Proud backer of this on Kickstarter. Played through all 3 of the currently available routes (I think there are a couple more still in the works) and found the whole thing really engaging. The relationships run the gamut from sweet and wholesome to textbook emotional abuse and all make for interesting stories, the lofi soundtrack is great, and I loved the ways the game plays with its presentation and interface during certain key moments.

My only real gripe (other than the unfortunate number of typos) is the semi-blank slate player character. Partially it’s just personal preference; being prompted for my name and pronouns at the start of the game gave me real bad “I do not want to be perceived” feelings. But also, I feel like there are so many central details about the player character (friendships, sexuality, upbringing, choice of major) that are out of the player’s control—not to mention the story beats where the player is specifically denied agency—that it ends up kinda at odds with asking the player to define and take ownership of the character.

Is it better to be overambitious and fail than to be competent but safe? Is a story well told made bad by a poor conclusion? I think those two questions sort of give my opinion on Harmony: The Fall of Reverie away but there is a lot more to it.

I think there are broadly two schools of thought when it comes to branching in Visual Novels/AdventureGames/narrative focused games etc. As mentioned in a previous review, I will call 1 the "Jon Ingold" school wherein the branching is almost entirely opaque. Not to say you will necessarily be entirely ignorant of how your choices or actions will affect the story (even in Heaven's Vault there's a few "will you do X or Y?" moments) but you'll not be allowed to see the internal workings of how the story determines the way forward. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" as it were.

Chrono Trigger, Heaven's Vault, (I believe some Silent Hills follow this model as well but I have not played them so I cannot confirm) follow this model and its easy to see why. Its perhaps easy to lose all mistique and worry the player will try to engineer the story rather than experience it, making choices for what they think they want out of it rather than let the designer lead in reaction to their natural choices. On the other hand its no secret this can cause a lot of frustration, there's a reason why a lot of games come with Flowcharts and the like and in a way; gaming the system and engineering the story can be a lot of fun, like solving a puzzle in a way.

On the other hand the "Flowchart Method" used in a myriad games can also be a double edged sword, it can make the story less mysterious, the story's cohesion may be broken with blatant save scumming or become frustrating in a different direction wherein a player will not understand how to navigate said system instead of a designer changing the story on the fly in response to user input.

Similarly there is a subcategory I'm going to call the "Uchikoshi Method" which I guess technically should be the Yu-No method but whatever I shill for the man. This is a transparent method of branching wherein the act of using the flowchart to your advantage is not only allowed, but made diegetic and canon to the story. This has its own set of pitfalls and honestly I'm planning to write an absurdly long piece about VLR when I replay it soon so I'll leave it for then.

Now, why did I spend three paragraphs subdividing VNs here (by no greater authority than myself btw)? Well, in relation to my point about HTFOR's overambition, this game appears to combine all three methods described above into one. Yeah.

I can definitely see the motivation behind this. Harmony puts a lot of stock into its flowchart, every single mechanic is related to its navigation; for better and for worse. If nothing else, I admire the courage in making something whose writing and planning must have been a right pain in the ass and it somewhat works.

But before I get into that in depth I should lay the groundwork for the rest of the game. Harmony : The Fall of Reverie is set in Atina, a fictional city state in the mediterranean run by a sinister corporation, a sort of cross between Hong Kong, Valencia and Athens or something along those lines. Although everyone speaks like they're Bri'ish but never mind.

You play as Polly, who comes back after many years to her hometown after her mother's disappearance. Quickly, she discovers she has become Harmony : An Oracle for a parallel world named Reverie, composed of Aspirations which are personifications of Human's emotions: Bliss, Bond, Power etc. With this power she can see the future, which manifests as being able to see the ingame flowchart in universe. Together with these Aspirations, Harmony's choices lead the story forward of an unfolding intrigue involving the sinister corporation, her missing mother, love, freedom etc.

I really enjoy the aesthetic aspect of HTFOR, the expressive 2D art, the 3D and 2D environment art, the music and sound design, these are all great. The voice acting is decent too (Oh and I inmediately noticed when Nora spoke I was like "Hey that sounds a lot like Philosophy Tube and lo and behold Abigail Thorn shows up in the credits) and the writing is from a first playthrough at least, pretty good, nuanced and entertaining, a lot of focus is given to mythologies and stories, social injustice and the sacrifices made for change.

