"Sugar and spice and everything nice?" Perhaps the standard, off-the-shelf girl may be made from such things, but this half-demon girl?
She isn't sweet, she isn't nice and you really shouldn't call her spicy, because she's got a magic hat full of weapons, a bad attitude and a mischievous sense of humor.
"An easy, quick read, but it’s still fast paced, filled with action, danger and lots of intimate moments... an entertaining and exciting first book in the “White Knight Security” series."
Tomorrow is the last day of the Smashwords End of Year sale! If you don't act soon, your chance to pick up Troll Song and Forgotten Legends for 50% off will slip away!
The Smashwords End of Year sale will be coming to a close in the next few days! Don't miss your chance to pick up Troll Song and Forgotten legends for 50% off!
Now is your best chance to find my books, Troll Song and Forgotten Legends, available for 50% off at Smashwords as part of their 2023 End of Year Sale! Find my book and many more at https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/
I'm not one for "New Year's resolutions", but I am one for overly ambitious projects.
For 2023, Project365 is "One New Game Per Day".
Given that I have 634 unplayed games in my Steam account and {mumble} unredeemed bundle Steam keys, there's a reason my unplayed collection is tagged "Pile of Shame".
I'll pin this to my profile, and give a brief summary here each day (or x, if I miss x days due to work or stuff).
I'll play 15-30 minutes of (at least) one new game I've never played before (or played less than 15 minutes of). I'll give every game at least 15 minutes, even if I hate every minute of it.
I'm also open to suggestions; if you reply to this thread with a game, I'll schedule it, or tell you what I thought of it.
One of the things that's come up is that I have a bunch of games that I've played once, and not touched again.
The Gunk is a third-person action-adventure platformer, with some puzzle elements thrown in. It's game number five in this month's Humble Choice bundle, and honestly, was not a game I was looking forward to playing.
The game title, and the thumbnail on Humble's website really put me off; had I stumbled across this game, with a name like "The Gunk"? Ew. No thank you.
But here I am, forcing myself to play through each of the games each month, so I installed The Gunk and loaded it up.
The game opens with an external shot of a workhorse ship, in space. This is a no Starship Enterprise, more of a yellow brick.
From inside the ship, a conversation between Rani (a crew member) and Becks (the captain) ensues.
They're low on funds, and space hauling is no way to make money. They've found a barren planet, which set off an alert on the ship for an energy source, but as Rani disembarks from the low-flying ship, her "power glove" barely holding together, all they find is a few worthless crystals, and a bubbling mass of "gunk".
We're off on an adventure... and what an adventure it is.
The gunk, as it turns out, is drawn to the energy pools that triggered the ship's alarms, and Rani's power glove has a build in "vacuum" that can suck up the gunk (don't think too hard about this). Once the area is freed of the gunk, it springs back to life.
Gorgeous, colourful, life. As you move through the various tunnels and platforms, they're rendered beautifully, but watching the bubble of life expanding outwards from your position as you remove the last piece of gunk, is wonderful.
Built into Rani's power glove is a scanner that can scan the various resources you encounter as you can explore, and you can extract them in much the same way as the gunk.
You'll need them, too, because scanning every new thing you come across is how you unlock upgrades to the power glove.
The platforming and puzzles are not too complex, and the laid-back accompanying score is fantastic, and suits the game perfectly.
The best thing for me about The Gunk, though, is the narrative; the back and forth between Becks as she waits back at the ship, and Rani as she explores further afield is fun, and it's this that genuinely kept me exploring for more than an hour, only quitthing because I was going to be late to start work if I didn't.
As they say, "Never judge a book by its cover", and missing out on The Gunk would have been a terrible shame. For me, this game alone makes this month's bundle entirely worth the money, because The Gunk is:
December 21, 2023 - Day 354 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 376
Game: Okami HD
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Dec 13, 2017
Installation Date: Dec 21, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 53m
Okami HD is a third-person action-adventure game, and a HD re-release of Okami, a game that was originally released for the PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo Wii.
It's genuinely like nothing else I've played this year. The game is set in "Nippon", and you play as the reincarnation of the Shinto sun goddess "Amaterasu", embodied in a white wolf.
You are accompanied by a bug named Issun who doesn't like being called a bug, and WILL NOT STOP TALKING. Issun is your guide.
You can break things throughout the game by headbutting them; in combat you fight with a sword that's held in your mouth.
However, what truly makes this game unique (other than the art style, which is based on classic Japanese painting styles, including Sumi-e), is that one of your combat techniques is literally painting.
You can fight an enemy until they are drained of colour, and then go into a "painting" mode, and use your brush to attack them with the various brushstrokes you learn throughout the game.
I've found some games hard to categorise because they're a mashup of so many game ideas that I end up with a long hyphenated description. I borrowed the description for Okami HD from the game blurb, because I just don't have a frame of reference to apply.
My only points of frustration with the game are that the camera was wildly frustrating until I found that you can (and I needed to) invert both the X & Y axes, and that manual saving is required, which can only be done at specific locations.
