Limbo

July 3, 2013 by 8 Comments

Probably spoilers in here.  Just a warning.

People are always asking me what I think of certain indie games that existed before I started Indie Gamer Chick. The two most commonly asked about titles are Fez and Limbo. I couldn’t finish Fez because of my epilepsy, so Limbo is the only one I’m really qualified to speak of. (UPDATE: I did end up reviewing it!) But seriously, it’s like a daily thing.  “What did you think of Limbo?” As if Limbo is the be-all, end-all of console-based indies.

I liked Limbo. I really did. I also feel the game is fairly overrated. When you strip out of the visuals and bleakness, it’s just a good, but not great, platformer. A trend I’ve noticed is that a lot of people only played through the early part of the game. When you first enter Limbo, you can be left shell-shocked by the dark tone, spooky visuals, and the fact that one of the first things that happens is an awesome, intense encounter with a giant spider. It perhaps gives the false impression that all those emotions will retain their impact through-out the game. They don’t. At least for me, I found myself desensitized to the whole concept not even half-way in. Once Limbo started focusing more on twitchy-platforming instead of physics-based puzzles, I started finding myself almost bored. It never fully becomes a chore, but once it starts becoming a platforming cliché, it does sort of burn out.

I filled in the blanks by pretending that the game starred Schroeder from The Peanuts. Here he is, learning of Charlie Brown's final fate.

I filled in the blanks by pretending that the game starred Schroeder from The Peanuts. Here he is, learning of Charlie Brown’s final fate.

Also, it was hard to get worked up about the setting when the game was using the all-deflecting “it’s an art game” shield, which pretty much guaranteed an ending “left open to interpretation.” Never been a fan of that. Especially when the game was abstract to begin with. So I guess the idea is the kid, or kids, are dead. How they died or when or where or why is never explained. Theories range from a car wreck to falling out of the tree house to being murdered. I guess from a marketing point of view, it works, because at least people are talking about the game. But I found the ending unsatisfying, because it offered no closure at all. When you invest hours into a game hoping to get some kind of explanation for all the fucked up happenings and the payoff is more questions, it almost feels like the director himself didn’t really know where to go with it. I’ll call this the “Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes Effect.”

Yea, sometimes the questions are more fun than the answers, but in the case of Limbo, you’re playing characters that have no characterization at all. The boy has no back story, no dialog, no personality, no facial expressions, or anything else going for him. The girl is no different. You’re forced to fill in the blanks yourself, but most of the symbolism is in the background and can be easily missed on account of you playing the game. Because the actual gameplay starts to dull towards the end, Limbo really doesn’t lend itself well to replaying to look for the clues that you missed.

Limbo’s ending. I apologize for comparing it to Burton’s Planet of the Apes. That’s a low-blow.

I don’t mean to be too negative here. Sometimes Limbo is brilliantly designed from a gameplay perspective. The bits with the spider early on are one of my all-time gaming highlights. Unfortunately, Limbo pretty much shot its wad in the first twenty minutes. Nothing that followed the sequence where you’re hopping in the spider’s cocoon came remotely close to the thrills and chills that section offered. All that’s left is solid physics-based platforming that I almost wish was in a more cheerful setting, because too much dark shit can get exhausting. But hey, dark is in right now. Any product that aims to be joyful is setting itself up for failure. If an indie game isn’t so bleak that you want to bury your face in your hands and cry, the developer must be mentally ill. Or possibly not mentally ill enough.

boxartlgLimbo was developed by Playdead

IGC_Approved1200 Microsoft Points honest to God can’t believe they just ported this thing to iOS. There is no fucking way this can be played well with fake virtual buttons in the making of this review.

Limbo is Chick Approved. 

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Your Bright Futures

July 1, 2013 by 11 Comments

So I’m making the transition from an XBLIG-centered site to more sweeping coverage of indies across all platforms.  It’s kind of scary.  I’ve spent two years focusing on this little unsung platform that is Xbox Live Indie Games.  But I’m not the only one braving new waters.  Hundreds of Xbox Live Indie Game developers are exploring new development formats such as Unity or Monogame, with the intent of going multi-platform.  With both Sony and Nintendo aggressively courting indies, not to mention upstart Ouya and the existing (and thriving) PC indie community, there’s no shortage of places to go.  Well, so far Microsoft hasn’t said anything.  My theory is they’re in a medically-induced coma after sustaining life-threatening whiplash following the quick and reckless 180 they pulled.  Again, just a theory.  But if you see any Xbox guys wearing neck braces, just nod knowingly.

Anyway, with this move I’m making, which has me a little on the jittery side, I was curious how the development community that has supported me for the last two years is handling the transition.  What plans they have for the future, and what lessons they’ve learned from Xbox Live Indie Games that they’ll be applying to the future.  Here’s what they had to say.

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Thank You

June 30, 2013 by 19 Comments

I want to say, deep down from the bottom of my heart: I love you all.  Two years ago I started Indie Gamer Chick with the encouragement of my best friend Brian.  Growing up with autism and intense shyness on top of that, being known for expressing my opinions is not something that would have ever seemed to be in the cards for me.  I don’t say that out of bitterness either.  I’m the luckiest person I know.  My parents grew up dirt poor in Cuba.  Today, we’re doing pretty well for ourselves.  Because of my father’s hard work, I’ve had a comfortable life.  It doesn’t mean there aren’t tough times.  When I was a kid, I gave people the creeps.  Other kids used terms like “robot” or “cyborg” to describe me.  I was pulled out of school in first grade when my teacher pointed at me and snickered to another teacher that I was the “retard.”  My parents were furious, but the teacher had tenure and the only thing they could do to her was make her take a weekend course on sensitivity.  I was home-schooled after that.  For most of my life, I had a tutor named Carol, and she was incredible.  It didn’t do much for my social life, but through various autism support groups, I got to hang out with kids like me.  A big part of that included playing games like Goldeneye or Perfect Dark.

