
that it doesn’t go overboard in the sci-fi genre and stays grounded. The
technology could realistically exist today, apart from the unique enemies in the
cave, that is.

With the story taking more of a backseat, it’s quite important that the gameplay
loop is enjoyable. The gameplay loop is simple, you have to explore the caves
with 4 chosen tools. The three slots above the entrance give you a hint on which
tools you will need to bring to gather the most loot. You take the lift down and
gather loot, while fighting enemies and avoiding pitfalls to survive. The goal
is also to find the other elevator that takes you down to the next level to
gather even more valuable ores to bring to the top. You have to fill in the ores
you gathered into the grinder to buy upgrades to your tools and environment to
progress.

The big risk with this kind of gameplay loop is that this is just a different
numbers game. What I mean by that is that, apart from maybe the visuals
changing, the core concept is always the same. This risks that the game becomes
stale and repetitive. It’s possible that it is just a “me thing”, but I enjoy
games like this more when there are some variations on the gameplay or some
different puzzles. Thankfully, this game has that. There are a lot of things you
can upgrade and improve to make each run feel rewarding, and each type of cave
you can visit has different enemies types and unique lay-outs to keep you on
your toes. In a way, I dare to compare the idea a bit to Cult of the Lamb in a
degree.

The music in this game is also a blast. It fits the atmosphere of each area like
a glove. My favorite track is the track that plays in the lake caves. It sounds
like you image a typical track like that to sound. And it gets more intense
while you are fighting enemies down there. Now, the silent moments when the
music doesn’t play feel a bit long, but I always know that there is more music
coming and that it fits the atmosphere perfectly and draws me more into the
game. Sadly enough, this isn’t the only problem with this game, and I’d like to
talk about them.

No feedback

This game has an addictive gameplay loop, and I’m really curious how the
multiplayer works. I haven’t tested the multiplayer in this game, but it looks
like fun. Now, this game can be played solo perfectly fine.

Now, I don’t know if VRKiwi took the VR version as a base for the non VR
version, since I have the impression, that is the case. I especially notice that
with the controls in this game. It feels a bit floaty, like you aren’t really
connected to the ground. It also feels a bit stiff, like you have to move your
mouse like you would a VR headset. You really have to play with the settings
until you hit that sweetspot that feels right for you. For me, I had to lower
the sensitivity to 80, amongst other things. I highly recommend that you tweak
the settings to your liking, since on the Nintendo Switch version, I had to
lower the sensitivity to 40 before it felt right.

Still, the character control doesn’t feel right. At first, I thought it was
because the controls felt floaty… But, after some testing, I think I found a few
other problems with the character control that might cause it to not feel quite
right. First, the jump in this game is just silly. You can’t really rely on it,
since it doesn’t always trigger when you hit the spacebar, and it’s just a
pathetic jump. You can’t even jump out of ankle high water sometimes.

Secondly, there are no sound effects for walking on most floors. You feel like
you are floating, and it’s jarring when you suddenly hear a sound effect when
you walk over a table or a railway. Thirdly, climbing on ropes amongst other
things is just insanely picky. There is also no real feedback or sound to show
you grabbed the rope. Fourthly, the scroll order between tools is extremely
weird. You get numbers on the wheel counter clock wise. But you go down, right,
left, up. Which still confuses me after 6 hours of playing this game.

And finally, some things are extremely picky. For example, there are safe
riddles you can solve down in the caves. But to rotate the letter wheels to make
pick the right letter is more difficult to do. All of these things give you a
feeling that you aren’t always in control of your character and that you don’t
get the feedback as a player on what’s happening. Making you unsure what’s
happening and doubt if you are doing the right thing.

Prompts like “Use W/S to use the crank” should be “Hold W/S to use the crank”.
Since, you need to hold the key instead of pressing it. Small things like that
could also improve this game and it’s controls quite a lot. Overall, the
controls are good, but they lack feedback to the player sometimes. Either with
sound effects or with some visual effects. Like with the hammer, you barely have
any sound effects when you use it, and it has some wind up animation, making you
unsure if you are using it or not.

That is one of the biggest flaws in this game. The lack of feedback on your
actions. Things like not knowing how many bullets are still left in your
revolver or a sound effect when you hit an actual enemy. I think if there is one
thing I’d use the built-in feedback tool is to report various cases/moments when
I expect feedback from the game, like a sound effect or visual effect. Maybe
they appear in the form of rumble effects… But, I’m not playing this game with a
controller.

When you read this section of the article, I wouldn’t blame you if you think
that this game isn’t good. Small bugs like the text of “Press R to reload” when
your gun isn’t equipped or the bullets not leaving from the gun but from the
player model don’t improve things either. Yet, I find myself looking past these
problems since the core gameplay still works. I find myself getting used to the
jank in this game and finding a very rough diamond. If the developers keep up
with their promise of improving this game, I think that more action feedback
will bring a lot to the game and maybe fixing the small bugs like in this
paragraph as well.

Things like the animation of the shovel looking weird sometimes. The animation
looks like the arms go through each other after a dig. Speaking of the shovel,
the last dig is annoying since you have to move a pixel or two for it to count
and give you your goodies. But the bug I’d love to see fixed most is the freeze
for several seconds when you pick up something new or get a new codec entry. The
game locks up like it’s about the crash, but it doesn’t.

What’s next for us?

Usually, I’m not really picky when it comes to the visuals of a game. As long as
a game looks consistent, I’m quite happy. It needs to have a certain style so
that you can quickly identify what’s what and enjoy the game.

Yet, for this game, I do have some things that I not really like in terms of the
visuals. Firstly, the contrast of some ores and the floor isn’t clear enough.
Sometimes I was passing up on ores since I wasn’t able to notice them on the
ground.

There are also a lot of objects to give more details to the cave, but you can
barely interact with them. I’d love to see lilly pads in lakes to move a bit
when you walk past them or something more than just being able to clip through
them. As well, a sound effect when you hit a wall you can’t mine. You get
shouted at when you use the wrong or a too weak tool on something, so when not
for the rest?

I think the biggest mistake that the visuals make is that it has an identity
crisis. What I mean by that is that it isn’t a cohesive style. There is a lot of
shell shading going on, but there is also a lot of details that give off a more
realistic vibe. Some textures aren’t detailed enough and strechted too wide
giving wrong impression the rest of the visuals that look more modern. The floor
textures sometimes suffer most from this issue.

Looking back at this article, I think I’m being very critical for this game. I
have played a lot worse and broken games for 15€. But, in this game you even
have customisation options for your character and thee developers are extremely
open for feedback. This game has a lot going for it. Fun achievements to hunt
for, bosses at the end of runs and an amazing auto save system.

