Progress report: May ‘23 (a.k.a. I’m Checking Out!)
Yesterday, June (a.k.a. my last month in uni)’s started, so I thought I was finally done tying up all the loose ends (‘cause… y’know… we’re in our third year, we’ve gotta write our theses…), but then this week everybody had something for us to do. I knew I wasn’t gonna be done with my thesis for the first deadline, but like, come on! At least give me some time to write it now, so I don’t have to waste all of my vacation! Sighhh…
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100 hidden hares
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Her Story
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Love Colors
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Not An Angels
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Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire [GREEN]
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Ravenlok
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Senpai Puzzle: Waifu Summer
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Super Seducer 2 : Advanced Seduction Tactics
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The Walking Dead: Season 1
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The Walking Dead: Season 2
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Umurangi Generation: Special Edition
5.1 hours playtime
23 of 23 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Zodiac Girls
100 hidden hares - Kind of a dirty move to hide two of them in gift boxes.
Her Story - Since I played Telling Lies first, I might as well compare the two despite Her Story having come out earlier. A didn’t even want to play this one with me ‘cause the premise made it sound like it would be identical to Telling Lies and lo and behold, it’s fundamentally the same exact game! Her Story, however, wins points for the style/setting (you can even turn off the effect that shows the person sitting in front of the in-game computer every time you stumble upon a major plot point), as well as the overall length. This game is all about this one-man (or rather, one-woman) performance, as you watch the character’s testimonies shift from interview to interview. Viva Seifert delivers an incredible performance, I’m genuinely surprised she isn’t an actress first and foremost. Maybe if I hadn’t played Telling Lies first, Her Story would have had a stronger impact on me, especially considering how much easier its story is to piece together than Telling Lies’. Overall, it’s a good game that I will be happy to play again next year.
Love Colors - For reasons unbeknownst to me, this game is marketing itself as a couch co-op painting game. Look, I would have imagined anyone who has heard of these pixel coloring games knows this by now, but to people who don’t play them, it’s like a modern version of Facebook gaming; so no, I wouldn’t want to invite my friends to play with me, ‘cause I’m pretty sure they would all just disown me. Instead, I feel like the devs should be focusing on the issues that still plague this game. For starters, I will say that they miraculously reappeared during Steam’s Puzzle Fest and discounted all the DLC content for the game, which was a nice surprise (I happened to buy it for a regular price shortly before that; Steam promised to refund me after I asked for it, but to this day I can’t tell if that money got back to me or not). They also removed two bugged achievements at some point before that, which is the only reason I can say I’m finally done with this game. But there still are a bunch of things that need fixing. First of all, the lack of windowed mode. Why, why, why is this nearly two-year-old game still only available in fullscreen mode? This really irks me, because rather than listen to music all the time, I like to watch stuff as I play casual games like this one, and here I was stuck with having to listen to music; sounds like a first world problem, but I’m sure I wouldn’t be the only one in this. Second, somewhat weird controls. After spending hundreds of hours in Coloring Pixels, I got used to being able to zoom in/out using the +/- keys and move around using the arrow keys, but here, you need to use the mouse wheel to zoom out and hold RMB while dragging to move around. It sucks that it took me buying a separate mouse to learn that. IMO, it’s a weird choice for laptop players (or just people who like using their keyboard, I guess) to be faced with the fact that unless they’re using the mouse, keyboard inputs will only make the screen snap to wherever the cursor was left in the game. Third, the bonus distribution. There are these “balloon” (color bomb, fills out a circle of a certain size around the place you click) and “bucket” (autofill) tools that are meant to… spice up? the gameplay, and I don’t know what to think. It’s not that they aren’t useful, but sometimes I felt I had way too many bombs and not enough buckets. Though the way you get them is as organic as it gets (depending on the size of the image, you might get the bonuses at one to three different points of completion, but what you get is pre-determined by the game, no rhyme or reason), I’m torn. These bonuses help out, but I feel like the game should be enjoyable without them, and as it stands, anything that required a bigger zoom out was an exercise in misery. But hey, at least they have a “Poland” category! (LOL)
Not An Angels - A nudie puzzle game. I’m not too keen on the whole “pre-rendered 3D graphics” thing, but overall, this one has a much better presentation than Unravel Cyndy. No paid DLC required to 100% is also a plus. The achievement for “completing 250 scenes” (I’m not even sure what the game counts as “a scene”, I could have sworn I’ve still had some to go when it finally popped) is a bit much though, there’s only so long you can spend on completing puzzles of the same images, even if you change the puzzle size (which there are a lot of - another plus for players who like a challenge; I stuck to sizes 12 and 24 for the sake of faster completion).
Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire [GREEN] - Well, I don’t know if it’s because I forgot to turn on the mysterious “Easy Mode” while playing Pretty Girls Mahjong Solitaire [BLUE], but this one took me so much less time to complete, it’s kind of insane. No, wait, it’s because this game actually has a shuffle button! Crazy how they can get rid of the padding and still have a game that clocks in at about 2 hours, am I right?
Ravenlok - Honestly, I don’t think I ever played a hack’n’slash to completion before this one. As of writing this, Ravenlok is one of the newest games on Game Pass; a hack’n’slash set in a world that takes heavily from Alice in Wonderland and blends together detailed 3D environments with voxel character models. I’m a sucker for Alice-esque media, so I was naturally attracted to this game; then, even more so, when I read it’s actually not that hard, or rather, not hard at all. I still took twice the expected time to beat it, even though I only lost two or three fights once. Oh well. The game’s got a satisfying quest system - although you can pick up most of the quests at the very start, which may seem overwhelming at first, you’ll be completing them one by one as you progress through the story. The stores could have used some better planning though; despite there being a fast-travel mechanic, having to switch locations to get items or level up (two different NPCs, two different worlds) gets old quickly. The combat gets repetitive fast as well, but in the end, it’s all doable. Otherwise, this game was just very okay. I feel like it could be a nice introduction to the genre, if you’ve never played anything from it yet.