Im not well versed enough in greek myth to make much sense of it, Polly is actually short for Polyhimnia ; a muse. The communal center turned house where they all live is called the Naiads, which I believe were Greek nymphs? I quite liked the detail of Chaos' paint changing slightly within scenes, it was a nice touch. This ignorance is however why I enjoy this site, whichever blind spots I may have someone else will fill in and give their perspectives on the matter which I can read and get a broader view of the work.

There is also some pretty good LGBT representation, though one character only revealed they were (I want to say NB? Their profile said they had a legal pronoun change and they say they like short hair as it helps them not be mistaken for a woman but I swear Polly refers to them as her at one point but maybe I misread?) at a particular, missable node. There are however at least two other gay characters.

Now, about that branching. I do think it works for the most part, there is a surprising amount of complexity to the game which tries to marry a lot of things. Essentially, your choices are somewhat transparent in the sense that as the story is divided into acts and scenes, which are further subdivided into nodes, your actual visibility of how the story will unfold is limited firstly to the current act or subact, which helps to make things less overwhelming and secondly by the node visibility being tied to various conditions, which you may choose to unlock if a choice mentions which nodes will be revealed as a result. There is also the bond crystals, essentially certain actions favour certain aspirations and other require their cooperation, thus you need to weigh up who you're helping and how that affects the decisions near to you. Furthermore, each act ends with a decision requiring a certain amount of bond crystals from one or more aspirations and further still there is a global running tally of how many bond crystals you have acquired and favouring a certain aspiration in this factors into one of the final choices in the game!

That sounds like a lot, doesnt it? Thats cause it kind of is? But it also kind of isnt. For the most part the game straddles the line of choices being tough to make (though that may be the executive dysfunction talking) but not overwhelming, though I did feel at times that I was always making the worst decision. Now, in theory that can work (Disco Elysium comes to mind) but there is something about your choices in the various acts locking you out of choices in subsequent acts that always feels like a kick in the teeth. Its that thing that theyre trying to have their cake and eat it too, have engineerable short term choices (the individual nodes can be fucking tiny as well, like 2/3 lines of text at times, although it does make the pacing pretty tight, I clocked in 5 hours and it felt like 3) with opaque long term choices which force you out of certain paths. And again, in theory Im fine with that, but at points it just fucks me up.

Case in point : the ending, which I am going to talk in general, nonspecific terms, but some people are really sensitive about these sorts of things so feel free to leave now if youre bothered by this sort of thing : I do recommend the game despite it all and I honestly would welcome more perspectives about it.

The game definitely acknowledges the ridiculousness of the complicated flowchart and demands and needs of the various characters and aspirations which pull on Harmony from a thousand different directions but its still a bit much. And well, if you are planning on playing this game : go all in on at least 1 aspiration! Dont attempt to keep each in balance cause honestly the game seemed disappointed I went for that, which kinda blew but again I have only seen 1 playthrough so perhaps I am misreading it. This is sort of the issue in reviewing any game. I have "finished" it but I have nowhere near enough of a perspective to judge it holistically, but at the same time making oneself fully familiar with the systems of these games can be either extremely hard or ruin the enjoyment entirely, thus making the exercise moot.

Another thing is that there was a choice relating to the future of the city state and what would have been to me the most interesting option became locked because of choices I had made previously and which IMO makes no sense why.

Actual Spoilers Now :
I led a goddamned revolution against MK, couching myself upon the outrage of the populous against its corpo masters but because of some minor bullshit in how I handled the situation later, the option I had to choose was basically status quo liberal democracy : Cringe! I could have also chosen some bullshit thing related to the ancient cultures that created the aspirations in the first place but the way it was phrased it sounded like we would be ruled by a city full of those greek Statue profile pics from Twitter with names like "Retvrn to Ancient Virtue" and only talk about how women having any autonomy is how Rome fell or whatever nonsense.

So Im left with a sour aftertaste. For all its faults I think Harmony is interesting and honestly it kept my attention its entire runtime, so its just doubly tragic how it couldnt stick the landing. I would still recommend if you are interested in branching narratives and a mixed collection of mediterranean cultures.

