Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £10.99 (£14.38 for “With Soundtrack” bundle, £6.99 for soundtrack)
Where To Get It: Steam, Humble Store, GOG

Dark Souls, it seems, has become… Almost a template. A boilerplate. We’ve seen this quite a few times in good ol’ (Ha!) video games, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing, so long as it’s done well. Hollow Knight, by all appearances, does pretty well. Sometimes too well.

That’s not creepy. Not at all, no *SHUDDER* sirree…

In any case, you are a bug. Possibly undead, it isn’t made too clear at first. You’re drawn to a nigh empty village above a set of ruins populated by the damned and the forgotten. If you’ve played Dark Souls, you’ll already be seeing how this is going. Mystery! Tragedy! Boss fights! That one place where everything seems to hate you, the player, personally! And, of course, that sick, numb feeling that comes from dying to something perfectly ordinary on the way to trying to recover your currency from where you died not five minutes ago.

I could bang on about which element is a metroidvania thing, which is a Dark Souls thing, so on, so forth, but… It’s apparent if you’ve played them, and irrelevant beyond the concept of “Exploring platformer where you kill stuff and get special abilities and maybe get told a tragic, creepy story if you’re not hammering that ‘skip dialogue’ button like a hammering thing.” What matters is: Does it do it well?

The boss fights are, as you might expect, highly pattern based, but creative and with stories of their own to tell. I almost feel sorry for this feller, for example…

In short… Yes. It does it aesthetically, with the hand drawn landscapes, music and bug design really selling that “Dark and creepy (but grounded) world” mood. It does it mechanically, with responsive controls, gameplay that relies more on timing than twitching, and a narrative that still works despite taking a lot of its beats from… Dark Souls.

There is, of course, a “but” hanging over this: If you didn’t like certain aspects of Dark Souls, such as occasionally having trouble working out where to go/what to do next (Not aided by a map that only updates a) If you bought a basic map of the area already by finding the mapmaker in the area, and b) You’ve sat down at a bench post exploration.) Or Occasionally breaking into an area you’re definitely not prepared for and dying. Or realising that, to get a thing that would definitely help survive an area, you’re going to have to grind enemies for… Quite a while (Which, at the time of this sentence, is exactly the problem I’m facing. Most of these things are either fair, or ameliorated somewhat (You can, if you get hold of a Rancid Egg and a Simple Key, draw your Hollow soul back via an NPC, for example), but they are nonetheless baked into the design philosophy behind the game, and if they turn you off, then I obviously can’t recommend it for you.

From the Metroidvania end of things comes… Extra Mobility (Gating areas.)

Overall, though, it’s an imaginative world, a responsive and pleasurable experience most of the time, and I’ve enjoyed my time so far with Hollow Knight. For an example of crossing Dark Souls and Metroidvanias well, you can’t go far wrong with this.

The Mad Welshman agrees that this review feels a bit short. Some might say… Hollow.

Filed under: Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!

Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £3.99
Where To Get It: Steam

I could write a single paragraph, and sum up Morphblade’s mechanics and concept. That’s how simple it is. I could sum up how I feel about it in a single sentence, if not the single word “Pleased.” That’s how uncomplicated it is to review. I could write a tiny essay on the tactical complexity the game’s simple rules and simple and easy to identify enemies provides, further fuel for my platform of “All games are made of simple rules, it’s what you do with them that counts.”

All games of Morphblade start something like this. There is, at first, one move.

I am going to do one of those things. Okay, maybe two. But first, I’m going to say it’s a short game where the pleasure is in playing. Unless you’re good, a single game will last all of two to five minutes. And then it will ask you whether you want to play again.

Instead, I’m going to use 264 words (counting this sentence), to ramble briefly about niches, and how “Short” and “Simple” are not dirty words. People seem to have this weird idea in their heads that if they have a short and simple game, they’re going to play it, get bored, and oh gosh, they’ve wasted… What’s currently the equivalent of two, maybe three bottles of Dr. Pepper. Oh no.

