funkalunk
2020
I sat down to play Bugsnax based on the promise that it was inspired by games such as Dark Cloud, Ape Escape, and Viva Pinata; games I very much enjoyed in the past. While the game avoids being outright derivative of any of these older titles, it does struggle to develop an identity of its own, making for an experience with a relatively low ceiling despite its endearing qualities.
And boy does it have some endearing qualities. Bugsnax is quite the colorful game filled with inspired visual design. The titular creatures are amusing visual puns, and the NPCs look to be straight out of a children's picture book. Bugsnax is enjoyable to look at and that fits nicely with its overall relaxed pace and lack of demands on the player.
The moment to moment gameplay of Bugsnax is also quite enjoyable. Each Bugsnak is a puzzle unto itself in how one catches it, and more often than not there is more than one solution. While it sometimes feels janky, largely thanks to the physics engine, the game engenders creativity from the player. The less prescriptive an open(ish) world experience feels, the more it justifies itself, and Bugsnax does that well.
I would mark the narrative as another positive, though I don't want to overstate things. It does just enough to create a hook in the investigation of the Bugsnax and the island they inhabit, and while the conclusion isn't extremely compelling, that's all the game needed to do to stop the moseying-about from feeling pointless. It helps when the world and its creatures do so much of the heavy lifting; it relieves the mediocre script of the responsibility of carrying the narrative.
Mediocrity, unfortunately, is something that pervades the rest of the game. Every quality the developer's wanted to ape from their favorite games is bungled in its implementation. Town building from Dark Cloud? Rather than actually constructing a town to your liking, characters fill pre-determined slots with no customization. Boss encounters with boss snax from an action game like Ape Escape? Scuttled by the intersection of the clunky physics engine and the fact that the player lacks a health bar or fail state entirely. Collecting all of the Bugsnak species to enjoy at your leisure like cultiating pinata in Viva Pinata? Completely meaningless without a customizable living space for the Bugsnax. (There is a pen for you to dump them in, but vexingly the player has no way of choosing the snax that roam around there, negating its purpose) The developer's implemented a grab bag's worth of features from other titles while failing to understand their function in the first place; a very much "ideas-guy" trajectory.
Do these problems ruin the game? No, but many questions are raised. Why is there a limit to the number of snax a player can hold? Why are there so many sauce varieties when so many snax all like the same sauce? Why is being set on fire so infuriating? Why are there so many mail sidequests, and why are they all identical? Why both Bunger and BBQ Bunger? Why are its environmental puzzles so insultingly easy? Why, oh why, does it set the time to 11PM every time you finish a sidequest?
I've made reference to it earlier, but I want to take the time to talk about the physics engine specifically. So many moments in the game are made more frustrating due to the physics-wrestling the player must engage in. There's a sidequest to climb a mountain using the jump pad, but the real challenge is trying to set the pad on the footholds without it just sliding off. There's a boss where one must launch orbs at a large Bugsnak, but half of the projectiles one fires lose all momentum whenever they slightly clip another one of the orbs the devs chose to litter the arena with. Most of the game, most of the snak catching, is physics based in some way, and while its never non-functional, small issues continuously arise to needle the player.
Despite all of this, I enjoyed my time with Bugsnax. I think with a more competent dev team and a clearer vision behind the project it could have been something great. As it is, it's just fine. I caught all of the Snax, and I'm content to never think of it again.
I caught all of the Snax, and now I'm full.
I caught all of the Snax, and I spoiled my appetite.
I raided my pantry, and now I'm all out of snax.
I finished snak time, and now it's nap time.
I don't know, choose one.
And boy does it have some endearing qualities. Bugsnax is quite the colorful game filled with inspired visual design. The titular creatures are amusing visual puns, and the NPCs look to be straight out of a children's picture book. Bugsnax is enjoyable to look at and that fits nicely with its overall relaxed pace and lack of demands on the player.
The moment to moment gameplay of Bugsnax is also quite enjoyable. Each Bugsnak is a puzzle unto itself in how one catches it, and more often than not there is more than one solution. While it sometimes feels janky, largely thanks to the physics engine, the game engenders creativity from the player. The less prescriptive an open(ish) world experience feels, the more it justifies itself, and Bugsnax does that well.
I would mark the narrative as another positive, though I don't want to overstate things. It does just enough to create a hook in the investigation of the Bugsnax and the island they inhabit, and while the conclusion isn't extremely compelling, that's all the game needed to do to stop the moseying-about from feeling pointless. It helps when the world and its creatures do so much of the heavy lifting; it relieves the mediocre script of the responsibility of carrying the narrative.
Mediocrity, unfortunately, is something that pervades the rest of the game. Every quality the developer's wanted to ape from their favorite games is bungled in its implementation. Town building from Dark Cloud? Rather than actually constructing a town to your liking, characters fill pre-determined slots with no customization. Boss encounters with boss snax from an action game like Ape Escape? Scuttled by the intersection of the clunky physics engine and the fact that the player lacks a health bar or fail state entirely. Collecting all of the Bugsnak species to enjoy at your leisure like cultiating pinata in Viva Pinata? Completely meaningless without a customizable living space for the Bugsnax. (There is a pen for you to dump them in, but vexingly the player has no way of choosing the snax that roam around there, negating its purpose) The developer's implemented a grab bag's worth of features from other titles while failing to understand their function in the first place; a very much "ideas-guy" trajectory.
Do these problems ruin the game? No, but many questions are raised. Why is there a limit to the number of snax a player can hold? Why are there so many sauce varieties when so many snax all like the same sauce? Why is being set on fire so infuriating? Why are there so many mail sidequests, and why are they all identical? Why both Bunger and BBQ Bunger? Why are its environmental puzzles so insultingly easy? Why, oh why, does it set the time to 11PM every time you finish a sidequest?
I've made reference to it earlier, but I want to take the time to talk about the physics engine specifically. So many moments in the game are made more frustrating due to the physics-wrestling the player must engage in. There's a sidequest to climb a mountain using the jump pad, but the real challenge is trying to set the pad on the footholds without it just sliding off. There's a boss where one must launch orbs at a large Bugsnak, but half of the projectiles one fires lose all momentum whenever they slightly clip another one of the orbs the devs chose to litter the arena with. Most of the game, most of the snak catching, is physics based in some way, and while its never non-functional, small issues continuously arise to needle the player.
Despite all of this, I enjoyed my time with Bugsnax. I think with a more competent dev team and a clearer vision behind the project it could have been something great. As it is, it's just fine. I caught all of the Snax, and I'm content to never think of it again.
I caught all of the Snax, and now I'm full.
I caught all of the Snax, and I spoiled my appetite.
I raided my pantry, and now I'm all out of snax.
I finished snak time, and now it's nap time.
I don't know, choose one.
2023
I usually write longer reviews but there's really only one thing I want to hone in on when it comes to Super Mario Role Playing Game: the addition of a combo counter that persists through encounters is a stroke of genius. This one element single-handedly takes an otherwise bare bones and somewhat dull combat engine bereft of challenge and makes it engaging for the player throughout the entirety of the experience.
Sometimes it's good to succumb to monkey brain and bask in the glory of "number go up". It's an entirely optional incentive the player has no tangible reason to care about, but I'm not exaggerating when I say it made the experience for me. Having never played the original, I would not be surprised if I found that game boring. Not the remake, however.
