 |
|
Oct 29th, 2024 at 19:08:31 - Webbed (PC) |
Another quick retirement. Webbed was an exercise in frustration with the controls. So, in this game, you play as a spider, and you can spin webs. You aim to a surface you want to attach to, left-click, and release to shoot a web to swing. Or you can aim to a surface, right-click, aim to another surface, release, and you'll spin a web connecting the two surfaces that you can walk on. My favorite part of the game was the movement, which took some getting used to. I first tried to play with a controller, but the aiming was finnicky. It seemed like it'd be better with a mouse for precise aiming to shoot webs. It was better, and I got past the very beginning, but I quickly realized that this was a sort of physics puzzler. It's less about the movement itself and more about manipulating the environment and objects to move yourself and to move things where you want them. You constantly have to attach things to webs to move them around, spin webs connecting surfaces, but spinning other webs to connect the first web for support (if you've ever played World of Goo, it reminded me of that).
I found it so frustrating trying to manipulate objects with webs. An early task required me to bring a cog to an ant. I accidentally dropped the cog into a pool of water that killed me if I touched it. So, I kept trying to shoot a web at the cog to pull it out, but I kept getting pulled into the water when I did that. Or, I'd attach to the cog, try to pull it out, and it would get stuck below a tree branch. I spent about 10 minutes trying to figure this out, and finally got lucky when I realized that I needed to spin a web higher to stand on to pull the cog out. Half the time, I would still fall off the web into the water anyway. In another spot, I had to pull an ant out of a pit, and that freaking ant would not come over a ledge onto solid ground. It's hard to pull stuff around where you want it, it's hard to precisely shoot a web where you want it, and objects stick to one another. For example, another time, I was trying to move a cog to some gears, but an ant that was there kept getting stuck on the cog. I kept having to try to get the ant off the cog before I could try to move the gear, but they kept inevitably getting stuck on each other. It was driving me nuts!
The game is cute, and I think the webby physics puzzling is neat, but I didn't like doing it. I noticed that 97.5% of players have the first achievement, which comes a few minutes into the game. The rate for getting the second achievement (which I didn't make it to after an hour) drops to 57.4%. 40% of players bail within an hour. I wonder how many quit because they got frustrated!
add a comment  - read this GameLog  |
|
Oct 29th, 2024 at 06:31:19 - The Pale Beyond (PC) |
I don't remember where I got this. Amazon? It's in my Steam account. Humble Bundle? Somewhere for free or in a bundle...Anyway, it wasn't on my radar, but it sounded interesting and it was so good! The Pale Beyond is a narrative, point-and-click(ish), survival, resource management game. You are recruited for an expedition to the South Pole to find a missing ship that was searching for [mystery]. Once you arrive, things go south (ba-dum!). Your ship gets trapped in the ice, the captain abandons ship with several other crew members, and you are thrust into the leadership role.
After the caption & co. left, I had 25 people to manage. Those people have different roles. There are "key" story people like a photographer, the head engineer, the doctor, and the benefactor's contact, who is clearly withholding information. They can't die except through narrative choices. Then there are the regular sailors, some more engineers, scouts, and a medical team. They can die. Every day, you talk to the crew members. They will petition you for things, argue with you, your relationship (and their relationships with one another to some extent) will increase or decrease. This is the "loyalty" meter. You want them loyal to you so they don't mutiny, and for some other reasons later on. I actually had a really rare ending that netted me the rarest achievement I currently have on Steam (0.8% of players!) because of how my relationships played out. It's pretty easy to figure out which dialogue options increase loyalty (hint: be kind and understanding for the most part).
You also have to manage food and heat resources. To get food, you'll need to use scouts to explore the ice around you and send crew to hunt game. To get heat, you have to constantly fuel the boiler with whatever you can find, from animals you hunt to resources you scavenge from the ship. There is also a morale to manage. If you don't provide enough rations or fuel for heat, morale goes down. Sailors will get malnourished, which, if left untreated with food, turns into scurvy. If that's untreated, the character dies. Sailors will get "freezing," which, if left untreated with heat, turns into frostbite. If that's untreated, the character dies. They can also become demoralized, which decreases the whole expedition's morale unless that's treated. You can send crew to the doctor for scurvy and frostbite, and they'll recover. The game progresses from summer to winter, so it gets colder and colder, which means that crew freeze more and more often. And as game becomes scarce, if you haven't managed food resources well, hunger becomes more common too.
So, you're constantly managing your human resources too because you need people to hunt and perform a variety of other tasks. If people are out sick, you can't use them. And if they die, well, you've got less mouths to feed, but also that's fewer resources you can get. I think I had one sailor die fairly early on, then I had a bad week about halfway through the game and lost another three. I ended the game with 21 crew out of a potential 25. Not too bad!
