#collectathon platformer

[piracyismymiddlename]

Stop calling Sonic Frontiers open world, it is a collectathon platformer.

Thank you, that is all.

[bunnymedley]

i should play mario odyssey

[chaoparty]

💎💌⭐

[molegato]

Frogun was launched a year ago! 🐸💙

It's been a wild ride, and working on the coming sequel is been a whole different adventure so far. Thank you all players, and if you haven't tried it yet, I hope you do and have fun!

[bryastar]

word salad #4

happy twilight Thursday!

today is a work day and something I'm thinking about right now is, yes just because this may be a daily blog doesn't necessarily mean I need to go into full detail about how every part of my days go. otherwise I'd be ranting about work for a vast majority of these entires.

so instead I wanna talk about... retro 3D platformers

a while back I came across a game called Cavern of Dreams. it claims itself to be inspired by retro 3D platformers. it features low poly graphics and textures with simple lighting effects, reminiscent of late N64 games. the gameplay feels very much like if Conker's Bad fur day was lighthearted and wholesome. what's also neat is camera controls are more reminiscent of later games, Mario sunshine and Zelda wind waker immediately come to mind for me. I've gotten through the first part of the game and really loving it so far, and the controls are probably the best I've seen in a long time.

but while thinking about this, I sorta made a bit of a realization... growing up, games like this were referred to as adventure games instead of 3d platformers. heck, I don't think I've seen the term "platformer" until around the mid 2000s. even Mario games I think we're more well known as action adventure games, or Zelda games being a puzzle adventure. PC adventure games tend to be point and click games, which is vastly different than what consoles typically offered. I personally think that NSMB for the DS may be in part why we now make this distinction as the 2D Mario games play vastly different than their 3D games, notably being easier to pick up and play.

but while on this thought train, I sorta began to wonder what sort of similarities that 3D platformers from this era had vs a point and click adventure game. what I ended up deciding on was: exploration. point and click games, you topically make progress by exploring the world around you and finding clues and solving puzzles by exploring the environment and talking to npcs. 3d platformers is... actually kinda the same, while typically focusing on item collecting, many similar elements show up such as exploring worlds and finding ways to progress by interacting with the levels and different characters.

while on that thought about collecting items...

a lot of late 90s and early 2000s platformers would feature collecting a long list of items. one prominent example is donkey Kong 64, which tends to be known as the game that killed collectathons. I have some thoughts on but I'll save for another entry, but I guess I will say that calling such games a collectathon very much misses the point of what the game is actually about. is it a game where you are sent out into a level and made to collect all the random items scattered on the ground, or is it a game where you're friends have been captured and your hoard of bananas have been stolen and you must rescue your friends and recover your bananas in order to progress while learning new moves and meeting interesting creatures who either help you or try to intervene. I dunno about most, but I like the latter premise better. (or maybe I out much more weight on a storyline for a game as opposed to the gameplay)

I hope this entry wasn't too hard or confusing to read, I guess I'm mostly rambling and jotting down bits and pieces of what's in my mind when I get a couple minutes of free time.

uhm..

pineapples (I need a better way to end these aa)

[thecuddlymuffintop]

Tonight, at 7 pm CDT, I will be continuing Spyro Reignited Trilogy over on Twitch.

You're always welcome to either watch here or join me and the other Chubby Checkers with the above link.

[horses-who-smile]

people say this is like conkers bad fur day + a hat in time but it really reminds me of a more obscure game

wiplash for the ps2 and x box

[valereth2]

IT. IS. DONE. My Jak and Daxter review is finally finished. Holy crap. I should have had this done months ago but I am happy with how the final video turned out. Give it a watch and let me know what you think

[skrunklowumbo64]

Guess where all of these collectables originally came from.

