🃏

i wish i had more to say about eden after sinking dozens of hours into it. it’s a modern mmbn deckbuilder that i kept coming back to try out in new ways—what more could you want! the systems bounce around each other at an overwhelming pace & the slivers of lore hint at a bigger world, but after finishing all the routes i’m left a little wanting. maybe that’s a fitting feeling at the end of the world.

➡️

really learning the game comes from playing & beating the game with every character, who tell most of their story through gameplay. doomed prodigy saffron shows an open plate of possibilities & everyone else gets more specific from there. selicy cheekily teaches the importance of working in attacks with your cards, reva incentivizes running around the stage to stay busy building up shield, and hazel even has her weird interaction where she can repair hostages like she does her machines. my favourite was the musician violette who basically has two kits that exploit each others’ weaknesses in a duet & help you see a whole class of risky cards in a new light. information isn’t told to you outright, it comes with time and experimentation as you put the pieces together.

🎻

after you have your fun & get a handle on the mechanics though, that’s kind of it! multiple endings add different levels of challenge and hint at the secrets of the apocalypse, but past a certain point it’s just challenge. the second half of my playthrough didn’t reveal any new twists, which were what pulled me in the first place. i don’t need exposition or explicit answers, but it’s sad to see a world that’s had so much work put into building the characters up to not have a little more to chew on, even through it’s strengths of mechanical storytelling. fun new lines & randomized elements from each run help a bit, but they never add anything to make certain runs more memorable. the upcoming duelists of eden game shows the developer’s hand a bit in being more vibes & systems based, so let the vibes roll.

🪩

i’m so happy to see the mmbn formula get some new indie life though. it’s one of those systems that almost got lost to time that i think can tell another dimension of stories we don’t get to see much. i put a lot of expectations on this game because there’s so much i want to see from it, and i hope that this isn’t where things end with its lineage.

🌐

[fav builds were big decks that worked in 3 or so focuses (+shield) at a time, like flow/trinity/kunai or jam/frost/poison OK BYE]

🎇🥘🍄🛠🌝🌚🌈🪩🔮⚔️🎆

i’m pretty stormy about a high energy anime pinball RPG being stuck to a gacha format like this, because it’s never going to be as fun as it could be. it also kind of needs to exist in this space to make sense as an unfolding layered team builder. i’ve had some satisfying highs from months of buildup with this game, but everything’s tilting so much that we’re starting to plateau.

after putting together the tools for the hilariously cool sounding ‘dark multiball’ team, i think my time with this game is come to a close. other fun builds i’ve put together are levitate combo, dragon powerflip, and coffin count, all with the help of the small & dedicated world flipper community. a handful of lovingly detailed spreadsheets exist on the internet, explaining how various obscure mechanics can work together for optimal play. there’s no sense of competition between players (other than bragging rights), since online play is collaborative. better teams for one mean better runs for all.

this isn’t to say that players are the only ones bringing character to the table. the worlds of world flipper push their bubbly shonen trappings to the extreme:

🧜🏻‍♀️ a brash isekaied pirate captain has a flirty mermaid princess follow her around
☁️ a freed beastman prisoner found in one world is increasingly implied to be the missing heir of another
🗡 a cursed hero must teach & rely on others as he learns the true machinations of the imperial systems he once served

and those are just beats from the a-plot! hundreds of side characters come with individual vignette episodes when you pull them, fleshing out their deal & the universe as a whole. it’s a mess of a story, but the love put into it is obvious, tropes and all. countless lone wolf characters are won over by a warm welcome from the main quartet with a home cooked meal. biweekly gag comics add an element of slapstick to the cast that rounds out their darker moments. there’s an optimistic complexity that shows you broken characters building something outside what should be possible together. how can you not get inspired?

so, it’s all a good time, until we look at the pieces needed to keep this engine running. along all the fanfare and fun, grinding for materials takes up about 95% of the game. these will let you build your ideal teams, unlock new abilities & equip game-changing weapons. it’s even fun when your newly finished team gives you the tools to tackle content for characters of another element! you’ll get to play with your new kit, characters bouncing around the course casting flashy abilities every few seconds. each round is like an interactive fireworks show. well designed teams will weave intricate combos that create a fun engine to tackle different types of levels.

but then you need to grind more. and more. and the power creep starts to settle in. harder bosses require newer, more optimal characters, who you also need to upgrade. victories stop meaning as much & the temptation to turn on auto battle grows.

ultimately, this is what keeps people around for online games, not just gachas. there’s a sense of progression that’s encouraging to see your characters go through every day as you work through your own personal battles. your work hours may be unbalanced as all hell, but you can whip your phone out in a free moment and get your dailies done. it’s like casting a small spell, a personal prayer for a better tomorrow.

i defs needed this prayer over the last year and a half, unintentionally lining up with my bout of long covid i’ve had to claw my way through. money is tight, and i’ve been able to build almost every optimal team with little more than luck, patience & consistency. most days logging on & watching the auto battles play out was the only thing my brain could manage.

things are starting to change, though. i just got on disability after working towards it for over a year, and i’m finding that things are very slowly starting to get better. i’m able to get out of bed about half of the week, and i’m looking to see what i want to change with my new options. world flipper feels like it’s been played through at this point, so i think i’m ready to take it out of the routine.

i’ll probably come back to play through the new plot beats, but those take so long to come out. i honestly think that with the teams i have now, i can come back in 6 months to play a bit & peace out again! there’s something reassuring to finding your own ending to a game, and i think i’ve got mine.

