#isometric emblem

[wallpapers4screen]

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[moontyger]

I just posted a PC Gamer article link in a separate post because I basically agree with it, but now I'm going to give my personal take as well. (Thought about adding it to that post, too, but was unsure about it.) The thing is that, IMHO, Dragon Age combat has gotten progressively worse over the course of the series. Inquisition's combat I basically suffered through, but I never actually liked it. Even dragon fights, which should be fun and strategic, weren't. And now this game has gone even further along that path, to the point that I am honestly not sure I will even be able to play it?

Because here's the thing: I don't actually like Mass Effect. I have never finished the first game and never played any of the others. Not only do I not enjoy the combat, I am actively terrible at it. My first few attempts at the game, I quit because I got stuck. Boss fights I couldn't win. (The last one I somehow got most of the way through before losing interest.)

Also? I hate combat wheels. Can we at least get some hotkeys for PC players? They are designed for consoles, but on PC they are so awkward that I end up not even using them the vast majority of the time. And don't tell me to use a controller. Controllers hurt my hands and arms so much that the last time I played a console game (Fire Emblem: Engage, if you're curious), I seem to have done permanent damage to my arms. I have nearly constant pain now. With a controller, I can maybe play for an hour or two every 3-4 days, which is shit. It is an actual accessibility issue.

The other thing is that I genuinely love western RPG combat. I love the Infinity Engine! I love dice rolls and turn-based systems (real-time with pause was the one big drawback of the Infinity Engine). I like isometric views and strategy. And I'd sadly accept that I am just an old fuddy-duddy with old-fashioned, nostalgic taste except: Baldur's Gate 3 was Game of the Year, multiple times over. That tells me there is a huge group of gamers with my tastes out there. A huge market for real RPGs. So why exactly is Bioware acting like they're ashamed of us and moving as far as they can from that kind of gameplay? I don't get it and am very unhappy about it.

[fake-fire-emblem-takes]

They should make fire emblem with guns. And give it an isometric pov idk what's with this 2d grid, we can barely see units.

Maybe make it more modern, with multiple deplyoable squads, and have the main antagonist be an alien invasion. Also no more supports we don't need those, they should do base building instead. And research, for more alien guns. And they can call it... F-CHROM.

great! maybe the obligatory animalwoman could be a snake or something. gotta have at least one beaststone user

[vixivulpixel]

imagine Greavard and Houndstone in pre-rendered 90s 3D scrunched down into SNES sprites and viewed at an isometric angle, facing off against Super Mario RPG Mario and co

Imagine Greavard and/or Houndstone in PS2-level 3D graphics and with a Heartless Emblem somewhere on their body up against Sora, Donald, and Goofy

[fluffyprincereviews]

10 Games Releasing 2023 That I'm Most Excited About

2022 was a wonderful year for games for me. I've played a lot of games in my backlog, as well as new releases as they came out. It can be tough keeping up with all the games that are releasing, but there are quite a few that I have my eye out for this year. Some big, some small, and some in-between! While I won't be talking about all of these extensively on this blog (mayhaps in smaller posts though, who knows?), at the very I want to gush about these in the turn of the new year.

Like a Dragon: Ishin (PS4, PS5, Steam, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S) February 21st 2023

To think that it's only been a few years now since I've first jumped on the Yakuza bandwagon. While there's still a few of the games that I need to finish, I'm excited to take on this spin-off game. Will I absolutely die because I insist on button mashing? Yes. Will I lose my mind the minute I see Majima? Also yes. I’d love to finish out the rest of my backlog with Yakuza before February comes around, but I know that’s but a lofty dream. 

Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (Switch) May 12th, 2023

If there is one thing that I have always enjoyed when it comes to Legend of Zelda, it's the lore and styling of the series. Link knows how to make an impact, even in his simple tunic. While I never finished Breath of the Wild due to my attention span being really bad at the time that this game released, there is a hope inside of me that I'll see this game through to the end. That and, I'm also hoping that they improved on the open world aspect to tie in more story.

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code (Switch) 2023

When it comes to adventure games, my absolute favorite genre are mysteries. I love being able to solve the big question behind what's happening. So while I should know better than to put all of my eggs into one basket, my hopes are very high that this game will scratch my ever constant mystery adventure game itch. Given that the people behind Dangan Ronpa are behind this game, it should at the very least be an interesting experience.