See, here’s the thing about short and simple games… Sometimes, you don’t want a long game. Even the people who say they want long games will find themselves, at 5AM (Coincidentally, it is 05:16), unwilling to touch their Torments, or their Age of Wonders. They’ll find themselves not wanting to stress out over their Overwatch rankings, or their Bulletstorm combos, or the inner complexities of a Hearthstone or whatnot. They’ll want something where they know what they’re in for…

As you can plainly see, tiles and enemies have their function explained, and it’s easy to remember (Not pictured: With right click)

…And Morphblade will be waiting for them. Silently, it will be reminding them that all its rules are explained… As you play. That all its symbols are open to it. That it won’t need you to quit in the middle of a game, because the end is always just around the corner. Just a couple of false moves (Rarely one. Usually two. At worst, three), and it’s all over. And it is definitely your fault, but it isn’t a problem. It doesn’t judge. In fact, it wants you to play it, and you can tell because it’s highly accessible, with an easily deciphered and colourblindness friendly palette, simple, easily deciphered shapes. It fits its niche excellently.

I bet a friend a tenner I couldn’t write more than 500 words about Morphblade, but not only am I going to win this bet, I’m going to finish the review by showing you some simple steps as to how to see for yourself how simple, deadly simple, the game is.

First, you look at the top of this review. There’s that price, less than £4. There’s also a Steam Store page link. Go click that. A video will autoplay (Or, if you have autoplay off, you can click play), and Tom Francis of Suspicious Developements will spend less than 3 minutes demonstrating the game (The length, funnily enough, of a normal game)

I can take one hit, so both of these enemy bugs are effectively dead. If one of them had been armoured, I could have run away. PLANNING.

I’ve now won a tenner, and am 6 quid up on my purchase. Which I can then use to buy Morphblade for a friend. Because I’m almost certain, based on play, the game, and Mr. Francis’ explanation of the game, that they will at least like it enough to come back to it.

It won’t mind. How can it, it’s a video game. Video games don’t judge. Only people do. I judged “Yea” on this one. You might too.

…Oh yeah, and a bottle of Dr. Pepper. Truly, I’m blessed.

Inevitably, you die. The only thing the game doesn’t *tell* you is that the turn counter is also the menu button.” Which is a tiny niggle, honestly.

The Mad Welshman smiled. Wave 19 isn’t so bad. We’ll see if we can top 20 later on. Or… Maybe now. Yeah, nothing urgent going on.

Filed under: Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!

Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £6.99
Where To Get It: Steam

White Wolf, purveyors of the World of Darkness (In which supernatural creatures of various kinds try to deal with their problems, including the need for secrecy) have… Very identifiable writing, at times. Style, they can do. Purple prose, they can do. The fantastic, they can often make believable, even relatable.

Subtlety, nuance, and focus, however, are often things that escape them. And these two pieces of Interactive Fiction very aptly demonstrate this. When one of your two showpieces is called (no joke) “We Eat Blood And All Our Friends Are Dead”, you know you’re in for a very White Wolf time. Whether you will enjoy that time very much depends on you. But I’m not betting on it. Let’s unpack why.

I’M SUBTLY SAYING THIS ISN’T SUBTLE, FOLKS!!!!

First up, let’s get the nice out of the way, because it’s all too brief. The mobile phone conceit of We Eat Blood is a nice one. Not one we haven’t seen before, but it works in the context, and allows for multiple threads. That’s good. Similarly, Refuge (The Mage portion of this twofer) has some cool visual stylings you’d associate with Mage (glitching, sigils, and the like.) So, visually, the stylings are pretty good. Similarly, for the most part, the tunes and sounds are also well presented.

So, there’s your style. Mostly. But the core of an Interactive Fiction is the writing, and its here… Where it starts to fall down. The general premise is that these are introductions, two people thrust into their respective supernatural worlds. But both quickly run into their own problems. Let’s begin with We Eat Blood, the stronger of the two. You are an artistic type, a drug user, general fun-haver, and, after a party, everything went horribly wrong. You can’t eat food anymore. You feel hungry as heck all the time. You have to learn how to deal with this. Oh, and your dead mother is also a vampire, a creepy one speaking in imagery, and there’s a racist bus driver, a lab monkey turned ghoulish killer, and…

Hey, did you know that vampires were originally more zombie like, and sex had next to nothing to do with things? Well, now you do!

