Progress report: First week of June ‘21 (a.k.a. Well, This is Interesting…)
I… didn’t plan for this. I just figured if I want to stop procrastinating on my studies, but still make progress on my backlog, I should look at the shortest of the short games… and since most of those are in the free price range, I’ve managed to knock out quite a few of them in just a week. (Still didn’t do any of my schoolwork though, aha! promptly breaks down into tears)
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3 Blind Mice: A Remediation Game For Improper Children
0.2 hours playtime
no achievements
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A long Time
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An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
0.0 hours playtime
no achievements
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Aurora
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Bundle Kitt
0.0 hours playtime
no achievements
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Escape Room - The Sick Colleague
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Fox! Hen! Bag!
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Mitoza
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OnlyCans: Thirst Date
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Song Animals
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The Flood
0.1 hours playtime
no achievements
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The Good Time Garden
0.3 hours playtime
no achievements
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Toy Tinker Simulator: Prologue
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UNBEATABLE [white label]
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You Must be 18 or Older to Enter
0.4 hours playtime
no achievements
3 Blind Mice: A Remediation Game For Improper Children - Well, that was… an experience. The Government™ sees the need to correct you, a troubled youth… so you’re put up to the task of completing a game in which the three blind mice quiz you. Like one of the Steam reviews I caught mentioned, there’s just enough worldbuilding to make you curious, but other than that, this game falls flat. (especially when answering incorrectly attacks you with a jumpscare; been a while since one really got me) The voice acting could have used some work, too; there’s lots of unnecessary breathing present.
A long Time - Ten minutes’ worth of platforming created during a week-long game jam (and improved during an additional three days) and based on the theme of “It’s been a long Time [sic], but we’re not done yet.” If you’ve played a first person platformer before, there’s nothing surprising here. One complaint I could have (who knows if it’s a matter of the setting by default or just what it looked like for me), is that setting the graphics to the lowest option made the white/yellow-ish (?) sections blinding.
An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge - An “experience”-type game based on the short story by the same title. I can only assume it barely differs from the story; said story is less than 10 pages long, so I might try giving it a read, actually. What’s more interesting is that the dev of this title challenged himself to make a hundred games in a year… so I guess I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole of a sort.
Aurora - Inspired by the Mariana dam disaster, this game follows the titular Aurora as she runs around her… neighborhood? with trash flooding the surrounding waters and murking them up. Then, she sets out on a boat ride to some kind of terminal and lastly, tries not to get flattened by barrels as she makes her way into some building and gets disapproved of by some kind of shadow figure. I dunno, man, that’s just the kind of game this is. Not to belittle the trouble the aforementioned disaster’s brought to the inhabitants of the nearby villages, but this game kind of sucked. The boat ride in particular is an exercise in patience, as the game does little to explain your goal. And if you prefer making a difference, rather than walking around and talking about it, there’s a whole another game (also free) that I can recommend.
Bundle Kitt - Have you ever wanted to hang out with a cat as it lives its kitty life? Well, now you can, with Bundle Kitt! Bundle Kitt is a cat… and it does very normal things that other cats do. There is no cat worth your three minutes other than Bundle Kitt. (Unless you have a real cat, in which case, do give it the time and care it requires.)
Escape Room - The Sick Colleague - I launched this game… only to realize I didn’t really feel like playing a game with riddles. That, and there were so many controls to keep track of that I figured out maybe two answers and then went straight to the walkthrough. There’s… an interesting story to be found? I can also praise the devs for sticking to their promise - there are hints for everything you need to figure out, so you won’t be forced to do any random guessing.
Fox! Hen! Bag! - There’s a fox! A hen! And a bag (of grains)! And they all need your help! You’re going to want to help them get to the other end of the cable car ride… but you can’t risk the fox eating the hen. Or the hen eating the grains, for that matter. If you’ve been around for a while, you’ve definitely seen a form of this riddle somewhere; there’s really nothing more to it.
Mitoza - A simple but cool game (sort of remindful of old browser games) where you can choose one of two options to gradually develop the life of a certain seed. There’s a whole bunch of choices, not to mention endings. It’s good (and free) fun for half an hour.
