This is probably my favorite recent imperfect game.

I think it's really cool that there's like, a very granular infrastructure focused game like this. It does a lot of good adventure gamey stuff while also avoiding doing weird inventory puzzles. It's also definitely a eurojank game, full of eastern europe cultural artifacts and odd design decisions which might seem weird and counterintuitive. It's like the machine fixing puzzles of Myst mixed with the "carry this object" puzzles of Amnesia and the environmental design of a walking sim. There's no enemies, this is an adventure game through and through!

The only thing weird about it is how it gets better designed as it goes. There's this awful horrible raft ride in act one which is the WORST part of the game, it's so awful i couldn't blame anybody for dropping the game there. I had to noclip to get myself out of some spots in act 2. But then in the last act of the game there's a REALLY good boat scene, and the contrast is kinda jarring! But also, kind of inspiring! You get to see developers hone their craft while you're playing the same game!

It's honestly really cool that a game can be this big and epic and expansive and never really veer into science fiction or fantasy too hard. The most unreal aspect of the game setting is these radioactive mushrooms growing in places, but beyond that everything is very real and grounded. And i think that's pretty impressive to me since video games are usually a medium so based in fantasy!

This game is as big as Half-Life 2, and in the same engine and has:
- No combat
- No enemies
- No scince fiction
- No aliens

And still works really well! And that's really impressive.

The only recommendation I would make is going into the settings and modifying the flashlight and camera batteries to just make them never run out. That mechanic feels wholly unnecessary to the flavour of the game, often more frustrating than interesting, and removing the tension of trying to find batteries really lets the walking sim parts shine. The developers seem to have realized this over its long development history, as in the final act you're given an upgraded flashlight which doesn't have the same battery drain issues.

If it weren't for the weird quirks, the awful Act 1 design problems, and the battery mechanics, this would easily be five stars. But it's already basically an instant recommend. Mark Infra goes down in my brain as one of my favorite scrimblos. Good job folks, this game is a winner.

¥50,000 huh…… ▋

What the fuck, man. This goddamn game. Suda you’re a fucking madman. I wrote literally two scripts before writing this one. I can’t find the right balance between overtly referencing The Silver Case and articulating my own thoughts, so, fuck it. We’re winging this shit. I’m not going to stress on this review at all. I’m writing freely. This game actually fucked me up LOL. My sleep schedule was ruined by it. Just like Tokio fr!!! Game was insanely captivating and immersive so much so that I couldn’t put it down.

FUCK THE PAST ▋

First off, I have to say I absolutely adore the art style and visual presentation. When I initially found out about The SIlver Case I was immediately drawn in by the art style. For so long I've been striving to find a game that’s reflective of my taste in art. This is that game. It’s so unique and senseless while still having a constructed comfy feel forming an immaculate atmosphere. Everything is weirdly claustrophobic but in a seemingly more focused manner? It’s hard to describe why I love it so much, it’s just my tastes.

FUCK THE BAT ▋

I’m left kinda speechless? Honestly this game caters to my tastes so well that I’m left with nothing but fragments of these memories conspired by Silverization. The past? Perhaps. Can one kill such a thing? The themes present all throughout the game remain strangely relevant while still being reflective of the times. The turn of the century…

FUCK KAMUI ▋

Suda is a weird fucking guy. I think everyone can agree to this. If this is just the tip of the iceberg with how far he can go then goddamn I’m in for a ride. Regardless, I actually really fucking love most of the characters. They’re all unique and the interactions between them are classic. Kusabi and Sumio are favorites with their gayass silly banter. Tokio is my personal favorite, though. I might have to say that I enjoyed Placebo more than Transmitter. The mystery was thicker and I found the simplistic tedious nature of the gameplay loop to be highly enveloped. It’s a more personal take on the grander scheme that Transmitter presents us with. The gaps left in the story of Transmitter get filled in nicely in Placebo. Both parts complete each other to form the stylistic and complex package. Plus Tokio is the most lovable fucking asshole I’ve seen in a game. His character development is also pretty three dimensional I’d say. In his last moments I really felt a sense of purity and oneness with him.

FUCK THE 24 WARDS ▋

Thinking about it more and more I kinda wish the story wasn’t as…rushed? Once you hit lifecut shit just puts itself out into the open and revealed. I think there was defo emotional buildup but it did seem a bit jarring coming off of Placebo which didn’t really resolve much. All in all the fantastic writing stays consistent all the way through so it’s not a deal breaker. The mystery is still there and it looms even after the game’s departure.

FUCK BIG DICK ▋

One last thing, the soundtrack. Haters will say it doesn’t go hard. Every song has the perfect tone to accentuate a scene. It completes the story, in a way. Hitting the extra beats that the story can’t always hit by itself. Masafumi Takada never misses.

FUCK YOU ▋

That’s it, I guess. I’ll still be pondering over this game’s enigmatic existence probably for years to come. I’m glad I finally experienced this batshit piece of fiction (bat lol) after almost a year of it sitting on my shelf. The more games I play, the more games that end up on my damn shelves. Here’s to Flower, Sun, and Rain hopefully being as engaging for me as this game.

FUCK ▋

Sudaheads, one question,
Would you lend him ¥50,000?


Save Log ▋
Your journal has been updated ▋

The game is absolutely fucking terrible.
The puzzles range from bad to tedious.
The graphics are lackluster.
You spend the biggest chunk of the game walking up and down the same 3 roads.
The story is nonexistent for 70% of the game.
When the last 30% of the story does pick up it makes no sense.

Soundtrack is good though.

But the game still, in spite of all of this, manages to weave an engaging experience. You might not understand the narrative, but you will be engrossed by it regardless. You might hate the walking, but you still want to see what happens next. You might not want to do another tedious puzzle, but you still want to read the witty dialogue after.