…It has a hard time keeping focus. There’s a lot going on in We Eat Blood, and it’s about as subtle as a bag of bricks wrapped around a smaller bag of bricks. The main character is an artist surrounded by artist friends because it allows really purple prose about how sexual bloodsucking is for a vampire, oh my god it’s so good, it’s like having communion with God, only that communion is also fucking, and… I didn’t actually mind that so much, having experienced my fair share of it when I enjoyed White Wolf RPGs (I still do, to some extent.) But the story is trying to build a world that’s meant to entice you into the World of Darkness without actually referring to things, so as to keep the mystery going, so if I didn’t know WoD, old or new, I wouldn’t have realised (possibly until the end) that I’m a Nosferatu, my mother’s a Malkavian… I could go on, but there are supernatural things, and Hunters (yes, with a capital H) and Ghouls, without explanation or context, and, rather than entice, it somewhat turned me off with how it seemed a collection of incidents without any real focus.

Now, I mentioned a racist bus driver, just off hand, and this is as good a segue as any into the Mage portion of the duo, Refuge. The name is, I’m assuming, a play on words on a couple of levels, as the main character is a woman called Julia, who lives in Malmo, Sweden, working for Nordic Aid with Syrian refugees. Her husband is a maker from San-Dieg- Oh. Wait. This would be a good time to mention this half of the duet I ragequit pretty early on. Because, like We Eat Blood, it’s highly unsubtle, and reading it felt like a highly painful clout to the head.

So… Minor digression here: Done well, games that discuss Issues (capital I, the big problems facing us today) are perfectly fine. Done badly, you have something very much like Refuge. Our heroine is a loving wife for a techbro who’s helping the girls into Maker culture, and is obviously the “good” , and the introduction of the “bad”… Is where I ragequit.

Yes, I get that this so-called “Professor” hasn’t actually *read* any Clarke or Asimov, if they’re saying dumb shit like this. Yes, I get that we are constrained by our “nice person” character to only be mean passively or actively. I GET IT.

Julia, I largely didn’t feel one way or the other about until this segment. She’s “generic nice person”, so generic, in fact, that it wasn’t until I looked at the store page that I realised she was a she (The first person narrative doesn’t help there.) But while yes, this guy is an asshole who, I would lay money, will be at the right-wing rally that apparently happens later in the game (Because this is a game about Issues as well as the introduction to the world of Mage), these responses are… Bad. And this so-called professor is quite obviously Bad, and the main character is so obviously Good, and I can almost hear the capital letters forming around this narrative. I could also hear poor ol’ Dr. A starting to revolve rapidly in his grave, but that’s purely by the by. When, before the bad things even happen, you find the reader yelling “I F*(!IN’ GET ITTTT!”, like Billy Connolly at an opera, it is a sign that you are handling things with all the subtlety of a Bagger trying to do microsurgery.

It may come as no surprise to learn that most of the story revolves around the Nordic Aid, magical elements kind of take a background to the whole thing for most of the narrative, and that the black-and-white presentation continues pretty much throughout. Oh, and for those of us waiting to hear if the Mage elements are as formulaic as they can be, yes, the character Awakens at a rave.

In summary, while We Eat Blood is unfocused in places, it is definitely the superior of the two games, but… Honestly, I can’t recommend either. They’re not terribly good at introducing you to the World of Darkness, or even their relative segments of it, there’s only the tiniest hints of subtlety in the writing at places, one character is only halfway relatable (We Eat Blood’s, who is still an asshole), while the other is a cookie cutter Nice Person, and, because of their primary conceit, you may not even realise there are multiple paths through the game (Seemingly mainly influenced by early choices), because of course the game isn’t going to tell you you’re a Nosferatu, or a Gangrel, or a Hollow One, or whatever the hell. And that, funnily enough, is sort of a problem. They become generic, rather than part of their world, one by trying to introduce too many elements, the other by sidelining the magical elements with a hamhanded handling of the refugeee crises in our world and the resurgence of nazi assholes calling themselves the “alternative right wing.”

