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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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2323 registered gamers and 3358 games. 7895 GameLogs with 13390 journal entries. 5126 games are currently being played.
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Beats (PSP) by PlanetSmasherN9 |
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most recent entry: Friday 8 February, 2008
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GAMEPLAY
Even with everything Beats does wrong, it still manages to be an amazing game. As I played for another hour, I really got addicted to trying out random songs in my collection. It was fun experimenting to see which types of music worked best for it and which types it didn't. This experimentation is truly where the fun of the game is found.
The note map generator is extremely impressive. It was able to make a pretty good map for about 70% of the songs I put on the game. Even when I played songs with odd time signatures and random starts and stops like The Dillinger Escape Plan and Protest the Hero, it kept with the beat of the songs and it actually fit the songs very well.
The mixture of playing a game with your very own music collection and the sense of experimentation lead this to be an extremely addictive game that I'm having a really hard putting down. It might not map the notes out perfectly all the time, but the fact that it works some of the time makes it extremely addicting and adds a sense of discovery that most games today lack.
DESIGN
From a design aspect, Beats truly is an amazing; from the design of the actual game to the way it is being marketed.
One of the problems of music games such as Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero is that they have a finite set of songs, and once you finish those songs it is really easy to get bored with the game. When you want more songs, you have to shell out another 50 dollars or so for the next iteration. Beats, however, completely avoids this problem by having a never-ending set of songs; as long as mp3 files exist, this game will never have an end. It is one of the few games that can claim to have virtually zero game exhaustion.
The user interface for the game is amazing. All of the menus are flashy and have a unique art style. On top of that, there are about 20 or so different styles you can choose between to change the whole look of the game. There are also around 30 or so different visualization types to play int he background along with the songs you play. This level of customization and art direction is almost unheard of for a bargain-bin game.
Furthermore, since it has no licensed songs, Sony was able to produce this game on a small budget. On top of this, they opted out of making it a UMD game, skipping the cost of the UMD itself, the case, shipping, etc. These points may seem pointless to your average consumer, but when you go to buy the game you see why it makes such a big difference. The full game of Beats will only cost you 5 dollars, around 35 dollars less than your average psp game.
I honestly feel that Beats represents the future of game design. It's revolutionary way of using user-generated content to create a game that is virtually endless is something we are going to see a lot more of really soon. I feel that most games in about 5 years will have at least some form of user-generated content in the game. I think games like this will sell well, especially considering the myspace/youtube generation most game companies go after.
Also, I think more and more companies will choose to make their games downloadable instead of on UMD. This was a great choice by Sony, because it really makes piracy of the game extremely hard. The PSP is notorious for how easy it is to pirate games on, and once companies see that releasing their games through the playstation store only makes this process more difficult, I think they will do the same. So, not only does it make the game cheaper to produce, but it makes it harder to steal.
I honestly really hope this game sells well, not only because it is one of my favorite psp games, but it represents most of what I believe in when it comes to game design. If you have a psp and five dollars to spare, you owe it to yourself to give this a shot.
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