#Laika: Aged Through Blood (Game)

[wolfnanaki]

You: "What's your favorite video game genre?" Me: "Furry." You: "What?" Me:

[shkika]

Aged Through Blood

[prokopetz]

If I had a nickel for every post-apocalyptic Weird West themed indie metroidvania with unconventional movement tech, a guitar-centric soundtrack, and a hand-drawn comic book art style where you play as a middle-aged gunslinger on a quest to save her daughter that's being released next year, I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice.

[friendlyoceanmower]

Don't cry my love. Don't cry my love. It's okay, it's okay. I'm not gone

[firestom-art]

[mossypawz]

I NEED ALL OF YOU TO PLAY LAIKA AGED THROUGH BLOOD RIGHT NOW PLEASE I AM SHAKING YOU SHAKING YOU SHAKING YOU PLEAAAAAAASSSEEE

[shepaa]

I thought it was funny

[waterloggedsoliloquy]

I'm not a hero, I'm not!

[sinileijona]

there's nothing else to do there's nowhere else to go there's nothing else to live for, anymore

[satoshi-mochida]

Some indie game recommendations from ones I’ve played or know enough about them to suggest them to others(mostly in no particular order), Part 8.

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9

LiEat

Rise of the Third Power

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin

Indivisible

Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass

Eastern Exorcist

Everhood

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The 7th Stand User(JJBA fan game)

Gravity Circuit

Rusted Moss

Laika: Aged Through Blood

Bramble: The Mountain King

Refind Self: The Personality Test Game

nameless(fan game for Hololive Vtuber Nanashi Mumei)

M.A.S.S. Builder

NAIRI: Tower Of Shirin and it's sequel NAIRI: Rising Tide.

Fatal Twelve

Fading Afternoon

The Friends of Ringo Ishikawa

Killer Frequency

Oh…Sir!! The Insult Simulator

Full Void

ENIGMA:

Seven Days

Siren's Call

Koumajou Remilia: Scarlet Symphony

Little Goody Two Shoes

Pocket Mirror ~ GoldenerTraum

Battle Princess Madelyn

When the Past Was Around

[videogamepolls]

Requested by anon

Reblog for a larger sample size!

[devon-the-wanderer]

I don't post enough for anyone to care about this, but I'm formally asking anyone who sees this to check out Laika: Aged Through Blood. It's a metroidvania game on a motorcycle. The story is really good, really dark, and really depressing. There's a demo you can play for free if you wanna try it out. It's like 20 USD on steam. It's one of the most interesting and unique games to come out of the past ten years, and hardly anyone is talking about it. Go check it out, I'm serious.

[shkika]

the last thing mother gave me

[thedharmafox]

Excuse me while I completely meltdown because of this fucking game

[adhdemongirl]

Kind of a review of "Laika: Aged Through Blood"

Over the past weekend I managed to put 24 hours into this little game and I have so many feelings about it that I decided to write up a review of it. So let's get into it:

Laika: Aged Through Blood is a 2D metroidvania by Brainwash Gang that released on the 19th October of this year. It's also a shooter with bullet time. And also one of those bike-platformers like the Trials games or Happy Weels. And a post-apocalyptic spagetti-western.

Gameplay: Like I've mentioned before, Laika plays a lot like one of those bike-platformers, meaning that you'll spend the vast majority of the game driving trough the desertificated ruins of civilisation, making sick flips and trying desperatly not to break all of your bones on the pavement. The major way in which Laika differs from those games is that it also gives you a gun and asks you to shoot facists with it. Because aiming while having enemies shot at you while also trying not to crash isn't that easy, the game throws you a bone (because your playing as a canaid, get it?) and activates bullet time as soon as you press down the trigger, firing the gun only when you release. This doesn't only alleviate the chaos, but also makes you feel cool as fuck! Your guns (of which threre are six in total) all have infinite ammo, but require you make a backflip to reload. You are also able to parry enemy bullets by pressing the turn button at the correct moment. Your parry only replenishes after doing a front flip. This is fucking brilliant, because it forces you to do tricks and tricks feel satisfying to pull of.