Fire Emblem Engage (Switch) January 20th, 2023

Like a lot of the Fire Emblem fandom, when the first official trailer for Engage came out, I was not sold on the designs at all. It just felt too...gimmicky. But after the deluge of new character designs that have come out, along with just allowing time to settle in, I realize that I am generally excited to see what Fire Emblem has in store for us. Of course, it is still a mild excitement, given the disappointment that was the gameplay/map designs for Three Houses. Say what you will, while the story was very good, the tactics gameplay left quite a bit to be desired.

Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection (Switch, PS4, Steam) April 14th, 2023

I have a soft spot for Gameboy RPGs. Growing up on Yu-Gi-Oh games, I just really love the styling of isometric views. While I don't have any nostalgia for Mega Man at all, I do want go play as many older RPGs that I can, especially those from the GBA era that I wasn't able to play in my youth. And perhaps, if I end up enjoying these games, it can show that fans want more from Capcom in terms of Mega Man RPGs.

Final Fantasy XVI (PS5) June 22nd, 2023

I'm not what you would call a Final Fantasy fan. That's not to say that I hate the series or anything, but more that I've just...never completed a Final Fantasy game. The furthest I've gotten was with Final Fantasy XIV and I haven't played Endwalker yet (and probably won't, just because I'm burnt out on MMOs for the foreseeable future). But something about XVI is drawing my eye and I find myself very intrigued. Perhaps its the gruff main character, or the fact that his charge is unexpectedly murdered, meaning that some intense angst is bound to occur. Who knows?

A Space for the Unbound (PS4, PS5, Switch, Steam, Xbox One) January 19th, 2023

I remember playing this little indie demo about a year ago and loving the atmosphere behind it. The pixel art was gorgeous and I followed one of the developers of this title as they were posting about the game on Twitter. To see it finally be released has me very excited, especially so soon too.

Suikoden I and II HD Remaster: Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, Steam) 2023

I'm very late to the classic RPG train, due to the fact that I never had the opportunity to play these games growing up. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who had thought this, but over the past...decade or so, Konami just left a bad taste in my mouth. From my perspective, it was the fact that they had so many IPs that they underutilized and those that they did milk (Yu-Gi-Oh) felt like low effort cash grabs. So seeing them actually putting an effort to developing and publishing games over the last few years has been a bit surprising. But hey, if it results in them opening their vault of old games and bringing them to more audiences, I'm all for it.

Have a Nice Death (Switch, Steam) March 22nd, 2023

Roguelikes are a genre that I never imagined myself exploring until I played Hades. Now, I'm on the search for any other roguelikes that can scratch that satisfying itch of slashing through enemies, failing horribly, and getting back up and trying again (with some leniency since I'm bad at games). I'm not quite sure what to expect when coming into this game as I like to know as little as possible about new games I'm interested in (outside of the basics to make sure I'm actually interested in it).

Mineko's Night Market (Switch, Steam) 2023

This is another indie title that I've had my eye on since it was first revealed in a Nintendo Indie Direct a couple years ago or so. Since then, it's been remaining low key, trickling out information every once in a blue moon. But now, it seems as though we are at the end of the tunnel, with a potential release date coming this year.

Those are just some of the games that I’m excited to play this year. But what games have your interest peaked? 

[jodjuya]

Gave "Drone Tactics" a go after seeing a Tumblr shitpost about it.

Nintendo DS title. Turn-based tactical combat on a isometric square grid, featuring human pilots controlling giant-insect mechs.

I was very unimpressed with it. The plot was tedious and uninspired, the visuals were adequate but nothing to write home about, and the combat was slow and clunky with some truely baffling design decisions on full display. Played through three missions before giving up on it, thinking to myself literally the entire time "why am I even playing this game when I could be playing Fire Emblem instead??"