But talking about games?  Yea right.  Not me.  I’ve always been opinionated, but expressing that opinion just wasn’t something I would do.  It wasn’t in my character.

And then I met Brian.  He says he didn’t do anything.  When you have the type of love and encouragement he’s provided me, I’d say that’s doing a lot.  And thus, I became Indie Gamer Chick.

But it wasn’t just Brian.  It was a whole community of hundreds of gamers and game developers.  All of them curious to see what I had to say.  All of them anxious to talk games with me.  All of them there to offer advice.  All of them ready to offer help if needed.  What an incredible feeling it is to have that much support.  Take the epilepsy thing.  I’ve literally had hundreds of people offer me all kinds of warnings on everything from games to movies to television about things that might set off my personal epilepsy trigger.  To have that many people looking out for me?  I can’t tell you how amazing that feels.  I hope you all get to know what that’s like.

Well, except the epilepsy part.  I hope you never have to deal with that.

I had no expectations when I started this, aside from “I bet I won’t even keep this up for a month.”  And yet here I am, two years later.  The most read Xbox Live Indie Game critic ever.  I’ve been recognized on the street.  I’ve done interviews.  I’ve had representatives from all three major console manufacturers reach out to me.  I’m being read not just by indie developers, but major directors of triple A games.  I’ve been into video games since I was seven years old.  To find out that I’m water-cooler talk for the people who made those games?  Surreal.  And awesome.

I’m a cheat code for God’s sake!  Me!  I’m like Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Start with a pulse!  My mascot is a hidden character in an upcoming game.  I’m doing a PC bundle.  Really, the only thing left is for me to buckle down and make my own game.  Which ain’t happening.  Probably.  This year at least.

In all seriousness, thank you.  All of you.  You guys don’t always agree with my reviews.  And that’s great, because I don’t always like your games.  But no matter what, you’ve all made my life more special.  I can’t thank people individually like I did last year.  We’d be here all day.  Just know this: I’m very fond of you all.  I’m grateful for the opportunities you’ve given me.  And I’m honored that you all treat me so seriously, because you’re the ones with the real talent.  The games you make can be spectacular.  When you reach your full potential, look out, because you’ll make a real impact on gaming.  I’m still getting the hang of this thing I do, but you inspire me to do better.  And I will.  I promise.  We’re all turning a new corner as this generation of games ends and another begins.  I’m sure this will lead to many of the guys who came into game development through XNA drifting apart.  That’s life.  But I think we shouldn’t drift too far apart.  I don’t think I could handle it.  You’ve all been there for me for two years now.  I don’t fancy going through the next decade without you.  So stay close please.  Continue to inspire me.  I owe you all a debt that I can never hope to repay.  You’ve changed my life.  And for that, as I said in the beginning, I love you all.

-Catherine Vice

June 30th, 2013

Filed under Editorials

Hotline Miami

June 29, 2013 by 12 Comments

I’ve always hated using the cop-out “it’s just not for me” in relation to anything.  It just seems so non-committal.  And yet, after putting a few hours into Hotline Miami and simply not getting what everyone else is raving about, I feel “it’s just not for me” is the only answer I can give, because it really isn’t for me.

And that has nothing to do with the violence.  I like violence.  I’m proud that I live in a time where the violence on television is so awesome that it makes even the most grizzled of war veterans become physically ill.  People are talking about the violence in Hotline Miami like we’ve reached the zenith of virtual murders.  Where have you people been the last few years?  There’s shit in the latest Mortal Kombat that would make even the most fetishistic psychopath go limp with shame.  Hell, I’ve played a game that gives you an achievement for tying a nun to railroad tracks and letting her get hit by a train.  And I loved it.  Sorry Hotline Miami, but your eight-bit violence is just not cutting it with me.

The typical after-party at the MTV Music Video Awards.

The typical after-party at the MTV Music Video Awards.

I think the raving is based mostly on the novelty factor.  Violence was never this masterful when games looked like this.  With modern indie gaming, we can take all the theatrical bloodshed we’ve accumulated from years of premium cable shows and modern M rated titles and apply it to games that seem like they could have existed in the 80s.  So the thrill comes from “hey, it’s an old game but it’s really gory.  Neat!”  But it’s not an old game.  I’m not saying Hotline Miami isn’t extraordinarily fucked up.  It is.  What I’m saying is, shouldn’t everyone over the age of twenty  be desensitized to this type of shit by now?

What turned me off most about Hotline Miami was the difficulty.  I just could not make any progress, often repeating stages several dozen times to no avail.  Hypothetically, the game is a bit of a puzzler, a bit of a brawler, a bit of a shooter, and a bit of a stealthy dungeon crawler type of thing.  It’s a cavalcade of ideas and it doesn’t always blend together smoothly.  This also helps mute the violence that is, let’s face it, the chief selling point of the game.  For example, the scalding water thing.  Everyone had been telling me about the water thing for the last year.  Grab a pot of boiling water off a stove and throw it on some dude.  Pretty brutal, right?  But the act of throwing boiling water loses its sting when you have to repeat that upwards of fifty times because of any number of reasons, such as having one of the enemies randomly move off its preset path and blow you away.  Or having enemies that can turn and fire on you faster than you can react.  Or clearing out a room only to miss one dude who gets up and casually blows you away with a shotgun.

