Here we are again, because Thursday with the kids was just about the worst day I’ve had during quarantine (Guess who’s got two thumbs and a son who decided to make a candle out of toilet paper in his room at midnight?). So page 2:
Secret Little Haven: This is one of those games in the style of a caricature of interacting with a computer from the ’90s. A story that’s a combination of sweet and unsettling. Seems to be a bit buggy but I didn’t encounter anything showstopping. Will probably come back.
Loot Rascals: Windows only.
Long Gone Days: Seems to be a mix of JRPG gameplay with a modern-realistic-warfare setting. Which sounds very interesting so I am annoyed there’s no Linux port.
Changeling: Visual novel with no Linux port
Fugue in Void: An abstract surreal game possibly about architecture? I like brutalism and all, but there wasn’t any interactivity in the first five minutes and there’s no save system, and I’ve got another seven hundred games to get through. Next.
Haque: Another one that looks interesting but gave me the same dependency problems as minit. The files are structured the same way as well so I assume this is some kind of 32-bit game dev toolkit that needs updating. (I would say “Unity” except that other Unity games aren’t like this)
DragonRuby Game Toolkit: An engine for writing 2D games. Might try to get Dylan interested in it.
Anodyne: The Linux version is advertised as unsupported, and indeed does not work. Near as I can tell, this game is in flash. It’s 2020. Sigh.
Troika! Numinous Edition: Another tabletop RPG. Again, nice art.
Depth of Extinction: A late-DOS-feeling Squad-based RPG reminiscent of X-Com. This isn’t usually my thing, but I found myself enjoying it anyway. Excessive load screens though.
Quiet as a Stone: Looks pretty. No Linux port.
Democratic Socialism Simulator: It’s just straight-up Bernie Bro Propaganda; you pick sides on randomly drawn issue cards to determine the fate of Antrhopomorphic Animal America. It’s weighted such that you always get more benefits for choosing the socialist choice than penalties you pay. I still managed to get deposed in a military junta though, six years into my administration. Oops. At least I delivered Medicare-for-All, solved climate change, fixed the Supreme Court, eliminated college debt, fixed income inequality and ensured a permanent Democratic senate majority beforehand.
Babysitter Bloodbath: I really want to try this. Windows only.
Tonight We Riot: Beat-em-Up about overthrowing capitalism. Basically River City Ransom but with communism. I’m not a huge fan of capitalism but I’m also not a huge fan of Beat-em-ups.
Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor: Billed as an “anti-adventure” with what looks like a very early DOS 3D visual style. Windows only, so sorry.
Micro Mages: I watched a making-of video about this some time ago, fascinated by the technical aspects of cramming so much game into the constraints of a NES cartridge. Yeah. There’s a windows port, but the version I played is the Nintendo ROM, via mednafen. It’s very tight, and doesn’t really feel like a legitimate NES game – it’s frankly too well-designed for that. But it’s a lot of fun.
Social Justice Warriors: Internet Troll-themed duel game that feels sort of like a card game. Cute concept but almost zero depth.
Catlateral Damage: One of those “You play a normal animal in a normal world, except that you are an asshole,” games, along the lines of Goat Simulator and Untitled Goose Game. You’re a cat and your job is to knock things down. The visual style isn’t appealing to me and while it seemed like it had an option to change the key bindings, I couldn’t get it to work. As a southpaw, I basically can’t use WASD and the mouse at the same time. Sorry.
Dungeons and Lesbians: A visual novel about dating and DnD. You know well by now that I do not like visual novels, but the writing in this one sings, and also I mean come on they had me with the title. I did one whole playthrough and might come back. I’m not enamored of the graphical style, though, and the text scaling is a little hard on the eyes.
From Orbit: A top-down RTS in space. Another “Not my thing” sort of deal. I gave it a fair shot, but just when I was starting to get a grip on the basics, something went wrong and the UI got stuck so I wasn’t able to switch my characters to defense mode and died.
Kids: An art piece. Interactive animation in a style reminiscent of Keith Haring. With there were an Android port; I feel like this would be fun for a small child.
Highway Blossoms: Another visual novel, and one way more anime than I’m comfortable with to boot. But the production values are super high, and it’s even got an “adult patch”. The premise seems like it would be good for a hybrid game with non-Visual Novel gameplay elements.
Beglitched: Another game-in-the-form-of-a-charicature-retro-computer, but this one is a lot more fanciful and abstract. Primary gameplay alternates between a couple of styles of puzzle game with a framing story that you’ve been conscripted to fill in for a “Glitch Witch” who controls the internet by magic I think. Will play again.
The Space Between: Visually interesting surrealist game which, again, I can’t play because it’s Windows-only.
Wheels of Aurelia: Wouldn’t run. Different library error than the other two, but it still seems consistent with my “It’s because the toolkit hasn’t been updated for 64-bit OSes” theory.
Wide Ocean, Big Jacket: A weird, ugly, strange slice-of-life story-driven game about a tween girl and her boyfriend going on a camping trip with her Cool Aunt and her husband. The slow pacing and slow movement is a real turn-off and the boy looks like a Timbertoe. I don’t like it, but I’m curious where it’s going.
Milkmaid of the Milky Way: A point-and-click game with a visual style reminiscent of a slightly-off LucasArts. Not wanting to spend too much time on any one game, I very nearly stopped playing at a point where I’d have thought it was a simple pastoral dairy farmer simulator. Then the milkmaid’s cows get abducted by aliens. One oddity: I could not figure out how to quit the game and had to kill it from the terminal.
Crashed Lander: This is a “the controls are hard; that’s all there is to it” sort of games. You control an improvised lunar lander that drives basically like a cheap quad copter, and you have to land it places without crashing. Seems like the main selling point is that the environments are very pretty fractally things, but the rest of the game is incredibly ugly and it has a kind of an XBLIG feel to it. Even the menus are a little janky; I kept on accidentally picking random levels before the main menu had even fully rendered. It’s got a VR mode, though, so that’s something.
Dujanah: What the even I don’t I it the um. Uh. It’s sort of a JRPG-style thing? Except with no combat. And surrealism. And claymation. And I think you play a mother in an occupied middle eastern country who is trying to find out if her family was accidentally killed in a drone strike? And there’s giant mechs? And the occupying army is made of Ethernet cables? And there’s glitch effects? I don’t even. Walking speed is too slow and the overworld navigation is hard.
Nuclear Throne: Another one that won’t run because of 32-bit dependencies. Seems to be a roguelike so pass anyway.
I swear I am working on some different content, but the plague hasn’t gone away despite our determination to pretend it has, so scheduling is a bitch. Till next time…
I actually recognize alot of these from ‘Errant Signal’ and/or ‘Nitro Rad’ youtube reviews. They had very different opinions then you, mind they also had windows, flash, and 32 bit systems so.