Amitte

Progress report: Second week of December ‘21 (a.k.a. Overstimulation!)

This post was due Tuesday. It is now Saturday, which should tell you how wrapped up I got with the last of my in-person classes, getting gifts and going back home for Christmas. I’ve been so busy and done with it for the past few days, all I wanted was to lie down, fall into a coma and wake up after Christmas. Or better yet, after the new year hits. Whichever really works. Anyway, here’s what I got done with back then:

Alpha Polaris: A Horror Adventure Game - You know it’s gonna be good when the title factors in descriptors for the game. In Alpha Polaris you control Rune, a young scientist researching polar bears. Coincidentally, he just so happens to be living at the same station - the titular Alpha Polaris - as people working to find and extract oil, which is sadly nothing more than an off-handed remark. Soon enough, things start going south after one of the researchers brings in some particularly morbid items, found during a trip down to the newly discovered crevasse. While it’s not state-of-the-art, I don’t think Alpha Polaris is the worst of point-and-click games out there, either. Its look is very dated, considering it only came out in 2015, but I find it appealing. The voice acting is decent, the 2D art expressive, the 3D character models - pretty good. Perhaps the cutscenes are the worst part, visually, but it’s one of those things you could figure would look the way it does. As for the puzzles, however… I quickly started using a guide, because not only is arctic research not really my thing, I found a good amount of solutions to be obtuse. If you’re not that particular about your point-and-clicks being straight-up amazing and you like ‘em lookin’ old-school, consider giving Alpha Polaris a try.

Freakshow: Anniversary - It’s only an “anniversary” release to the dev and whoever followed this project since the start. Otherwise, it’s a very confusing game that barely has a backstory (and the little that it does have, it doesn’t seem to want to elaborate upon). The art style is crude, the voice acting could be better and the minigame collection available on the side doesn’t seem to have any real relation to the whole thing. My personal “…what?” kinda standout, though, has to be the dev scraping the game this was previously and remaking it from the ground up… to later provide “commentary” in which he says “I don’t have any crazy development stories or anything”. Why on earth record this, then? Marvelous, truly marvelous.

Iron Snout - A 2D side-to-side (is that what you would call that?) button mashing fighting game, where you control a pig fending off hordes of wolves - wolves with knives, wolves with chainsaws, police officer wolves, Miley Cyrus wolves… wait, what? Ah yes, of all the things to date a game. I’m not really a fan of those kinds of games, but I’ve been sitting on this one for a while, not even expecting to be able to 100% it, yet as it turns out, I pulled through. If you like repeatedly challenging yourself to set high scores, this should be up your alley.

Mercury Blue: Mini Episode - A prequel to a point-and-click adventure game that seems to never have released, despite being slated for 2019. Having checked it out, though, I’m not exactly surprised. Me not being a fan of stories set in space aside, this game wasn’t nearly as funny as it seems to think it is. The robot’s personality lost me, on one hand he swears profusely, on the other gets scared for his life when appropriate… but then also goes back to swearing like nothing ever happened? Oh well. The voice actors really saved this experience for me and despite their personal websites being dead, I wish them the best of luck in finding more solid jobs in the future.

Not Heaven - Continuing the trend of promoting music through games, Not Heaven is a game-ified rap EP from Wealthy Relative. The way I got to experience it left me somewhat baffled and conflicted. To start off, the whole game is heavy on abstract visuals and with environments chock-full of various objects, the performance is bound to suffer. Considering I only have my trusty laptop (which is only a little over a year old by now, so not really outdated), this happened in most in-game locations. Not only was it tough to move around, I’ve also sat through almost all the songs playing while heavily stuttering. Your character can also take photos and paint around the place, but the aforementioned issues take all the joy out of trying it, my lack of creativity aside. Coupled with the bizarre (read: unpleasant to the ear) sound effects, it was all a pretty unsatisfying experience. I might try and give the EP a listen in the future, but I can’t really talk about whether or not I’d recommend this game.

Occult Crime Police - A homage to Ace Attorney, Occult Crime Police is a humorous mystery-solving VN that has you investigating a murder at Base 24, the only place of true interest there ever was in Boomtown, USA. Controlling Miranda Warren, a sheriff in her forties, you’re going to want to help her recover from her performance on a case from years past, which has left an impression on the people of Boomtown; that being a plot point I wish the story could get back to, assuming there would be a continuation in the future. Anyway, in good ol’ AA fashion, OCP features highly expressive, animated sprites, testimony and persuasion segments, and most importantly, Nintendo-style text boop-baps! …meaning that even if I’ve barely ever touched AA, I still appreciated and had fun with OCP.