My guess is Hotline Miami would have played better if I could have played it with a mouse and keyboard.  Using the PS3 controller was an exercise in frustration.  Locking on to an enemy requires lining up a cursor somewhere near them.  Of course, sometimes enemies bunch together, so trying to line up exactly the right is tough.  The game probably needed something along the lines of Metroid Prime’s lock-on system that generally lined up the closest person to you.  Not that it would have mattered.  The AI is a crack shot every time from seemingly all distances, and it can process information faster than you.  Thus the moment one centimeter of your body is exposed, you’re dead.  The puzzle aspect doesn’t really work right because the AI can be so brutally unfair but also prone to fits of randomness where guys break off their preset paths.  Or sometimes they just wouldn’t play along at all.  I would play rounds where I would fire a shotgun through a door and set off every single dude in the place to come and murder me.  At other times I could fire from the exact same location, killing the exact same guy, and have nobody react to it.  There was no consistency from one life to the next.

As a full disclosure type of deal, I had to play Hotline Miami in shorter play sessions (about 30 to 45 minutes at a time) due to epilepsy concerns. But I was never bummed when it was time for a break. The repetition can be exhausting.

As a full disclosure type of deal, I had to play Hotline Miami in shorter play sessions (about 30 to 45 minutes at a time) due to epilepsy concerns. But I was never bummed when it was time for a break. The repetition can be exhausting.

I will say this: if you absolutely do not want to play the PC version and you have Vita as an option, go with it.  It’s a trend I’ve noticed with these cross-platform PS3/Vita releases.  The Vita version always has superior control.  For Miami, movement isn’t as loose, aiming is more efficient because targeting is handled via the touch screen, and scrolling is done by dragging your finger around.  By comparison, the PS3 port is clunky, cumbersome, and imprecise.  As if the too smart, too quick, too accurate AI isn’t enough of a problem, you have to deal with controls that never feel intuitive or smooth.

I can’t really explain how I could enjoy a game like Spelunky and not enjoy Hotline Miami.  Both had control issues.  Both are based around frequent dying, trial-and-error gameplay and unfair design.  I wish I could explain it.  It would probably save me a lot of grief that I’m already getting from fans of this game.  I can’t even say I hate the game.  Maybe it’s been the year of crushing hype that everyone has been showering me with.  People talked about Hotline Miami like it was the second coming of Grand Theft Auto.  But I don’t think it’s that.  I really don’t think this game is as good as everyone is saying.  What it does do is meet the three rules for an indie game to get critical acclaim no matter how flawed or broken it is.  They are:

1. Have retro graphics.  Because if you hate a game with retro graphics, you’re pissing on gaming’s heritage and thus your opinion is invalidated.  Even if you’re talking about a brand new game released this year (or the port of a PC game released last year).

2. Be insanely, unfairly, unreasonably difficult.  Because if you hate a game that’s all of those, you’re just a low-skill gamer whose opinion is invalidated by the sheer force of your sucking.  Or you’re too young to remember a period when all games were this hard (there’s no such thing) and thus your opinion is invalidated because you’re a whippersnapper used to be coddled by games that hold your hand from start to finish.

3. Be gratuitously violent and shocking in ways so brazen that if you were to describe them to a psychiatrist out of context, you would be committed.  Disliking games like this means you’re a prude at best, and an anti-gaming sissy in league with the Jack Thompsons of the world at worst.  Clearly someone whose opinion isn’t valid.

Me?  I’m a neo-retro loving, violence embracing gamer.  Okay, fine, I’ve never understood the whole “be as insanely difficult as possible” thing that some people thrive on, but I can put up with it if I’m having fun.  I didn’t have fun with Hotline Miami.  Not just for the controls or the unfair AI.  I just didn’t like it.  It was boring to me.  Almost everyone else seems to like it.  Which is fine, because the groundwork for something spectacular is laid here.  I just couldn’t get into it.  So I’ll chalk this one up to “it’s not for me” and move on.  By the way, Brian is noting right now that I’ve used the “it’s not for me” excuse to avoid watching F1 with him, so I can’t claim this is my first use of it.  Fine.  I’ll you what Brian: when drivers start throwing scalding water on each-other and are allowed to use firearms during the race, get back to me.

imageHotline Miami was developed by Dennaton Games

$9.99 admits that I didn’t make it very far, but not for a lack of trying.  Having said that, I spent five hours failing again and again, so I feel I have enough room to talk about this game in the making of this review. 

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Tales from the Dev Side: Why Boardgames are a Great First Game by Sean Colombo

June 28, 2013 by 5 Comments

Why Boardgames are a Great First-Game

by Sean Colombo of BlueLine Game Studios

After Indie Gamer Chick said that our game, Hive, was the best game since Tetris (okay, I’m seriously over-exaggerating heavily paraphrasing here), she brought up that there seem to be a decent number of game developers starting out by making video versions of board games.

It was no accident that I chose to start with our first major offering being a board game. There are quite a few advantages of starting your game company with board games, and today I’m going to share some of them because it’s IGC’s anniversary and I’m an Indie Game Developer so I’m too cheap/skinflint to buy her team a real gift.