My issues with it:

The most generic, flimsy, paint-by-numbers isekai plot you could ever imagine

Insects in the parallel dimension are regular earth sized insects (or they are, at least, regular sized when they gatecrash our dimension. Unsure if either the children or insects are resized when they get over to The Insect Dimension...), but they are sentient and live in insect societies that mirror the human-style societies on regular-earth. But also, they can transform into giant mechs called "Drones" if you use a special magic card on them. But also also, ONLY humans can use those special magic cards to transform/summon/create Drones. But also also also, the humans native to this Insect Dimension have all gone mysteriously extinct, so therefore regular human children from regular earth have to be summoned across dimensions to do the mech summoning/piloting, but ONLY children who already love insects because otherwise the trans-species telepathy doesn't work and the sentient insects can't talk to them. Also their science teacher has also been isekai'd—either "too" or "previously"—and he pilots a snail mech which functions as a mobile storage hanger for the children's mechs.

It's dumb and goofy and I'm not a fan.

Why use an isometric grid when your controls are strictly cardinal??? It's horrible and I hate it and there's a reason why no other games do this. Even worse is that because you're attempting to stuff a diagonal grid onto a rectangular screen, the corners get truncated and this causes your cursor to slide off in the next-best direction to whichever direction it is you're pressing on the d-pad at the time. Horrible design. F-tier stuff. Unintuitive and shit.

'melee' and 'guns' are two separate combat styles, with separate stats for each. Okay, fine; so far so normal. But every unit has equal access to both abilities, and 'guns' has zero range, so it functions identically to 'melee'! Additionally, every unit has a different spread of stats—naturally—so this means every unit has a fixed preference for which type of attack to use! Admittedly, I didn't progress beyond the very beginnings of the campaign, so possibly it would have made a difference later on, but from what I saw there was zero tactical advantage made available by every unit having both types of attack. All it added was an extra step to every single turn of combat for every single unit. Why?? What did this add to the game? Why did you do this??

[theavaricesystem]

Alright I'm gonna make a post on here about the very sudden idea I had for a video game, that is currently spinning wildly in my brain:

Sprint/STRIDE

Setting: An as-of-yet unnamed Sci-fi city, where sapient AI are still relatively new and are a hotly debated topic in both legal, ethical, and scientific spheres. Capitalism can't seem to find an easy way to exploit these Synthetic Humanoids, at least not yet.

Protagonist: a Synthetic, designation STR-103, nicknamed "STRIDE" by their creator and mom. They were designed with experimental tech, which allows for "photon conversion and projection". Meaning, they are able to convert their body into light in order to move at the speed of light in very short, angular bursts.

STRIDE felt called to help protect the city they were made in, and eventually begins investigating a dangerous outbreak of "Rapid Personality Burnout", an event which can cause synthetic humanoids to suddenly lose the ability to reason and become dangerous to themselves and others. STRIDE's creator lost a friend and partner to an RPB, making this a deeply personal endeavor, even beyond the risk that STRIDE may experience one of these burnouts themselves.

STRIDE is a sleek, aerodynamic, almost minimalist synthetic, with various rabbit-like features, such as long ears, digitigrade legs, and a small, angular tail. Their face is a screen, which displays their emotions via emoticons.

The gameplay: turn based, where STRIDE takes action by plotting out a course, moving a number of spaces according to an ENERGY bar, and interacting with enemies and the environment to neutralize foes in a nonlethal manner. STRIDE refuses to use lethal force, even on other Synthetics.

After STRIDE takes action, there is another turn for "The World", where all of the enemies-and the results of the actions taken on STRIDE's turn-come into play. STRIDE is not built for durability, and thus, WILL die from one stray bullet or well-timed attack. However, no other Synthetic or human can keep up with their processing abilities or speed, giving them a great advantage.

Movement and Actions both use your ENERGY. You have to balance how far you move with how many things you do in a turn, and vice versa. Enemies will often not follow you as you move however, opting to stay in place and try to catch you between movements to close in and attack. This means the best course of action is to alter the terrain bit by bit, until a path is cleared for STRIDE to close in and subdue hostiles in one turn.

Visuals: grid based movement, possibly isometric graphics. Alternatively, 2D sprites on a 3d plane?

