Report 38: Lightning round
I’ve been wanting to do this for a while now, essentially taking some shorter titles off my backlog. Here goes nothing.
Well, that was… pointless. You find drawing tools, you “draw” stuff you’re demanded to, you get randomized grades… and then it’s just over. It’s one of those “i’m trying to be weird” game, but it doesn’t do much interesting with its’ weirdness and just abruptly “ends”, and you’re left in the game world which feels even less empty than your average Yume Nikki map. Nothing particularly funny, strange or interesting about it.
Meh.
It’s a… choose-your-own-adventure-game? I wouldn’t call it bad, but it also wasn’t particularly funny or interesting, it didn’t look good, and, as a matter of fact, it was miiiiiindnuuuuuuumbiiiiinglyyyyyy boring. While the secret payoff was kinda cute, these 2 hours felt like eternity.
It’s a surprisingly fun (for what it’s worth) indie action game. You fight enemies, collect energy orbs and upgrade your skills. Most of your weapons possess terraforming ability, changing the landscape of the level. While it can be clunky and really cheap at times, it still was unexpectedly interesting. Too bad it’s one of those games that weren’t finished and abandoned by the dev for some reason.
This game is uuh… bonkers. At the first few seconds I thought it would be something along the line of Another World/Flashback tributes, but boy was I mistaken for the most part. It felt like few unfinished games were slapped together into this bizarre mix. Anime girls (which are drawn pretty nicely), arcade-y parts (tons of them), black humour (pretty weird, just like I love it), arkanoid segments (huh?)… And it’s all presented in a such a fast-paced fashion you rarely get bored (only if you’re not achievement hunting, there’s a couple of difficulty spikes to ruin the fun). Not to mention that the game can be kinda hard at times - although not merciless enough to completely stop you dead in your tracks.
Overall, it’s sometimes crude, but still pretty insane and fun ride to get through. The ending was kinda abrupt, but whatever.
This is a pretty good-looking indie point’n’click with surrealism vibes that kinda go nowhere in the end sadly.
I’m not sure if it’s designed good. MC refuses to do some of the actions at random, items dissapear from your inventory at random (this is mostly the final parts of the game). But the progression here is kinda weird - I never got to use some of the items I found. And according to hints I found on Steam discussions, it’s not that I missed a big chunk of gameplay by locking myself on the negative/neutral ending only. There’s three endings, and you can get a good one if you don’t do the thing I did (and of course, my most recent saves were waaaay before I did it and waaay after it happened). I’m not really upset about it, since all the endings are kinda meh.
Overall, it was okay, but could’ve been a lot better.
This is an anime-styled action platformer with puzzles (and some of them are somewhat decent). It’s very short (6 short levels), it has nice artstyle and uuh… cute voice acting? I swear most of the phrases sounded like they were translated to english from the other language, and I think that it actually is the case.
The game feels janky sometimes, but it was never bad enough to turn me off completely.
It’s a short and pleasant indie title. I don’t think it’s worth the full price though.
It’s a really trippy rhythm (I guess?) game. The soundtrack and the game’s design look very fitting.
Don’t even try it if you suffer from epilepsy or similar condition.
It’s not really “completeable” besides the high score achievements, and while I was nowhere near getting them, I think that was enough of that game for me.
Another walking simulator that is done by the numbers. It’s not bad, but it definitely doesn’t stand out in any way. The story is just the usual sentimental plot and it’s barely there.
Well, at least I got it for free and it’s really short, so who am I to complain.
This is a short VN/puzzle game from the russian developer. It’s a satire on the recent Steam’s hentai puzzle games boom. Ironically, I was ignoring this title for a while because I was thinking it’s just another hentai puzzle.
It’s somewhat fun, but way too short and ends too abruptly for no reason.
It has an uncensored patch on the dev’s Discord.
It was a bit amateurish, but surprisingly engaging horror-ish adventure. It has a “remake” version, but I played the original since the achievements weren’t working in the remake - so the typos, bugs and some other things I’ve encountered may not be present in the remake. The puzzles were never too hard, it’s mostly story-driven (but you’ll have to solve some of them that are easily missable and make the not-really-obvious-in-your-first-playthrough decisions to reach the game’s good ending). As I’ve said, the plot kept me interested enough and went some weird places before the ending.
Overall it was pretty fun, but I wish I could play the remake version, which is - presumably - better.
SG win!
It’s a horror adventure game that gets dangerously close to being a straight-up ryona game in the spirit of Demonophobia and such. It’d be kinda weird to say I actually really liked it..?
The “plot” is just there. This game never takes itself too seriously, and that really shows at the final parts. The art is great - and not only the gallery unlocks, but the pixel art too. There’s a bit of (not very detailed) nudity and TONS of gore.
The english translation is hilariously bad and only adds to the charm.
Overall, it’s short, fun (if you like this very specific kind of “fun”), and I really enjoyed it.