Reggie Fils-Aimé famously said “if it’s not fun, why bother” during Nintendo’s E3 2017 showcase. For some, these have become words to die by. An easy phrase to parrot when the individual faces a system they can't come to terms with. Some see it as a harmless way of saying they don't enjoy what they're playing, but I have never appreciated its implications.

If your definition of “fun” equates to anything you like, this quote probably resonates with you. But I've rarely seen the word used that way, and instead, this obsession with fun’s necessity in games seems more damaging than anything.

“Fun” is fast, approachable, and easy to control. An immediate stoking of the attention span, constant engagement, or a light enjoyment lessened in friction. Some see Dark Souls as unfun due to its slow, heavy movement and methodical combat. Dark Souls 3 is “fun” because it's quicker and lighter; you can roll faster, further, and more often. Nothing is wrong with either approach, yet one is sometimes dismissed.

Not everyone defines the term this way, but I’ve seen it used to debase games with an unconventional design. Traditionally “unfun” foundations have a harder time finding their place in communities who won’t acknowledge its worth unless it’s immediately satisfying. I remember this phrase being used during Death Stranding. It was picked apart, labeled as “unfun” because it’s a package delivery walking simulator. Who wants to be a delivery man, right? Even “walking sim” has become dismissive, used to label things as lesser.

Regardless of Reggie’s intention in the full quote, which specifically emphasizes that games are also a journey, even inviting the player to “open their mind,” that snippet has shifted into a rallying cry for people to do anything but. If something must be “fun” to be worthwhile, and that definition of “fun” is remotely limited, it denies ideas that don't fit under a narrow bracket. It is a quote accompanied by frustrating ignorance.

Not everything needs to be fun. Other artforms aren't seen this way, so why are games different? Is it because they're interactive? Is interactivity meaningless without fun? Art is feeling, and there’s no single feeling a work has to evoke to be successful.

Playing Resident Evil reminded me of my stance on this.

It isn't fun. It's claustrophobic, stressful, and frustrating. No encounter, room, boss, or weapon is traditionally “fun.” It's an unforgiving, labyrinthian puzzle; a constant check of resources where memorizing rooms and locations is vital. Even saving the game is limited to a resource, one I often found myself without and had to make huge stretches of progress knowing one mistake could send me back an hour.

Bosses are a cold, calculated check of your mindfulness towards collecting and preserving as much ammo as possible. You enter a boss room, move only a little, and fire everything you have. They die and you move on. You wasted ammo, and that made progressing more difficult. No part of this balance between figuring out the path forward while wasting as few resources as possible was fun, alongside trying to figure out at what point the player should save.

Yet Resident Evil is enormously good and I’m enamored. I've reversed my tune on the Ink Ribbon system after years of avoiding it in other titles in the franchise. The fear that arises from knowing one mistake can ripple; your decision to not save means you're risking everything, or being too frugal by going nearly an hour without a save, brings rise to an unmatched tension.

Games don’t have to be fun to be worthwhile, successful, or good. Art is too complex, and limiting any medium in this way sucks. It’s not something to be afraid of, either. Fun absolutely rules, but I’m tired of people treating it as a necessity. I’m tired of being seen as lesser when expressing love for old, unconventional, or mechanically complex experiences. I’m tired of new things being inherently better because they’re faster, more fluid, and easier to control. No feeling is worthless and games can accomplish anything. Just keep an open mind, experience it, and vibe. Fun isn’t everything.

If you support that quote and think “that's not what fun is, it's just whether or not you like something,” then that's fine. We can disagree. But I’ve seen people use the requirement of “fun” to shit on non-traditional systems before. People shouldn’t be afraid to say something isn’t fun yet still love it. There's so much more to feel :)

One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 was the first game in the Pirate Warriors series and the first Musou I played. Initially, I was somewhat excited about it as I had gotten into watching & reading the series a short while before the game was released and because it covered pretty much the whole story. A few months after it came out, I was able to purchase a copy. Even though I was somewhat hyped for the game, that wasn't enough because I would drop the game after getting to Arlong Park due to my inability to commit to finishing games and because I got bored of it rather quickly. Well, I completed the main log & the dream log and all I can say is that it is the best out of the Pirate Warriors series.