Senpai Puzzle: Waifu Summer - Just a baby’s-first-game-looking puzzle game with cute and summery anime girls.
Super Seducer 2: Advanced Seduction Tactics - Me and A have actually finished this back in April, I just didn’t review it because I thought I would want to watch the bonus content… yeah, right. I’ve aired most of my grievances out while reviewing the first game, but there is some new stuff in this one. Richard and his crew have listened and this time, they have included more “diverse” scenarios: interracial dating (now you can teach a girl to say she’s horny in Chinese), rich guy friend Mahmoud looking for a sugar baby (I think? Has this scenario ever been relatable to anyone? Hello?) and last but not least, multiple scenes from a woman’s POV (these ones are maybe not that bad, if still super trope-y). Charlotte, the women’s dating expert (or something like that? I don’t even know), is also introduced to provide her perspective on the choices you make. The set for the cut-ins after decisions has also been upgraded - instead of more-or-less half-naked female models, there’s a bunch of models both female and male, dressed elegantly and posing all around the set. None of that matters much, though, ‘cause both Richard and Charlotte are just so fake, you can’t even tell if they like each other or not. Does Charlotte have her own opinions, or is she just saying what she thinks women would want to hear? It’s all a mystery to me.
The Walking Dead: Season 1 - My third playthrough! While there’s the inherent lack of care for the major beats, which you’ll obviously be steered towards either way, I love discovering these characters again and again. Now that I knew how to get Kenny on my side in particular, I tried my best to do so, but there are still bound to be some choices where I just can’t get myself to be as stubborn and single-minded as he is. Gah, what a great game.
The Walking Dead: Season 2 - Okay, since I can’t even tell what the hell I did differently during my second playthrough because of how cryptic I was being in that post, I’ll just say what I did this time straight up: I was more trusting of Kenny, so much so that I tried justifying him to the others, but I would also pull him back when he got out of hand. My interactions with Jane were more reluctant, leading to a more negative outlook on her as a whole (I do still feel for her, though). Also, I managed to lose Bonnie? WTF?! Didn’t know that was possible.
Umurangi Generation: Special Edition - A first-person photography game set in a retro-futuristic world sounds pretty dope, but this ended up being annoying more than anything else. Don’t get me wrong, I like the fact that each level has a set of things that need to get photographed before you can finish the level, but putting a time constraint on it (completing each level within 10 minutes is one of the goals you need to achieve to perfectly complete a level) is totally not the way to go in my opinion. Instead of being able to take in your surroundings naturally (as opposed to playing in creative mode - which is also unlockable, btw), you’re constantly being rushed by the bounties. Funnily enough, this clashes with the fact that the dev(s) is/are supposedly big on environmental storytelling (which is why your friends are nothing more than their names and the posing they do for your photos, I guess). If there really is a story you want to tell through your environments, you’ve still got to lay some groundwork first. Don’t mind me, I’m not a fan of media that is mute on purpose (I tend to find it more and more shallow every time, it’s like people think they’re being smart by putting out something that’s so obviously made to make the viewer cry, like come on), but if there’s no background for the story currently playing out, there’s no way to try and bond with the cast. Hell, as a player you don’t even get to learn who you’re playing as. The tutorial is also so barebones it might as well have not existed. It just asks if you’ve ever played an FPS game and then it throws the whole list of key prompts at you with no context or warning. Sometimes it’s not really fun to be led by the hand through every single little task, and I wouldn’t say this is the kind of game that would warrant this kind of approach, but then again, you couldn’t call what happens a “tutorial”. At least the music is pretty damn good, I might find time to listen to it outside of the game. All in all, it’s a refreshing concept, but not with the best execution.
Zodiac Girls - Following Sweet Car Wash, this is my second encounter with this series. I couldn’t help but get this one, ‘cause for some reason I really, genuinely liked the art in this one (the theme not being anything particularly fetishistic is a bonus too). I’d say I don’t see myself buying more of these any time soon, but let’s face it, tons of codes for this dev’s games have flooded the market recently, so… you know. clears throat
See you next month!
I’m looking forward to trying Ravenlok, I really liked the dev’s previous game on Game Pass (Echo Generation)
It’s good! I dunno, it’s hard to write well about games I end up liking that actually have a story. It is, however, weird to me that these devs’ games are being somewhat marketed as a “trilogy” just because of the voxel character art? Aren’t they fundamentally different games?
Hmm, I’m not sure! Maybe they have unifying lore or take place in the same world/universe or something? I haven’t played Riverbond yet so it’s hard to say
If so, kind of a risky choice to make three vastly different games and unify them by lore only. Oh well! Let me know if you ever get down to that mystery :)
Wikipedia says this: “Ravenlok is the third and final installment in Cococucumber’s Voxel Trilogy, following the releases of Riverbond and Echo Generation. Ravenlok has been described as the culmination of their studio’s exploration into the 3D pixel aesthetic.” So I guess they are just considering it a trilogy from an art/graphics perspective.
Overall, I loved Her Story more than Telling Lies. but I also played HS first. If you haven’t played Barlow’s Immortality yet (my favourite game of last year despite its flaws), using a controller is better than a mouse. Best of luck with your uni wrap-up.
Oh yeah, Her Story is far better IMO. I’ve seen Immortality on Game Pass, but I’m afraid I won’t have time to get to it this month :( Thank you for the heads up and encouragement!