Hitting that “Compassion” button like there’s no tomorrow. I mean, it’s good advice… But there’s a page and a half of this. I’M TALKING ABOUT SUBTLETY AGAIN, IN CASE YOU HADN’T NOTICED.

The Mad Welshman remembers the names of all the supernatural beings who cross his path. There’s That Guy, and That Thing, and This Thing, and… 

Filed under: Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!

Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £5.99
Where To Get It: Steam, Official Page

It’s not often I get to review a game that’s so very honest about what it is: A hidden object/person search in the purest sense of the word, where the entire point is to click on things in the hope that yes, that’s the one you’re looking for. Or, y’know, get eyestrain trying to do it legitimately. That’s an option too.

Clicking on things, as it turns out, is the wiser option. As is discovering the scroll wheel does zoom in and out in many places. And that click and drag moves things. The game doesn’t outright tell you any of this, but you do discover it fairly quickly and organically, so I can’t really have a go at the developers for that.

Goodness me, there’s a lot going on here, isn’t there?

In fact, there’s a lot going for what, at first, appears a simple and unassuming game, and a lot of that is because the developers have done their homework on both their source inspiration (Things like the Where’s Wally?/Waldo? books) and how a game… Can somewhat get around the limitations of their source.

Like the hidden person books from which they’ve drawn inspiration, there are stories in each image. The butterfly hunt. A day at the farm. A concert in the middle of the desert, which proved… Not to be the best idea. But interaction is required to fully spot everything you want (Although you can move forward before spotting everything, if you so desire, which is very nice.) Some people and objects are hidden behind leaves, or rocks that you drag, or, in one case, you have to appease the gods of the corn for your blessing to appear (Yes, I’m being cryptic. It’s not a long game, so I’m trying my damnedest not to give you any hints that the game isn’t.) Clicking on the objects to find in the bottom bar will give you a hint. Not always a very useful hint, but then, they weren’t always very useful in the Where’s Wally books either. And, of course, sometimes something is more apparent zoomed in, than zoomed out.

All these lovely… HEY, SHEPHERD! THAT’S NO PLACE TO TAKE A SHOWER!

Adding to this is the charm of the audio. Pretty much everything is done, soundwise, via foley, aka “Let’s try and imitate the noises with our mouths”, and I shamelessly love that. There’s a sense of playfulness about it as a result. Similarly, while the black and white line-art of the visuals may be a turn-off for some, it neatly sidesteps colourblindness issues that could be such a problem in hidden person books, and, again, it has charm.

Honestly, there’s only two things I would really criticise, and both of those are effectively niggles: The flavour text boxes for each level don’t run on a replay (You can delete your progress and replay), and the varieties of left mouse interaction aren’t very well explained (But become apparent with experimentation on the second level.)

For the price, one and a half times that of one of those pocket Where’s Wally books, I’d honestly recommend Hidden Folks to fans of this sort of thing, and for folks who want a relaxing, somewhat likeable game that involves just exploring the landscape.

The Mad Welshman grinned as he moved the train down the tracks. Ostensibly, he’d find one of those people he was hired to… But the hero tied up in front was definitely a bonus!

Filed under: Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!

Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £14.99 (£18.99 for Fleet Edition)
Where To Get It: Humble Store, GOG, Steam

The sea is a harsh mistress. She is also, in Diluvion, a strangely empty one. Unless you count pirate ships, of which there are plenty.

Thankfully, at this range, it’s almost impossible to miss. The day is mine!

Let’s step back a bit: Diluvion is a submarine adventurey simulation type thing, in which you pick one of three ships, eventually upgrading to better ones that can go deeper, picking up crew and having adventures as you go.