Faster to Market

Probably the single biggest obstacle that I’ve seen keeping people out of the game industry is that they can’t finish their game. We all love games and tend to have big visions (eyes) and finite amounts of time (stomaches). So it’s really a race to finish a game before we lose motivation or come up with a more distracting idea to pull us away.

Acknowledging this tendency, we should set ourselves up for success by choosing projects where the total amount of work is smaller. Starting with an existing engine (eg: Unity) or releasing a very simple game are good strategies. Similarly, you can cut down the scope of your game drastically by choosing something – such as board games – where thousands of hours of playtesting have already been done on the concept.

Many people forget to bake this into their time-estimates for the game, but the playtesting needed to make a game actually fun and with high replayability, is far trivial. For some examples, I was playing a paper-prototype of Chess: The Gathering around a year ago and I think Tim has been playing it every time I’ve seen him since then. It was a little awkward that one time during yoga class, but let’s just all be thankful that using Warrior Pose to summon pieces didn’t make it in the game. Similarly, I played Cannon Brawl about a year ago and the gameplay was what many would call “done”, but Pete and his testers kept at that thing and now there’s awesome new units that are like magic missiles and ba-bombs!

We certainly had to do a bunch of playtesting of our interface for Hive, but the literally-thousands of games of gameplay playtesting by John Yianni (the developer of the Hive board game), made it so that we could spend a decent chunk of time polishing visuals and AI while still being able to complete the game before we died of old age, went broke, gave up, etc..

screen4

Market Recognition

Additionally, when you’re starting out nobody knows/cares who you are. If you start with a board game, all of its fans already know what your game is about! On our very first blog post where we announced Hive, we almost immediately had a commenter (who was a complete stranger as far as I know) telling us that they were looking forward to it! That kind of instant fanbase doesn’t happen on its own.

This is probably the point where someone digs up that quote from one of the Team Meat guys that goes something like ‘if you have a good game, the internet will make sure everyone finds it’. Those meaty fellows are wrong. They make great games and I love them to itty bitty pieces, but they built up a following from about a decade of games prior to Super Meat Boy and even had a specific MB following from their flash game “Meat Boy”. If they didn’t have their presence built up, SMB would not have sold as well. This buildup is the same for many of the indies that we think of as overnight successes: Behemoth cranked on several Alien Hominid releases before the (mainstream) world learned their name from Castle Crashers, Rovio released around 35 games before they ‘launched’ (ba-dum-cha) Angry Birds, and Notch (Minecraft) has been making games since the mid-80s.

Are you still not convinced? Wow, you’re stubborn. Allow me to predict the future! Ian Stocker made Escape Goat which Indie Gamer Chick reviewed as the best XBLIG of all time (no joke) and currently reigns #1 as the king-goat of the Leaderboard. He’s also released Soul Caster I & II and is finishing up Escape Goat 2 with Waking Mars artist Randy O’Connor, at the time of this writing. My prediction: even though EG1 was critically acclaimed, the reputation-snowball is going to make EG2 sell more than twice as much as EG1. I’m so confident that if it doesn’t, I’ll give out all of my remaining free-codes to Coagulate on a first-come-first-serve basis.

Now that I’ve beaten this dead-horse back into stardust… we all agree that your sales suck until people know you. Here’s where boardgames come in: board game fans will buy your game without knowing who you are. Now, you won’t get all “board game fans” but fans of Hive didn’t need to hear of BlueLine Games before they bought our first game. After 100 repetitions of our splash-screen, now they’re fully borgified and will probably buy our next title, Khet 2.0, even if they haven’t played that specific board game.

Attainable IP

Other than the very mainstream board games whose rights have been bought up by Mattel and Hasbro, many board games creators are still willing to deal with indie developers. The board game industry itself is parallel to the video game industry in many ways and most of their developers are “indies”. One of the larger challenges in working with these developers is that most of them aren’t going to want to put an up-front financial investment in. You’ll have to be prepared to eat through your savings just to take the gamble at releasing another game to market that may or may not be successful. That’s just part of the job though.

In addition to indie IP, there are a ton of games that don’t even require a license. For example, BoardGameGeek lists of over 600 public domain board games. These come with their own challenges too, of course; every platform seems to have 3 versions of Chess, Checkers and Go within a week of launch.

Spectrangle360 was another Chick-Approved board game based on an existing property.

Spectrangle360 was another Chick-Approved board game based on an existing property.

Reusable Code

Board games have a lot of re-usable concepts in them. Players, pieces, boards, plies, AI based on Minimax, etc.. If you do it right, you can make your second game far more quickly than your first. We had hoped we could make our second game in half the time of the first. So far, it looks like Khet 2.0 will take one-quarter of the dev-time that Hive took.

One huge caveat here is that making reusable code is a huge difference from writing a general-purpose board-game engine. If you want to start your project by making the most universal, extensible board game engine in the world, then you’re almost certainly never going to finish your project (see the first section of this post!). However, as you create things you need, it’s fairly easy to plan ahead and make sure that anything general you’re writing (such as Minimax AI), is made in a reusable way.

Now, Step Off!

If you’re looking to make a game to break into the industry, board games can be a great way to start! However, if you try to knock off Hive or Khet, I may have to go all Dr. Karate on you!

But seriously, have fun making games and whatever game you decide to make – best of luck finishing it!
– Sean Colombo

If you like board games or indie game development, please follow our twitter @BlueLineGames, or our Facebook page to see behind the scenes!

