Don't know about you, but when I do end of year retrospectives I tend to forget neat stuff I played early on, and I think that's a shame. So post what you played so far: neat old games, weird bullshit you bought on a whim, hot takes, cold takes, upcoming stuff we should look out for, etc! Here's some of mine:

Overwhelm

Haven't gotten around to finishing it. It is marketed as a hard reverse metroidvania where the enemies get upgraded instead of you, and you only get a limited number of lives. While all of this does describe the game, what I found most cool was the atmosphere. The game is retro, and has a color palette composed of black, white and red, but some of the bosses have this really fluid animation that makes them uncanny, and there's some "glitchy ambiance" to the encounters, where the screen will cut to static and things will move around. Kinda feels like playing an old videogame creepypasta and I think that's reason enough to play it.

Killing Time at Lightspeed

Text based game where you are stuck in a spaceship looking at social media back on Earth. The dialogue is cheesy at times and the social commentary a bit heavy handed, but it conveys the feeling of being out of touch, left behind, disconnected from the world around you, specially towards the end.

Slay the Princess

Visual novel game. Only has a demo out at the moment, but I liked the writing. It is both a Stanley Parable deal, with a (kind of) adversarial narrator, and an interrogation type of game (trying to determine if the titular princess should/could be slain). With the way the game responds to player choice, I think that if this leans into the horror direction it can be something really cool, like a more fleshed out version of the stuff Until Dawn implied it was doing with the psychologist sections. The devs are also making a game called Scarlet Hollow that is a more traditional visual novel, but still really good from the chapter I played.

Melatonin

Neat little rhythm game that borrows heavily from lo-fi zoomer aesthetics. I hadn't played a rhythm game that doesn't rely on visual input before, so that was nice, but since then I played some of the rhythm heaven games and those are much better. Some people say that it's a game made for you to watch instead of play, but I disagree (though I recommend it only if on sale, it's too short).

Fear and Hunger

So, this is a game that falls into that category of "games that want to make you miserable". I've seen people compare it to Pathologic, don't know if that comparison makes sense because I dropped Pathologic early. This is a survival horror RPGMaker game with really hostile design: party member permadeath, ability to lose limbs with really scarce (and costly) opportunities to get them back, the fucking Lisa: the Painful save system makes a comeback, and generally obscure mechanics, lore and objectives, etc. It wears its influences in its sleeves with 0 shame, from Berserk, Silent Hill, Resident Evil, Dark Souls, etc. but it still feels cohesive somehow. It's also really edgy. Most of the times it serves the mood, but it can get gratuitous and gross, to the point I feel weird recommending it to anyone even though I think it's interesting (PLEASE CHECK THE CONTENT WARNINGS).

HyperDemon

Shame on everyone in the entire internet for not telling me they made a Devil Daggers sequel! It's even better than the original, with much prettier visuals, trippy as fuck, and has some cool twists to the formula. One of the best arcade experiences out there.

Paradise Killer

This one is kind of well known, but I think it deserved more praise. Doing the Phoenix Wright formula in an open ended role-playey way is genius. Doing so with a single giant case in a completely alien setting with demonic vaporwave aesthetics seals the deal. Though I do have some gripes with the "friction gives things meaning" principle the devs used as a design pillar, informing things like how things are spread out in the open world, or small annoying things like the door puzzles. Like, I can't deny that some of the frustration made the ending trial more cathartic but they could have toned it down a bit.

The Travel Game

Dirt cheap game that is basically just a logic puzzle with some vaguely creepy atmosphere. Nothing special, I wouldn't really recommend it, just think that logic puzzles are a bit underexplored as a game mechanic. Apart from a small part in a game called Subsurface Circular, and that one level in Dishonored 2, I don't think I ever saw it used. I kind of like picking up pen and paper and doing some predicate logic from time to time. Could work well in investigation games.

I think that's all! I played more stuff but it was either not worth talking about or well tread ground (no one wants to hear another take about how silent hill 2 is not really that scary).

  • ElGosso [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    On sale? $5 base price? 500 mb install? Oh yeah :bean: it's gamer time

    • Comp4 [comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Hope you have fun with it. I cant vouch for it since I didnt play it but my buddy really seemed to like it.