Definite sources of inspiration: The Flash, TRANSISTOR, and Fire Emblem/Advance Wars/tactics games in general, and Tracer from Overwatch (kinda sorta)

[fridge-reviews]

Curse of the Dead Gods

Developer: Passtech Games Publisher: Focus Entertainment Rrp: £17.99 Gog.com, Humblebindle, Steam, Epic and Origin Released: 23rd February 2021 Available on: Gog.com, Humblebindle, Steam, Epic and Origin Played Using: An Xbox One Control Pad Approximate game length: 22 Hours +

They say that great power can be found within the temples of the dead gods, but only if you can survive the many curses they lay upon you. Within those halls you'll find the twisted remains of all those hopefuls that came before you. If you truly feel you can brave all these and survive... then you are a fool, but such is the way of fools.

Curse of the Dead Gods is a isometric roguelite game in which you attempt to work your way through three temples to gain powers beyond mortal reckoning. That really is about it when it comes to the story, however, I've found that being light in the story department is a strength for most roguelite games (with the notable exception of Hades). Most players don't want to be bogged down with a complex narrative and simply want to get back into the action and in that regard this game doesn't disappoint. The temples of the dead gods are sealed shut with no natural light apart from a few lit braziers, well that and your trusty torch. However, you have a choice to make you can either have your torch out and illuminating your way or your weapons. Both light and darkness have their benefits and drawbacks. When in light you can see hidden traps and have (slightly) more warning of upcoming enemies, but in the darkness your attack damage increases significantly, in fact certain builds rely upon you fighting in the darkness rather than the light.

Your character (whose name I only found out was Caradog when doing some research) has stamina points, five of them actually. One of these stamina points is depleted each time you dodge, use your secondary weapon or perform a finishing attack (which is the final attack in a string of them with your main weapon) and using your two handed weapon drains two stamina points each time its used. These points regenerate quickly after use and can even be earned by performing a perfect dodge, meaning you dodged out of the way at 'just' the right moment. Each time you go through a door you gain corruption which will start to fill a gauge in the bottom right of the screen, when it fills up you are 'gifted' a curse upon entering the next door. These curses add additional rules that make the game more challenging. You can have five of these curses which range from being mildly annoying through to deadly, however its the fifth and final curse thats the worst usually directly affecting your health (like draining it away).

At the end of some rooms you will find altars where you can make an offering, the various altars relate to weapons, relics or attributes and they will accept an offering of either gold or blood. Expending the gold will use the gold (that doesn't stack between runs) you've gained to purchase what you want, an offering of blood increases your corruption instead.

Normal enemies will sometimes drop crystal skulls, weapons or relics when they're killed. The occurrence of these drops happening is influenced by your Perception attribute. If you kill a champion (end of level boss) they will drop jade rings, crystal skulls, relics and weapons (and if its your first time killing them they also give blood emblems). Jade rings, crystal skulls, and blood emblems carry over from playthrough to playthrough and you spend them to upgrade your characters situation in the underworld. Normal enemies will sometimes drop crystal skulls, weapons or relics when they're killed. The occurrence of these drops happening is influenced by your Perception attribute. If you kill a champion (end of level boss) they will drop jade rings, crystal skulls, relics and weapons (and if its your first time killing them they also give blood emblems). Jade rings, crystal skulls, and blood emblems carry over from playthrough to playthrough and you spend them to upgrade your characters situation in the underworld. Now you may have noticed that I've made no mention of the enemies dropping gold, that's because they don't, but that doesn't mean you can't get gold from their deaths. This game rewards the player for skillful play with its 'Greed Kills' when you chain kills the greed kill counter will appear and start to count down (it lasts approximately two seconds) the more enemies that die while the counter is on screen the greater the multiplier becomes. If you take damage during that time though, the greed kill timer disappears.

As you play you'll find relics and weapons that will grant bonuses if they are equipped. However, you can instead choose to offer them up to the gods who in turn will reward you with a reduction in your corruption, gold or sometimes a increase to an attribute.

I've mentioned attributes a few times now so I should probably explain what they are. There are three attributes, Constitution, Dexterity and Perception. Consistution increases you maximum health, dexterity increases your damage with weapons and perception influences how often enemies will drop items. Inevitably, your character will die either to an enemy or a trap, and when that happens you're sent to the underworld, its here that you can spend the crystal skulls and jade rings on blessings, unlocking weaponry and improving your starting arsenal. Thus improving your chances at success in your next run.