There are other wins here, of course; the reframed cutscenes, the rerecorded music, and the graphical facelift all work to enhance the decidedly dated aesthetics of the original. Other elements that work as well now as they did in the SNES era, such as the chunky sound effects, are still present.
Most definitely the definitive edition of the game. I would know; it's the only one I've played.
Sometimes it's good to succumb to monkey brain and bask in the glory of "number go up". It's an entirely optional incentive the player has no tangible reason to care about, but I'm not exaggerating when I say it made the experience for me. Having never played the original, I would not be surprised if I found that game boring. Not the remake, however.
There are other wins here, of course; the reframed cutscenes, the rerecorded music, and the graphical facelift all work to enhance the decidedly dated aesthetics of the original. Other elements that work as well now as they did in the SNES era, such as the chunky sound effects, are still present.
Most definitely the definitive edition of the game. I would know; it's the only one I've played.
I'm constantly amazed at how much I enjoy Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness as its flaws are as numerous as its title is needlessly vexing. Early on in my playthrough I compiled a list of bizarre design decisions and that list only spiraled out of control the more I played. I constantly used the Switch's capturing feature to post clips of oddities, bugs, and things that made me go 'Hmm...' to Twitter. The game is not all that well put together, and at times it seems poorly thought out. That's all to say nothing of the forced 10 hour tutorial that the player is subjected to.
And yet, I can't say that I don't love the game. Made in Abyss is a great example of a survival game that has real tension, real discovery, and real challenge. The way those three interact on a minute-to-minute basis creates an extremely compelling experience that is much more than the sum of its parts.
At its base the game is about plunging further down into the titular Abyss and the game is not shy about making this a trying experience. Characters suffer a sickness when rising in altitude, not unlike divers resurfacing, and this stops your progress constantly. Walking up a slight incline? Better stop for 5 seconds to quell your character's growing sickness. There's a hunger and stamina system that constantly hamper your progress as well. Your greatest enemy might be a cliff face that you simply don't have enough stamina to scale at your level, or it might be your lack of preparedness as your empty stomach demands you return prematurely.
Now this all sounds like standard fare, but where the real challenge lies is extricating oneself from one's dives. Getting back out of the Abyss is much, much harder than going down there. To say nothing of the risk-reward tension of deciding how deep to dive insofar as what your supplies can accommodate, environments are confusing and clearly designed to be hostile to the rising climber. Some passages are one-way, and on more than one occasion the game pulls the nasty trick of unexpectedly blocking previously used routes forcing the discovery of a new way up. All of this takes place under the ticking clock of your depleting hunger bar. The lack of a meaningful fast travel in areas one hasn't absolutely surpassed means it is very likely that you will fail. The likelihood of a loss is exacerbated by the save system: One cannot save anytime; saving uses a consumable that can only be used in certain areas of the abyss; and entering a new area overwrites the autosave meaning one can be locked into an unfavorable situation.
So now that we established that failure comes often, what is the cost of such failure? Time, mostly. At any time the player can select to "Give up" from the menu. They are returned to the top with absolutely none of their progress. None of their experience; none of their collected items; none of their exploration remembered. It's all gone. Given that I've spent hours on one run into the Abyss, I want to stress how big of a cost this is and how miserable a failure feels. With that in mind, the aforementioned tension created by the game is palpable, as any failure is hours of progress gone.
Discovery is another feeling the game nails, though I'm reluctant to praise it too much on this axis. Each layer of the abyss is visually compelling, functionally unique, and filled with distinct areas unto itself alongside a variety of imaginative flora and fauna. However, being based off an anime (and in turn a manga), the visual design is derivative of another work. A good realization, but not an original idea. Still, seeing this environments brought to life to explore at one's leisure is the kind of experience fans wanted when experiencing the parent works. More importantly, it creates organic and intrinsic rewards to enduring the exploration and the overall feeling of stress the game provides; one wants to push deeper not to collect an item, but to see more of the Abyss.
Another element of the game I enjoyed is its status as an "Arceus-like". This is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek "genre" I've created to note games that involve a lot of mindless open world collection, monster killing, box checking, and inventory management in service of finishing not-at-all-rewarding sidequests doled out similar to a randomly generated MMO. The name, of course, coming from Pokemon Legends: Arceus, a game from earlier this year. Despite how boring and tedious that description sounded, I enjoyed those elements of that game, and Made in Abyss very much scratches the same itch. Every area has a "Collect 50 items" sidequest to complete, and it's fun to run around spamming the collect button. This is despite the need to drop half of those items because of your encumbrance limit and how the reward for the quest is basically nothing. Perhaps the term "Autism Simulator" is more evocative of the feeling I'm trying to convey here.
The final point I want to hit on is the 10 hour tutorial mentioned much earlier. At the onset of the game players are presented a choice between two games, one that follows the characters from the anime, and another that follows original characters. Despite being presented a choice, only the former is able to be chosen at first. This "Game A" is one that is stripped of many features: you only go downwards through the Abyss; many areas are blocked; you cannot craft any meaningful items; weapon types are locked out; weapon durability is disabled; there are no sidequests; there is no leveling. I could go on. Game A is a shallow facsimile of the true experience, and it's vexing to me that it's the one forced onto the players. While it does serve as a soft tutorial to ~60% of the game's systems, it just is not compelling in the slightest. I imagine many players will give up on the game before getting to Game B, whether they stop playing after the credits in Game A or just don't finish it at all. The abrupt ending of Game A is also a point worthy of criticism, but to be honest it just shouldn't exist in the first place.
At the very least, Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness rewards players who stick with it. They are rewarded with a much deeper Game B. They are rewarded with challenging gameplay that scales very well unlike other survival games that plateau once a certain rank of gear is unlocked. They are rewarded with increasingly fascinating layers of the Abyss as it descends into the earth. And of course they are rewarded with new, fancier whistles.
This game carries an absolute recommendation, but keep in mind what you're getting yourself into here.
"It gets good after 10 hours."
Indeed.
And yet, I can't say that I don't love the game. Made in Abyss is a great example of a survival game that has real tension, real discovery, and real challenge. The way those three interact on a minute-to-minute basis creates an extremely compelling experience that is much more than the sum of its parts.
At its base the game is about plunging further down into the titular Abyss and the game is not shy about making this a trying experience. Characters suffer a sickness when rising in altitude, not unlike divers resurfacing, and this stops your progress constantly. Walking up a slight incline? Better stop for 5 seconds to quell your character's growing sickness. There's a hunger and stamina system that constantly hamper your progress as well. Your greatest enemy might be a cliff face that you simply don't have enough stamina to scale at your level, or it might be your lack of preparedness as your empty stomach demands you return prematurely.
Now this all sounds like standard fare, but where the real challenge lies is extricating oneself from one's dives. Getting back out of the Abyss is much, much harder than going down there. To say nothing of the risk-reward tension of deciding how deep to dive insofar as what your supplies can accommodate, environments are confusing and clearly designed to be hostile to the rising climber. Some passages are one-way, and on more than one occasion the game pulls the nasty trick of unexpectedly blocking previously used routes forcing the discovery of a new way up. All of this takes place under the ticking clock of your depleting hunger bar. The lack of a meaningful fast travel in areas one hasn't absolutely surpassed means it is very likely that you will fail. The likelihood of a loss is exacerbated by the save system: One cannot save anytime; saving uses a consumable that can only be used in certain areas of the abyss; and entering a new area overwrites the autosave meaning one can be locked into an unfavorable situation.
