Entries tagged with os: windows

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Book of Travels: Early access game

Book of Travels was a Kickstarter game that's been bringing people into beta for the last couple of months, and brought in the final batch (including me) in the last week and a half. A few days ago, it opened for early access purchase on Steam.

It's very, very pretty.

It claims to be a "TMORPG" - Tiny Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. By "tiny," they mean, "servers will only hold up to 7 players at once." So. You're mostly interacting with NPCs and the world; you usually see another player or two every few hours, but you're not making parties, much less hordes.

There are party bonus things, which kick in whenever 2+ players are in the same district. However, communication with other players is limited to a row of emotes; there is no chat. There is no PVP either, not even the non-fatal duels you can do with the "wardens."

"Serene," they call it. "Immersive." And you might get so caught up in the imagery and music (they really are great) that you miss "a unique social roleplaying experience that doesn’t hold your hand."

Translation: Tutorials are a waste of time. Also, welcome to permadeath.

BoT shenanigans so far:
( A whole lot of 'umm we never playtested with people who weren't on board with our design philosophy' )

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The Floor is Jelly (2018)

The Floor is Jelly (2018) is a platformer, a cute jumping game set in a jiggly and gelatinous world of brightly colored 2D art. I played the Mac OS version.

I love the look of this and if I was any better at jumping games I'm pretty sure I'd adore it. However, jumping games are my least favorite, so I quit after about 10 levels. Supposedly it gets weirder and more complex the longer you go, to the point where people were raving about the physics, but I just couldn't push myself to keep playing.

Still think it's really cute, though! The jelly physics were a lot of fun.

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Your Future Self (2018)

Your Future Self (2018) is an interactive fiction game set in the future, post-worldwide catastrophe. You play as a genderless protagonist trapped in a time loop, ordered to convince your future self not to commit a terrible crime.

It's a very intriguing storyline, with very simple gameplay. You're trying to match up your dialogue choices with the current mindset of your future self: the more matches you get, the more they trust you and the further you can go into the game. But it's not that easy!

There's another group outside of your area trying to make contact, and of course the time loop keeps resetting. Each replay has similar dialogue but slightly different emotional variations, which makes it tricky to get 100% right.

I don't want to spoil it too much, but the ending was unexpected! I liked how the game sort of subverted whatever standard story expectations I might've had. That said, I don't particularly understand what gaining insight points did, since "leveling up" didn't seem to do anything. And failing dialogue options still gave the same dialogue information, I just had to loop a few more times until I got the right correct percentage.

Also didn't much enjoy the graphics. The old school computer style was really neat, but there was a LOT of flickering and juddering, even after turning it "off" in the settings. After an hour or so of playing, my eyes were NOT happy with me.

Still, it's a neat little game with some clever twists.

Price: $2.99

Available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. I played the Mac version.

(Crossposted from

misthold)

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Hidden Folks

Hidden Folks is a find-the-things game, like Where's Waldo grown up. It's all black-and-white line art, animated, with sounds that are all created by human voices. It's got several "areas," each of which starts with a few simple things to find, and then moves into a larger area with lots of things to find.

It's a delightful puzzle game, nicely challenging because not everything is visible - sometimes, you have to click on doors to open them or tools to activate them before you reveal the person or item you need to find.

Watch on YouTube

It's won several awards and deserved them.

What I don't like: The sounds. (Most people will probably find them charming. I don't. But I enjoy the game enough to put up with them.) The fact that zooming in makes the sound louder - so it's hard to pick a comfortable volume level.

What I love: That you don't have to find everything before moving to the next stage. Figuring out what to find - if it says "Elsa doesn't have enough change for a soda," you'll find her somewhere near the soda machine. The interactive animations. The ease of zooming in and out. (Scroll wheel.) The logic behind the interactions, once I figured it out. (Like, trees with a wiggly line in the branches can be clicked to reveal something inside, often a bird's nest.) The way the background noise changes by section. That there's a mix of easy and hard to find things at each level. That there's no penalties for not finding anything, or for not finding them fast, other than not being able to move to the next area.

Terrific game for people who like high-detail, low-stress activities.

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Ruya

I got this with the bundle, and I figured I would like it since I like these sorts of puzzle games. The music is soothing and atmospheric, the puzzles aren't too difficult (though I made Ruya cry several times), and the overall feel is both melancholic and hypnotic.

Here's a video on YouTube displaying the gameplay:

Watch on YouTube

Ruya is kind of bare-bones in terms of tutorials, and it doesn't take long to play if you're accustomed to these kinds of puzzle games, but I could see myself replaying it sometime in the future.

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Dusk Child

Dusk Child (2016) is an adventure/platformer game starring an archaeologist in search of her past.

Couldn't get Mac version to work (kept crashing), so I played the browser version.

Fun graphics, they remind me of 90s computer games like Jill of the Jungle. Good colors, and the atmosphere was to die for. Good basic game mechanics, just jumping, picking things up, and (apparently) running. It's VERY old school, to the point where you can't hold a bucket AND read a sign.

Jumping and landing on small squares takes some doing! I saw some other reviews that complained of "slippery feet," but I actually found it fairly forgiving for my skill level. Took me a while to beat the last room because I'm not that good at jumping on small squares.

A short (<2 hours) but enjoyable game!

Hint for opening the final temple door if, like me, you couldn't figure it out: ( Read more... )

(Crossposted from

misthold)

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Arcade Spirits

Arcade Spirits (2019) is a LOVELY game, one I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys playing romantic visual novels. It's set in the near future, in an alternate timeline where video games are even more popular than they are in this timeline. You play as Ari Cader, a down-on-their-luck dreamer with no ambitions. ( More words and three images )

I definitely want to go back and play a few different choices. The nice thing is that I can do that but still maintain my Kindly personality type if I want, because not all plot choices lead to personality type choices. For instance, for this first play-through I chose to build a retro arcade. Maybe the next one I'll pick a family-friendly esports center! etc. Or I wonder what would've happened if I sold out earlier on in the game, or was harsher with some trouble-makers. That's the exciting thing about this game: it has lots of replayability!

It took me about 6? hours to play through the first time and even with the speed-run options, it'll probably still take another 3 for EACH of the different romance/plot points. And now that I've done it once, I can speed through some scenes and go back and make other choices IN the game. Nice!

Price: $19.99

Content notes: Parental abuse, depression (/disassociation?), guns/knives (teenage gangs), sexism.

(Crossposted from misthold)