As I previously mentioned, the game covers just about everything up to Dressrosa. Unlike the first two, every location from every major arc is in this game each with slightly more detailed maps than the last entry. Since Dressrosa was incomplete at the time this game was released in Japan, Dressrosa has an original story. It's a good way of adding an original plot similar to what Pirate Warriors 2 did with its story and adding the location without having to wait for the manga & anime to finish the arc. Personally, I'd rather they go the full Pirate Warriors 2 route until the series ends, but them doing this every 3 arcs or so is serviceable.

In terms of gameplay, its just like the other games. If you've played any kind of Musou game, you know exactly what you're getting. The only differences are the new locations and characters.

The newcomers added are all welcome additions that were either NPCs in previous games such as Lucci & Moria or brand new characters like Fujitora, Sabo, and Doflamingo. They even threw in Shanks who was every bit as fun to use as I expected. From what I can tell there were no cuts from Pirate Warriors 2 so I can respect them for keeping every previous playable character in.

One Piece Pirate Warriors 3 once again improves upon the first two Pirate Warriors games making it the definitive Musou adventure for Luffy & crew. One Piece & Musou fans won't want to miss this one.

The legacy of the title may be enough to where it will be remembered for many years to come, but the quality of Night Trap wasn’t even close to being on the same level to compare to said legacy. Sure, the game wasn’t terrible, but it was pretty much the poster-child of cheap FMV CD games for the early 90s, with not much else to show for itself other then providing a hilarious “movie” to watch alongside it, which is probably a smarter thing to do than actually trying to play the game. But nonetheless, the game was still successful enough for Digital Pictures, selling 400,000 copies by 1998, so logically, they went ahead and continued making these FMV games for quite a while until their defunct in 1996. One of their most noteworthy titles that would follow Night Trap would release just one year later, and would simply be known as Double Switch.

Unlike with Night Trap, I didn’t know much about Double Switch when I initially went into it, as it didn’t quite have the notorious reputation that Night Trap had. I had assumed that it was just gonna be yet another generic FMV game that would scream “90s” in every way possible, which would be fun and entertaining enough to at least watch rather than play. Nonetheless, I went into the game, and I found that it was mostly what I was expecting, but surprisingly, I actually found it to be better then Night Trap, not just in terms of its gameplay, but also in terms of the movie that was being presented here. Yes, it does still carry some problems with it, as well as the movie itself having enough of that 90s cheese that could turn off some viewers, it was enough to keep me entertained, and the gameplay was satisfying enough whenever you got everything figured out.

In terms of the movie portion of the game, the story is completely insane, with there being a central plot that you need to focus on, while also being occupied by plenty of other sub-plots that are about as ridiculous as you would expect, which makes the story way more entertaining to watch, even if you once again can’t pay attention to most of it when you play the game yourself, the characters this time around are very enjoyable, with there being many different types of them here rather then just focusing on one group of high-school girls for most of the time, and each of them have just the right amount of bad line delivery and hokey acting to make them a joy to watch, the acting is appropriately bad, but once again, it does make watching the product much more entertaining, so I wouldn’t have it any other way, and the way that the characters move around and talk are overexaggerated and stupid enough to where you will keeping wanting to see what people do rather than focusing on the main objective.

As for the game itself, the gameplay is very similar to that of Night Trap, where you take control of……. yourself, I guess, look through a series of cameras that are placed all around the hotel that Double Switch is based in, use the many different traps located around the building to thwart the plans of any thugs that enter the building, gather plenty of different codes, as well as the locations of more hidden traps throughout the building, so that you will be able to make progress through the game while finding out what it truly going on around here, and while you do all that, enjoy some of the goofiest 90s FMV that you will ever see in your entire life. It is all pretty standard for a Digital Pictures product like this, and for most of it, it really only uses the movie footage as a means to draw players in, which was already enough for me, but thankfully, in comparison to Night Trap, there are some improvements to the gameplay here.

