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Phantom Abyss (PC) by jp (Apr 6th, 2025 at 19:14:27) |
I'd heard of the game's hook (or gimmick if you will) as, everyday it's a different 1st person platforming game/run, and if you die - that's it. Play a different run later.
I'm guessing stuff changed along the way, though the concept is still here - it's a reasonably challenging rogue-like 1st person platforming game. I've had fun, you have a whip to help you climb and each level has different modifiers (the whip has an ability) and you can pick up boons in your run (if you have enough coins to afford them) and hopefully make it to the end. BUT, you see a bunch of ghosts for everyone else who played this level - if someone died, you can collect their spirit or something for a small heal! During each run you collect keys you can use to buy permanent upgrades, and so you go up the progression ladder of many roguelites...
Someone described this as first person temple run, which is close enough? I mean, the levels themselves are a lot more interesting than the "mere" reaction times that temple run goes for, here you can side-step/etc. stuff - and there are different paths, and in all you can be a bit creative for how you approach stuff...I've had fun so far - unlocked all the green levels and I've started on the blue ones!
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Cuphead (Switch) by jp (Apr 6th, 2025 at 13:37:03) |
I only get to play this when my son comes around - and we play together and I realized, yeah - I need to either start practicing seriously or just give up. And, I enjoy playing it co-op, so there's not much sense in practicing, so I decided to give up.
We did make it to the 2nd island(?), and played some of the levels there - but I was clearly starting to see a steeper path to success. As in, it too us (mostly my fault) more and more tries to make less progress. He's already played it, beat it too? So, not much point for him really.
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Sonic Rush (DS) by jp (Apr 6th, 2025 at 13:34:08) |
I started playing this from the saved game - with new(?) character Blaze on "area 2" (I don't remember the exact name). And, I just could not beat the level - it was set in the casino world, and everything was moving super fast and on "automatic" - so, you just press move and the character zips along, bounces, etc.
It's actually quite boring! Because you just do this, at some point you hit an enemy (very few enemies in the game!), lose your rings, and then carry on. But, I'd lose because I'd fall into a bottomless pit, lose three lives and then out.
I'd say it wasn't so much frustrating as it was a disappointment. Yes, the point of Sonic is that it's "fast" - that's it's thing. But I find that there's little interaction to the game for most of the levels - you just "go along with the direction". It's neat when sometimes you get bounced around automatically, but for the most part I like to control the character.
So, I deleted the save file and started a new one, this time with Sonic in the equivalent of green hill zone. This level has two areas and then a boss. So, it's like 3 levels make up a level.
And, the experience was pretty similar - run on automatic for a while, lose rings suddenly or die, repeat with a bit more caution...etc. I did make it all the way to the boss fight - which I almost beat one too many times, and I just realized - ok, this is dumb - at least the boss fights have more gameplay ( you dodge, make an attack when the weak spot is open, etc.) - but it's still a pretty boring/uninteresting platforming experience.
So, off to the shelf it goes!
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Secret Files: Tunguska (DS) by jp (Apr 4th, 2025 at 19:16:25) |
I think there's a weird moment in time when everyone thought that point-and-click style adventure games were dead, but they were not. And, I think this game is an example of a game that was under the radar of "mainstream" games press at the time? Or at least under the radar of the average consumer of videogames...
This particular game is also a strange little time capsule - it's a port of what I think was a PC game...also at a time when people where porting all kinds of things to the DS. And, it works! Well, from a UI perspective at least. And it works pretty well. At least compared to another adventure game I played recently on the DS whose name I'm blanking on as I write this. I bounced on that one because it had some character/3D interactions that were awkward and unintuitive. Here, they were much smarter about it (I'm assuming they made UI "concessions" because it's on the DS). So, while you have a 3D character that navigates a static space - you don't actually have to move the character around directly in order to interact with objects/places in each scene. Press one button and all the interactive spots highlight, and you can just tap on them directly. I LOVE this solution - especially because I was never a fun of the "hunt for the pixel" approach that many games had (on PC) - and I'm super glad it didn't come across into this DS version (for all I know, the "here's all the highlights" was also possible on PC).
But, the UI triumph aside, I still kind of bounced off this. I got stuck on a puzzle (how typical!) - and what I had to do was leave a location to visit another location and then continued...this seemed really "unfair" to me - as in, unintuitive - mostly because I had assumed I could not leave the locatio in the first place. It wasn't entirely unintuitive - but it was the sort of puzzle where I was sure I should be able to (in this case) get the key out of the aquarium - but it turns out that no, I had to leave the place, do some other stuff, and then come back. At this point I was well into the tried-and-true "try all the things with all the things", except that I did not know I could leave the location I was at. Sigh.
So, from glancing at my list of DS games I still need to play...well, I wasn't THAT interested in the story so far and the puzzles didn't feel particularly interesting either..so, it was an easy game to put on the shelf.
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Shogun Showdown (PC) by dkirschner (Apr 4th, 2025 at 18:33:00) |
Clever little tactics roguelite. It reminds me of Into the Breach and other tactics games where you are given clear information about what enemies will do each turn. It's also reminiscent of Into the Breach because of the small play space. Basically, the game takes place on a 2d plane that is divided into like 8 or 9 spaces. Any given character occupies 1 space and can move left or right. You build a "deck" of "tiles" that include attacks and other special abilities, many of which involve movement (e.g., a forward dash that moves to the nearest frontal enemy and deals 1 damage). Your goal is to build up your tiles and progress stage by stage until you kill the Shogun.
