grubmaiden
2022
I had been following this artist for a while and had no clue they were also experimenting with visual novels. It really is in the spirit of old small-form RPG maker, VN, and webcomic stylings, with a completely bewildering, beautiful and unique art style. For the several minutes it takes to play through it, it just completely captivates, functionally the best digital picture book I've seen in a while. A treat for art lovers, not much more than that.
I have to admit that the initial concept of it seemed very special, but it was subverted with an ARG lost love narrative that.. Well... While it was trying to tell its own story, it doesn't quite hold a candle to the potential of the premise itself. I would love to see it explored further. The abandonment of these old multiplayer spaces. The experience itself, valuable.. The ARG elements, if you like it, well, it certainly delivers for people who love a good unreality puzzlebox. Can't exactly knock it, but it's not what I was here for. Worth a try. If you've ever felt pangs of sadness opening Half Life Deathmatch or Unreal Tournament Gold. Anything like it. Witness a slow digital death.
2018
I think I like everything about this game aesthetically, but felt like it dragged its feet way too hard through that middle stretch. Needed more time in the oven, I think.
I own the GOG version of this and it's too late for me to return it but it needs to be put out there that it has a significant amount of weird changes to it that make it hostile to modding. Avoid and find a way to play Legendary Edition instead.
2019
I remember thinking the aesthetics of this games first trailer was really interesting. Expectations shot by learning it was using its status as "Publishers of Dark Souls" to appeal to me with a game similar to it. This was the first one I saw, setting a preference of my opinion of all of these kinds of games. Which is to say, when I see something trying to advertise itself as being like Dark Souls, I should expect extremely generic and cheap efforts unless it can be demonstrably worth it in teaser gameplay. I wasn't prepared for the game to be a generic anime action game with just a few souls inspired elements sprinkled in. It's disappointing, but it was a necessary disappointment for me to have to build healthy expectations of the modern gaming world. In a way this game was a lardmark moment in games marketing and building literacy of games journalism in gamers. To me, this is the official canary that died in the coal mine for people afraid of the reality that Dark Souls was going to be assimilated into mainstream games instead of leading to a new wave in risk taking and different approaches in big studios.
Years later, I finally own it, bought it at a cheap price in case I have buyers remorse, in this case I did. The best part of the whole game is its character creator, which isn't even that good all things considered. I've been eternally spoiled by SecondLife. It plops you into a basic tutorial that establishes the basic buttons but does very little to explain the terrible UI. And then lots of juvenile cutscene fodder that skipped and was laggy in spite of my pretty powerful computer. I am running it on Linux but I can get 60 fps in Elden Ring, this problem shouldn't be happening. Big boobed, practically oedipal waifish anime girl dropped on your lap that you're supposed to care about. A first mission, tedious, repetitive, not challenging, and had multiple sequence breaking problems and glitches that forced me to redo certain parts. There is nothing for me to stick around for. I don't want to see how the combat in the game develops because it feels really unsatisfying. This game was a waste of money and a waste of spectacle and better as a conceptual trailer. Bleh. Maybe one day I'll try it again, but why would I when there are games made with heart by smaller studios more deserving of attention? Maybe I'm not enough of a knuckle dragging shounen fan to get it.
Years later, I finally own it, bought it at a cheap price in case I have buyers remorse, in this case I did. The best part of the whole game is its character creator, which isn't even that good all things considered. I've been eternally spoiled by SecondLife. It plops you into a basic tutorial that establishes the basic buttons but does very little to explain the terrible UI. And then lots of juvenile cutscene fodder that skipped and was laggy in spite of my pretty powerful computer. I am running it on Linux but I can get 60 fps in Elden Ring, this problem shouldn't be happening. Big boobed, practically oedipal waifish anime girl dropped on your lap that you're supposed to care about. A first mission, tedious, repetitive, not challenging, and had multiple sequence breaking problems and glitches that forced me to redo certain parts. There is nothing for me to stick around for. I don't want to see how the combat in the game develops because it feels really unsatisfying. This game was a waste of money and a waste of spectacle and better as a conceptual trailer. Bleh. Maybe one day I'll try it again, but why would I when there are games made with heart by smaller studios more deserving of attention? Maybe I'm not enough of a knuckle dragging shounen fan to get it.