Apart from improving the character controls and adding some feedback on actions,
I think this game is pretty decent. Yes, there is some polish missing like not
having a tooltip with the lever at the cave entrance on what that lever does. I
personally feel less conflicted about this game compared to the original. The
growth in this title is immense and brings me a lot of hope for either some
amazing updates, DLC or a new entry in the series.

The basis of for an amazing title is here and if you look past it’s short
comings, this game is a blast to play. Maybe it’s a bit too repetitive for some
and can be more fun in short bursts. But, when this game sinks it’s hooks into
you, it really clicks. There is some polishing left to do and for a rather new
VR focused developer, this is amazing. It’s their second non VR game and it
shows a lot of promise.

The game is a perfect relaxing game to wind down, since it isn’t too difficult.
The game is rather forgiving. I wouldn’t be surprised that I play this game
after work to wind down and try and finish it slowly. Then again, while I’m
writing this, I have summer holidays and I wouldn’t be surprised that I finish
most of this game during my summer break.

Like I said earlier, I feel less conflicted about this game compared to the
previous title. This game has a lot more going for it compared to the original.
It’s less repetitive and it has a lot more going for it. It has it’s problems,
yes. But, if you enjoy games like Minecraft, Steamworld Dig or Cave Digger, give
the demo of this game a chance. The demo gives a very good idea on what you can
expect from this game and if you enjoy it, buy the game. I’m enjoying myself
quite a lot with this game and I’m happy that I have chosen the PC version over
the Switch version since I feel like it just plays better. But maybe, if I get
used to the Switch controls, I might enjoy it on Switch as well.

With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now.
Maybe when I finish this game, I might write a full review with the final
thoughts and opinions on this game. But for now, I think the best conclusion for
this game is that it’s an amazing step up from the original and besides some
unpolished things… It’s a great game and comes recommend from me.

So, it’s time to wrap up this article with my usual outro. I hope you enjoyed
reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in
another article, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

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FIRST IMPRESSION: TRINITY TRIGGER (NINTENDO SWITCH – ESHOP) ~ JUST A BIT MORE

Wikipedia page – Official site – Official microsite

I love how the store credit system works on the Nintendo eShop. When you
purchase games, you get golden coins that you can use as a discount for other
games. If you have enough coins, you can even buy the game outright. One of the
games I have bought with this system is Trinity Trigger. From the description,
it sounded like an interesting and unique action JRPG, and I’m always interested
to play new and unique games. Especially since key staff on this game worked on
amazing games like Chrono Cross and the Mana series. Now, is it any good and
should you pick up this game, or is it a game that you should skip? Well, in
this first impression I have after playing 1/4th of the game, I want to tell you
my opinion so far. I’m also curious to hear your opinion on the game and/or the
content of this article in the comment section down below. And with that said,
let’s dive right into Trinity Trigger.

Just A Bit More

In this game, we take on the role of Cyan. Cyan is an average boy from a small
village. He is also a treasure hunter that one day learns he is chosen by the
God of Chaos as his Warrior of Chaos.

In the fantasy world of Trinitia, there are two main Gods. The God of Order and
the God of Chaos. In ancient times, they used to wage war for control of the
lands. Now, they chose a warrior each to represent them and fight the other
warrior to the death for dominance. Cyan doesn’t know what that even means, but
it might explain why he has amnesia, those weird dreams and that special glowing
mark in his eye. In search for answers, he sets out on a journey, and that’s how
this game starts.

When this game was originally teased, the main setup for this game was to create
a game and story that was nostalgic to those who played old school JRPG’s. A lot
of talent who worked on other big titles like Xenoblade, Pokémon and Bravely
Default II were working on this game as well. I always find it dangerous to
mention these things, since it might set the expectations of players way too
high. What if this isn’t going to work out or when the story just doesn’t hit
the mark?

You can never predict how the chemistry is between people, and it’s possible
that they are unable to work together. But, it’s also possible they hit it off
big and make something extremely unique and special. I remember how a game like
World’s End Club could have been so much more with two amazing directors behind
it, Kazutake Kodaka from Danganronpa fame and Kotaro Uchikoshi from the Zero
Escape fame. Yet, that game was decent but could have been so much more if it
had more depth and polish.

If I’m honest with myself, Trinity Trigger falls into the same boat then World’s
End Club. Take the story, for example. When I started playing this game, an
amazing world was being setup and I started to get interested and immersed in
this new world. But, it didn’t take long before I noticed that this game hits
all the familiar story beats you expect from a JRPG. But the biggest issue in
this story is that it doesn’t do anything special during its journey. I have
already visited a couple of towns and each time it’s the exact same basic
premise that happens.

The best way I can describe the story is that it’s unoffensively bland. It does
what it’s supposed to do, but nothing more. It’s a shame, since the amazing
voice cast behind this game brought this game to live so much. I have nothing to
critique there. The only thing that can be a bit annoying is hearing the same
grunts over and over again while you are fighting in the dungeons, but that’s
part of the course in JRPG’s.

Playing it safe

For some people, having a bland story in a JRPG’s is a dealbreaker. But, I can
handle that if the main gameplay loop is enjoyable. In this game, you go from
town to town and explore the town dungeon to become stronger and get new unique
abilities.

The battles in this game aren’t turn based like in other JRPG’s. This is an
action JRPG, after all, so you have to dodge and time your attacks well. You can
even choose to ignore battles if you want to, apart from scripted fights or boss
battles, that is. The combat system is decent and does the job. The only
complaint I have is that your stamina drains a bit too fast, making your attacks
quite weak against enemies. So, you have to use other mechanics like having
better damage when you dodge roll an attack in time.

After each dungeon, you unlock a new weapon that has a slightly different
playstyle. You can choose between which weapon you use on the fly with a weapon
wheel. It works quite well, and it’s fun to figure out which enemies are weak
against which weapons. Especially the bosses, since hitting them with the right
weapon creates even more damage.

During your exploration, you can find hidden chests with items. Underneath the
mini-map, you can find a counter with how many hidden treasures are still left
in the area. I find it quite enjoyable to explore the whole map to find these
hidden treasures. Some of the hidden passages are hidden away extremely well,
and finding them was a blast.

Something I also really enjoy is that you can easily choose between which
character you control. Some characters have unique skills and being able to
quickly switch between them is amazing. Since, some enemies have a long range
attack, and then it’s a blast being able to switch to a character that can use a
bow to take them out more easily.

Enemies also drop various items that you can use to craft items in shops or at
special stations. And crafting these items actually cost in game money. The
amount you have to spend for crafting is a lot lower, but this is a mechanic I’m
hesitant about. It would have been quite a lot of fun to be able to craft
healing items during your exploration. Maybe these healing items were less
effective than the potions you can buy in the shops. But then again, it might
break the balance of the game and make you a bit overpowered.