First and foremost, unlike with Night Trap, the locations of the thugs you trapped aren’t scripted. Yes, there are obviously scripted events that you will need to pay close attention to, but in terms of the regular thugs that you need to trap to proceed through the game, they all appear in random locations at random times, which makes it so that you can’t just blunt force your way through it using a guide, already making this more preferable than Night Trap. In addition to this, this game is also a lot more forgiving. When it came to Night Trap, you had to do all of it in one shot, going all the way from the beginning to the end and accomplishing the tasks almost perfectly, which made it really suck whenever you fucked up just one task, and you had to start all over again. Thankfully, in this game, there are three separate levels, or “Acts”, that you go through, and whenever you fail in one of these acts, you only get sent back to the beginning of the act rather then the beginning of the game, which is much more preferable then what we had before.

However, as is natural with these kinds of Digital Pictures games, there are still several things that are holding it back. For one thing, while I did say this game was more forgiving then Night Trap with the acts, the regular difficulty of the game was ramped up to make up for this. The amount of things that you have to do specifically in such a short amount of time, while also making sure to trap plenty of thugs in the process, is absolutely insane, and if you just fuck up even one of these specific tasks, such as missing a part of the security codes, or not using a specific trap in a specific event, then you will have to start all over again. What doesn’t help this is that there are specific traps that are ridiculously timed, especially in the later acts, where there will be a trap that you can activate at multiple points, and if you don’t activate it at the point that the game wants, then you automatically lose. Needless to say, this is extremely frustrating, especially when you need to utilize a separate trap button for a lot of the traps that affect the main story.

Overall, despite still being ruthless in plenty of places and having a lack of innovation for this type of game, I would still say that Double Switch is still an entertaining game, not just in terms of the ridiculous FMV cutscenes that play throughout, but also because of the satisfaction that you get from getting all of these codes and activating all of these ridiculous traps at the right time. I guess I could recommend you playing it for those who were fans of Night Trap, but for those who actually want to keep their sanity intact, then I would recommend just looking up the Double Switch cinematics all slapped together on YouTube, because again, that is the most enjoyment that you can get out of this game. Also, I wanna point out real quick that Lyle the Handyman, one of the main characters in the game, is played by Lee Ermey, the same guy who played Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket, so that is pretty cool. I just wished they allowed him to talk in a similar fashion to how he talked in that movie.

Game #422

What I will NOT say about this game is any form of admonishment for its portrayal of an incestuous relationship. It is simultaneously true that depiction of this type should ideally be handled with care, but in the same token it is also true that incestuousness in Andy and Leyley is one decidedly portrayed as negative and not to be endorsed or repeated. To understand this is a fundamental component of media literacy.

What I WILL admonish this game for is its writing of Ashley. It is one thing to portray a female character as a controlling freak in a heterosexual relationship (which is already its own can of worms), but when you pair this with the emotional and frequently romantically charged whining of her diatribes in chapter 1, it comes off as nothing less than a stereotype of the 'crazy bitch' that is manipulative and erratic to no end while the angelic male of the situation is forced to comb through the abuse. It is a frankly disturbing portrayal of how codepency actually works and is extremely concerning to witness. The fact that she's supposed to be annoying only works to such an extent, especially considering that Andrew had been putting up with this almost 'psychosexual' behavior at the very least when they were both school-children. It's not just unrealistic that codependency necessarily happens like this, it's probably a harmful portrayal if viewed anywhere outside the lens of intentionally exaggerated sexual fantasy- Which is, from a random outsider's perspective, not entirely apparent.

Flight attendant: Is there a doctor on this flight?
Dad: nudging me that should've been you
Me: Not now dad
Dad: Not asking for a FMV point-and-click deckbuilder to help, are they?
Me: Dad, there's a medical emergency happening right now
Dad: Go and see if the "Little Baldwin" card helps

This is one of those games that I really do like and respect, but it doesn't cross over into my favorites for one reason or another. I don't share the common complaint about Metal Blade being busted (mostly because I've always saved Robot Master weapons for bosses the couple of times I've played), but I do think Boobeam Trap is a terribly-designed boss, simply for how easy it is to throw away an entire run by a single misuse of Crash Bomber. Maybe that long, silent corridor at the start of Wily Stage 5 gets tedious on retries, but you can at least get Bubble Lead back up to full there if needs-be; why couldn't that be in place for Boobeam? I also have been spoiled by the pre-Wily stages of later Megas Man. This is a big part of why I always used to call 3 my favorite to the series. 9's proved that I don't need that, but some sort of interstitial sequence helps make these games feel more complete, even if the only buffer between Robot Masters and Wily is a cutscene.