So now that we established that failure comes often, what is the cost of such failure? Time, mostly. At any time the player can select to "Give up" from the menu. They are returned to the top with absolutely none of their progress. None of their experience; none of their collected items; none of their exploration remembered. It's all gone. Given that I've spent hours on one run into the Abyss, I want to stress how big of a cost this is and how miserable a failure feels. With that in mind, the aforementioned tension created by the game is palpable, as any failure is hours of progress gone.
Discovery is another feeling the game nails, though I'm reluctant to praise it too much on this axis. Each layer of the abyss is visually compelling, functionally unique, and filled with distinct areas unto itself alongside a variety of imaginative flora and fauna. However, being based off an anime (and in turn a manga), the visual design is derivative of another work. A good realization, but not an original idea. Still, seeing this environments brought to life to explore at one's leisure is the kind of experience fans wanted when experiencing the parent works. More importantly, it creates organic and intrinsic rewards to enduring the exploration and the overall feeling of stress the game provides; one wants to push deeper not to collect an item, but to see more of the Abyss.
Another element of the game I enjoyed is its status as an "Arceus-like". This is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek "genre" I've created to note games that involve a lot of mindless open world collection, monster killing, box checking, and inventory management in service of finishing not-at-all-rewarding sidequests doled out similar to a randomly generated MMO. The name, of course, coming from Pokemon Legends: Arceus, a game from earlier this year. Despite how boring and tedious that description sounded, I enjoyed those elements of that game, and Made in Abyss very much scratches the same itch. Every area has a "Collect 50 items" sidequest to complete, and it's fun to run around spamming the collect button. This is despite the need to drop half of those items because of your encumbrance limit and how the reward for the quest is basically nothing. Perhaps the term "Autism Simulator" is more evocative of the feeling I'm trying to convey here.
The final point I want to hit on is the 10 hour tutorial mentioned much earlier. At the onset of the game players are presented a choice between two games, one that follows the characters from the anime, and another that follows original characters. Despite being presented a choice, only the former is able to be chosen at first. This "Game A" is one that is stripped of many features: you only go downwards through the Abyss; many areas are blocked; you cannot craft any meaningful items; weapon types are locked out; weapon durability is disabled; there are no sidequests; there is no leveling. I could go on. Game A is a shallow facsimile of the true experience, and it's vexing to me that it's the one forced onto the players. While it does serve as a soft tutorial to ~60% of the game's systems, it just is not compelling in the slightest. I imagine many players will give up on the game before getting to Game B, whether they stop playing after the credits in Game A or just don't finish it at all. The abrupt ending of Game A is also a point worthy of criticism, but to be honest it just shouldn't exist in the first place.
At the very least, Made in Abyss: Binary Star Falling into Darkness rewards players who stick with it. They are rewarded with a much deeper Game B. They are rewarded with challenging gameplay that scales very well unlike other survival games that plateau once a certain rank of gear is unlocked. They are rewarded with increasingly fascinating layers of the Abyss as it descends into the earth. And of course they are rewarded with new, fancier whistles.
This game carries an absolute recommendation, but keep in mind what you're getting yourself into here.
"It gets good after 10 hours."
Indeed.
2023
In a month of playing Baldur's Gate, Armored Core 6, and whatever else, this MissingNo-core puzzler held my attention the most. It was brought to my attention by a post on /v/ that simply read "Puzzlekino or Voidslop?" and for whatever reason I bought it without investigating further.
I don't feel much of a desire to write an in-depth review here, so just know that the puzzle gameplay remains intriguing all the way through to the end, the game's score is fantastic, and the "more than meets the eye" subversive elements of the game are hidden well enough to not undercut themselves in a pitfall so many would-be-clever devs fall into. A game well worth playing.
Puzzlekino.
I don't feel much of a desire to write an in-depth review here, so just know that the puzzle gameplay remains intriguing all the way through to the end, the game's score is fantastic, and the "more than meets the eye" subversive elements of the game are hidden well enough to not undercut themselves in a pitfall so many would-be-clever devs fall into. A game well worth playing.
Puzzlekino.
2023
I like Oatchi!
2022
Quick review here. Frogun is a game that exists to be looked at and known about rather than played. I imagine it brings someone great pleasure to look at screenshots and videos of a game made in 2022 that resembles the PS1 games of their youth. And perhaps it's even intentional that the gameplay is incredibly shallow, trivial, and at times frustrating as many older games made for children were. But I refuse to believe that anyone could sit down with this game, play it to completion, and feel as though they were enriched by the experiences.
Playing Frogun is a chore. I struggled to get through a session that breached the 10 minute mark, as one's patience begins to wear halfway through that. If you've played one level of connect-the-dots frogunning and paint-by-number treasure collecting then I assure you you've played them all.
Special shout outs to the racing levels which seemed to be designed in a way that is intentionally at-odds with the completionist itch the collectables in the game are clearly trying to scratch.
Further shout outs to the Banjo Kazooie-esque way one's collected treasures vanish upon death, leaving the player to retread the same ground over and over or tag up on checkpoints constantly. Really fun in a game with so many omnipresent markers reminding you if you haven't 100%'d a level.
Additional shout out to the oddly large amount of scrolling text in speech bubbles in the game, especially those that occur mid-level asking the player to either stand in place reading for a minute or two, split their attention between reading and platforming, or just ignore the text entirely. Don't worry, the game also tracks whether or not you picked up these journal logs, incentivizing you to find them and clutter your screen even if you're not interested in the contents.
Circling back around Frogun looks like a PS1 game (But in higher definition, with a higher framerate, and really it doesn't resemble anything from that period save for low-poly models but that's neither here nor there) and that's good enough for some people. They can buy it, think "Wasn't the PS1 great?", never play it, and feel rather contented.
Personally I prefer games that were made to be played, with all the design decisions being made with that mission statement in mind. A wild concept, to be sure, but one I hope to see more of from this budding "video game" medium.
Playing Frogun is a chore. I struggled to get through a session that breached the 10 minute mark, as one's patience begins to wear halfway through that. If you've played one level of connect-the-dots frogunning and paint-by-number treasure collecting then I assure you you've played them all.
Special shout outs to the racing levels which seemed to be designed in a way that is intentionally at-odds with the completionist itch the collectables in the game are clearly trying to scratch.
Further shout outs to the Banjo Kazooie-esque way one's collected treasures vanish upon death, leaving the player to retread the same ground over and over or tag up on checkpoints constantly. Really fun in a game with so many omnipresent markers reminding you if you haven't 100%'d a level.
Additional shout out to the oddly large amount of scrolling text in speech bubbles in the game, especially those that occur mid-level asking the player to either stand in place reading for a minute or two, split their attention between reading and platforming, or just ignore the text entirely. Don't worry, the game also tracks whether or not you picked up these journal logs, incentivizing you to find them and clutter your screen even if you're not interested in the contents.
