#Steam
2023年9月の #HumbleChoice
Tiny Tinaはシーズンパス付きの豪華版なのマジかってくらい一点豪華主義な内容
SkyrimのModをスタンドアロンでリメイクしたThe Forgotten Cityも遊んでみてほしいね

It's that time again - Blaugust Reviews the August 2023 Humble Choice. Time is running out if you wanted to pause!

#Blaugust2023 #NerdGirlThoughts #HumbleChoice #IndieGames

http://nerdgirlthoughts.game.blog/2023/08/28/blaugust-reviews-humble-choice-august-2023-edition/

After initially decided it wasn't for me, I take a second quick look at SuchART, one of the games in the August 2023 Humble Choice.

#Blaugust2023 #NerdGirlThoughts #IndieGames #HumbleChoice

http://nerdgirlthoughts.game.blog/2023/08/25/quick-look-suchart-genius-artist-simulator-humble-choice-august-2023-edition/

Today I take a quick look at Hot Brass, which occupies the not-so-coveted 8th spot in the August Humble Choice.

#Blaugust2023 #HumbleChoice #NerdGirlThoughts #IndieGames

http://nerdgirlthoughts.game.blog/2023/08/17/quick-look-hot-brass-humble-choice-august-2023-edition/

August 12, 2023 - Day 224 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 244

Game: Hot Brass

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Feb 17, 2021
Library Date: Aug 4, 2023
Unplayed: 8d
Playtime: 16m

Hot Brass is the final game in this month's Humble Choice bundle, and answers the question, "What if Rainbow Six Siege was a top-down game about SWAT cops?"

I'll start out with saying I'm wary about reviewing this, purely on the basis of it being by a local Melbourne developer, and if I rip it to shreds, I feel like there's a chance that I probably know someone who knows someone.

However, I need to get this out of the way. I cognitively understand why "ACAB" is a thing, yet I still struggle to reconcile it personally with some people I know who are very much C, but very much not B.

However, one cannot get away from the fact that SWAT teams are militarised police, and Hot Brass is a SWAT team simulator, so TCAB.

On a purely gameplay front, I wasn't quite sure how to make sense of the game, but a couple of minutes of the tutorial and I was ready to jump ahead and into the game.

It's much the same as most first or third-person shooters: WASD movement, CTRL to crouch, point weapons with mouse. Space to sprint is an odd choice, though. 1 & 2 to switch between primary & secondary, 3 & 4 for flashbang & door breach charge.

Right-click to yell at a non-compliant suspect... F to tase a suspect into compliance, E to handcuff a compliant suspect...

...it got ugly quickly.

I tried to just play without thinking about it too much, but I couldn't compartmentalise.

I've lived with depression and anxiety for most of my adult life, and my late Dx for autism explained a lot of that. I'm trans.

I'm now painfully aware in a way that I wasn't when I was younger that there are several different aspects of my identity in which an encounter with police could end badly for me, and I still have the privilege that comes from being white and educated.

I'm not Breonna Taylor, or Elijah McClain, or Eric Parsa, or Maddie Hoffman, or Clare Nowland. These names and more are burned into my brain, countering the lifelong messaging that the police are there to protect me.

As I breach the door in the first mission, then start yelling at someone expressing thanks that the police have arrived, followed by handcuffing them, it's all a bit too visceral, even as a top-down game with my character represented by a circle with a MP5 icon. I'm not having fun.

The mechanics of the game are well executed, and on a purely technical level, it seems like a good game. Some of the illustrations in the loading screens are... I can see a lot of effort and love went into them, and I'll leave it there.

Unfortunately, I can't enjoy playing as a cop; Hot Brass is:

2: Meh

#HotBrass #TopDown #Shooter #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

If you have ever had issue with motion sickness due to low FOV - or even if you haven't - you might want to skip over Arcade Paradise entirely.

#Blaugust2023 #NerdGirlThoughts #HumbleChoice #IndieGames

http://nerdgirlthoughts.game.blog/2023/08/11/quick-look-arcade-paradise-humble-choice-august-2023-edition/

August 11, 2023 - Day 223 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 243

Game: SuchART

Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 13, 2022
Library Date: Aug 4, 2023
Unplayed: 7d
Playtime: 25m

Tin Can is game number seven in this month's Humble Choice bundle, and answers the question, "What if Breathedge, but serious?"

