#gives me those old RPG maker horror games vibes

[mickules]

TRICK OR TREAT!!!! - 🧛 - Charles Eyler from Hello Charlotte

✨TREAT✨

no.9 Odds Charles Eyler – Hello Charlotte

Ooo there have been lot of indie game requests, and from what little I could see without spoiling myself too much – this one has a lot of twists and turns

[jaxonkreide]

....i just remembered my dream from tonight again 

i meant to write it down this morning because it was crazy but I didn’t have the time

so it starts out, I’m uhh practically playing a game?? like I’m watching a game play before my eyes. It was this RPG maker perspective, but I still felt like I was the brown haired guy walking.

The game only played in a straight corridor and the boy was on a walk in the woods with someone who had run before him and was always out of sight. Usually in this game you would go to the end of the screen, talk to someone/something, go back to the start of this screen and pic something up and go on to the next screen.

Honestly it kinda had a small horror game vibe, but it wasn’t at all

Then there is this particular screen. Like there is this small cliff on both sides. Start of the screen you jump down at on the other end of the screen there is a car in front of the cliff that you could use to climb up. There is a black haired man the boy somehow knows. The man asks the boy to investigate where he had just jumped down. He does so and touches something on the ground. 

Now it’s like a floor panel flips and a green bottle is on the floor. The boy picks it up and the floor panel moves completely out of the way showing a secret passage way

The boy walks through and the man jumps up and follows. The next screen you first pass a vending machine and then for the first time the game splits ways and gives you a third dimension to explore into the background. The boy first picks up a thing on the far end of the screen and then looks at the thing in the background.

There’s a building with three doors. The ones on the sides are placed lower than the one in the middle and are also double as big. The rightmost said “now”. The middle one had no shield and the leftmost said “the old days” 

The man passes you and says something like “yes!! I’ve found it!!” and goes into the now door. You just watch. He comes out of the old days door and suddenly is an old man. “no... but... this is wrong! this is not how it’s supposed to go! This isn’t the secret fountain of youth?!?!” the now old man says looking at this hands

This doesn’t interest the boy and he goes back to the vending machine.

Well rather then a vending machine he now notices that it’s also popcorn machine?? The boy gets himself some popcorn and a drink. 

the now old man only seems to be just standing around now, seemingly mourning his lost youth.

The boy looks at the vending machine again. It’s completely dirty and rundown, but still works perfectly fine.

He notices an open side door and looks inside. 

For the first time this dream turns into first person. Inside the vending machine the boy also sees that the vending machine was seemingly frying hazelnuts “for the squirrels” the boy thinks

Something about that vending machine makes you care, something inside you says that you want to take it with you and clean it and care for it. Something tells you that this vending machine has a soul and needs you help.

You stop investigating upon the sound of an approaching car and the RPG maker perspective returns.

A fire fighting truck rolls down the small path.

“what are you two doing here? this is an off limits area. This elementary school has been abandoned for years!” one of the two fire fighters says.

Both the man and boy don’t know what to say. Besides that the boy doesn’t want to leave here without the vending machine. The old man offers him to strap it onto the car he came here with. The fire fighters say no.

A blonde woman comes by. Her hair goes down to her knees. Something about her is almost alluring. She says it’s fine for the two of you to be here and that the fire fighters could leave now. Which they then start to do. With a smile the woman heads down to the elementary school and leaves you and the man alone (? that building wasn’t like any elementary school the boy has ever seen in his life before that was sure. What was up with those doors?)

You take the vending machine and everything fades to darkness to something like a loading screen.

A witch with long blonde hair that flies in the wind behind her flies through the night on a broom.

One after another two textboxes appear next to her. “ah to be young again” “let’s leave behind the good old days”

The screen brightens up again and I’m in first person again.  I’m currently cleaning the vending machine and somehow talking to it. The more I talk to it the more sure I am that it’s talking with me too and that we have found some mental connection. 

I’m also very sure that I now am the screamy protagonist from black clover Asta lol

time passes the wending machine is all fixed up

months pass and the village we are in is attacked. The vending machine was originally a dragon before being cursed but now has it’s form back?? The evil is defeated and we’re badly wounded and drink some of the last of the water in the healing spring in the village and hope it’s not tainted

tbh this part is kinda fuzzy and I don’t really like the sudden change of character in the middle of a dream so should I ever think about something for this dream that part will not be included, I think the story surrounding that blonde witch is way more fun

oh btw. The man who turned old just went into the wrong door. Would he have gone into the good old days door he would have so to say “brought the good old days into the now” meaning he would have become younger again with that one. Of course the witch knew that, but she’s not gonna tell him that and tbh the boy suspected it too but was way more interested in that vending machine lol

I also suspect that this game has multiple endings and stuff depending on what you do. You could have gone into one of those doors yourself. The middle one would have been the most interesting. Or you could have not even interacted with the man in the first place just passing him, but that were just things that came to my mind after waking up... besides that middle door the boy was really curious about that one

[stompsite]

indie bundle cruft deathmatch volume 3: ex box

So normally, I wouldn’t do so many of these in such short order, but I’m moving at the end of the month, and I’m moving to a place where the internet’s gonna be wonky, so I’m trying to store as many games on my hard drives as I can. As a result, I’m going through my “definitely not gonna play these again” games as quickly as possible. So, hey, here’s another one.

LOVERS IN A DANGEROUS SPACETIME is a 2d metroidvania, I guess? Except you pilot a spaceship with a partner. It’s fun enough, but metroidvanias and I don’t get along super good. It looks nice and plays okay, but I feel like it’s meant to be played with multiple people, rather than solo. I played it on Xbox, since I got it free on Xbox Live at some point. NAH.

MAX: THE CURSE OF BROTHERHOOD is a sidescrolling platformer about a boy who wishes his brother away. Kinda like Labyrinth, but, as far as I’ve played, without the brilliance of Henson or Bowie present. This isn’t to say it’s a bad game at all, but it’s not really gripping me. But it is a platformer, and I’m someone who’s been trying to figure out why I don’t like platformers for a long time.

I think I’ve figured it out.

One of my least favorite things to do in a video game are forced racing sequences. In these sequences, you mostly have to learn where everything is, memorize it, and repeat. I’m not one for memorization. It’s fundamentally uninteresting to me on a basic level. A good racing game involves some degree of skill; most races in games not meant to be racers rely more on simply memorizing the track.

Most platformers I’ve played don’t involve any kind of interesting or meaningful decision making. Sometimes you’ll get some puzzle solving, which can be enjoyable, but more often than not, platformers are about simply reacting to what’s there, and nothing more than that. See the path, follow the path. The enemies aren’t super intelligent; Goombas march back and forth, and that’s about it. These are games about memorizing the path and timing your button presses perfectly.

In a Sonic game, you might get a few choices, but that’s about it. Played a bit of Mario 3D Land lately and it’s the same thing; at its most difficult, it’s just a game about memorization.

I value a game like DOOM or Halo, where you get to look over the environment, plan your route, and act accordingly, reacting to changes in the situation as they arise. There’s a nice mix of “doing interesting things” at work in these kind of games.

I value improvisation. 

That’s why platformers aren’t very interesting to me.

Oh, and Max has a magic marker that changes the environment. It’s a rule that all platformers have to have A Gimmick, and that’s what Max’s gimmick is. SEE YOU IN ANOTHER LIFE, BROTHER.

SPEEDRUNNERS, because it’s a platformer (a racing platformer, but a platformer nontheless), definitely can be SENT TO LIMBO.

SUPER DUNGEON BROS: claims, on its store page, that it is a rock-themed dungeon brawler. Basically it’s kinda like Diablo, I guess, except that I wasn’t really having much fun, and I forgot to take a screenshot. I DECIDED TO PASS ON IT.

BONEBONE: RISE OF THE DEATHLORD sure seems like a mobile port to me. You shoot arrows at skellingtons. YAWN.

BRINE seems like one of those Fallout mods you get for someone who offers “realistic nights,” but it’s so dark that you begin to wonder if the person making the claim suffers from severe night blindness. Seriously, the ground is just, like... totally black.  It’s some kind of survival game with a 24% positive rating on Steam. I’M STEERING CLEAR.

BROADSWORD: AGE OF CHIVALRY is like, I don’t know, if Civilization were incredibly low-res? I’ve really struggled to enjoy hex-based 4X games. For some reason, Stellaris is my drug of choice, but even games like Civ are hard for me to enjoy. AWAY WITH YOU.

This is what screenshots from BULLET LIFE 2010 look like. Yes, they did misspell “Resume.” Reviews are about half and half positive/negative. I’m surprised there are positive reviews at all, but what do I know? It’s a 3D bullet hell shooter that doesn’t feel super... bullet... hell-y. But I didn’t spend a lot of time with it because the controls were a nightmare. Took way too long to discover that “W” was the interact button and “X” was fire. Oh, and by switching to full screen in the pre-load options menu, I booted up the game. Here I thought I’d be able to edit multiple settings. Silly me. DUMPED.

BULB BOY is an aesthetically wonderful point and click adventure game, which I may come back to some day. The problem is that, well, it’s a point and click adventure game, another one of those genres I really struggle with. If platformers bore me because it’s about reaction time and memorization, point and clicks bore me because they’re about clicking on everything you can until you figure out in what order a bunch of interactive objects are supposed to be placed. It’s a genre that can be brute forced in a way I personally find dissatisfying.

But.

Don’t let this dissuade you from checking out Bulb Boy, a game that has a 91% positive rating on Steam, which, last I checked, is the same as DOOM. So, if you’re into the genre, you’re probably in for a treat. DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS.

What did I just say, CAPTAIN MORGANE AND THE GOLDEN TURTLE, about adventure games? Also, I have no idea what’s going on in the graphics here, but this sure doesn’t look like a three year old game. Also, it runs awfully on my GTX 1070, and there’s a review on Steam that makes the same complaint, but for a 1080. NOPE.

I was bummed out that Steam wouldn’t let me take screenshots of CARRIER COMMAND: GAEA MISSION. It’s not a great game from what I’ve played so far, but it’s interesting. Lots of little tweaks that Bohemia Interactive could do to make it play way better than it does. Maps feel huge. It’s neat. Obviously ARMA is their bread and butter, but... this has me intrigued. FINALLY, A GAME THAT STAYS.

Apparently there are earlier Deponia games, so I probably shouldn’t be testing CHAOS ON DEPONIA right now, but I went through the tutorial. Seems like an adventure game, made me chuckle. I’LL KEEP THIS ONE AROUND. FOR NOW. 

CITIES XL PLATINUM is a city builder, so you’d think it would stay on my list, but it won’t, and here’s why: city builders come in two varieties. There’s the Extremely Popular SimCity style, where you just kinda build a town and keep things running and that’s that, and then there’s the Less Popular But The Kind I Like games, like Tropico, The Settlers, and Anno. These games take you to different maps where you have specific objectives you need to complete. I find operating within those constraints much more enjoyable than the open-ended sandbox creation aspect of things. That’s just not my thing.

Cities XL Platinum is in the former style, unfortunately, which means I’m... like, I’ll give it a shot, but I’m not super into it. The performance issues I experienced weren’t great either, and Cities Skylines, which is from the Cities in Motion developers, is a much better game in this specific city-building subgenre. Forgot to screenshot. KICK IT TO THE CURB.

CLOUD CHAMBER is an online game that was, as best I can tell, removed from Steam. If you have it, you can... like, click on stuff, but you can’t play it, because apparently it, whatever it was, was an online game. WHAT’S THE POINT?

CONTAGION sounds cool, but I didn’t really enjoy the time I spent with it. A review says “it’s like No More Room in Hell, but costs money, and is worse,” and that seems about right. PASS.

COGNITION: AN ERICA REED THRILLER is a game I took a screenshot of, because I hadn’t been doing it or it hadn’t been working in the past few games. Apparently I ended up in Episode 2 even though I told it to go to Episode One. As you can see, people’s faces look... odd.

It’s a point n’ click where you spend like ten minutes in three different camera angles (one shot of two people talking, two closeups of their faces) where they mostly just talk about things that could’ve been said in far less words. It has 199 reviews on Steam, and the reviews are mostly stellar, so... hey, make of it what you will. The genre’s not for me, so I’M BANISHING IT TO OBLIVION.

DEADBOLT reminds me of Gunpoint. Like... uncannily so. This is fine, though, because I really liked Gunpoint. Now, you might be going “hey, Doc, I thought you hated sidescrolling games as evidenced by your above remarks about platformers!” Well, kinda. Deadbolt, like Gunpoint, keeps me engaged by letting me plan things. Observe. Strategize. Engage. That’s what makes it such a fun game. Best way I can describe this is if Gunpoint and Hotline Miami had a baby. The game wears its influences on its sleeves. I LOVE IT.

Word of caution: it gave me a black screen on Windows 10. I had to edit the ini, then it worked properly. Solution was located in the Steam Discussions.

BROKEN DREAMS wouldn’t let me take screenshots of it, probably because it was running in flash. It’s a quirky indie puzzle platformer, with an art design that I find distinctly off-putting. NAH.

DRAKENSANG refused to boot up at first, which is a bad sign, but I finally got it to work, and I was rewarded with a nice classic 3D PC RPG. It feels great to play, very Dragon Agey, if you’ve played that, though it’s got less “AAA Bioware” vibe and more of a “mid-00s German RPG” thing going on. Cool stuff. I had to reinstall the directx executable that came with the game and add “-windowed” to the launch options to make it work. NEAT STUFF.

I’m genuinely unsure where or when I acquired CLOSE YOUR EYES, but it’s definitely not my thing. It’s one of those games where the default controls are Z/X and Arrow keys. Close Your Eyes claims to be a horror game, but this RPG Maker-esque game did nothing to evoke any response in me as I played. I have no idea if it’s good or bad, but the genre and gameplay did nothing to draw me in. I was bored. AWAY WITH YOU.

Well, that’s 20 games. Of those 20 games, 4 of them stayed on the backlog.

The main thing I’m getting here is that genre’s pretty important to me, especially when it comes to being able to make plans. Adventure games and platformers tend not to emphasize strategizing, which is something that’s important to me when playing games. So games where you don’t do that, where you just react to stuff, that’s not as interesting to me.

Until next time.