💾 Archived View for appl.garden › play › diary-2.gmi captured on 2024-03-21 at 15:18:47. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Recollecting memories of completing games during the earlier months of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
https://npckc.itch.io/space-frog
SPACE FROG! is a pick-your-path adventure story made for agbic 2020 - LOW TECH (ancient techniques only)
This is a very short story (5-15 minutes long) made by npckc.
while the game can be played entirely in browser, a downloadable version is also available for windows & mac.
for $2 or more, you can support me in my game-making adventures & also receive a printable zine version of the game! (some assembly required)
SPACE FROG! is not a very interesting story, but it is extremely cute, as you would expect from npckc and generally from a game with that title and promo art. 6/10
It's a very light browser game which can run on any reasonable machine. Looking at the HTML a bit, it doesn't even use Canvas 2D graphics, just basic text elements and a tiny bit of Javascript. Still, I have not tested this on Internet Explorer. :D
A modern classic which needs no introduction. Play as a sexy witch, shoot demons and kill Gods.
Yes. Amazingly fun story (in spite of it being non-sensical near the end), fun characters, great gameplay (the game is treating me like a bitch with the Stone Awards but that's how you know the gameplay has depth). Music is good and Fly Me to the Moon never got old. Overall extremely high-quality game. Downsides are:
I absolutely enjoyed this, *9/10*, highly recommended as long as you keep in mind that the game is not easy.
Fly Me to the Moon, the fun version
Bayonetta was very laggy on my old-ish laptop running Linux, Windows performed better. I've played only one chapter on Linux and decided it was not worth it, as this game's crazy-fast pace requires as much FPS as you can get. I played with minimum graphics settings.
Link to my ProtonDB entry for this game.
A PlayStation-1 era adventure/visual novel game developed by Grasshopper Interactive and directed by the (allegedly legendary) SUDA51. A remastered version was released for Windows, Linux and macOS in 2017. The game consists of two parallel stories: the "Transmitter" episodes, where you play as a detective for the Heinous Crimes Unit getting directly involved with an assassin named Kamui Uehara, and the "Placebo" episodes, where a journalist examines the "Transmitter" investigation with a little more detail while also dealing with his own personal problems.
I had played the demo version a while ago and only recently got around to beating the full game.
[image, 187k] I don't know, would you enjoy playing it?
The Silver Case is the kind of game that makes me wish I was better at writing reviews or critiquing, since there is a lot to be said, but I don't think I can say anything clever or something that hasn't been said before, plus I have like 3 other games left to cover. So instead of talking about my thoughts I will talk about *vibes*.
Have you watched Serial Experiments Lain? This game is like that, but less focused, and nowhere near as gripping, because instead of experiencing an insane story with fun insane visuals, you now get walls of text and primitive PS1-era 3D environments to walk around in, though still presented very uniquely. I can see how SUDA51 could get a cult following for his later games, but the original Silver Case is from a very distant past and is just too messy to be properly enjoyable.
The story felt badly paced and hardly satisfying, but it does touch on many themes, sometimes in interesting ways. It starts with very heavy exposition, but the dialogue overall is actually very well written, with most characters being unique, edgy but also human. If only the game displayed the names of the characters in a readable font...
[image, 139k] Anyway, don't know what else to say, so here's another screenshot stolen from GOG.
The Silver Case spawned two sequels, and is also a part of the "Kill the Past" series of loosely thematically connected games from the same author. This first game has been described by some as "only for die-hard Suda fans", so perhaps it was a mistake for me to start with it. Then again, others describe it as one of their favorite games of all time. Since I feel obligated to give ratings, I'll give it a *7/10*, tough to explicitly recommend, but undoubtedly very interesting, and I'm curious about the possibly better games in the series.
The Linux port of The Silver Case is just straight-up broken if your system is set to some non-English languages. It's speculated that it has to do with most non-English locales doing number separators like 9.000.000,69 rather than 9,000,000.69 and that the game's 3D cutscene parser is for some reason locale-dependent on Linux. So the 3D just breaks unless you set the environment variable value LANG=C
GOG forum thread describing the issue
This kind of neglect for the Linux port also makes it harder to recommend this game.
Part 3 is coming soon...
-- gardenapple 2022-07-28
![[image, 187k] I don't know, would you enjoy playing it?](/kennedy.gemi.dev/archive/cached?url=gemini%3a%2f%2fappl.garden%2fplay%2fassets%2fimg%2fthe-silver-case%2fgog-1.png&t=638466311270000000&raw=False){kind=link}
![[image, 139k] Anyway, don't know what else to say, so here's another screenshot stolen from GOG.](/kennedy.gemi.dev/archive/cached?url=gemini%3a%2f%2fappl.garden%2fplay%2fassets%2fimg%2fthe-silver-case%2fgog-2.png&t=638466311270000000&raw=False){kind=link}