Tin Can is a first-person space survival sim. Your goal is to survive as long as possible in real time.

The tutorial walks you (an on-board janitor) through the basic systems of the escape pod through a set of cute over-the-radio interactions with an on-board engineer who has to be in two places at once, and seconds you a few times to run through some repairs, then diagnostics, then troubleshooting.

Then the ship starts to explode, and suddenly you need to be in that escape pod.

You have a handful of spare parts, a technical manual, and a few minutes to solve whatever problem the escape pod is experiencing before that problem kills you.

The game tells you upfront that you will die. A lot.

I wouldn't describe it as fun, per se; it's stressful, but very engaging.

With only one game left in this month's bundle, I'm genuinely surprised at the number of bangers this time around.

If you don't already own the games I reckon you can't go wrong dropping AUD$17 on the bundle, even if the final game turns out to be a fizzer.

Tin Can is:

4: Good

#TinCan #FirstPerson #Survival #Simulation #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 10, 2023 - Day 222 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 242

Game: SuchART

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 14, 2022
Library Date: Aug 4, 2023
Unplayed: 6d
Playtime: 1h44m

Game number six: SuchART.

I figured this might be the game where I sigh, and force myself to 15 minutes and write my little review.

Almost two hours later...

Conceptually, this game is much like Passpartout: The Starving Artist that really surprised me back in January.

Instead of a humble garage in Paris, you find yourself in a future where all art is created by robots, and realising the dead end of this, real live artists are being sponsored to create real art, with real paints and canvases...

...based on a space station.

It's a cute twist. You're supplied with everything required to make basic art, and you can paint commissions or just create paintings and sell them in the "marketplace" (no other players required).

My first commission was a request for a unicorn from my sister.

It was a very bad unicorn. She loved it. Of course.

You can pretty much grind out anything, and it will be accepted and loved by those who commissioned it.

White polar bear in a snowstorm doesn't cut it though.

You have to put *something* on the canvas.

I kept painting, and churning out crap to complete quests and level up. It was kind of fun, and a chill way to kill some time.

Then... I saw something. An idea. An actual idea. In fiddling around with the in-game tools, something unlocked, and I found myself frantically grabbing paints and rollers and brushes, and a water pistol filled with paint, and *creating*.

When I was done, I sat back in my chair, and just loved that thing I'd created.

SuchART is:

5: Excellent

#SuchART #FirstPerson #Art #Simulation #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 9, 2023 - Day 221 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 241

Game: Arcade Paradise

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 11, 2022
Library Date: Aug 4, 2023
Unplayed: 5d
Playtime: 54m

There comes a time in every monthly Humble Bundle where you hit the cruft. The games they chose to pad out the bundle to eight games.

...and so we come to Arcade Paradise, game number five.

This is not that game.

I really didn't expect much of this from the title. The apparent love of retro games by indie devs is lost on me, and going on the name and the artwork, I made the assumption that this was going to be something a la Capcom's "Arcade Stadium" with a bunch of retro-styled games, and maybe some vague narrative thread to string them together.

Having just finished re-assembling my PC at 11:45pm, I figured I'd put in my 15 minutes and write the review later.

The game intro didn't do much to assuage my fears. A bunch of hand-drawn animated graphics. Not *badly* done, but I've been burned before.

The intro ends, and the screen morphs into... full first-person high resolution 3D.

*blink* wut.

This is a pleasant surprise.

As it turns out, Arcade Paradise is a love letter to retro arcade games, wrapped in a business sim.

As 19yo college dropout Ashley, you've been handed the keys to one of your father's run-down laundromats, in the hope that you'll "make something" of yourself.

The game opens with you dropped off by the bus in front of said laundromat, with a series of answering machine messages from your father telling you each step of managing the laundromat.

Hope you don't mind doing laundry, kid. There's a lot of it to do. There's also cleaning, garbage collection, maintenance, and emptying coin hoppers.

Oh, and there are a couple of arcade machines in the back room.

This is the heart of the narrative. Yes, you need to do all that stuff in the laundromat, working long days, to earn money... so that you can afford to buy more arcade machines, and prove to dad that there's more to life than just the grind of doing laundry.

