Category: PC

Timespinner – Symphony of the Alright

If you’ve never heard of indie games and really like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, then boy have I got something for you.

Let’s be honest: There might be a few too many devs releasing 2D platformers with pixel art. That’s just a fact of life. Are some of them uninspired? Sure. Is Timespinner the best one? Nope, but I sure had a pleasant weekend with it.

Timespinner is the closest game to Castlevania’s opus since the incredible Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow back in 2003. That doesn’t mean it’s as good, but it suuuuure feels like either one of those games, and you might even confuse it with one of them if you squint hard enough. You run back and forth between a 2D map filled with monsters and upgrades and ledges just a bit higher than your jump and then double jumps. You know exactly what you’re getting here. Oh, also you can stop time but it’s almost useless and comes into play like three times in the whole game.

The best part of Timespinner is its weapon system. Instead of swords and bows, you’re armed with orbs imbued with magic spells, and then you get even cooler spells from there. In my roughly 6 hours it took me to 100% the game and see all of its endings, I ended up with a good dozen or so different spells, and very few of them were useless or not worth seeing. You’ll start off with a basic projectile, then some swords, then lightning powers, and so on. Maybe only twice did I not at least enjoy experimenting with each ability as I found it, as they all offer some unique functionality or are just plain fun to use. For every orb also comes its equivalent super attack that uses mana, and those’re super neat as well. Once you get the gigantic sword slice ability that wipes anything off the screen, you’ll only feel more and more powerful from there.

Timespinner is a Metroidvania-lite if there ever was one. There’s a lot of stuff that’s worth seeing, but it all feels a bit too slight. One of my biggest issues is how samey and forgettable a bunch of the areas are, and that you’ll even begin to notice identical level layouts by the end. I closed in on the end-game and was waiting for the big reveal, SotN style, that maybe I was only seeing the first half before some big twist. And then I watched the credits.

None of this is to say Timespinner is a bad game. It’s not at all. I recommend playing it if you want to see a handful of new tricks that I somehow hadn’t seen in this well worn territory. Pay your 20 bucks, have a solid 5 or 6 hours with it, and then go play Hollow Knight and wonder if the genre can ever recover from being so soundly put to bed.

October 8, 2018
It’s Paper Guy! – Slice, Dice, and Be Real Nice

Are you ready to fill your next fifteen minutes with a helping of pure, unfiltered joy? Well, here he comes… It’s Paper Guy!

It’s Paper Guy is a tiny game that a group of French students submitted as a final project at their university earlier this year. Without knowing much more, I can almost guarantee they passed. You play as the happiest man/boy/guy alive, Paper Guy, as he skips through the forest on his own little adventure. His dark secret, though, is that he can somehow cut through anything around him on a whim. Don’t care for the paper trees? Snip snip. Dog stuck on a leash? Slice that rope; he’s your dog now.

The game consists of a handful of different areas in which you hop and chop your way through some very light puzzles to make the world better for everyone else around you. Help out local office workers, hang out with your new pet, and use your terrible, destructive powers for good.

The game’s aesthetic obviously owes a lot to the Paper Mario games, but it never feels wholly derivative. A pleasant 2D adventure game where you have near complete control over the environment isn’t quite like anything I’ve seen before. It’s Paper Guy! winds up being a combination of clever and wholesome in a way that we really don’t deserve.

If you’re ready to hang out with the happiest guy in town, check out It’s Paper Guy! on its itch.io page.

September 8, 2018
Just Shapes & Beats Is The Rhythm Hell Game I Needed

I wish someone had told me Just Shapes & Beats existed before I stumbled across it a month after release. If you know my taste in games, you’ll know that a weirdly artsy rhythm based bull hell hybrid is going to 100% be up my alley. Just Shapes & Beats nails that combo so hard it’ll be tough to see anybody else even give it a shot. As I played the first hour of Shapes and Beats, I had a bigger smile on my face than from any other game this year. It’s a game that just exudes pure joy even in the face of some surprisingly difficult challenges. I loved every minute.

It plays out like an interactive music video, your tiny little character moves and dashes around the screen avoiding pink obstacles that move in tune with the music. Levels vary wildly, from false 3D effects of bullets spinning around, to caverns filled with musical stalactites. As short as the game is, it crams so much variety into its two or three hours of dubstep and electronica tracks that I was ready to hop right back in as soon as it was done. Luckily, there’s a challenge mode where that exact option is available.

I understand a the main criticism I’ve seen thus far: yes, some of the obstacles and attacks are completely unfair, untelegraphed, and unacceptable in such an otherwise polished game. You have more health than you need for the most part, and I just take the damage from dumb trial-and-error attacks as they come, and remember to avoid them next time if I need to. Moments where damage is almost unavoidable are luckily few and far between, but I understand if those moments turn you off from the experience.

I know it’s a cliche to say a game is like X meets X, but this is one time where it felt like such a strange combination that I needed to get it off my chest. Imagine if the gameplay from Child of Eden and the emotional sincerity of Undertale were rolled into one video game, and you’ll have a slight understanding of the weirdness that this game pokes at by the time the credits roll.

Just Shapes & Beats is a game that I feel very few people are going to play. That sucks. It’s without a doubt the most unique game I’ve played this year, and pretty darn close to my favorite game of 2018. Go check it out!

July 29, 2018
Enter The Gungeon Is Sprinting Toward the Roguelike Throne

Enter the Gungeon may have come out in 2016, but 2018 is the year that it finally became that game it was meant to be all along. I played Gungeon back during launch week and found it to be a decent Binding of Isaac riff, but one in need of several improvements if it meant to aim for the rougelike throne. While I still think Isaac is my favorite of the two, Enter the Gungeon’s path of updates over the last few years have made quite a strong argument that Isaac isn’t the only game in town anymore.