I really liked the story. Each of the main story characters plays a big role in the expedition, and they all have backstories and whatnot that influence their behaviors and relationships as the expedition progresses. Even the minor characters (the regular crew) have histories and relationships with one another. What the game does so well is create a horrific survival setting, and you feel it as you play. Like, it's life and death out there. The game plays out in several "chapters" where story events happen and then the setting and conditions for resource management change a bit. It kept me on my toes the entire time, and I never got bored. I often felt in a precarious position, like one mistake, one poor week of resource (mis)management could have a domino effect and ruin the expedition. I only died one time, and that was because of an inevitable story event that I didn't anticipate would happen (at least, not as soon as it did). The ending is different than what you would expect and, although it changed the game up, I thought it was neat. If you want a harrowing polar adventure with some challenging resource management and decisions (that isn't overwhelming with the amount and complexity of mechanics!) and a well written story, then this is a good bet.
add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
Oct 29th, 2024 at 06:05:03 - Manifold Garden (PC) |
Quickly, this is a really disorienting puzzle game. It gave me motion sickness. I tried to play twice. The first time, I made it like 30 minutes, but I didn't recognize the dullness behind my eyes and the yawning (which happens either when I'm tired, bored, or about to barf) as motion sickness. I thought I was just tired. Then yesterday, I sat down to play and started feeling sick within like 10 minutes and retrospectively interpreted the other day's symptoms as motion sickness. I went to YouTube to see more of the game, and felt even worse watching the YouTube video. Blech.
The handful of puzzles I did solve were mind-bending. You shift gravity by pressing spacebar. Doing so basically rotates the world around you by 90 degrees, so you can "run up" walls, change gravity again to get on the ceiling, and so on. There are all these cubes and switches, and it seems like you're really trying to navigate Escher-esque structures and figure out how to get cubes in the right places to open doors. I'm not sure I would have stuck with it anyway, or if I'm just interpreting it more negatively because of how I felt. But it seemed really hard, and the lack of narrative was turning me off. Also, puzzle games after work are not necessarily the best idea.
add a comment - read this GameLog |
|
Oct 16th, 2024 at 16:51:22 - Paradise Killer (PC) |
This was a huge surprise, and yet another gem in that narrative Humble Bundle from a couple months ago. I actually got this game once before and gave it away because I was on the fence about whether I thought I'd like it. But I got it again and figured I'd give it a shot. Good decision!
Paradise Killer is extremely creative. It's like a detective game / visual novel. I don't play either genre, so this was all pretty new to me. You play as Lady Love Dies, an "investigation freak" who gets called back from exile to solve a murder. There's a whole fiction here. Lady Love Dies is part of "The Syndicate," which is a group of...I don't even know what they are...special people, I guess...who live on an island. Every so often, they destroy the island and create a new one. They usually destroy the island, it seems, because demons invade it. That's more or less the case this time, too, except that on the night that they were supposed to move to the new island, the entire Council (the Syndicate leadership) was murdered. That's the one you're called back to solve.
There are 10 or so other (alive) Syndicate members. You run around the island, exploring it, finding clues and collectibles, learning about the history of all this, and meeting the other Syndicate members. You're collecting evidence, trying to make sense of the murder. Who did it, why, and how? Once you've collected enough evidence, you have a trial. Actually, you can have the trial immediately if you want to, just wildly accusing people. But, I was a good investigator. I think I explored most everything and discovered most all the evidence, and waited to call a trial until I had a good picture of what happened.
And there is a lot to explore. The island has like 10 areas, and there is hidden stuff everywhere. I thought the game was going to be more like a visual novel, and although I knew there was some exploration moving through a 3D world, I didn't know that that would be most of the game. I got completely engrossed in scouring the island for clues and collectibles. You will find a ton of stuff, and you will keep on discovering new areas and secrets if you're looking hard enough, all the way up until the end. I used the word "engrossed" earlier, but "exhilarated" also is appropriate. Like, it was really exciting to find hidden objects, secrets, to get more evidence against a character, to realize I learned something that could break an alibi, and so on.
I 100% want a sequel to this on the next island, and actually, I have some things I want to look up about this one, like what happens if you execute everyone and there is no one left to move to the next island? If you execute Lydia, can anyone be transported there? If you execute the Architect, then who builds the next island? Each character has a role, so what happens if those roles are empty? All the Syndicate members are suspicious for various reasons, and I gather in this game that there is no "right" answer. Like, it doesn't tell you if your accusations are correct; you just piece your evidence together as best you can, and if the Judge finds it reasonable, then the people you accused are sentenced and either executed or exiled. So, I guess that different players can have different outcomes of the trials.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Oct 16th, 2024 at 16:52:38.
add a comment - read this GameLog |