I was hooked, and am tired this morning as a result.

There are some things that frustrate me about the gameplay. The "opening the safe" process gets old *very* quickly. The inability to interact with the garbage piled outside the laundromat just annoys me.

I WANT TO CLEAN IT UP. There are empty vending machines that I want to fill, and cannot interact with. I don't just want to build the arcade, I also want to clean up and renovate the laundromat, but that's a "me" thing.

Ironically, you can also play the arcade games themselves, something that just doesn't grab me at all, but that's OK by me.

In a completely unexpected twist, Arcade Paradise is:

4: Good

#ArcadeParadise #FirstPerson #Simulation #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 8, 2023 - Day 220 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 240

Game: Trek to Yomi

Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 5, 2022
Library Date: Aug 4, 2023
Unplayed: 4d
Playtime: 29m

Trek to Yomi is a side-scrolling action game, where you play as a samurai set on vengeance.

Two days in a row, two sword-based action games, and they could not be more different.

There is an elegance to a katana that's just not there with a broadsword, and comparing these two games side by side is eye-opening.

The look of Trek to Yomi took me by surprise. It's set in black and white, as if it was a Kurosawa film (with film effects and everything). While it's technically side-scrolling, the opening tutorial of the game has you walking towards and away from the camera in the Z-axis as well, giving the game a beautiful sense of three dimensions.

The sound is lush and gorgeous, and the controls are intuitive. There aren't a dozen different combinations to remember, just a few, which makes the swordplay come to life. I very quickly found myself instinctively weaving and blocking, rotating to face another enemy and seeing him off.

I'd seen Trek to Yomi mentioned a few times since it was released, but the idea of playing a game in black and white as an Edo period samurai didn't grab me at all.

Yet as soon as I'm finished writing this review, I'm going back to play some more.

Trek to Yomi is:

5: Excellent

#TrekToYomi #SideScroller #Samurai #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 7, 2023 - Day 219 - RePlay Review
Total RePlays: 7

Game: Road 96

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 16, 2021
Library Date: Nov 16, 2021
Playtime: 40m (Total: 3h)

Road 96 is a cel-shaded procedurally generated first-person adventure RPG set in a vaguely midwest alt-American quasi-dictatorship in the summer of 1996.

It is the third game in the August Humble Choice bundle, and the second of the games that I already owned, having bought it three months after it came out.

You play a succession of teenaged runaways attempting to escape cross-country by whatever means possible to reach the titular Road 96, the one route out of the country.

As you make each journey, you encounter a cast of characters, slowly piecing together their backstories as you make each journey.

Each journey can end in arrest, or (apparently) death, or escape.

So far, my first two chapters have resulted in being arrested each time, so at least I'm not dead?

The soundtrack is quite wonderful, and I find the storyline quite moving.

Between this and Disco Elysium, I think either game justifies this month's bundle, but if you don't have either, it's a definite buy. Even if you do end up with Chivalry II as well.

Road 96 is:

5: Excellent

#Road96 #FirstPerson #Adventure #RPG #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #RePlay

#Steam
2023年8月の #HumbleChoice
所有済みは3しかないから契約してもいいかも
Chivalry 2は今も人いるんか？と思い調べてみたが、同接上2k下1kでまぁなんとか遊べるかも
Trek to YomiはGame Passでプレイしたが、唇だけ動いて歯が動かなかった不気味なカットシーンは直っているだろうか…

Also, regardless of whether or not you are Blaugusting, if you blog about gaming, and you want to participate in the group review of this month's Humble Choice - hit me up and let me know which game(s) you plan to write about.

https://www.humblebundle.com/membership/home

#Blaugust2023 #HumbleChoice

I got Temtem as a part of this month's Humble Choice. After several hours of playing, it's pretty fun so far. It scratches a particular gaming itch. I'm still in the early game, but there's a decent chance I'll actually keep with it long enough to complete the main story. #gaming #temtem #humblechoice

There's just a few more days to subscribe to Humble Choice if you want to get your hands on the July Bundle - let us help you decide!