You can only carry so many potions and to be very honest, I never really had
problems with a boss battle or a dungeon when I was stocked up on potions. When
you don’t do anything crazy and keep your stock high and manage your stat
boosting items well, this game becomes quite easy. So easy in fact that boss
battles become an endurance test and extremely repetitive.

Each boss battle has the same basic premise. You have to dodge their attacks and
use the right weapon to break the shield of the boss. In most cases, this is the
newly unlocked weapon. After you have broken the shield, you can damage the
boss. If you have broken the shield 4 to 5 times, and kept hitting the boss, you
have beaten the fight.

Now, the dungeons play like your typical The Legend of Zelda dungeon to a
degree. There is one main theme and puzzle mechanic for you to solve. Once you
reached the final room of the dungeon, you fight a final boss and progress in
the game. When I think about it, the structure of this game resembles 2D Zelda
games here and there. And maybe, the structure of a Zelda game would have fit
the game better than an action JRPG. Since, I wouldn’t be surprised if players
drop this game and call it repetitive. Since, it really is. I tried to play this
game in longer sessions, but I started to feel bored after playing it for an
hour or two. Yet, I kept enjoying myself with the game while playing it on my
30-minute train ride from and to work.

Middle of the Road

The more I play this game, the more I feel like this game could have been so
much more. The basic foundation of this game is rock solid, and I barely have
anything to critique there. Like the controls and the UI for example. The
controls are extremely responsive and a blast to work with.

Now, the other characters are AI controlled. Overall, the AI does an okay job
following you and aiding you in combat, but it can do some brain-dead actions as
well. One of the dungeons where it frustrated me to no end was the ice dungeon,
where your AI allies slid into the spikes every single time.

Visually, this game looks pretty decent. There is quite a lot of detail put into
this world and the underused area exclusive mechanics are quite a lot of fun to
play with. For example, I love how in the forest area the mushrooms can have
different effects depending on the color. Especially the one that allows you to
light up the area.

But then you have moments where some textures are bland and look like they are
from an earlier generation, creating a mismatch. And on top of that, some battle
animations can’t be canceled. And the final attack of the bow is just silly.
Yet, if a certain attack is in progress, you can’t switch weapons. This is
something that annoyed me quite a lot as well.

The soundtrack of this game is quite enjoyable. It fits the atmosphere of the
game like a glove. Overall, this orchestral soundtrack is a joy to listen too.
But, there are some tracks that are a bit too short and the rather repetitive
melody isn’t it doing any favors. Thankfully, these tracks don’t appear to often
so I don’t mind it too hard.

The sound effects are pretty good too. I’d recommend that you use the option
menu to tweak the sound balancing to your liking, since the basic sound
balancing is a bit off when it comes to the balance between sound effects and
music. I had to lower the music a little bit so I could hear the important sound
effects better during battles.

This game really feels like it’s walking the middle of the road here. My biggest
complaint with this game is that it lacks depth in almost every aspect of the
game. And it’s just that lack of depth that’s hurting this game. This game has a
lot of great idea’s like how easy to read the UI is, but it barely does anything
with the stat boosting items.

The game also has local co-op, but I don’t see a reason why to play this game in
co-op. There aren’t enough elements to justify for me to have a friend over and
play this game. It’s just too bland for that. It’s a shame, since if the combat
system was more in depth, it would have been an amazing feature. Now, it’s just
another ticked box of features this game has.

Just like how some of the monster design is amazing and sometimes even looks
somewhat creepy. They also telegraph their attacks quite well, so you can easily
dodge them. Dodging attacks in time is quite important, since you can do special
attacks or even more damage. Now, you also have your typical enemies like your
slimes and bees, but they look unique and fit their setting quite well.

To be honest, this game is the perfect entry game for young childern to get into
roleplaying games. I think that if you have played other more expansive JRPG’s,
you will notice the cracks this game has and feel mixed about the game like the
whole reception is for this game.

This brings me to the price. To be honest, I wouldn’t pay the full price for
this game. The asking price for this game is 40€. And if you want all the DLC,
it’s even more. Around 50€. Now, I don’t recommend buying all the DLC apart from
the one that comes with the Deluxe edition. The other DLC is just a one time
booster pack you can buy to make the game even easier than it already is.

The asking price is too high for this game and it’s length. This game can be
beaten in 15 hours and it doesn’t really have replay value. I personally feel
that 25€ would have been a better price for the base game and Deluxe edition
should have been 40€. If you are interested by this game, I’d buy it if it were
on sale. While this game isn’t doing anything new or innovate, it still manages
to be enjoyable.

I’m happy that I gave this game a chance. While I expected a lot more from it, I
don’t think it’s a bad game. I can totally understand why people don’t like this
game or drop it. Since, it’s a very basic middle of the road JRPG that could do
something unique but doesn’t. Now, the Japanese publishers of this game FuRyu
have developed a game that became the basis for another larger game (The Legend
of Legacy feels like the basis for The Alliance Alive). Maybe this game is
creating the basis for another larger and better game.

If that’s the case, I’d love to see more unique puzzles in the dungeons for a
start. The dungeons were so easy to beat and didn’t provide too much challenge.
Maybe some puzzles were only the unique dungeon weapon has to be used to
progress or even exit the dungeon.

I’d also love to see more expansion on the armor and stat items. I felt they
barely had any impact in this game and I often forgot you could change the
stones in your equipement to increase the damage output in certain cases or
decrease the taken damage in certain cases.

The biggest thing I’d love to see improved is more depth in the game. Develop
the town more and make them more memorable, instead of just a stop to stock up
on supplies to go to the next dungeon. The side quests were introduced too late
into the game.

I could go on for a while giving examples of what they can expand or improve,
but I want to avoid that you get the impression that this game is bad. This game
is decent, but not great. That’s the best way to describe this game. I’d
recommend it to younger players who want to give an action JRPG a try. If you
are in love with the action JRPG games, I’d highly advice you to lower your
expecations. I’d compare to that animated summer blockbuster movie that
everybody forgets about in a few months. It didn’t do anything memorable but it
a fun time while it lasted. It’s a great snack inbetween games for me and I’m
curious to see what the developer does next. Since, the potential is there.

With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about the game for now. I
want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as
much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another
article, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

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REVIEW: LITTLE NOAH – SCION OF PARADISE (SWITCH – ESHOP) ~ ZIPPING
KITTY ATTEMPTS

Nintendo.com microsite – Official website – Wikipedia page

When you purchase games on the Nintendo eShop, you earn store credit. I usually
save up a lot of my credit and purchase a smaller title with it. One of these
titles I purchased a few months ago is named Little Noah – Scion of Paradise.
After playing it for a bit, I was surprised that it was the perfect game to play
on my commute to and from work. I played it on a few train rides, and I think
I’m ready to share my opinion on this game. This game is something unique and
now that I have beaten it once, I really want to talk about it. Wait, beaten it
once? What do I actually mean? Let’s talk about it in this article, while I
invite you to leave a comment with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game
and/or the content of this article in the comment section down below.

