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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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The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition (PC) by dkirschner |
| Surprisingly entertaining! And surprisingly frustrating! ---------------- Just use hints when you need to and don't feel bad about it. Such a different way to approach a game. |
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most recent entry: Tuesday 6 March, 2012
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Why oh why can't I get into adventure games? I don't think I lack patience. The puzzles aren't over my head. They have plenty of humor, engaging stories, lovable characters and beautiful artwork. So what the hell is it?
Adventure games just don't seem to make sense!
When I was a kid, I played a lot of the old LucasArts games like The Dig and Full Throttle, alongside Myst and others. I liked them. I was good at them. I kept journals in Myst and got pretty far. I beat The Dig and I beat Full Throttle over and over because I wanted to be in a motorcycle gang.
Then I grew up and didn't play adventure games.
Then one day I saw Machinarium and oooh'd and aaah'd and clicked "buy now." It was so cool at first, the cute robot, the mean policeman, the mechanical city, the music, the gorgeous backgrounds. I eventually became frustrated by some of the puzzles and relied heavily on a walkthrough to finish.
I've also tried out some Sam & Max, which went similarly. The solutions seemed random and didn't make good sense.
I also downloaded Secret of Monkey Island 1 & 2, and Syberia 1 & 2, the former for being point-and-click classics, and the latter for looking really interesting.
Fast-forward to me being bored on an airplane. I boot up my computer and go to start a point-and-click adventure of The Secret of Monkey Island because I have only a touchpad and can run the game on low power. I'm excited. It's supposed to be one of the most-loved point-and-click games ever. Maybe this one will bring me back to my childhood and reinvigorate my love of adventure games.
Pros: the usual suspects -- like the style, good voiceovers in the special edition, lots of personality, interesting characters and intriguing story and setting...
Cons: clunky interface -- Pushing buttons doesn't always work and I have to push things repeatedly to register sometimes. This can be really annoying for timed events, like carrying a mug of acidic grog and switching mugs before the grog melts the first mug. The button inevitably doesn't work and my mug melts, forcing me to go do the whole thing over. Also, there's a hidden edge to the screen. If you mouse to the apparent edge, the game cursor gets over-riden by the Windows mouse cursor and you can't click on anything. So you can never mouse to the edge of the screen. Want to move to the edge of the screen? Too bad! You have to take baby steps! The clunky buttons also make it so you can rarely skip dialogue that you've heard 20 times and really don't want to listen to anymore. Just mash that Backspace and hope it skips. The voices are great, but they get real old having to listen to the same lines over and over.
And then, the usual suspects -- too many of the solutions don't make any sense! They're not puzzles in this game. There aren't any patterns or anything like that, like I found in Machinarium. There are just objects you use on other objects.
Examples:
My first need for help was when I had to find a helmet so some carnies would let me launch out of a cannon. So I went looking for a helmet. I had a pot I'd found, but I was busy trying to fill it with grog to poison some dogs. It wouldn't fill up. I used the "H" hint system, which told me to give the pot to the carnies. Oh, okay. Yeah I guess a pot could be a helmet. I've seen that. But that particular pot doesn't look like a helmet. And when you get shot out of the cannon, the pot falls off your head anyway. Why did I need it?!
So the pot made some sense. But the next one is why I can't seem to get into these games. There's a part where you have to poison some dogs. I thought I needed to poison some meat I'd found to feed to the dogs to get past them. I'd figured out how to evade the cook and get some meat, figured out how to season the meat, but couldn't figure out how to poison it. There is grog all around, including a barrel of it with a skull on the side, and it's leaking slime green (poison alert?), so I just knew I needed to get some grog on the meat too. There was a chalice elsewhere I couldn't pick up, and the pot-helmet I couldn't use to fill with grog because 'I don't need that much.' So again, nothing left to do. Used H. H tells me to poison the meat with something in my inventory. I look. There is nothing in there. Breath mints. A flower. I use the mints. Nothing. Push H again. "Poison the meat with the yellow flower." What? But why? There is no indication that the flower is poisonous. If you 'look' at it, it just says it has a striking yellow color. How is that intuitive or indicative of poison? Sure, some plants are poisonous, but why would I think this flower is, especially with the presence of the obviously toxic grog? Lame.
At another point, I had to give an object to a troll as a toll to pass his bridge. He wanted food. I'd tried to give him everything under the sun, and finally obtained a carrot cake from a prisoner, who needed a file to get out of his cell. When you inspect the carrot cake, it just says "It's heavy." Okay. So I take it to the troll, who doesn't want it. That's like the 5th piece of food I've tried on him. I can't do anything else so I use H. H says "Look inside the cake." What? Why would I ever decide to look inside the cake? Because it is heavy? It's totally normal for cakes to be heavy. So, really? I can't go on because I didn't figure out to dig into a cake? I can't go on because I didn't figure out to use a flower to poison some meat? I can't go on because I didn't walk to the end of a pier to step on the edge of a plank and flip a bird off a red herring? I thought I could actually scare the bird like a normal person using any variety of things? Nope!
So. I've been using H whenever I get stuck. Usually it just tells me to do what I've already been trying and I then figure out a way to do it slightly differently and quite right. Sometimes I'd rather just play this game like an interactive movie with a walkthrough. It's very frustrating, but I do like the characters and am intrigued by the story.
Le Chuck.
Le sigh.
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