But 2's a classic for a reason. My aforementioned grievances aside, the game's one of those that's immaculately designed. After all the experimentation of the first game to find what approaches did and didn't work, 2 steps confidently forward and hits home run after home run. Quick Man. Crash Man. Air Man. Wood Man. Metal Man. Bubble Man. Heat Man. Wily 1. Moment after moment of great level design set to great music followed by great boss fights. Such a variety of level archetypes, showing that even though the developers had settled on a general gameplay style, they were still keen on experimenting with themes and challenges within that style.

(I guess Flash Man and Guts Dozer are okay, too.)

I understand this was made in a hellish 8 month dev cycle, compounded by the fact that this was the first Mega Man to incorporate submissions for the Robot Master designs. Things wouldn't entirely improve from there - Mega Man 7 had four months in the oven - but I'm at least glad all the hard work paid off, and they really stuck the landing with this one.

When I was around 9 years old, the website I played this on tried to desperately warn me by saying I needed "nerves of steel" for this game. I didn't know what those words meant. 2 minutes later, shit made me freeze up so bad that it felt like brain paralysis. The first episode of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People was downloading in the background. My family was in the other room, blissfully unaware of what I just stumbled into. And there I was, absolutely frozen in my chair. Presumably, taking a mental note that I should probably be more careful of the internet from there on out. I proceeded to do some research on screamers, memorized how a couple of them looked, and vowed to never be tricked into seeing them ever again.

A couple months later, my friend put headphones on me and started playing that car coffee commercial. I jumped out of the chair before the jumpscare even happened, knowing full well what this was. My research... paid off in the end.

I haven't just mastered you, you fucking piece of shit of a browser game. I've mastered how to dodge them all.

You are on your own.

Good lu- ...

Thrown away into the red sea in a bunch of badly together scraps that could barely be called a submarine, it’s clear from the very get go that Iron Lung doesn't hold its punches off. The mere promise of a barren universe whose life and planets have disappeared out of thin air, with only the ships and lifeless moons remaining and their last decaying bastion, it's already pretty shit-pants inducing, especially for those who already certain fear of the limitless beyond, but that's not even where the focus of the game lies, and the messed-up part if that awaits you is probably more terrifying than that premise.

OXYGEN NOTIFICATION

The Iron Lung only provides you protection against drowning in the blood sea and whatever lurks around this horrific place, and you could say that even that is debatable. You don't even get the gift of sight here, you fo have a camera, which gives you a glimpse of the outside world and it's what you'll need to get the photos of what you've been ordered to investigate, but aside from that, the bulk of the experience takes place within the four small rusty walls of the wretched ship, being forced to navigate using only a map and the coordinates on your ship, and thank god the z-axis doesn't facture in this equation. Iron Lung not only takes advantage of the fear of the unknow, it embodies it, the gameplay itself its extremely simple, only really made interesting by the fact you really can't see shit, but that small little detail is basically what the entire game takes pride of. With almost nothing to see, the sounds that creep through the bowels of the red sea are what make every neuron of the brain go into read alarm mode: from sounds like the ship catching fire (yes, even down here you aren't even safe from that), to the-

OXYGEN NOTIFICATION

-... yeah that, but most of all... the echoing grunts and sounds of the beast that swim outside of you, always out of sight, curious yet afar, being only able to get glimpses of them that are enough to make you shiver, and sometimes you do get more clear view of whatever you are investigation or stalking you... but even in those cases it's confusing, alien, bizarre. It's the primal discomfort or not knowing where you are, what you are even facing, and times things are a bit clearer, it's only to make you feel even more hopeless.

It's a magnificent example of simple yet effective design, even with its caveats. There is a ton of down-time, and while at first its effective and there are some key moments in which the game really knows what to do to not let you put your guard down, for such a relatively short experience, having to traverse huge chunks of seafloor with nothing happening outside of the same sounds you've heard before is a tad disappointing. This same design fault is what makes subsequent playthroughs a tad tedious; Iron Lung invites you to discover it, to explore its secrets, and for a game that pretends you to do that and asks you to at least play it again to discover every major thing it has offer, it certainly isn't scared to make that process take a long while and to sacrifice that feeling of paranoia and fear that made it so special. But it is that first playthrough, the key interaction with the game, what makes it so utterly genius, so horryfiying, and everything outside of this metal prison complements this idea.