Zipping Kitty Attempts

In this game, we play as an alchemist called Little Noah. She is in a long
journey to reunite with her father. While she is looking for her father, her
airship gets caught in a storm, and she crashes near a mysterious ruin.

In that ruin, she meets an amnesiac cat named Zipper. Well, she names it Zipper.
Together, they start to explore this ruin because they encountered a dark wizard
named Greigh, who wants to enable a powerful machine which is dormant in the
ruin.

Now, if you are looking for a deep story… I’m going to have to disappoint you.
The story of this game isn’t the main focus of this game. The story in this game
is fine for what it is and does its job, but there is nothing more to it.
Personally, I don’t think it’s a negative for this game. Because the story takes
a backseat, the gameplay loop is a lot more polished. Also, I don’t think it was
the intention to have a very in depth story.

The voice actors in this game did an amazing job and brought the characters and
the world of this game to live. The amount of personality they brought to their
characters is really well done and really fits the atmosphere of this game like
a glove. The amazing voice acting is one of the main reasons why I didn’t mind
the “To be continued” at the end of the game at all. This small title really
feels like the developers are testing the water if people who be interested in a
larger game set in the world of Little Noah.

So, what do I mean by “small title”? Well, this game can be beaten in an
afternoon. Now, the game has quite a lot of replay value in my opinion. The
gameplay loop of this game is quite enjoyable. It has quite the potential to
grow into something unique that I don’t often see in these rouge lite games.
But, I’ll talk more about the gameplay later.

According to various sources online, this game has been worked on by a small
team of 30 people. Even by some industry legends like Yukio Futatsugi, who had
his hand on another title I played in the past called World’s End Club. The
amount of love and care put into this title is quite impressive and gets a
thumbs up from me. I know that this game is based upon an earlier mobile game
from the same developers called Battle Champs. Yet, I think it’s great to see
the developers repurpose the assets after the shutdown of that game and make
something new about it.

If you have ever played a game like Rouge Legacy, you’ll feel right at home in
this game. In this game, you have to explore a dungeon and fight bosses. During
your exploration run, you gain various special items that give you all sorts of
buffs.

In terms of difficulty, this game is very balanced. While you can get lucky and
get amazing items and buffs to make it quite far in the game, with enough skill
and understanding of the game… you can even outplay the game if you get bad
items and not good buffs. Now, I’m reading mixed things about the hard
difficulty online, but I have been playing through this game on normal
difficulty and I found it pretty fair and balanced. So, let’s do one more dive
to explain how this game works.

One More Dive

I want to talk about the unique mechanic in this game. The combat system in this
game is something I wanted to play for a long while. In this game, you are
accompanied by Lilliputs. These are special creatures who attack for you. You
start each run with three basic Lilliputs. During your run, you can find other
Lilliputs and make yourself stronger.

Each Lilliput is very different in terms of strength, element, attack, and
unique attack. You can only have five Lilliputs for your main attacks, and you
have two special attack slots where you can place one Lilliput in each. So, you
really need to balance your Lilliputs well. The order is also quite important,
you don’t want a whole row of slow attacking Lilliputs in an area with a lot of
range attacking enemies. Also, you don’t want to use a weak element compared to
the enemies you are facing. If you are focusing on wind, you will have trouble
with fire enemies.

It’s extremely important to understand your Lilliputs. Since, once you started
an attack, you are somewhat locked into that attack. You can’t start another
attack while an attack is in progress, excluding the special attacks that is.
So, if the enemy moves to the other side of your attack, though luck. This game
is a whole balancing and time act, and it’s a lot of fun. The randomness in this
whole game makes each run unique, and you can never predict how far you’ll be
able to go.

Now, dying in this game isn’t the worst thing. All your items and Lilliputs get
converted into mana, which you can use to repair your airship. The more you
repair your airship, the more advantages and buffs you can unlock to make even
better runs. You can also use special treasure chests you can pick up in your
run to either increase the strength of your unlocked Lilliputs or give to Zipper
for a special bonus for your next run.

So, how does a run go? Well, allow me to compare it to a crusade in Cult of the
Lamb to a degree. In that game, you go into a dungeon, and you have to go from
room to room, defeating every enemy in that room before you can progress to the
next room. Unlike Cult of the Lamb, some rooms give you a special challenge.
These challenges are reaching a certain amount of chained damage or hits, not
being hit or defeating all the enemies in a limited amount of time. When you
complete this challenge, you receive an additional bonus when you defeat the
room.

There are also special rooms that can spawn. A shop where you can spend the gold
you earn during a run, platform challenges with a strong treasure chest at the
end, (combat) challenge rooms and rooms where you can get special buffs from a
crystal and a room where you can get Lilliputs or a buff item. All of these
special rooms have a special icon on the map. The map also shows little icons
when there is still something you can pick up in the room.

Complete exploration of a dungeon is a very risk/reward thing. You do risk your
health to go into an additional room to get additional buffs, or do you want to
save your health for the next (mid)boss level? In order to beat this game, you
have to beat three worlds. Each world works like this: level – level – midboss –
level – boss. Be warned, you can only replenish your health potions at the start
of a level. During (mid)boss fights, you can’t replenish your health potions, so
keep that in mind when you are deciding if it’s worth the risk to go into that
challenge platforming room.

Overall, the gameplay in the dungeon is quite addictive and the fast-paced
decision-making you have to make is something that got me hooked. I don’t spend
a lot of time on my airship, outside repairing it and setting up the right buffs
for my next run. I always want to do one more dive and try and beat the game
again. Now, the airship itself is build quite well. You can also re-read the
tutorial boxes in case you want to refresh your memory on certain mechanics.

Repetition of Diving

Something that really impressed me is how smooth this game actually runs. The
optimization of this game is incredible. I didn’t have any frame rate issues or
slowdowns at all. Even when I’m preforming my ultimate attack, which causes a
lot of visual flair and effects on the screen.

The controls are extremely responsive as well. Very rarely I felt like I wasn’t
in control, and I think some of these moments might even have been a false
positive where I was trying to blame my mistake on the game. In terms of the
controls, there are only a few nitpicks I can give. The first is the decision to
place “R” as the interaction button. This feels quite unnatural and took me some
getting used to. Also, I think a left-handed mode would have been welcome since
I think left-handed people who appreciate the “L” button then for interactions.

Why am I placing so much attention on this? Well, because you don’t pick up
items or Lilliputs automatically. You have to stand next to them and interact
with their medal or crystal. But items like health drops or burst gauges are
picked up automatically.