There’s just one problem: It’s not very intuitive, and it doesn’t feel all that rewarding. It is, without doubt, pretty. When you find an ice block, several times bigger than your sub, or an abandoned research station surrounded by mines, you can’t help but wonder at the stories. But, even with the landmarks, those stories are mostly one liners, and most of what you’ll be seeing, even if you work out how to efficiently use the faster currents to get around, is murky dankness, filled with the bacteria and dead flesh of the ocean, the marine snow.

Not the shiniest landmark. But still an *impressive* landmark, considering…

The main thing that comes to mind with Diluvion is that yes, it’s a fairly open world, but it’s an open world without a whole lot to do. The first main quest (Upgrading the sub) is effectively an extended fetch quest, asking you to find scrap (Which is the easiest, being common, and ammunition for your main guns aside), reinforced plates (Seemingly only found in a minefield, because this is a post-apocalypse), engine parts (Seemingly, again, only found in certain areas), some blackberries (God knows how they’re grown, but I’ve also found Ferns and Daisies, so… Good job?), and a morse radio (Again, found… Somewhere. Somewhere I haven’t been yet.) Meanwhile, most of what this entails is docking with abandoned research stations, Loot Spheres (No, really, that’s what they’re called), pirate ships you’ve attacked, hunting around a hand drawn 2d representation of the thing you docked with for chests, and looting the buggers. Occasionally, there will be a crew member to hire (Including, weirdly, in the pirate ships you cripple with your scrap cannons), a trader, or an event hidden behind a door, itself gated by whether you have a crew member (Who you will potentially lose) and a crowbar (Which you will definitely lose, regardless.)

Again, these… Just blend into each other, to be honest, the majority not even being noticeable, let alone memorable. Crazed crewman to calm down was the most common one I saw, along with “There is a loot chest here, but it’s dangerous to get, maybe a crewman will help!” Meanwhile, Lady with Party Hat seems to get about a lot faster than I do, being seen in multiple places, at multiple times, sometimes even in the same building. Sometimes she’ll be running a bed and breakfast. Sometimes, she’s got absolutely nothing to say. Sometimes she’s a crafter of charms, which, due to the strange world, actually have an effect. But she is Lady with Party Hat, and unfortunately, you can tell me no different.

Good Heavens, they’re *multiplying* o.O

There is an over-arching story to this, by the way, something about a treasure, with everything unknown but its rough location (Very Deep Underwater), that apparently will make Everything Alright… But, for all that there are excellent ship designs, and the buildings are interesting, the sameness of a lot of the ones you encounter dulls the overall experience. It’s interesting, in its way, how a first quest can really mess up an experience. There are interesting things to find, and I’ve mentioned a few (Another would be the Angry Captain. Poor feller’s driven himself into an electricity pylon, and needs to make the cash to get towed), but despite seeing these things, I’m bored, and this big ol’ fetch quest is a big part of that.

It doesn’t help that, as mentioned, it’s somewhat unintuitive, and a little bugged to boot. When entering the settings, mouse sensitivity and the window size aren’t remembered between sittings (Occasionally causing swearing as Apply resizes beyond what I was comfortable with), the crew end up being pretty numbers, and applying them is odd, combat depends upon you remembering turret position, and just because something is a landmark, doesn’t always mean its a checkpoint. To be perfectly fair, dying is not a big problem, as you can reload from the last checkpoint just fine, but switching between 2d captain mode (For talking to crew, boarding ships, etc) and the main 3d mode is annoying at best, and, even with the addition of a slowdown function to switch crew between stations in combat, frustrating at worst.

Tonnesburg is, so long as you look around, a surprisingly lovely place. You will be coming back here. A fair bit.

I can see Diluvion being perfectly fine if you go into it with the right mindset, aware of the grind and just wanting to chill out, spend some time. It does, as noted, definitely have its pretty side. There was obvious attention paid to the aesthetics, there’s obviously a world out there. But it’s not really for me. If you want a chill submarine time, then I don’t think you could go far wrong with Diluvion. But if you want something a little spicier, quicker, and a little less grindy, I definitely wouldn’t blame you.

Filed under: Game Reviews by admin

Become a Patron!