Sportsfriends

May 7, 2014 by 5 Comments

Move over Dark Souls. I’ve found something way more challenging than you could ever hope to be: finding three other people willing to play local-only, multiplayer-only indies with me. I swear to God, I think crossing the Sahara with a pair of honey badgers eating my legs off would be easier. Thankfully, my mutant superpower (that’s right, I’m a mutant. Don’t act surprised) is the ability to guilt anyone into doing anything for me. It’s way better than having metal claws. “Brian, I could really go for a hotdog from 7-11 right now.” “Oh for God’s sake, it’s 2:25 in the morning and you don’t even like 7-11’s hot..”

UNLEASH THE PUPPY DOG EYES

“.. did you say you wanted one or two? I’ll get two just to be safe.”

It’s fucking awesome. Sadly, my friends have acquired immunity to this, at least when it comes to playing indies. They always manage to find themselves busy, or sick, or in a traffic accident, or accidentally shooting their pinky toe off. Psssh, some friends.

Thankfully, Sportsfriends is a party game, where the minimum skill level doesn’t need to be quite as high. In fact, I think one of the best ways to tell how good a party game can be is by how accessible it is for people who would rather saw off their own tongue than spend their free time playing games. So I hit up my parents and a couple of my business partners. They said no. I unleashed the Puppy Dog Eyes. They asked if they should bring pizza.

Super Pole Riders, which was the surprise hit of the day.

Super Pole Riders, which was the surprise hit of the day.

The field was as follows.

Cathy: 24-years-old. Somewhat noted for being a bit of a gamer. Except when people disagree with her reviews, at which point she is clearly not a gamer and how can anyone not see that? SPECIAL QUIRK: eats M&Ms by shoving the whole pack into her cheeks and sucking the shell-juice through the gaps in her teeth.

Oscar: 64-years-old. Known to sire snarky game critics. Back in the early days of home consoles, when they were still considered a bit of a novelty, he would buy the new ones, play them once or twice, then never touch them again. Though he actually did buy a Vita, so if Sony is curious, that’s where one of the other eleven that sold went. SPECIAL QUIRK: is incapable of cooking food that isn’t so hot that it makes your shoes smoke.

Lynn: 44-years-old. Despite her daughter being obsessed with games, she never actually touched one herself until the Wii came out. Today, she actually plays a lot of iPhone games and has three-starred every level in every Angry Birds game. SPECIAL QUIRK: misspelled her own middle name for at least seven consecutive years.

A.J.: 65 years old. My Godfather. How often does he play games? He still refers to all consoles as “Ataris.” That should give you a clue. SPECIAL QUIRK: His kids carry the names R.J. and S.J. Because A.J. is a J.A.

Christian: 47-years-old. One of my business partners. He has a PlayStation 3 and an Xbox One. His cool as shit seven-year-old son Gabriel also has a 3DS, and ran through a few levels of Zelda: Four Swords with me. Christian occasionally shows up at my house just to help me play a two-player game I’m reviewing at Indie Gamer Chick when nobody else has time. Cool guy. SPECIAL QUIRK: Didn’t kill me when I replaced his business cards with ones identifying him as “Christian: Blood Angel.” (slang term for a shady angel investor)

Reggie: 39-years-old. Hates me calling him “the Regginator.” Has a PlayStation 3 that he uses for everything but gaming. Though he does have a decent assortment of games on his Galaxy tablet. SPECIAL QUIRK: He’s the only person that can get away with calling me Kitty Cat. I don’t even let Brian do it.

Why five other players? Well, because there’s a game in Sportsfriends that takes place not on the screen, but in your living room. Which is probably where your screen is, come to think about it, but work with me here. In this game, you and other players must brawl each-other in an attempt to cause your opponents to move their controllers too much. I had two thoughts. One: I should totally sue the developers for plagiarism, since wrestling over the television remote was clearly inspired by every TV viewing session in the Vice household.

“I want to watch American Idol!”

“No, we’re watching American Pickers!”

“Hey, put on American Bandstand!”

“For fuck’s sake A.J., how many times do we have to tell you, that show has been off the air for twenty-four years now and Dick Clark is dead!”

Punches are thrown. Teeth are lost. The cops are called. We ultimately always settle on some awful NBC comedy before we all go to our respective rooms to sulk. Sportsfriends turned THAT into a game and they owe me royalties on it.

Second, a full contact video game sounds fun if you’re young and spry. I might have the young thing going for me, but after a couple of neck and back surgeries, I’m anything but spry. So I decided that I would make them play the full contact video game and take bets on which pair would end up going the longest time without speaking to each other afterwards. Vegas had my parents as the odds-on favorites, but having worked with Reggie and A.J., I know they’ve brickwalled each-other over lesser things than a concussion and a broken wrist and slapped $20 on them.

Sadly, we never got a chance to play it. On PlayStation 3, “Joust” hints that the game is optimized for use with Move controllers. Four of them, to be precise. Teehee, give me a second.

GWHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I’m sorry, but you guys actually thought someone out there actually would own four of those ping-pong-ball on an off-brand Wiimote controllers? The same controllers that Target couldn’t clearance out at $5 with a game bundled with them because nobody would be caught dead holding them?

Thankfully, Sportsfriends is also on PS4. Except we don’t yet have four controllers for it either. We did go to Target to buy them, but they were sold out of all but one. Even after poaching the controller from the PS4 at our office, we were left with three. So I settled for trying to get the guys to use the decidedly less optimized PS3 controllers. I still wanted to see the boys fight to the death, but when I showed them a video of what they were about to partake in, they all refused. Reggie said “I dunno, Cathy. This seems like some kind of scam by Sony to cause broken controllers and drive accessory sales.” I asked the developer if that was true. He smiled and dismissively changed the subject. Okay, no he didn’t.

Oddly enough, Joust is the game on Sportsfriends that the majority of people have been hyped to play the most. It’s had a lot of good reports from various trade shows. Yet, I’ve encountered a lot of people who want to play it but can’t. And it’s almost never because of lack of enough controllers. It’s an issue of space. Playing it will typically require, at the very least, rearranging furniture. Even then, for many, there just isn’t enough clearance to play it without risk of injury or damage to property, especially if your friends are hyper competitive. To put how big a problem this is in perspective, even one of the game’s programmers doesn’t have enough room at his place to play it. If you live in an apartment, forget about it. But hell, I have a pretty dang big house and I question the feasibility of being able to pull it off. So, we skipped it.

Sportsfriends has three other games. First up is Barabariball. The best way to describe it is “Smash Bros. as a ball game.” Playing 1-on-1 or 2-on-2, players are on a platform, and there’s a ball. You must brawl with your opponents while trying to throw the ball off their side of the platform and into the water. You score a point when the ball fully sinks beneath the waves. You can do multiple jumps in a row, so if the ball winds up in the drink, you can dive in and save it. If you sink beneath the water, there’s a penalty you have to wait out before respawning. You can set the game to go by a time limit, a set number of points, or a combination of both.

