The summer season is slowly coming to an end, but before we pack our bags and head back to wa- I mean the school/university of your choice I decided to bring to you all another lovely little collection of Brief Looks. A new series I debuted roughly around five months ago where we go over the games I’m not willing to write full reviews for. You have to be able to prevent burnout somehow readers, and I found an exceptional solution! Anyways, I have a total of fifthteen titles to cover today. Some of which are on pretty hefty budgets, but nonetheless a majority are small indie developer titles that can be beaten in under five hours. Similar to last time we’ll be going through these games in order of least favorite to most favorite, so let’s not dilly dally around any longer and hop onto the list. Here’s the well awaited volume two of Brief Looks. Please enjoy…. That was the most trim down intro I’ve given in awhile. How far we’ve confused ourselves. Is that the right word? Can you even use “confused” like that? Screw it.
Observation
Observation is a sci-fi horror puzzle mystery developed by No Code. They have been developing games since 2015 and currently they are working on Silent Hill: Downfall. You know, that series of psychological horror games Konami drove into the ground and now they’re trying to resurrect it by hiring a bunch of studios to develop a bunch of games altogether. Which may sound like a feasible solution only to then realize the quality of each product will vary, which then leads to mixed reception and a failed resurrection of what was once one of the most beloved horror series in the gaming industry. The one whose second entry offered a character study focused around the topics of depression and self guilt. What am I saying? I know nothing about Silent Hill and how does this associate with Observation of all things? Despite Observation doing almost everything it wanted to do right, I didn’t really like this game. That’s not to say it’s a bad game and it’s not worth your time. I would recommend Observation over a whole slew of other indie horror games out there, and it’s mainly due to its story and presentation. However, I ended up walking away feeling really disappointed.
In this game you play as SAM, an artificial intelligence in charge of taking care of a space station named Observation. You know how 2001: A Space Odyssey had the HAL 9000 and eventually at some point it wanted to kill everyone aboard. At least that’s what I assume, because I have never even watched A Space Odyssey. That’s how you tell I’m uneducated on films. You are basically the HAL 9000, and you wake up to find the entire space station abandoned with only one person remaining, Dr. Emma Fisher. Your goal is to figure out what happened to the crew, restore your base functions, and figure out where you are. Well you immediately do, because upon looking outside you discover you are floating directly above Saturn. There’s a weird alien hexagon that floats in the room every now and then, and all it does is blair noises and flash symbols. The one thing that makes Observation worth playing is how it handles horror. I listened to a video essay on horror the other day and it said there are two ways to do it. Either directly or through senses. What it means to do horror through “the senses” is basically to f*ck about with the audiences’ mind, otherwise psychological horror as we all know it. There is the occasional cheap jumpscare that happens every now and then, which I hate, but it's usually with the floating hexagon I just mentioned. You aren’t being approached by a monster or alien, but a floating shape. That may sound stupid on paper, but trying to unravel what’s going on is horrifying. What happened to the crew, what SAM did before he lost his memory, and how what’s happening is even possible. It gets even more horrifying when the big twist comes into play. When the story transforms into a nightmare and all you can do is be in shock.
This is probably one of the scariest sci-fi horror games I’ve ever played. Not only that, but one of the most expensive indies I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if No Code counts as an indie studio, but the world on display here is striking. Roaming around a full space station, seeing all the details, and the way you interact with it. The game is immersive as heck, but this is where I get into my biggest gripe. Playing Observation is actually a chore after the first hour. The gameplay loop will involve you switching between cameras, different parts of the station, scanning documents, and solving whatever puzzle is on offer. I say “on offer” because Observation does not always do a good job telling the player what to do. At least for me, because there were times I had a goal to follow, but didn’t exactly know how to do it. You eventually get this orb you can, which allows you to float around the station. The controls for it being particularly bad, and when you bump into a wall the camera begins to static up. I think it’s also made worse with how dark some parts of the station are and you can’t always see what’s in front of you. It makes you feel like a highly advanced artificial intelligence, but is what you are doing fun? Scanning documents, switching between cameras, navigating through a confusing user interface, and flying around as an orb only to then scan more documents. They took the most boring parts of any game and combined it with the mind numbing mechanics of Five Nights At Freddies. God lord, I wasn’t expecting myself to go and say that. Some of the puzzles are kind of cool and reaching a solution makes you feel clever, but two hours in I just pulled up a guide because I realized I wasn’t having all that much fun. I just wasn’t my cup of tea. 7/10 for being just fine.
The Looker
The Looker is a parody game based on Jonathan Blow’s The Witness. I actually attempted to play The Witness a few months ago. I got it during that one Playstation covid event where they gave out a bunch of indie games for free, and it’s been sitting in my library ever since. My sibling and I played an hour of it, deleted it shortly after, and came to the conclusion that it was both a bad game and a bad piece of art. I don’t know the full tale, but this is the story I was told for what happened behind The Witness. After the success of Jonathan Blow’s first indie game, Braid, he decided to take all the money he made and pour it into his next project. Jontahtan was praised for how smartly designed his first game, and this gave him the ego of a man who likes smelling his own feet. He spent nights working on The Witness thinking every aspect of it was perfect. He then gave it to a bunch of media outlets and told them to praise all the work he put in. Ignoring the fact that he made a really tedious puzzle game. That almost every puzzle was virtually the same idea with some of the solutions involving the usage of environmental objects. Which were not always clear and there were some moments that downright wasted the player’s time. It’s his longest game to date, but this proved to be a downside as the game felt dragged out by the end. Outside of media outlets, a lot of people hated The Witness. That it was a step back from the tight designed work of art that was Braid. Jonathan tried to brush this off and act like he was a genius, but this ruined some people’s reception of him. I think he has matured since then, but hearing these retelling from people basically shows how you can fall fast.
The Looker was made to make fun of all the wrongdoings of The Witness. It takes under 2 hours to beat the game, and due to how small it was it was sold for free. I played it one afternoon as I had nothing else to do, and it was alright. It’s The Witness, but bearable to play. Run around, do some maze puzzles, and another maze puzzle. Except a lot of the solutions require you to cheese the puzzle. For example, there’s this one maze where you can’t possibly reach the end by going through it naturally, so instead you just draw a line around the maze. Another where you draw along the tube connecting two puzzle screens to get to the next one. I can’t remember all of them, but The Looker whatever chances it gets to make fun of Jonathan Blow and people who think they are geniuses but act like jackasses. You can find audio logs around the area where a bloke talks about philosophy or something, and during the end of one of the logs he questions what he was even talking about. Like he actually didn’t understand the script he was reading. We’ve seen people like this in real life. The ones who preach about modern subjects, but only do it to look smart and actually don’t know what they are talking about. Those people. The game then ends with you overlooking all the puzzles you solved and basically drawing a giant penis. Now that my friends, that is how you end a joke game. The Looker is not a mustplay, but it’s something you’ll probably check out if you have nothing else. Plus it’s free. Who would turn down a free game? I give The Looker a 7.5/10 and againThe Witness is my least favorite indie.
Shadow Warrior 3
Shadow Warrior 3 is the third in Flying Wild Hog’s rebooted Shadow Warrior series, and is one of three games they published in 2022. The other two being Trek To Yomi, which I played and to be honest quite liked, and Evil West which I was considering playing but turned down. Out of the three games this is probably the most well received. It’s been in development for quite awhile and the more they showed off for the game the less it looked like it would be a total flop. Instead of the looter shooter modern gameplay of the previous two entries, Shadow Warrior 3 decided to copy a little bit of Doom Eternal’s homework. Everyone has joked about how Shadow Warrior 3 is basically Doom Eternal but with stereotypical asian jokesters, and they are absolutely right as they somehow found a way to make a game more annoying than Borderlands. The story of this game is not good. No one was expecting it to be good and somehow it was worse than a lot of people imagined. No one ever shuts up and the characters who do seem kind of cool aren’t all too likable. At some point I ended up skipping cutscenes, because I didn’t want to listen to whatever banters Lo Wang and friends had to belch out. If you do want to know the story: Lo Wang, killer fighter, evil dragon tore apart the world, and now he must destroy the giant evil dragon.
The real meat of Shadow Warrior 3 is the gameplay, and it’s really good. One of the few shooters that copied the modern Doom games and somewhat understood why they work. We’ll get to that shortly. You run around, shoot waves of enemies, pick up crazy weapons along the way, and use them to shoot more enemies. Six guns at once, fast movement options, a grappling hook because why not, and a sword because this is a stereotypical asian setting. All the guns are really fun to wield and have their pros and cons. The pistol fires rapidly and is easy to reload, but it has a low damage rate compared to most weapons. The riot gun is deadly up close, but has a low ammo capacity and long reload time. Dual SMGs to mow down hordes with low accuracy, grenade launcher which is deadly but has an arch, the railgun to nail foes from afar with a charged shot, and the shuriken launcher which honestly I never wrapped my head around. There’s reloading which is surprising because Doom taught us reloading actually slows down the combat, but the game actually makes it work. It’s quicker than most games, and it does that thing Half-Life 2 does where if you swap to another gun full of ammo and swap back it automatically reloads. It saves the hassle of having to reload often and encourages a little thing Doom fans love: weapon switching. I honestly don’t like weapon switching. It’s not that it’s a bad mechanic, but I saw it as an exploit shooter fans discovered to make combat in these games trivial. Shadow Warrior 3 did get a bit challenging near the end, but I started using weapon switching; it made every single encounter kind of easy. People say it’s a mechanic, but it's an exploit players found with Doom and the devs incorporated it because so many players used it.
The katana is a last resort weapon and it can be used to hack up foes. Doing so may force them to drop health items and ammo refills, but there’s also crystals around each arena. Color coated so that you know what you are getting. Enemies sometimes have specific weaknesses, like these floating samurai heads which must be shot at the crystals on their backs, but again this is made trivial with weapon switching. You do have this unique system where you can store up energy and trigger what is basically a glory kill. It fully restores your health and sometimes gives you bonus health, but you may rip out a powerful weapon from your foes. Gore Weapons as they are called, and they can be used either once or for a short amount of time against surrounding foes. It’s a cool system and pushes you further to consider what bloke you should chop down first. The movement options are cool and visually the game is striking. I like the environments and I may even prefer them more than Doom Eternal. However, how does this game stack up to the likes of its influencers? It’s alright. I like the gameplay loop, but I don’t think it fully understands what made Doom Eternal tick for a lot of people. Doom Eternal had a combat loop where certain weapons and tricks worked best against certain foes. Sometimes you have to shoot the tail of an enemy, or chip off their armor to reveal a weak point. I don't know whether I like this system more or less than Doom 4, because while it makes combat more challenging it does create a pattern for combat encounters. Cacodemon spawned in? Shoot a grenade into its mouth. Don’t do anything else because your supplies are limited and better off used on other enemies. Here they went for Doom 4 combat, but I don’t think it works as well.
Shadow Warrior 3 is trying to copy Doom Eternal, but it’s also trying to be simple like Doom 4. I have a few more gripes. There are these occasional parkour sections, and while they offer cool environments to look at and downtime between combat they aren’t particularly good. I don’t like the platforming sections in Doom Eternal and I still don’t like them here. You can pick up skill orbs to unlock new perks or weapon upgrades, but they don't really add much to the game. Plus the game is built so linear that you aren’t often encouraged to explore levels. There aren’t any rewards for exploring levels at all, and this further decreases the replayability of this game. It was originally sold for fifty dollars and decreased to forty, but honestly it still feels expensive. The game is five hours long, which sounds like a good runtime for a shooter. Not too short, but doesn’t overstay its welcome. Forty to fifty dollars for a one time shooter though is a bit. I think Shadow Warrior 3 is good, but there’s just a ton of other shooters out there more worth checking. One of which we’ll cover soon. 8/10.
Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time
This one I dropped three fourth of the way through and came back recently. My memory is a bit jagged, so I’ll try my best to offer criticism. Crash Bandicoot 4 is pretty alright. It’s a game fans of the franchise will love, but it’s not one of my favorite platformers out there. The story is that almost all of Crash’s major villains found their way back into the world and plan on getting revenge by ripping through dimensions. Crash and Coco venture out and along the way they team up with a bunch of ancient masks. One of which is voiced by Richard Horvitz, the voice of Raz from Psychonauts, so it’s cool they got him on board. The game plays like the original three in that you navigate through a linear level full of traps, hazards, and deadly foes. There’s a live system for if you want it to play like older Crash Bandicoot games, and one where there are no lives in exchange for extra challenges being to die as little as possible during a stage. I like how they have this option, because the problem with live systems is that they either make the game too punishing by forcing you to the beginning of a stage once you run out or you have too many lives and they make the game trivial. It helps make Crash Bandicoot 4 more accessible, because this is a really hard game even without the extra life system. This game wants to be its 1990s’ brethren and it has the challenge of its 1990s’ brethren. It does not f*ck around.
Crash Bandicoot 4 is one of the hardest platformers I played and the longer I stayed around with it the more I felt annoyed by it. It’s still a rewarding game to play through though. Having a quick second reaction is what will help you for every stage. However I don’t think the controls are the best. For me, Crash tended to either under or over jump gaps and this created frustration for what were simple jumps. They eventually had to add a circle showing where Crash lands, but I still have anxiety when it comes to clearing gaps. I will say, the level ideas are varied and this is one of the most impressive looking 3D platformers out there. With characters that are expressive and look like they came out of a Saturday morning cartoon. With the plot and pacing of one too. I think this game is good and worth recommending, but when it comes to 3D platformers I have always enjoyed the collectathon ones. Not only are they more forgiving, but they give you a ton of space to roam around and test out character movement. You can either get creative with how you navigate the world, or the way you are forced to platform around are more varied. The goal for each world can often be more varied too, and you are rewarded for exploring every corner of a map. Not saying I hate linear platformers though. Shovel Knight is one of my favorite games and Rayman Legends is a masterpiece. Platformers are one of my favorite genres out there, but something with Crash Bandicoot 4 didn’t fully click for me. By the end I was ready to be done with it, which is sad because there’s a ton of content on offer that encourages replays of the game. Crash Bandicoot 4 is great, but I wish I could have liked it a lot more. 8/10.
Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight
Momodora: Reverie Under The Moonlight is a souls-inspired metroidvania and is the 4th entry in the Momodora series. A series of games I didn’t even know existed. You play a Kaho, a priestess trying to navigate a slowly dying world so that she can cure it from an undead curse ravaging the land. Now the series has existed since 2010, years before the original Dark Souls came out, but this game feels tone-wise quite almost the same as the Souls series. From the themes, the bosses, the checkpoint system, finicky dodge roll and attack animations, and how you restore health using a flask that refills upon resting at checkpoints. I don’t even know what you use to restore health, that’s how much this game draws inspiration. You collect currency from defeated foes to buy new items, pick up upgrades scattered throughout the world, and get to where you need to be. Interconnected world design with shortcuts that can be opened up to cut down the amount of backtracking you have to do, secrets cleverly hidden in the world, etc.
Now one thing I should say right now is that Momodora is not a very long game. In fact it's roughly three to four hours long and compared to a lot of metroidvanias I've played this one seems to have the least amount of reasons to come back after beating. There are a lot of other metroidvanias that give you more bang for your buck, but I don't think this game is worth skipping. I do think this is a good game and despite it's short length it makes the most of itself. The pixel art is quite nice, the game never feels too hard or easy, boss fights are really fun, and despite some RPG mechanics there was never one point where I had to worry about equipment or stats. It's a by the metrics metroidvania and I know some say it's the easiest to one hundred percent. One thing it does best is the atmosphere, and part of it is due to great sound design. There is music, but I feel like it mainly plays during boss fights or specific parts of the game. You hear wind off in the distance, the creaking of cerain objects, and much more. The game has it's quiet moments, but that's what makes Momodora more ominous. Not knowing what'll attack you next or how far the next checkpoint is. Kind of the reason why I love Soulsborne so much. This game is not as memorable as the other 2D soulslike metroidvanias I have played, but it I still recommend. I give it an 8/10 for being pretty good.
Grimm’s Hollow
This coverage is going to be short, because it’s only one and a half hours long. Grimm’s Hollow is good. It’s another free to play game which is great, and has a very lovely message to say. You play as Lavender, a young girl who had recently died and ended up becoming a Reaper. If a soul is not too guilty or guilt free to pass on then they end up in a limbo world. They are given masks, cloaks, and told to reap souls for the Grim Reaper himself. Turns out he’s a really nice dude, and is willing to care for his Reapers no matter what. Lavender is here though because she’s trying to look for her younger brother, Timmy. We aren’t told how they died, but she misses him a lot and wants to bring him back to life so he can continue living out the rest of his days. The childhood he was taken to. She does find him and the game becomes a quest of finding his soul and sending him back to the real world. It’s very wholesome. You learn more about Lavender and Timmy, the life they have, what happens to a Reaper as time goes on, and near the end you learn Lavender can’t go back to the real world. She has to stay behind and be a Reaper, and this leads to a very sad goodbye. It’s a wholesome game with a sad mature ending, and I always like endings like these. It proves that games that look targeted towards younger audiences can have meaningful things to say. It’s why I often defend animation and what the medium can offer.
Gameplay wise Grimm’s Hollow is alright. It’s an RPG game and it’s as simple as it can get. You go through three caves, fight enemies in turn-based combat, gain experience points, and level up your stats. Combat is similar to that of Final Fantasy III and Child of Light in that you have to wait for a bar to refill to act. Your basic attacks require good timing to work, but you have these special attacks which require no timing and are immediate. Enemies attack when their bars are full and sometimes you want to attack specific foes first as they can heal or apply protection. It’s a functional combat system, but something went wrong. Occasionally you have to block attacks and this can happen when you are navigating a menu screen. You press down to dodge, but often it will not work. In fact, timing your attacks right and dodging won’t work with a single button press. I had to tap the down key several times in hope of it working and this led to a bunch of off sequenced attacks. Not saying combat is hard though, because it can be made trivial. You can level basic stats or unlock skills, but trust me when I say those skills are mostly useless. Dump a good chunk of your experience points into health, attack power, and defense. That way enemies die quickly and you can last longer in battles. There’s a failsafe early on where when you die you are dragged out of the cave you are exploring and restored to full health. However, this isn’t a punishment since caves aren’t that long and by then you know how to get through them quickly. Around the last cave you just stop getting dragged out and instead exit a battle restored to half health. Not as good as being restored to full health, but still not punishing. I don’t think the game had to be challenging due to how short it is and the message it had to say, but I think people will be upset when they compare it to a ton of other RPG Maker games out there. Grimm’s Hollow is good. I give it an 8/10, but it’s like a solid 8/10.
Pony Island
Pony Island is the first game solo developer Daniel Mullins put out on Steam. I’m not gonna say “first game ever made” because upon research it turns out he made much more, but digress. This is the first subversive experience Mullins sold for an actual price and it’s still quite good. You play as a hapless soul who recently died and you end up in a weird arcade surrounded by darkness. All that’s there is a single light and an arcade machine, and upon playing you discover it’s a game made by the actual devil himself. A game that’s unbeatable unless you sell your soul, but a hopeful soul comes in to help you work around the problems. He says you aren’t the first person to lose your soul to the lord of hell and together you must find the three core files of the game, destroy them, and eventually bring down the devil himself. It’s an intriguing story and you occasionally uncover memories of who you were in life. How you were possibly a soldier during the 1200s, and you were simply following orders to only be then cut down by the opposing army. How you left behind a family and you won’t be able to return to them ever again, and this guilt is what sent you to the realm between heaven and hell. Daniel Mullins has always had interesting narratives with big twists, and Pony Island definitely throws you for a loop with its twist.
Gameplay will involve you controlling a pony who gallops across fields and occasionally going through files to rearrange code. The pony parts are simple, it's basically that one computer you can play when the wifi is out. The one where the T-rex hops over fences, but this time you have to blast whatever comes in your way. Fun enough, but nothing really extraordinary. The aspect that enticed the most though was the coding part. It’s simple, but acts as sort of a puzzle. Where you can redirect certain outputs and lines so that things go according to plan. I’m studying to become a computer engineer currently, and while this isn't the best representation of coding I do find it an intriguing simplification of it. I would be done with more games like this, but at the same time there still has to be an intriguing narrative because games that are simply just coding would probably get really boring. Pony Island is beatable within under three hours, but that’s a good runtime and the game goes on sale often. I do recommend it as with Daniel Mullin’s other games. Inscyrption is still his best game though. I give it an 8.5/10.
Hypnospace Outlaw
Hypnospace Outlaw is somehow both a detective game and simulator replicating the feeling of browsing the web in the 1990s. It takes place in an alternate universe where a high tech company found a way to hook people up to the internet. Not in a cool sense where you can roam around it with a body, but just use it like you casually would. Hypnospace is what they call it, and using a special headband you can access the internet while you are sleeping. You are an enforcer recently hired by the company, and using a specialized headband you must ban people who post content against the rules of Hypnospace. Whether that be posting violent imagery, harassing others, using illegal marketplaces, or copyright infringement. You have to ban them all, because it’s your job. The game becomes a puzzle after a while, because finding enough content to get banned can be tricky. You have to flip between sites, check connected sources, or see where they were last. Get enough and you can initiate the ban hammer, and it’s rewarding once you figure out what to do. The game also has a built in search bar to authentically create the experience of searching the web. You can download virtual pets or even viruses by accident, which you then have to cure using anti-virus softwares. I’d recommend playing this game on PC, because some of the magic is lost when you try to play it on consoles. You don’t even have to progress with the main story. You can babble around and see what each in-game website has to offer. Whether that be online forums, advertisement of music, and more. It feels like an actual webspace.
Speaking of which, what I love most about Hypnospace Outlaw is how real everyone feels. You are technically banning people from the internet, and your actions do have consequences. One person you have to ban is an elementary teacher trying to show off drawings her students made, but the drawings are of a cartoon character which is considered copyright infringement. You ban them and basically they try to revolt. They were doing a nice thing, but you had to do your job. I find it similar to Not For Broadcast or Papers, Please where harming others is part of work, and trying to do the right thing can prove to be difficult. Then the story takes a turn and becomes a plot about corporate conspiracies and secrets lying behind the company. It’s well presented and the ending is sweet as it shows a businessman regretful of all of what he did and the people he harmed just to get where he is today. I do have a fair share of gripes. Some of the solutions to the cases are hard to work to, and later on in the game you have to type in what feels like codes just to get to where you need to be. At some point I used a guide which ruined bits of the game, but that shouldn’t ruin it for other people. Take in what Hypnospace Outlaw is and that is being a tribute. I give this game an 8.5/10.
Fashion Police Squad
Fashion Police Squad is another retro first person shooter, or boomer shooter from what a lot of players like to call it. There've been many boomer shooters in recent memory, but stick around for this one has a hook to it. This one is a comedy FPS that takes place in a city where terrible fashion is the worst crime you can commit. More so than manslaughter, drug smuggling, human trafficking, and much more. Wow, I killed the mood right there. You follow Sergeant Desmond, recent recruit of the Fashion Police Squad, as his job is to wipe the street clean of any fashion offenses. Instead of guns you use tools made to tailor clothes, and instead of demons or monsters you shoot ugly people. I won’t say this is one of the best indie boomer shooters out there, but one of the more unique ones. Instead of having drab environments full of decay and depression you instead this colorful city brimming with life. With locations that are distinct from each and level ideas always switching up. The story isn’t great, but I will say the writing works. I found myself chuckling quite a few times not because the game was funny, but because the game was aware of how stupid it was trying to be. There’s a lot of fashion puns and there’s even a boss fight that not only references three different video games, but also makes fun of how Fashion Police Squad is a comedy video game. You fight tourists, flaming Guy Furis, and Karens. Any game that lets me fight Karens gets an extra half a point in my book. It’s one of few comedy games done right, and thankfully it’s also a really fun game to play. It’s no Dusk, but it’s really well designed.
You navigate through stages fighting an array of enemies, and each enemy requires you to use a specific attack to defeat them.For example, gray men in suits require you to use a paint gun on them to add color. Teenagers with too much neon clothing will require you to drain color, men in overly large suits require you to de-thread them, loose pants require the smack of a belt, and much more. Using any other weapon on them will not work and I can see some people getting upset with this design choice. It has a similar problem to Doom Eternal's overreliance on using weaknesses, but I find it a little more exceptional in Fashion Police Squad. The weapon arsenal isn’t so vast and you aren’t constantly being gunned down instantly. This is one of the easier FPS games I’ve played, but it’s really fair. All of the weapons are fun to use from the paint gun which is basically a shotgun, the thread gun which is an assault rifle, water gun which can also be used to wet the ground and run faster, and the clothing cannon which is a rocket launcher. The only weapon which isn’t fun are the sock gnomes, because they have an arch and low throwing rate. There’s also a belt which is your melee attack, but it can also be used to break boxes containing items and swing on poles. There’s platforming sections sadly, but swinging around with the belt is more fun than trying to figure out what platform to jump onto like in Doom Eternal. With the wide array of enemies and six different weapons you’ll be swapping often, and due to there being no ammo count it means you’ll switch up your attacks a lot. Which is great, because a game that pushes you to vary your approach is a great one. The game takes four to five hours to beat, which is a good run time as any longer would make me hate it more. They’d probably start running out of jokes to say, and that is something you do not want for a comedy game. Fashion Police Squad gets a stern hearty recommendation in my book. I'd give it a worthy 8.5/10 for being pretty good.
Firewatch
Your enjoyment of Firewatch will vary depending on whether you took in the message it had to offer or saw it as another walking sim. I really enjoyed Firewatch and thought the story it had to tell was worthwhile. The game opens up with you, Henry, recollecting the last few years of your life. How you met this beautiful woman, married her, and started a life together. She was then diagnosed with early set dementia and your lives started to fall apart. She could no longer pursue the career she wanted, you never had kids, she moved in with her parents, and you longer see the person you loved anymore. Henry then takes a job offer to lookout for fires in the woods, and it’s through this job that you attempt to escape the burdens of your life. You quickly become friends with your coworker, Delilah, and you start having a relationship with her. You see the woman you wanted to be with, but there’s still this guilt of not actually being there with your wife. The game’s story involves a conspiracy of what is going on in the woods, but the real story to me at least is how much Henry tries to escape his life. The peaceful nature of the woods and being out there alone with nothing but a voice on a radio to talk to. Not having to deal with working in an office, paying house taxes, and of course that wife with dementia. How he tries to maintain the situation he is in, but the problems of before tries to drag him back. How the fire, the destruction of his getaway home, forces him back to reality. How he has to deal with a wife with dementia, and prepare for what is to come. We’ve all had that moment where we wish we were somewhere else. Where that be witnessing your parents in an argument or daily hassles. Firewatch is a game about learning to deal with those problems and accept what the future offers.
Graphically the game looks stunning and I found waltzing around the woods to be peaceful. You feel nothing but the grass on your feet, the blowing winds, and the water running by you. I like the world design and how simple it is to navigate. It’s a somewhat open world, but instead of giving you a radar telling you where to go you instead use a paper map. Marking all the major locations in the area. From there you try to pinpoint where you are and get to where you need to go next. This creates familiarity with the world and eventually you stop using the map. You then start using natural instinct, because you know where everything is. It’s not as extravagant as a title like Outer Wilds where exploration will reward you with an incredible discovery. Firewatch is a really linear game, but I think it’s a well designed one. The world doesn’t take long to trek across and the game takes less than three hours to beat. I strongly recommend Firewatch. It’s not innovative and it’s not one of the best indies out there, but the environments and storytelling are what make it worth playing once. 8.5/10.
The Beginner’s Guide
Okay, so we got two walking sims to talk about today. The second is The Beginner’s Guide made by Davey Wreden, the same person who made The Stanley Parable. Not as artistic or gamey as Firewatch, which is weird because I might like this one more. I'm gonna spoil certain things about the game for you, so skip ahead if you don’t want it spoiled because it’s not a long one and it’s best to experience it yourself. In The Beginner’s Guide you listen to Wreden recollect the life of his former friend Coda. A game developer he met during 2009 and has been test playing his projects since then. Coda was an interesting developer. He would work on a game for about a month, stop, and then go on to make another one. He made a large handful of games in the hopes people will be impressed by his work, but everytime he began to change. His mental health started to decline and from here we experience an interesting case study. One about a man who seeked value through his work, but overtime forgot what it was like to have a normal human interaction. To the point where one of the games follows Coda seeing a woman he liked, but being too afraid to go and talk to her thinking he’d fail to start a good conversation. Then there’s a game where you run around and destroy Coda’s work as if he’s saying none of it was worth it to begin with. I related to this situation, because there were times during my high school years where I wondered how to interact with people. I didn’t have many friends growing up and trying to relate to people proved difficult. The Beginner’s Guide provided a neat character delve, but then the big twist happened and now we have two interesting character studies.
The twist is that Wreden was secretly altering Coda’s game so that when he showed them off to others they would experience the sad tale of Coda’s life. Wreden lies about Coda being depressed and not seeking help, and this offends Coda who is already having a hard time with enjoying his work. The two then stop being friends and we then dive into Wreden’s perspective. How he was attempting to do the right thing, but eventually seeked validation for helping someone. How he regrets what he did and knows if he didn’t alter Coda’s work then the two would have still been friends. The Beginner’s Guide became a game I kept thinking about even after the credits rolled. It’s not a long game and neither is it a replayable one. It’s a one and done experience, and one flaw that prevents it from being excellent is that in reality Coda is a person Wreden most likely made up to tell his narrative. I think there was even an argument saying Wreden could be sued, but maybe there’s an interview talking about how he made The Beginner’s Guide. Anyways, this is a good game and I recommend giving it a look. 8.5/10.