It’s a somewhat decent platformer with easy puzzles. The art is pretty good and disturbing at times. The game itself can be pretty hard and annoying at some segments but never to the point of being frustrating. There’s a weird delay when you’re turning around, and that sure takes time to get used to.
I’m not doing the no-death-achievements, since I hate them. Overall, I had more fun with the game than I expected to.
This is a short (and pervy) bullethell-sidescrolling-shoot’em-up (phew that’s a mouthful). The plot is… there. It’s mostly just some magic school nonsense with girls being… really friendly to each other. Like, being REALLY close.
Without going into details, the pervy stuff is pretty open about itself, and thankfully, the game art isn’t detailed enough for it to be censored in one way or another. Just three words: girls in loincloths (although it’s barely a loincloth imo).
The art is cute, the music is pretty good too, and the overall indie feel to it is quite nice too.
The gameplay isn’t especially hard if you have any experience with bullethell. Though it’s challenging enough - at least for the fourth, last level to be a hurdle.
Overall, it was pretty good.
Another one of these “found phone”-type games. The writing felt somewhat forced and fake, didn’t bother with music and turned it off (it’s honestly distracting), the puzzles were mostly password-based (I mean, there’s not much to chew on with the phone theme anyway).
The plot is one of those where you see it all from a mile away as soon as you read the disclaimer before starting the game. Empowering and discussing touchy subjects is great and all, but man, was that even duller than Gone Home. And it’s not like I can’t stand slice-of-life-plots, I really enjoyed Shimanami Tasogare manga that deals with somewhat similar topics without being too heavy on the plot, so that can’t be the case. Either way, it was pretty boring.
Overall, it’s not really bad, but be prepared to read a lot and don’t expect anything sudden or interesting to happen - you’re better off playing Simulacra or something if you do.
You’ve heard it folks, it’s a kinetic visual novel. It has a pretty sappy (and a pretty predictable, in my opinion) story. Despite its’ short length, I was pretty bored most of the time. I’ve got it for free at some giveaway (not SG) and it wouldn’t end up in my library any other way, so it’s safe to say it’s just not my kind of story.
The writing is somewhat decent - I guess? I’m not exactly an ENL to judge. There were some interesting moments spread throughout. I still feel the love story was kinda clumsily inserted.
It could’ve been done a bit better technically - there are some moments when character sprites should be removed from the screen at this point, but they’re not. It was somewhat distracting. Although the backgrounds are okay too, they clearly could use some simple changes - there are some scenes that are supposed to take place during night time, and it’s clearly still a day depicted on some of the backgrounds.
Overall, it’d be an easiest skip for me if it wasn’t free and in my library already.
Really liked that one. It’s really hard to boil genre down to one word, but the closest thing would be puzzle game with side-scroller elements, even if it’s much more than that. It’s not very long, but there’s quite a few things to explore and find. I’m really glad I decided to stick with the game and complete it after I beat it initially. It sure didn’t turn out to be as short as I thought it would, but I enjoyed it too much to care about that.
Welp, that was Quake!
I have mixed feelings about it. Running around and shooting stuff was fun, but I don’t think I like game’s colour palette that much.
Really enjoyed the soundtrack. Too bad I found out that it exists after I beat the Steam version (which is dead silent).
It only had two bosses, and both of them kinda sucked. I mean, the game’s finale is basically a meme at this point.
I also had a nasty bug that deletes the runes you found at random. Turns out you can put the runes in your inventory with console commands and play GLQuake version so this won’t happen in the first place.
Overall, it turned out pretty much exactly how I imagined it to be.
It’s a fairly interesting point’n’click which shares common themes and mood with McCormick’s The Road (and even references it, I think). Let’s just say it was pretty bleak.
The plot and the dialogues are pretty good written. There’s not much going on in the terms of puzzles.
There’s five endings and they’re really convoluted to get - even with a guide, I couldn’t reach the last three. I also found all the notes (which is required for some endings) - at least I think I did, because the game never recognized it. So I’m kinda stuck there.
Either way, it was a pretty good story.
This is, essentially, an interactive cartoon with light resource gathering & management mechanics. And boy, was I surprised by that one.
The plot’s concept was really fun, and the game turned out to be pretty hilarious (at least, in my opinion). It doesn’t shy away from being kinda offensive, though, but the characters being antropomorphic animals do smooth things out a bit.
It’s really short since it’s one of those episodic games. Turns out this first episode came out a while back, and a new one is coming on February 2021. What a time to find this gem, huh.
If I had to point out something negative… First of all, the inventory stuff works kinda weird and can leave you with no items if you quit the game and then continue, so it would be best if you try to do it in one go and also don’t try to savescam your way out of gambling minigame. I really burned myself here. Though it’s not like your loot actually matters all that much beyond the achievement hunting, since the story seems to progress either way. Second of all, the game desperately needs the function of skipping dialogues. You can’t pause and neither can you skip them. So if you want to replay the game (like I do), you’ll have to suffer through the whole dialogues all over again. And that’s a shame, since many of the achievements demand contradicting things, rendering most of the achivements impossible for the single playthrough.