OXYGEN NOTIFICATION

You are not the first to come down here, the real name of this ship reveals as much, and it only takes reading the note of the last pilot, reading the terminal entries and discovering the dark secret hidden in the farthest ends of the rift to get a good picture of what's really going on here; the universe is torn apart, even more than what the current situation would have already broken it. The very few survivors, barely more than a thousand and with their provisions dwindling, are divided, broken by meaningless wars of espionage and petty battles, making prisoners go die in the depths of the unknown while desperately trying to find ways to turn into the superior colony; even at the brink of the cease of existence, humanity finds ways to kill each other.

By digging a bit more, what you get is only more desperation; there's nothing to be had, nothing to be claimed, and you are lucky enough to maybe get a chance at freedom, or at least the one you could have in these conditions. It’s bloody genius hidden story-telling, because if at first you already though all of this seemed bad, oh let me tell ya, it gets much worse! And yet, you keep going, maybe its spite, at a certain point it's what I felt, spite of just figuring out what was going on down here and achieve freedom, and that's underlying feeling of desire, of hoping of something better while everything around seems to crumble down, what sealed the deal for me, it feel too personal of a game to also achieve what it accomplishes. There's nothing to grab onto...

But somewhere in the void, there must be hope...

OXYGEN NOTIFICATION

I know I know, this wasn't in my personal bucket list of spooky games for this month, but I just had to jump into the Backloggd Game of the Week tradition at the very least once, and hey, this indeed has the spooky thematic so it still counts!

Y'know, I wouldn't say that I'm someone who's difficult to charm, I'm very easily enthralled by bizarre or charismatic worlds and characters if they are unique or appealing enough, but I'll admit, I'm a bit of a picky bastard when it comes to humor. I massively respect games that try to go for the humoristic angle A TON, but that also results in me being a lot more strict with, for a lack of a better term, ''comedy games''; if you are trying to be funny cheeky game, then you better not miss (I say this, being the worst '''''''punster'''''' in the entire site...). Graphic adventure games are probably the breed that's most familiar with humor, and that's everything but a secret, Monkey Island and Sam&Max are two perfect examples, while far from the only ones. Whether its poking fun at the tropes of the genre they are part from or just breaking the fourth wall more directly, this more sarcastic, satirical and surrealist is one that I cannot get enough of. I was initially scared that No Rest for the Wicked would fail in this regard, since I didn't really enjoy a few jokes in the beginning, but luckily, it didn't took long before it put my concerns... to rest!... Oh my god that was the worst one yet holy fu-

It has been a while since I've been charmed by a bunch of morons this hard; the nameless servant is a fantastic main character and loved his dry and sarcastic commentary and I actually really enjoyed his voice (the voice acting in general is pretty good to be honest), the count/master is everything I could ever want from a pretentious and dumb as bricks vampire, I adore the depressive son of a bitch that is Otto with every bone in my body and Carla was a really funny character that I wished it had even more interactions with you and the prisoners! The writing is on point, there are indeed some jokes at first that felt too sarcastic or direct to my own liking, but after those everything is a hit; it's not a game to which you'll be constantly laughing at, but the smile will persist during the entire playthrough and will get a chuckle or too out of you.

Puzzles are pretty simplistic for what they are, tho that's not a negative. It's a quick experience after all, and considering the run time, the game is pretty clever with the problems it presents and it has a puzzles that I would call stellar, it's nothing mind-breaking, but it is very creative and it took a while for me to realize what to do. The only negative that I could point to is how many major objects blend with the background and other objects, but at this point, this is more of a generalized problem with this style of game that a particular fault of No Rest of the Wicked.

Weirdly enough, even the negative kinda connects with the biggest positive I can say about the game: if it were to be a bit longer, I could easily see this as a classic of the genre, both in visuals, design, and above all else, script. It goes for that very particular way of writing and nails it, while at the same time managing to feel completely unique. In the end, it is what it is, a very enjoyable albeit short and not very deep experience, but it is like a good pun; clever, lasts as long as it needs to, and it may take a while to get some parts of it, but it's very worth it.

