Kaleith

January 2018 Update

A bit of a weird month, with a few days of furious gaming intertwined with 2 week+ long periods with no playtime whatsoever. I thought I would end up playing only 2-3 games, instead I got 8 kills. A good start of the year :3

Part of the merits go to this month’s great theme and the support I had from an anonymous sheep.
It was surprisingly fun to play 2 games alongside them and share stories and impressions. It also helps that I mostly played very good games, once I started them I couldn’t stop ^_^

Night in the Woods

13 hours, 16 of 31 achievements

What do I even say? Night in the Woods is nothing short of a little masterpiece in character design and storytelling, and I loved it so much because of it.

The problem I find in most videogames is that characters seem to be conjured out of thin air just to fill a certain role, and have no complexity or background to them.

What NITW does differently is have the various characters hint at past events and experiences, use inside jokes and nicknames to make them and their relationships look real and believable.

What's also believable and incredibly relatable is the topic of those events and experiences: this game doesn't have a story filled with dragons and princesses to save but it's simply what happens in the everyday life in Possum Springs; the only demons in the game are inside the heads of the rural town's folks, worried about their debts, an ill relative, the possibility of losing their job and so many other common, down-to-earth fears.
It's really surprising how I kept telling to myself "oh, I know someone that's experiencing that exact thing" over and over whenever I found out something more about every character; that's a testament to how REAL this game gets ^^

My final point is about the attention to detail, with small things like animations and subtle sound cues sprinkled here and there to emphasize some of your actions (one of my favorites is walking on a rope, with your character spreading her arms to keep her balance and short string sounds whenever you take a step). Those really show that a lot of love was poured into this game, making it an absolute joy to experience.

Rakuen

11 hours, 15 of 15 achievements

Speaking of absolute joys to experience, here comes Rakuen, another game that gets a huge recommendation.

Rakuen gets compared a lot to To The Moon and there are definitely a lot of similarities: they're both story-driven games made in RPGMaker with nice music and they make you cry a lot. After playing both I firmly believe Rakuen is my new favorite when it comes to this particular subgenre.

The story is about a young boy that lives in a hospital and reads every day, with the help of his mother, from the titular fantasy book Rakuen.
In the book a young child goes on a journey to wake up Morizora, the forest guardian, which has the power to grant his wish to ride on a magical ship and reach the island of Rakuen, where the rest of the child's tribe is.

The Boy and his mom decide to go on the same journey between reality and fantasy, and in the process they learn about and help the other patients in the hospital.

If that description looks a bit vague it's because I don't want to spoil much. I'll just say the characters and story are great and those are supported by (sometimes) gorgeous art and an absolutely amazing soundtrack. The pacing is just right once you get past the first boring 30-40 minutes, so if you end up trying it out (you should) just bear with it :)

Cat Quest

8.2 hours, 6 of 12 achievements

I cat believe how many cat puns they managed to squeeze in this thing. Unlike most “cat games” on Steam though, this one is actually decent.

At its core Cat Quest is an Action RPG game with dozens of sidequests to complete and dungeons to explore. The mechanics are very simple (there’s even a phone version available!) with combat basically boiling down to slashing the enemies and get out of their attack and spell patterns, which are helpfully highlighted before striking.

It’s not a game that I’d recommend if you’re looking for hardcore gameplay and challenge (although there are challenge modes unlocked for new mew game+ but it’s definitely a good pick for some casual-ish fun and A LOT of eye-rolling to cat puns :3

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

4 hours, 6 of 60 achievements

I only played one run of the game, and I enjoyed the trip down memory lane to when I used to play some RPG game books. I used a guide to get through it, which kinda defeats the original intent of them being sort of “trial and error” but I don’t really have the patience to have a lot of time go completely wasted for no fault of my own anymore.

I don’t think I can judge the game from that experience, so I’ll just say that the fact that the game shows you a lot of cool characters to start the journey with, but most of them are only available after either buying a dlc or grinding some profile-permanent currency left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth >_>.

Ambre - a heartbreaking kinetic novel

51 minutes, 6 of 6 achievements

This very short visual novel was (sort of) recommended by some people here, which were careful to mention that you should keep reading past the first 10-15 minutes to “get” the game.
I would have dropped the VN without that warning, but that’s not to say I actually liked it once done with it. I believe the “plot twist” doesn’t add anything to the story but is actually a detriment to it, although I guess it can be plauded for experimenting…?

