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Game Thoughts: The Case of the Golden Idol

I beat The Case of the Golden Idol the other day, and you should absolutely purchase and play it. It's fantastic.

The gnarly pixel visuals, the absurd scenarios, and the wonderful environmental storytelling are all top-notch. The puzzles and related mechanics are perfectly executed, and the way each story tied into the next was thoroughly satisfying.

I must have audibly said "OHHH" out loud half a dozen times over the course of the ~100 minutes it took to finish from start to epilogue, as the puzzles and point-and-click environments are designed with many revelations and "everything makes sense now" moments.

If you liked Obra Dinn, this is a mandatory purchase. (You haven't played Obra Dinn that's also a mandatory purchase FYI).

The only complaint I have is it's too short. That's not a complaint that takes away from the game, I just wanted more. There's a DLC out but it's not cheap, and while I'm confident it will be worth the money I'm going to wait and see if they release more DLC first so I can get (and play) them all at once. (I want another meal, not snacks!)

Also, the game was built with Godot, so that's a bonus cool fact!

Game Thoughts: Tunic

About a half hour ago I beat the "bad" ending of Tunic, a cute snes-zelda-esque game with a cute fox that gets way too hard. (mild spoilers)

I'm not sure I liked this game very much as a whole. There was about a 2 hour window window between the "oh this is just a snes zelda clone" and "ok I remember why that's not a bad thing", and then a nice handful of hours where I really enjoyed the game and what it was offering in terms of lore and gameplay... then the game decided it was time to get serious and cranked the difficulty to 200.

I have a very real skill ceiling when it comes to action-y parts of games, and I have neither the time nor the patience to "git gud". "Souls" games are essentially a watch-only thing for me, and Tunic delved just a little too far into that realm after a point. If you like dodge-rolling and dying a lot and re-treading then great; if you don't it can get extremely tiresome extremely quickly.

Thankfully, the game comes with some accessibility settings that make it easier. These range from disabling stamina depletion (allowing for infinite shield and dodge), to completely disabling death. I am fully willing to admit that I got to a point where I just flipped on invincibility so I could cruise through the rest of game -- and even then there was an enemy I had trouble beating.

A lot of wording online says to go into Tunic blind, comparing it to things like The Outer Wild. While the game has some mysterious puzzles and interesting revelations as you peel back the layers, it wasn't that for me. Outer wilds left me breathless, while Tunic just left me irritated.

After getting the bad ending I did a bit of research into getting the good one, and I was honestly annoyed even reading the solutions, so there was no way I was going to actively dothem. I just watched the other ending online; I think the kind of late-game and meta- puzzles that Tunic offers is for a different breed of puzzle-enjoyer than I.

I will say, the whole manual-page-collecting mechanic was very endearing and cleverly implemented, and the game looked and played wonderfully, the dark elements were unexpected and great. There was a lot that I liked in Tunic, but I don't think the good outweighed the frustrating for me.

Game Thoughts: The Machine

I need to tell you about The Machine, an unlicensed Gameboy/Color game released in 2022 that's absolutely one of the best games that's ever released for the console (IMO). this post will contain medium-rare spoilers.

When I booted up the demo for this game, I was thinking it'd be the usual gameboystudio fare; a quick retro romp that I'd quickly put down after a little fun. It opens with a shot of "The Machine" itself, and we zoom into a classroom where you promptly fail the "Test that will determine the rest of your life", and are subsequently invited to join the police force by your uncle, because he also failed the test in his day due to cheating.

The Machine is filled to the brim with tongue-in-cheek humor that had me glowing the entire way through. Its the kinda simple stuff that you really didn't see in most gameboy games from the era they were relevant. Gameboy games were for kids -- they might be scary or serious or gory or funny, but they certainly didn't have tongue-in-cheek social commentary. The Machine is a gameboy game for adults.

