Category: Free

Suffer Through Bounce.wav With Me, Please

I just spent the last four minutes or so playing Bounce.wav, a game made by @Klewachu and @nightkenny for this month’s GBJam. I spent those four minutes dying roughly 30 times and making it through the first level. I’m about to go back and play more.

This thing reminds me one of those “impossible challenge” games that flood your phone’s app marketplace. Incredibly simple, very few buttons to learn, but takes forever to make any progress whatsoever. The time between Start-Death-Restart-Death is, for me, around eight seconds. Bounce.wav is soooooo easy to start and figure out if it’s for you, I had to come back right away and inflict this punishment on others so I wasn’t struggling alone.

You control a forever-bouncing square and you can move it up and down. It maintains momentum, so when you choose to move it determines whether or not you send the thing to its immediate demise. Make a mistake, and a fraction of a second later you’re back at the beginning of the stage, already ready to go again. Maneuver carefully, though, and you’ll be rewarded with a new level to bang your head against.

It’s super simple, but I’m a sucker for this kind of thing. I played Flappy Bird for much too long, and Circle Spike for even longer. Get this on a phone and I’ll probably have killed a couple afternoons only to find myself on level five.

If you’re ready to spend more time than you care to admit on a tiny time-waster, check out Bounce.wav on its itch.io page. Good luck!

October 22, 2016
Games of the Month – September 2016

So uhh, kind of a drought, huh?

As I kept waiting for some surprise to pop up, at some point I realized September was just going to be a dud. But when anything’s compared to last September, (Mario Maker, Metal Gear Solid V, Undertale) it really just isn’t fair. At least we got Gunvolt 2 out of this one. (more…)

October 10, 2016
Games of the Month – August 2016

So I played Monster Hunter some more. Oops. After spending a few dozen more hours hunting down dinosaurs and sharks, I figured I should try to find some new things to play. Turns out, not a whole lot happened in August. A few neat fan games came out, some of my favorite games ever had re-releases, and there’s a new Deus Ex that I’ve barely touched. But since I probably shouldn’t make Monster Hunter the Game of the Month for a month it didn’t come out in, I guess I’ll find the next best things.

1. Pokemon Uranium

Megaman Unlimited was my first real introduction to excellent fan-games. I had typically written them off as projects by people who couldn’t come up with better ideas, but now I realize some of them are impressive tributes that rival entries in the series they so obviously admire. Pokemon Uranium is somewhere in the middle. I’ve never played a Pokemon fan-game before and now I realize I probably should have. Did you know that some people make entirely new regions of Pokemon for stuff like this? I had no idea. Yes, a few of the ones featured in Uranium look like bad Digimon, and the bugs and framerate issues that plague it don’t do the game any favors. But even with its issues, there’s a fine Pokemon game here that can ease the wait of these next few months. And sometimes you just feel like roaming around and checking out cool new monster designs, you know? Birbie rules.

2. The House Abandon

Text adventures haven’t ever really been my thing, but this one sold me on checking more of them out. The House Abandon stays exciting throughout its short half-hour runtime and never becomes too frustrating or fiddly like so many others in the genre. It says what it wants to, does a lot of surprising stuff, and gets out. You should try it.

3. Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X

Weird, right? I had heard about these games for the past few years, and until a friend of mine mentioned this one on Twitter I’d never considered giving the series a shot. I probably should have. Project Diva X is a fast-paced rhythm game overloaded with flashy visuals, and I wish I had tried one of them sooner. It isn’t perfect, and on occasion the colors and dancing get in the way of distinguishing what buttons you’re actually supposed to hit, but the game is so positive and cheerful that it’s hard to be too upset. If you’re looking for a serious high score chasing experience this may not be your thing. But if you just want to tap out quick J-pop rhythms while cartoon characters skip around on stage, this may be up your alley.

Honorable Mentions:

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided – Uhh, the first hour or so was cool! I just haven’t made the time for it. I dumped around 80 hours into its fantastic predecessor so I’ll get to this one at some point before year’s end.

Project AMR2 – I’d never played Metroid 2 before, but this seems like the way to do it. Though AMR2 is nearly just as speedy and well-paced as Zero Mission, the monotonous Metroid fights really turned me off.