After returning to the game two years later with waaaaaaay more content than was there during the initial release, I’d be hard pressed to say that Enter the Gungeon is just an inferior copy. They’re both the current kings of the roguelike genre, and it’s pretty much just up to taste as to which you enjoy more.

If you, like me, tossed Enter the Gungeon to the side as some throwaway toy back in 2016… there really hasn’t been a better time to see why both of us were so, so, wrong.

First off, if you’re unfamiliar with the genre, it goes like this: You run around and dodge scary enemies, manage a small inventory and look for sweet items. You get more powerful the longer that you survive, but as soon as you bite it, you’re all done and have to start over again. You do make small bits of permanent progress by achieving certain tasks so you’re never totally set to square zero. However, if you’re not into mastering a difficult game again and again, this might not be the thing for you. For everyone else, let’s talk about what’s new.

With the most recent Advanced Gungeons & Draguns update, a slew of new content has been released, including a new floor, new bosses, OVER 300 SYNERGIES BETWEEN WEAPONS AND ITEMS, new enemies, new modes, and more stuff that I’m probably forgetting. If you were put off by Gungeon’s individual runs not being as varied as Isaac’s, this is the patch you’ve been waiting for.

A rough estimate I’ve thrown around is that there’s at least double the amount of stuff to find and do in Enter the Gungeon 2.0 when compared to 1.0. Even just the small tweaks to the game speed and smoothing out a few rough edges here and there make Gungeon in 2018 feel almost like a sequel to developer Dodge Roll’s freshman effort. Suffice it to say, I’ll be paying my share of attention to anything they decide to work on next.

Dodge Roll also put this update out for FREE, which is ridiculous if you’re one of the several thousand fans following this update’s development.

Long story short: if you’ve been itching to hop into the roguelike genre or just want another game to play in between Isaac runs, Enter the Gungeon should absolutely be your next stop.

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I can’t believe I got through this whole post without making a bullet heaven joke.

Oh.

July 29, 2018
Super Weekend Mode – Tough Love

Don’t be fooled by the cute dancing girl on the title screen. Super Weekend Mode isn’t playing around. You’re going to die a lot in this game; those skulls on the backdrop aren’t just for show.

Super Weekend Mode exists as some kind of crossbreed between Galaga and Rock Band. You control two paddles which each can be moved between two positions. You’ll swap them around to collect hearts, shoot at the boss, and avoid obstacles that mean you harm.

The thing is, though, that the stuff coming at you moves fast and sometimes unpredictably. As you’re frantically switching your two columns around collecting hearts and fire beams at the boss, skulls and enemies are headed towards you. If you don’t quickly dodge out of the way, your screen size shrinks, giving you less room to see what the next barrage of incoming objects will be.

This is where I think Super Weekend Mode is a bit too difficult. I’m fine with the fast switching, even though some of the objects tend to swap lanes with barely a half-second to process and react to them, but making the game harder when you play poorly seems unbalanced. This leads to “the poor get poorer” effect of being hit a couple of times, having a very tiny window to see the action, and having little other option than to just give up and try again from the (much easier) beginning.

Super Weekend Mode feels like an old school arcade game from top to bottom. The chiptune tracks feel authentic and as poppy as they ever were. The hectic vibes beg for you to play just one more round, and the second paddle can even be controlled by another player huddled around the same screen as you.

But the downsides of arcades, namely the quarter-munching, is alive and well too. You’re given three lives and you’re out. No matter how many of the seven stages you’ve completed, there’s no continuing. I typically don’t mind this, but some of the deaths feel a bit cheap. (When the LEVEL UP text appears on-screen, it completely obscures the action and almost always leads to a death!) The developer page also kindly informs you right away that the difficulty increases even if you do well on any particular stage. Whether or not you’re succeeding, the game is determined to take you down as quick as possible.

I’m all for difficulty in games, but feeling fair is an important aspect in keeping players coming back. I’m still really enjoying my time with Super Weekend Mode, but it just feels like it’s a few small updates from being an instant recommendation.

If you’re up for some punishing pew-pewing, check out Super Weekend Mode on its itch.io page.

March 7, 2018
JUMPGRID is a Punishing, Heart-Pounding Puzzler

JUMPGRID is a game of aggression. Right there in the all-caps title it lets you know that it means business. Death comes fast and often, and the electronic soundtrack never stomps thumping to mourn. Instead, a violently flashing screen and a screech greet you at every end. It’s reminiscent of Super Hexagon, in that you’re the only thing keeping the party’s pace down. You have to move, and you better move fast.

In JUMPGRID, you’re tasked with hopping between 9 dots on a grid. Like this:

You’re the glowy thing in the middle, and you can jump to any of the ones directly across from you, i.e., up, down, left, or right. Once you dodge whatever obstacles are flying through the grid and collect all nine green pieces, a warp hole to the next level opens up in the center and you hop along from there. Doesn’t sound too bad, huh?

Well… it gets rough. After a dozen or so screens, JUMPGRID feels like it’s just getting started. Very specific sequences of jumps have to be performed at exact times in order to collect all the shards and make the warp. Some are time limited, others have you follow a fast-moving maze and collect shards in order, and others just send way too much at your way to comprehend until you’re at least a handful of deaths in. You’ll respawn immediately though with every mistake, giving the game more than a passing resemblance to any number of precision platformers.

https://youtu.be/Ag-xI72ReUA

If you’re ready to make the jump, give JUMPGRID a shot on Ian Maclarty’s itch.io page.

March 6, 2018