The metroidvania aspect of the game honestly falls a bit into the background. There are only 3 really new abilities that you unlock over the game, one of which doesn't get utilised enough. The gamplay at the end of the game doesn't feel that different from the beginning. Luckily enough, the gameplay that is there feels amazing and the game isn't long enough for this lack of evolution to become a problem. Still, it would probably be more honest to call this an open world game than a metroidvania, especially more so because while exploration is definitly a thing that happens, it happens more passivly while you are doing quests for the people in your village or other wastelanders. A couple of other (really minor) misgivings that I have are that I only really found myself using 2 of the 6 guns, that there should have been a couple more teleporters around and that the dash upgrade should have been a nitro boost.

Presentation: Laika has a really cute cartoony art stile that contrasts brilliantly with it's bleak world and gruesome violence.

Even the most minor encounter will lead to mangled corpses and our heroine being soaked in blood (partially because this wastelands currency are the guts of your enemy)

That doesn't mean there isn't time for more peacefull or communal moments though

And honestly, the game needs an artstyle like this. Anything less and it's world would feel to bleak. A game this bleak and melancholic needs a bit of cartoony levity, else it would be to depressing.

Speaking of melancholy, the soundtrack by Beícoli is hauntingly beautifull. Tracks like "The Whispers" or "Mother" will be spooking around in my head for a while. The soundtrack is also completely diagetic! Because not only is Beícoli a character in the game, but the songs you listen to are cassetes that you listen to with a walkman (that you can eject and replace whenever you want through your menu).

The rest of the sounddesign is also great. Menus have all the right clicky noises, your bike roars apropiatly and while I'm not completely satisfyed with the guns (could use more cracking) they still sound better than in some FPS games I've played.

Story and World: I'm honestly a little bit afraid to say too much about both, because I'm afraid to spoil to much of an amazing experience. I'll still try to give at least a (very tiny) ocerview. I'll also get into the content warnings for this game. Because besides the extreme, although cartoony, violence, the game also features depictions of extreme violence against kids and depictions and mentions of suicide, as well as mentions of sexual assault. Now the game itself warns you of these and it didn't feel like it relished in any of them. I still think that they are worth mentioning though.

As I've alluded to before, Laikas world is not a happy place. The world you inhabit isn't dying, it died a long time ago. And there are still people that want to deprive others of what little they have. Specificaly these racist as fuck birds with legally distinct guns and uniforms that definitly aren't a stand in for real world imperial powers, what are you talking about?

(The birds in question)

The game beginns with a child having been brutally murdered by them and his father having gone out to take revenge. Our heroine, the anthro coyote Laika (whoever would've guessed that she's called that!?), follows him. soon enough she's sent out by her village to wage a one person war against the enemy. Luckily, Laika is cursed (ha), which means that she can not only see the ghosts of the recently decesed, but she's functionally immortal (because resporning at checkpoints is also diagetic, hell yeag!) Laika is also a single mom looking after her daughter Puppy (there is an actual story reason she's called that, the writers weren't just lazy). Laika doesn't want this fucked world to rob her Puppy of her childhood (for more reasons one). Her own mother, Maya (who she has a very strained relationship with at best), disagrees. Maya believes that Puppy needs to grow up to have a chance surviving. Both of these plotlines, Laika fighting the Birds and Laikas relationship with her family, are surprisingly nuanced, overlap at times and, most importantly, hurt me. Laika: Aged Through Blood is one of these stories that, even right after beginning them, you just know can at best end melancolic. That doesn't mean there is only tragedie to be had here, just be aware that you shouldn't play this game if your goal is only to feel great.

Final thoughts: I could talk about this game for hours (but that would involve heavy spoilers and isn't fitting for a review). I don't think I there was a moment in the 24 hours I spend with it that I didn't enjoy (mind that someone that was better at the game wouldn't need that long, I just fucking sucked at it, lol). It's a game that made me cry multiple times. It's a game that definitly deserves more attention than it is currently getting. It's a game that you can try out right now because there is a demo available! It's probably my game of the year.

[alderdixon]

Game Report: Laika: Aged Through Blood

Overall this game was a great time and I really enjoyed the unique biking mechanic. Super cool art, atmosphere and music, it just ended up a bit weirdly paced towards the end and I completed it partly due to sunk cost fallacy. Honestly I should've done a whole page for the map character though they were my favourite person to run into :D