2023
I bought this game the second day it came out, mostly because of its interesting aesthetic of a corporate hell where you play as someone tormenting sinners and keeping them in hell. But also because the style of gameplay reminded me a lot of Vampire Survivors while incorporating elements of card games and tower defense strategy games. I wasn't going in expecting gold, but for a game under ten dollars, I think it's a very pleasant roguelite experience and I'd do it all again.
I'm generally a fan of cutesy takes on really dark or sadomasochistic themes, but this doesn't quite deliver. Its music is very fitting and nostalgic for people who like stereotypical 'evil' sounding metal, mostly the realm of speed, thrash, some light touches of brutal death or black metal. Beyond the flavor of the different characters you unlock, and the towers you use, there's really not much else holding it together.
In breaks between sessions as you first start out, you get a number of strange mini-events in the form of new files and emails and states of your computer. It never quite goes anywhere. The only real things pushing you forward are the unlocks and achievements.
The actual process of playing the game is really addictive and a lot more thoughtful than you'd expect. You get a deck of mostly fodder, and have to craft the fodder together to get better cards in constant rotation. There's an economy of holding onto good cards and pushing for higher value upgrades for your towers which does take more brain cells, planning your builds a little bit on the fly, everything fun you'd expect out of a game like this.
As of the time of me writing this, I've 100%'d the game, including the exceedingly annoying and broken breakout minigame, which honestly felt like an insult that it was included. I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone unless they're looking for a game to do something while experiencing executive dysfunction and watching a youtube video or something in the other window.
I'm generally a fan of cutesy takes on really dark or sadomasochistic themes, but this doesn't quite deliver. Its music is very fitting and nostalgic for people who like stereotypical 'evil' sounding metal, mostly the realm of speed, thrash, some light touches of brutal death or black metal. Beyond the flavor of the different characters you unlock, and the towers you use, there's really not much else holding it together.
In breaks between sessions as you first start out, you get a number of strange mini-events in the form of new files and emails and states of your computer. It never quite goes anywhere. The only real things pushing you forward are the unlocks and achievements.
The actual process of playing the game is really addictive and a lot more thoughtful than you'd expect. You get a deck of mostly fodder, and have to craft the fodder together to get better cards in constant rotation. There's an economy of holding onto good cards and pushing for higher value upgrades for your towers which does take more brain cells, planning your builds a little bit on the fly, everything fun you'd expect out of a game like this.
As of the time of me writing this, I've 100%'d the game, including the exceedingly annoying and broken breakout minigame, which honestly felt like an insult that it was included. I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone unless they're looking for a game to do something while experiencing executive dysfunction and watching a youtube video or something in the other window.
2018
Sad to say that I just couldn't make this game work for me. The bare, skeletal art and gameplay putting me through loops, it really just never had enough to pull me in. It's cute, but cute in the way many nondescript jam games are. I kind of feel guilty saying this. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just not for me. Maybe it's because I never liked Gameboy / 1-bit games all that much.
It puzzles me the way this wad which takes a big influence from dementia based horror like The Caretaker, and gets seen as a negative thing by people. How a very similar mod with somewhat related themes coming out the year after got a much more glowing reception. It's really creative and infusing genuine horror and tragedy into the doom experience. If you really like myhouse.wad or have any interest in Don Hertzfeld you should play this.
2014
It has many moments of profundity and is held back by being far too roughly cut to have things like goals and stories to follow. The game has a habit of crashing, a poor differentiation between what you can interact with and can't, bad collision with interactable objects. Overall it's too frustrating to try and get through a lot of the meat of the game or even to just kind of relax and see where it takes you. Because you're always fighting with the controls. It's nostalgic, thoughtful, morbid, and has a lot of really interesting things to say, but my tolerance for going back to it after it crashes is low.
2022
This review contains spoilers
I had a passive interest in the game because I generally look for interesting indie titles, but a friend of mine really encouraged me to jump into playing it, and I'm extremely happy I did because the game managed to speak out to a lot of my current interest and feelings I've been working through. As far as a time and place goes, there's no better time for me to get into this game than now. If I'm going to preface my thoughts on this game with anything, it's that every single part of it works in tandem for a beautifully constructed narrative whole. It's a game propelled by nostalgia and influence and exceeds its inspiration in unforgettable ways.
