The classic puzzle game Chip's Challenge, which made its debut on the Atari Lynx thirty-five years ago (oy vey), has now resurfaced on the Nintendo Switch. For those curious, this is the Lynx game running on an emulator, as opposed to the PC version, which has a higher resolution and a wider view of the playfield, but unsettling...
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.
Samudra is a sideways scrolling platformer-puzzler set in an underwater world that's riven by pollution.
As the game opens, a young child dressed in a Kruegeresque oversized jumper, shorts, sneakers, and... a diving bell... is sinking to the bottom of the ocean. The further they fall, the worse the pollution becomes, until they finally hit the seabed.
This is a gorgeous game. The graphics look hand-drawn. The lighting effects are wonderful.
Unfortunately, Samudra is beautifully boring with a side-order of frustrating.
The controls are simple: WASD (or controller thumbstick), and space (or button A) for actions.
As you slowly run across the ocean floor -because you're underwater, wearing a diving bell, without any oxygen hose- you will encounter things that trigger a speech bubble containing an icon above your head. There are literally no instructions. Even the "Controls" in the menu says "You have one button. This action button."
Your job is to work out exactly what the hell you're supposed to do, and how... because most of the time, the action button does nothing. Until it does. There's no real indication that it's become usable, so I spent a lot of time just mashing it hoping it might suddenly do something.
You can't jump... unless you can. You can't interact with things... unless you can. The game is rendered in a lot of dark, underseas tones, with much of the junk littering the ocean floor rendered in various shades of white.
It turns out there are indicators built into the environment for when actions are available... and they're also white.
Unless they're not available yet, in which case they're a slightly different shade of white.
But it's a 2D sideways-scrolling platformer, so at least that's not confusing. Except when it is.
I found myself standing on top of a crate; jumping down from the crate triggers a quick time event. You have to jump down. There's nowhere else to go. As you land on top of the slope built out of shipping containers, one hurtles down the slope towards you from the right of the screen.
You can't outrun it. You can't jump out of the way. Splat. Splat. Splat. Splat. I couldn't find any way to avoid it. In frustration I alt-tabbed out to find a walkthrough.
It turns out that you need to run towards the shipping container, and then use the action button to step into a shadowed nook... in the Z axis.
I have no idea what I'm meant to be doing, but worse still, no idea why. Unfortunately, the beautiful atmosphere and look of this game does not compensate for the lack of fun.
July 27, 2023 - Day 208 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 227
Game: The Eternal Cylinder
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Oct 14, 2022
Library Date: Mar 14, 2023
Unplayed: 135d (4m13d)
Playtime: 22m
The Eternal Cylinder is a weird game. It's a weird open-world-ish adventure-slash-survival-slash-puzzle game where you play as a little creature called a Trebhum, and you can consume stuff around you in the environment in order to evolve.
Which you need to do, to try and stay ahead of the giant unavoidable titular "Eternal Cylinder", which literally crushes everything in it's path.
Including you, if you can't get ahead of it, and to one of the towers dotted around the landscape that stop the cylinder. Temporarily.
The alien landscape reminds me of the planets in No Man's Sky, but the weirdest thing on the planet's surface might be the Trebhum. These little spehroidal* creatures start out with two eyes and a snout, which which they consume (left mouse button) and expel (right mouse button) things they find around the environment.
Some of these things help the little Trebhum evolve new abilities. Like suddenly growing legs with which to jump and run away from the giant, world-crushing cylinder.
Fortunately the game autosaves a lot because, y'all gonna need it.
All the while, the game is narrated by a friendly & gentle Englishman (who's actually a New Zealand actor, Peter Hadyen), guiding you through the things you need to do to survive.
The only reason I stopped playing was because I had my late work shift and a co-worker waiting on me to make the actual phone calls due to my lack of actual voice, otherwise I would have continued playing.
March 16, 2024 - Day 441 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 476
Game: When Ski Lifts Go Wrong
Platform: Steam
Released: Jan 24, 2019
Installed: Dec 21, 2022
Unplayed: 451d (1y2m24d)
Playtime: 45m
When Ski Lifts Go Wrong is a 3Dish physics puzzler set in a ski resort.
I like puzzle games, I like physics puzzlers, this should be a no-brainer, and for the most part it is.
I don't like to complain about a game without being able to specifically explain my frustration, but in this case, there's something that feels very inconsistent and counter-intuitive about the controls.
I find myself constantly having to stop and think about the controls, which takes me out of the zone that puzzle games normally put me in.
With a more intuitive control system, When Ski Lifts Go Wrong could be so much more than:
Chip's Challenge hits the Switch. Yeah, I didn't see that coming, either. (www.nintendo.com)
The classic puzzle game Chip's Challenge, which made its debut on the Atari Lynx thirty-five years ago (oy vey), has now resurfaced on the Nintendo Switch. For those curious, this is the Lynx game running on an emulator, as opposed to the PC version, which has a higher resolution and a wider view of the playfield, but unsettling...
JSoko (www.sokoban-online.de)
Website of the open souce game JSoko.