Super Smash Bros. Ball

Super Smash Bros. BrALL

I really enjoyed Barabariball, but I think I would have liked it a lot more if I had been playing with more skillful people. Sportsfriends positions itself as a party game, and the best party games are ones that can be enjoyed by anyone of any skill level. Chompy Chomp Chomp is the all-time champion in that regard. Barabariball can have the most complex strategies if you have the right people to play with. I had my parents and business partners, none of whom are regular gamers, so rounds quickly degenerated into wild button-mashing with about as much finesse as a three-toed sloth on roller blades. Of the three games I could play, Barabariball probably has the highest ceiling for enjoyment, but it’s also the toughest for non-gamers to enjoy. The team I was on won easily every single time, and I was even able to shut-out Daddy and Christian (the two most skilled players besides me) single-handedly while having nobody control my partner. If you have regular gamers to play with, this is probably the one you’ll spend the most time with. If not, you might actually want to skip this one.

Next up is Super Pole Riders. No, it’s not based on the Pole Riders event from Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. It’s another ball game. Here, each player has a pole that they must use to propel themselves into the air to smack a ball tethered to a line. Teams must swat at the ball until they’re able to score it in the opponent’s goal. On paper, this sounds like the most complicated game, and I figured my gang would struggle even more with this than they did with Barabariball. But actually, this was the big hit of Sportsfriends with my group. Everyone quickly got the hang of it, and pretty soon, while teaming with my mother, we found ourselves flinging each-other over the team of Reggie and A.J. using some pretty awesome double-team tactics. The guys quickly caught on and soon they were doing it too. We had some pretty dang competitive rounds. Mommy and me then watched as Daddy and Christian also quickly got the hang of it. A quick survey on Twitter confirmed that this is the favored game by the majority of Sportsfriends owners, which kind of surprised me. I figured it would be Barabariball. My theory is, you’ve seen games like it before. Super Pole Riders is a truly insane idea that you would have to be mad to come up with.

Also, they need to totally make it into a real sport.

Finally, there’s Hokra, which is the only game of the bunch that requires four players split into teams of two. It’s also the simplest of the bunch. From a top down view, each player is a square that must grab the ball and simply hold it in their scoring zone for as long as possible. The first team to fill up their scoring meter wins. I guess I’m the weirdo of the group, because I enjoyed Hokra the most of the three games. It’s so simple and so very fun. It feels like a game from the late 1970s that somehow went undiscovered until now. There’s no complex techniques to learn. You simply bump into other players to steal the ball. You tap X to dash when you don’t have the ball, and press X to pass when you do. It’s competitive video gaming boiled down to its most basic mechanics, then refined until perfect. Games of Hokra are super fast-paced, short-lived, and generally result in lots of smiles, laughter, and screaming at each-other.

Despite absolutely adoring Sportsfriends for its masterful craftsmanship, I do have a couple nits to pick. Like everyone else seems to have noted, there’s no online play. Sportsfriends is local only. After my first attempt at playing this last week with three random fuckwads who decided before we even started that they would hate it, I started a mini-riot on Twitter by complaining about the recent trend of multiplayer-focused games with no online components. Sportsfriends, Towerfall, and even the HD re-release of one of my favorite under-appreciated games from my childhood, Cel Damage. This touched off a lot of bitter responses from developers talking about the cost and ultra-high difficulty of optimizing games for online play. I’m not often talked down to by the indie community, but on this day, people were pretty condescending to me about it.

Yes, I fully comprehend the cost and difficulty of getting your game online. Unlike most people complaining about it, I have gone out of my way to learn the ins and outs of making this work. Hell, I invited developer James Petruzzi to do an editorial explaining it to my readers the same way he did to me. There have been other editorials in recent weeks, like this one by the designer of Super Pole Riders explaining why you don’t want to see Towerfall online. I must have been linked that dozens of times last week. People couldn’t understand why, after so many people have explained why it can’t be done, people still complain. Especially me, because I should know better. I was called ignorant and naive.

It doesn't matter how you play the game, it's whether you win or lose. And even that doesn't make all that much difference.

Seriously, couldn’t you see this as a real game? If this isn’t in the Olympics by 2028, I’ll be so disappointed.

We live in an era where consoles are built around online functions. Online multiplayer for a game that is multiplayer-only is absolutely expected by the majority of console owners. Especially on the PS4, a system that most people are having difficulty locating themselves, let alone know enough people who own one to bring controllers with them. If you want to throw the party yourself, three extra controllers will run you around $200 with sales tax on that platform. And no, no matter how fun it is, Sportsfriends (or any game for that matter) isn’t worth that by itself. I’m sorry guys, but we live in an era where everyone owns a cellphone and has the ability to talk with their voices to anyone they know at any time, yet they choose to send texts to each-other. The standards of social interaction have changed. It’s noble of you to try to create a game that unites people together like in the good old days. But if you can’t understand why people still complain about the lack of online play, you’re naive one, not me.

My only other complaint is I wish there had been more games. But that’s really not that big. Any of these three games by themselves would rank pretty high on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard. Combined? It’s a great package and a great value. There’s no A.I., so if you don’t have a means to get a local party together, don’t even consider a purchase. But all three games are incredibly fun, control smoothly, look neo-retrorific, and you’ll talk about your play session long after the party is over. On a personal note, everyone in my party has had a really tough time lately. We lost our dear friend and partner Kevin to cancer two weeks ago. This was the first time we’ve all been together just to hang out and have fun as a group since his passing. It was really cool. A great way to heal together. I usually try to end these review with a gag or a punchline. Instead, for Sportsfriends, I’ll say this: we all kept saying how much Kevin (who wasn’t a gamer by any means) would have loved to been there playing with us. He totally would have, and he would have been laughing and yelling with us. It was a really great time for all of us, and it wouldn’t have been as cool if I wasn’t doing this Indie Gamer Chick thing. I love you and miss you Kevin, and I totally would have knocked your ass into the water.

sportsfriends logoSportsfriends was developed by Die Gute Fabrik

IGC_Approved$14.99 said it doesn’t matter how you play the game, it’s whether you win or lose. And even that doesn’t make all that much difference in the making of this review.

An early access review code was provided to Indie Gamer Chick. Sportsfriends was then released before the publication of this review and a full copy was then purchased by Indie Gamer Chick.

Sportsfriends is Chick-Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

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Indie Gaming Doom and Gloom

May 4, 2014 by Leave a comment

This article on Eurogamer by Christian Donlan is saying that we’re saturating the market with games, particularly on mobile and on digital distributors such as Steam. For every Flappy Bird there are a hundred clones. For every AAA game released on Steam, there are ten games that had no business being greenlit getting greenlit. We are heading for another video game crash.

The Atari version of Pac-Man is unquestionably more responsible for the great crash than E.T. It's also potentially lethal for Cathy thanks to the insane flickering.

The Atari version of Pac-Man is unquestionably more responsible for the great crash than E.T. It’s also potentially lethal for Cathy thanks to the insane flickering.

There certainly is no shortage of games these days. On May 1 and 2, 2014 alone, there were twenty-one indie games released on Steam and seven on Desura. We are living in a sea of virtual bliss. Back in the day, a shortage of games is something that Atari was trying to prevent and they made certain that they had a large library for their consumers. The problem though, was they went for quantity, not quality. With a glut of crapware, such as the infamous E.T., Atari did itself in as bad game after bad game was released. When nothing but shit is coming out, people see the pattern and they stop buying games.