Aesthetically, it's striking, bold, with dozens of little details that you can never fully focus on all contributing to a deep sense of entropy and an uncertain undertone that things are wrong. Cold, sterile, robotic, oppressive underneath the weight of an authoritarian, fascistic government. The surface of the aesthetics start to peel away the further you descend into the game. Beauty and warmth, a desire to live and share, think for oneself and be happy. As these bursts of light and love and life unfold out, the morbid decay, mutations, anguish and incomprehensible memories all boil up into the surface; of your thoughts as the player character, and in the environment itself.
Metamorphosis takes hold of the game and works carefully and selectively with every beat, every level, every person you talk to. Evocatively expressed through to Lovecraftian imagery of the King in Yellow among other less explicit inspirations. Even the little failures and close encounters you have with some of the tougher enemies will push out this intended emotional state the game is trying to carry you through. You lose more of yourself, the facility loses more of itself as you descend deeper, a rotten, amorphous meat pulling into itself, whispering about promises and unity.
It really does an amazing job with keeping the gameplay loops interesting.. You really need to rely on understanding and memorizing your surroundings, constantly rummaging through your limited inventory to make space, head back to storage, coming in and out of the same areas so many times, you would think you'd memorize it all like the back of your hand. Only a true understanding and comfort is just barely out of reach as the ever present rot will force change, take away your map, take away your sense of safety, bring enemies back in places you thought were safe. The walls constantly closing in around you.
You're a person, some kind of bio-android, essentially. As are basically everybody in the facility. When I first was in the game I felt compelled to talk to people, finally some kind of comfort and familiarity to cut through the oppressive atmosphere, only they themselves give haunting images of what's probably going to happen to you. Minds unwound, bodies mutilated, and of course lots of dead bodies in general. At the beginning you know you're looking for someone but don't emotionally understand why, and your interactions with other NPCs and the messages they leave behind do a fantastic job to lay out the emotional urgency of the players mission. I wasn't just playing the game to beat it, I remembered my purpose and had no choice but to push on through insurmountable terror.
This is past the point of no return on spoilers. If this sounds interesting at all and you haven't played it, stop reading.
Throughout the game are a lot of bleeding memories from lives that came before the bio-androids. They're based on the neural patterns of people who'd died out at war. Anything that could provoke them to remember, a la PTSD triggers cause them to go defective. A great deal of the Replikas you see are all so defective, breaking out of the mold of their standard programming to a tragic ending generally, and come to find that you yourself are just like them. Love and desperation for your partner, a human you were built to serve, but it's just a narrative, an encoded assignment mapped onto something which shouldn't have been altered.
At many critical points in the game, you're given a bit of insight into the emotions of Elster, the Replika player character. Obscure, at first, quiet, subdued. Like you experience that bleed firsthand, images of your lover appearing in memories, in dreams. The things she said at first fragmented and split apart. The More you embrace the rot and meat of the game, the more you feel yourself taken into that place, where you can be one with her, where you can remember, where the pointless suffering boils away, and all that's left is the connection, and an embrace of death.
When I finally got through the end of the game, saw the rot and the bleeding of personae reaching a fever pitch as everything internal and external was a borderline amorphous flow of consciousness, data, blood, meat, technology, and different selves. After a whole false ending where that final goal is more clear in my head. Making my way back to the ship to see her in her cryo chamber, reading the notes she and Elster had left behind on their long voyage, the game would've been too agonizing for me to continue if it wasn't the very end.
They're two defects sent off on a mission to colonize a planet that they would never find before the life supports on their ship would give away, and face a slow agonizing death they'd know was coming. Throughout all of those years together, they'd at least have each other, an excruciating but free love where the facades would've melted, their authentic selves known to each other in a universe where it was systematically denied. Until that slow death would come. 3000 cycles. 8.21 years. When the ship gives out. Forced into cryostasis and in a state of liminal, denied death, denied life. The little autonomous existence coming to a close, the ship crashing into the planet the game starts in. When the game ends, you see here again, and aren't even given the dignity of dying in each others arms. Next to each other, fading away and sublimating into the promised oneness of death.