[heliianth]

thoughts on the update so far from reading posts and watching streams, etc, is that a majority of the difficulty is pretty artificial and lots of the game is unpolished. dont get me wrong its extremely admirable for sonic team to provide this update for free (and apparently its optional? or do new save files have "another story" as default once arriving at ouranous?) but it is very obvious that it was made in less than a year. regardless i think its impressive at least (though i know nothing abt game development so almost anything is impressive to me lol) and its encouraging that this happened at all

[cubixfails]

Pep-Pel releasing this Friday! (15/11/23)

Guys. GUYS.

Pep-Pel comes out this Friday, it's had so much love put into it and I'm so excited to play the full game, plus hey you get to listen to me in various funny roles :3

Add to your wish list, if you'd be so kind 💖

[anonymouspuzzler]

I am also in academic overdrive but I’ve been playing superstar saga for the first time lately so do you have a favorite mario game? If so what do you like about it?

i've wanted to play superstar saga for a long time!! funnily enough, I've not played a lot of mario games myself despite mario games being my first foray into gaming outside my family's direct influence (i played Sunshine at a friend's and it made me want a gamecube and the game more than life itself). perhaps unsurprisingly I have a big soft spot for Sunshine because of this, and I've also really loved what little I've played of Odyssey! the worlds are so beautiful and the movement makes it so fun to run around and explore and discover out of the way little challenges!

outside that most of what I've played have been the weird little spinoffs - Party, Kart, Picross, you know. I guess out of those Picross has unsurprisingly been my favorite because. puzzles LOL

[neproxrezi]

armored core.........,

[weirdlittlegames]

contemplating livestreaming my fave game that 99% of people i’ve met have never heard of. Rotating it in my mind

[superpodsaga]

Tinykin's best addition to the collect-a-thon genre is its plentiful Pollen

Tinykin is a game about collecting things. Players explore a truly gigantic house in search of the titular Tinykin, balls of pollen, and household items that can be turned into some sort of space ship.

While discovering different species of Tinykin and creating the space ship rightfully take up most of the players focus, the collectible pollen actually serve as the bedrock that makes Tinykin such a joy to play.

Each room of the house contains upwards of 1000 glowing golden balls of pollen. Everywhere you look in every direction is pollen. There's pollen on the floor, pollen on the appliances, pollen floating strategically in the air. Pollen. Is. Everywhere. You literally can't go anywhere in the house without picking up pollen.

While it is absolutely possible to collect every piece of pollen in a room, and you can continuously upgrade your bubble glider by collecting a moderate number of them, the true purpose of the pollen is GUIDANCE. With the player being the size of a bug and normal household objects the size of buildings, it could be easy to get disoriented, uncertain of where you've been, or unsure of where you can still explore.

But that's where the pollen comes in!

With pollen covering almost every surface, the player has an easy and constant reminder of where they have and haven't been. Anywhere the player sees pollen is a place where they haven't yet explored.

Not sure where to explore next? Follow some pollen. Need some more Tinykin for a puzzle? Follow the pollen. See some pollen in the distance? Go touch that pollen!

For completionists, the pollen is a godsend. Where other games have you navigate large landscapes on your own, leaving plenty of opportunities to accidentally miss areas, Tinykin's pollen breadcrumbs guide you to every nook and cranny. It's unbelievably satisfying.

Tinykin's pollen has genuinely made exploration in other games less fun for me. If that's not the sign of a brilliant mechanic, I don't know what is.

[harpgriffin]

Pilo and the Holobook Preview

This is a charming little sticker-themed game, reminiscent of Avalon Code but without the combat. The full release will have puzzle solving, but right now it's just exploring and sticker collecting in a very pretty game that still runs on my decrepit laptop, once again proving that excellent optimization can make graphical ambition accessible to lower-end computers. The main issue for me is that right now it's lacking in accessibility. Everything is hold actions and there's no control remapping, though gamepad and mouse are both supported. The lack of a minimap may be a problem for some although they are relatively small maps (at least in the demo), so you can't get lost for very long.