Progress report: February ‘23 (a.k.a. Can School Be Done Yet? Please?)
As the title may (or may not) suggest, February’s been hard. I’m supposed to be done with uni in a few months, but the fact that I need to write a bachelor’s thesis to do so is keeping me up at night. Heck, it drove me to a meltdown; can’t remember the last time I had one of those. It’s tough, cause I feel pretty much directionless and yet now that winter break is over, they just keep piling up work…
…but this was supposed to be about games, wasn’t it? Let’s go, then:
-
100 hidden snails 2
-
36 apples
0.6 hours playtime
no achievements
-
A Taste of the Past
0.3 hours playtime
no achievements
-
Camp Focus
-
Chill Corner
-
Kili's treasure
-
Mason and Strings
2.4 hours playtime
no achievements
-
Moo Moo Move
-
Plasticity
0.9 hours playtime
no achievements
-
SEXTS
-
Spa Mania 2
6.0 hours playtime
no achievements
100 hidden snails 2 - Woah, finally stumbled upon a sequel. Also, seems like the dev’s tried to improve again. Taking a jab at I commissioned some bees, perhaps?
36 apples - A first-person puzzle game with a minimalistic art style, all about collecting apples. There’s probably an explanation for everything that happened; I admit I didn’t really “get” any of it.
A Taste of the Past - An aesthetic dream come true, A Taste of the Past is a short story about reconnecting with your roots. In a way, I found I could relate to the main character, who’s not much of a cook with a seemingly absent mother. However, this story concerned exclusively Chinese-American heritage, and since I’m not Chinese-American, I’m afraid I can’t say much about the details. While pleasing to both the eye and ear, story-wise perhaps it seems more like something made for the devs’ closest relatives, rather than a wide array of unrelated individuals.
Camp Focus - The third one of the “lo-fi and work” type games I played; I would guess this one is the least fleshed out of the three, but at the same time, I only really turned it on once for its only achievement…
Chill Corner - Another app (rather than game) to use for lo-fi music while working, studying, etc. I have a faint recollection of it initially receiving mixed reactions, especially when compared to Virtual Cottage. I wouldn’t say it came out on top, but it is good. The base game uses enough music to keep you going, but if you’d like, you can purchase more as DLC; the same goes for customizables and even minigames. You get rewarded with in-game currency for the time you spend playing, which you can later use to buy furniture and accessories for the home your character is in. Since I spent all the time running this game while I did my homework or some other chores (promise!), that wasn’t much of a focus. However, at some point, sending/receiving letters/stickers got added, presumably taking from Kind Words, and I admit, that did take some of my attention away from what I was supposed to be doing. I answered some people’s letters, I opened my own heart up a little about the things that have been on my mind recently… but when I unlocked all the stickers and got past the point of having spent a whole day’s worth of time in the game, I had gotten all the achievements. I’ll be back if something new gets added, but for now, it’s been nice. (I hear the devs are working on some kind of a life sim game as well, so I’m waiting to see more of that!)
Kili’s Treasure - Play as Kili, a little girl on a treasure hunt arranged by her mom, present in the game only as the notes she left around the house for Kili to find. You’re going to spend an hour-ish going around the house in search of what to interact with to find another note, each piece of furniture holding some kind of significance in the family memories. Not much more to note, it was simply pleasant.
Mason and Strings - 14 year old Mason really wants to impress her crush, Tilly, so she and her newfound friend, Strings (yes, that’s the guitar’s name) embark on an adventure to help her learn to play… well, guitar. The Adventure Time-esque art style pulled me in, but a few other things outweighed that easily. First, the platforming; it’s not ideal, and although an update added a “fast fall” mechanic, Mason is still very much slippery. Luckily, it’s acknowleged in-universe. Second, the rhythm part; I’m a sucker for rhythm games, so when I noticed that there might be a semblance of one here, I was ready. As it turns out, there’s nothing to do with keeping a rhythm - all you get are four basic chords (played using the arrow keys) and a wheel to shoot them from (rotated by using W/S). Every once in a while, you’ll need to play a few chords to make a way for yourself or solve some other puzzle, but between how sensitive the wheel seems to be and the awkward controls, it was never really enjoyable. To add insult to injury on the controls part, you use W to talk to someone and only then advance the conversation using Space. I think I’m justified when I say now that I kept getting confused by the controls. Achievements are a fairly new addition to the game as well, so I suppose that’s why they’re not showing up on BLAEO? Oh well. I’m going to mark this game as “completed”, despite one of the achievements not triggering even though I fulfilled the requirements. Must have some kind of weird flag. To end on a good note: the soundtrack is great. It’s simple, yet satisfying and I found myself wanting to listen to it outside of the game. I’m glad the devs released it for free.