A few things are different in this generation that differ from the era of the video game crash in the 80s, primarily, the internet. With 28 games released in only two days, one could argue that the same problem that plagued Atari is plaguing us again. However, is it such a bad thing? It’s been this way for some time and I don’t see any sign of a crash.

Thanks to the internet, we have ourselves multiple ways to talk to each other about what we’re playing, see what others are playing, and a number of outlets to purchase games from. We can now vote as a community as to which games are great and which games to avoid. Ranking systems which are player-driven in real time rather than making us wait for a monthly gaming magazine to give us review scores. We don’t have to wait for our neighbor down the street to save up the cash to gamble on a game that “sounds” cool. We can pull up a review in seconds, view clips on YouTube, and download a demo of the game.

Flappy Birds might suck, but and it might be getting cloned to death in the most pathetic gold rush in gaming history, but it is NOT going to crash the industry, people.

Flappy Bird might suck, but and it might be getting cloned to death in the most pathetic gold rush in gaming history, but it is NOT going to crash the industry, people.

App markets and digital game markets have been flooded with crap for years now and the industry hasn’t crashed. The best tend to rise through the ranks thanks to curation and a social community that ranks the best. With so many games though, I’d argue that it is possible, even with all of our tools to help good games succeed, that some may be overlooked. It’s harder to stand out with so many other games to compete for gamers’ attention.

Don’t stop trying though. Make a good product and do what you can to get your voice heard. Part of the reason I started game reviews is to help people out be it by pointing their game out, or giving my thoughts on improvements that could be made for their next game.

We are not heading into a crash and anyone who says to is fearmongering. We’re in a great era for indie gaming and in the gaming industry as a whole. Knock that shit off.

Note from Cathy: this is Miko’s first editorial at Indie Gamer Chick. I quite liked it! Be sure to give feedback and encouragement. Make sure you follow her on Twitter too! 

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Retro Runner: Princess Power

April 30, 2014 by Leave a comment

In Retro Runner: Princess Power (“RR:PP”), you play the role of a princess who no longer desires to wait for a prince to rescue her from captivity and plans to make her escape. Along the way she encounters enemies and bosses who try to stop her, as well as weapons and powerups to destroy them, in this storied version of an endless runner.

rrpp01Ever since Temple Run and Jetpack Joyride became big, endless runners have been showing up more and more. Many are clones with their own graphics, such as Agent Ride or Pitfall! (the runner version), and some try to add a bit of their own flavor into the mix. Retro Runner is one of the latter, and the game differentiates itself from most endless runners in a few ways.

The first is that the playfield changes as you progress through the story, traveling with the princess through different eras of gaming, from the Atari generation, through the SNES/Genesis consoles, and the current period. This means that your character and the environment gain better graphics and sound along each leg of the adventure. Each stage plays the same, but the advancing graphics is a fun trek through time.

Most endless runners have some sort of currency collection as a carrot to keep you playing and let you gain powers, and this game is no different; however, RR:PP also includes weaponry to fight enemies along the way. With the point of a finger, you chuck knives, energy shields, throwing stars, and homing pigeons at your foes. Yeah, homing pigeons. They’re deadly! At the end of each stage is a boss that takes a different strategy to defeat.

The story is fun (yay for a princess taking care of herself!) and the gameplay is a joy, but there are some things in the game that I felt could use improvement, most of which left me confused when I first encountered them.rrpp02

In the tutorial, you encounter what seems to be the final boss of the game who is undefeatable in this mission. At this point I had no way of knowing that and spent a considerable amount of time avoiding his attacks and hitting him, unsure if I was doing any damage. The game made it sound as if I was hitting armor, but again, at this point there wasn’t a way for me to know this wasn’t the default “hitting a big enemy” sound. Finally I got hit again and the story advanced. It turns out that I was supposed to “die”.

Games such as these allow you to collect or purchase currency to use in-game to buy powerups that make the game “easier”. But in RR:PP, the amounts required to purchase anything after the first level of any category are enormous and made me feel that I had to purchase in-game currency if I had any intention of boosting my character. I don’t want a free ride, and in-game purchases are the driving force as to why games like this exist these days, but the initial curve feels extremely steep.

A few of some very important things to me in a game is both control and the UI. Control in this game is fine, it’s hard to go wrong with a runner really though admittedly, sometimes incoming enemies are difficult to see because you need to have a finger on the right side of the screen, covering some of the playfield.

Outside of gameplay, the UI for the game needs improvement. Level selection shows you all of the stages in the game, but there is no indicator as to which levels are open to the player; they are all the same color and clickable. When it comes to the powerup purchase menu, it isn’t intuitive what you can click on to gain a skill without randomly pressing around and seeing what happens as, again, everything is clickable, but you don’t find out what you can click on without trial and error. On the bright side, since I started writing this review, a patch has come out that makes the powerup purchase menu brighter, but to a new user it is still not particularly easy to understand.

rrpp03While I like that the game asks the player a quiz after each death as a chance to gain bonus currency, no matter if I failed or not, the question stayed up and allowed me to keep clicking on answers in a now-dead interface.

I encountered three bugs that I hope are easily squashed. The first is that once I purchased some currency, I still received ads until I restarted my device. Secondly, after one death, the second end boss joined my next run. It didn’t attack me, but it hovered ominously up and down while I tried to make my way through the stage again. Finally, before I made a purchase to remove ads, I confused the game by turning on airplane mode. Naturally it couldn’t load the ads and gave me a blank screen, but in order to be able to keep playing, I had to open the home screen and return to the game.

The thing about mobile games is that you need to be able to entice users right away as they tend to be fickle. Leaving them to hunt and peck their way through your interface is a surefire way to lose many of them which is a shame because the game underneath here is pretty fun. Keep it clean and simple. I want to suggest the game but not just yet. Let them get a few things worked out and I would gladly do a IGC Second Chance.

RR:PPRetro Runner: Princess Power was developed by Stratum Games

The game is free, supported by in-game ads and in-game currency purchases, and on iOS, Android, and soon the desktop. Oh and the game is fucking hard, too! Fuck!

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

Super Broken Games

April 28, 2014 by 1 Comment

This isn’t going to be my most glowing review. So before I get to the guts of this game, I want to talk about the game’s developer. His name is Daniel Navarro, and he’s a class act all the way. I stupidly downloaded Super Broken Games off the Xbox marketplace without screening it. I took a look at it and thought “oh hey, it looks like WarioWare! Fucking sold!” But, as it turns out, the game was not remotely accessible by me due to my epilepsy. I later found out that some of the effects were able to be switched off, but the way that was laid out was confusing, and it didn’t catch everything.

Daniel showed tremendous concern for me. He patched the game for myself and potentially others who live with photosensitive epilepsy (if you do, you should consult your doctor before attempting to play any game, as there is no such thing as “epilepsy safe” if you have it). Within a week, Super Broken Games had its potential triggers rendered optional. Not removed from the game. I’m not trying to activate a Jester’s Cap on developers and remove the fun stuff for everyone else.

screen1

Effects switches (or “The Switch” for short, which I’m trying to get popularized in gaming lexicon) are becoming more common, but I always get very emotional when a developer includes one. I didn’t like Super Broken Games, but I have much love and respect for Daniel. Thank you.