Circling back around Frogun looks like a PS1 game (But in higher definition, with a higher framerate, and really it doesn't resemble anything from that period save for low-poly models but that's neither here nor there) and that's good enough for some people. They can buy it, think "Wasn't the PS1 great?", never play it, and feel rather contented.
Personally I prefer games that were made to be played, with all the design decisions being made with that mission statement in mind. A wild concept, to be sure, but one I hope to see more of from this budding "video game" medium.
2024
Short review for a very insubstantial experience. Complete lack of challenge or stress in the gameplay that I would say subverts the horror experience had any effort actually been made to make the game even remotely scary or suspenseful. Ostensibly pays homage to old survival horror titles despite being a facsimile of what they actually looked like while adopting the very worst of their gameplay loops.
Crow Country is entirely putting square pegs into square holes to unlock triangular pegs for triangular holes. Silent Hill and Resident Evil had this as well but they had the sense to force the player to absorb the tense atmosphere between those bits by forcing enemy combat with intense resource management via ammo count and healing items. The gameplay reinforced the atmosphere; not a deep thought but it eludes Crow Country.
The writing is completely off as well. It's all Reddit-tier quips and lighthearted asides as if the setting was Candyland. It's tonally inconsistent with the visuals and also ineffective at inspiring humor if one was to assume that's a worthy goal. Following all of that up with the reveal of a future that refused to change was a particularly intense whiplash. Unsatisfying.
The worst thing I can say about Crow Country is that it proves anyone can make a game. No matter how fundamentally you misunderstand the design of games you insist you like, you can make a game. No matter how bad of a writer you are, you can make a game. No matter how misguided you are in your mission statement, you too can make a game.
After experiencing another disappointment with Signalis a year or so ago I'm about ready to call the "Survival Horror w/PS1 inspired graphics" genre DOA. Get them out of here.
I thought it was called Crow County for 95% of my playthrough. Pretty good dithering work.
2/5
Crow Country is entirely putting square pegs into square holes to unlock triangular pegs for triangular holes. Silent Hill and Resident Evil had this as well but they had the sense to force the player to absorb the tense atmosphere between those bits by forcing enemy combat with intense resource management via ammo count and healing items. The gameplay reinforced the atmosphere; not a deep thought but it eludes Crow Country.
The writing is completely off as well. It's all Reddit-tier quips and lighthearted asides as if the setting was Candyland. It's tonally inconsistent with the visuals and also ineffective at inspiring humor if one was to assume that's a worthy goal. Following all of that up with the reveal of a future that refused to change was a particularly intense whiplash. Unsatisfying.
The worst thing I can say about Crow Country is that it proves anyone can make a game. No matter how fundamentally you misunderstand the design of games you insist you like, you can make a game. No matter how bad of a writer you are, you can make a game. No matter how misguided you are in your mission statement, you too can make a game.
After experiencing another disappointment with Signalis a year or so ago I'm about ready to call the "Survival Horror w/PS1 inspired graphics" genre DOA. Get them out of here.
I thought it was called Crow County for 95% of my playthrough. Pretty good dithering work.
2/5
2022
Live A Live is an interesting game in that it has many identities rolled up into one. Of course, that might seem obvious when one looks at the packaging and the core conceit of the game, but it really runs deeper than the superficial idea of simply playing as different characters. No, the mechanical identities in this game are also quite numerous, which is something best described as a 'beguiling strength' of the game.
It's quite enjoyable to find a new twist or gimmick with every character one picks up. A stealth mission, a horror story bereft of combat, a weird marriage of Street Fighter and Megaman, rather than different characters sharing a game, some of these feel like distinct games altogether. The differences of each story line are manifested in gameplay rather than set dressing, heightening that effect. It makes this first part of Live A Live exciting to play through, and given that each of these character missions only take a few hours to complete at most, it is also a brisk experience. It makes it easy to overlook the couple of segments that are less exciting or mechanically samey (Namely the prehistoric and near future chapters).
But really all of this is just a ruse, as this first part of Live A Live is just a prelude to the actual game: A hackneyed 'team-up' segment that shamelessly falls back on classic RPG mechanics. (Though, I suppose at the time of the original's release, they were just "RPG mechanics") This includes random battles, grinding, and a need to obsessively min-max the gear of each of your characters. This final, long, segment of the game is fun, but it feels at-odds with everything that came before it.
The problem is the continuity between the first and second parts of the game. As an RPG, your characters all level up and grow throughout their individual stories. However, all stories are not created equal, and thus has different amounts of combat. Unto itself this is not problematic; you're never expected to grind in any of the stories, and completing them is rather easy. However, when one loads into the end game, it's very easy to find oneself unprepared for what's to come.
To provide more detail: At the start of that final story the player chooses which of the eight characters they'd like to play it with. One of my characters was level 10, another was level 5, another was level 2. All of those levels were the natural result of those individual stories, yet most of them necessitate grinding once loaded into the final story, as the latter is scaled for characters of higher levels.
It's baffling, the game does not at all prime the player to invest in the characters' levels. After all, why would you care if you're not going to be playing as them in an hour? Why would you care if the mission is easy anyway? Then there's a sudden shift of momentum and the "real game" is an RPG where your level dictates your success. It's annoying to have a forced shift in your priorities; it's annoying to be presented with a grind when one was not needed before.
Don't misunderstand, this final section of the game is quite fun, but it feels at odds with the stated conceit of the game up to this point. It's a final piece of variety that upsets everything before it, a spice that throws off the balance of the dish. Taken individually it works fine, but not here.
There's a lot of things one could talk about concerning Live A Live that would make for interesting discourse. The game has a wealth of interesting ideas (Up to and including an insane anti-boss-run that serves as one of the potential endings) but it's all small potatoes when compared to the intrinsic structural issues Live A Live presents. All the same, I'm happy the game took what was clearly several risks. While the final experience is middling, it's a very memorable game, and that is extremely appreciated.
It's quite enjoyable to find a new twist or gimmick with every character one picks up. A stealth mission, a horror story bereft of combat, a weird marriage of Street Fighter and Megaman, rather than different characters sharing a game, some of these feel like distinct games altogether. The differences of each story line are manifested in gameplay rather than set dressing, heightening that effect. It makes this first part of Live A Live exciting to play through, and given that each of these character missions only take a few hours to complete at most, it is also a brisk experience. It makes it easy to overlook the couple of segments that are less exciting or mechanically samey (Namely the prehistoric and near future chapters).
But really all of this is just a ruse, as this first part of Live A Live is just a prelude to the actual game: A hackneyed 'team-up' segment that shamelessly falls back on classic RPG mechanics. (Though, I suppose at the time of the original's release, they were just "RPG mechanics") This includes random battles, grinding, and a need to obsessively min-max the gear of each of your characters. This final, long, segment of the game is fun, but it feels at-odds with everything that came before it.
The problem is the continuity between the first and second parts of the game. As an RPG, your characters all level up and grow throughout their individual stories. However, all stories are not created equal, and thus has different amounts of combat. Unto itself this is not problematic; you're never expected to grind in any of the stories, and completing them is rather easy. However, when one loads into the end game, it's very easy to find oneself unprepared for what's to come.
To provide more detail: At the start of that final story the player chooses which of the eight characters they'd like to play it with. One of my characters was level 10, another was level 5, another was level 2. All of those levels were the natural result of those individual stories, yet most of them necessitate grinding once loaded into the final story, as the latter is scaled for characters of higher levels.