By the time I'd started my job at a factory, rode the subway car, and got a quick look at the inner workings of the machine I was completely hooked on the game. I purchased a ROM to play the whole thing on my phone, and would later go on to purchase a physical copy to display on my shelf. This easily one of the best things I've played this year -- I was playing the new Zelda game at around the same time, and would continuously put that down in order to do play a run through of The Machine.

Each playthrough is short -- my first run had me in a factory, subsequently joining a union, and dealing with the fallout in about 2 hours. I'm normally one to not replay games when I can avoid it, but I dove right back in to try my hand at being a police officer. Then again, to see what would happen if I ditched my job, or took up some shady offers, or chose NOT to join the union.

Every little choice you make in this game has delightful consequences, and I was shocked at how much variety they managed to pack into the relatively little memory gameboy cartridges provide. I murdered people, covered up crimes, sold drugs, ran for chancellor, did remarkable good and unspeakable evil just to see what kind of outcomes they thought of for this combination. I kept coming back, and each time I couldn't put it down until I saw the credits message: "The Machine Grinds On!"

That simple message of inevitability -- that all your actions had no effect on the marching on of the machine -- is such a poignant punctuation at the end of each playthrough. Your attempts to change things are so frequently futile, but it's always worth trying again.

I had more fun than I possibly imagined I would. For such a small, unassuming game it is packed to the brim with content and humour. It's a testament to gameboystudio as a tool for development, and I think more people should give it a try. Writing about it now, a month or so after being done with the game, I feel again the itch to pick it up to try to do things just a little bit differently and revisit the levels of the machine that I now know so well.

The Machine Grinds On~

Game Thoughts: Citizen Sleeper

I bought Citizen Sleeper during a recent Steam sale -- I wasn't actually intending on doing a full playthrough, but wanted to check it out since it had some good reviews.

I subsequently lost 3 nights of sleep to the game's ingenious game loop and gorgeous character portraits. This game is fantastic.

The game plays out as half-visual novel (most of the "stuff" that happens just happens in text form) and half progress-quest where you literally just make some progress bars count up while others count down automatically day over day.

And it works! The developers somehow trimmed all of the fat out of the typical roleplaying paradigm, distilling common game mechanics to their purest form -- after all, what is an RPG when you pull back the veneer? You'll find it is, in fact, simply doing actions to progress to the next story beat.

Everything's balanced out so that you're simultaneously trying to keep your character alive while progressing several story threads -- each action you take is resolved by consuming one of 5 dice rolled at the start of the day. The longer you go between topping up your character's meds, the less dice/actions you get per day, applying even more pressure.

In between the progress bars you dictate your character's future and the future of the station you're on. You are a "sleeper" -- a humanoid cyborg (there's more to it than that, but I'll gloss over the details) fleeing the company that owns you. You find yourself on The Eye, a station in political and technical flux, and must eke out a living or find a means of escaping.

I was so drawn into this story I couldn't put the game down. I fell in love with the characters (the excellent portraits help), their stories, and The Eye with all it's grit and problems. The progress bars stopped being progress bars and became storytelling mechanisms, incentives, panic-inducing countdowns to dire events.

I do have to say I'm very glad that I got the game late in its life, as if the game had ended at one of the endings offered to me through the main campaign I would have been very disappointed. Fortunately, the game currently comes with 3 expansions (Flux, Refuge, Purge) which provide an extremely satisfying ending that ties up much of the loose ends of the game.

I honestly don't know how they actually made it happen, but all the small choices I had made throughout the campaign and particular characters I had liked and interacted with all pieced together perfectly in the finale. I had tears rolling with the credits -- definitely what I expected from progress bars!

I won't be revisiting the game for a second playthrough because I'm completely satisfied with the ending I got in the first run. I will, however, be keeping an eagre eye on the upcoming sequel.

This game taught me a lot about making magic happen with very little, and I hope I can take those lessons with me into my own eventual works!

Book Thoughts: Ancillary Justice

I finished Ancillary Justice the other day, a Sci-Fi book that's been on my reading list since it snagged a Hugo back in 2014

The premise is fantastic -- the protagonist is a vengeful warship AI bound to a single body, but accustomed to several hundred (plus ship sensors and bio sensors on soldiers). On their journey they make some very human relationships.

