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Some things change, yet gaming goes on. Time passes, yet blogs are not updated.
(These are some of the games I'd played before the big attacks on energy infrastructure)
As a demon army besieges his village, a young ninja ventures through a cursed world, to deliver a scroll paramount to his clan’s survival. What begins as a classic action platformer soon unravels into an expansive time-traveling adventure full of thrills, surprises, and humor.
This took me a long time to finish, because I'd retired it for many months. But in the end, it was pretty fun! Somehow I'd missed that there was going to be a time-travel 8-bit/16-bit gimmick, and I'd lost some of my interest in this before I reached my first 16-bit section. Not sure why I'd retired it, as the gameplay was pretty good! I guess I'm just a little too young for 8-bit aesthetics. The platforming is consistently pretty solid, though short of reaching Celeste's level; the graphics and soundtrack take a while to get good, then eventually the whole game gets worse again due to excessive backtracking. The humor started off terrible but eventually the light-hearted fourth-wall breaking grew on me. Good game, but not a masterpiece. *8/10*
The Messenger is a Windows-only game, but works great on Linux using Wine.
Play as detective Kaname Date on the case of an elusive serial killer in this thrilling, sci-fi murder mystery.
Developed and released by Spike Chunsoft in 2019.
Yes. The story delivers what Spike Chunsoft is known for: presenting itself as smart, but actually being extremely dumb, but in a really fun way, but then the solution to the mystery is actually pretty clever. Maybe that wasn't a very catchy slogan... Just think of it as a good anime. One branch of the story may involve diving into the subconsciousness of a Twitch streamer who has dreams about Minecraft because they've been streaming it for too long; another branch is about uncovering an alien conspiracy, and- wait, these things happened in the same episode? Oh man, I really am not great at describing this. The story is good.
The gameplay is uhh... AI: The Somnium Files takes place in very surreal environments, with puzzles requiring surreal solutions. Some describe the solutions as pure trial-and-error. I thought the idea was great, and the implementation was not quite as bad as some people said - there were very few instances where I felt forced to guess blindly. Still, less than stellar.
The humor often sucks, but the over-the-topness sets an overall fun mood for the game. Overall, I would give this game an 9/10, but...
This is a 2019 game, and while it's not a AAA-budget title, it is not a minimalist indie product either. This may present problems for weaker laptops like mine. I've experienced numerous crashes which required me to restart gameplay sections. The good news is that 1) restarting puzzle sections is not a terrible thing, because then you get to experience some of the wackier wrong solutions and extra interactions, and 2) these crashes happen on Windows as well, which means I can't blame Linux! (though Linux does struggle to play the video cutscenes). The technical issues force me to drop my (subjective) rating to an *8/10*.
The classic walking simulator, originally released on the Japanese textboard 2channel in 2004. An inspiration to many games beloved by zoomers and non-zoomers alike, such as Ib, Undertale, OMORI, LISA: THE PAINFUL, Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass, and others.
Play as a young girl who can delve into a bizarre, and sometimes extremely frightening, dreamworld.
I'm glad I'd experienced Yume Nikki, but I did not enjoy playing it.
I was not joking when I described this as a walking simulator. There are numerous bizarre, weird, inhuman, creepy, human, scary, interesting areas to get lost in - that is what Yume Nikki is. The game does provide a goal: to find all 24 'effects' (which are different transformations for the player character), however some of these are found in painfully obscure locations. You must either consult a walkthrough/wiki (which, for me at least, ruins the mystery element of games; and for a game Yume Nikki losing that element is a very considerable price to pay), or invest many, many days exploring areas which realistically have a few hours worth of 'content'.
This works fantastically as a work of art. Hiding countless easter eggs, such as those that require interacting with an object 64 times, inside painfully numbing and oppressing areas means that you'd have to be a sick fuck to dedicate your life to uncovering all there is to see. The game instills isolation and loneliness into its players, however these players are also united by sharing that experience, alongside their explanations of the various themes, the easter eggs that each player has stumbled on, and so on. The atmosphere and feel of Yume Nikki is unmatched by any game. But that's only because Yume Nikki doesn't actually work as a game - that's the thing. The numerous games inspired by Yume Nikki, which I'd listed earlier, actually *are* games, which take elements from Yume Nikki - however these elements lose their expressive value since they were intended to be dark instead of fun.
Anyway, uhh, the game is free, and is unique and influential enough that I'd definitely recommend playing it for at least 2-3 hours, all by yourself. But do not hesitate to look up a walkthrough as soon as you stop enjoying exploring blindly. The game actively prevents itself from being fun, so don't make the mistake of being stubborn about it like I was.
This is one of those weird *7/10*s.
The game was developed for Windows, but it works seamlessly on Linux with Steam.
gardenapple - 2022-12-15