It's a deeply tragic game. I think I'm going to be having a really hard time getting through it in a second playthrough. The more cycles I go through, the more the setting and world building of the game really starts to sink in how much tragedy in the game there is, that you're just one person this is happening to. You find lots of dead Replikas in that facility. You see Adler struggling and reliving the same pain, over and over again, never given peace, never given any kind of closure or sense of understanding. He's trying to keep people out, with purpose. The more I think about him, the more sense he makes as a character. Isa, she fails in her mission too. Just like us. There's an inevitability of failure. Sometimes you can try your hardest, and it still will never be good enough.
This is fresh off of one single playthrough.. I have a lot more feelings going on that I'm having a lot of trouble parsing, mostly because a lot of the imagery and elements in the game are abstract, serving an emotional narrative more than they're trying to serve any kind of rigid plot structure.. And I love this. I love it a lot. That it's obscure in a literal way, and I can map my emotions so easily onto what's happening.. In this way, you could say my interpretations of the game are completely wrong, but it's it exactly like how a defective Replika regaining memories from other past selves would be thinking and perceiving the world? There's an unforgettable beauty in how it's all crafted together.
Also.. two girls kissing
Aesthetically, it's striking, bold, with dozens of little details that you can never fully focus on all contributing to a deep sense of entropy and an uncertain undertone that things are wrong. Cold, sterile, robotic, oppressive underneath the weight of an authoritarian, fascistic government. The surface of the aesthetics start to peel away the further you descend into the game. Beauty and warmth, a desire to live and share, think for oneself and be happy. As these bursts of light and love and life unfold out, the morbid decay, mutations, anguish and incomprehensible memories all boil up into the surface; of your thoughts as the player character, and in the environment itself.
Metamorphosis takes hold of the game and works carefully and selectively with every beat, every level, every person you talk to. Evocatively expressed through to Lovecraftian imagery of the King in Yellow among other less explicit inspirations. Even the little failures and close encounters you have with some of the tougher enemies will push out this intended emotional state the game is trying to carry you through. You lose more of yourself, the facility loses more of itself as you descend deeper, a rotten, amorphous meat pulling into itself, whispering about promises and unity.
It really does an amazing job with keeping the gameplay loops interesting.. You really need to rely on understanding and memorizing your surroundings, constantly rummaging through your limited inventory to make space, head back to storage, coming in and out of the same areas so many times, you would think you'd memorize it all like the back of your hand. Only a true understanding and comfort is just barely out of reach as the ever present rot will force change, take away your map, take away your sense of safety, bring enemies back in places you thought were safe. The walls constantly closing in around you.
You're a person, some kind of bio-android, essentially. As are basically everybody in the facility. When I first was in the game I felt compelled to talk to people, finally some kind of comfort and familiarity to cut through the oppressive atmosphere, only they themselves give haunting images of what's probably going to happen to you. Minds unwound, bodies mutilated, and of course lots of dead bodies in general. At the beginning you know you're looking for someone but don't emotionally understand why, and your interactions with other NPCs and the messages they leave behind do a fantastic job to lay out the emotional urgency of the players mission. I wasn't just playing the game to beat it, I remembered my purpose and had no choice but to push on through insurmountable terror.
This is past the point of no return on spoilers. If this sounds interesting at all and you haven't played it, stop reading.
Throughout the game are a lot of bleeding memories from lives that came before the bio-androids. They're based on the neural patterns of people who'd died out at war. Anything that could provoke them to remember, a la PTSD triggers cause them to go defective. A great deal of the Replikas you see are all so defective, breaking out of the mold of their standard programming to a tragic ending generally, and come to find that you yourself are just like them. Love and desperation for your partner, a human you were built to serve, but it's just a narrative, an encoded assignment mapped onto something which shouldn't have been altered.
At many critical points in the game, you're given a bit of insight into the emotions of Elster, the Replika player character. Obscure, at first, quiet, subdued. Like you experience that bleed firsthand, images of your lover appearing in memories, in dreams. The things she said at first fragmented and split apart. The More you embrace the rot and meat of the game, the more you feel yourself taken into that place, where you can be one with her, where you can remember, where the pointless suffering boils away, and all that's left is the connection, and an embrace of death.
When I finally got through the end of the game, saw the rot and the bleeding of personae reaching a fever pitch as everything internal and external was a borderline amorphous flow of consciousness, data, blood, meat, technology, and different selves. After a whole false ending where that final goal is more clear in my head. Making my way back to the ship to see her in her cryo chamber, reading the notes she and Elster had left behind on their long voyage, the game would've been too agonizing for me to continue if it wasn't the very end.