For once I honestly have nothing to complain about with this one. It was smart, funny, empathetic and interesting. The author's storytelling and setup was great, the universe was compelling, the goals were clear once announced. The character development was also great, and the whole everyone-is-a-she thing definitely did some interesting things to reader perception.

I'm really happy where book one in the series ended and I've read that the later books are a little slow, so I may just treat this one as a one-off happily-ever-after and move to some other interesting items.

Highly recommended; that Hugo guy knows what he's doing when it comes to picking books.

Game Thoughts: Final Fantasy XV [INC]

I don't know how big of a Final Fantasy fan I technically am. On one hand, Final Fantasy 7-10 (and tactics) were a huge part of defining my childhood, and what set me on the course for being a lifelong videogame enjoyer. On the other hand, I haven't really enjoyed a Final Fantasy game since 10 with the exception of FF7R.

With Final Fantasy 16 on the horizon (far on the horizon as I don't think I want to buy a PS5), I thought it would be fun to take another stab at Final Fantasy 15, which I had previously played and quit around the point where you meet Dino-the-shitty-gem-quest-giver. (I hate Dino btw).

This time, I went in by first watching the movie as well as the Brotherhood anime -- both of which weren't great, but definitely added some nuance and backstory to the characters and setting. This had me more attached to our band of boys, but definitely could have just been stuff that was included in-game. I honestly would have loved some more story and character building in the game.

I tried really hard to like this title, and genuinely enjoyed the interactions and dynamics between the boys in the main party. They nailed that. The combat was also fairly fun and I generally liked playing in the presented world despite it being populated by only 16 non-generic characters, the rest being random faceless npcs or store clerks.

Unfortunately, the holes in the story were unacceptably bad. Now, I expect some unhinged incomprehensible shit to go down -- this is a Final Fantasy game -- but this was a pathetic showing that frequently threw me out of immersion so hard I got whiplash.

Game Thoughts: The House in Fata Morgana

I finally got to the end of The House in Fata Morgana on Friday; a widely celebrated visual novel about love and tragedy and a big ol' house with a witch.

It was a good visual novel with a pretty wild story that definitely cranks the tragedy (read: fucked-up-ness) to 11 while still keeping you attached to the main characters. I'd definitely recommend it to those into visual novels that want to avoid the harem/smutty titles that tend to crowd the space.

That said, it's a great visual novel, not absolutely not actual novel quality. Going into it I had unrealistic expectations of this being literature-grade writing based on the reviews, and it most certainly wasn't that. Despite the interesting threads and mysteries running through this story, it has a lot of dips in quality and questionable design decisions throughout.

Be forewarned that this is a 30+ hour long "game" that consists almost entirely of dialogue with no gameplay elements other than a handful of choices that either continue the story or terminate immediately with a bad ending. That is, there aren't any "branches" to be found in this tale.

If you're new to visual novels I definitely recommend starting with something like "The Nonary Games" or "Raging Loop" to get a feel for the medium before trying to swallow this one!

(note, expand post for detailed thoughts on game. Spoils basically everything, won't make sense if you haven't played)

Thoughts: Reclaiming Time

I sit here now after our first full week in the new apartment, sweating profusely as the building's AC won't be activated until May and we've had a handful of uncharacteristically hot days.

For nearly a month now I feel that I've accomplished nothing. Strangely, looking at how my has been spent I've actually accomplished quite a bit -- the move went well, I've been seeing friends, exploring the city with my dog and partner, building tools at work and by most metrics getting a lot of shit done... but the part of me I compartmentalize away and consider "mine" hasn't had much time to do stuff lately, and its the things I finish (books, games, projects) in that time that make me really feelaccomplished.

I think maybe it's strange that I don't include partner activities or social hangouts part of "my" time, as these are often times spent doing things I want to do with people I love to do stuff with. I think there's just a special fulfillment that comes from doing a thing entirely of your own will to satisfy an entirely personal desire: writing characters for a game I'll never make, playing a game from deep in my backlog, practicing drawing, reading detailed tutorials/articles on shit I'll probably never need to know.

