I was intrigued enough to give this a spin based on its Amiga inspiration, but soon deleted it. I think the designers had ideas about updating this into more of an action game, but they don't work in a fun way. Mashing a QTE every time I wanted to heal one point of health is not great and there isn't enough variety in moves or animation to make the encounters interesting. Neither is the level design, which feels like a string of ideas put together without consideration for the floaty movement. After I accidentally executed a leaping attack and fell to my death, only to see that there are no checkpoints and that, as such, I would have to replay the whole level, I decided not to give this one any more of my time.

I gave this one a quick spin a couple years ago. It didn't grab me at the time, but I gave it another shot last night and I'm glad that I did. There's some fun stuff going on here with diegetic visual indicators and scale. The core idea of a little dude who uses in-game buttons to pilot a land boat is a fun one. The score and sound effects shine, from the hiss of steam to the use of plucked strings to convey traveling through hail.

It's a good thing that its charm carries it, though, because it's a little nonsensical with a moment's thought. Those visual indicators that are helpful to the player don't make much sense in the setting and neither do the big orange buttons that control everything. The components to solve puzzles are usually inside of the screen in which your land boat is halted by an obstacle. In some ways, all of that is good: it would be a less pleasant game if I was held up by searching the screen for interactive elements. But I think it also limits the narrative potential of the game, leaving Far: Lone Sails as simply a fun and often pretty journey. My motivation in playing, really, was to keep crossing to see what was on the other side.

A game that excels at delivering the unexpected. It's a shoot 'em up crossed with a twin stick shooter with a focus on puzzles over reflexes. Mechanics change often - often within the same level - and I think there's thirty-five levels and seven boss fights. I delighted in how these changes were visually communicated and how tightly designed they were. There's often just enough time to react, then work things out, then embrace the new structure, and then bam it's time to adapt again.

While its mechanics are inspired, the music and art aren't worth much mention. Anything that could be mentioned as plot is nonsensical. Oddly, my thoughts on those things don't matter much to me. Playing Eigengrau is more about having fun and basking in varied and well-executed game mechanics than anything else.

Playing on Atari 50, my goal with this one was to be decent enough to hit extended play. That turned out to be a tough task! I would have pumped plenty of quarters into this one in the attempt and probably would never make it with the intended 2-player co-op.

Once again, I can see this as a potential inspiration for many games to come. The graphical detail is also a leap forward from the likes of, say, Sprint 8. But it seems to me to be missing one obvious component: there's no firefighting elements, at all. Might as well call it "runaway tractor-trailer." I guess it might have been beyond the capabilities of the time to have a water hose effect, let alone fires to put out.

Holds up very well. As with a lot of the Atari arcade games from the 70s, the most impressive thing about it is the feeling of momentum. I think there's still an element of psychological mystery as to how the feeling of gravity is communicated so well with so little. There is something charming about the simplicity of the vector graphics and they're complimented with numerical readouts for speed and direction. There's also the snark and satisfaction of the text messages that display after landings, both successful and attempted. It's very satisfying to nudge the lander into a 5x score multiplying landing spot and see "The Eagle Has Landed."

Blown away by this one being from 1991. It must have been from the future. Really, it's Compile building on the platform of their previous work. Spriggan has a great implementation of the Aleste system of collecting multiple power-ups but these ones can be combined to change the shape and pattern of your shot. Even better, each of the three that you can hold at a time can be ejected in a pinch as a small bomb. Sprites are great, there are fully voiced cutscenes (that my lacking Japanese was not up to, that's on me), and designs are detailed. There could be a little more to some enemies and patterns, but there's more than enough variety for its six-levels-plus-a-final-boss.

I had a circuitous route to Risk of Rain as I've already played (but haven't yet finished) its sequel. With a winning run in this one, I'm curious to see if I'll have more luck with the second. But I do think that the first Hopoo effort still has some great things going for it in its own right. It's a very readable game despite its chaos and scale. Classes are varied and stacking items and drones is a blast. The soundtrack is worth an extra star in its own right, too. Most importantly, it feels like the designers trust the player to have fun with the game in their own way. There's a lot of control in when to start the fireworks, fight bosses, and progress, right up until the final boss.

Unfortunately, playing this one made me think of better games that I would rather be playing. Well, one is a set of games: the Treasure Trove games. I could be playing any one of those and doing a challenge run in which I destroy every checkpoint. That would have the same effect of resetting my progress with each death, but I would benefit from well-crafted levels and more precise controls. Similarly, I think there's some clear inspiration from Downwell in here, but without the momentum and deceptive simplicity. Those are good ingredients, but they don't come together in Shovel Knight Dig. Ultimately, I don't think that procedural generation and Shovel Knight go all that well together.