If you play this you'll come to see all these glaring issues aren't really issues at all. Everything about the game feels deliberately crafted to deliver a certain experience. And regardless of the merit you get out of this game, it definitely conveys what it wants to convey. How you interpret that is up to you. And you have to respect games like those.

After a week I already miss waking up in the morning and playing this on my 3ds.

“he’d love to spend the night in zion / he’s been a long while in babylon / he’d like a lover’s wings to fly on / to a tropic isle of avalon” - digital man, rush

dense, layered, and easy to get lost in all the same as its island centerpiece, flower sun and rain endures as personally-tailored perfection in a video game.

some years ago when i was working my way through kill the past, a good friend of mine advised me to not bother with the completely optional and not at all mandatory lost & found puzzles, as “they suck and they ruin the pacing of the game”. as a matter of pride i simply decided to not heed that advice and go through the game solving as many of the lost & found puzzles as i possibly could. in doing so i’ve made the playthrough likely much longer and more drawn out than it should have been, but it’s only until as of writing this in 2023 that i’ve realized that doing these puzzles actually held some value to me.

flower sun and rain is a game of multifaceted allegory and metaphor, where no ‘truth’ is singular (despite what sumio initially says) and just about any way of reading into it is a valid reading. to me, flower sun and rain is a metaphor about a man unwilling to acknowledge the past and move on to the future; a man eternally stuck in the present. the titular hotel claims its stake on being a paradise to forget about time in, and like a moth to a flame, sumio does as much as he can to waste away in paradise for as long as he possibly can. he lets himself get distracted with the denizens and their issues, letting paradise pull him deeper into itself so sumio doesn’t have to think about the airport and everything outside of this paradise. 25th ward puts a wrenchingly satisfying end to this thread as his life outside of paradise has become completely void of enjoyment. in the end he lets paradise subsume him, never to move on again.

paradise as an idea is something i had touched upon earlier in my thoughts on kaizen game works’ paradise killer, which for anyone who’s played a decent number of suda51 games, can very much see the unabashed ktp cribbing it proudly flaunts. it is rooted in a need to escape human problems ironically caused by humans and the societies they’ve built up. in building these paradises, it comes down to exploitation of resources and people to cultivate these getaways and romanticizing a world fundamentally incompatible with the systems that even lets a vacation spot like this exist in the first place. vacation spots like the flower sun and rain hotel are inextricably linked to colonial structures thriving off of that exploitation. this brings flower sun and rain close to an idea proposed by writer mark “k-punk” fisher known as capitalist realism, in which he proposes that due to the sheer widespread influence of global capitalism, it’s believed that it is the only viable political and economic system and that it would simply be impossible to even begin to imagine any viable alternative. in that sense there’s no such thing as a true-to-definition paradise; it is at best only a temporary state of mind, but it’s one that a person can find themselves unfathomably lost in.

there’s probably not a lot of people who went out of their way to do the ds port’s lost & found puzzles, as they’re technically not really rewarding the player with any juicy lore or narrative revelations, just some stuff to look at in the game’s model viewer and maybe the satisfaction of solving esoteric puzzles that have nothing to do with anything. or so one thinks they have nothing to do with anything relevant. for the player to deliberately seek out the lost & found puzzles and forget about time solving them, it is, to me, the perfect way to reinforce the narrative flower sun and rain presents. sumio is a man who lets frivolous people distract him and seeks out these meaningless problems to solve for others, and for the player to do these lost & found puzzles, they act as an extension of sumio to drag out every second possible to indulge in paradise. one of the most potent executions of a ludonarrative tool i’ve seen in a video game, and it’s entirely done through optional puzzles that a good deal of the people who played this game likely did not do.

i don’t regret doing the lost & found puzzles. i think they’re the best part of the game.

(try playing this at https://neal.fun/password-game/!)

—

the password game takes the ripe joke of having to obey increasingly specific password requirements when signing up for a site and runs with it. it is divided into levels - “rules” - that you have to follow, a new one revealed once you fulfil all pre-existing ones. at least 5 characters? sure. a special character? you got it. an emoji for the current phase of the moon? uhhh… the notation for the winning move in this game of chess? uh oh….

if i was meaner i would be assigning this a rating and docking it some points. this was definitely intended to get increasingly ridiculous to play into the joke, and not as a game structured for anyone to beat. the dev admits as such on twitter. theres an entertaining level of entropy to the whole game the further you get in due to how the “rules” all have to be fulfilled at once - i had to start accounting for boron in my answer because i was forced to move my bishop during a previous level (the algebraic notation for this beginning with a B). lets hope that youtube url you need doesnt contain a C, M or X because youre going to fuck up your roman numeral multiplication that way!! and you can pad your answer with special characters if you know the fire is coming…

its a decent quick laugh. again, i would most likely be rating this negatively as an actual game due to an unsatisfying luck factor (rule 24 is so unfair!!) but theres enough novelty here to be funny to show friends and gauge reactions as they delve further. and i had a fun enough time trying to optimise an “ideal run” through it. so i bear no ill-will

This is my Stranger of Paradise.

Lovingly crafted kusoge, when DLSite crosses wires with Steam. In all honesty, this isn't too good as a Devil May Cry thing, it's more of a basic action roguelite with chronically little meat on its bones - but is still an endearingly earnest attempt to right Kadokowa's wrongs by acting as a rewrite of season 2. Kemono Friends was great, and one of the most speedy slaughters of a golden goose I've ever seen, the show's meteoric rise in popularity only to be decimated by a couple stuck up old fogeys at the executive level still wounds my sugoi heart to this day.