The game comes with an 'assist mode' that can be activated in the system menu. Turning on this mode will allow you to customise the difficulty of the game somewhat, for example you could increase your stamina or remove the final curse. However, activating this will stop you from gaining achievements (if that matters to you) and will put a permanent marker on your save slot, I know a lot of people who would find that very off putting.

My thoughts on this game? It's pretty damned good. I liked it enough to purchase the soundtrack and even when I finished the game I kept coming back to try my hand at the daily challenge events that appear. So yeah, I recommend it.

If this appeals to you perhaps try;

Hand of Fate 2 Hades

----

If you’d like to support me I have a Ko-fi, the reviews will continue to be posted donation or not.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

I have tactics ogre on PSP and Playstation, but I haven't played it in a while. I wouldn't cosider that an isometric RPG though. It's really a strategy RPG, like FFT or Fire Emblem. An isometric RPG is what used to be called a cRPG, and they're games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment, Neverwinter Nights, Pillars of Eternity, Fallout 1 and 2, the newer Wasteland games, and the two Pathfinder games. Basically an RPG with an isometric perspective. Here's a decent explanation. They're usually known for having very reactive stories and a lot of freedom for the player to explore and influence the world around them, though that varies from game to game.

It is really weird how some people have a bee in their bonnet over Soulsborn games, Elden Ring included. I remember when the latter came out, you have actual devs from Ubisoft (maybe devs in name only then) bitching about the UI because it wasn't the standardized slop you got in the recent AC games, Destiny, even the new GoW.

When Demon's Souls first came out I played the shit out of it despite it being harder than any other game I'd played at the time. And it was *fun* because of having to persevere until you finally beat the bullshit King with the bullshit hitboxes at the end. Yeah, there's going to be tedium and some grinding if you want souls or materials but that's the work you put into the game, because getting that extra few levels and learning enemy movesets and even getting the right gear for your build is part of the enjoyment.

It's like how you have Squenix wanting to change up the "guys in a line" turn based JRPG - because you've had assholes who don't like that genre being vocal about it. Squenix are currently digging their own grave with not great releases recently because they're trying to cater to people who wouldn't be enjoying their games anyway.

I'm personally not a fan of overly difficult games, which is why I always say that Elden Ring is the perfect soulsborn. It's not easy, especially when you go after side bosses. But just the simple fact of making it open world and letting players tackle the game from whatever direction they want, instead of the usual mostly linear route soulsborn games make you go through, is a perfect example of making a game more accessible without sacrificing what makes the game appealing in the first place. Elden Ring is probably one of my favorite games ever, and I can't understate enough how much I hate dying in video games. I'm a easy mode guy. I save scum all the time when that's a possibility. But Elden Ring was so well made and so fun to play and gave me so many options to make things easier on myself that I stuck with it and had a blast. Fuck, I even had fun grinding for hours in one area.

But Elden Ring did all that without compromising what it is.

And if it didn't, I would have put it down and moved on. I wouldn't have demanded an easy mode or ugly yellow paint everywhere. Which is something tourists and hobby gentrifiers can't do. And it sucks when devs try to appeal to people who are perpetually mad about everything, instead of trying to appeal to their core userbase, and then expanding from there.

[annalee-thecrazyqueen]

Cheers to anyone shipping DoroGrid

I really like Dorothea and Ingrid’s summer costume. So instead of making roommate AU thingy, I made a summer cabin for them.

[ember-atelier]

The Emblem Building - Drapnell - Tinder Colony

The Emblem building is a distinctive mixed-use highrise building in the Drapnell area of Tinder Colony. As well as its many residential properties, the building contains a variety of shops and stores, taverns and other commercial amienities such as bathhouses and dentists, offices and laundries. There also some light industral units present such as craft workshops and indoor hydroponic farms.

(To view other images based in this building, click on the “Emblem Building” tag under this post.)

[wallpapers4screen]

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[raul-volp2]

Evolution of the CIty Noire (my tactical ttrpg): First it was a more side scroller game style with a some references from strategy games like Fire Emblem.

Than I moved to isometric minis, adapting the style to the isometric view, based on iconic games like Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics style (My favorite Pixel Art style) but also isometric view is the most common used in digital tactical strategy games overall, some examples including Xcom, Invisible Inc, BattleTech and Fell Seal.