I've become so habituated to auto-saves, that even though the game goes out of the way to highlight the save system, I still managed to wipe out over half an hour of game progress before I realised what I'd done.
December 27, 2023 - Day 360 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 389
Game: Strange Brigade
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 28, 2018
Installation Date: Dec 27, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 42m
Strange Brigade is a solo or co-op action-adventure third-person shooter, set in Egypt in the 1930's.
I'd been sitting on Strange Brigade for a while, because I've previously played one of the Zombie Army games by the same developer (Rebellion), and it so thoroughly creeped me out, that I had no desire to go through it again.
But with access to the game via my son's Steam account, and a spare Steam key, and it being the middle of a sunny day, I thought I'd give it a shot.
You play as one of four members of the titular Strange Brigade, a special unit of the British Government tasked with dealing with supernatural entities.
One of the options is Gracie Braithwaite, a brawler, and a red-headed Lancashire lass. One of the things I've learned from my family tree, is that great-grandmother was from Lancashire, and was described by my grandmother as "a Lancashire lass", and it just felt right to choose her.
In terms of the gameplay, while it bears some basic similarities to the Zombie Army Trilogy (because zombies are heavily featured!) and it uses the same Asura engine as ZAT, it styles itself heavily after pulp movies of the 1930's, with an overly chirpy English narrator providing running commentary.
The game is bright and colourful, unlike the spine-chilling environments of ZAT, and I found Strange Brigade a far more enjoyable experience - at least once I remapped the rather wild control scheme.
Nothing like hitting the shift key to run away from a zombie, only to drop a grenade instead.
I had a bunch of fun with Strange Bridgade; it's pretty:
December 31, 2023 - Day 365 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 399
Game: Saints Row
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 23, 2022 (PC)
Installation Date: Dec 31, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 59m
Saints Row (2022) was a poorly received reboot of the Saints Row franchise. It's a third-person action-adventure RPG, that is, this time around, based around the founding of a criminal gang named "The Saints".
You play as "The Boss", and can choose from a set of pre-made characters, or build your own from scratch, so I lost track of how long I spent in the character creator.
In this case, I didn't go into the game completely unawares; I've played some of Saints Row IV, which was cartoonishly over the top.
I remember reading reviews of Saints Row saying that they wanted it to be more grounded, and to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, "...that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Maybe it's not quite as OTT as the last game, but grounded is not a word I'd use either.
I'm a little surprised at this point that the reviews were so awful, as it definitely feels a lot like the previous Saints Row games to me.
I'll probably slot in some further Saints mayhem between RPG sessions in the new year.
December 31, 2023 - Day 365 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 400
Game: Dave The Diver
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jun 28, 2023 (PC)
Installation Date: Dec 31, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 43m
Dave The Diver is a 2D sideways-scrolling pixel-art* game that's part management sim, part fishing sim, part restaurant game, and part action-adventure RPG.
When Dave the Diver first showed up on Steam a few months ago, I was still very much of the "pixel-art-no-thank-you" mindset, so it was a pass.
Then I saw some folks raving about how good it is, and then the free Dredge DLC was announced, and I went back and added it to my wishlist.
As they're currently offering a "Dredging & Diving Bundle" on Steam which meant the game was cheaper than the sale price (by a couple of bucks), I decided to add one more game to my pile of shame, and then take it off again, and what a way to finish this project out.
It is REALLY hard to categorise, because it pulls gameplay aspects from multiple different genres, and it's probably best if I lay it out.
Firstly, to address that asterisk against pixel-art, the game uses pixel-art for the gameplay, but uses vector art for the UI, which is a great way to make the game feel up-to-date.
The game opens with Dave relaxing on a beach, drinking a beer, when his phone rings, and he gets a job offer. Queue plane & map intro cut-scene.
A guy named Cobra has offered Dave a job diving in "the Blue Hole", which is a procedurally generated environment that is different on each dive.
After a tutorial sequence, where you learn to catch fish with a harpoon (fishing sim!), you learn that you've been roped into managing a sushi bar as well (management sim!).
Dive twice during the day to complete quests (RPG gameplay!) and catch the fish that you then use at night to set the nightly sushi bar menu.
Oh, and you're also the sushi bar waiter; this takes partial gameplay ideas from cooking sims like "Cook, Serve, Delicious!" in that the various customers will order the things that you've added to the menu, and the cook (thank goodness!) prepares each meal, as you run back and forth serving them, and cleaning up after some detty pigs, as well as another mini-game where you need to pour green tea and fill the cup perfectly.
Some of the RPG gameplay elements like equipment upgrades and weapon upgrades are handled through unlockable "apps" on an in-game "smartphone", and given that there are a number of preloaded apps on the phone with locks on them, looks like there are more mini-games as well.
Somehow, though, the devs managed to pull this off in such a way that it all fits together seamlessly, and is a lot of fun as well.
So, there you have it; for my final game review of 2023, Dave the Diver is: