It's Rewind Time.

Mega Man is a frustrating game, which is a real shame, as it holds some interesting concepts! I tried playing the original NES version of Mega Man several times before, but always quit early on because of the amount of unfairly placed obstacles and enemies and never even managed to beat a level. This time I decided to give it another shot, as the Legacy Collection has a rewind feature - which turned out to be a real game changer. (Obviously this wasn't a feature in the original Mega Man, so I'm not going to add any points for it, but I'm glad it's in there, so I could experience the game to the end.)

Being able to do the initial six levels in any order as you please is a cool idea, you can just play the stage you feel like playing at the moment. I've only learned later on that there's an "optimal" progression route or something, but I liked being able to choose which boss to go up against next. Despite being seemingly disconnected at first, doing levels in a specific order can change the way you approach them, as each boss you defeat nets you a new power themed after them. Ice Man's power lets you freeze enemies mid-air, Bomb Man's power lets you detonate an AoE bomb and Elec Man's power makes you shoot electric beams in all directions. Each power has a different use and can change the way you play a stage. Unfortunately, there's a specific case if you don't have Guts Man's power before doing Elec Man's stage - you can't reach an item that's required to complete the game. This was the case for me and I was unable to proceed in the final stage, as I was missing the Magnet Beam and had to backtrack (causing me to have to revert to an earlier save file). Speaking of the final stage, I respect everyone who actually beat it without using save states, rewind or anything like that. It's all the frustrating parts of earlier levels cranked up to 11, featuring boss rematches against all the earlier bosses right before the final boss. Flame Man's spamming fire pillars again and you can't do anything against it? Too bad, enjoy starting from Bomb Man's fight again. The infamous Yellow Devil fight wasn't even that bad compared to some other bosses, as he'd always follow the same moveset patterns. I'm convinced Cut Man and Fire Man can actually read your future though.

After having rewinded more than in my entire playthrough of Life is Strange 1, I was able to have a decent time with Mega Man despite the infuriating game design. Hopefully the later entries will cut back on some of the comically placed enemies and obstacles, because I like the idea with the progression and the unlockable powers!

"Terraria is a land of adventure! A land of mystery! A land that's yours to shape, to defend and to enjoy. Your options in Terraria are limitless, are you an action gamer with an itchy trigger finger? A master builder? A collector? An explorer? There's something for everyone here."

I took this directly from the Terraria wiki, since we spent almost the entire game with it open; I thought it best to consult it first. This brief introduction defines well what Terraria is and what you can expect from the game. Terraria is easily one of my favorite indie games, I'm not sure where it would rank in my list, but it would definitely be among the top five I like the most. But what makes this game incredible?

Terraria emerged at a time when Minetrash was starting to gain popularity, meaning comparisons between the two are inevitable, but the similarities are limited to just the basic concepts: procedurally generated worlds, mining, and the crafting workbench. However, Terraria has undergone many more changes over the years and has received almost a decade of free updates. This demonstrates the care that the developers have for the game.

At first glance, Terraria may not seem very appealing; it is visually simple and can easily be mistaken for just another generic sandbox title. But as you explore the landscape, it becomes evident how creative the game is. It goes beyond mere building and ore collection, delving much deeper into the basic mechanics of a sandbox. Here, there is a genuine reason to construct things, not just for aesthetic purposes; it is crucial for the game's progression. Yes, there is indeed a progression in the game, along with an overwhelming amount of content such as bosses, events, NPCs, tons of weapons, accessories, and many other items that will aid you on your journey – over 5000 items at your disposal. The game's progression is measured by the bosses you defeat, and by doing so, you gain access to new items like stronger pickaxes, allowing you to gather new resources and become even more formidable to face the next boss.

Overall, Terraria offers an extremely satisfying experience and deserves all the praise it receives. Obviously, this is just a simplistic view in the face of the grandeur that the game represents. Each generated world is a unique experience, after all, being a sandbox, the way you explore the world, build structures, or defeat the bosses is entirely up to the player.

The best way I can describe the ongoing development of Karlson is this:

When I was around eight or nine years old, my older brother came home with a burned CD he obtained from a birthday party he went to for his one of friends. On that CD wasn't music, but a few games that his friend had actually made. They were all created in Multimedia Fusion 2, all used stock assets that the program handed to you, one of them featured the song Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple in all of its bit-crushed .wmv glory, and one of the games was just straight up the tutorial project. And it was glorious. As a child, there's this impression that creation is an imaginary thing. While the adults in front of your house are tinkering with the family car, you're reading a book about a car that can fly, has a swimming pool in it, and can go underwater. In reality, flying cars are a liability at best, and would count as a human rights violation if a pool was ever involved. Reality is disappointment; if the car in front of your house could fly, you'd take it to see your cousins halfway across the state all the time. Otherwise, the closest ones are about a six-hour drive, and the ones that live in another state are nine hours away—and this is nothing of the stops to use the restroom, eat, or panic about a flat tire. So when you step away from the finely crafted luxury of Mario and Goldeneye 007 and Pajama Sam and see disappointment for what it is—a bunch of aesthetically clashing assets on backgrounds that consist of solid colors put into levels with no cohesion whatsoever—a thought comes to mind.

I can do it. I can do it!

My own experiences with creating games are nothing to write home about; it's mostly a bunch of failed attempts to capture ideas outside of my range of talent. Joining the Backloggd Discord server, I was surprised to find a small, niche community on there set about making their own games. Most of the projects I've seen from that so far are visual novels, and I don't think it takes the most literate genius in the world to know why. A cliche in game development spaces is "I know how to program, I just wish that I had an artist as a friend." When you're good at art and writing but don't have a friend who can program, where else do you go? Removed from the Fish Game I played to death as a child, or the series of strange games my older brother wound up making in the same class and on the same engine that I would end up working on in the year or two to follow, the reality of game development isn't working on a car with an instruction manual in your hand. Reading the manual for any given programming language will teach you what words work, but much like a dictionary, won't tell you which one will most effectively solve your problem. And so you get stuck in this endless cycle: I want to make a spaceship move, but every time I tell it to enter a building, I start to smell the stench of ash. I spend hours looking for the single line of code that's causing this and fix it. Great, onto the next car fire.

If I was a child in 2020 hearing about Karlson, perhaps my expectations would be different. It's one thing to be given a CD with games that have already been made on it. To see the sausage getting made in all of its frustrating glory is an entirely different beast. And on top of that, to have the sausage be wrapped in a Magic School Bus-like casing makes it go from feeling like a job to a passion. Or a passion that can be turned into a job, or a skill set that will set you up for later on in life. I know that, had Dani been around when I was a child, I would have tried learning how to use Unity. I would have failed and given up because, as explicitly stated in a dev diary for this game, a single ten-minute video can constitute months of hard work and problem-solving. As an adult, I see that and say, "yeah, I get you." As a child? What the fuck even is problem-solving? I'm still trying to figure out what fractions are while the class we're next to is learning about the periodic table of elements, something that I will only learn in high school because everything is fucked.

I'm conflicted on whether or not to say that it's inspirational in the same way that knowing Who Killed Captain Alex? was made on a shoestring budget of 200 dollars is inspiring. Does it speak to the long-dormant voice inside me that wants my creative voice to be heard, or am I being deceived because the entertaining wrapper around it is focused on packaging the process of creation as a hero's journey of sorts? I suppose it varies from person to person; trying to learn Unity as a kid would have fucked me up, but for somebody else, it probably would have led to much greener pastures somewhere in the future. And in the midst of it all, I think of that CD; reality is disappointment. But who's to say compromise is always a bad thing?