IsaacAdept123456
Recent Activity
2 hrs ago
2 hrs ago
RedBackLoggd
commented on
2manyW's
review of
The Binding of Isaac
I want to play this game, but I heard it has a lot of grossout humor. Any truth to that Wolfie?
2 hrs ago
RedBackLoggd
commented on
ResidentAtelier's
review of
Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book
Ah copy, I figured based off the cover art that they generally revolved around that. What is an atelier?
2 hrs ago
2 hrs ago
FloofQueenEmily
reviewed
Animal Well
I am really not much of a metroidvania kinda girl, it's often a genre I'll appreciate but never really get fully into. Rarely do I ever finish them, I appreciate them for what they are typically just aren't for me and I quite never really got why. In a vacuum it seems like something I'd like. I love exploration based games, I enjoy my 2d platformers from time to time, and I really enjoy action games but for some reason when all of these come together as a metroidvania it often feels like there's something that's just not clicking with me. Animal Well might be the most fun I've ever had in this genre, just because it's so different to most metroidvanias out there right now. Trading action and combat for very serene and eerie vibes, all delivered at a slow and comforting pace to make Animal Well something I really loved playing.
The puzzles are easily the standout feature. They are everywhere. In front of you or behind you. In the light or in the dark. In open space or obscured behind the walls. You cannot escape them, you pick a direction and solve. Thankfully though, there's an ENOURMOUS amount of puzzle variety on offer and plenty of items you can pick up all with quite a few uses to help you along your way. I won't spoil any of them but they're all really unique and really fun to play around with.
The visuals and audio as well are perfect. This is a dark, eerie and tranquil space filled with all kinds of animals to interact with or just observe. All the animation work and hearing animal calls echo throughout the many rooms you'll explore within the Well will really set the mood. Playing with a Dualsense controller is also highly recommended because of the vibrations added a lot to the experience. If you've ever been out in the middle of the night in a forest or by a river while its lightly raining you'll know exactly how the Well would feel like. It is peaceful and creepy and is the perfect backdrop and soundscape to accompany your puzzles.
The platforming is probably the biggest pitfall to in Animal Well. It's pretty good platforming, but some puzzles do require going back and forth between rooms and especially ones with some more challenging platforming, as it can become a bit tedious at times. There's also no combat at all, so platforming is the only kind of moment to moment gameplay. I really liked the platforming and using my items to help me get around so it didn't detract from my experience but if you prefer your metroidvanias to have combat in them, this is not for you. There's also quite a lot more to the game even after you roll credits, so there's still much more to find once you do roll credits.
As a whole package Animal Well is just exactly the kind of game that I'm looking for in the metroidvania genre, and hats off to Billy Basso for developing the entire game solo. It's one gigantic puzzle box that's dripping with atmosphere all the way down and I'll be heading back inside to uncover the many more secrets that are hidden in the Well.
The puzzles are easily the standout feature. They are everywhere. In front of you or behind you. In the light or in the dark. In open space or obscured behind the walls. You cannot escape them, you pick a direction and solve. Thankfully though, there's an ENOURMOUS amount of puzzle variety on offer and plenty of items you can pick up all with quite a few uses to help you along your way. I won't spoil any of them but they're all really unique and really fun to play around with.
The visuals and audio as well are perfect. This is a dark, eerie and tranquil space filled with all kinds of animals to interact with or just observe. All the animation work and hearing animal calls echo throughout the many rooms you'll explore within the Well will really set the mood. Playing with a Dualsense controller is also highly recommended because of the vibrations added a lot to the experience. If you've ever been out in the middle of the night in a forest or by a river while its lightly raining you'll know exactly how the Well would feel like. It is peaceful and creepy and is the perfect backdrop and soundscape to accompany your puzzles.
The platforming is probably the biggest pitfall to in Animal Well. It's pretty good platforming, but some puzzles do require going back and forth between rooms and especially ones with some more challenging platforming, as it can become a bit tedious at times. There's also no combat at all, so platforming is the only kind of moment to moment gameplay. I really liked the platforming and using my items to help me get around so it didn't detract from my experience but if you prefer your metroidvanias to have combat in them, this is not for you. There's also quite a lot more to the game even after you roll credits, so there's still much more to find once you do roll credits.
As a whole package Animal Well is just exactly the kind of game that I'm looking for in the metroidvania genre, and hats off to Billy Basso for developing the entire game solo. It's one gigantic puzzle box that's dripping with atmosphere all the way down and I'll be heading back inside to uncover the many more secrets that are hidden in the Well.
