Source: Cash, ‘cos, like, I couldn’t not support the developers of this one!
Price: Iunno, it says £14.99 for the game, and, like, £18.99 for the game and the soundtrack and stuff?
Where To Get It: Well, Steam  has it, you should, like, totally check it out… If it’s your thing, y’know!

Okay, so, listen up. This is a game about, like, teens. Also spooky scary ghosts, but mostly teens. Y’know, with the awkwardness, and the sentences that are either, like, way contracted, or run on for ages and ages and ages… You, like, remember being one of those, right? Or maybe you are one? Y’know, when you’d say like, and y’know, and gaaaahd? Or be totally quiet? Oh, yeah, sometimes you’d forget words you totally use all the time, like… Well, totally!

See? Like, teen stuff, like Truth or Slaps, which is kinda like Truth or Dare, but with less butthole licking, like he said!

I’d like to tell you this is a game about happy endings. But that’s literally up to you. Like, literally. Your choices actually lead to things, because there’s only a small amount of things it can lead up to. And most of it has nothing to do with whether you, like, save the world, or whatever. Because it’s entirely possible you can do that. Although it’s also totally possible that none of it actually happened, or all of it happened, and, like, keeps happening, because timey wimey stuff is involved. Also it hella reminds me of The Fog… Oh, wait, you might not have seen the fog, it involved radios too, and creepy voices, and a shipwreck of some sort… Unless it’s the new one, in which case it was a bit weirder, and not as cool. But either way, things happen, and you kinda have to keep everything together when… Well, things really… Really aren’t together, do you get that?

Anyway, the point is that there are drama bombs, and if you’re not ready for those, or the fact that, y’know, it starts slow? Maybe this isn’t the game for you. Because these teens, they’re like… Their concerns are what you might call “Boring teen drama”, or you could, like, remember when all of that stuff was super important, I mean, universe endingly important. That’s kinda what I did, and I spent the whole game in various states of “Oh… My… GAAAAAHD!” or “OH NOES!”

This is, like, most of the teens, something like halfway through the night, I guess? I mean, look at how they’re tryin’ to be brave, and totally sucking at it!

Because the game definitely does a lot to give you a bad case of the Oh Noes. It, like, threatens your friends, or… Well, they’re not your friends, but they kinda are, because you’re a girl called Alex, even if, y’know, you’re not a girl, or a Person of Colour, which Alex also kinda is? Either way, it was really cool to see these teens being treated as… Well, people, not just scream queens or puppy princes or whatever. They make dumb choices, like eating space cakes at bad times, or bring out their drama, and half the drama comes from… Well, maybe they’re not all there in ways that aren’t related to those cookies that make you hungrier the more you eat them, y’get what I’m saying?

The game looks kinda cool, although it’s hard to see things on a big monitor, and the characters look kinda small, but that’s okay, because the island is really cool too, and the music that plays, all the sounds and voices and weird effects are good too, as is, like, how easy it is to work out how to use the radio to, y’know, do spooky things (because there are spooky radios), because when you get on the right frequency for, like, things to happen, something obvious usually comes with it, like a light, or triangles, or whatever.

I’ve only done one run through of the game so far (The game pulls a really, really mean trick to show multiple playthroughs. Like, what the hell, Night School, I was all “NUUUUUUUU!” when you pulled that!), and it took me, like, four whole hours to get through it once, but I liked it, and I’m gonna try and see what happens if I do things differently, because there’s, like, hidden achievements for drama choicey stuff and not-so-hidden achievements for finding letters and backstory and stuff, which would be cool, because your first time through, you’ll kinda be all “Whuuuuuhhhhhh?” for at least the first half, maybe more if, like, you don’t get it?