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Richard and Alice

June 27, 2013 by 9 Comments

In all honesty, I’m not sure what to write about Richard and Alice. On one hand, I dig this game because it spins a compelling, complex yarn that you’ll want to see through to the end. On the other hand, I hate it because that yarn hits too close to home for my liking. As a seasoned writer and critic, I should be able to keep my personal biases and issues out of a professional review but, in this case, I cannot.

I’m human and things affect me. So it goes.

Image

Hmm, there’s a ladder in this church. I wonder if that’ll come in handy?

The story of Richard and Alice revolves around two prisoners and/or guinea pigs who are imprisoned neighboring cells in an underground facility, The Typhon Project, as the snowy, apocalyptic world above them slips further and further way from any semblance of civilization. Why the world above has become a frozen wasteland is only hinted at and is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. What is relevant is the relationship between the two prisoners, the eponymous Richard and Alice, who are both guarding some rather big secrets. One character’s terrible secret is revealed in gameplay flashbacks, if you will, and the other character’s is only revealed as the endgame plays out to its morbid, yet satisfying, conclusion. (As it turns out, there are three possible endings to the game. I happened to get the “special,” alternate ending…which is the most bleak of the three. Yay me. That’s what I get for being good at these types of games. )

In terms of gameplay and graphics, this experience is definitely kickin’ it old school. It’s a point-and-click puzzler with 16-bit era graphics. This is not a detriment in any way, it definitely works for Richard and Alice and, if anything, this style of game makes you focus more on the story, which is this title’s strongest element by far.

Image

There’s a metric fuckton of snow in Richard and Alice’s world.

The puzzles are logical and well thought out for the most part…nothing Myst or Riven-like here, thank Christ. There was only one puzzle near the end of the game that gave me any real trouble. But again, its solution is entirely realistic and had me smacking my head while saying, “Fucking duh. I should have thought of that sooner!”

The closest comparison I can make here, and you can take this as you will, is that Richard and Alice reminds me of the best film I saw that I will never watch again, Grave of the Fireflies. Grave of the Goddamn Fucking Asshole Fireflies, man. That movie stayed with me for some time, and not in a good way.  Watch it only if you enjoy getting repeatedly punched in the gut and revel in sadness and misery. But, it is a well-crafted, highly artistic film that I’d love to recommend…but I just can’t and I won’t.

That exact same sentiment goes for Richard and Alice as well; I’d like to recommend it…but I can’t and I won’t. So it goes, my friends, so it goes.

ImageRichard and Alice was developed by Owl Cave.

For $5.99, Richard and Alice will make you feel really real feels and nobody wants that, right? Go take a couple Zoloft, have a nice lie down and forget those bothersome feelings and emotions ever existed.

Richard and Alice is available on Good Old Games, Desura, and Indie City.

Follow the Indie Gamer Guy on Twitter.

 

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Home: A Unique Horror Adventure

June 24, 2013 by 2 Comments

A couple of months ago I reviewed a game for iPhone called Year Walk, and stated my opinion that I don’t think horror can be done properly on a platform like iPhone.  Well, a few days ago, a fairly popular PC indie made the jump over to iOS, and it happens to be a horror game.  People were telling me “even if I think you were wrong about Year Walk, you have got to try this.  It really is scary.”

No.  Home isn’t really scary.  It’s creepy.  It does creepy well, but I feel there’s a difference between that and scary.  The basic idea is you play as Conan O’Brien (that’s who it looks like, and until someone says otherwise, I’m pretending it’s him) who wakes up with no memory of how he got to where he is.  His leg is injured and he has no idea how it got that way.  Oh, and there’s at least one dead body nearby.  I don’t know why he’s so fussy over it.  It’s basically how every Sunday morning begins for me.

Other candidates besides Conan O'Brien: Ron Howard pre-baldness, my boyfriend (though I've never seen him wear a sweater in my life), or Andy from Toy Story.

Other candidates besides Conan O’Brien: Ron Howard pre-baldness, my boyfriend (though I’ve never seen him wear a sweater in my life), or Andy from Toy Story.

All of this is told through a pixel-art point-and-click adventure.  If it sounds interesting, you’re right, it is.  The problem with Home is that it’s one of those fireworks where you light the fuse and nothing happens.  It took me all of five minutes to guess what the big plot twist would be.  Was I right?  I don’t know.  The solution to what happened I guess changes depending on how many clues you find throughout the hour-long play-through.  At the end of my session, the game saw fit to give me no ending at all.  It didn’t crash or anything.  It just ended with no resolution.  Conan walked to the final door, some text pondering the nature of what just happened popped up, and then BAM, credits.  The fuck?

All choices you can make happen in the form of questions.  Like if you find a knife, the game will ask you what happened in a past tense form.  “Did you pick up the Knife?  Yes/No.”  Here’s the weird part.  Near the end of the game, I was asked if I thought one of the other characters in the game was the murderer.  I said no, because all the clues from the get-go said otherwise.  But now I’m mildly curious whether that would have become the solution if I had said yes.  Not so curious that I’ll play through it again.  Once was enough.