And finally adding more dynamic poses and itens/equipments, and changing the colour style to work more with hardshadows and a purple rim light to better highlight the characters.

[surpriserose]

Btw i love that persona 1 is doing what i thought persona 2 would do when i saw the like uh i guess you could call it the isometric battlefield style? Like i expected to have to position people and deal with range on my attacks but no it just kinda looks like that BUT in persona 1 that is the case and is very tactical i love it like not to say its like a mash up of fire emblem and persona but it is xhdjsnsjzkz

[agirlinsearchof]

I wonder something now.

You know how Final Fantasy VII had chibi overworld models, and how those models were swapped out for ones with more realistic proportions when the characters fought?

If there had been a Fire Emblem game on the N64 (disregarding the fact that the sole publicly-released screenshot of FE64 showed isometric sprites), I wonder if something similar would have been done (chibi models on the grid, more realistic models in combat with animations on).

[a-shrieking-cloud-of-bats]

so earlier this year I attempted to stop buying so many video games because I thought I needed to finish the ones I have and while I still believe that, that attempt has absolutely imploded and I’ve given up for the rest of the year

which means it’s time to go over steam summer sale games that I bought, click the names for steam pages.

listed in no particular order

this is not an extremely in depth review set and I haven’t finished most of them (but I have played most of them long enough to get a handle on them)

so yeah

Steam Summer Sale Roundup 2022

The Last Spell - this was a game I was sort’ve nervous about getting and god damn I am so happy I got it; easily my number one

turn based strategy game (think fire emblem, isometric though), the hook is the in depth character creation, loads of stats to pick from, and while it’s a fairly difficult game and there are some clear winners, but I’d say none of the stats are useless, which is nice

additionally, weapon type determines your moveset, for instance...

one handed swords have a lot of mobility based moves, the attacks move you, you get more damage on one of their attacks depending on how many tiles you moved prior to using it

one handed axes are “cleave” focused, with a lot of skills that hit a small area (its basic attack equivelent hits 3 tiles, which is nuts), in exchange they are inaccurate

one handed hammers are big on single target damage and stuns

and so on; you can see how this variation would encourage you to build characters differently based on the weapon they’re using, I’m sure

with this said most weapon types must be unlocked, but the game is hard enough that I think having an introductory period where you’re racking up currency/getting achievements that unlock stuff is reasonable enough

unit death is permenant and in fact, damage is semi permenant; you go through multiple nights on stages and damage carries over between the nights, along with spent MP. This does two things, it puts a lot of focus on HP regen/MP regen when picking stat ups (not my favorite thing but I accept it as a quirk of the system they put in place), and makes you think about how often you’re using those big fancy skills that stun and do huge damage, a big part of the game’s difficulty is resource management, which leads into the next (and final) mechanic, town building

you’re defending a town in this game and it starts out mostly fucked up, every day (as opposed to night) you pick upgrades, build new buildings, and tell workers what to do for the day, there’s stuff that generates gold (needed to build buildings), materials (needed to build walls), stuff that gives free armor and weapons, stuff that restores HP/MP for gold cost (there are upgrades for freebies)

overall the game offers a load of depth and replayability and even as much as it’s twisting my balls I’m enjoying it quite a bit, it’s giving me darkest dungeon vibes

the plot is nothing to write home about but it works, basically wizards made a spell that fucks up towns, it’s used in military action, the spell creates purple mist that zombifies the dead, the rest is history, medieval zombie apocalypse plot take it or leave it; also as a result of this event mages have been spurned and are now forced to end the concept of magic, hence the title, you’re protecting a mage that’s working on a segment of the spell

there’s also some weird stuff going down with the upgrade vendors and how the MC seems to be resetting time but I dunno nothin about that yet

at any rate if you love difficult turn based strategies and character customization, you could hardly do worse!