What Jonas is saying is, like, my reaction through, like, the ENTIRE game. With, y’know, a lot of “Oh cool!” too…

Article Translation/Summary: If you like adventure games along the lines of The Cave or the newer Telltale stuff, with well written teenagers being well written (And voice acted) teenagers in a spooky situation that, on your first run through at least, is going to leave you with lots of questions, then this is definitely a good purchase, and well worth checking out. Just be aware that the slow start is just a build up, and stick with it, you might find it worth it. Also please be aware that there is death and teenagers (rightly or wrongly) blaming each other for some of the shit they did, space cakes (That’s “hash” browns, emphasis on hash, to many others), and it is a horror game. Thanks for reading through what I felt was a fitting style of reviewing for the game!

The Mad Welshman is totes a cool dude who, like, isn’t a freak or a… Wait, are we even allowed to say freak anymo-ooooh, these cakes taste so good….

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £10.99
Where To Get It: Steam

I’m genuinely conflicted about this one. Mainly because I can’t understand why it looks the way it does. This isn’t Melissa Royall’s first art gig, nor is it Richard Perrin’s first outing. Both of them made Journal, and Richard Perrin helped make The White Chamber and Kairo. And yet… I’m faced with an art style that wouldn’t look out of place in one of those low effort “Girl Games” (The quote marks are there for a reason), and UI placement weirdness that I’d expect from worse games than this.

The opening is highly artistic, and seems inspired by games like Persona, but the game itself…

Make no mistake, it isn’t a bad game, per se… But it definitely makes some strange decisions. Like adding quicker week timers as a thing you buy in game (No, it’s not using microtransactions), or an unlockable “comedy ending” to the game’s story, which is about harassment in cosplay… Admittedly, it’s hard to unlock, and considering the non-sequitur that was the “Comedy ending” in The White Chamber, I’m not really sure I want to bother.

So, er… The game, yes. It’s essentially a life sim, like Princess Maker or Academagia, where you want to become the very best cosplayer there is, so you can be flown to Japan for the International Cosplay Championship and be feted as being awesome. You plan your… Wait, more odd decisions. The week’s divided into weekdays (All of them), weeknights (All of them), and weekends? But what if I finish a costume early, do I…? Yes. Yes I do waste the rest of the week. And I’m not entirely sure researching to raise skills works. Or if it does, how it works. The game isn’t very communicative, even for a life sim. Finally, considering actual events happen pretty slowly, as opposed to the normal kind of “While you’re doing this thing, one of your stats was changed by something happening”? I haven’t gotten amazingly far in the story, I certainly haven’t gotten toward relationships, and I’m not entirely sure I want to put in the effort. Because it means watching the protagonist (Who is the worst drawn of the characters, some of whom are moderately well drawn, others… Not so much) stand in a relatively static image, while one of something like four jazzy tunes plays.

…This is our protagonist. Compare the two portraits.. And that pose… o.O

Okay, they’re good tunes, but hearing them for the hundredth time in a row is starting to get wearing. As are the work images. And the dissatisfaction I’m feeling is really awkward, because I’m pretty sure there’s some happy endings in there, the characters talk about cosplay fairly realistically (Even if the jobs in the work system… Er… Aren’t depicted as anything but gamified “Get money and stress” options that you usually see in life sims), and the intro (Which looks inspired by Persona) shows signs of quality that… Aren’t as obvious when you get to the actual game.

And this makes me very sad, because I want to like this game. I like the idea. I like that it’s trying for social commentary on a scene that definitely has its ups and downs, not to mention a bit of wider social commentary. I like that it apparently has same sex relationships. But I’m struggling uphill against a game that lacks some necessary transparency, has a blank-slate protagonist that creeps me out a little every time I see her vapid stare and odd poses, and whose UI and controls make decisions that constantly make me think “What the hell? How was this not spotted, when it’s that obvious?”

…This is what I mean about the UI. The windows blur into one another, making a hot mess…

There’s more content coming, and the game is being updated at a rate of knots right now, but… I’m extremely conflicted about this damn game. It has its pros, but right now, they’re outweighed by strange design decisions, a UI that hurts my eyes if I stare at it too long, and that protag…

The Mad Welshman, eventually, will achieve his dream of cosplaying Elijah Snow from Planetary. But until then, he will wait.