Now then, Super Broken Games. The idea is a series of dexterity tests that require you to move a ball (or balls) into a goal. The hook is there is some sort of control quirk in every stage that brings the difficulty level somewhere between “hard” and “homicidal rage-inducing.” The controls are awful, but it really is by design. Super loose, designed to aggravate, and maddening to a fault. Sometimes it involves the cursor moving too fast. Sometimes it can’t move in a straight line. Sometimes you’re controlling two at once with the left and right sticks. No matter what method (except maybe the dual-stick stuff, which isn’t so bad), you’re going to be screaming in emotional agony.

screen2

I appreciate Super Broken Games for its truth in advertising. Given the circumstances, I wish I could say I had fun with it, but I didn’t. I don’t know if the effects I had to turn off to avoid the epilepsy risk add a lot to the gameplay, but I found SBG to be sterile and dull. I’ve never been a fan of any game that’s only goal seems to be to cause a spike in your blood pressure. A multiplayer mode doesn’t help because finding other people willing to play a game that’s entire hook is having mangled controls is next to impossible.

I have nothing against games that are difficult, but they need to have more than just difficulty going for them. Super Broken Games only has hardness going for it. You know those things they have at carnivals where you have to take a hoop and run it across a bent piece of mental without touch it? Super Broken Games is as frustrating as one of those, only without the reward of winning a teddy bear if you succeed.

xboxboxartSuper Broken Games was developed by Feel Good Seal

$1 clubbed the feel good seal in the making of this review.

 

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David

April 22, 2014 by Leave a comment

I played the PC version of this game. It is out for Mac and iOS as well and I cannot speak for how it plays on those platforms.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with this one when I read the description. Hell, even after watching the trailer, I still wasn’t sure what to expect when I booted it up. What you see is a square flying around as it throws things at a number of other shapes. While it’s clear something is happening, it’s unclear exactly what until you try it for yourself.

The "Skittles" are what you shoot at enemies.

The “Skittles” are what you shoot at enemies.

Playing the part of a square named David, you are on a quest to destroy a number of evil, polygonal figures with your “slingshot”. This slingshot is your only attack and uses a drag and release method of mouse control that requires a bit of precision in setting up and launching your attacks against the quadrilateral onslaught.

To avoid enemy fire, or the enemies themselves as they have a tendency to launch their entire bodies at you, you bounce around each stage with the WASD keys. It can be tricky at first and I’d be lying if I didn’t say my hand cramped up a bit, but once you get the hang of it, it’s easy to excel at. During the time that the game flows at its “normal” speed, movement itself feels similar to that of Super Meat Boy. The majority of your time, however, you are in a slowed down state as you charge up and aim your shots. In this altered state, you plot out where you’re going to move next and where you should attack next. The experience leaves you feeling like you’re a leaf on the wind after some practice.

Huh?

Huh?

The only thing in the game that had my head scratching is the use of confusing symbols used in some of the game over screens. Perhaps there are some universal meanings behind them but the only way I discovered what they meant was through trial and error. (Yes, the screenshot to the right was taken from my phone. Shush.)

This is a short game and it won’t take long to get through the “easy” version of the missions. Taunting you, however, is the fact that in order to truly beat the game, you need to run through the missions again on the hard difficulty in order to reach the final boss. The stages all play exactly the same except unlike in easy mode you have a fair amount of hit points, hard mode leaves you hanging with only one. Deaths in this mode are frequent but limitless and they rarely feel “cheap” and that you cannot improve upon what you tried before.

All of this may sound like a lot but by the time you complete the ninth mission and replay the missions at a harder difficulty, you discover that at some point along the way you got really good at this game. Completion only took me about an hour but at its price point, it’s well worth the cost and it’s fun and easy to pick up. The game sucks you in without you even noticing it and completing the more difficult missions feels satisfying.

davidlogo

David was developed by Fermenter.

IGTlogo-01For $2 (temporarily $1) you, too, can help me translate the glyphs in that menu system in this fun adventure.

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The Indie Gamer Chick Mailbag: April 21, 2014

April 22, 2014 by Leave a comment

I typically get a lot of questions on Twitter about random game stuff. Thoughts on the indie scene, on mainstream gaming, etc. I’m quickly learning that Twitter is a lousy place to answer any questions. It’s tough to explain complex opinions in 140 characters or less. So I figured I would start a mailbag feature. I announce it, and suddenly I go from getting questions every few minutes to getting no questions at all. Grumble. Well, a few guys did ask some stuff, so I’ll give the whole mailbag thing a try.

@LostScarf asks

Do you think Indie games would be more successful if they took the time to add Online Co-op, or it wouldn’t matter?

It depends on the game. Some titles really could have benefited from a more robust online experience. But there are roadblocks if you attempt it. On XBLIG, getting online working was overly difficult. Developers did not have access to Xbox Live when making games that would utilize Xbox Live. But even when you’re not developing for a system that actively seems to be trolling its own developers, optimizing an online co-op experience is extremely difficult. Especially if you give a shit about the emotional and psychological experience of your game. There’s almost no way to measure how effective your work is in those areas, especially if your concept involves two strangers working together. It’s a leap of faith.

Does it make a difference in a game’s sales? I’m not totally convinced. My favorite aspect of Terraria was playing it with Brian on two PS3s and two TVs. We also very much enjoyed sharing some of our extra plunder with my fans on Twitter. Hell, I met my best friend Bob that way. But, I was surprised to learn that most of the Terraria fans that follow me on Twitter never played it co-op at all. That’s not that uncommon with many indies that have an optional co-op mode. So I guess, unless a game is designed specifically with online co-op in mind, it won’t make a big enough difference that anyone should lose sleep over it.

@iilusionofchaos asks

If you could change one thing about your favorite game, what would it be?

My favorite game ever is WarioWare Inc.: Mega Microgame$ for Game Boy Advance. It just got re-released on Wii U’s Virtual Console. Easy answer here: I wish it had online leaderboards.

@TerrorSkwirl asks

Who/what do you think is the most well written character in recent memory?

Clem from Walking Dead. Her actions, speaking style, reactions to situations, and emotional state all feel like a real person. The strange thing is, there are a lot of secondary characters in the Walking Dead games that feel like lazy stereotypes, if not outright parodies. There’s just enough of those type of characters that you wouldn’t expect to see such an incredibly authentic character emerge. Clem is a real person in a real zombie apocalypse.

I’ll give a close second to Balloon from Doki-Doki Universe. Her undying love for protagonist QT3 was so moving and, again, authentic. Doki Doki was, as of yet, the only game I streamed my entire play-session on Twitch. I had some tough guys admit they were tearful as the ending between QT3 and Balloon played out. No violence. No cursing. No high-stakes. Just love and admiration between two friends, and it was more real than many of cinemas highest-paid actors are capable of delivering.

@Scott_A_Bennett asks

if you could only change one thing about the indie scene what would it be?

The perception that the community is too exclusive for newcomers to jump in. I think people expect the scene to be populated by anti-social, standoffish artsy types. They exist, but they’re very much the minority. The indie scene at large is so very welcoming and encouraging to newcomers. Hell, you don’t even have to be an active developer. I’ve never made a game, never will, and I have a site that, more often than not, doesn’t speak highly of the games I play. If the general perception of the indie scene were true, I would have been run out of town a week after I arrived. Instead, I’ve found an endless stream of new friends and fantastic relationships. And I’m certainly not alone in this type of experience with indies. That is the story that we need to make sure gets told. Unlike a lot of other things I wish would change, this one is very easily doable.

