This really isnt taking me very long with free assets to put together a digital space I can stream a logical camera from. I have the cel shader looking less wind waker. Cel shading and shaders in general are interesting when less complexity can give you a more unique art style sometimes
#2D or #3D#artist wants to work with me to develop a character + create #FOSS software for streamers, guessing jumping into sketches and eventually that cool one that looks like an old social studies text book
A 2D platform game with a persistent world. When Edgar's father fails to return home after venturing out one dark and stormy night, Edgar fears the worst: he has been captured by the evil sorcerer who lives in a fortress beyond the forbidden swamp....
Approximately one hundred thousand years ago, I used to doodle on paper every once in a while. But I love painting with light on a computer screen a lot more. 😊
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.
December 26, 2023 - Day 359 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 384
Game: The King's Bird
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 24, 2018
Installation Date: Dec 26, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 21m
The King's Bird is a 2D platformer that utilises a "momentum-based flying mechanic".
You play as a young girl, who explains in the introduction level how she's always dreamed she could fly, and has always been caged.
From there she goes on to gain the gift of flight (in a sense), and you're off to explore. Her gift of flight is less "flight" and more "momentum activated short-term gliding".
The controls are simultaneously simple and frustrating. Movement instructions are presented as pictograms, and even when following them exactly, results can vary.
When everything comes together, movement feels glorious; however, it's not entirely clear on what makes everything come together.
The game's atmosphere is gorgeous, all silhouettes and varying monochromatic colours, and the score is beautiful.
If only movement wasn't so inconsistently frustrating; at this point in the game, The King's Bird is:
December 26, 2023 - Day 359 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 385
Game: The Hex
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Oct 17, 2018
Installation Date: Dec 21, 2023
Unplayed: 5d
Playtime: 26m
The Hex is a trippy, genre-bending 2D pixel-art pastiche adventure game.
From the blurb: "In a creaky old tavern, in a forgotten corner of the video-game universe, a storm is raging. An anonymous caller suggests that there is a murder plot. Six video game protagonists are the only plausible suspects..."
Beyond this, the game is difficult to review, because to try and review it is to spoil the game.
One of the things I've learned over the last year, is that I prefer games where the gameplay supports the narrative, rather than the narrative being an excuse to try and justify the gameplay.
The other thing that I've said is that given my general lack of nostalgia for pixel-art games, a pixel-art game needs to offer something that overcomes my general lack of interest.
The Hex delivers that in spades. With that said, there are some minor frustrations I have with the gameplay, but even going into those runs the risk of spoilers, so I'll just say that The Hex is:
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:
January 2, 2024 - Day 367 - RePlay Review
Total RePlays: 12
Game: Mind Scanners
Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 20, 2021
Reviewed: Dec 17, 2023
Original rating: 1 - Nope
New rating: 3 - OK
Playtime: 4hrs30m (5h)
When I reviewed Mind Scanners a couple of weeks ago, I found it icky. I tagged it for the trading cards, and as with many games that have trading card drops, it has to be played to collect them.
I've sold enough of them to buy whole DLCs with the proceeds, so at least it feels like I got something out of the game. Usually this just reinforces my opinion of the game, and makes me more determined to recover the storage space, but sometimes things go differently.
I started playing this last night, and then kept playing it this morning. It turned out that I'd missed a part of the user interface, and thus gameplay, and instead of just turning everyone in mindless zombies, there's a whole gameplay aspect of also maintaining their personalities in the process.
Which took this from icky to "Ohhh, NOW I get it!", which makes my original review a bit harsh. I'm still not a fan of the pixel-art, but the gameplay is actually interesting, and in getting this part of the gameplay right (effectively restarting the game from scratch), the narrative has now revealed itself.
January 12, 2024 - Day 377 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 413
Game: Rain World
Platform: Steam
Released: Mar 28, 2017
Installed: Dec 4, 2023
Unplayed: 39d (1m8d)
Playtime: 18m
Rating: 2 - Meh
Rain World is a 2D platformer, set in a post-apocalyptic world, where you play as a "slugcat" that's been separated from its family, in an intro that's almost as depressing as Stray's intro.
The character animations are great, and the environmental design is very well done, but after 15 minutes of shimmying up and down poles and through pipes, while trying to find food and avoid predators, I wasn't really enjoying myself.
Apparently it only gets more difficult moving forward, so it looks like this was a swing and a miss.
198X is a 2D pixel-art pastiche of 1980's arcade games. It's a bit hard to characterise it other than that.
At the start of the game you're inexplicably dropped into a beat-em-up with a different name, and very little context.
This is one of the times that reading up on the game before I played it might have helped. It took me about 10 minutes to beat that stage, only for the actual game to reveal itself, which is a game about arcade games, and a coming-of-age story.
The pixel-art in this game is gorgeous. It captures a mood incredibly well, and combined with the music and voice talent, the game's backstory is well done. It's a pixel-art game where the pixel-art is actually art.
The game is built around five different kinds of arcade games that were popular in the 1980's.
Which is where I ran into problems. The second game is a side-ways scrolling sci-fi shooter, and I was always terrible at this kind of game.
Which means that's where I got stuck, repeating the same section of the game, and dying around the same point each time.
All things considered, I'd like to try and continue playing, but I'm not sure if I'll get past that section to find out.
January 23, 2024 - Day 388 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 424
Game: Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition
Platform: Steam
Released: Feb 1, 2019
Installed: Jan 23, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 24m
Rating: 3 - OK
Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition is a 2D top-down "Gothic Horror" RPG, that's part visual novel and part "what the hell did I just play?"
You start the game as the first mate of a space-faring Victorian steam locomotive that sails through the aether unmoored from such frailties as railway tracks.
It only gets weirder from there.
I genuinely don't know how to review this game, or quite honestly, how I feel about it.
There's something here that I can't quite put my finger on; Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition is:
Edgar 1.37 (github.com)
A 2D platform game with a persistent world. When Edgar's father fails to return home after venturing out one dark and stormy night, Edgar fears the worst: he has been captured by the evil sorcerer who lives in a fortress beyond the forbidden swamp....
Naev (github.com)
Following the winter tradition, the Naev DevTeam is proud to announce the release of version 0.11.0....