They're two defects sent off on a mission to colonize a planet that they would never find before the life supports on their ship would give away, and face a slow agonizing death they'd know was coming. Throughout all of those years together, they'd at least have each other, an excruciating but free love where the facades would've melted, their authentic selves known to each other in a universe where it was systematically denied. Until that slow death would come. 3000 cycles. 8.21 years. When the ship gives out. Forced into cryostasis and in a state of liminal, denied death, denied life. The little autonomous existence coming to a close, the ship crashing into the planet the game starts in. When the game ends, you see here again, and aren't even given the dignity of dying in each others arms. Next to each other, fading away and sublimating into the promised oneness of death.
It's a deeply tragic game. I think I'm going to be having a really hard time getting through it in a second playthrough. The more cycles I go through, the more the setting and world building of the game really starts to sink in how much tragedy in the game there is, that you're just one person this is happening to. You find lots of dead Replikas in that facility. You see Adler struggling and reliving the same pain, over and over again, never given peace, never given any kind of closure or sense of understanding. He's trying to keep people out, with purpose. The more I think about him, the more sense he makes as a character. Isa, she fails in her mission too. Just like us. There's an inevitability of failure. Sometimes you can try your hardest, and it still will never be good enough.
This is fresh off of one single playthrough.. I have a lot more feelings going on that I'm having a lot of trouble parsing, mostly because a lot of the imagery and elements in the game are abstract, serving an emotional narrative more than they're trying to serve any kind of rigid plot structure.. And I love this. I love it a lot. That it's obscure in a literal way, and I can map my emotions so easily onto what's happening.. In this way, you could say my interpretations of the game are completely wrong, but it's it exactly like how a defective Replika regaining memories from other past selves would be thinking and perceiving the world? There's an unforgettable beauty in how it's all crafted together.
Also.. two girls kissing
Where there were certainly flaws in the first two Will You Ever Return games, this little extra one seemingly just made for the gag is honestly a shameful thing to have in my collection, just deferring to outright racist jokes and shock humor, not offering anything real, anything thoughtful, or anything worth talking about. Throw it in the trash.
It has such a strong and evocative name that I couldn't help myself but to try it first after buying Jack's bundle he was advertising for fundraising. What it does with the name, I felt it wasn't nearly as poignant as I hoped it would be. But the aesthetics, the artistic choices baked into this game make up for it. Yet it has the Glorious Trainwrecks type of problem of the gameplay being very rudimentary and not very compelling. Collect the demons, collect the skeletons. It really doesn't concern me. Nothing about the game itself actually speaks out to me, but the approach to design and visuals and setting a tone do. The only thing in those respects weakening it as some other reviewers have spoken on is the very dated and sort of unfunny memes. I think for the dollar it takes to actually get your hands on this hidden gem is worth it regardless.
After being made aware this was the first of the Valve games to have a commentary mode with nodes interspersed throughout the level to explain the creation, I had to go back and play what was my introduction to Valve games to begin with. I'm a professional game artist myself and always enjoy a look behind the curtain, especially if it's a work that partly motivated me to enter the field. Lost Coast is a tech demo. It's not a game, but a level with a unique set piece. A whole slice that puts Half-Life 2 in a microcosm, and does so very well. What's unique about it is the East Europe coastal town setting, Byzantine monastery, and execution of the then-experimental High Dynamic Range.
What they had to say about High Dynamic Range on the commentary track wasn't exactly new to me. Anyone who had to learn Unreal Engine had to figure out all of the industry standard post processing effects. Making use of tone mapping and bloom and the high dynamic range, refraction shaders, it was interesting to hear from their words and 2005; as a modern game artist it gets taken for granted. I would go as far as to say these unique features have been ruined. Because of how easily implemented it is in games, I see it regularly misused and overcompensating for many titles with poor art direction and level design.