It's baffling, the game does not at all prime the player to invest in the characters' levels. After all, why would you care if you're not going to be playing as them in an hour? Why would you care if the mission is easy anyway? Then there's a sudden shift of momentum and the "real game" is an RPG where your level dictates your success. It's annoying to have a forced shift in your priorities; it's annoying to be presented with a grind when one was not needed before.
Don't misunderstand, this final section of the game is quite fun, but it feels at odds with the stated conceit of the game up to this point. It's a final piece of variety that upsets everything before it, a spice that throws off the balance of the dish. Taken individually it works fine, but not here.
There's a lot of things one could talk about concerning Live A Live that would make for interesting discourse. The game has a wealth of interesting ideas (Up to and including an insane anti-boss-run that serves as one of the potential endings) but it's all small potatoes when compared to the intrinsic structural issues Live A Live presents. All the same, I'm happy the game took what was clearly several risks. While the final experience is middling, it's a very memorable game, and that is extremely appreciated.
2022
Splatoon 3 highlights my issues with iterative sequels as a concept. Ostensibly this game exists to vaguely update the formula fans enjoy and do absolutely nothing to alienate anyone who bought the first Splatoon or its sequel. Indeed, this concept is seen in many other franchises on the market today. Call of Duty, John Madden, Assassin's Creed, iterative sequels are everywhere, though they usually see an annual release.
Splatoon, not so much. 5 years separate the releases of Splatoon 2 and 3, and I have no idea what the developers could have spent that time doing. Splatoon 2 is a game I have not played, but having played the first I can say it feels exactly the same as Splatoon 3. The core gameplay is the same, the multiplayer maps are the same, the layout of the (lacking) single player campaign is the same, and the online systems are just as archaic as always.
The idea of an iterative sequel taking so long to come out rubs me the wrong way. Why is Splatoon 3 $60 if not for all the time that went into its development? If someone just kept playing the second one, or even the first, what would they be missing out on that is unique to this title? Not much.
A review for Splatoon 3 is very unsatisfying to write, as one would be essentially reviewing the other two games concurrently. What am I going to discuss here? The stagnated gameplay formula? No, all I can really point out is the redundancy of this series, which is really disappointing from a company like Nintendo who basically built their legacy on each of their major franchises constantly innovating with each release. The Splatoon series, while overall decently fun, misses that boat.
But hey they added a CCG. That's half a star right there.
Splatoon, not so much. 5 years separate the releases of Splatoon 2 and 3, and I have no idea what the developers could have spent that time doing. Splatoon 2 is a game I have not played, but having played the first I can say it feels exactly the same as Splatoon 3. The core gameplay is the same, the multiplayer maps are the same, the layout of the (lacking) single player campaign is the same, and the online systems are just as archaic as always.
The idea of an iterative sequel taking so long to come out rubs me the wrong way. Why is Splatoon 3 $60 if not for all the time that went into its development? If someone just kept playing the second one, or even the first, what would they be missing out on that is unique to this title? Not much.
A review for Splatoon 3 is very unsatisfying to write, as one would be essentially reviewing the other two games concurrently. What am I going to discuss here? The stagnated gameplay formula? No, all I can really point out is the redundancy of this series, which is really disappointing from a company like Nintendo who basically built their legacy on each of their major franchises constantly innovating with each release. The Splatoon series, while overall decently fun, misses that boat.
But hey they added a CCG. That's half a star right there.
2021
This review contains spoilers
Inscryption is a a pretty good video game, a decent card game, and not at all a roguelike or horror game. Expectations can be a bitch, but going in bereft of them enabled me to enjoy the game for what it was. And what it was is something that I find to be pretty unique: A story-focused experience that is just as committed to innovating in gameplay as it is to writing in creative twists for the narrative. All too often developers will forsake one of these two elements, though of course forsaking the latter is more or less fine given the medium. But Inscryption is an incredibly well paced experience that delivers brand new gameplay styles right the way through to the end, only shaking things up at the exact time they would begin to grow stale.
It's fortunate that the mechanical throughline of the game has plenty of room for innovation. The core engine of the card game on display is deeper than it initially appears, and that was the element that first hooked me. Once the game introduced the second resource for cards I knew there was a satisfying amount of strategic depth. Imagine my surprise when two more resource systems were introduced later on! It's the kind of depth that sets the mind aglow with possibility, and the game smartly compartmentalizes all of these as optional so as not to overwhelm the player.
Drawing inspiration from countless real life card games, though mostly the one from which the achievement names are aped, Inscryption is comfortable trusting the player to build the type of deck they want to play. Mixing resource systems for a balanced approach, or committing to one in a "glass cannon" sort of build, there is plenty of room to experiment. While the game isn't the roguelike it initially purports to be, this kind of Build-A-Bear gaming still works well in a single player, linear adventure.
The game's, and the player's deck's, complexity waxes and wanes throughout Inscryption's duration in a satisfying way. As the ancillary trappings of the adventure morph in crazy ways, the complexity slows its roll to allow acclimation. Only once the new coat of paint has become familiar does the game step back onto the gas and demand more thought in the deck building process.
Now despite this intellectual demand the game isn't inaccessible by any means. For better or worse, it is possible to "brute force" encounters thanks to the game's forgiving use of checkpoints, especially later on. Given the nature of card games, variance will always allow a somewhat weak deck to overcome a difficult situation with a god draw. While this does let almost anyone finish the game, it encourages them to bang their head against the wall and create an experience for themselves that isn't great. An experience that pales in comparison to the fun on offer should they actually learn to effectively interface with the deck building mechanics. The cost of freedom and player agency is this misuse, but it's certainly appreciated over a heavy-handed approach.
The omnipresent variance in card games is the most misunderstood and mistakenly maligned part of the engine. Variance is good; variance creates come-from-behind situations; variance creates the key element of excitement in the card one draws every turn. A more scripted encounter leads to more flat game play. If the frustrations of drawing terribly are mitigated, the excitement of drawing well is gone too. Variance is a feature, not a bug. Not only does Inscryption lean into its variance, it does so in a way that's completely novel from any card game I've ever seen.
The third act of the game features a somewhat "Demon's Souls"-esque system of exploring a map, fighting enemies, collecting resources, and losing all of those resources on successive deaths. Pretty rote. However, the most important aspect of early Souls games was the tension in exploring a level. Exploring more and finding good items is fun, but with every step taken the risk of ruin grows. Can you make it back? Who knows!
Tension.
But upon leveling up and gaining more gear, that tension tends to dissipate. Death becomes infrequent, and the system ceases to be relevant. Inscryption sidesteps this thanks to the variance inherent in the card game genre. Any encounter can have the player drawing terribly; a loss is always possible. This preserves the tension in exploring the map even as one's deck improves over the course of the game. It was a perfect and completely unexpected marriage of two gameplay styles that complement each other. I'm now interested in seeing a Demon's Souls-like game that leans harder on random elements.
Upon completion of the game, the player is "rewarded" with an endless mode of its first act, something that is essentially a regression. Inscryption works as a complete package; it works because it is a perfect coalescence of the story's and gameplay's themes matching and enhancing one another. To focus on any one individual part of it exclusively misses the point of the game. To say I was disappointed by this final unlock would be an understatement, but it is easy enough to write off this optional content.