The thing is, there’s no actual game here.  You walk, you click stuff, and stuff happens.  There’s no real puzzles to solve besides typical lock-and-key stuff.  At most, you might have to hit a switch.  So while the graphics are pretty good, the atmosphere hits the mark, and even the dialog is well done, Home is actually kind of boring.  Mechanically speaking, at least.  It tells a story well, but it’s not a game in the strictest sense.  It’s a visual novel where paragraph breaks come in the form of having to walk around trying to figure out where to go next.  It does very little to take advantage of the medium, and that’s a shame.  Unlike a lot of misfires I deal with here, I can’t chalk this up to poor writing or over ambition.  It’s just a dull game. 

I took this picture at the worst possible time.

I took this picture at the worst possible time.

One last thought on the whole “multiple ending” thing which I’ve never been a big fan of.  Here’s why I’m against it: because I don’t know if I’m going to end up with the same ending if I play through again.  I played once and the end result was NO ending.  I felt I played pretty well the first time.  I clicked everything.  I backtracked occasionally to place items where they belonged.  What the fuck more do I need to do, Home?  Well whose to say if I do things differently that I won’t fall into that one and only trap that sets off the exact same ending I just got?  If a game is going to base itself around having multiple endings, it needs to set up a way to take advantage of that besides “replay the whole thing again.”  Especially stuff like point and click adventures, which just don’t lend themselves to multiple play-throughs.  My usual way around this is to simply look up the other endings online, but as it turns out, a game called “Home” isn’t the most Google-friendly title.

I was a bit on the fence about this one.  On one hand, I think the game successfully achieved its goal of having a well written story with genuine suspense and chills.  On the other hand, the gameplay is boring and the hook requires multiple play-throughs, which will certainly mute those chills and shrink the suspense.  I’ve spent more time trying to figure out if I liked Home than I spent actually playing Home.  For that reason, I can’t recommend it.  The deciding factor was if I had a magic “undo” button that would give me the hour I spent playing it back, would I do it?  I can quickly answer that: yes, because the ending sucked.  Results will vary by player, but for me, I felt borderline cheated by the ending I got.  It literally had no closure at all.  Every single question left unanswered.  That’s just plain stupid.  If the power had gone out while I was watching the series finale of Lost, I probably wouldn’t have called that a brilliant ending.  Though in retrospect, that would have been an upgrade.

HomeHome: A Unique Horror Adventure was developed by Benjamin Rivers Inc.

$2.99 admits that I hate replaying games anyway and thus the odds of me playing through Home again was probably slim to begin with in the making of this review.

Filed under iPhone and iPad Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4

June 23, 2013 by 4 Comments

I should probably preface this review by making three notes.

#1. I think Penny Arcade is alright.

#2. I really enjoy the work of Zeboyd Games.

#3. As of this writing, I consider the third entry in the series to be the fifteenth best XBLIG ever made.

Got that?  Good.

Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Click Precipice of Darkness 4 is a train-wreck of unfunny dialog that would feel more at home on a bad CBS sitcom.  It’s also a very well designed RPG.  Great game.  Boring storyline with obnoxious characters that you would hate if they were your coworkers or neighbors.  The weird thing is, I don’t remember loathing them this much during the first three games.  I didn’t like them either, but I could at least tolerate them.  I guess that’s because it wasn’t until late in the third game that the narcissism went completely unchecked and the story devolved into the biggest masturbatory ego-trip since Donald Trump teased his candidacy for the US Presidency.  Instead of just fighting Gods, it turns out Tycho actually is a God, or something like that.  The whole thing really comes across as the type of wish-fulfillment fantasies you would expect from a neglected middle-schooler.  At least Kevin Smith had the decency to stop after having a light-saber fight with Mark Hamill.

Seriously though, the old-school graphics with modern design sensibilities works great. No complaints about that.

Seriously though, the old-school graphics with modern gameplay design sensibilities works great. No complaints about that. Well, at least for a paragraph or two.

Whatever happened to Penny Arcade as a source for gaming-related humor?  I know they still do it, because I just checked their website and immediately got a mild chuckle out of their latest strip.  Have a look.

Topical.  Funny.  That’s the kind of stuff I look for from Penny Arcade.  I said it last year in my review of #3, but it bears repeating here: Penny Arcade is the perfect brand to do full-out absurd gaming parodies.  Think Airplane!, Young Frankenstein, or Naked Gun in video game form.  I’m not suggesting to be like Scary Movie or Retro City Rampage where all the humor comes in the form of references to other stuff (it’s funny because I’ve heard of Super Mario too!).  I’m saying, take an established gaming formula and turn the absurdity up to ten, but play it totally straight.  It would be brilliant.  Unconventional.  This Rain-Slick stuff is the type of crap anyone with RPG Maker and access to a How I Met Your Mother DVD could come up with.  Tycho and Gabe really only exist to be joke-delivery devices.  As characters, they’re kind of douchebags.  That’s fine for thirty seconds at a time, three times a week.  Spending ten hours straight listening to their non-stop sarcasm that contains none of the gaming-related humor or “isn’t this whole hobby of ours fucked up?” charm can be, well, exhausting.

I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of people out there saying how hilarious they found the whole series.  I’m genuinely happy for those that did.  I just don’t get it.  I think this series is one gigantic missed opportunity, with #4 being the worst offender.  Whereas I felt Penny Arcade 3 had a fair share of hits to go along with the misses, Penny Arcade 4 feels like one misfire after another.  Even the timing is bad.  A main character gets killed by another, out of nowhere, in what I’m guessing was supposed to be one of those random “It’s funny because I didn’t expect that” type of deals.  But it came at about the worst possible time in the narrative, where the camera was shaky and a boss had just been defeated.  The dialog sure hinted that it was supposed to be funny, but it’s like trying to tell the joke while everyone is watching a squirrel that appears to be  dancing  dubstep.  It’s best to save the joke until you have everyone’s undivided attention.