The other nitpick I have is that when you start your dive, you get a fixed
amount of mana from the first dungeon. Why can’t we skip this little cutscene
that plays every time? It breaks the flow of the start of a run. Since you are
stopped in your tracks every time.

Another nitpick I have with the controls is how the Lilliput attack order can be
decided. The problem comes when I just want to swap two Lilliputs of their
place. This is something you can’t do. Unless you swap them from your inventory
to the main line OR from the main line to a special attack slot and vice versa.
Swapping two Lilliputs in the main line is somewhat clunky to do and feels
unpolished.

Visually, this game is extremely colorful and charming. While this is a side
view game, like a 2D Mario game, the backgrounds are also incredible. The team
that worked on the visual presentation of this game did an amazing job. I only
have one nitpick about it and that’s somewhat shared with a nitpick I have with
the audio design.

I feel like the frozen status isn’t communicated clearly enough to the player.
Several times I was unable to move Noah and I couldn’t figure out why. It took
me sometime to realize that she was frozen and that’s the reason why I couldn’t
preform an action. Either a more exaggerated visual of a frozen Noah could solve
this or more sound effects when you try to do something while frozen.

Apart from that, I don’t have any complaints about the visuals. The animation
feels amazing, and you feel the impact of the attacks of your Lilliputs and it
feels so rewarding, adding more immersion to the gameplay loop. This game is
something where I felt: “One more dive” after each time I died and returned to
the airship. Each time I wanted to go and explore the amazing caverns. While I
was afraid that this game would suffer from long play sessions, I was pleasantly
surprised that it wasn’t the case for me. At the end of a long play session, I
have to admit that the game felt a bit repetitive… But I don’t mind repetitive
gameplay too much when the core gameplay loop and level design is fun.

The only negative I have about the level design is that you very quickly see all
the possible room lay-outs there are in this game. While the dungeon is
randomized each run, it doesn’t take long before you see similar rooms. A couple
of times, I even had the same room back-to-back. This isn’t a huge problem
perse, but I felt that the developers could mask this a bit better with
different decorations or minor changes like one of the platforms having a
possibility of crumbling or not.

The music and sound effects in this game are really catchy. I would love to add
it to my playlist. Sadly, I can’t really find a way to listen to the soundtrack
or even buy it. The tracks in this game are charming when they need to be but
are also quite action-packed during fight scenes. The sound effects and visuals
inform you quite well when an enemy is going to attack.

Now, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I think
it’s high time for my conclusion of this game. Let’s dive into the summary and
my final thoughts of this game.

Summary

The bad:

– Some minor nitpicks with the controls.
– Story is fine, but lacks some depth and is predictable.

The good:

+ Very addictive gameplay loop with high replay value.
+ Amazing voice acting.
+ Breath taking visuals.
+ Extremely optimized gameplay.
+ …

Final thoughts:

This game is a small indie title created from the remains of an old gotcha game.
It’s only 15€ on the Nintendo eShop and it’s totally worth it’s price in gold.
While the game lacks some depth and is quite short, the replay value this game
has is something that’ll make you replay this game just one more time.

While playing this game, I felt that this game was an experiment. The developers
were testing the waters if the gameplay would work or not. This game feels like
a prequel to a much larger game and if I’m right, I can’t wait to see what the
full game or the sequel is going to be like.

Even when this game is going to be a standalone game, I don’t really mind if
that’s the case. This game is a game I can highly recommend if you enjoy games
like Rouge Legacy or Cult of the Lamb. While it doesn’t have a lot of, if any,
base building… It’s another amazing title in the genre.

While outside of the combat mechanics, it doesn’t do a lot of things you haven’t
seen (a lot) before in other similar games. But, that isn’t a bad thing. Since,
sometimes a game where all the good ideas from other games come together into
one title can be a lot of fun as well.

I’d love to see another game in this universe where there are a bit more stakes
in using your Lilliputs. What if certain Lilliputs get weaker when you pick up
items of their opposite element? Or Lilliputs that can do a special attack with
another Lilliput present…

There is so much more you can do with this combat system and I think that if the
developers expanded on the core mechanics, this game sequel could reach quite
far. Since, the game we already got placed an amazing foundation for an amazing
series. I love this game to bits and I’m so glad I gave this game a chance,
since it was an amazing pleasant surprise to playthrough. It comes highly
recommend from me. After I finished the game once, I let me hunger for more. I
wanted to play it even more. And the fact that I barely have any complaints
about this game apart from a weak story and some nitpicks… This game just has a
lot of care and lot put in by the developers and everything works and fits
together so well.

With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now.
I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading this
as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another
article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 90/100

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PREVIEW: AMA’S LULLABY (PC – STEAM) ~ HACKING THE POINT-AND-CLICK GENRE

Itch.io – Steam

Back in 2017, a developer from France contacted me about their new
point-and-click sci-fi game in the works called Ama’s Lullaby. But, it’s more
than a point-and-click game, it’s also a hacking game. Now, this developer works
on this game in his free time after his day job and with a small budget.
Sometimes these passion projects die due to lack of time, money, motivation
and/or just interest. But it looks like Ama’s Lullaby isn’t going to be one of
those projects. Earlier this year, a demo of the game got released. Now, I asked
the developer if he was interested in streaming this demo with us, and he did.
Here is a link to part 1 & part 2. Sadly, due to overheating of Klamath’s
computer, it had to be cut into two parts and the ending was quite abrupt. Now,
this stream is almost a month ago, and I still wanted to write an article about
this game. So, what do I think of the demo? Am I still as impressed when I saw
it during the livestream, or is my opinion going to change when I’m not back
seating and playing it myself? Let’s find out in this article.

Hacking The Point-And-Click Genre

The story of this demo is quite simple. Ama enters the police station and gets
new tasks to aid the space colony she is in. Overall, the story is told more
naturally compared to other games. Mostly, we get an opening where the main
story of the game is teased, but not in this game. During interactions with the
others, we get little glimpses into the world and story. Now, this is a tricky
thing to pull off, since either you have to force the player to interact with
everybody or risk that some players miss potentially important information. On
the other hand, info dumping on the player isn’t always the best solution.

Now, in this space colony, there is an AI that makes a lot of decisions. It
turns out that Ama and her dad have created that AI and the software to interact
with it. She is one of the ambassadors of the human race. But it doesn’t take
too long before strange things start to happen, and you notice that not
everything is what you think it is.

The dialogues in this game appear above the character’s their head. When it’s
cursive, you know it’s a thought. Not only that, you have simple sound effects
that appear to put some additional power to the dialogues and to quickly
differentiate between thoughts and spoken dialogues. Currently, there are plans
to fully voice act this game, but if those plans fall through, I’d recommend to
the developer to have different sound effects for the dialogues for different
emotions.