Also, I kind of saw the end coming, but it didn't make it the less funny. All in all, you could say this game is pretty wickedI'M SORRY I'M SORRY I'M SO-

Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (10th Oct. – 16th Oct., 2023).

Evoking the quirky spirit of LucasArts' point-and-click titles, No Rest for the Wicked is an intelligent adventure that strikes a subtle balance between inspiration, reference and its own identity. The plot and structure borrow directly from the first act of The Secret of Monkey Island (1990), reusing timed puzzles or reinterpreting the iconic verbal jousts through three different objectives. The initial puzzle is very similar to the one behind the tavern at the very start of the game, while the bookcase is a rather ingenious reinvention of the sword duels. The dialogue and the introductory cutscene are written with the same light-hearted, gently sarcastic glibness that characterised the Monkey Island series, with a protagonist forced into bizarre situations against their will. Similarly, the title takes the liberty of constantly breaking the fourth wall or mentioning elements that the characters are not supposed to know about, including fairly direct references such as Metallica's 'Master of Puppets' (1986).

Rather than taking sterile inspiration from a design that is sometimes more obtuse than it needs to be, No Rest for the Wicked manages to keep its puzzles in confined spaces, while making it easy to experiment with the objects. No pixel-hunting is required, as the cursor adapts contextually to the correct action. Although some may feel that the solutions are sometimes too explicitly given to the player, No Rest for the Wicked is more about creating an atmosphere than just mimicking old games. In a way, the title is emblematic of a recent trend in point-and-click games, which contrasts with the heaviness of titles by Wadjet Eye Games, Faravid Interactive and, more generally, games that border on detective stories - which are longer and coloured by a slightly pessimistic or melancholy view of the world. On the contrary, No Rest for the Wicked is a defence of shorter titles, infused with intelligent, respectful wit.

Growing up playing gen 3 means absolutely no critical opinions I might or might not have are completely invalid. I pretty much grew up in Hoenn. I used to pretend the houses in Rustboro were my house and the trainer school was.. a school. But that wasn't this game,it was Emerald instead. Later my mom got me a copy of Sapphire second-hand and words could not describe my fascination about how these games were actually pretty much the same, but this one had some stranger's savefile with a freshly caught Kyogre and a Blaziken instead of Swampert.

Eventually,early Youtube rolled around and by this point, I must have known Ruby was the same as Sapphire, but that's not what those early videos showed at all. Apparently Ruby was used as a base for every romhack made at that point so in my mind Ruby occupied every space inbetween hyperrealistic blood to a cutscene with Latias roaring in a puddle atop a white mountain tileset. You could catch Agumon, Weegee, Yoshi and other trainer's Pokémon in Ruby. There's probably a tech reason why Ruby was used over other games but in my head, Groudon was both cooler and all these fucked up and silly events happened ingame concurrently.

I did realize at some point that obviously, this was all made up. In fact, the exact same rumours were also made about the gen 1,2 and 4. And I beat the Elite 4 50 times and NO JIRACHI SPAWNED? Even if there's video evidence, everything online has to be bullshit. And why would anyone care about Ruby when Emerald was right there? It has all these amazing features like, uh.. your character wears green, a vastly superior colour to red. And the Battle Frontier, even if nobody actually beat it or really cared about anything other than its presence. I even picked up Alpha Sapphire instead of Omega Ruby; Primal Kyogre is just bound to be way stronger; remember how overpowered Drizzle Politoed was in Gen 5? Groudon might look cool,but it'll suck in comparison...

Years went by and wander was lost. Between all the fucked up shit,Covid and memory loss, I frankly don't know if I ever played Ruby version itself; I remember playing either it or Sapphire and being mesmerized at all the small changes Emerald had made me grow accustomed to. This playthrough was no different; it's death by a thousand papercuts to think about what they eventually improved,like how the contest halls are not in order so even if you'd like to invest time into this one feature they clearly wanted to be a big thing moving forward,it'd be frustrating to do so early game. There really is less of a point to play these games over the improved versions comparatively to all generations both moving forward and back... but in my mind and anyone who's grown up in a pre-Battle Frontier, early internet world, they're pretty special. After all, you can catch Agumon in this one.