By the way, if I sound like I didn’t like Penny Arcade 4 at all, you’re wrong.  As always, Zeboyd simply knows how to make a fun, engaging combat system.  After four games, it’s fairly safe to say they’re good at this kind of stuff.  But, even this feels like a bit of a letdown.  Gone from Penny Arcade 3 is the awesome button-upgrade system that I was still tinkering with right up until the end of that game.  In its place is a stripped down animal/trainer system where creatures fight in the place of the main characters.  For the vast majority of Penny Arcade 4, you’re split into two “parties” made up only of two characters each.  Each character has unique trainer abilities for the things you fight with.  But again, there’s only two per party, which doesn’t give you a whole lot of flexibility.  You know, there’s an ongoing plague in gaming where sequels offer significantly less advancement or gameplay than the games they’re based upon.  That’s the type of shit that should be avoided by indies, not emulated.

Even the locations are more drab this time.

Even the locations are more drab this time.

Is it still fun?  Sure.  In fact, it’s really fun.  At least for a little while.  But unlike the third game in the series, there’s not a whole lot of mixing and matching to do.  Thus, it does start to get old, a problem I never encountered in the previous title.  Unfortunately, this situation also combines with a game that seems longer than the previous effort.  I don’t know if that’s true or not.  I didn’t time the game, and I don’t think the game did it for me either.  Mind you, I would still call Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4 one of the fifty best XBLIGs ever made as of this writing.  But this is Zeboyd’s weakest entry yet.  I can’t totally blame them.  When you do a licensed game, you can’t exactly flex your creative muscles, and this was no different.  They jumped into the series with a horrible ground foundation laid.  I guess the worst thing you can say about them is they weren’t quite able to make chicken salad out of chicken shit.  But now the series is over and they’re free to do their own thing, instead of having to placate the self-indulgent whims of a couple of egotists who slap their likeness on everything for no good reason.

Oh, speaking of which, the Indie Gamer Chick Bundle is coming soon to Indie Royale.

gamer-chick

I still say it looks like Titanic-era Leonardo DiCaprio fighting Adam Lambert.

I still say it looks like Titanic-era Leonardo DiCaprio fighting Adam Lambert.

Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4 was developed by Zeboyd Games

IGC_Approved400 Microsoft Points honest to God did not laugh or even smirk once over the twelve hours of this game.  And it’s not that I’m that hard to please.  I laughed so hard at this video that I couldn’t breathe and my family nearly called 911.  Not exactly highbrow humor at work here.  Too much sarcasm.  A little of it goes a long ways.  Too much of it is just annoying.

Penny Arcade 4 is still Chick Approved in a big way and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard. 

Thanks to Todd at DMP Design for the Indie Gamer Chick Collection logo (not to mention my Seal of Quality).  Expect an announcement soon on the lineup to be included. 

Filed under XBLIG / Creators Collection

Fast Times at the Too Many Games Expo

June 21, 2013 by Leave a comment

Who needs E3? I mean, really. It’s become so overblown and ridiculous that the whole thing seems like a Mike Judge or Christopher Guest directed parody film to me anymore. (Actually, a mockumentary styled video game movie is an awesome idea.  My brain is awash with ideas! Cathy, get our people on the horn! )

This past weekend, I attended an event that’s more my speed, an anti E3 if you will, the Too Many Games Expo which was held in a quiet suburb of Philadelphia. To me, an event like this does it right: it’s big, but not so big where you’ll get overwhelmed; it has a little something for everyone and yet isn’t so vanilla that you won’t stumble across cool artifacts of gaming ephemera tucked away in some random corner of the hall.

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Is this “playing with power” too?

Shortly after arriving early Saturday afternoon, my son, Kyle, and I did a quick tour of the hall. Right then, we both realized that we didn’t bring anywhere near enough cash with us because there were just so many cool things to buy. We stopped for a moment to grab a quick bite to eat and as I was scarfing down a hot dog, I was lucky enough to catch James Rolfe (The Angry Video Game Nerd) and his cohort, Mike Matei, making a sly entrance through a side door to the hall. James was gracious to stop for a moment, shake my hand and take a picture. He said he knew of our little home away from home on the interwebs here because Mike was a fan. Pretty damn cool, if I do say so myself.

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Sorry James, but I treasure my photo with Steve Wiebe a bit more. Steve, if you’re out there, call me!!!

Over the next few hours Kyle and I got to see/hear a set by awesome chiptune artist, Danimal Cannon, watch an N64 Goldeneye tournament, scope out some cool cosplayers, play some classic coin-op games (I posted the high scores on Dig Dug, Joust and Crazy Climber but fucking Commando still handed me my ass; not too shabby for an old man, though) and attend the Angry Video Game Nerd panel.

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Moby?? Where have you been, man?

The AVGN panel is where my experience at Too Many Games went off the rails a bit, unfortunately, because the audience was on the boorish side. It’s been some time since I’ve attended one of these panels and the ones I’ve attended in the past were a bit more upscale, I suppose, dealing with mostly journalism, game narrative and/or writing related topics. I’ve been a huge fan of James’ work since he started out as the Nerd, but I guess I didn’t realize that his true fan base isn’t 42-year-old geek dads like myself because, quite honestly, I don’t think of myself in those terms. I own all six volumes of Nerd DVD’s and love them to death. Does this mean I have to give them up now?