🐊
just touched the freaking sublime by sitting down to play with Kontinuum by Klaus Schulze playing in the background [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UkXeOMSwdZQ] what just happened? is this what meditation is supposed to do to my brain?

didn’t have a goal, score didn’t matter, just got to come back to a system i enjoy and get lost in what felt familiar. that’s video games to me, pure & simple.

i love every gator here & the playful theming throughout. walls are lined with gator teeth, portals hold your hand into unseen corners of the world, my pinball got stuck on a spot for 30 seconds as it edged back out pixel by aching pixel. i’m not even mad, it was kinda beautiful.

it’s emergent, it’s contained, it’s goofy gators. what more could you want?

🧀〽️🎨✴️🛹🌐💠✈️🛗🌀

bless this block of brutalist swiss cheese. running through abandoned airport gates and skating for miles across impossible tree canopies is something i didn’t know i was missing in my heart.

as i figure out my final 3DS library choices, adding this game into the dreamcast themed shelf rounds out the shape of how the console feels to hold in my hands and spin in my mind. it carries with it subspace ghost towns that can never become something more.

and yet, here, they can just be—loosely guided along by waypoint collectibles & the bustle of unknowable enemies. guiding words are stripped away to let the player find out if they want to play here, to learn a bit more as they go. it’s unpolished & opaque, but considered enough that it never feels rushed to me. i get to ask myself what could be if we designed games with a purpose that doesn’t need to be known. i like the answers that come out.

in a lineup that is bite sized and structured (asked by its handheld mold), automaton lung gives the 3DS a liminal labyrinth that acts as a holographic swan song, a gem that will shine brightest on its tiny lenticular screen.

🧹💨🪰🪱☁️🪢🌫🔪🃏🥪

perfect little vaccine recovery game. the texture of the setting is weirdly satisfying: ominous red bugs carving out health bars with loud teeth, massive unshackled worms digging up fresh maws for exploration, the proliferation of dust in every corner of reality and it’s universal utility. everything down to the two button action controls is simple enough that this could easily be burned onto a GBC cart and spun up as a creepy forgotten game from the era.

playing through the this feels like an interweaving of dream-feuled obscure gameboy logic with this anti-narrative clawing against the idea of a chosen hero, all while staying on a pretty linear path towards it. parts of the beginning felt abrasive at first contact—like the game resented me for playing it—but a few hours in you can start to see that it’s more of a og grumpy animal crossing villager vibe. i personally wish they leaned more into the dream stuff, but having done that messy work of creating a nonlinear story that tries to be satisfying no matter what angle you come at it from, i get it 💯

it’s fun to see a small game that came out in 2013 & see how much it was doing ahead of the indie crowd. i don’t know if we’ll ever be able to track its influence on a map, but it’s out there. mostly, i’m glad that there’s no pitfall damage, since that would have drawn out the game unnecessarily. the post game looks like it’s own beast that’ll be fun to jump into sometime! for now, i’ve got plenty to chew on.

🤛🏻🎀❌🍛👊🏻🏐🎸🌊🤜🏻

maaan, i was looking forward to this one! time to unpack a bit after deciding to stop pursuing the post game.

there’s a lot to love in the presentation here. rem is this expressive illustrator who’s designed some real good knuckleheads. reading through her comic, devil’s candy, is a blast every time, and i love getting to see another angle of her work through this synthwave rude girl lens. go check out devil’s candy!

the setting of two delinquent girls headbutting their way through a city of violence is also too good to pass up. you’ve got shops full of jaded kiosk workers & inspiringly buff women giving you brief periods of calm between tidal waves of punches on vibrantly beat up streets. each variant of an enemy has a unique name & can be recruited as a single move unit, including secret boss versions that hit harder & reveal the undercurrent of a subplot through their descriptions. going around the city & finding these characters becomes it’s own type of minigame.

these are all cool ideas! there’s a lot of cool ideas in this game. but it feels like a collection of cool ideas & sweet art put next to each other on a shelf, rather than something that works together as a cohesive whole. none of it quite rings through to me as well as i can imagine how cool it sounded in the planning stages of development. there’s this spiritual successor fusion of scott pilgrim & river city ransom going on, but it gets in the way of delivering a good time.

i wish they either kept things rougher around the edges or actually playtested the game a bit. things end up in this kinda in-between space where you can feel them phoning it in after a while. for me it was around the 20th time an enemy said ‘does anyone actually read this?’ as their defeat line.

🍁🛶🐛🐺🦌🔮🔮🐈🦚👻⚔️👑🍃✨

something about this just clicks for me—i’ve played through it twice when i’ve had an open weekend. immersive enough that you feel accomplished with it, but not overly long that you can’t take breaks to do other things.

the color palettes of every zone are suuper pleasing. controls are simple enough to keep track of everything in a tight battle. atmosphere is evocative without laying everything out. i dunno, i never played dark souls, so i guess this gets to take the credit for the sense of dreadful peace instilled by this genre of game (for me, at least)

🚀🪫🤖💓🤖💎💎💎🚜🎊🟪🔋

the adorable visuals really help this game, which ends up being a nice & meandering but definitely active multiplayer experience. if you wanna get through a level you gotta co-mu-ni-cate! about the small things, about what you’re planning on trying next, about exploring a small nook or cranny. it doesn’t always work, but the playbox style mini levels let you explore them to your heart’s content before moving on (and sometimes, you really find something that makes you want to explore more…!)

really happy with this one!