Also some additional animation could really help.
Overall, it was a really fun experience.
These guys really stepped up their game since Gone Home. This one provides a narrative that is way better structured and it feels more natural and interesting overall. I also happen to like sci-fi and space themes more, so here’s that.
Essentially it has the same feel as Gone Home, but the game is more linear. The exploration is somewhat limited, but there’s still stuff that you can miss (although it’s pretty hard to miss it - with few exceptions).
I liked the story, even though in the process it became pretty evident it’s not going to include any of the darker elements that I tend to like - as in SOMA, Dead Space, Alien Isolation, you know the stuff.
Overall, a very solid short game.
It’s a fast-pace twin-stick shooter/cutter. This turned out to be way more addicting than I was expecting. Once I got a little better, it turned out to be really fun. Cutting the bullets of your enemies and repel them back is extremely satisfying and cool.
The soundtrack is great and energetic, just as it needs to be.
It’s a pretty fun fighting game with cheesy story and the bare minimum of required features. The characters feel pretty unique for the most part. I wish it wasn’t so goddamn easy to accidentaly exit the game during story mode - maybe I would’ve completed it.
That took me much longer than I thought it would, but then again, it was pretty fun, actually. It’s a fast-paced quake/doom/dukenukem/whatever-ish fps.
While it was refreshing to finally see a shooter where you move and jump extremely fast, shooting enemies sometimes feels kinda… stiff? like in Borderlands, and the sword weapon feels especially clunky to use.
The level design could be a bit more interesting, since all of the levels are really barebones. The game was also supposed to be expanded further, but was abandoned for whatever reason. Either way, Episode 1 is long enough to get a feel for the game.
Even though it looks like I’m shitting on the game all the time, the main core - gameplay - was really hard and fun.
That was a neat little metroid clone (I guess?). It has unlockable abilities which help you get to the previously unreachable places, you know the deal.
Essentially there’s only one boss, but it’s colored differently and gets new abilities every time you fight a new one. The difficulty curve is not that steep as you learn to deal with his new attacks one by one.
Speedrun achievement? Take-no-damage-during-the-final-boss-fight achievement? Yeeeaaahh, I’ll skip these, thank you very much.
Overall, it was a pretty good game.
Shorter title my ass.
This is a spooky surival-ish horror. You wander through the town at night trying to find your sister and encountering a buttload of spirits instead.
The exploration aspect really shines here. It feels like some sort of a way more coherent Yume Nikki experience mixed with simplistic action and puzzle-solving. The feeling of discovery is really great, since the game barely tells you how to play it, and you just rely upon trial and error most of the time. You’ll learn how to avoid monsters and to use the items to your advantage, and even then, the game will throw some curveballs at you with its’ unique spirits’ encounters. It can be a little frustrating in some action parts, and replaying these segments over and over definitely bring down the spook factor a bit. Well, either way, it’s really entertaining to play either way.
The map isn’t very large, but it’s big enough and filled to the brim with little discoveries behind pretty much every corner.
There are downsides, still. The game isn’t really good at technical level and I’ve seen a lot of comments from people who struggle to even start the game. I’ve had issues with crashes after 10-15 minutes in, but it went away after I’ve set Win95 compatibility.
The second downside is the achievement hunt part. While all but one achievements are really fun and not that hard to get, the last one wants you to play the game for… 50 hours. Just in case, you’re gonna need 10-14 hours MAX to get every item in the game, and even less (6-7 hours) to complete the main storyline. It’s just like with the first Lucius game, where it wants you to play for 20 and 40 hours while clearly not having enough game content to justify it. You’re gonna have to idle the game whether you want to or not, if you want to complete it.
There’s also an occurence that made me miss one of the items in the game due to bug (it didn’t show up in my collection), and I felt pretty pissed about it, but when I found the last item from the collection, the achievement still popped up as if I’ve had it (you do pick up this item during the game, but you “drop it” if you fail to do the required task and you’ll have to try again next time). Either way, phew.
Overall, a really great game to scratch the spooky itch with some japanese folklore and urban legends-themed vibe.
Extremely simple and straightforward zombie defense game. It’s short, dumb and fun for what it’s worth. Truly a junk food of videogames.
Backlog progress status:
I plan to go back to just ignore them for the remake, hopefully its noticeable
From what I could gather by playing it first for a few minutes and reading the forums, it’s simply a polished version of the original and it’s not re-done from scratch. I mean, it won’t hurt to try it, it comes with the original game for free anyway. Achievements still don’t work though.
Yeah I read a little but seeing no achievements made me stick to the original version. I never had any problems or at least didn’t pay enough attention to any