The questions from the capacity crowd came at a rapid clip. James, Mike and AVGN Theme composer, Kyle Justin, did their level best to answer them with humor and conviction, and mad props to them for that, but my thoughts meandered to Alex from A Clockwork Orange and his famous quip to one of his unruly droogs: “You’re being a bastard with no manners. Without a dook of an idea about how to comport yourself public-wise, O my brother.” And after about the tenth ridiculous, recycled and poorly-worded question stammered out a fanboy’s mouth, I decided to beat a hasty retreat. I exited stage left while thanking the gods on high that I had the foresight to choose seats that were close to the doors.

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“I could have sworn somebody just asked us that question…”

As we were exiting, my son, Kyle, who is 20 and certainly more in line with the Nerd’s core demographic, remarked in total “tractor beam” mode, “I had a million dollar idea while we were sitting in there:  we should open a grooming, style and manners booth at the various video game and anime cons. Like a Martha Stewart thing…but for dudes.”

Sunday was the day I reserved for talking with the indie developers and checking out their games. But first, I managed to re-connect with an old acquaintance, author Jeff Ryan. Jeff had a booth at the Expo and was selling his excellent book on the history of Nintendo, Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America. Check it out if you dig all that is the Big N; I highly recommend it. Jeff’s next book will be about the true origins and history of Mickey Mouse. He obviously has a thing for taking on the sacred cows of our popular culture…but I look forward to reading it all the same!

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“Now, this is where the magic happens…’

There were a good many more indie game booths than I expected at the Too Many Games Expo. I suppose this is a testament to the allure of the indie game scene these days. These four were the most interesting and/or promising that I had the pleasure of demoing that day. It should be noted that all of these games are some time away from a true launch and, hopefully, they’ll all see the light of day on some platform or other in the not-too-distant future. So, without further ado:

1. The Great Gaias by Horizon’s End. This is a very cool looking classic RPG that harkens back to the best games of the 16 and 32-bit eras of gaming. Check out some kickass gameplay footage right here:

 

2. Default Dan by Default Dan Studios. Default Dan is a platformer with  some very interesting gameplay twists, as it chucks all the conventions of traditional platforming experiences right out the window. Have a look:

 

3. Bit Blaster by Null Foundry. The best way I can describe this game is to call it “Warlords in Space” with real-time physics and a slick, design your own ship mechanic.  Very cool.

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Bit Blaster has everything a growing gamer needs.

4. The Island of Eternal Struggle by Wimbus Studios.  Another old-school RPG homage but this one has a wry sense of humor and some interesting, turn-based combat wrinkles that set it apart from the crowd.  Take a peek:

 

All in all, I can’t recommend these kinds of smaller conventions and expos highly enough, as you get to see the real people of the video game industry, slugging it out in the trenches. E3 is like an effete Officer’s Club soiree compared to events like Too Many Games which are akin to the gore swathed beaches of fucking Normandy. Can you guess where you are going to learn more and figure out what this industry is really all about?

If I need to answer that question for you…well, my friend, I’m sorry to say, but I don’t think you’ll ever truly know.

Filed under Editorials Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Congratulations to Tim Hurley and TheXBLIG.com

June 19, 2013 by 3 Comments

Today marks the one year anniversary of TheXBLIG.com, a site run by one of the coolest, kindest, most awesome guys I know, Tim Hurley.  Tim has spent the last year spreading the gospel of Xbox Live Indie Games.  His journey has been similar to mine.  We both didn’t know a whole lot about indies, and we certainly weren’t familiar with the XNA community.  We had no idea how amazing this community would be to us, and how enhanced our lives would be through XBLIGs.

This needs to be a tee shirt. Like, right now.

This needs to be a tee-shirt. Like, right now.

But, I feel that Tim’s contributions have been vastly overlooked.  The guy has been hugely prolific, providing over 150 reviews of XBLIGs, many of which are not covered on any other site.  Like me, his reviews come from the heart and represent his honest and true opinion on games.  He reviews based on how he feels, not on how others might feel.  His method of delivery is very different, but our goals are exactly the same.  He wants to entertain, inform, and shine light on games that are truly deserving of it.  We don’t always agree, but with Tim, I always finish a review knowing exactly what a game is and whether it sounds like something that’s for me.  If that’s not the mark of a gifted writer, I don’t know what is.

Tim has also always been there for me to offer support, advice, and help whenever I need it.  He’s contributed to features here at Indie Gamer Chick when called upon.  He’s acted as a judge in contests, or as a comic foil during Indies in Due Time.  When all is said and done, Tim will go down as pretty much the nicest guy on the XBLIG scene.  That’s a pretty dang good title to have.  And really, the guy needs a big hug.  I mean, his site is THE XBLIG.  Poor guy.  It would be like someone getting a “Disco Will Never Die” tattoo in 1980.  But, I’m sure he would have it no other way.  He’s lived and breathed XBLIG for the last year, and his loyalty to the platform is nothing short of amazing.  It looks like he’ll be making the jump with me towards a PlayStation 4 focus this next generation, and that means we get to stay as connected as ever.  That makes me happy.  Tim, you’ve been my friend and I love you.  The whole XBLIG community loves you.  Congratulations on the anniversary.

And for God’s sake, don’t do PS4Indies.com.  Pick something that will last beyond just a generation, just like you will. 🙂

Filed under Editorials

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