Moo Moo Move - A seemingly simple game, all about herding cows. It was absolutely made to be played with a gamepad, which I’m surprised not to see said explicitly on its store page. It’s the first game from its devs, so it’s hard to be a negative nancy, but I think it would have been much more easier if there was an option to rotate the camera; having it be locked seems like an unnecessary obstacle when the main mechanic is supposed to be troublesome enough by itself. There are a total of 21 levels in the whole game, and across them, besides how susceptible the cows are to your movements, you’re also going to be fighting with bulls, icy ground, an UFO and some… scarecrow-like thing that patrols the vicinity and puts your cows to sleep? It’s the middle of nowhere, who on earth might want these cows not to be herded? That’s just weird. All the levels give you a star rating, depending on how well you did, but in my opinion, some of those three star times are ridiculous. I managed to get three stars in two levels in spite of that, though I think it was just a matter of sheer luck. Also worth noting is that the flag for the achievement for completing all levels seems to be misplaced - it popped for me first, just after I barely launched the game, and judging by the percentages, it seems most people likely got it at the same time. According to some reviews, it’s a long-lasting issue the devs never bothered to address. Overall, it gets a “meh” from me; it’s a relatively easy and non-violent game, but it’s not really “good”, I suppose.
Plasticity - A very shallow, very glitchy piece that’s trying to convince everyone to fight pollution, or else all our mothers are going to die of cancer. Oookay then. When are we going to turn this on the corporations? I’m waiting.
SEXTS - Just a typing game all about sexy stuff. The art is openly said to be AI-produced and “touched up by AI-positive artists” (which might be why the base game is free to play). Personally, I’m not too into AI art dominating everything, but on the other hand, I can’t resist a game like this. Visually, there’s too much going on around the play area for seemingly no reason. The BGM could use a change as well; that’s definitely not game music. No beating around the bush; no matter how good the art looks, these games are always slapped together for the purpose of making a quick buck and that is why I’m glad to say all the achievements (at least currently) are doable without any of the paid DLC packages. Hopefully that trend doesn’t change later on.
Spa Mania 2 - Jade is back, alright! By now, she’s already established a chain of eco-friendly spas, but her competitor still refuses to give up, so you’re going to have to spot the moles she sent under the guise of regular customers and remove them from your spas. This time, the customers are mostly based on subcultures (geek guy, goth girl, surfer dude, etc.), rather than simple age characteristics that defined most of the first game’s clientele. Funnily enough, the SFX are simply brought over from the first game (and one of the geek guy’s SFX is that of a female voice, for some reason). Gameplay was pretty much the same as the first game, I blazed through most of it with relative ease; what’s a tad odd in this entry are the “green points” you get for having your customers use eco-friendly stations; that will then contribute to your final score. The day is over, but you still haven’t reached the goal of the level? Wait ‘till you see those green points accounting for a third of your final revenue. Some crazy green money going around in this universe. However, this time around I wasn’t pleased with the spa upgrades or Jade’s costumes. The spa upgrades unlock gradually, for seemingly no other reason than to make sure you won’t run out of things to upgrade before the game is over, which is… less preferable to just buying everything as soon as possible and being just a little sad about not having anything new to buy. As for Jade’s outfits, I much preferred the customizable dress-ballerina shoes combo of the first game, even if it didn’t affect gameplay in any way. Here, you get a wardrobe of various tops, bottoms, shoes, gloves and dresses, but they also unlock over time and affect how fast Jade moves around and works at different stations; I find that counterintuitive to the idea of customization, especially since the clothes don’t even mesh together most of the time. The minigames this time around average out to a “meh” sort of rating from me - the incense minigame is kind of Flappy Bird-esque, the tea minigame is a crazy easy “plan the path” kind of game and the special treatment minigame (“deliver ingredients to bucket”, tries to have a factory-esque vibe) deserves to burn for how dumb and limited it is. Comparing the art style of the first game and this one, I’m not a fan of the change, but alas, that’s just how things are. At least there aren’t any more stereotypical caricatures. What I did like, however, was that each new spa had a different rendition of the same song playing in the background, each bringing a different instrument out to the forefront of the track. Last thing I can think of is kind of a shower thought - how is it that Jade travelled seemingly all over the world to learn the secrets of wellness in the first game, yet her spa chain in the second game seems to be confined only to the US? Curious, that.
See you next month!
If you’re interested in checking out any other productivity-related games, I’ve been enjoying PomoFarm! No music player in that one, but it’s based on the Pomodoro Technique (work for 25 min, take a 5-min break, repeat) and it’s REALLY cute :-)
Thanks for the recommendation! Seems I’ve already got it on my wishlist, but since it’s paid, it’s probably gonna have to wait… like, a lot longer than free stuff ever would. I also don’t think Pomodoro would work for me? I’m like a bull, I want to charge straight through work and just get to the part where I finally have time for myself xD
Oh damn I didn’t know Mason was a girl. The whole adventure time thing is what got me too, I’ve kickstarted their new game so it will be interesting to see if they fix the problems you have
Yeah, I played most of the game thinking she was a boy, then at some point someone mentions she’s a girl ^^;; I don’t think it was supposed to be a surprise reveal or anything, just that the devs didn’t pay much attention to it… but yeah, to me “Mason” is typically a boy name and she doesn’t look much like a stereotypical girl, either, I suppose. Glad to see they’ve got a new game coming up!
Yeah I had to look on their page and its easy to skip over the fact it mentions she. I had the same thought about the name