During each run, you can purchase and upgrade tiles, mostly increasing their damage or decreasing their cooldowns, purchase passive abilities, use items, and other standard roguelite stuff--make yourself stronger by strategically handling whatever random things you get.
Most every action you do takes a turn, and all characters take turns at the same time. So, you move right (1 turn) and all the enemies do a thing (one might move left toward you, one might queue up an attack). Then you queue up an attack, and those two enemies might queue up an attack and attack, respectively. Actually, it also reminds me of Crypt of the Necrodancer, which works like this, where all characters act simultaneously. In that game, when you move, everything else moves. Shogun Showdown is like that. When you do something, the enemies do something.
I beat the Shogun for the first time this evening, which was maybe my fifth run or so. I had what felt like extremely overpowered weapons, a sword that I'd leveled up to deal 5 damage with only a 2-turn cooldown. I also had a bow-and-arrow with 4 damage and a 3-turn cooldown. The kicker though was a curse that doubled the next damage on an enemy. So, I'd just queue the curse, the sword, and the arrow. That took literally half the Shogun's health bar. Did it again, dead and into phase 2. No problem. Did it two more times. Dead. Easy. When you beat the Shogun, you unlock "day 2", which is the next difficulty level. You can also unlock additional characters with different skills, and you can keep unlocking new tiles and stuff. I consider it beat after taking out the Shogun once. It's a fun game, really tight, and makes you think ahead. It doesn't do much that you haven't seen before though.
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GameLog hopes to be a site where gamers such as yourself keep track of the games that
they are currently playing. A GameLog is basically a record of a game you started playing. If it's open,
you still consider yourself to be playing the game. If it's closed, you finished playing the game. (it doesn't matter
if you got bored, frustrated,etc.) You can also attach short comments to each of your games or even maintain a diary (with more detailed entries)
for that game. Call it a weblog of game playing activity if you will.
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2285 registered gamers and 3255 games. 7787 GameLogs with 13264 journal entries. 5110 games are currently being played.
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most recent entry: Tuesday 31 January, 2017
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Exploding Kittens, games 1 and 2 (31 Jan 17).
Exploding Kittens is a card game for 2-6 players. Half a modified form of Russian Roulette, half a vehicle for The Oatmeal (Matthew Inman)’s wacky drawings, this game blends luck and skill, and is a fun way to spend half an hour in friendly competition.
Players:
2-6 normal humans. This is not a role-playing game, so players are themselves. Each player has a hand of cards to play or not, as they choose. Play goes around in a circle.
The Deck:
The deck consists of many different kinds of cards. The most important is the Exploding Kitten—the equivalent of the non-blank bullet in Russian Roulette. If you draw the Exploding Kitten, you lose. There are other cards, though; extending the analogy, imagine if you could skip your turn (Skip), rearrange the bullets (Shuffle), look at the next three bullets (See The Future), wear a temporary helmet to deflect a bullet (Defuse), make another player give you one of their options (Favor, Pair), force another player to take your turn as well (Attack), or prevent another player from using an option (Nope). Each card is illustrated by The Oatmeal, and they are almost more of a draw (pun intended) than the gameplay itself. For example, one of the Skip cards is titled “Don a portable cheetah butt,” with accompanying illustration.
Rules:
Each player is dealt four cards from the deck, and one Defuse card. (Number of players – 1) Exploding Kittens are shuffled into the deck. Play goes to the left, and each player’s turn consists of 1. Playing a card and resolving its action, 2. Repeating this step for as many cards as they wish to and can legally play, and 3. Drawing a card from the deck to end their turn, unless a card has ended their turn in some other way. Cards are played onto the discard pile. If a player draws an Exploding Kitten and has a Defuse, they must play the Defuse and privately put the Exploding Kitten back in the deck wherever they choose. If they do not have a Defuse, they are out of the game. The game continues until only one person is left. That person is the winner.
Playing The Game:
First Session: I played both sessions with three other people, one an old hand and two new. It got off to a slow start, as I had to explain the rules several times, but it was mostly due to the players, not the instructions. I went first, to demonstrate.
We started pretty conservatively, mostly deciding to draw without playing any cards; this is a strategy that most people seem to adopt, as it helps you amass cards in the early game. After the first several rounds, though, things started to heat up. The experienced player quickly began using See The Futures, Skips, and Attacks to avoid drawing potentially dangerous cards. This spurred the rest of us to do the same thing, and it quickly devolved into a tit-for-tat free-for-all.
The new players were the first to go out, being less experienced and more easily nudged into picking an Exploding Kitten, and then I miscounted where I had put a card back in after using a Defuse and the other experienced player won. Some notable moments were a quadruple skip, resulting in the first player having to draw anyway, and one of the new players laughing so hard at the illustrations that she had to go and lie down. Altogether, the game took about a half an hour.
Second Session: We played the second game immediately afterwards. This time, we got off to a much faster start. Everyone was more cautious, though, and there was much less of the indiscriminate card-slinging of the first session. Players tended to go more for stealing cards from others, and there was more talking and joking.
One of the new players ended up winning this round, due to good luck and maneuvering on their part. One flaw in this game, which I had not noticed until this assignment, is that people have nothing to do except sit and watch once they are out of the game; in other games, the winner is not determined, and all players keep playing, until the very end. With this game, however, there is the opportunity for people to wander off before a rematch.
Overall:
Exploding Kittens is a quick and easy game. It could handle exploded players better, and the images eventually lose their novelty, but overall it is a good way to kill some time.
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