Inscryption has plenty of qualities that fall flat. The "found footage" angle is entirely unsatisfying and poorly put together; the narrative itself is not the strongest; parts of the UI obfuscate important strategic information way too often; but all of these feel like minor foibles when taken in the scope of the product as a whole. Inscryption's core design is very strong, particularly the way it meshes narrative and mechanical themes, and that is something that will live in my mind long after I've finished with the game itself. It is the rare game that I actually respect rather than simply enjoy.
(4 stars tho)
It's fortunate that the mechanical throughline of the game has plenty of room for innovation. The core engine of the card game on display is deeper than it initially appears, and that was the element that first hooked me. Once the game introduced the second resource for cards I knew there was a satisfying amount of strategic depth. Imagine my surprise when two more resource systems were introduced later on! It's the kind of depth that sets the mind aglow with possibility, and the game smartly compartmentalizes all of these as optional so as not to overwhelm the player.
Drawing inspiration from countless real life card games, though mostly the one from which the achievement names are aped, Inscryption is comfortable trusting the player to build the type of deck they want to play. Mixing resource systems for a balanced approach, or committing to one in a "glass cannon" sort of build, there is plenty of room to experiment. While the game isn't the roguelike it initially purports to be, this kind of Build-A-Bear gaming still works well in a single player, linear adventure.
The game's, and the player's deck's, complexity waxes and wanes throughout Inscryption's duration in a satisfying way. As the ancillary trappings of the adventure morph in crazy ways, the complexity slows its roll to allow acclimation. Only once the new coat of paint has become familiar does the game step back onto the gas and demand more thought in the deck building process.
Now despite this intellectual demand the game isn't inaccessible by any means. For better or worse, it is possible to "brute force" encounters thanks to the game's forgiving use of checkpoints, especially later on. Given the nature of card games, variance will always allow a somewhat weak deck to overcome a difficult situation with a god draw. While this does let almost anyone finish the game, it encourages them to bang their head against the wall and create an experience for themselves that isn't great. An experience that pales in comparison to the fun on offer should they actually learn to effectively interface with the deck building mechanics. The cost of freedom and player agency is this misuse, but it's certainly appreciated over a heavy-handed approach.
The omnipresent variance in card games is the most misunderstood and mistakenly maligned part of the engine. Variance is good; variance creates come-from-behind situations; variance creates the key element of excitement in the card one draws every turn. A more scripted encounter leads to more flat game play. If the frustrations of drawing terribly are mitigated, the excitement of drawing well is gone too. Variance is a feature, not a bug. Not only does Inscryption lean into its variance, it does so in a way that's completely novel from any card game I've ever seen.
The third act of the game features a somewhat "Demon's Souls"-esque system of exploring a map, fighting enemies, collecting resources, and losing all of those resources on successive deaths. Pretty rote. However, the most important aspect of early Souls games was the tension in exploring a level. Exploring more and finding good items is fun, but with every step taken the risk of ruin grows. Can you make it back? Who knows!
Tension.
But upon leveling up and gaining more gear, that tension tends to dissipate. Death becomes infrequent, and the system ceases to be relevant. Inscryption sidesteps this thanks to the variance inherent in the card game genre. Any encounter can have the player drawing terribly; a loss is always possible. This preserves the tension in exploring the map even as one's deck improves over the course of the game. It was a perfect and completely unexpected marriage of two gameplay styles that complement each other. I'm now interested in seeing a Demon's Souls-like game that leans harder on random elements.
Upon completion of the game, the player is "rewarded" with an endless mode of its first act, something that is essentially a regression. Inscryption works as a complete package; it works because it is a perfect coalescence of the story's and gameplay's themes matching and enhancing one another. To focus on any one individual part of it exclusively misses the point of the game. To say I was disappointed by this final unlock would be an understatement, but it is easy enough to write off this optional content.
Inscryption has plenty of qualities that fall flat. The "found footage" angle is entirely unsatisfying and poorly put together; the narrative itself is not the strongest; parts of the UI obfuscate important strategic information way too often; but all of these feel like minor foibles when taken in the scope of the product as a whole. Inscryption's core design is very strong, particularly the way it meshes narrative and mechanical themes, and that is something that will live in my mind long after I've finished with the game itself. It is the rare game that I actually respect rather than simply enjoy.
(4 stars tho)
2015
Fuck me for playing this one, I guess. The bulk of the game is better than my two star rating would imply, but the combination of a momentum halting, seemingly endless exposition dump at the climax of the story combined with sudden-onset-stupid-Japanese-wordplay made this one a chore to finish. I was just happy by the time it was finally over.
There's various plot twists, all of them dumb, but if taken at face value and contained to just the first three routes, Raging Loop is not the worst game in the world.
Put that on the box, please.
There's various plot twists, all of them dumb, but if taken at face value and contained to just the first three routes, Raging Loop is not the worst game in the world.
Put that on the box, please.
2002
Deeply flawed yet eminently enjoyable.
Dark Cloud 2 is a game I've had an affinity for for quite a long time, and just recently I played it for the first time in 15 years. The amount of flaws in the game was staggering so I wanted to take moment to briefly recount them.
To start, the inventory system of the game is possibly one of the worst I've ever seen. The player collects so, so many items throughout the adventure in a variety of types. There's quest items, weapons, battle items, healing items, status items, crafting materials, upgrade materials, fishing materials, fish, etc. etc. All of these things co-mingle in the same inventory with no auto-arrangement options. Over the course of the game the inventory balloons to an unusable girth, and manually organizing things becomes a chore.
Crafting is such a fundamental mechanic of the game that a cumbersome inventory system is not only unforgivable (Spoiler alert: I end up forgiving this flaw) but mind-boggling in how the inventory made it out the door looking the way it does.
A second issue with the game is the implementation of the literal world-building mechanic relative to the first game. The Georamas were never too intricate in Dark Cloud 1 (DCX for the PlayStation fans) but they did go a bit further in the various requests of the citizens that the player had to keep in mind when arranging the cities of land. There was also that delightful totem pole puzzle in the desert area.
The city building in Dark Cloud 2, however, is pretty mindless. There's a reason for this: the amount of structures the player can build is largely uncapped. Let's look at an example:
In the volcanic area of the game there are a few buildings that need to be built a certain way. One needs to be elevated a few blocks in height, which entails committing materials to building those elevator blocks and then placing the house on top of it. So I did this, and when it came time to move a particular NPC into the village, I found that he needed a special house with a fence built around it.
In Dark Cloud 1, I'd have a conundrum here. I would need to construct more blocks around the house to allow room for the fence to also be built up a few stories high. However, in Dark Cloud 2, I can just build an entirely separate house on ground level, easily build a fence around it, and move the NPC into it with nobody occupying the higher-up structure.
By removing the cap on structures players can dedicate one house to each "building requirement", where before the very slight difficulty of the building sections came from balancing all of the requirements within the limited number of structures.
There are precisely two attempts to do something interesting with the building: One is a city that has to be built on four plateaus that rise and sink depending on the number of houses on them (???) and thus the player has to equally build on all to create a perfectly flat ground. The other is the final building section of the game that tasks the player with rebuilding a garden to the exact specifications laid out in a few portraits they can find in the nearby dungeon.