Now, the game cold opens with an old school terminal as a main menu. This might
be a bit jarring for new players who aren’t used to working with the command
line. Personally, as somebody who knows how a command line works, I really love
this touch. Since, this interface is also present in a lot of puzzles in the
game. It fits the atmosphere and style of the game as a glove. To be honest, I
think that with some minor polishing, it would be perfect.

There are a few things I would change. First, I’d get rid of the case-sensitive
commands. The main reason is that a lot of people have the default keybinding
for the Steam overlay with is… Shift+Tab. Since I love using autocomplete, it
got pretty frustrating when I was holding my shift button and tabbed to
autocomplete and my Steam overlay popped up.

A second thing I’d change is to allow the user to enlarge the font of terminal.
The reason for that is because it doesn’t really scale pretty well with people
who are using larger monitors.

Now, since this game is still in development and this is just the demo… I can
totally excuse that there are features not present. Like pushing the up arrow to
get the last command, or the help feature not always working correctly in all
menus. For example, if you are in the options menu and use “QUALITY HELP”, you
get information but if you first write “QUALITY” to see the options you can
input and then “QUALITY HELP”… It bugs out and doesn’t give you help at all.
Another small bug I noticed is that for some reason, the enter button on my
numpad didn’t enter but always selected the whole text. But hey, during the
stream the developer said that some of these things are on the list to get fixed
for the full game.

Cyberpunk Sci-fi

I was impressed with the visuals of the game when we were playing this game on
stream. While I haven’t played the Blade Runner games yet, I have seen a lot of
people talk about it and know the visual style of the game. This game really
mimics that style extremely well. You really feel like you are in a sci-fi world
with some older technology than we have compared to our own technology.

Also, something I really love in this demo is that everything is one big space.
You don’t really have “screens” in this game, like in a Broken Sword game for
example. No, the camera swings and follows Ama as if she was in a movie. This
sells the illusion of the area even more. While I’d have loved to see the
details the developer put in every scene more up close sometimes, the more
zoomed out look gives you a better overview on the scene. It almost feels like
you are watching Ama through security camera’s or a drone camera in a way.

The biggest thing that I want to point out in terms of the visuals is Ama
herself. The game goes for a more dark and dimly light environment and with a
main character that’s wearing black clothes, it’s extremely easy to lose Ama in
the scenery. It wouldn’t surprise me if they gave our main character in Blade
Runner a brown coat for that reason, so you can more quickly see the main
character without breaking the visual style of the game. But, overall, this is
almost a nitpick. Since, it didn’t happen a lot that I lost Ama in the scene. It
mostly happened when I was replaying parts of the demo while writing this
article.

Now, I want to talk about the command line. The tutorial in this game on how a
command line works is actually well done. I love how it doesn’t hold the players
hands and tries to force them to input the right thing. It really lets you
experiment with it and learn how it works. All the while, a small guide on how
things work is displayed on the top of your screen.

This whole command line mechanic in this game is a breath of fresh air. It’s
impressive how true to reality the whole command line is. While it uses some
creative liberties here and there to make it fit into the game world, overall,
it might be a real command line interface that’s open in the game.

In this demo, you have a few tasks to complete. Most of these tasks involve
fixing various things. One task is highly dependent on the command line. This
was quite easy for me since, like I said, I know how to use a command line.
Visually, it’s a bit tricky during the tutorials in the network view since it’s
not really clear/easy on how you can scroll up or down while in the network
view. Using the mouse mostly scrolls around the network map. I think an easier
way to scroll up and down in the terminal could be useful there. Also, when you
have to input a command that’s longer than the terminal screen, I’d start a
second line. Since, that’s how real life works. Or move the whole thing, and not
let the username stay.

Final thoughts and future wishes

Overall, the demo is quite short. If you don’t know what you are doing and
exploring everything, it will take you mostly two hours to complete. But if you
know what to do, you can finish this in 10 minutes. Yet, the impression I got
from the stream hasn’t changed. This game has quite a lot of potential but it
needs some polish here and there.

There are some minor things like some objects not being solid and Ama being able
to run through them, but there are also more major issues. The elevator bug the
developer Marc mentioned during the stream, happened to me. Ama didn’t go up
with the elevator and she was stuck. I think it was related to another bug I
encountered where the head of IT got stuck in an animation loop. Somehow it was
like Ama was near him while Ama was walking in other parts of the station. I
don’t know what exactly triggered that, and I have replayed the demo trice to
try and get it back into that bugged state, but I was unable to find the cause
and I was unable to replicate it.

Currently, there is one way to save the game. There are several terminals in
this demo where you can save your game. You only have one save slot. There is
also no manual saving of the game. So, remember that. You can also only load
from the main menu.

Reviewing a demo is always tricky to do. Especially if the game is still in
development, since you never know for sure how the final game is going to look
like. Yet, this demo is extremely promising. The puzzles where a lot of fun and
after playing the demo, I had the same feeling that Klamath had at the end of
the stream. I want to play more or similar games like this.

I could start talking about how the sound effects are amazing but there isn’t
enough music yet. But, at one hand, the lack of music really sells the
atmosphere of the game a lot more but on the other hand, the music during the
terminal sections is really enjoyable. But, I’m sure that in the full game we
shall see more music.

Just like I’m convinced that when the full game releases and the players find
bugs, they will get fixed. While I was talking with Marc during the stream, I
really felt the passion for creating this game and how he wants to make it the
best experience it can be for his players. So, if you are interested in this
game after reading this article in any way shape or form, I highly recommend
that you give this game a chance, play the demo for yourself and give the
developer feedback via his Discord or any other of his official channels.

I can’t wait to see and play the final game. Various things got revealed and
talked about during the stream and I have to say, it was an amazing experience
and conversation. I was already interested in seeing this game when it was on
KickStarter but now that I have played the demo, I think we are on a winner
here. This game will put an interesting twist on the point-and-click genre and
will be interesting to anyone who enjoys adventure games with a sci-fi influence
or just enjoy more unique puzzle games.

I want to thank Marc for reaching out to me and talking about his unique
project. You can be sure that when the full version releases… me and Klamath
will play through it and most likely stream it. And I’ll write a more in-depth
article on the final product. Since, I might have not talked quite in-depth in
this article but I want to hold off my final opinions when the game is fully
released.

If you have read my article, played the demo and/or watched our stream, I’m
curious, what did you think about this game? Feel free to talk about it in the
comments. Am I overhyping the game or overlooking flaws? Or is there something
you’d love to see in the full game?

