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A couple of games in one post again. Let me know if you read the whole thing, or if I should keep things shorter (I'm always self-aware about this but keeping things brief can be surprisingly difficult).
It's a minimalist puzzle game where you design rail networks in various cities. You start with a few stations where just a few citizens appear every now and then, wanting to travel to another type of station. Your job is to build connections between them. Gradually, the city expands, adding more destinations and increasing the population: you must keep up with the demand and satisfy your citizens. If there are too many frustrated passengers waiting at a station, you lose.
Yeah, although this one definitely goes into the category of "Zoom lecture games" or "Podcast games" or whatever you want to call it. It really is quite minimal, and decently long: so once the gameplay really /clicked/ for me, it started to become a tiny bit boring. Not to mention that there is almost no music and very little sound. Maybe it was their intention to *not* fully absorb you into the game? I can see Mini Metro being a good mobile game, but for a full-fledged PC game it's not quite enough on its own.
Let's talk about the actual gameplay: when I said that the game "clicked" for me, what really happened was that I had to stop thinking of MIni Metro as a simulator, and more of an abstract puzzle game. It is advertised as a "simulator", but do not be fooled: there is no concept of money (it literally costs nothing to just delete the entire rail network and start from scratch), the citizens' desires are not very realistic, and so on. Once I abandoned real-life logic, the game became a lot easier for me, but that's when I started just zoning out and doing the levels on autopilot.
I definitely have not reached the ceiling in terms of skill here: the game does offer extra difficulty challenges (most of which I did not manage to complete), and there is an online leaderboard (I never logged in to it, but I just assume I'm far from the best). Plus there are bonus missions where you deal with "old" versions of cities: so you have slower and less spacious trains, etc. I never even bothered with that.
This game could be described as "easy to learn, easy to master, hard to really master", or something like that. As in, I feel like I have a solid grasp of the rules, and I've looked at a few tips and tricks online, but I still can't 100% this game, and I feel like it's not worth it. With that said, it's a good game for just chilling and listening to some background audio. *7/10*, would have been an 8 if they included my city into the game.
I got the Linux version from GOG and had zero issues. This game is minimal and functional, I imagine that it can run on anything.
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https://npckc.itch.io/a-year-of-springs
I mentioned it in this blog a while back. /A YEAR OF SPRINGS/ is a compilation of three short itch.io visual novels: /one night, hot springs/; /last day of spring/; and /spring leaves no flowers/. This trilogy became somewhat famous when the first title was included in the itch.io Racial Justice and Equality bundle a while back. This re-release costs 5$ and includes an extra epilogue, but the original trilogy is still available for free.
This game starts with a content warning:
this trilogy discusses issues that people of different genders and sexualities may face, which is a topic that can be sensitive and personal.
So you have an idea of what the game is about, but you might be mislead about the tone of the games. It is not a cruel tearjerker or anything: this trilogy is mostly a very cute, feel-good story, though it does offer some education about how it might feel to be transgender in Japan.
Yes, it was a very pleasant 2 hours! I've already played the three free games originally, but it was nice to revisit them all at once and more clearly see the progression of the story.
The first game is the best at making you go "awww" but that comes at the expense of being unrealistic. A transgender woman is invited to a hot spring by her friends: she is understandably very anxious, but it turns out that this specific hot spring just so happens to have a very understanding owner, who lets her stay despite breaking the rules. It's always nice to see acts of kindness from strangers, but it feels like a forced plot twist and might not represent the average attitude in such places.
The second game addresses this criticism and instead provides a clearer message that "society as a whole does not accept you, but your friends can help".
The third game is not really a continuation, it just kinda offers a different perspective on a different character with very different issues. I guess it complements the first two.
In the end, this is not the most profound story, but it is very short and is good at what it wants to do: provide basic education to the reader and be cute. *8/10, it did provide information that was new and helpful for me personally, but I understand if people don't feel like they need "education" about this topic.*
Again, downloaded the Linux version (this time from itch.io), and had no issues. 2D visual novels like this should work on just about anything.