While these approach the more thoughtful usage of the building mechanics in the first game, neither is that mentally demanding nor engaging.
One is left thinking why they brought this mechanic back at all. Did Dark Cloud have that much star power that they needed to brand this as a sequel with ham-fisted legacy mechanics instead of just making a new game unburdened by what kids in Blockbuster perceived as "discount Zelda"?
Almost everything to do with the story of Dark Cloud 2 is another misfire. The voice acting ranges from mid to awful, and the awkward load times of the PlayStation 2 ensure that cutscenes never run smoothly. There are frequently awkward pauses as the next line of dialogue loads that produce unintended comedy as characters just stand around in otherwise dire situations.
A significant element of the story is time travel, and Dark Cloud 2 has some of the least thought-out time travel mechanics seen yet in games. There is no attempt to logically think through what time travel would mean in-world insofar as causality and logic. I'm fine engaging a game on its own level when it comes to these things rather than missing the point by nitpicking, but the way time travel is handled in this game is just so illogical that it can be difficult to accept at times for anyone who has engaged with the idea before in any other form.
The rest of the writing, too, is off. It's incredibly juvenile, which is of course fine were the game to be good for kids, but I the mechanics of Dark Cloud 2 are just one step above what most children would find approachable or even possible to engage with. The mismatch of the mechanical depth and the maturity of the writing produces some amount of cognitive dissonance.
And man are there just so many mechanics! At the base level there's world-building and weapon crafting, both fundamental to the completion of the game. But there is also photography, invention, monster recruitment, fishing, fish breeding, fish racing, golf (???), and robot customization. All of these exist in varying degrees of completion of depth, and none of them are particularly engaging. The dominant strategy of completing this game seems to lie in choosing just one of these, whichever you find the most fun, and forgetting all of the others exist.
And yet the core gameplay loop of this game is just so satisfying to me. Running through samey floors of dungeons, wiping out enemies, building up your weapons until they evolve (???) into another weapon, saving the nearby city until all of its inhabitants are happy, it's something I could do for hours. Despite all of the flaws listed above, I was incredibly disappointed when the game concluded after only 35 hours.
The Dark Cloud series will never win any awards nor be put on any best-of lists, but it is one whose gameplay resonates so completely with me as an individual. I love these games; I love playing them despite all of their warts. It may take a special kind of autism, but if you enjoy rote dungeon crawling, I recommend this game with my entire being.
Dark Cloud 2 is a game I've had an affinity for for quite a long time, and just recently I played it for the first time in 15 years. The amount of flaws in the game was staggering so I wanted to take moment to briefly recount them.
To start, the inventory system of the game is possibly one of the worst I've ever seen. The player collects so, so many items throughout the adventure in a variety of types. There's quest items, weapons, battle items, healing items, status items, crafting materials, upgrade materials, fishing materials, fish, etc. etc. All of these things co-mingle in the same inventory with no auto-arrangement options. Over the course of the game the inventory balloons to an unusable girth, and manually organizing things becomes a chore.
Crafting is such a fundamental mechanic of the game that a cumbersome inventory system is not only unforgivable (Spoiler alert: I end up forgiving this flaw) but mind-boggling in how the inventory made it out the door looking the way it does.
A second issue with the game is the implementation of the literal world-building mechanic relative to the first game. The Georamas were never too intricate in Dark Cloud 1 (DCX for the PlayStation fans) but they did go a bit further in the various requests of the citizens that the player had to keep in mind when arranging the cities of land. There was also that delightful totem pole puzzle in the desert area.
The city building in Dark Cloud 2, however, is pretty mindless. There's a reason for this: the amount of structures the player can build is largely uncapped. Let's look at an example:
In the volcanic area of the game there are a few buildings that need to be built a certain way. One needs to be elevated a few blocks in height, which entails committing materials to building those elevator blocks and then placing the house on top of it. So I did this, and when it came time to move a particular NPC into the village, I found that he needed a special house with a fence built around it.
In Dark Cloud 1, I'd have a conundrum here. I would need to construct more blocks around the house to allow room for the fence to also be built up a few stories high. However, in Dark Cloud 2, I can just build an entirely separate house on ground level, easily build a fence around it, and move the NPC into it with nobody occupying the higher-up structure.
By removing the cap on structures players can dedicate one house to each "building requirement", where before the very slight difficulty of the building sections came from balancing all of the requirements within the limited number of structures.
There are precisely two attempts to do something interesting with the building: One is a city that has to be built on four plateaus that rise and sink depending on the number of houses on them (???) and thus the player has to equally build on all to create a perfectly flat ground. The other is the final building section of the game that tasks the player with rebuilding a garden to the exact specifications laid out in a few portraits they can find in the nearby dungeon.
While these approach the more thoughtful usage of the building mechanics in the first game, neither is that mentally demanding nor engaging.
One is left thinking why they brought this mechanic back at all. Did Dark Cloud have that much star power that they needed to brand this as a sequel with ham-fisted legacy mechanics instead of just making a new game unburdened by what kids in Blockbuster perceived as "discount Zelda"?
Almost everything to do with the story of Dark Cloud 2 is another misfire. The voice acting ranges from mid to awful, and the awkward load times of the PlayStation 2 ensure that cutscenes never run smoothly. There are frequently awkward pauses as the next line of dialogue loads that produce unintended comedy as characters just stand around in otherwise dire situations.
A significant element of the story is time travel, and Dark Cloud 2 has some of the least thought-out time travel mechanics seen yet in games. There is no attempt to logically think through what time travel would mean in-world insofar as causality and logic. I'm fine engaging a game on its own level when it comes to these things rather than missing the point by nitpicking, but the way time travel is handled in this game is just so illogical that it can be difficult to accept at times for anyone who has engaged with the idea before in any other form.
The rest of the writing, too, is off. It's incredibly juvenile, which is of course fine were the game to be good for kids, but I the mechanics of Dark Cloud 2 are just one step above what most children would find approachable or even possible to engage with. The mismatch of the mechanical depth and the maturity of the writing produces some amount of cognitive dissonance.
And man are there just so many mechanics! At the base level there's world-building and weapon crafting, both fundamental to the completion of the game. But there is also photography, invention, monster recruitment, fishing, fish breeding, fish racing, golf (???), and robot customization. All of these exist in varying degrees of completion of depth, and none of them are particularly engaging. The dominant strategy of completing this game seems to lie in choosing just one of these, whichever you find the most fun, and forgetting all of the others exist.
And yet the core gameplay loop of this game is just so satisfying to me. Running through samey floors of dungeons, wiping out enemies, building up your weapons until they evolve (???) into another weapon, saving the nearby city until all of its inhabitants are happy, it's something I could do for hours. Despite all of the flaws listed above, I was incredibly disappointed when the game concluded after only 35 hours.
The Dark Cloud series will never win any awards nor be put on any best-of lists, but it is one whose gameplay resonates so completely with me as an individual. I love these games; I love playing them despite all of their warts. It may take a special kind of autism, but if you enjoy rote dungeon crawling, I recommend this game with my entire being.
2012
Aside from Mario-favoring maps, pretty fun!