#HumbleChoice #IndieGames #Blogging #NerdGirlThoughts

http://nerdgirlthoughts.game.blog/2023/07/27/blaugust-reviews-humble-choice-july-2023-edition/

July 26, 2023 - Day 207 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 226

Game: Samudra

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 29, 2021
Library Date: Mar 14, 2023
Unplayed: 134d (4m12d)
Playtime: 21m

Samudra is a sideways scrolling platformer-puzzler set in an underwater world that's riven by pollution.

As the game opens, a young child dressed in a Kruegeresque oversized jumper, shorts, sneakers, and... a diving bell... is sinking to the bottom of the ocean. The further they fall, the worse the pollution becomes, until they finally hit the seabed.

This is a gorgeous game. The graphics look hand-drawn. The lighting effects are wonderful.

Unfortunately, Samudra is beautifully boring with a side-order of frustrating.

The controls are simple: WASD (or controller thumbstick), and space (or button A) for actions.

As you slowly run across the ocean floor -because you're underwater, wearing a diving bell, without any oxygen hose- you will encounter things that trigger a speech bubble containing an icon above your head. There are literally no instructions. Even the "Controls" in the menu says "You have one button. This action button."

Your job is to work out exactly what the hell you're supposed to do, and how... because most of the time, the action button does *nothing*. Until it does. There's no real indication that it's become usable, so I spent a lot of time just mashing it hoping it might suddenly do something.

You can't jump... unless you can. You can't interact with things... unless you can. The game is rendered in a lot of dark, underseas tones, with much of the junk littering the ocean floor rendered in various shades of white.

It turns out there are indicators built into the environment for when actions are available... and they're also white.

Unless they're not available yet, in which case they're a slightly different shade of white.

But it's a 2D sideways-scrolling platformer, so at least that's not confusing. Except when it is.

I found myself standing on top of a crate; jumping down from the crate triggers a quick time event. You have to jump down. There's nowhere else to go. As you land on top of the slope built out of shipping containers, one hurtles down the slope towards you from the right of the screen.

You can't outrun it. You can't jump out of the way. Splat. Splat. Splat. Splat. I couldn't find any way to avoid it. In frustration I alt-tabbed out to find a walkthrough.

It turns out that you need to run *towards* the shipping container, and then use the action button to step into a shadowed nook... in the Z axis.

I have no idea what I'm meant to be doing, but worse still, no idea why. Unfortunately, the beautiful atmosphere and look of this game does not compensate for the lack of fun.

Samudra is:

2: Meh

#Samudra #2D #Platformer #Puzzler #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

July 25, 2023 - Day 206 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 225

Game: Yakuza 4 Remastered

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jan 29, 2021
Library Date: Jul 18, 2023
Unplayed: 7d
Playtime: 44m

This is how July's Humble Choice Bundle ends, not with a bang, but a deep sigh.

Yakuza 4 Remastered, is the ... fourth... game in the Yakuza/Like A Dragon franchise. Yakuza has a complicated history. There's a release order, and a chronological order, and this was kind of what I was worried when trying to decide whether to play Yakuza 4.

Apparently, the generally agreed-upon "best" way to play the Yakuza games is according to the chronological story starting with Yakuza 0, and being dropped straight into Yakuza 4 without the backstory did make it a bit... "Huh?"

I have trouble categorising this game, due to a lack of experience to this style of game. Even though my playtime was 44 minutes, I feel like most of that was cutscenes telling the story. It feels a lot like a playable movie, although it seems like technically it's a third-person action-adventure.

Seeing that I have Yakuza 0, looks like I might need to head back to the start.

So far, Yakuza 4 Remastered is:

3: OK

#Yakuza4 #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

July 24, 2023 - Day 205 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 224

Game: Ozymandias

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Apr 17, 2020
Library Date: Jul 18, 2023
Unplayed: 6d
Playtime: 74m

Another day, another late review.

I'm on call this week, which means that it's a little bit trickier to fit in a game and a review, and I had to write yesterday's review. I had enough time to squeeze in 15mins of the second last game in the Humble Bundle.

74 minutes later, yeah...

After the last two games, I didn't have a lot of hope for Ozymandias. At least it wasn't pixel art?

Turns out that Ozymandias is a "stripped down 4X". The first 4X game I tried to play (and failed at) was Reach for the Stars, and I just haven't had a lot of luck since then.