Only If - A puzzle game that I can’t honestly recommend, and not because I’m not big on puzzle games in the first place. Only If sets up an absurd premise - you play as Anthony, a young guy who goes to a party thrown by Sam, a girl he seems to be interested in, only to wake up the next day, still in her house, but quickly thrown into riddle-solving mode by the mysterious (and very snippy) Vinny - and at just about every step of the way, it asks of you a different set of skills - you’re going to be sneaking around, platforming and stuffing your head in trash cans. Yes, really. While I admire the fact that this story was told completely without using any kind of visual representation for any of the characters, there are a whole lot of downsides I can’t forget to mention. Despite being dialogue-heavy, Only If features no subtitles, which may be perhaps the most glaring negative. After that, there’s the fact of little-to-no direction regarding the puzzles, leading me to believe that the guide creators may just be superhuman. While I mentioned the lack of subtitles, the story isn’t really worth it, anyway. In the midst of all the back-and-forth Anthony and Vinny have, some derogatory terms that are frowned upon nowadays appear; naturally that is also a big “no”. The ending isn’t really worth all the hassle of the puzzling and other performance, in my opinion. And last, but not least, something’s up with the achievements, making it so that if you happen to die in a segment (or the entirety of the game leading up to that point, even) prior to getting an achievement, you will be forced to quit the game, validate its files and fulfill the requirements again. I fully admit to skipping one of the sections, because working under pressure really isn’t my thing, so if you happen to try this game out and find yourself in the same predicament, I would say it’s not worth the trouble of not skipping. In the end, though, I can’t recommend this game, unless you’re a huge puzzle nerd (especially with how abstract the ones in this game are) who is also willing to deal with the achievement thing.

Six Days of Snow - Inspired by Japanese literature from days long gone, Six Days of Snow tells the tale of Eiji, a little-known writer in search of inspiration and Reiko, the young girl working at the inn he stays at. Little did they know what those six days were going to have in store for them… “It’s been a while since I read anything from Ebi-hime and her work is still nothing short of amazing” is what I’d like to say, but… well, look back at the first part of that sentence. What I can say, though, is that the art is impeccable and the music - perfectly fitting. I feel like I should be able to say something more about this one, but since it sat around in my library being unfinished for about five years at this point, I’m just glad it’s done and over with.

SORE - A sequential adventure game that desperately seems to want to convey some kind of existential message, but ultimately fails on account of not having an actual story to go along with. There’s no way to really get to something hidden deeper, to put yourself in anything remotely close to a win stat and the achievements will have you doing ridiculously inconsequential things like sitting on the main menu screen for three minutes or pushing a loose brick 25 times. Can’t recommend this one to anybody.

Tennis Story - A half hour’s worth of memories that have been given new life in the form of a game. I can admire the work it took to create something like this (and seeing how dramatic it is, perhaps it demanded some reflection as well), but it’s barely a time-worthy experience, unless maybe you know the dev personally and/or are the model for one of the characters.

The Adventures of Nick and Willikins - Assume the role of Willikins, the Cambridge-schooled butler (the last of his kind, presumably) who dedicated his life to serving Nick, his ever so lazy and downright idiotic master. Seems like Nick Hall (yes, that is the name of the residence) is going to be greeting a brand new day, one like any other… until someone is mysteriously murdered! It’s up to Willikins to solve the mystery, because just about everyone else is busy being self-absorbed and, to add insult to injury, convinced of Willikins being lazy, terrible at his job and generally inadequate (all of which is rubbish, naturally, but he’s heard it so many times by now that he takes it in stride and moves on). Perhaps the way he reacts is what saved this game for me, as I tend to deeply dislike humor based around singling someone out and talking them down aggressively for seemingly no reason. The background art was nice, character art… less so. I found the voice acting decent and the sarcastic/witty remarks entertaining; I interacted with just about everything for the sake of hearing more commentary. There are two basic features most point-and-clicks have nowadays that this one didn’t - I couldn’t seem to skip dialogue whenever I found myself accidentally triggering the same piece again and it wasn’t possible to quick-walk between locations, either. Most importantly, though, it really felt like the ending was rushed. All of a sudden, you learn what happened aaand… it’s the end. No real resolution, no “and they lived happily ever after”. Considering it’s free, though, it’s still on the upper shelf, if you will. I’m curious to see if the devs are ever going to put out another game.

The Change Architect - Oh my god, I just… don’t care at all at this point. It’s another one of the “intense 10 minutes” stories, except this one has no direct link to the previous two. The overarching theme, however, stays the same, so I’m wondering if it’s close to the devs’ hearts or if they just want to trick us into thinking they feel for it. I don’t get the whole thing where I think I’m supposed to be wowed by the ability to change the camera’s position. The game is ten minutes long, why can it not do that for me? This time around, it also asked if I want my progress to be saved, should the kickstarter for the new title succeed. I instinctively said “yes”, but I’m still going to uninstall this after I’m done writing my piece, so, like, whatever, maaan.

To Burn in Memory - Now off the store in favor of the Anniversary Edition, To Burn in Memory is a text-based adventure… which is exactly where it lost me, so I caved in and after a short while of wandering around, I followed the path to the end, along with all the achievements. Not really enough to write a review, now, is it?

When the Darkness comes - Billed as “an experience without meaning”, When the Darkness comes is an… abstract? experimental? walking simulator, originally created not with the intent of being publicized, but as an outlet for its developer. Since at its core, it is an exploration of things such as depression or anxiety, naturally this experience isn’t for everyone. I only took interest in it after having watched a playthrough of it (which, as I was proven upon playing by myself, was merely partial) and despite having added it to my library, I didn’t expect to play it soon. I’m glad I played it, braved it, even. No idea how I managed to do that in the middle of the night! It’s not my place to say if this game did a good job of portraying mental struggles, much less when I consider that the presentation is supposed to only resonate with the dev himself, really. It features a Stanley Parable-esque narrator and minor file manipulation for enhanced fourth-wall breaking (comparable to Doki Doki Literature Club), so if you’re into either of those, not currently suffering from mental health issues and not too big of a scaredy-cat, I will gladly recommend you give this one a shot.

See you next week! :)