@Rabite890 asks

do you find the reports about the number of steam games that go unplayed/uninstalled to be as bad as some do?

Whenever I go grocery shopping, if I’m hungry when I go, you can bet the shopping cart is going to be overflowing full of all kinds of stuff I would normally not pick up. Then it will linger in our kitchen cabinets until it goes past the  expiration date.

That’s probably what happens with Steam, or hell, any platform when a sale hits. I have 217 PSN games on my PlayStation 3 and there’s at least 40 I’ve never booted up. I either got them with PlayStation Plus, or I bought them when they were on sale and just never got around to playing them. I do it on my Vita too, then the shitty, too small memory card fills up and I have to start deleting stuff. I can always redownload it any time, of course, but I probably won’t. It’s impulsive behavior from people with too much disposable income, but by no means indicative of any problem on the indie scene.

And finally, @Bonedwarf asks

I’ll give you a tough one. You can give 12 words of advice to all aspiring indie devs. What are they?

Nothing will go exactly as you envision, so be patient and humble.

(points at the screen and counts the words silently)

Damn, I’m good.

Well, I had fun doing this. If you guys had fun reading it, just send me a tweet with the hashtag #IGCMailbag and we’ll do it again. It will help keep the content on this site going when I’m post seizure and unable to get my game on.

Like my new logo? The gentleman who designed it, Kenneth Seward Jr., is for hire! Visit his site and check him out on Twitter. Reasonable rates, awesome work!

Still here? Cool. I have a new blog that will contain my non-gaming related ravings.

 

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Bad Bunny

April 20, 2014 by 4 Comments

Approximately nine hours ago, I started watching the new Hobbit movie with Brian. Weirdly enough, the counter on the television indicates that we only began watching it one and a half hours ago. I tried to alert scientists of the world of the bizarre vortex in space and time emanating from our living room, but they showed little interest. Probably because checking it out would require them to watch the Hobbit as well.

Thankfully, I was also playing an Easter-themed XBLIG called Bad Bunny. It was a bit disappointing in one regard: the cover art made it look like it would have a lot more personality than it did. Take a look.

xboxboxart

Not bad-looking. I figured it would be like an XBLIG version of Naughty Bear. Which, granted, was one of the worst games of the last generation, but at least it had an interesting concept. So I ponied up a dollar and fired it up. Needless to say, it was not Naughty Bear.

screen1

Yeah. So instead it’s another fixed-position wave shooter, only this time the enemies are rabbits firing Easter eggs at you. Honestly though, Bad Bunny not bad at all. It’s not good or memorable either, but it didn’t feel like a complete waste of a dollar. There’s not a whole lot for me to comment on. The projectiles fired at your stationary turret could stand out a little more, so that you could better defend yourself. And they could have really used more power-ups to keep things interesting. And online leaderboards as opposed to just a local one. And it could have used more than one ordinary play mode. Bad Bunny isn’t remotely ambitious and you’ve played a million games like this before.

BUT, it is fun for an hour, and fun is all that has ever mattered in my books. Bad Bunny is a totally harmless, borderline charming arcadey throwback and yes, I do like it a little bit. Let people moan that I enjoyed this half-assed shooter and didn’t like something ambitious and thoughtful, like Deadlight. Am I saying Bad Bunny is better than Deadlight? I guess technically I am, though that seems somehow wrong. How about “I personally enjoyed the overall experience of one hour with Bad Bunny more than I did several hours with Deadlight.” Besides, it’s just one person’s opinion. It’s not like it’s notarized by the Pope or anything. I actually did try to get it notarized but he stopped taking my calls when I wouldn’t stop calling him “Super Mario.”

xboxboxartBad Bunny was developed by Game Play You

IGC_Approved$1 Has no clue how we got from Jesus being beaten, executed by crucifixion, then returning from the dead to bunnies and colored eggs in the making of this review.

Bad Bunny is Chick-Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

Like my new logo? The gentleman who designed it, Kenneth Seward Jr., is for hire! Visit his site and check him out on Twitter. Reasonable rates, awesome work!

Footage via the unsung hero of the XBLIG scene, Splazer Productions

 Still here? Cool. I have a new blog that will contain my non-gaming related ravings. Header

 

 

 

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I Can’t See the Berries – Gaming with Color Blindness

April 18, 2014 by 3 Comments

Last year, I wrote about my experiences with epilepsy and gaming. The response from the gaming community was great, and it’s had an impact. Since I started Indie Gamer Chick, many Xbox Live Indie Games and assorted PC titles have started to include “effects switches” in games. And recently, Towerfall on PlayStation 4 became the first PlayStation Network title with “the switch.” I’ve had a lot of fun and done a lot of cool things through Indie Gamer Chick. Spreading awareness of gaming and epilepsy? That has probably been the most rewarding bonus. Something I never expected to influence.

Here’s the thing though: epilepsy is relatively rare. In developed nations, there’s between 4 to 10 cases for every 1,000 people. That’s not all that much. And of those people with epilepsy, only between 1 to 3 for every 100 have what’s called photosensitive epilepsy, also known as the kind that sucks if you’re a gamer. It’s also more commonly seen in girls than in guys. But it’s the thing I live with, so it’s kind of my pet cause.

But, most of my readers are guys. When I started to talk more often about the epilepsy thing, I had a lot of male readers say they know what having a health-imposed limitation is like. They have color blindness. Now granted, their condition is not actively trying to kill them (at least when they’re not at a four-way stop), but I was shocked by how common I heard it. I would venture a guess that, oh, 1 in 12 of my male readers have it. That’s probably because 1 in 12 men have some form of color blindness. I had no idea it was that common. That’s 8% of the male population. That’s a hell of a lot of people who struggle with this condition. And by the way, it’s a myth that girls can’t be colorblind. Around 1 in 200 are. Thankfully it seems to be the one medical problem I currently am not dealing with.

1 in 12.

Wow.

I can’t even imagine what it’s like. Thankfully, I don’t have to. I found someone to describe it to me. His name is Gordon Little, a network administrator from Newfoundland and a father of three. This is his story.

Oh, and please forgive his use of the Queen’s English. In America, we dropped the “u” from “color” thus making us 16% more efficient.

I Can’t See the Berries

by Gordon Little

During my childhood my mother would take myself and my twin brother out berry picking. Raspberries to be specific. Big red juicy things hanging out among the green leaves and stems. We each had a bucket and after an hour Mom would check our progress. Her bucket was full. My brother’s bucket was halfway full and his face told the story of berries that never made it into the bucket. My bucket though… my bucket was lucky to have 2 or 3 berries in it. “I can’t see the berries,” I would tell her. She’d point at a berry on the bush and like magic it would POOF into existence. She thought I was just lazy. I was a kid and I didn’t know what to think, except I hated berry picking.

For people like Gordon, you can forget about using radar in Crysis 2.

For people like Gordon, you can forget about using radar in Crysis 2.