Generally, I find there are too many moving parts to keep track of, and I end up stressed out instead of relaxing. Not the good kind of stressed out where I get to through the stress to a win state.

The bad kind where I hate every minute of it.

Herein lies the surprise with Ozymandias: I had no idea it was a 4X until after I finished playing it, and read the precis for the game on Steam.

They've stripped out the bit I dislike, and left me with something that got me hooked and kept me playing *far* later than I should have.

The framing is an early 20th century expedition, where you're introduced to the "world" of Ozymandias. The game introduces you to each piece of the gameplay in a single level, and it all comes together into something very playable.

It's a top-down strategy game, and the graphics work for the playstyle. Not too simplistic, not overly complex.

I just have to make sure I don't start playing again now, because I have somewhere I need to be for dinner.

Ozymandias is:

4: Good

#Ozymandias #4X #Strategy #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

July 23, 2023 - Day 204 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 223

Game: Merchant of the Skies

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Apr 17, 2020
Library Date: Jul 18, 2023
Unplayed: 5d
Playtime: 48m

I played yesterday, but due to some unexpected surprises, the review is super-late today.

The sixth review for this month's Humble Choice bundle is Merchant of the Skies. It has airships! It has floating sky islands! It has trading! It has pixel-art... again?

This time, your in-game avatar is literally Lemming-sized pixels (ask your great-grandparent).

I was initially frustrated by encountering another pixel-art game, but Merchant of the Skies had other frustrations in store.

This is not a game that teaches you how to play it; when I was as exhausted as I was feeling last night, poking around at things trying to understand what it was I was supposed to do did not spark joy.

Oddly enough, as I kept poking away at it, trying to run down the clock, the underlying gameplay mechanics began to reveal themselves, and the gameplay was enough to keep me playing for 45 minutes.

This is the kind of thing I was talking about in my Kraken Academy!! review. Pixel art isn't a bad thing, per se, if the gameplay supports it, and in the case of Merchant of the Skies, it works.

To the game itself. You have inherited an airship, and your job is to fly from island to island, on a top-down map, buying and selling things, and trading your way to untold riches.

It's basically a capitalism/work simulator. At first, unlocking the map and finding different islands felt interesting, but it became monotonous fairly quickly.

There are no enemies to attack you in the air, no air piracy. The only real challenges are trying not to run out of gold, and trying to make it to the nearest island without running out of energy, because if your airship runs out of energy, you're doomed!

Actually, you're not. You just get towed to the nearest energy station to buy a refill.

Unfortunately for Merchant of the Skies, there are other capitalism simulators that are more fun.

But kudos for rising above the pixel art, in any case.

Merchant of the Skies was ultimately a bit:

2: Meh

#MerchantOfTheSkies #PixelArt #Trading #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

July 22, 2023 - Day 203 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 222

Game: Kraken Academy!!

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 11, 2021
Library Date: Jul 18, 2023
Unplayed: 4d
Playtime: 24m

The fifth review for this month's Humble Choice bundle is the fifth game in the bundle; this was unintentional, but I'm not making this mistake again. I'll come back to the third game at the end of the bundle, because I'm still trying to decide what to do about it.

Kraken Academy is a... oh no, yet another retro pixel-art top-down adventure game.

I'm not going to fill up another review complaining about how retro games don't do anything for me, unless the gameplay hooks me and gets me past the visual design.

I did not get past the visual design.

The game has a lot of high-res well designed characters. They pop up in voiceover scenes to move the "action" along, but then the gameplay is back to a pixel sprites.

Kraken Academy!! is set in the titular private school, which is so run-down, it justs feels like it's missing Rick yelling at Carl about walkers.

You and your sister have been sent there, she hates you, you're there for music, one of the other students is a girl made of broccoli, named Broccoli Girl.

Smash bins to collect plastic bottles to trade in for in-game currency. Pick up quests, complete quests, which just feels like a grind to fill up the time. Apparently there's a magical kraken a little bit further into the game, but it was pretty much an exercise in clock-watching.

Kraken Academy!! feels like the filler for this month's bundle; for me it's a:

1: Nope

#KrakenAcademy #PixelArt #Adventure #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay