#gorogoa

[knightofleo]

x

[pixelfolly]

[veebs-hates-video-games]

Sure whatever, I can put ten game in a single post, because that's how many I managed to play since the last one. Only for like an hour each on average, but that was enough to finish multiple of them and decide the others weren't really doing it for me.

Clickolding was pretty good. I don't usually play stuff right when it comes out, but it was a couple bucks and I feel like I can trust Xalavier Nelson Jr./Strange Scaffold to do something interestingly weird at this point. It's the most about sex work anything's ever been without explicitly stating it's about sex work, and it will do its best to make you vaguely uncomfortable about that and the mundanity and boredom and desperation and detachment that can go along with it. It's also about the impact our actions have on the lives of people around us. A decent way to spend like an hour of your time.

I had a bit more mixed feelings about the first DLC for Voxelgram. On one hand it's good because more Voxelgram is good. On the other the larger puzzles don't really make it more challenging or anything, just more tedious. The last couple took me a bit over an hour each, and I saw someone else saying the last one took them significantly longer than that. I think I would've been happier if they were a bit smaller and didn't go on for so long, and they'd also fit on the screen better that way.

Something I didn't have mixed feelings about was Strawberry Vinegar, which was kind of disappointing because I tend to enjoy ebi-hime's stuff even if it's never my favorite stuff ever. This one I just got through the bad ending and stopped though because I had no interest in seeing what happens in any of the other routes. The way the characters were written just didn't feel right to me, like this is not a nine year old girl despite you telling me it is, and the vibes were definitely off. Oh well.

I have mostly positive things to say about Seraphim Slum though. It's very not afraid to get weird with things, and I mean Capital W Weird, not lolrandom rawr xd. A tagline/pitch like "Play as sapphic Lucifer and corrupt angels to fall...in love with you." is a good way to get my attention. It's at least initially on the surface "date cute angel girls", but it very quickly leans heavily into corruption = love = freedom/release/relief. Overall I definitely enjoyed the vibes and presentation and where it went with stuff, and I only have a couple issues with it: one is that some of the auto-advancing text is borderline unreadable on certain backgrounds, which is unfortunate but can be worked around by reading it in the log, and the other is that the routing/structure of it is pretty incomprehensible to me and I have no idea how to get to a couple parts of it I haven't seen yet. Maybe I'll check the DLC guide at some point when I can justify spending more money on stuff.

An Arcade Full of Cats was ok. Not my favorite Devcats game but fun enough that I finished it. As someone who remembers most of the eras it represents (not the DLC ones though) it was fun seeing the terrible cat puns on old arcade games and various other things they snuck in. There was definitely some artistic liberty taken with some of it, but they did a surprisingly good job capturing the feeling of a bunch of stuff I hadn't thought about in a long time in a hidden object game about cats. I feel no shame about using the cheat button for a few things in this one though because some of them were genuinely bullshit. Even after it pointed out a couple of them to me I could barely recognize them because they were so small they didn't look like anything. I don't remember having that problem in Building or Castle, at least not to that degree.

Gorogoa took me forever to finally try out. I really like the idea of it, and they do some clever stuff with the presentation and ways you interact with things that let them do fun stuff with how puzzles work. I don't really like actually playing it though. It does a bad job sometimes with letting you know which things are interactable or in what ways, and as a result I feel like it kept deteriorating into the typical point and click adventure game problem of rubbing every object on every other object until something happens. It's just not very enjoyable to know what the end goal of a puzzle sequence is but have no idea how to get there because it's looking for a very specific sequence of very specific events, and you tried something very slightly different that didn't work, and there's no useful feedback why.

TET's alright though, if a ten minute cooking game about preparing food for Vietnamese Lunar New Year sounds like your kind of thing. It's cute and funny and even includes recipes. Also it makes me want spring rolls. Also also it feels much better to play with a touchscreen.

I was extremely underwhelmed by Muse Dash, which also took me forever to get around to actually trying. The gameplay seems fine. What I saw in my brief time with it didn't really stand out to me, but there also wasn't really anything wrong with it either. What definitely is wrong with it though is that it kept pestering me to create an account even though I was just trying to play by myself offline, and also the UI seems completely unmanageable. Like the song picker would work but be mildly clunky if there were 20 songs in the game. It appears to have hundreds though, maybe more, and it's just really not suited for that. Yeah there appears to be a filter, but it's just a bunch of incomprehensible icons and very inaccessible for a new player. The art and music seemed ok though.

Speaking of ok, there's also Luna's Fishing Garden. It had some better than ok moments, but overall...it's ok. The default/challenging fishing minigame did not feel good to me at all, and the relaxed/easy mode was a bit boring, but I got over it because it turns out you don't actually have to do it all that much once the game gets going. It's pretty chill, and there's some cute pixel art and characters. Shout out to the "you caught a fish" animation in particular for being adorable. Most of the time I felt like progression was pretty well balanced, but toward the end there was definitely a significant amount of waiting around to get enough of certain resources that dragged it out longer than it really needed to. Aside from that though? It's ok!

And then since I said ten at the beginning, uh...Townscaper exists? Let's include that even though it wouldn't be hard to argue it's not a game. I'm pretty sure I got it in a game bundle though, and it's on Steam, so let's just go with that. It's fun to poke at for a little while and see what you can build with it. And that's about all there is to it.

Video games ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[satoshi-mochida]

Annapurna Interactive Deluxe Limited Edition Collection announced for Switch – 12 games on one cartridge

Gemastu Source

iam8bit and Annapurna Interactive have announced Annapurna Interactive Deluxe Limited Edition Collection for Switch, which includes 12 titles on a single cartridge for $199.99. It is limited to 2,500 copies. Pre-orders are available now at the iam8bit online store.

The 12 titles included in the collection are as follows:

Donut County

Gorogoa

Hindsight (debut physical release)

I Am Dead (debut physical release)

If Found… (debut physical release)

Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition

Neon White

Sayonara Wild Hearts

Solar Ash (debut physical release)

The Artful Escape

The Pathless

What Remains of Edith Finch

The collection also includes an exclusive hardcover cloth-bound art book with spreads celebrating each game, as well as a creator statement from the individual developers. The book and game case slide into a premium slipcase with Annapurna Interactive’s logo. It also includes an exclusive Annapurna Interactive Switch console and cartridge case.

[fireladybuckley]

I love Steam sales 😀

[randomname-231]

Games I played recently and strongly recommend :

Sheepy a short adventure

Gorogoa

Dordogne

Press Ctrl

Outcore

There is no game

[somebody392]

hey! if someone has a lot of free time or is bored to death, maybe let's chat? we can also ramble about tagged fandoms! like this post and i will write to you or you could text me yourself!

(i can speak a little german.)

[inolienkiki]

Gee, I forgot, didn’t I?

Vote to pick your preference, like and reblog to get your friends on top of it, but mostly… vote to help me choose! I’m very torn 😅

[chiclet-go-boom]

I was today year's old when I found out that one of my all time favorite games, Gorogoa, was made by the same publisher that put out Journey and Stray.

I don't know why I'm surprised. But now I REALLY want play both those other games. Gorogoa is a masterpiece.

[ketallpot]

Playing Gorogoa

Going to play some Gorogoa at about 7:30 EST, as an early Bedtime Gaming thing. Especially since I have the energy to do so. I'll link when I start.

[first-impressions-gaming]

The games I played and adored in 2022

This bite-sized piece will include only a couple of sentences as an introduction to the games I checked out in 2022, which means that a game does not need to be released in 2022 per se. 2022 was a packed year for gaming, so many games that were intended to be developed and published before got delayed a year or two due to shutdowns and quarantine measures during the pandemic. And here we are, at the end of 2022, we find ourselves having played dozens of games, reading countless newspieces, reading and scrolling down reviews, first impressions and such.

I will break down this list into genres for easier navigation, I will not, naturally, include every single game I ‘liked’, I want this list to be a…some sort of guide as to open doors to genres you that you might not check out yourself usually.

RPG

Disco Elysium (The Final Cut)

Developed and Published by ZA/UM

This game deserves its own full-fledged deep-down analysis and review of all games. Imagine a detective-cop game with the smoothest and darkest narrative and mysterious fictional world with superb drawing style, in which you find yourself pulled to the environments, and getting familiar with each and every major or minor character. Disco Elysium is not for fainthearted, it is not a ‘game’, it is an ‘experience’ which will stick to you even when you are not playing it or after having played it. You will never look at narrative games the same following this game. The game received full voice-over in 2021, making it a masterpiece in acting in every possible way.

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition

Developed by BioWare

Published by EA

Mass Effect is a behemoth in RPG and space-opera genres. When I saw that ME trilogy got remastered for modern consoles and hardware I was sceptical at first because I do not consider myself an RPG person, yet I was surprised and excited at this excellent narrative-driven RPG. ME has been considered a legendary (aptly named) franchise ever since the first game was released back in 2007 on PS3 and Xbox 360. The playtime this remastered trilogy offers is over 100 hours (personally I completed the trilogy in 89 hours, not finishing all the quests, side missions) during which you’ll find yourself captivated in life of Shepard, wandering around the Milky Way in dozens of locations, will become acquainted with people at unexpected moments.

Puzzle

Gorogoa

Developed by Jason Roberts

Published by Annapurna Interactive

Taking puzzle genre to the next level with game mechanics that I did not see anywhere before. The game lasts around 3 hours, and the best compliment I can make for a game is saying ‘I finished this game in one sitting!’. For a game that relies on player’s interaction and pace, Gorogoa never skips a beat with its own unique story-telling approach and top-quality puzzles.

Point-and-Click Adventure

To my surprise, I checked out two phenomanol point-and-click titles this year, a genre that I am particularly keen of, yet both of which exceeded my expectations and left me craving for more. Both titles feel and play excellently, the intracate and detailed stories will take you on a journey.

NORCO

Developed by Geography of Robots

Published by Raw Fury

The pixelated style fits this game on a different level, with its character designs, surroundings, menus and dialogue windows, NORCO keeps everything in a straight path in an ever-growing and -developing plot. The game is set in Norco, Louisana in somewhat 80s. This mystery/investigative adventure offers peak narrative quality accompained by dark, gloomy and murky voiceover.

Pentiment

Developed by Obsidian

Published by Xbox Game Studios

Set in Upper Bavaria, Germany in 16th century, Pentiment is where you roleplay as Andreas Maler, an illustrator apprentice in an abbey in this small town named Tassing. Andreas, or rather you, find yourself entangled with the death of an aristocrat followed by even more mysterious events and happenings. The game combines a genre and setting I never experienced before, this Renaissance setting is enhanced by a glossary (of information about famous people, locations, books, scripts and incidents of that time) which helps the player getting familiar with what is talked and discussed among characters not only politically and socially but also matters of religion. The drawing style and dialogue windows received overwhelming positive reviews across the board, for example, in the dialogue window what a character says displays but there’s twist, the font type differs from character to character depending on background, personality, level of education, whether they are common people or people related to the abbey, they are printing press workers.

[deramin2]

Me on the second playthrough of Moncage and Gorogoa.

cycle of abuse fans when the poison drips through

[fletchasketch7893]

Spoiler Alert for Gorogoa Content warnings: A bit of cosmic horror, maybe? Nothing really. Game: Gorogoa Song: "Everything in its Right Place" by Radiohead Side note: I originally planned for this to go with "Thorofare Hike" by Chris Remo which plays at the end of the game Firewatch. I was going to call it "gorofare hike" or something, but then I found this song and figured it would work better. On the topic of major, last minute changes, the color correction and fading which dramatically improved the edit, only added in the last 40m or so before uploading this. I have no idea where that single green frame at the end came from, but it wasn't part of the project when I was editing. ( Personal project repurposed as gift. )

[a-lil-rat]

Me: I'll watch a youtuber play Gorogoa before going to bed. You know, to relax.

Me, the entire video: YOU NEED TO ZOOM IN!! IT IS A CORE MECHANIC PLEASE JUST ZOOM IN!!

[take-care-with-your-glasses]

People think that Stray from Anapurna is badass. I think Gorogoa is badasser.

[truthandshadow]

So I played Gorogoa and like everyone else who’s played it I don’t really know how to describe it. Beautiful artwork! Unique gameplay! Very very short!

What’s it about?

Uh… religion. Worshipping a rainbow dragon fish thing. Except it all goes wrong because you were seeking the wrong thing and now you have to spend your whole life figuring out what to do with that.

I’ve finished the game and I’m still very confused. The storytelling is nonlinear and also entirely image based so that doesn’t help. Like there’s something really interesting going on with punishment and atonement and the loss and return of faith. And grief obviously plays a big role thematically. But I don’t know how to unpack it.

I need to play it again, like, immediately.

Spoilers beneath the cut:

If my god literally, physically cast me down and broke all the bones in my body because my belief was too naive— well, actually, at that point it’d be pretty hard to say god doesn’t exist, but I sure as hell wouldn’t go back to worshipping them. So props to the main character? Maybe? Depending on your views on religion?

I also don’t think he had to atone because he did anything wrong, but that atonement was an important part of his religious journey. It’s sort of like the bargaining phase of grieving, I guess?

The lack of text and the lack of any sort of instructions despite the totally unique mechanics is definitely also metaphorically resonant. It’s about struggling through life and faith without instructions. It’s about confusion and trying and getting things wrong.

The nonlinear structure is really interesting. You spend 90% of the game doing the wrong thing and then at the end you look back and put all the pieces together and become redeemed.