Earth’s Dawn - Japanese Indie side scrolling beat-em-up, basically aliens invade earth and humans get beaten back but there’s a secret project that you’re a part of that makes you into a robo human that can kill the aliens and like I said with the last spell, take it or leave it; this shit ain’t shakespeare. what it is though is a surprisingly simple beatemup with some heavy focus on upgrades, you can upgrade your weapons, you can upgrade your armors, you can unlock new skills, and this is overall sort’ve a grindy beat-em-up where you’re doing a lot of little random stuff to get Points to Get More Upgrades to Do More Stuff, etc

that’s the draw of it anyway, I personally love this shit

the progression is a little funky in places (there’s an early game mission that puts you up against an extremely tanky basic enemy that you are basically guarenteed to die to) and I think the bosses are too tanky overall but death does nothing significant

not a bad beat-em-up, nothing groundbreaking, a lot of where it is on this list is due to my personal affinity for a good grind and beat-em-ups

Mind Scanners - this is a game a pal recommended to me because it looked like papers please (and it does! It was clearly inspired by the game), however it plays significantly differently. Less paperwork, more warioware. We’ll touch on the plot first though.

The game starts with the local oppressive government taking away your daughter because she’s got a rare form of infectious mental illness. You become something called a Mind Scanner, which is a sort’ve futuristic kinda campy form of psychologist where you determine if people are mentally ill and then administer treatment if so through various tools at your disposal (these are the warioware microgame things). As the plot progresses you learn about a revolutionary group that’s attempting to free the city from the reign of an oppressive government.

The second half of that paragraph obviously sounds familiar, it’s a fairly common concept for a game these days. But mind scanners works with it remarkably well. When you’re treating individuals, failures will build stress, where max stress makes the patient freak out and run away from you (and probably get you taxed the next day), and there’s a sanity bar, as there’s a subplot about how the tools can erase people’s minds or something, it honestly never gets explored particularly well. Regardless this sets up a few potential outcomes for various patients.

either you think the patient is sane, and let them go, this gives you a few bucks, you find them insane and treat them, this gives you a larger paycheck, or you find someone insane, think they’re not worth letting exist (or you erase them on request from someone), and erase their brain on purpose. This gives you a paycheck for treatment but if done on the wrong person can have consequences. Money is used on rent and buying new tools. The game tends to make you feel bad for erasing minds, obviously, and the revolutionary group doesn’t like it when you do it either.

All this lines up to make an interesting game that’s attempting to tell a story that’s way too long for it to sustain. The story isn’t bad; I especially appreciate that this is a game plot like this that doesn’t beat me over the head with how the fucking government is evil; I hate that; but ultimately 6 minigames with some side ones you can do to get minor auxilary benefits is not a lot of content. Additionally I think the game tries a little bit too hard to be “difficult”, because some of the later patients can take like 2 days to treat entirely, and it’s kind’ve hard to optimize the minigames you use. The game ends up dragging on for a plot that’s heading towards a pretty obvious direction by the time it starts dragging on.

It’s not bad and it’s pretty cheap; worth picking up if you’re looking for a decent plot and a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously mechanically. There was definitely interest in getting new tools and seeing how they worked, but the game ran a bit too long for me. Will definitely finish it eventually, but the repetition does make it hard to push through.

Full Bore - I am not a puzzle game player. Full Bore is a block based puzzle game. Full bore is Extremely Good. Full bore is also abandoned by its dev and has some bugs. They don’t seem to be game breaking, and I’ve never heard of them halting progress in the game, but it’s also not exactly a super popular game. They are Definitely Noticible, and Definitely Stress Me Out. Take note. Game would probably be higher then mind scanners if I wasn’t so concerned about the bugs.

Full Bore is a game about a boar that stumbles into a minefield that explodes, tossing him underground, which leads to him getting into a rocket that takes him to a Place, where the dominant species is boars. He’s also framed for a gem heist. There’s some time/location ambiguity going on with the plot, and while the plot is obviously not the main focus, is interesting.

Game is quite simple, you can dig blocks, blocks react in certain ways depending on where they are, what they are, and what they are surrounded by, in some cases. Rock falls slowly and digs slowly, sand and silt fall quickly and dig quickly (and can be broken from a distance by a stomp), that sort’ve thing.

Your goal is to get gems to pay off your debt. On the tin, anyway. The real goal is to dig down, find terminals explaining the plot, and eventually reach a culmination of said plot. Saying more would be too much. If you like block based puzzle games, check it out, I really think it stands out from what I’ve heard of the genre. If you like weird sci fi, consider it. It’s not a primary focus, but the plot might hook you. I’m certainly interested. The game doesn’t let the fact that it’s a puzzle game keep it from doing interesting narrative stuff, which I appreciate, I feel like a lot of puzzle games resign themselves to being a quirky vector for Weird Tetris. Or whatever. Anyway.