Gravity Ghost

2 hours, 8 of 19 achievements

According to the store page Gravity Ghost is a “gravity hopper”. A weird definition, but it effectively describes the main mechanics of the game ^_^

The game has almost 100 levels and the goal of each is to reach a door unlocked by finding the key (a star). There are planets scattered around and you use them to navigate the levels, using them as platforms or making use of their gravitational pull to orbit around.

As you progress you unlock some special abilities to help you navigate levels more accurately, and there are also several types of planet - each with their own unique properties -
to help things stay fresh.

It was a very relaxing and “zen” experience, so much that I was surprised at seeing I played over 2 hours of it as time seemed to fly.

Papo & Yo

3.7 hours, 6 of 10 achievements

A 3D puzzle adventure sort of-platformer with a “kid and creature” interaction à la The Last Guardian and a serious story narrated through allegories.

It was recommended to me as a short but nice game to beat in a gaming night, and boy it was nice :)

The gameplay has a series of pretty straightforward puzzles and some light platforming to it.
What steals the show is the warped and unexpected representation of elements of the world the protagonist Chico lives in, which makes it a joy to keep playing and seeing new whimsical stuff.

I don’t understand why the game made a big deal of the “reveal” at the end, as the topic of the games is given away right in the opening scenes >_>

Trent

Nothing anonymous about that sheep!

I also really enjoyed Papo & Yo. Played it with my young children, who ofc didn’t understand the subtext of the subject matter.

Kaleith

If you take out the subtext only the whimsical parts remain, so I’m sure they enjoyed it except for the “angry monster” parts I guess, they made me a little uncomfortable too :p

EvilBlackSheep

The 2 games we played really were so good, I’m still not sure how everything else is gonna live up to it. If you wanna play another game along since the theme still runs for this month, feel free to let me know, it was really cool discussing the games while we advanced.

Your post also remind me I need to get to cat quest soon, because i’m really finding it super cute.

Oh and totally unrelated but I thought about you earlier today while shopping for hot sauce

Kaleith

If you wanna play another game along since the theme still runs for this month, feel free to let me know

I think I might go for some of the games in the monthly, I had Black the Fall and Tacoma whitelisted, Norwood Suite looks pretty interesting too

I need to get to cat quest soon, because i’m really finding it super cute.

Yeah, it’s incredibly cute, although the gameplay itself gets repetitive pretty fast. I like some games to be just mindless fun and that fit the bill perfectly also cats

I thought about you earlier today while shopping for hot sauce

That’s because I’m a hot cat right? It’s not related to the link or anything

EvilBlackSheep

Oh, I’m definitely interested in both Tacoma and probably Norwood suite. I haven’t activated anything yet from the monthly but i’ll check out the games tomorrow. I was glad i didn’t buy Tacoma yesterday on chrono.gg. Anyway, I’ll be happy to play along, i’ll catch you on steam :)

Kaleith

I thought that weird chrono sale was a way to cash in before the value of the game inevitably dropped due to a bundle. I’m glad I was right ^_^

EvilBlackSheep

Yeah i had the “oh that one is gonna be in the monthly” feeling when i saw the sale. I’m glad too. #ZeroRegrets

skanda

That’s one proper update!

Kaleith

That’s one proper comment!

uguleley

Damn. I’ve been keeping my eye out on Night in the Woods since many here have praised it, but your summary really sold it to me. I can imagine how nice it feels to dig into a game world like that. I remember playing that little side project from the same dev (Lost Constellation) and I really like their style of doing things.

Nice job with 8 beaten games! You might be a chubby cat, but not a lazy one.

Kaleith

Yeah just play it, it’s great. Lost constellation is one of the “minigames” that they released while working on the full game, it’s actually included in the start menu in NITW :p

You might be a chubby cat, but not a lazy one.

IT’S FUR OK

Kaleith

That reminds me of when I brushed my cat, I always ended up with a spare cat like in that photo :3

uguleley

As much as I thought I knew cats, that’s a very unconventional way to reproduce.

Kaleith

They can’t really reproduce through hand-holding like humans do

Blue Ϟ Lightning

You’re description of night in the woods made me go to steam to wishlist it before remembering it already is…
along with Rakuen

still a buli tho and your stupid postu smells like smelly tuna dumbo

Kaleith

*pat pat*