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Source: Free
Price: Free (Donations accepted)
Where To Get It: Steam Itch.IO (The latter has details on donation)

Emily Is Away is a game that can make you uncomfortable. In fact, as I’m writing this paragraph (I don’t write these things all in one go), I’m staring at the login screen for the third chapter, after 15 minutes, thinking very hard about what’s just transpired. I’m not entirely sure I want to continue. But obviously, this is a review about a game that isn’t “fun”, but needs to be talked about, so… Later.

“Nothing much” is going on. And yet…

[Later] Damn, that was just as harrowing as I thought it would be, two chapters in. Time to talk about it. Because talking is the core of the game, in a sense. In another sense, it’s about not talking. About the things you don’t say as much as the things you do. About pain. And, to me at least, a reminder of what an asshole I was in university (College to american readers.)

If you’re expecting something flashy, something glitzy in this donationware game, think again. This is set in the age of AOL Instant Messenger, and shitty icons and blocky text are the order of the day. And it’s all messenger. It’s all talking, and hitting the keys to type the words that your avatar in game actually types. And I find it both very clever, and harrowing, to type myself to make those words appear. It makes me feel complicit. And I don’t mean that in a good way. I am responsible for those words, even in that fictional world, and it hurts. Theoretically, I could play this multiple times (It took me just over half an hour the first time), and there are multiple things that could change the story, but I want to talk about it as it stands. And I’m going to do it by talking about relationships.

…Why did I say that? Why didn’t I say what I was *going* to say?

Relationships can seem easy to many, but they’re not. Even keeping a friendship can involve a surprising amount of work, but it’s work we do gladly because friendship is, in a very real sense, its own reward. But this applies even more so in bad times. In bad times, we may find ourselves asked to give more than we receive in a friendship, and sometimes to do so in a way that, in the short term, risks losing the friendship. Sometimes we’re not strong enough, for whatever reason. Sometimes, Things Happen. And Things Get Awkward. And trust is broken. Trust is important in relationships, especially if you genuinely wish your friends and loved ones the best.

This, folks, is a game filled with the pitfalls of real relationships. And what you say may have little bearing on what happens. Eventually, either Emily will be Away… Or you will. And it’s only the voice of experience that told me how bad things would be so early, and that knowledge, unfortunately, makes this game more affecting. In this case… I was the one who left. The words that needed to be aired never were. And I won’t play again (Although I’m sure regret over my fictional avatar’s situation will force me to play “What If?” later), not because this isn’t a well written gutpunch of a game, but because I want to hold on to that feeling, despite the fact I’ve experienced it personally before, on both ends. The same feeling my fictional avatar seemed to be afflicted with toward the end, where he wanted to say things… But didn’t, instead writing inconsequentialities while the elephants in the room (Multiple elephants) stared fixedly into his brainpan, before awkwardly saying that he had to go. Wondering where it went wrong. Wondering why he can’t say those words. Wondering, while secretly knowing, whether things will ever be the way they were.

…Of course, by the time it’s reached this point… It’s too late to say *anything*

They won’t. Something potentially valuable has gone from this world, because two people did stupid shit at the wrong times, because they didn’t know how to say what they needed to say, or to hear what they needed to say. And it will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

I won’t recommend this game to people just seeking “Fun.” It’s not. As soon as you realise the threads that simultaneously bind and tear apart these two people, the feeling of losing control, you know, instinctively, that Fun isn’t on the cards. But if you want a well written, emotionally affecting game that, in its way, talks about not talking, and bad relationships (Whether starting bad or going bad), you have a winner. If you want a game that makes your heart ache, and think very seriously about how lucky you are to have the friends you do… This game is worth playing, and very possibly worth a donation so the creator can make more.