OnlyCans Thirst Date - Easily one of those games I can’t believe are totally free. You get to enjoy the whole line-up of sodas from the ridiculously popular Shize™ brand, what’s not to love here? There’s a memetastic 2-3 hours to be spent on taking out all the cans and proving your love for each of them, as well as Shize™ as a whole. Which can will be the one for you?
Song Animals - A short point-and-click about animals rescuing other animals through the power of song. I liked the watercolour backgrounds, not so much the animals themselves. Since I saw a reviewer mention children, the animal designs alone could be why I personally would be reluctant to show this game to children.
The Flood - Have you ever dreamed of taking a casual boat ride down a slowly flowing river, as you look around and take in the sights? Well, now you can do all that from the comfort of your own home! Complete with Music To Relax To™ and Inspiring Quotes™. I’m not a fan of people going around and saying “this is not a game, 0/10” about every other visual novel or some other casual game out there, but this one’s really bland; especially more so if you consider that the dev might have thought it could make a difference, but really… people experience things like this and forget them right after. I sincerely hope the dev didn’t actually pay to have this on the Steam storefront…
The Good Time Garden - This short, abstract, oddly sexually charged experience was… exactly that. I could bet it’s all symbolism, but do I want to know what it represents? …not really. It had weird controls, which the devs preferred to explain on the store page rather than in the game itself, which led to dozens of people who don’t read product descriptions leaving negative reviews. It also has the ridiculous size of 4.68 GBs… sure, the art style is pretty nice to look at, but what the hell made this game so big, huh?
Toy Tinker Simulator: Prologue - As the name suggests, you get to tinker with toys here. Since it’s the prologue, you only get to play with three of them. It’s very much like House Flipper and other similar titles, in that you receive jobs, buy supplies and equipment required to complete them and get paid upon restoring a toy. Sadly, the visual presentation leaves a lot to be desired. I’m a sucker for this type of game, but as it stands right now, I’d rather just get House Flipper.
UNBEATABLE [white label] - This one’s only an intro to the full game that’s still not yet released, but I enjoyed the hour I spent with it. I’d say UNBEATABLE is one of the “easy to learn, hard to master” games, as it’s played with only two buttons, but the jump from all the beginner difficulty tracks to the one extra level track is straight-up harsh. I instantly fell in love with the visuals, as well as the mostly-pop punk soundtrack. As far as this goes, the score screen could use some tweaks, since it looks really bland and out of place. As for the full game, I will definitely be on the lookout for it.
You Must be 18 or Older to Enter - Do you remember the first time you’ve heard the word “porn”? Maybe the first time you learned what it actually was? How about the first time you looked for it online, constantly on guard in case someone were to walk in on you? You Must be 18 or Older to Enter explores the last scenario, complete with ye olde Internet dial-up sound and an old-school ASCII art style. In the end, though, it is nothing more than a simulation, which seems to only end one way. cue me poking fun at the dev team’s name
See you next… week? :)
Gonna use this as a “todo” list for free to play games, once I clear a bit more of my current backlog.
BTW, Mitoza might be reminding you of old browser games because it was originally a browser game. No idea if it got updated or just ported, though.
Gonna use this as a “todo” list for free to play games, once I clear a bit more of my current backlog.
Glad to hear that! I enjoy digging through Steam in search of free-to-play titles (as hard as it is), so the only thing that would make this better is if someone else found at least one title to have fun with themselves :D
BTW, Mitoza might be reminding you of old browser games because it was originally a browser game.
Doesn’t sound surprising exactly because I made that comparison in the first place :D Not to diminish the creativity that went into making it, but it probably wouldn’t have reminded me of browser games if it didn’t feel like one (as in, the concept really screams “browser game”).
Ah, I remember when I took a similar approach a few years ago. Now I’m stuck with all the long games and progress is ever so slow :D
Good work on the backlog clearing regardless of the lenght of the games. Each games needs to be played, no matter how long they take! And now, go do your schoolwork (jk)