3 hrs ago
FloofQueenEmily
completed
Animal Well
4 hrs ago
RedBackLoggd
commented on
ResidentAtelier's
review of
Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book
Hey girl, you gotta @ someone's username if you want them to get a notification. Think of it like Twitter/X. Just in case you thought I was ignoring you!
How are the stories? Slice of life? Deep drama? Comedy?
How are the stories? Slice of life? Deep drama? Comedy?
6 hrs ago
RedBackLoggd
liked
ResidentAtelier's
review of
Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Mysterious Journey DX
6 hrs ago
RedBackLoggd
liked
ResidentAtelier's
review of
Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings DX
6 hrs ago
6 hrs ago
9 hrs ago
9 hrs ago
9 hrs ago
RedBackLoggd
reviewed
The Swapper
This review contains spoilers
Spoilers only discussed at the very bottom of the review
The Swapper is a terrific platformer wrapped in a half-sown skin, one that seeks to combine the atmospheric tension of Super Metroid with a genuinely-awesome gimmick, and while I wish the game had succeeded on both fronts, its triumph with the latter more than makes it worth playing.
Because I wish to rave extensive praise on the game, I’ll get the negatives out of the way regarding its story - you play as a female spacefarer stuck on a dilapidated station following a botched landing (no context is given as to where she came from as far as I could tell). You quickly learn this place is a research facility called Theseus that was home to the Swapper Project - a firearm-like tool capable of transferring one’s soul across multiple clones. Logs laden throughout the satellite’s computers detail what transpired prior to your arrival, disclosing a chilling backstory in the process….or so it was intended. The Swapper’s biggest issues are that it doesn’t really lean into its existential horror motifs, nor delve deep into those philosophical concepts hinted at in said data files.
With the former, your heroine is silent, meaning she inherently stopgaps any attempts at dread: there are no reactions to the usage of the Swapper, no commentary on the fates of the scientists, no expressions toward any revelations she uncovers, nothing. I get that Facepalm Games were trying to pay homage to Samus; however, given that The Swapper is about questioning one’s humanity, I just don’t think that choice was a wise decision. Fears about the human condition can only go so far amidst faceless responses, and if your character is basically treating everything like another Tuesday, it makes it very hard to invest in the going-ons about you.
Fans may retort how a mute protagonist is intended to be a proxy for the player, but without a choice system, I’ve never bought into that argument - when you’re simply observing everything like a pedestrian, it rarely feels like you’re imbibing your character psychosocially; your role better described as a camera operator in charge of recording said character. Relatability and connections are formulated through dialogue, and when you render your protagonist aphasic, you end-up disabling a necessary supplement to your story.
This facet partially afflicts the aforestated secondary qualm of shallow philosophy which, as you may imagine, The Swapper indulges in via concepts of transhumanism and solipsism. Unfortunately, if you were hoping for another game akin to SOMA, you’re better off looking elsewhere as the writers here were content with making marginal allusions to these ideas over something profounder. Now, to be fair, I don’t think it was ever their intention to write-up a Newtonian-esque essay on the topic, and I did actually appreciate them leaving things up to interpretation compared to SOMA’s insistence on a singular hypothesis; however, the fact stands that their take was ultimately scattershot, with the ending, in particular, losing all edge (you’ll know it when you play it).
But look, if you’ve heard of The Swapper, chances are it was because of the fascinating gameplay, and on that front the developers more than succeeded. From the get-go you’re gifted the ability to craft four clones and switch between each body, the remaining dolls mimicking your movements ala the Piped Piper for-better-and-for-worse. The Theseus is a gigantic behemoth host to tens of rooms serving as organic levels, and the creativity Facepalm managed to wring out of this premise blew my mind. Outside of a few stages I admittedly had to look-up the answers to, The Swapper’s biggest feat is that it’s completely solvable through good old-fashioned deductive reasoning: because you aren’t dealing with innumerable power-ups or new gameplay mechanics every few minutes, you’re constantly aware of what can or can’t be done within a region, and that goes a long way towards making them scrutable amidst their countless reworkings. Combine this with the bitesize level design and ability to slowdown time between transfers, and you’ve got an addicting gameplay loop that never gets old.
The aesthetics surrounding these stages are concurrently aided-and-impeded by the visuals. See, The Swapper has been praised for having a surreal-like quality to its presentation, this claim no doubt owing to the excessive particles everywhere: dust, motes, and mists ground into a frame of blurry extravaganza, and on the one hand, it does a phenomenal job accenting the numerous colored rays within the Theseus’s hull, but on the other, I couldn’t help feeling like most of this was done less for the sake of atmosphere and more for the sake of hiding some messy geometry latent in the game’s modeling. It’s well-known that Facepalm utilized clay to build their assets, and while such sculptures are absolute works of art, they’re unfortunately offset by an inherent squishiness to their composure that intrinsically limits texturing. As a result of this hazy technique, I’d argue a fair amount of recurrent simulacra, including the backgrounds, crates, portals, and wall-lining, looked a bit too bleary, though others like the hatches, signs, switches, and rocks remained excellent.