Years later, myself and my brother had to get eyeglasses. One year the optometrist said “Have you ever been checked for colour blindness?” Nope. So he opens a flip book of strange coloured dots. “What do you see here?” Nothing. “And here?” A squiggly line. “Here?” Nothing again. “Are you sure you don’t see the number 13?” Nope. Nada. Zilch. The 13 was a berry and I couldn’t see it. It was unobtainable. “You have red-green colour deficiency.” My brother, you might ask, he did not. His colour vision was fine.

Red-green colour deficiency never really impacted my childhood. I had a NES, then a SNES, then a PC and video game life was good. When video game resolution and the ability to display colour increased, then the problems began. I could tell the difference between bright reds and greens, but it was more subtle shades and hues that caused problems.

The first time I played a game that I actually couldn’t play was a gem matching title like Bejeweled. All the gems were the same shape, just different colours. Ok. I can do this. Why won’t they join? Oh, two are green, one is yellow.

Real Time Strategy games can be great. Except when the units look 90% identical on both sides expect one has green shoulder pads and the other red. And the mini map doesn’t help either. It’s just a giant orgy of coloured dots and I can’t tell which are mine.

Turn Based Strategy and RPG games can be great. Except when the tiles change colour to indicate different things. Green means you can move here. Red means you’ll get attacked. Yellow means you MIGHT get attacked. All of that info is useless when you can’t tell which tile is which colour.

Like most of us, Gordon can't tell what's going on in Grotesque Tactics. Unlike the rest of us, he has an actual medical excuse.

Like most of us, Gordon can’t tell what’s going on in Grotesque Tactics. Unlike the rest of us, he has an actual medical excuse.

First Person Shooters are usually okay.  Except when part of the screen flashes red to indicate you were hit… somewhere… from behind?  The side?  Sometimes I don’t even notice it’s happening.

So what are some suggestions to developers to assist colour blind gamers? The number one suggestion is never (EVER) make colour the sole source of information for the player. There are lots of gem matching games out there, and most of them now have different shapes and symbols inside them to indicate which ones are which. You could take the colour out and still be able to play. For turn based / tactical / RPG don’t colour code the tiles on the ground, or if you do, put hit percentage numbers in the tiles for the player to see.

Every time a game uses colour as the sole provider of information you risk it being the berry in the bush. And I can’t see the berries.

Visit Gordon’s site.

There are several great developer tools available to simulate color blindness. Unreal Engine 4 has an excellent built-in color blindness simulator, under general/appearance/color. Photoshop has a more limited color blindness simulator, only covering the most common type, under view/proofing modes. Last is Color Oracle, a free piece of software for Mac / PC/ Linux that runs a single frame simulation on whatever is currently on your screen. Available from colororacle.org. For more information on how to design in a colorblind-friendly way, visit Game Accessibility Guidelines’ color-blindness page.

Indie Gamer Chick supports Game Accessibility Guidelines, a not-for-profit that provides free information for game developers on how to make their games more accessible to people with epilepsy, color blindness, and various other conditions. Support it. Use it. Live it.

UPDATE: Within two minutes of this being published, gamers and developers living with color blindness started to sound off. Here is ArcadeCraft’s developer:

Colorblind 3

 

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PAX East 2014 Overview

April 16, 2014 by 1 Comment

PAX East 2014 is over and I’m beat. The four days of adrenaline kept me going without much food or sleep but now it’s time to recuperate. While I sniffle and hack away at my desk, recovering from PAX Plague, here are some previews and first impressions to a handful of the indie games that were there. I wish I could do a “Best of PAX” but there is no way that I was able to play everything that was shown. Maybe this time I’ll give out the, “Indie Gamer Chick: Not a Bad Build Out of the Relatively Few Games I Was Able to Play Because There Are So Many Here” Award.

Note, the following are not all-encompassing previews. They are synopses based on a very short amount of time with the games and there may be inaccuracies based on where the presenters decided to start the game or how much background to give me. (Case in point below, Flem would have appeared far different if I hadn’t asked for more info.)

Always Sometimes Monsters (by Vagabond Dog)

The feels, this game gave them to me. Here the player is asked to witness the results of their choices in life. In the demo I played, I played a man whose roommate wanted me to scope out his crush and see if there was any chance the guy he liked, liked him back. I don’t want to spoil what happens but what you decide to do once you do it changes how the game continues.

One of the more mentally deep games I played, this one promises to make you think.

Assault Android Cactus (by Witch Beam)

A dual-stick shooter that’s influenced by bullet hell games. In this 1-4 player game, you’re killing seemingly endless waves of monsters as you make your way through the end. You get to play as a number of cute androids, blasting the ever-living hell out of everything, trying to rack up combos and get the best grade you can. It’s fun and if you can get a few friends locally to play with you, it’s even more of a blast.

The three folks that I played this with kicked the crap out of it, allegedly the first folks of the con to beat the boss at the end.

Bik (by Zotnip Games)

A point-and-click adventure where you play a young boy who was abducted by aliens. Teaming up with some fellow mercenaries and other aliens met along the way, you go through a number of adventures before returning home. Inspired by the point-and-clicks of yore, their focus wasn’t on trying to make you wonder about all the ways you can’t Get Ye Flask and let you have fun experimenting different things. The game even auto-saves for you so you don’t have to worry about being unable to undo the horrible things you’ve accidentally done.

The demo had me set up in a spaceship as one of the aliens. There was a fire in the engine room and I had to save a crewman and stop the fire. It took me a few tries to complete the section for apparently turning off the air supply and killing us was not the immediate solution (I PUT THE FIRE OUT THOUGH!) and sticking a mop into the fire (don’t ask) didn’t do a thing.

Bounden (by Game Oven Studios)

While playing another game in the Indie Mini Booth, out of the corner of my eye I caught some folks making some strange motions while holding a phone between them. Intrigued, I dropped the controller and shoved everyone in my path out of my way.

This mobile game makes heavy use of the gyrometers within the phone to have you “dance” with a partner as you both hold onto the screen as you move together to move objects on the screen. It had us rocking the phone back and forth and even at one point, holding it overhead and twist in a ballet-like maneuver. It had me intrigued as a little party thing to share a fun experience with your friends.

Buddy and Me (by Sunbreak Games)

Adorable. You play a child who is racing through a dream world with his Never Ending Story-like pal named Buddy. It’s meant to be a non-stressful version of an endless runner where you can still “lose” easily but the pace isn’t too fast and you have the cutest imaginary friend to travel with you and help you out over some obstacles. I was able to play a preview of the new female character, which the dev says will be available soon to players in an upcoming update.

The dev tells me that the level generator determines your skill level as you play and makes things more or less difficult for you as you go (but still providing a challenge).

Darknet (by E McNeill)

I talked about this game a little in my “Oculus Rift: Second Impressions” article posted from the show floor (https://plus.google.com/115383603237792435980/posts/JttdvUQb8Pp).

This is a strategy/puzzler that makes use of the Oculus Rift to give you a virtual reality version of cyberspace akin to those of the 90s hacker movies. The goal is to hack into servers, break the security, and retrieve the data you’re after. Once you retrieve that data, your reward is money to buy various hacks (power-ups) to help you break into other systems.

It was one of two experiences I had with the Rift over the weekend and stood out as a one of the better examples of what it can do.

