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Smashing Bottles (PC) by jp (May 30th, 2026 at 18:16:28) |
Heard about this one recently and got stuck playing the demo on itch (though it's also available on Steam) for a few hours until I got to the final (demo) ending!
It's an incremental game with some interesting things going on - you have a bat and smash bottles, but you have a limited time to do so (in seconds, like max 25 or so after all the upgrades?). When time runs out you can go again or go to the shop to buy upgrades. As expected you want to get more money from smashing bottles and there's ways to do that - spawn golden bottles, champagne bottles (when they smash the corks fly out and can smash other things), and even molotov cocktails (that explode, smashing other things).
There's a few things I thought where nice/clever:
a. The game has two distinct phases (once you unlock molotovs, everything changes, really) - the "you smash" and the "maximize money in the time allowed". In the latter, the game mostly plays itself as the molotovs keep everything getting smashed.
b. The "you smash" has rotating bottles, and since the smashing can take a few hits, there's some interest in smashing champagne such that the cork flies in a certain direction for more damage.
c. The champagne corks are pretty clever - since it gives you a reason to, in the short time you have to smash, choose what to smash a little more carefully. Go for golden or champagne hoping for a productive chain reaction?
Of course there's also a prestige/reset mechanic - from which you can lock a separate bat that smashes.
I'm curious how far things will go once the full game is out - and what the nature of the upgrades will be. I'm really hoping for more variety in the experience beyond the simple "number go up" - in that sense the molotovs seem like they're capping the experience in a detrimental way (even as they were super fun to smash when I first unlocked them.
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Donkey Kong Bananza (NSW2) by jp (May 30th, 2026 at 18:07:32) |
Still playing!
It has an interesting structure in terms of its levels and such - the core metaphor is that you're going deeper into the planet with each level, and they're both thematic and numbered. I got to a point where there's a bifurcation - go right into what I thought was "jungle land" or left into "snow land". I went right did a few more levels, cleared the boss (it was plant/poison land) and in order to continue going deeper I was then told to go back to "snow land"! There's a fast travel/teleport system involving giant worms that can move your around, so it was easy enough to do this, but I was surprised to learn that the fork was just a "choose what order to do these" situation... and also, the entire "fork" makes little sense thematically so I'm curious to see how it's explained and communicated in the interface - will it look like a fork in the "hole" going into the planet's core?
The titular ability (bananza mode!) was a bit underwhelming - you turn into a bigger DK and can now punch things you couldn't before - it lasts a limited amount of time. But, I've since unlocked a new one - DK-bird - where you can glide around (and after paying to unlock) and drop an egg on enemies. The gilding around was important/necessary in the plant/poison levels, and I'm expecting it to be similarly required in the snowy ones. We'll see!
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Hollow Knight: Silksong (PC) by dkirschner (May 13th, 2026 at 14:58:07) |
Kicking myself for not writing an entry when I was playing this 6 months ago. I am cleaning up my wishlist, backlog, and etc., and the FEELING I get when I see Silksong "in progress" is anxiety. I had jotted a few notes in December, as follows:
"It’s true, Silksong is hard. Like, really, frustratingly hard. Like punishingly difficult. I hit a wall at the end of Act 1 trying to beat the Last Judge. The game likes to place benches far away from boss fights, such that retrying boss fights involves slogging back through tough platforming and other sections of the map."
I did kill the Last Judge and complete Act 1. I remember that took a very long time, and that after the Last Judge, I died a few more times and, probably, with shaking hands and rapid heartbeat, said, "I can't do this anymore." Actually, it may have been in one of those rooms with waves of enemies. This innovation is new and unwelcome to Silksong, rooms that lock upon entering and spill several waves of challenging enemies at you. Yeah, I think that is what got me, just being pummeled over and over in one of those rooms, getting tired of exploring the maze-like map, tired of dying, tired of corpse runs, just exhausted. The game became a chore.
Besides that, I loved it, haha. I was definitely into it for a while. It was sublime until it wasn't.
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Turnip Boy Robs a Bank (PC) by dkirschner (May 12th, 2026 at 17:20:35) |
I meant to quickly beat this back in April so I could have a "completion" for the month, but I got really busy after spending barely an hour one afternoon with Turnip Boy Robs a Bank, a bizarre little twin-stick shooter about a turnip...who robs a bank. The game builds off previous games in the series, which I have never played, in which Turnip Boy commits tax evasion and, according to this game at least, seems to have started a war. Work has slowed down for the first time in nearly two months, and while I wait for my next contract to begin, I figured I'd knock this out.
The whole game is silly. The world is populated by sentient fruits and vegetables. You are employed by a pickle / mafia gang leader to rob a bank of a garlic bulb / bad guy / killed your dad. You have a base, where you can get new weapon loadouts by bringing weapons from the bank (always try to return with something new or high-powered!), purchase progression items from the "dark web," and upgrade stuff at another vendor. You go on "runs" to the bank, which are timed (starts at 2 or 3 minutes, goes up to 5 or 6 with upgrades). Runs are over when you die or when you exit the bank. Die and you lose half the cash you accumulated in the run. Survive and you are handsomely rewarded. Upgrade stuff. Go back to the bank. It's a roguelite too.