Okay, that’s the end of this review. Goodbye.

The Mad Welshman Is Away.

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Mention the Black Dahlia murder, and many games players will point at LA Noire. Mention the game of the same name, however, and most often, you will get a blank stare. The rest of the time, a scream of sheer, unadulterated rage.

Black Dahlia, you see, is a game that, while mostly forgotten unjustly, had one element to it that angered many of its players beyond measure: The puzzles. Which, for an FMV adventure game at the tail end of the FMV heyday (1998, to be exact), was a sales killer.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

I was one of those original sales. Now, before we begin talking about why this is worth a Going Back, let’s mention just two numbers. Eight CDs. 4.6 Gb of game. In 1998. Of course, even a “full install” back in the day would be under 500 Mb. But it’s still a pretty mind boggling number. Now let’s go into why it’s mostly a game that should be recalled.

Firstly, for its silly premise (Involving the Thule Society, the Torso Murders, the Black Dahlia murder of Elizabeth Short, and, as you might expect, occult shenanigans linking them all), the writing and the acting sells the game. It was a selling point of the game that Dennis Hopper and Teri Garr were both acting in it (And, in a relative rarity for productions like this, even the extras are named in the manual), and they were supported by actors who, while relatively unheard of, were definitely not unskilled, such as Dan Frezza (Utah Shakespeare Company), Bradley Moniz, Daniel Whelan, and Colette Schreiber. You forget its silly, because, for the majority of the game, the actors and actresses are playing their roles very well. All I’ll say about the story is that it starts with you as a new investigator for the underfunded and underdeveloped COI, checking out a somewhat dubious report of Fifth Columnists in the area, and ends with the fate of the world in your hands.

Darren Eliker really sells the role of Jim Pearson. Poor feller.

Secondly, it had an interesting system where you could not only examine objects, but move them around in their containers, such as a notepad in your desk that can be shifted back to reveal a service revolver (Itself able to be opened.) It had quite a few locations, and used not only hotspots, but items in conversation.

There are, however, two mood killers for anyone wishing to play the game today: It’s difficult to run on modern systems (and, in fact, nigh impossible if you want to run it flawlessly), and the game’s difficulty could best be described as hellish. Here’s some examples to give you some idea, all from the first chapter (Disc 1 of 8).

You’ve talked to everybody, including the irascible Henry Finster, your superior (Walter Donovan, head of the COI at the time, and later OSS), the detective working on the Torso Murders cases (Peter Meryllo), and a smarmy FBI agent called Winslow. But you’ve run into a brick wall. The game’s given you enough clues that you have a blacklist of possibly less-than-loyal German-Americans, but, due to the rivalry between Donovan and then head of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover, the damn thing’s encrypted and nobody’s given you the key. The key to cracking the code is in your office. But to get there, you need to find the gun in your desk drawer (Which you won’t find unless you’re clicking and dragging everything that you can interact with), open up the handle (Which, again, you won’t find unless you realise you can do that in your inventory), use the key to open a locked cabinet in your room, and copy the notes written down on paper, because the in-game note system isn’t going to help you here, buddy.

Infamously, not only is this puzzle not meant to be solved when you find it, a bug means the game is unwinnable if you try before you’re meant to.

The code is quite simple, once you realise what it’s doing. But the game doesn’t exactly help in letting you know what it’s doing, as the two sheets cannot be read together, and both have their red herrings. This one puzzle is the gatekeeper to… The rest of the plot. Equally innocuous is the shadow on your office light, only seen when you flick on your office lights, and look up. That shadow… Is important, and checking that is vital. There aren’t, to my knowledge, any truly silly puzzles (Along the order of the infamous Cat Hair Moustache of the Gabriel Knight series), but many of them are exactly this tough to discover, let alone solve. Of course, the manual helps you with a few of these early (but vital) tasks, but who reads the manual, eh?