Delver’s Drop (by Pixelscopic)

This is a dungeon crawler which had its camera angle inspired by The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. This build was a bit early and it was missing many of the game assets and enemies, leaving things a tad barren. The dev had to point me in the right direction a few times because I’m an explorer.

It has a number different characters, all which move and attack differently. I admit, in the short time I was able to devote to it, the “fluid” control and momentum felt clunky but it was by design as each character you can select plays with slight differences. I suspect that after a bit more time, the player gets used to it and it’s a non-issue.

Distance (by Refract Studios)

The only game on my list here that I didn’t get to play up front but I did get to chat with the dev at length while watching a few folks play. This is a survival racer heavily inspired by the racers of the late 90s (Rush, Extreme-G) where you speed through a high-tech city, avoiding obstacles on the track that trashes your car. The game is gorgeous and flashy and hits all the right buttons for this TRON-lover.

Interesting note, this game is based on another game of theirs they worked on while attending Digipen. Since it was a Digipen project, the school owns the game so they wanted to do with again under their own names.

Flem (by Henchman & Goon)

Walking by this display and seeing some folks play, my mind immediately went, “Super Meat Boy” clone and I almost kept walking. The crowd around the screen left and I was the only one there which inclined the presenters to ask if I wanted to play. I said sure and thought there may be there’s something here.

It started off just as I suspected. Difficult levels that try to kill you and you restart immediately to keep you going. The presenters (these gentlemen did not work on the game but were marketing students) were telling me about the game and it felt like they were describing Super Meat Boy. I don’t know if they hadn’t played it or not but I had the sense they didn’t know the comparison at all. It wasn’t until I had the chance to ask, “What makes this game differ from it? What makes it stand out?” That’s when I got it out of them.

A few stages in, you gain special powers that allow you such moves as to hover temporarily among a few other things. It requires a different kind of precision to finish a level than jumping, jumping, and more jumping. I asked if I could test out those special powers and they seemed surprised as if no one else had brought it up before me. They were right for at that point, the game changed and was much more fun.

I have a feeling that folks may pass this one up prematurely because of the initial few levels. Stick with it!

Future Unfolding (by Spaces of Play)

In a randomly created, gorgeously styled world, you are one person trying to find your way out of a forest. There are no weapons, no health bars, and no mana – you are one person who uses clues in the environment to find which way you need to go next. “Using” a pair of stones in the ground that don’t quite fit may open up a path in the forest. Connecting some unusual trees together may make bad creatures appear which give chase. You don’t know what’s going to happen until you experiment.

If you are one who loves exploration, keep your eye on this one.

Hand of Fate (by Defiant Dev)

This game weaves a tale like no other that I’ve seen before it. Using tarot cards, the story is told with randomized encounters and events based on your draw. Once a combat card is shown, your character slips into a battlefield in which you fight using a combat system that’s simple but fun as you get to not only punch and smash your way through enemies, but dodge their blows as well.

Over time and as you complete aspects of the game, you’re granted more cards that are shuffled into your deck. It all makes for a fun and random game each time you play.

This one is a bit on the expensive side for an indie game but it may very well be worth it once it’s released for PC and PS4.

High Strangeness (by Barnyard Intelligence Games)

Readers may soon be cluing in on a a weakness of mine. If your game reminds me of A Link to the Past, there’s a good chance I’m going to like the game. Harking back to the late 80s and early 90s, this game mixes up 8-bit and 16-bit, creating what they call a 12-bit experience. This adventure has players bouncing between the classic era and … slightly less classic era to solve puzzles and kill monsters. When you’re in the 8-bit world, enemies may not have complex attack patterns, but they hit harder. In the 16-bit world, game assets are more detailed so you can see where you need to place a certain object.

The Phantom P.I.: Mission Apparition (by Rocket5 Games)

Another game in the adorable category, you’re playing a ghost buster of sorts in a puzzle/adventure game which places you in a spooky, maze-like mansion to put an end to the chaos caused by the thief ghost, Baublebelly.

Along the way, you encounter traps and puzzles which you need to solve by collecting objects and using them at the right moment. You may need a fuse to activate a switch, or bucket of water to put out a fire.

All in all, it’s a cute little package that works well on a touch screen.

Revolution 60 (by Giant Spacekat)

Set in the future, our hero is tasked with trying to find out why a weapons platform has gone offline which sets you on a course of killing baddies and robots and all sorts of futuristic things. Combat is a mixture of quick-time events and tactics strategy and the narrative combines a choice system that determines the reactions your character has to certain situations. Our hero is this badass woman who stays calm under pressure and looks good doing it. Basically, it’s like playing a blonde version of me. Har. Har.

Normally, I hate quick-time events (QTE). I don’t find it enjoyable in the least when a game is prompting me to smash the hell out of X at just the right moment or move the joystick in just manner so sitting down to play Revolution 60, I was rather skeptical about what I was going to experience. It turns out that I now have an addendum to my hatred of QTE and that is, on touchscreen devices they make much more sense. Why is that? One thing I hate even more than QTE is trying to use controller-like controls on a touch screen and I’m so glad they didn’t do them here. QTEs fit well as they don’t require intense button smashing and still allowed me to enjoy the story.

I introduced myself at the Revolution 60 booth as Bri and the woman who I talked with made a comment about how great that was since their head was also named Bri (Brianna). Interesting fact, the team is entirely (or nearly so) women and I had the opportunity to see Brianna at a panel the shortly before playing the game (that’s me in the pink dress up front in a picture she took: https://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/455690195468554241/photo/1).

Rollers of the Realm (by Phantom Compass)

Obviously, these folks have some sort of randomizer for the folks behind Rollers of the Realm somehow got the combination of pinball and RPG. You know what? It’s fun! Set in a medieval world, the main character is a thief girl who is trying to make it on her own with her pet dog. The two, and lots of people you meet along the way, are represented in-game as pinballs, each with their own physics. The playfield is based on the location the storyline is in such as a village with people standing around, boxes to destroy, and more.

Sentris (by Timbre Interactive)

I suck at music. I have no rhythm and typically I couldn’t tell you who sings what. For example, if you know it, it took 20 years for me to be able to pass the Yoshi Island on Mario RPG before I finally “got” it. Always up for a challenge though, I walked up the Sentris booth and said, “Girl, I’m going to try your game. I’m going to suck and you’re going to pretend I’m doing well to help my ego.” (This conversation may have only taken place in my head.)

The playfield is sort of like an LP that spins constantly, playing a background song that you can affect by inserting colorful segments of different sizes into the playfield. Different beats and… other music words… (sorry, I told you I’m inept) begin with each additional segment, leaving you with a unique song that’s truly your own with each play.

Completing certain color matches, you “beat” each stage. That is a bit of a misnomer for you don’t actually beat anything, only move yourself to the next stage to create another musical wonder.

Vertiginous Golf (by Surprise Attack Games)

Long gone are the crazy golf games we used to have; Wicked 18, Kirby’s Dream Course, and so on. When I saw this steampunk-themed, mini golf game, I had to try it out. Given a steampunk controller to control the action, I was given a large number of obstacles to use and bounce off of and hazards to avoid in reaching the pin of each stage. The stages are large and have plenty of going on with plenty of ways to try to reach the end.

There was an Oculus Rift version of this game but it was not demo-ing when I had the opportunity to play.