Probably the most ludonarratively cohesive game I’ve ever played. It’s inspiring how Moon loudly broadcasts its mechanics and themes and then sticks to them with such commitment.
Mechanically Moon is all about time. The game works around two concurrently running clocks: the limited time your character has left before passing out and triggering a game over, and the continuous passage of time as the game’s seven day week and the routines of the various NPCs loop. Let’s start by discussing the former.
Moon exists between periods of sleep, not unlike our own lives. Everything the player can accomplish within their time awake is saved and catalogued upon resting, but should one run out of gusto before reaching their bed, the game is over and the day’s progress is wiped. Especially early on when energy is in short supply this means you will be racing back to bed to bank your progress even after accomplishing the most minor of tasks.
The amount of time one can spend without resting is increased by leveling up, which is done by accumulating “love”, which in turn is done by doing things to help out the world’s denizens whether they be human or animal. It’s an incredibly wholesome arrangement; something as simple as listening to someone’s personal problems can get you a small amount of love. Other, larger acts, such as bringing together two lovebirds, accordingly give the player more love. It’s a game all about increasing the kindness in the world. By doing so you get stronger and that is channeled into more time to spend helping people.
What’s satisfying is how time is manifested in the game. Very few things pause the clock, so if someone needs you to wait for them, you will indeed be waiting for real world minutes. If a character needs you to show up on consecutive Sundays, you’ll spend the days between with the commitment hanging over your head. This is all to say that being kind, showing love, is not trivial, and nor should it be. If you want someone to love you then you’ll need to invest mental bandwidth into thinking of and remembering them. Don’t worry, they’ll reciprocate the gesture.
It would be easy to shortcut several elements of Moon in favor of a quality of life improvement, but a notion as selfish of QOL runs perpendicular to love as a concept. Moon asks you to engage in selflessness, and every facet of the design pushes towards that goal, even when it runs up against the notion of what is “fun”.
More openly Moon seems to be about subverting violent, “typical” RPGs of the time, what with its marauding knight-in-shining-armor “Hero” running amok across the world and massacring everything in the name of Exp, but I don’t think such a surface level, cynical reading is accurate.
No, Moon is more of a statement against thoughtlessness. Every puzzle in the game, every task there for you to conquer, is easily solved through just observing people, their routines, and the environment. It’s not a difficult game, the puzzles aren’t challenging, but they sure do become impossible brain teasers if the game is played with a self-centered approach that blinds the player to detail. If you just want to get through the game and “win”, the self-centered hero, you will surely struggle.
The second of the game’s clocks, the looping week, is where the most detail is to be gleaned. While a bit of a hackneyed idea now, Moon’s NPCs all have set schedules in accordance with the hour, day of the week, and events of the game, and this grants it a lot of depth. If you want to investigate a character, your best bet is to check on them on each of the game’s seven days. What do they do each night? Who are their friends and when do those characters tend to meet? If you want to help someone you’ll need to get to know them, even if doing so precludes your convenience or your ability to dote on others in parallel.
What’s brilliant is that one’s ability to explore this aspect of the game thoroughly waxes as the strategic depth of the other time mechanic wanes. There comes a point while leveling up where the main character’s remaining energy ceases to be a realistic concern. This could have become an incredible bore had Moon shown its hand too early, but instead it seamlessly transitions into a fascinating game of people watching that just wasn’t possible earlier in the game.
As such Moon works on a few levels. It’s time management and scheduling for some percentage of its run time, and a narratively focused puzzle solver for the test.
Other elements of Moon are worthy of praise. The soundtrack is great, the pre-rendered backgrounds are entrancing, and the story itself is relatively interesting. But this is a game, first and foremost, and games should always convey themselves through their mechanical systems. Moon is exemplary here, and deserves a visit for that quality alone.
Incredible game!
Mechanically Moon is all about time. The game works around two concurrently running clocks: the limited time your character has left before passing out and triggering a game over, and the continuous passage of time as the game’s seven day week and the routines of the various NPCs loop. Let’s start by discussing the former.
Moon exists between periods of sleep, not unlike our own lives. Everything the player can accomplish within their time awake is saved and catalogued upon resting, but should one run out of gusto before reaching their bed, the game is over and the day’s progress is wiped. Especially early on when energy is in short supply this means you will be racing back to bed to bank your progress even after accomplishing the most minor of tasks.
The amount of time one can spend without resting is increased by leveling up, which is done by accumulating “love”, which in turn is done by doing things to help out the world’s denizens whether they be human or animal. It’s an incredibly wholesome arrangement; something as simple as listening to someone’s personal problems can get you a small amount of love. Other, larger acts, such as bringing together two lovebirds, accordingly give the player more love. It’s a game all about increasing the kindness in the world. By doing so you get stronger and that is channeled into more time to spend helping people.
What’s satisfying is how time is manifested in the game. Very few things pause the clock, so if someone needs you to wait for them, you will indeed be waiting for real world minutes. If a character needs you to show up on consecutive Sundays, you’ll spend the days between with the commitment hanging over your head. This is all to say that being kind, showing love, is not trivial, and nor should it be. If you want someone to love you then you’ll need to invest mental bandwidth into thinking of and remembering them. Don’t worry, they’ll reciprocate the gesture.
It would be easy to shortcut several elements of Moon in favor of a quality of life improvement, but a notion as selfish of QOL runs perpendicular to love as a concept. Moon asks you to engage in selflessness, and every facet of the design pushes towards that goal, even when it runs up against the notion of what is “fun”.
More openly Moon seems to be about subverting violent, “typical” RPGs of the time, what with its marauding knight-in-shining-armor “Hero” running amok across the world and massacring everything in the name of Exp, but I don’t think such a surface level, cynical reading is accurate.
No, Moon is more of a statement against thoughtlessness. Every puzzle in the game, every task there for you to conquer, is easily solved through just observing people, their routines, and the environment. It’s not a difficult game, the puzzles aren’t challenging, but they sure do become impossible brain teasers if the game is played with a self-centered approach that blinds the player to detail. If you just want to get through the game and “win”, the self-centered hero, you will surely struggle.
The second of the game’s clocks, the looping week, is where the most detail is to be gleaned. While a bit of a hackneyed idea now, Moon’s NPCs all have set schedules in accordance with the hour, day of the week, and events of the game, and this grants it a lot of depth. If you want to investigate a character, your best bet is to check on them on each of the game’s seven days. What do they do each night? Who are their friends and when do those characters tend to meet? If you want to help someone you’ll need to get to know them, even if doing so precludes your convenience or your ability to dote on others in parallel.
What’s brilliant is that one’s ability to explore this aspect of the game thoroughly waxes as the strategic depth of the other time mechanic wanes. There comes a point while leveling up where the main character’s remaining energy ceases to be a realistic concern. This could have become an incredible bore had Moon shown its hand too early, but instead it seamlessly transitions into a fascinating game of people watching that just wasn’t possible earlier in the game.
As such Moon works on a few levels. It’s time management and scheduling for some percentage of its run time, and a narratively focused puzzle solver for the test.
Other elements of Moon are worthy of praise. The soundtrack is great, the pre-rendered backgrounds are entrancing, and the story itself is relatively interesting. But this is a game, first and foremost, and games should always convey themselves through their mechanical systems. Moon is exemplary here, and deserves a visit for that quality alone.
Incredible game!