Nonetheless, the art direction and level design in this tech demo are quite good, and I really enjoy the few nodes that break down their choices. They go with a very vertical cliff facing sequence as combat starts so people have a clear direction to go, and can see enemies going. They have a very good levity, knowing when to break up environment exploration, puzzle solving, and combat. They set up the arena areas so the player knows they're going to have to deal with a conflict but have a little bit of time to strategize and just breathe a little. You could say what the level design accomplished was a platonic ideal for the cinematic shooters that were popular for the era. It even ends with an action movie climax of blowing up an attack helicopter with a rocket launcher. Cliche as it is, I felt it was earned.
The coast, the NPC you talk to before the level properly starts, both give a very strong impression to me. I was constantly moving and adjusting myself to find a nice photo. I had plenty of opportunities for photos with very strong compositions and compelling images, which really isn't an easy thing to accomplish, especially not for a game from 2005 played nearly two decades in the future. There's a timeless thought put into the way the aesthetics and elements of the game all fall into place, and there's no better example of this than the Byzantine monastery. It was certainly a highlight, and a shame that it didn't end up in the base game. Although, it makes going out of your way to try Lost Coast a little bit more worth it.
Obviously, this is only for people interested in the technical aspects of Half-Life. People who are already fans, who don't see Gabe Newell as a meme, people who are looking for something free but perhaps with a little bit more polish to it than what you typically find in free game lists. It's old. It's great. It's a modest piece of gaming history, even. There's worse ways to spend half an hour.
What they had to say about High Dynamic Range on the commentary track wasn't exactly new to me. Anyone who had to learn Unreal Engine had to figure out all of the industry standard post processing effects. Making use of tone mapping and bloom and the high dynamic range, refraction shaders, it was interesting to hear from their words and 2005; as a modern game artist it gets taken for granted. I would go as far as to say these unique features have been ruined. Because of how easily implemented it is in games, I see it regularly misused and overcompensating for many titles with poor art direction and level design.
Nonetheless, the art direction and level design in this tech demo are quite good, and I really enjoy the few nodes that break down their choices. They go with a very vertical cliff facing sequence as combat starts so people have a clear direction to go, and can see enemies going. They have a very good levity, knowing when to break up environment exploration, puzzle solving, and combat. They set up the arena areas so the player knows they're going to have to deal with a conflict but have a little bit of time to strategize and just breathe a little. You could say what the level design accomplished was a platonic ideal for the cinematic shooters that were popular for the era. It even ends with an action movie climax of blowing up an attack helicopter with a rocket launcher. Cliche as it is, I felt it was earned.
The coast, the NPC you talk to before the level properly starts, both give a very strong impression to me. I was constantly moving and adjusting myself to find a nice photo. I had plenty of opportunities for photos with very strong compositions and compelling images, which really isn't an easy thing to accomplish, especially not for a game from 2005 played nearly two decades in the future. There's a timeless thought put into the way the aesthetics and elements of the game all fall into place, and there's no better example of this than the Byzantine monastery. It was certainly a highlight, and a shame that it didn't end up in the base game. Although, it makes going out of your way to try Lost Coast a little bit more worth it.
Obviously, this is only for people interested in the technical aspects of Half-Life. People who are already fans, who don't see Gabe Newell as a meme, people who are looking for something free but perhaps with a little bit more polish to it than what you typically find in free game lists. It's old. It's great. It's a modest piece of gaming history, even. There's worse ways to spend half an hour.
2004
booted this up and played a few championship cups as princess peach. mostly got a hang of the controls pretty fast, very intuitive. but it also filled me with.. i don't know how else to describe it, but like bimbo sports syndrome, where i'd whine and complain and yell and cry. My girlfriend told me that im acting like the real princess peach and crying about how mario hit me but still got a point and it didn't count as a foul. also i developed a ghoulish laugh for when things go my way, and i use my power shot immediately after my opponent and score an easy point (this is the best strategy to win) i had to stop because i was giving her a headache getting too much into the game. i told her in real life tennis players are so much louder. princess peach numba 1
2023
I played Driving Home before this, and thought it this was going to be a general improvement over it.. The car controls this time around don't feel all that much better. The ambiance of walking in the forest was exactly what I wanted more of and did greatly appreciate it.. The inclusion of more people definitely made it feel more of a real world, but ultimately this game had an even worse weakness of relying on a loud jumpscare than the last game.. I understand with such short campfire story type of plots, you need to go out with a bang, but.. This does just feel a bit cheap and trite.. The atmosphere is otherwise nice.