We Are Doomed (by Caffeine Monster Software)

Another dual-stick shooter to add to the large volume of this type of game, but this one is really, really pretty with bright, vibrant colors that almost has a papercraft-type feel to it. It doesn’t add anything new to the genre but it is fun and doesn’t break the budget. Something about this title kept me interested longer than a lot of dual-stick shooters do.

Woah Dave! (by Gaijin Games)

I broke this game when I played it. Sorry Dant.

Unashamed to admit that it is heavily influenced by the classic Mario Bros. game and Joust, Woah Dave is a mash-up of the two where you are trying to destroy bat-like monsters that get really angry and when they touch the lava on the bottom of the screen. When they hit it, they jump back up to the top of the level, hoping to reach the lava so they can get more pissed. …or something. In any case, it’s fun. It doesn’t try to be anything more than a simple game that is enjoyable and it succeeds.

If you want to know any more about the above games, check out their pages in the associated links. PAX East was an amazing experience for me and if you haven’t been there before, I highly suggest going if you can. Thank you to everyone I got to talk with and meet. Our time was short but it was a blast.

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Fez

April 12, 2014 by 4 Comments

I had to wait a couple of years longer than most people to experience Fez. I did play it on Xbox Live Arcade back in 2012, and it became one of the first titles I attempted to review at Indie Gamer Chick that gave me a seizure. Which, to be clear, is not the fault of Phil Fish or publisher Polytron. It’s my fault. I took the risk of playing it, and with my condition, gaming is always a risk. I wasn’t sure I would ever get to play it, but by the glory of God, it’s finally on PlayStation Vita. Vita is a great platform for me, because if a game relies heavily on my personal epilepsy triggers, I can significantly dull my risk by dialing back the brightness of the screen. The back-lighting can’t be turned completely off, but it’s far and away my best, safest option to play a lot of games. Please note: this works for me. If you have photosensitive epilepsy, consult your doctor before trying to play any video game.

Has any indie game ever come with the crushing hype of Fez? Indies ideally shouldn’t have this much hype attached to them. It’s asking for a letdown. When it finally released on XBLA two years ago, the critics loved it, but I saw a bit of a mixed-reaction on social media. I’m sure some of that has to do with hostility towards creator Phil Fish. But I think most of that is the game was possibly over-hyped, at least from their perspective. It was featured in magazines, major websites, and a feature-length documentary. This is an independent video game we’re talking about here, not a first-round draft pick or a Rhodes Scholar. Getting excited about it is one thing, but some people were expecting some kind of life-changing experience out of it, and screamed “OVERRATED!” when it didn’t happen. Well, yeah. With those kind of expectations, of course you were. Fez didn’t change my life or make me see the world any differently. But I didn’t expect it to. I was hoping for decent indie platform-puzzle and nothing more.

It's a game, people. Not a pilgrimage.

It’s a game, people. Not a pilgrimage.

Well, I didn’t get a decent indie platform-puzzler.

I got the best indie platform-puzzler.

I’m two years behind the party, so I’m sure everyone knows the idea, but here’s a quick recap: you’re a baby Stay-Puff Marshmallow who lives in a world that’s 2D. A magical something happens, the game reboots, and when it’s back, you can rotate the world 90° at a time for a full 360° perspective, which alters the way you travel the land. You thus embark on a quest to find cubes. The rotation gimmick is one of the most inspired gameplay mechanics in a 2D game I’ve seen. Yea, it’s been done before. Super Paper Mario used a similar mechanic. But, where Super Paper Mario bored me to tears (the whole game felt really lazy and phoned in), Fez uses the gimmick almost flawlessly. That alone kept me interested from start to finish.

Truthfully, there really isn’t anything in Fez that hasn’t been done before. Fez almost plays out like one of those “Now That’s What I Call Music” CDs. They could call it “Now That’s What I Call Indies!” Name any major indie gaming trope and it’s here. Retro graphics? Check. Self-aware 4th-wall-breaking jokes? Check. Minimalist story? Check. Call-backs to classic games or platforms? Check. Lots of games do this and it often comes across like trying too hard (see Guacamelee), but Fez has just the right balance of it all. I’ll admit, the story didn’t work for me. The minimalistic quirk stuff is over-saturated these days and I’m over it. For me, I can get a good story from any number of mediums. I play games for the gameplay. And Fez’s gameplay is something special.

I have to admit, even with the duller back-lighting and extra precautions, I had to hand off Fez a couple times.

I have to admit, even with the duller back-lighting and extra precautions, I had to hand off Fez a couple times.

You can tell Fez was crafted with care by people with a genuine love of gaming. There’s almost nothing to complain about with the controls. They’re sharp and accurate. Jumping is spot-on. I honestly can’t think of a single knock on the controls. Or the graphics. Or the sound effects. Or the music. The puzzle design is not only clever, but I really dug the extra-circular stuff that you practically have to solve with pen and paper. I know this review is getting boring, but it’s hard to be snarky with a game I enjoyed this much.

My one and only gripe is sort of significant: it’s easy to get lost, and not know what to do next. The game doesn’t point you in the right direction, which I’m sure a lot of the old-school readers I have will enjoy (I swear, the next time I hear “back in MY day games didn’t hold our hands” I’m personally going to donate money to Trump for President, which will no doubt result in the collapse of society as we know it. TRY ME MOTHER FUCKERS!). But there was a lot of time I spent wandering aimlessly trying to figure out what exactly I missed to move the game forward. There is a useful map system that tells you when you’ve cleared every possible part of a stage, but I almost wish there was something more, for those who don’t wish to spend hours just plain stuck.

Perhaps a small non-complaint complaint is that Fez takes the "you're in a glitchy game world" concept too far a few times. The game starts with a sequence that mimics an old-timey PC reboot sequence, then does it again during the finale. It was cute the first time. The second time felt like a person saying "GET IT?" after you've already laughed, indicating that you indeed "got it."

Perhaps a small non-complaint complaint is that Fez takes the “you’re in a glitchy game world” concept too far a few times. The game starts with a bit that mimics an old-timey PC reboot sequence, then does it again during the finale. It was cute the first time. The second time felt like a person saying “GET IT?” after you’ve already laughed, indicating that you indeed “got it.”

That is literally my only complaint. Fez is a love letter to gamers. It practically dares you to not fall in love with it. I know not everyone does, but it charmed the socks off me. Again, I’m convinced that a lot of the dislike and disappointment stems from it being created by an asshole. Yea, welcome to the world of consumer entertainment. Entertainment is made by unlikable people of all stripes. Racists and anti-Semites. Homophobes and misogynists. Hawks and cowards. Far-left extremists and far-right wingnuts. Phil Fish seems like little more than your garden-variety fart-sniffer. So why is he such a pariah? I’ll tell you why: because it’s annoying that someone who is such a douchebag could also be so talented and create such an amazing work of art as Fez. Get over it, people. Embrace the douchery.

FezFez was developed by Polytron Corporation

$12.99 noted that Fish’s Twitter picture is Andy Kaufman, who was noted for his douchery, so are we sure this whole thing isn’t performance art in the making of this review?

Fez is easily Chick-Approved and ranked on the Indie Gamer Chick Leaderboard.

 

 

Filed under PC Reviews, PlayStation Reviews, Xbox Live Arcade Reviews Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

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