Resident Evil 4 HD: Still the best shooter ever made? Yeah.

Mibibli’s Quest (Steam Edition) – If you didn’t play Mibibli’s Quest back a couple years ago when it snuck out, here’s your newest reminder: It’s just as good as Shovel Knight and maybe the best indie platformer ever made.

September 18, 2016
The House Abandon Makes Text Adventures Modern (And Scary)

I’ve never been a huge fan of text adventures. I didn’t grow up with them, and I end up getting frustrated after I feel like all of my options are exhausted. Hell, I didn’t finish Frog Fractions (A game that I adore) for the longest time simply because I couldn’t force myself through the text section. The House Abandon is different.

Admittedly, I don’t play a ton of this kind of thing, so I’m sure something like it has done before. The House Abandon feels surprisingly modern in comparison to staring at a black and white screen inputting WEST and EAST over and over. The text adventure game itself resides on a desk inside The House Abandon, and you’re playing a game within that game. And no, the potential of this idea does not go untapped.

As an Interactive Fiction newbie, I appreciated the limited range of actions you’re forced to take throughout the adventure. The House Abandon pretty clearly lays out what you need to do so you’re not tossing a dozen things into a parser just to get a result. The flow isn’t broken after getting stuck on a puzzle for so long that you forget you’re wandering a dimly lit abode. And as a game created by an Alien Isolation designer and Co., this team knows how to keep the tension going. You’ll just need to see for yourself how they do it.

The game ends with a promise of the No Code team making more short stories like this, and that’s a promise I want to hold them to. Hopefully we’ll see another one of these around Halloween time…please?

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If you’re curious about The House Abandon, check out the game’s wonderful trailer…

…and go play it here, because there’s no way you don’t want to after watching that.

September 5, 2016
Games of the Month – July 2016

I’m over a month deep into Pokemon GO and still enjoying it quite a bit. BUT: There were actually other games that came out in July! Granted, I may not have played as many of them as usual, but when a worldwide phenomenon is going on I think I can be excused. Just this once.

1. Pokemon GO

Duh. I’m not sure what else I need to say about this one. I’ve met so many cool people just from playing it, and my friends and I go out several times a week to hunt down virtual creatures. The hype has died down a bit, but I still see people playing every single day. It’s great!

2. Monster Hunter Generations

More of the same, but that same is still real, real neat. There’s a few quality of life changes here and there, but this is mostly more of what I loved so much about last year’s Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate. This is my favorite series to zone out and watch TV shows to, which may not seem like the best compliment…but sometimes that’s exactly what I’m looking for. My only gripe is that all of the towns are unlocked from the beginning rather than being unlocked through progression like in last year’s game, but it makes sense since these are all places players of the rest of the series have seen before. And also that I’m not playing right now. (UPDATE: My internet has been out for two weeks so I’ve played so, so much more of this. I think I like it better than MH4U now. Just the added variety of environments and movesets early on have spiced this one up a lot. I’m not how to rate this up against wholly fresh experiences come GOTY time, but just know that this is one to play, even if you’re a series vet.)

3. SEUM: Speedrunners From Hell

I’ll be bringing this one up a lot during Game of the Year talk, I’m sure. I wrote about the free demo last month, and this is just a more polished, much more fleshed out version of that. A fast-paced, first-person speedrunning game about quickly solving a demon obstacle course? Uhhhhhh, yes please.

Honorable Mentions:

Kentucky Route Zero: Act IV – I kind of fell off the KRZ hype train halfway through the 3rd Act. This one’s good from what I played, but still doesn’t hit the highs that I felt as I drove through Kentucky back roads in the first couple of entries. The writing is still top notch, and those entries alone made such a huge impression on me that I’ll definitely play through the series again in time.

Furi – Seems super neat at first, but restarting long-ass fights a dozen times didn’t do a lot to keep me begging for more.

SKULL CHAINZ – THIS SHIT IS RAAAAAWWWWW.

Super Stickman Golf 3 – This game is out. It exists and I wanted you to know. It’s a sequel to the best multiplayer game of all time. Bye.

August 18, 2016
THERE IS A VIDEO GAME CALLED “SKULL CHAINZ”

THE NAME OF THIS VIDEO GAME IS SKULL CHAINZ.

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July 22, 2016