Strangely, despite this? I’d still say the game is worth it, and due a re-release on GOG or the like. But who would be the ones behind such a game? Who would be the ones who made this intriguing, if sometimes maddening game? Why, it would be Take 2 Interactive.

I remember my reaction to this scene. “Is she flirting with him? She’s flirting with him! … She’s flirting with him, and he’s not noticing. Idiot.”

But you’d know them, in the modern day, as 2K Games.

The Mad Welshman also sees spies everywhere. Fifth columnists, trying to ruin his sense of fun by sending him derivative AAA games. It’s a menace…

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Hidden Object Puzzle Adventures, in my considered opinion, are mostly creatively bankrupt. I’ll save the rant as to why for another time, but one of the main elements is that there is little to no consideration of where the puzzles fit. I’ve seen Memory puzzles in churches and “secret doors”, I’ve seen evil lairs guarded by the amazing security system that is… A brute forcable colour matching puzzle. The story, similarly, is often formulaic, and often has a “Tell” that conflicts with its “Show.”

Five rooms, each filled with bits of music trivia and puzzles for your puzzle box.

But I have actually found a good HOPA. And I’d completely forgotten about it. Let me correct this injustice, and show people why it works, when so many others make me groan and grumble. Let me tell you about Musaic Box.

Musaic box is the tale of a woman of somewhat indeterminate age, who has an explorer grandfather with a taste for music that was passed down. She comes to visit her grandfather, on the promise of a very special birthday present. But first, she must solve the riddle of the Musaic Box, and the clues are left around the house. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? It even takes around the same time as your average HOPA (Two or so hours.) However…

You didn’t really think I’d show you a completed puzzle, did you? For shame!

It’s tightly focused. One house, six rooms, and every room has something to do with music or musical history. Within each room is a collection of patterns for the Musaic Box, hidden in places like on the shade of a lamp, or on a printing press stamp, and those patterns lead to the core element of the game: The puzzles. The descriptions for the puzzles are from the character’s perspective, so we know that she was called ‘Little Figaro’ for singing the Barber of Seville at an early age, that she used to do ballet, that she skinned her knee while climbing trees… The puzzles round out her character in a way that supports her sometimes bemused commentary on Grandfather’s collection. In its small way, the story supports the game. And, because it’s in a small way, it doesn’t over-reach itself. There’s no moment to moment supernatural drama that falls apart after a slight examination here, just a young lady playing a game on her birthday. But, as I mentioned, the puzzles are the core element to the game. Let’s go into those.

Not only the core of the game, but where we get character backstory. Not a whole lot of it, but the game doesn’t contradict itself.

Musaic is a portmanteau of “music” and “mosaic”, and, essentially? That’s the puzzle right there. It’s a jigsaw, but a jigsaw that involves music. There’s usually (But not always!) one instrument that you can hear, and you’re supposed to piece together the short tune, making sure that matching colours of symbols aren’t on the same column. Sometimes there’s no lead instrument to listen to, sometimes there’s patterns to match up instead, but for the majority of the game, it goes like that, leading to one of my two criticisms of the game: It’s only moderately challenging until near the end. Otherwise, it does everything it sets out to do, it entertains, and everything fits together as a well designed game should. Of course, finishing the game nets you the birthday present, an “Atlantis amulet” (sic) that allows you to rearrange the tunes in the game any way you want (Which sounds horrible, for the most part: My second criticism of the game) , but then you realise “I spent a third of what I would spend on Hidden Secrets: The Horrific Jumble Of Items” , and you remember that the game has some pretty good short arrangements of classical tunes (Including a surfer rock version of “My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean”, and a properly swinging “When The Saints Go Marching In”.) And you smile. You may not play it twice, but you have had fun.

HOPA devs could learn from this example, which goes to show that “more complex” doesn’t necessarily mean better.

The Mad Welshman smiled as he slotted the last part of the Musaic into place. Victory, as it turns out, sounds like The Entertainer.

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