18 reviews liked by wallmeat


The cutest gameee, obsessed with the artstyle and concept, even if it's a short game it's so nice and polished and consistent, i'd love a long replayable version of this concept and style, its absolutely charming <3

One of Toaplan's two horizontal shmups that I know of, the other being Zero Wing. They're not so different at all, they're lengthy and dull and boring to look at, meanwhile the music does the best job out of anything on display.

This one has a pretty irritating mechanic with the weapon switching, though. You have four modes to switch between: pink (shoot forward), yellow (backward), green (verticals), and blue (diagonals). You'll need to use each of these pretty often, so a lot of switching around is done. The thing, though, is that you can only cycle through them in that order. So if you need to alternate back and forth between pink and yellow (which would be awfully convenient at various times), well then tough shit for you because you can't immediately go to pink from yellow, and you have to cycle all the way around until you get back there. It seems minor, but it really is annoying especially later on. Definitely bogged the experience down some.

It's Strange World: Gunman's Proof is a cowboys and aliens themed Legend of Zelda clone with Smash TV combat, Contra weapon power-ups, and a treasure collecting score system straight out Kirby Super Star's The Great Cave Offensive.

The game is extremely easy, not only because of how frequently it doles out new abilities and permanent upgrades to your base equipment, but also because almost none of the enemies can shoot diagonally. The few enemies that do shoot diagonally can't really aim, they just fire in random directions (or all directions at once). The player, on the other hand, can shoot diagonally while moving, and pretty much nothing in the game really knows how to react to this. From start to finish, this is the winning technique. Though I will say, even if the game is consistently not much of a challenge, it is also consistently quite fun.

The soundtrack is fantastic. The village theme (which will greet you at the start of each play session) is chill, whistling elevator music. The overworld themes serve as excellent background for galloping across the landscape, and the theme that plays while you ride your donkey is joyful without being overly bombastic. The dramatic theme that plays during certain cutscenes carries all the weight of more classic themes from the game's contemporaries.

The game's characters, in terms of animation and dialogue, are charming in a way similar to Earthbound. The main character is basically the town failson until he's possessed by an alien at the start of the game, becoming the only fighter in town competent enough to face the Demiseeds. By around the halfway mark of the game, some of the townspeople start to wonder if something's the matter with you, while your dad (who kicks you out of the house at the start of the game) claims to have always known you were destined for greatness. The main character is extremely well animated, with smooth animations for 8-direction walking, shooting, crawling, punching, not to mention all of the little poses he does when finding treasure or interacting with other characters.

I'm gonna talk about the racism.

So, a lot of the enemies in Gunman's Proof are typical video game fare, giant bugs, slime monsters, etc. But a common enemy, probably the first one that the player will see, is basically a cowboy golliwog. Now, in this wild west themed island setting, the heroes are obviously colonial settlers. The enemies are the native people and wildlife of this "new" land, and killing them is justified by the fact that they are all possessed by a space alien. Yet, in order to defeat them, the hero too must carry this same otherworldly spirit.

The townspeople are obviously an invading force, but they project their alien nature onto those who were there before them. It's a strange world, but it can be made normal. In the end, with the alien defeated, so too can the alien be expelled from our hero's body, and everything will retvrn to the way it ought to be.

When you defeat an insect in this game, you don't kill it. It just turns back into a normal insect.

When you defeat a late-game boss consisting of two twin sisters, they don't die, they regain consciousness and remark on how exotic their attire is.

When you defeat a wild west Mr. Popo, nothing remains.

It sucks. It's a pretty substantial blemish on an otherwise really charming game.

Gunman's Proof is a fairly short game, if you want it to be. You can beat it in a couple hours or so. I would recommend taking it slow, play one or two dungeons each session. Talk to all the NPCs, they usually have something new to say. Explore around and find any health upgrades or new moves you might have missed.

It's speculated that the reason this game is as short as it is, is because it wasn't really finished. It was the last game developed by Lenar, and it doesn't even have an end credits sequence, nor could I find that information online. If you try to open a chest while riding your donkey, you get a text box that specifically says

"You can't open chests while riding Robaton. We're real sorry, honest."

Edit: 3/16/24

I do think perhaps as others have pointed out that the racist aspects of the game are sort of blown out of of proportion in discussion of it, and I want to make it clear that in accusing the game of having racist imagery or colonialist themes that I don't think the game is truly worth condemning or erasing. This review was originally written as a sort of companion piece to a review of Resident Evil 5 that I never finished because I never finished playing the game either, because that game isn't very good. The point though, was that Resident Evil 5 is, perhaps on accident, a very valuable work of fiction in the same way that something like those WWII era cartoons. It shows the exact kind of post-9/11 hysteria that was going on in the minds of most of the first world at the time, and the virus and bioweapons serve as an effective symbol of how wartime propaganda is used to paint civilians as equivalent to combatants. In the same way, I think a game that makes the undertones of games that encourage the player to plunder and conquer a space in the name of ousting an outsider more literal and surface level is interesting. Plus, even if we assume that those pixels on the screen aren't meant to have a golliwog-esque appearance, it's not like such images were unheard of in Japanese games from this time, and it's not unreasonable to assume that's what your looking at.

Monster World IV was charming and cute enough for me to look past the fact the level design falls off a cliff in the latter half of the game.

I love the music, I love the bright colors, I love coming back to town between levels to explore and talk to the colorful townsfolk, and I love the contextual actions of your orb friend. There's so much done right here, but then it throws a level at you that is just 3 mazes filled with icy floors and sawblades.

Cute, fun and memorable, but just a bit too lightweight for me. The base mechanics are compelling and entertaining, and I enjoyed exploring and learning how to play each new card and even class I found, but it felt like I was done with the game after having completed the first episode with each class, even though I know there is much content remaining. I just don't see how this game will change or surprise you very much, and it doesn't help that, even though opponents do have their own decks and abilities, the matches end up feeling very similar to each other with little to no variety, due to the incredibly tiny "deck" size. Or, rather, opponents can have decks and draw different hands, but you cannot, so every turn in every match just ends up feeling the same.

Ain't nothing wrong with the videogame equivalent of a sugary snack that's too sugary after a few bites, though. It gets old and I can't finish it, but those first few bites were delicious!

i actually played this a fucking while ago but i completely forgot to log it. this game makes me feel like i'm going insane. playing this makes my mouth feel dry and my bones go stiff. pathologic's tedium as designed could never even compare to the experience of playing all of metroid in one sitting. i love this game. i will never play this game ever again. played on the switch NES thingy

Imagine Animal Crossing but it actually respects your time as a player, and you’ve got Littlewood. It’s a little more simplistic compared to AC but it’s cute, charming and really knows how to pull you in. I also really love the stamina mechanic that allows time to progress as slowly or as quickly as you like. It’s super chill and if you’ve got a laptop, it’s a great game to play while snuggled up under the covers.

Littlewood is an amazingly charming and relaxing little city builder. You don't have any timers to worry about, you just take your time to build your little town, gather resources and make friends.

It's a perfect game to just relax, I absolutely love it and my time with it.

This is the only one of this type of farming/town management/relationship builder type game that I've actually found as relaxing as intended. While things like Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing either waste an enormous amount of your time and make you check the game at specific times or have you run against a clock to get things done, here time is abstracted into an "energy bar", and night and exhaustion only happen in accordance to the number of actions taken as opposed to some arbitrary clock. Wish the fishing had something more to it though.

This is just a really pleasant game, and hey, it really feels like you went on a short hike by the end

2 lists liked by wallmeat