And with that said, I have said everything about the game I want to say for now.
I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it
as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another
article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

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REVIEW: HYPNOSPACE OUTLAW (PC – STEAM) ~ DREAMING UP NOSTALGIC INVESTIGATIONS

Steam store page – Wikipedia – Official website

So, when I’m writing this, it is 2024. I turned 31 years old back in February. I
still love playing video games and surfing the internet since I was a young lad.
Besides that, I also have a fascination for anything that has to do with dreams
and their meanings. And then a game called Hypnospace Outlaw turns up on my
radar. A game that promises to bring back the early years of the internet that I
remember. Not only that, we are going to have to moderate the internet with a
new technology that allows people to surf the internet while they are dreaming.
We have to play as an unnamed enforcer to keep the internet safe and on top of
that, we can create our own pages and mod this game easily. But before we start
spending time on that, let’s find out if the base game is actually good and if
it’s worth to start playing this game or if it’s something we should skip. Also,
feel free to leave your thoughts and/or opinions on this article and/or the game
in the comment section down below. Besides, dear enforcer and MerchantSoft, this
isn’t harassment, this is a fair review/critique of the game. Removing this from
HypnoOS isn’t the solution.

Dreaming Up Nostalgic Investigations

In this game, you play as an unnamed enforcer for MerchantSoft. A company that
developed a headband that allows users to surf the web in their dreams. Your
goal is to clean up the HypnoSpace for everybody. You start in late 1999, where
your first case is assigned. When your first case is assigned, you are left to
your own devices, and you can explore the internet by yourself. And let me tell
you, there is a lot of internet to explore.

The story of this game is fascinating. You get to dive and explore through
various pages on the internet about various things. A long time before social
media was a thing and everybody had a website for their own creations. The
HypnoSpace has several zones, with each their own theme. If you remember AOL,
you will know what I’m talking about.

If you want to get the most out of this game, I highly advise you to take your
time with this game. Don’t rush it at all. This game is sadly rather short if
you only follow the main story of the game. It’s only 6 hours long and shorter
if you know what you are doing. I mean, the speedruns are only around 11
minutes. The strength of this game is the depth it has. This game has three main
chapters, and there are clear triggers that separate the chapters.

The deeper you dig and the more you read up, the more interesting lore gets
revealed. I actually started a second playthrough to try and find the things I
missed. And honestly, this game is one that gets ruined by playing it with a
guide in any sort or form. Do not play this game with a guide. It’s a lot less
rewarding if you play it with a guide in your first or second playthrough. The
wonder of getting lost in all of these pages is just so nostalgic.

Now, while I was playing, I was wondering if it would appeal to the younger
players out there. I’m somewhat on the fence about that. While it tackles a lot
of subjects that are still somewhat relevant, I honestly think that it’ll mostly
click with those who grew up with the internet of the ’90 to early ’00. With
that said, I think that it still might click with the younger people, but know
that the internet was very different back then.

Point-And-Click Detective

This game is a point-and-click adventure game in any sense of the word. You get
a case, and you have to explore the internet to see if anyone broke the rules or
not.

Each infraction you find, will reward you with HypnoCoin. You can use these
coins to buy various things in the Hypnospace. This can go from stickers,
wallpapers, themes, applications to so much more. But be careful, it’s quite
possible that some of these downloads are infected with malware. And back then,
malware was a lot more visual and less aimed at serving you a lot of ads or
stealing your information.

The controls of this game are quite easy. You mostly click with your mouse and
input things sometimes in the search bar. If you know how to do basic things
with a computer, you’ll very quickly find your way around with this game as
well. While I sometimes struggled with opening apps, I didn’t have too much
trouble with the controls. Thankfully, there are some options to tweak the
controls to your liking, like disabling that double-clicking opens apps. But,
I’m a Windows user and the double click to open apps is just hardwired in my
brain.

Visually, this game really looks like you are playing with the old internet.
When I noticed that there was a mod that changed the OS into Windows 95, oh boy,
I was sold. There are various themes for the OS in this game, and they go from
amazing to silly. There is even a fast food theme. Now, if you read that this
game is mostly created by a team of 5 people, it’s even more impressive. Not
only that, one of the main designers of Dropsy is part of the team.

The creativity of this game never ceased to amaze me. Let me continue on the
trend of the visuals and say that the little details on how the webpages look is
just so realistic. The little typo’s here and there, the rabbit holes you can
jump down, the crazy visuals on various pages… Even the “help me, I can’t remove
this” and “Test 1 2 3″… I made me crack up and remember my early days when I
used to write webpages in plain HTML with barely any coding knowledge as a young
teen.

While I knew that wiggling the mouse sped up the loading of the webpages, I just
never really did. I just enjoyed the webpages loading slowly and having that
experience again when I was a teenager before Facebook or any other big social
media started to take over. Yes, even before MySpace. While I only experienced
the late “pre-social media internet”, I do have amazing memories of it.

On top of that, you have the amazing wallpapers and sticker packs you can buy
and play around with. With this, you can really make your desktop your own. But,
something that really triggered memories for me were the viruses you can
encounter. Back as a young teen, I was a lot less careful in what I downloaded
and seeing the visual mess some viruses can create in this game, it triggered
some nasty memories.

Memories like how one time, I got a very nasty variant of the SASSER worm and
each time I installed something new, my computer would lock up and crash. Yes,
even when you tried to re-install Windows, it locked up and crashed the
installer. After a lot of digging, I found that it was caused by a program
starting with boot and I had to screw out my hard drive, connect it with
somebody’s computer and then remove the start-up file from there. I also had a
piece of malware that looked like the ButtsDisease virus in this game. Where it
started to change all the text on a webpage to another word. Oh man, those were
the days.

So, during your investigations you can encounter various things. Things like
people breaking the rules, and you have to report those. You mostly need to
focus on one of 5 categories. Copyright infringement, harassment, illegal
downloads/malware, extra illegal commerce and illegal activity. Each law gets
several infractions, and you do have to look for them. At one moment, I really
that to take notes. I really have to say, taking notes for this game is really
helpful, you even have the notes’ app in HypnoOS.

Sticking in your brain

Now, something I have to commend the developers for in this game is that they
also took accessibility into account. Something I have to commend the developers
for as well is the amount of content in this game, even when the main story is
extremely short. I already talked about the visuals and how much I love them,
but the music in this game is something else.

Some of the music tracks are really stuck in my mind and I wouldn’t be surprised
that if I ever write another article in my favorite game music series, some of
them will pop up in that. Some tracks are real earworms and got stuck in my
brain. The music for some of the parody products in this game is so good, that I
wish they were real.

The music in this game is a mixture of various styles, and I find some of them
more catchy than the others, but it’s really impressive at how many styles there
are in this game. If you know that this game has over 4 hours of music in it,
that’s an amazing feat.