The part that sucks about this is I've had lots of opportunity for my own time lately, but my head's just been distracted this past month. The spans of time I could have claimed were instead drained by social media and watching mindless youtube shorts. I've been turning off instead of taking the reins and doing shit.

Even walking, --an activity I usually categorize as "my" time since I can dig into audiobooks -- hasn't been mine lately, as background process of 'settling in' has been eating up all available bandwidth.

I've caught myself now, though, and am finally feeling somewhat settled in to the new place. Pushing myself to sit down at my laptop and introspect (instead of doom-scrolling) is what I needed to reboot my head and see all the opportunities I've been missing to do my own thing.

With nothing planned for tomorrow, I think I'm going to try stealing the whole day.

Thoughts: Moving

Last weekend my partner and I went to take a look at a couple of apartments. Theoretically this was just to take a look at what kind of stuff was available, but we found something we really liked and pulled the trigger a whole month earlier than planned.

As a result, I'm in shambles. I'm the kind of person who tends to fret about details when stuff gets time-sensitive, so organizing a move and all of the timeboxed to-dos like purchasing cheques (10 day delivery time, really?), prepping deposits, hooking up utilities and planning a move are all things that aren't difficult but their time sensitivity turns me into a fidgety mess. The only thing that hits me worse is airports.

Of course, this fretting translates into reduced functionality at work, which pushes my deadlines and, in turn, increases anxiety. The vicious anxious cycle

These things have translated into falling off what was starting to be a successful diet (stress eating) and budding workout habit (replaced with pacing, which is at least still moving). I've also essentially abandoned my side projects for the time being as I need to spend the creative focus I still have on keeping pace with work stuff.

And so, I think, it is time to step back and take a breath. Write a little blog post to help me orient myself and align my expectations with the coming changes to lifestyle. Talk myself out of the panic, if you will.

With the move I will transition once again to a vagabond lifestyle, existing half of the time with my partner in our new apartment, and half the time with my family in my quiet-town home close to my work. This will translate to more time in transit, which is an excellent time to focus on more audiobooks. In the past this travel time (when not jammed with traffic) was some of my favorite alone time to really dig in to good books, so I'll be getting that back.

Our increased rent and more expensive city lifestyle is going to translate into less money for my more costly hobbies. Video game collecting, trading card games, and purchasing obscenely expensive pens and inks are probably all out for the forseeable future. However, in the last few years I've established a very large backlog of both retro and modern games, and a very robust collection of fancy pens, papers, and inks. Now I've got more incentive to play all the games I've already got and spend more time writing with the pens and inks I love so much.

The stress I'm currently going through is preventing me from focusing on my game-making hobby and I'm not finding joy in it currently. I just end up pacing and playing games and ripping through time on youtube and social media sites. This, however, is a temporary state, and I will eventually settle and once again crave the satisfaction of making things. I should use this as an opportunity to get through more of my backlog. Read more books and play more games on my must-play list. Use this as an excuse to break out my retro handhelds and get to games I may never have made time for.

As for the diet? Fuck it I'll have time for that later. If I spend the next 3 weeks undoing the good I did in the last 3 so be it. The success I had was the proof I needed that I've "still got it" and can seriously and consistently cut back on the food and move more. I can pick up those pieces once I've re-established a comfortable rhythm.

And work I need to stress about less. Nothing is broken and I work in the public sector. My deadlines are to meet expectations, not profit margins, and the occasional lull in productivity can be forgiven by talking honestly with stakeholders.

So things aren't so bad. Life isn't over with this move, it's just changing. Just because I like the way things are now doesn't mean they won't be better after the change -- after all, where I am now is the result of just such a change in the past which I'm sure I was loathe to make at the time.

Book Thoughts: Vagabonds

I also finished the audiobook of Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang over the weekend; a story about a colonized and independent Mars experiencing growing pains. Big spoilers ahead.