The Swapper is a dark game, but thankfully never slips into overly-dim territory courtesy of your torch as well as consistent multicolored spotlights hung throughout the areas. True, the Theseus, as a whole, is decked in blue/grey tones, and while that may offput Metroid enthusiasts expecting somber rainbows, I think it works well for the kind of title Facepalm was trying to craft.
Sadly, I never quite got taken in by The Swapper’s atmosphere, and that largely had to do with the minimal ambient noise on display: echoes only resound during certain portions, footsteps are consistently muted, and you can’t walk anywhere, preventing that slow burn typical of high tension. Luckily the remaining SFX is solid enough, with some of my favorites including portal warping, machinery beeps, the crunch of a collapsing clone, and the masterpiece that was airlock transitions.
The OST by Carlo Castellano is interesting in that it opts for relatively-peaceful melodies over those moody lo-fi tunes depressing space games like Swapper tend to hold. There’s an interesting dichotomy at-play of calming piano chords against the corporeal suicide runs most of the levels entail, but it’s one you’ll ultimately enjoy due to the calming nature of the music in sum.
There is voice acting, particularly as it pertains to the divulgence of the Theseus’s history, but as it entails spoilers, I’ll reserve my thoughts on the matter to the very bottom(+).
In the end, The Swapper is more than worth your time. Yes, the story isn’t as fleshed out as it could have been, and you’ll definitely have some growing pains with both the twin stick format and slightly floaty jump, but master these and you’ll enjoy a severely-underappreciated puzzle platformer.
NOTES
-The game has an opening cinematic, which is quite good though part of me wonders if the devs would’ve been better off saving that money by using white-on-black text. Might’ve made things more mysterious.
-I liked the bending effect that occurred whenever you used a warp gate.
-Side doors in Swapper are clear homages to Metroid.
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SPOILERS
+Basically you intermittently encounter another survivor who’s actually three separate entities in one: the original scavenger plus two scientists who created the Swapper. Personally, I don’t think the actress behind the Scavenger did a particularly great job as she just wasn’t able to accurately individuate the three personalities inhabiting her like Joanne Woodward or James McAvoy did in their respective roles, though I’ll at least agree that her base voice acting was fine (ditto to the original voices behind the two doctors themselves pre-merger).
The other instance of major voice acting arrives at the finale with the rescue crew, and the distortion effect placed upon their microphones made it too hard to accurately judge their performances.
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The Swapper is a terrific platformer wrapped in a half-sown skin, one that seeks to combine the atmospheric tension of Super Metroid with a genuinely-awesome gimmick, and while I wish the game had succeeded on both fronts, its triumph with the latter more than makes it worth playing.
Because I wish to rave extensive praise on the game, I’ll get the negatives out of the way regarding its story - you play as a female spacefarer stuck on a dilapidated station following a botched landing (no context is given as to where she came from as far as I could tell). You quickly learn this place is a research facility called Theseus that was home to the Swapper Project - a firearm-like tool capable of transferring one’s soul across multiple clones. Logs laden throughout the satellite’s computers detail what transpired prior to your arrival, disclosing a chilling backstory in the process….or so it was intended. The Swapper’s biggest issues are that it doesn’t really lean into its existential horror motifs, nor delve deep into those philosophical concepts hinted at in said data files.
With the former, your heroine is silent, meaning she inherently stopgaps any attempts at dread: there are no reactions to the usage of the Swapper, no commentary on the fates of the scientists, no expressions toward any revelations she uncovers, nothing. I get that Facepalm Games were trying to pay homage to Samus; however, given that The Swapper is about questioning one’s humanity, I just don’t think that choice was a wise decision. Fears about the human condition can only go so far amidst faceless responses, and if your character is basically treating everything like another Tuesday, it makes it very hard to invest in the going-ons about you.
Fans may retort how a mute protagonist is intended to be a proxy for the player, but without a choice system, I’ve never bought into that argument - when you’re simply observing everything like a pedestrian, it rarely feels like you’re imbibing your character psychosocially; your role better described as a camera operator in charge of recording said character. Relatability and connections are formulated through dialogue, and when you render your protagonist aphasic, you end-up disabling a necessary supplement to your story.