There is even a whole suite where you can create your own pages, music and mods
released by one of the main developers of this game. It works only on Windows
and you can read more about it on the itch.io page of Jay Tolen here. There were
even various community events where your stuff could appear as an Easter egg in
the main game. Yet, these tools are now part of the main game and are in your
installation folder.

Speaking about this, modding this game is extremely easy. There is even a build
in mod browser, and it’s a piece of cake to install and downloads mods. If you
use the in-game mod menu, you don’t have to reboot the game for most mods to
take effect. Just go to the main menu, choose the mods button and install the
mods you want. Now, there are a lot more mods out there then just what you can
find in the in-game mod browser, so check them out here.

The game has an autosave, it doesn’t really show when the game gets saved. There
are three save slots, so if you want to replay the game, you can pick another
save slot. Now, if there is one mod I highly advise is he expanded endgame cases
mod. This mod expands the game quite naturally and is a lot of fun and
additional challenge. But don’t read the description when you haven’t finished
the game, since it contains quite a lot of spoilers.

This game can be quite tricky. Sometimes the solution isn’t the easiest to find.
It’s even possible you don’t find the solution to every puzzle out there. Now,
there is a built in hint system for this game. It’s somewhat hidden to avoid
immersion breaking, but for a small HypnoCoin fee, you can get a hint to
progress. I really love this system, since I rather have you getting a crowbar
to get yourself unstuck than you getting a guide where it’s very easy to other
things and spoil the whole experience. Since the fun of this genre depends
highly on solving the puzzles with what’s given to you. If you want to get a
hint, just search hint.

Overall I have been extremely positive about this game, and I have to say that
overall this game is extremely well-made. I rarely found any moments where I
thought, this isn’t right. But does that mean that this game doesn’t have any
negatives? Well, sadly enough there are a few things I didn’t like about my
experience and that I want to talk about.

First of all, I wish the default text-to-speech voice wasn’t the default
language of your system if you aren’t English. I’m from Belgium and my
text-to-speech voice reads English extremely weird. Thankfully, I had the
English soundpack installed on my computer so after I went into the BIOS
settings, I was able to quickly change it to the English one and it sounds a lot
more natural and better.

Secondly, this is an issue in general with point-and-click games but the replay
value just isn’t here. Once you explored everything, you have seen everything.
There are various mini-games, but those are quickly beaten. While I personally
don’t really see this is a negative, since not every game needs high replay
value and sometimes playing it once and having the whole experience engulf you
is the idea… I want to mention it, if somebody is looking for replayable games.

Third, you can find more infractions than what’s required to close the case.
While I can understand that the game doesn’t tell you how many other things
there are out there for immersion reasons, as somebody who wanted to experience
everything, I was sometimes a bit annoyed that I couldn’t make sure I found
everything. If only there was an option you could toggle to see completion
percentage or something of that nature. Since, because of this, it’s possible to
lock yourself out of achievements or content in this game.

Yes, this game has achievements and some of them are extremely tricky to get. It
took me a lot of researching and exploring in HypnoSpace to find all the
material. Thankfully, taking notes really helped me to find it all.

And the final thing is that the final chapters of this game feel a bit rushed
and undercooked. One of the final cases is a breeze to solve if you have written
notes during your playthrough and it feels like there is content cut out of the
game. The ending comes a bit out of nowhere and if you didn’t explore everything
or didn’t register certain things, the ending won’t make sense to you and it
will loose it’s impact. Thankfully, the mod I shared earlier resolves this to a
degree.

That’s all the negative I could say about this game, in my honest opinion. When
this game clicks with you, it clicks really well and doesn’t let go at all. But,
I’ll leave my final thoughts after the summary of this review. So, I think it’s
high time for that since I have touch upon everything I wanted to in this
review.

Summary

The bad:

-Text-to-speech should use English by default

-It’s possible to miss content or lock yourself out of it.

-The game is rather short.

-Rushed ending.

The good:

+ Amazing nostalgic trip

+ Amazing music

+ Fantastic writing

+ Easy to use mod tools

+ Great puzzles

+ Great controls

+ …

Final thoughts:

Hypnospace Outlaw is an amazing nostalgic point-and-click adventure trip through
the late ’90’s internet. This game might not be for everyone, but when it
clicks… Oh boy does it really click. Now, this is also a game you shouldn’t
rush. The charm of this game is in all the little details and references that
are hidden in the pages and the world building of this game.

While the game is rather at the shortside for point-and-click games, I don’t see
it as a big problem to be honest. The journey that this game took me on was a
lot more worth it to me than having a long game. Since, I think it would have
lost it’s charm if this game kept going and going.

While I personally have more memories with the internet time period that came
right after it, the developers are already working on the sequel to this game
called Dreamsettler. I honestly can’t wait to play that one, since the quality
that this game has is just top notch. The music is catchy, the visuals are
amazing and it alls comes together in an amazing nostalgic trip that makes you
want to play more.

There are some minor blemishes on this game, but you can work with them. Like I
said before, when this game clicks, it really does click extremely well. I’d
compare my experience with games like There Is No Game or SuperLiminal. Amazing
small titles that leave a lasting impact on those who play it. All of these
games are passion projects that turned out amazing and get a recommendation from
me.

If you enjoy playing unique point-and-click games and/or if you have nostalgia
for the old ’90’s internet, I highly recommend that you give this game a try.
While this game is on multiple platforms, I highly recommend that you play the
PC version since it has mod support that gives you even more toys to play with
and expands the game even more.

I had a blast with this game and it’s a breath of fresh air for me. I’m angry at
myself that I rushed my playthrough, but now I have installed several mods and
I’m so going to replay this game after I have published this article. I also
want to earn every achievement in this game, since I really want to see
everything. I’m also extremely hyped for the sequel to this game and I can’t
wait to start playing that, since that is going to be an even bigger nostalgic
trip for me than this game. And with the amazing set of developers behind this
game, I think we get another gem in our hands.

And with that said, I think it’s high time to wrap this article up. I want to
thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I
enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but
until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 100/100

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Posted on May 12, 2024 by NekoJonezPosted in Articles, Personal, ReviewsTagged
001, accessability, AOL, arpegi, buttonsmashers, cases, click, controller,
differences, dreamsettler, dropsy, ending, enforcer, extended, free, game,
games, gaming, hint, how, hypno, hypnos, hypnospace, Hypnospace Outlaw PC game
impressions., internet, jea, Jonez, jonez001, jonezjea, lasch, laterlevels,
mage, media, merchantsoft, michael, microsoft, mods, more, neko, NekoJonez,
Nintendo, no, normalhappenings, nostalgia, nostalgic, oldschool, outlaw, patrol,
pixels, play, playstation, point, review, robots, rocks, sony, spinoff, spoiler,
switch, system, teentopia, tendershoot, The, Video Games, walkthrough, well,
Xbox, zane, zones. 2 Comments

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