The bank has a specific layout of rooms, but you'll encounter some randomized areas too, and enemies and treasure are somewhat randomized. Throughout the bank are tons of NPCs with little fetch quests that usually reward you with pictures (fun/ny to look at) or hats (fun/ny to equip). A blueberry might want you to find its wedding ring, a lime wants you to get divorce papers from her lemon husband, a scientist pineapple wants you to find a philosopher mango and ask it an ethical question about experimenting on fruits, etc. I had some good laughs.
In each corner of the bank is a boss. Boss fights were fun, but the most challenging were early on. Once you start upgrading stats, the game becomes easy. It definitely ends up being an "upgrade everything and go nuts on all the enemies!" type game, experience being overpowered.
I haven't played a twin-stick shooter in a while, and while this wasn't revolutionary or anything, it was fun and scratched the itch. I gotta get back to Divinity: Original Sin 2. I might have some extra time till my next gig, so maybe I can boot it up, remember what I was doing, and make some progress this week.
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Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS) by jp (Apr 27th, 2026 at 22:04:52) |
I got to that point where I hit a monster/boss that just wasn't that much fun, and then I got a bit lost in terms of where to continue making progress, and the backtracking started to get a bit tiresome...as I explored and searched for different paths. So, time to bail!
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Chrono Trigger (SNES) by Sir Whompus |
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most recent entry: Thursday 21 February, 2008
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Game play:
It seems as though even outside Chrono Trigger I am traveling through time, because what seemed like a few minutes turned out to be a couple hours. Since I left off, I have journeyed backward and forwards through time just by sheer accident. When I say accident I don't mean the means, I mean the reason. The story line in Chrono is amazingly plausible. The characters act like real people, not driven by some divine writer that said "this would make a good plot". For example, I just rescued the girl from the past and returned to the future only to find that I was going on trial for kidnapping her! But wait, it gets better: I caused the trial to occur by saving the royal advisor in the past; after his rescue, he was determined to make a legal system to put away criminals... but i didn't know that I would end up as a victim of the system I indirectly created. I didn't need to rescue the advisor; he was locked up in a chest, and had I not opened it I wouldn't have been tried. However, the fact of the matter was that I did get on trial, and was forced to break out of prison. In an attempt to escape the guards, I had to use one of the time gates to lose them, ending up in the future. It surprised me that the reason wasn't "go kill this bad guy", but more of a "run the hell away" reason. In fact, they haven't even introduced the main villan yet.
Anyways, after I played for another 2 hours I was delighted with the battle system. It's natural, without any random encounters (gasp!). Well, their are "random encounters", but they actually show the enemies popping out from bushes or from off screen so it makes sense. It was a small touch that I think makes alot more sense than the normal system. As well as a actual decent introduction to battles, the battles themselves were fun. For instance, bosses require you to think. The first boss I encountered would counterattack when it was hit from far enough away, but wouldn't when it was close to you. I powered through the fight, but I almost died because I did not wait for him to move to a more tactically sound position. The second boss also required though; by reading a book on a desk, you gained information that the boss (divided into 3 parts) would heal itself and was immune to fire until the head was destroyed. It made the fight much more difficult, because the first time I fought him, I was unaware what part was healing, which led to my demise.
Design:
The design of this game is, quite frankly, amazing. I can see why it is on the classics list: from the story to level design to battle systems, it is a very well put together the use of time periods as level design seemed to be a tricky way to pull it off; unless they actually changed the map it would get repetative. However, after finding my way to the futuristic zone, I was no longer worried. The continents are completely redone, as the entire world was (to the best of my knowledge) devistated by war. Craters cover the ground, and people live in small civilizations called domes. Talking to the NPCs, I found that food is hard to come by, probably because the land doesn't seem fit to grow anything.
I wondered after the last log if healing moves would be part of the double tech abilities. Surprising enough, I found that they were combined with attack techs. For instances, when you combine a heal with a AoE, it makes the heal affect all party members. It was an interesting way to include the healing in the tech combos, and one that I will be interested to see more of. The fact that bosses requires you to think is another great improvement over most RPGs. Where in most you can power your way through bosses without much thinking, in Chrono that does not seem to be the case unless you happened to be very, very over leveled. It seems like the battles will not get boring unless they end up rehashing the same abilities for the bosses over and over.
The story was also impressive; as I mentioned before, it has characters that seem alive, with motivations other than "i must do (insert quest) to save the world!" One of the party members is a princess who, at this point, has rejected her father as a fool who can't even think beyond the crown. Another, your best friend, follows you because she tried to break you out of prison before finding out you had done it yourself. Finally, the Chrono himself seems caught up in a tangle of problems just because he was interested in a girl. I have high expectations of the story and character development, and doubt I will be disappointed.
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