Skul: The Hero Slayer - Skul is another roguelite in a long line of roguelites. I keep buying them and I’m not sure why, but I’m not letting that effect my opinion of Skul. I initially thought it was pretty bad, but ultimately it’s a platforming action roguelite that has some excellent pixel art, a solid difficulty curve, and.. not as much variety as I’d like.

The game revolves around a little skeleton by the name of Skul, who works for the demon king. The First Hero captures the demon king in the intro and your job is to rescue him. Along the way, you and a witch that also works for the demon king learn the heros are using something called dark quartz which warps creatures into abominations and removes their will. Moral Ambiguity Plot

the plot is not incredible. Not a big deal, most roguelite plots aren’t. It’s a cute concept, but it’s mostly a surface level thing, beyond the primary gimmick. As a skeleton you can swap skulls. This gives you new movesets and gimmicks. This was part of the reason I didn’t like it initially; these skulls have A Lot of work put into them. They are all upgradable, which unlock additional mechanics in the skull, and you can generally think of a skull as a class moreso then a piece of gear. You can carry two skulls, somehow, and swap between them, with a cooldown preventing you from spamming it (many skulls do something unique on swap).

There are also passive items, and if you’ve played a roguelite you already know what they do. Increased attack speed, increased attack power, chance to stun, yadda yadda.

This overall makes skul a roguelite more about good execution rather then getting a series of items that makes something insane happen that wins you the game. To compare it to its contemporary, Dead Cells, Skull is more about precision platforming and dead cells is more about getting through stages as fast as possible, while killing as many enemies as possible. At the end of the day Skul feels like an odd combo of slow, careful platforming and replayable, six runs an hour roguelite stuff. I frequently feel more hampered by my ability to platform, which is weird. When the platforming and combat are put in the same place, enemies are frequently put in places specifically to make you approach things slowly and carefully, which is also weird, because the game is very fast when it doesn’t do that. It’s not a bad game. But it is a weird game. I suppose it’s to be expected from a genre as populated as this one.

Ultimately my beef with skul is that the platforming is Very Finnicky. The number of times I’ve bopped my head into a spike ceiling and lost a tenth of my very important health pool is absurd given I’ve never gotten past the first world. This frequently happens even when enemies are not present, and while I might just be bad, I also think that “be careful don’t jump too high ha ha” is a messy design concept to begin with. I’ll probably play it more but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s more because it’s designed to tug on my endorphin glands rather then a legitimate desire to play that game specifically.

Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate - Look I could keep you for like 4 paragraphs but Shiren the Wanderer is the grandaddy of mystery dungeon games. If you’ve ever played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, they’re similar, though it’s not pokemon so it has to get the Pokemon Variety from somewhere else, namely gear and items. You have usable items that cause effects, equipment that applies passive effects/has super effective hits on certain enemy types, and the game is tough as nails and more of a long burn thing. If you’re looking for a roguelike that doesn’t have a page of DnD stats on every item and does have a graphical interface, you could do much much worse.

Hellsinker - Hellsinker is an extremely fast top down shmup that will probably blow you apart if you’re not used to shmups. It probably will even if you are. It is also a historic game within the genre, and lead to a load of innovations in other games within the genre.

The game starts with 3 selectable characters and more unlock as it goes along. There’s a surprisingly in depth plot that’s mostly kept in the manual, and I don’t understand any of it because I’m still working on stage 2.

Mechanically it varies by having two meters on the left, sol and luna, which determine how much damage your primary shot does and how fast it fires, respectively. Luna depletes when you shoot, sol depletes when you bomb (which can only be done at 3 or more sol, both meters cap at 5).

So, yeah. Shmup! You either know how they work or you don’t. If you don’t I highly reccomend another shmup. I’ll reccomend Zero Ranger. Nice, easy going, and not too esoteric, but also won’t just give you the win.

Video James; the sale is still going on as of now so most of these games should still be on sale! Check em out. Or don’t. It’s not like I spent an hour and a half typing this up. (seriously though don’t feel obligated)