More itch.io games, including finally reaching that 1700+ games bundle from six years ago (there were a few I bumped up after seeing SG giveaways for them, but only now have I properly gotten to the bundle chronologically).
SATAN LOVES CAKE is okay for a free metroidvania, though it can be kinda confusing at first because the right path has a few different branches that all dead-end until you go through the left path. Worse, it takes way too long to charge your weapon–and then you have to wait even longer for it to cool down before you can attack again! Sure, there’s an upgrade that reduces its charge time to what it should’ve been from the beginning, but you’ll need to spend your currency on progression powers first, including one that gets quietly added to the shop as you explore the second area and wonder how you’re supposed to get past all these new dead ends. The bosses could also stand to have less forced-waiting in their attack patterns.
Mobility is another platformer that’s really only okay because it’s free, since the levels are quite insubstantial for at least half the game. The goal is to touch all platforms in the level, but you’re really not doing much besides making basic jumps. There’s a hard mode, but that has the platforms disappear after you touch them, and given how aimless some of the levels can be, that’s the wrong way to increase difficulty for this type of game since it can take some trial and error to figure out which path the game expects you to go, so I’d still recommend playing on normal. The harder difficulties also remove checkpoints, which–as I’ve said many times in the past–doesn’t make games harder, only more tedious, so that’s another reason to stay on normal mode.
And now, a few of the bundle games. BIT RAT Singularity is mostly easy, but the last one-and-a-half puzzles are kinda tricky, even if the gameplay is quite sluggish. The rats ironically don’t have as much impact on the gameplay or story as the title and narration would lead you to believe, and the game does end on a cliffhanger, but don’t worry: the full game will come out sometime in 2018! XD So yeah, this is probably all it’ll ever be, and $2 is quite a stretch for how few tricky puzzles it has, but if you already got it in one of those bundles, I say give it a try.
EAT GIRL is kinda like Pac-Man but with more enemies and levels, and instead of one wave of dots lining every path, there are three-or-so waves of dots that only cover specific areas/patterns. It’s mostly okay, but Greg’s chasing pattern can be hard to get used to, and he makes such an annoying crunching noise that I used 7zip to overwrite those ogg files so I didn’t have to hear that noise constantly during those already-difficult levels. I also encountered a bug where the ghosts would sometimes chase you around a corner instead of stopping at the wall (which made a certain small postgame level very frustrating), but apparently, there was an update shortly after I downloaded the game that fixes the ghosts’ decision-tree, so maybe you’ll have a better time than I did. Also, postgame as a whole is kinda annoying since it requires revisiting certain levels with a new power you don’t get until after beating the game, but since you likely won’t remember which levels have those steel crates blocking secret areas, you pretty much have to do trial and error revisiting every stage until you’ve gone through all of them (and the postgame ending was quite disappointing). Postgame also includes a level with a wall of electric-volt shooters, and since the main game doesn’t familiarize you with them that much, it can take some trial and error for you to realize you need to rush forward and go near around half of them to make them put up their electric forcefield, thus delaying their volt-shots until after the other half shoot so that you don’t get trapped by an unavoidable wall of electricity and die. Again, its base price of $5 is a stretch, but it’s worth trying if you already got it in a bundle.
By the way, I’ve been trying to stick to games I’d at least somewhat recommend, but itch.io really pushes Lenna’s Inception hard for just how boring it is. Seriously, dungeon design struggles to be on par with the original Legend of Zelda for NES, and sometimes, it doesn’t even hit that low bar. For all the talk about procedural generation supposedly making games more replayable, a single run in this game felt like I was playing the same dungeon eight times over, just with a different texture pack and boss. Oh, and if you’re specifically looking for an easy romp, this game still won’t be for you since some of the bosses have unintuitive or cheap attacks, like the squid boss’s second phase where it turns into an invulnerable flying saucer and spams homing projectiles (it took a minute or two for the boss to finally use its tractor beam so my bombs would blow it up). Plus, the only way to access the postgame & good ending is to do a bunch of unintuitive stuff that you’d only maybe know about by wandering around the equally-bland overworld, or keeping a walkthrough handy from before you start the game since it’s very easy to lock yourself out of the postgame by accident, and the hint you get in the normal ending is too vague to be much use. Sure, a walkthrough would spoil the plot twist, but it’s also a fairly common plot twist that you’d easily figure out yourself during the bridge cutscene at the halfway point (or you may even figure it out before then). If you want a roguelite zeldaclone, I recommend Rogue Heroes: Ruins of Tasos instead (on sale, of course).
Lastly, On Rusty Trails is a platformer that actually stands on its own somewhat. You automatically walk on the walls/ceiling when you jump at them or walk to a ledge, and after a few levels, you get a suit that lets you switch between orange and blue, likewise toggling collision with same-color blocks and hazards–and even checkpoints! Speaking of, checkpoints are very frequent, maybe even more frequent than they need to be, but that’s not a problem. It’s not even a huge deal that you have to find a nearby token before you can activate a checkpoint, partly since the game doesn’t expand on this mechanic much and there’s almost always a nearby token that’s easy to see/obtain. You could try to beat the levels without spending any tokens, but I didn’t notice any aknowledgement the one time I did beat a level with all of its tokens, so I say just use the checkpoints as you encounter them. There is a difficulty curve here, but it’s very gradual, so it might take a couple worlds before the game starts being fun, but there are also seven worlds total, so it does get there. My main issue is that the last level of world six has green meteors fall way too fast for you to react, so you kinda have to memorize where they fall in order to get past. Also, the first two levels in world 4 weirdly barely have any checkpoints, making them kinda annoying to redo if you die there. (EDIT: And the momentum can be awkward at times). Still, this is a decent game, and even if you don’t already have it from one of those itch.io bundles, it’s still worth getting on its own on sale (it’s even also on Steam).