Progress report: Third week of July ‘19 (a.k.a. Time is Passing, Way Too Fast!)
What do you mean it’s already the last week of July?! I know I went to sleep and woke up a few times, but really? Time to panic!
To shortly describe what’s been going on in my life - I’ve been trying to divide my time between the devices I’m gaming on equally, which sort of led me to having a terrible sleep schedule… And my feet get numb real fast, every dang day. Not an actual medical condition, just plain annoying.
Anyway, I haven’t stopped playing games! Here’s what I did this week:
- be you
0.5 hours playtime
no achievements
- Boobserman
0.8 hours playtime
- Downfall
11.7 hours playtime
- Shrinking Pains
0.7 hours playtime
no achievements
- The Mammoth: A Cave Painting
0.1 hours playtime
- They Came From The Moon
2.0 hours playtime
- What Never Was
0.7 hours playtime
be you - A 12 year-old in visual novel form. I can’t tell if any of it is serious or not.
Boobserman - I’m pretty sure this is reminiscent of another, much more popular game that I can’t remember the name of right now. In Boobserman, you’re some kind of weird construction worker who undresses graffiti of cute girls by planting bombs on them. Simple enough, right? Well, the game isn’t. The first level introduces you to what you’re going to be doing, but from the second level onwards the difficulty spike makes the game pure rage material. That’s because an enemy appears - a character with a paintbrush, here dubbed a “censor” - he’ll trace your movements and cover up what you already uncovered. The smallest touch between the player character and the censor - game over. You can also blow yourself up with your bombs, but that happens a lot more rarely if you’re moving fast enough. Additionally, the game uses a simple positive/negative powerup system - increase/decrease player speed/bomb size and such. I beat the game in less than an hour and that’s okay for me for now. If I’m ever really bored, I might try going for the remaining achievements - not blowing myself up is way easier than not getting caught by the censor.
Downfall - Another game from R Michalski, this time focusing on Joe and Ivy Davis, whom you briefly meet in The Cat Lady. (Or maybe you’re surprised to meet her in Downfall? Questions, questions.) The premise is simple enough - Joe and Ivy are a married couple, struggling to stay together due to Ivy’s sickness dominating their life. When on a holiday trip, they need to hide away from the oncoming storm and therefore decide to stay at a place named Quiet Haven, which, they will soon learn, is not really true to its name. Downfall is a linear point-and-click, short enough that after playing through it three times I’m almost certain I could speedrun it. For the most part of the game, you’re in control of Joe, who is on his quest to reconcile with his wife - and there are three ways you can do that. You can be the best husband she could ever have, an absolute asshole who doesn’t care about her or fail at being either and end up somewhere in the middle. As far as undrground titles like this one go, the voice acting and music are simply amazing. Well, for the most part. For example, I could see Joe perfectly from the more calm and collected side, but never the darker side - his voice actor is way too soft-spoken for that. That being said, 3/4 of the voice cast are people who played either The Cat Lady or the original Downfall and loved it - personally, I feel like that’s a great move on Michalski’s part. Furthermore, there are dozens of references to different franchises throughout the game, since Michalski is not only a horror nerd, but likes to see people speculate as well. Needs more The Shining, in my opinion. Also, I’m already writing this down way later than I should be, so I’ll say this - it’s become another favorite of mine, I’m gonna go back to play the original one some day and here’s a really cool interview with the dev. Oh, and I really, REALLY can’t wait to play the third game of the series, Lorelai! It’s oughta be good!
Shrinking Pains - A short vignette portraying the life of a person with an eating disorder. Ultimately, it never ends well. Reminded me how frustrating and disgusting I find eating disorders.
The Mammoth: A Cave Painting - Possibly the shortest game I have ever played on Steam. In the five minutes it’ll take you to finish this game, you’ll experience the feeling of adventure, loss, and newfound strength, all of it illustrated indeed not unlike a cave drawing and narrated by a beautiful female voice. Okay, this probably sounded a lot more poetic than I meant for it to, but you get my point.
They Came From The Moon - A shitty Lemmings/Flockers-type game. No joke, it looks and plays like a grade schooler’s first (and still) unfinished IT project. The game apparently contains 40 levels, but since the achievements are only related to the time you run the game for, I gave up at level 9 and idled the game for 100% completion.
What Never Was - A simple walking sim - in this one, Sarah, a biology student, comes up to the attic of her presumably deceased grandfather’s home. While looking through his things and deciding what she could take with her as mementos, she comes to realize there might be more to who her grandfather was than she could have thought back when she spent time with him as a little girl. I wonder if there are any plans to continue this story in another game, because the ending hinted at it; although I know full well this often doesn’t happen, because devs just want to tell a short story and leave it like that. Oh well, I guess we’ll see.
It’s interesting how I can never gather my thoughts properly when it comes to describing the games I really, really liked… oh well, maybe that’s just what my mind’s like. See you next week!
What Never Was. The dev showed off some chops with that one. I’d love to see him/her/them do a full escape room game. I think they’ll do a better job at it than just about any other company not named Fireproof Games.
Oh, wow! Fireproof Games made The Room and I never knew! Just about every assassin is playing this series, so I gotta check it out sometime :D
Yep. They are top tier. In fact, I just bought the fourth game in the series for my phone. The Old Sins. Gonna jump into that pretty soon.
Then again, I have to say - “escape room” reminds me of two things - old flash point and clicks I barely understood when I tried playing them as a kid or the accident that happened here a few months ago (two girls burned to death in an amateur escape room that didn’t provide safe escape routes), which apparently got people so terrified the horror movie “Escape Room” had to premiere later than initially intended. Call me heartless, but I find this kind of panic funny. Obviously it’s scary to hear about accidents and I’m glad officials took it upon themselves to curate escape rooms more closely, leading to a lot of them being punished over not having proper escape routes or other safety-related specifics either, but like… delaying a movie’s premiere is that kind of thing that later ends up on Wikipedia and I stumble upon it, which then leads me to looking up the cause of delay and… man, I ranted.