This facet partially afflicts the aforestated secondary qualm of shallow philosophy which, as you may imagine, The Swapper indulges in via concepts of transhumanism and solipsism. Unfortunately, if you were hoping for another game akin to SOMA, you’re better off looking elsewhere as the writers here were content with making marginal allusions to these ideas over something profounder. Now, to be fair, I don’t think it was ever their intention to write-up a Newtonian-esque essay on the topic, and I did actually appreciate them leaving things up to interpretation compared to SOMA’s insistence on a singular hypothesis; however, the fact stands that their take was ultimately scattershot, with the ending, in particular, losing all edge (you’ll know it when you play it).
But look, if you’ve heard of The Swapper, chances are it was because of the fascinating gameplay, and on that front the developers more than succeeded. From the get-go you’re gifted the ability to craft four clones and switch between each body, the remaining dolls mimicking your movements ala the Piped Piper for-better-and-for-worse. The Theseus is a gigantic behemoth host to tens of rooms serving as organic levels, and the creativity Facepalm managed to wring out of this premise blew my mind. Outside of a few stages I admittedly had to look-up the answers to, The Swapper’s biggest feat is that it’s completely solvable through good old-fashioned deductive reasoning: because you aren’t dealing with innumerable power-ups or new gameplay mechanics every few minutes, you’re constantly aware of what can or can’t be done within a region, and that goes a long way towards making them scrutable amidst their countless reworkings. Combine this with the bitesize level design and ability to slowdown time between transfers, and you’ve got an addicting gameplay loop that never gets old.
The aesthetics surrounding these stages are concurrently aided-and-impeded by the visuals. See, The Swapper has been praised for having a surreal-like quality to its presentation, this claim no doubt owing to the excessive particles everywhere: dust, motes, and mists ground into a frame of blurry extravaganza, and on the one hand, it does a phenomenal job accenting the numerous colored rays within the Theseus’s hull, but on the other, I couldn’t help feeling like most of this was done less for the sake of atmosphere and more for the sake of hiding some messy geometry latent in the game’s modeling. It’s well-known that Facepalm utilized clay to build their assets, and while such sculptures are absolute works of art, they’re unfortunately offset by an inherent squishiness to their composure that intrinsically limits texturing. As a result of this hazy technique, I’d argue a fair amount of recurrent simulacra, including the backgrounds, crates, portals, and wall-lining, looked a bit too bleary, though others like the hatches, signs, switches, and rocks remained excellent.
The Swapper is a dark game, but thankfully never slips into overly-dim territory courtesy of your torch as well as consistent multicolored spotlights hung throughout the areas. True, the Theseus, as a whole, is decked in blue/grey tones, and while that may offput Metroid enthusiasts expecting somber rainbows, I think it works well for the kind of title Facepalm was trying to craft.
Sadly, I never quite got taken in by The Swapper’s atmosphere, and that largely had to do with the minimal ambient noise on display: echoes only resound during certain portions, footsteps are consistently muted, and you can’t walk anywhere, preventing that slow burn typical of high tension. Luckily the remaining SFX is solid enough, with some of my favorites including portal warping, machinery beeps, the crunch of a collapsing clone, and the masterpiece that was airlock transitions.
The OST by Carlo Castellano is interesting in that it opts for relatively-peaceful melodies over those moody lo-fi tunes depressing space games like Swapper tend to hold. There’s an interesting dichotomy at-play of calming piano chords against the corporeal suicide runs most of the levels entail, but it’s one you’ll ultimately enjoy due to the calming nature of the music in sum.
There is voice acting, particularly as it pertains to the divulgence of the Theseus’s history, but as it entails spoilers, I’ll reserve my thoughts on the matter to the very bottom(+).
In the end, The Swapper is more than worth your time. Yes, the story isn’t as fleshed out as it could have been, and you’ll definitely have some growing pains with both the twin stick format and slightly floaty jump, but master these and you’ll enjoy a severely-underappreciated puzzle platformer.
NOTES
-The game has an opening cinematic, which is quite good though part of me wonders if the devs would’ve been better off saving that money by using white-on-black text. Might’ve made things more mysterious.
-I liked the bending effect that occurred whenever you used a warp gate.
-Side doors in Swapper are clear homages to Metroid.
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SPOILERS
+Basically you intermittently encounter another survivor who’s actually three separate entities in one: the original scavenger plus two scientists who created the Swapper. Personally, I don’t think the actress behind the Scavenger did a particularly great job as she just wasn’t able to accurately individuate the three personalities inhabiting her like Joanne Woodward or James McAvoy did in their respective roles, though I’ll at least agree that her base voice acting was fine (ditto to the original voices behind the two doctors themselves pre-merger).
The other instance of major voice acting arrives at the finale with the rescue crew, and the distortion effect placed upon their microphones made it too hard to accurately judge their performances.
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10 hrs ago