Splasher
Splasher is a speedy platformer made by Splashteam. Convenient name, I know. The story is that you are a humble janitor who works for Inkorp and they develop experimental inks and robots. A bit weird they develop both ink and robotos, but whatever because one night you witness one of the scientists of the company develop a serum that transforms its workers into hideous blobs. Not wanting that to happen to the rest of your coworkers, you pick up your spraying equipment and set to rescue all of them. The game has a total of twenty two levels, and each contains seven little workers to rescue and an end goal to reach. Splasher feels like a combination between Rayman and classic Sonic. Levels are linearly designed and secrets are dotted about in the way Rayman does it, but you blast through stages at high speed and a majority of obstacles must be avoided using inpoint precision like in Sonic or Super Meat Boy. It’s fun, exciting, and you feel bad when you successfully master a difficult section of a stage. The driving mechanic of Splasher is your spraying equipment. Using your water hose you can interact with objects in the environment, and you are going to need it. You want to progress through stages and fight baddies. The hose usually auto locks onto whatever you aim it at so you don’t have to worry about accuracy. There are a ton of sections that require you to maintain movement and spray, and this is when Splasher will push you. Some later stages are harder than they should be, and I will say the controls aren’t always the tightest. It is fair, and that made playing till the end so fun.
As you progress through the game you occasionally unlock a new ink to spray around. One ink allows you to stick on ceilings and walls, and another ink will allow you to bounce off surfaces. This opens up a variety of level mechanics and ways for which the game can push you. Splasher also has this art style that I would best describe as a mid 2000s flash game. I would even bet the developers of this game worked with flash and published content on Newgrounds at some point. Finding all the coworkers is fun and the last coworker challenges you to collect all the golden ink throughout a level. I was driven to rescue them all and I did just that. There’s also a time trial mode to see how fast you can navigate through levels and it adds a ton of replayability to the game. I recommend Splasher, and even though there are flaws and the final boss kinda sucks it's another worthy entry in the platformer genre. I give this game an 8.5/10.
Sayonara Wild Hearts
My track record for rhythm action games hasn’t been the greatest. I liked Cadence of Hyrule and adored Everhood, but I was really disappointed with BPM: Bullets Per Minute and got frustrated with Crypt of The NecroDancer to a point I never finished it. I heard amazing things about this year’s Hi-Fi Rush, but I don’t have an Xbox Series X or a stable enough PC to play it on. I do plan to check out Metal: Hellsinger, but for now let’s talk about Sayonara Wild Hearts. Another rhythm action game, but this time narrated by Queen Latifah. I was planning on skipping this game due to the short runtime and the amount of flashing lights made it look headache inducing, but I’m happy I ended up checking it out. You follow a young woman sleeping the night away. She's awakened from her sleep when she gets sucked into a faraway fantasy world. A world that was once teeming with prosperity and magic, but a group or corrupt individuals decided to take it and conceal it within their hearts. Using a couple of tricks up her sleeve, the young woman must fight those who stand in her way, free whatever is trapped in their hearts, and save the day. The game isn’t very narrative focused, but as time goes on you eventually learn what the story is. It turns out the young woman had recently suffered a heartbreak. She is sad, alone, and is suffering from a deep state of depression. I don’t know if the fantasy world we were isekai away into was real or if it was a dream made, but my theory is that the young woman’s mind conjured it up so she can face her trauma. The many regrets, burdens, and hatred she aimed towards herself after the breakup. The game has an end sequence where you forgive all the enemies you faced during your travels, and in some ways it’s the young woman’s way of forgiving not only the person who left her but herself. You then see her in the real world a bit happier, and it's a message for self healing and that you can always give love a second chance.
Gameplay involves you navigating a series of hazards and trying to reach the end of a stage. This may involve fighting one of the many villains or trying to avoid oncoming objects, but from what I remember a lot of these obstacles are timed to the beat of the song that is playing. You just have to try your best to avoid them, but if you do get hit you get sent to a nearby checkpoint to repeat the section. Sayonara Wild Hearts is a very forgiving game and you don’t lose that many seconds of progress if you do get hit. Even if you do fail several times the game gives you the option to skip the section that is troubling you. There are however these points you can rack up during a level, and obtaining more will build up your end level score. Your grade will depend on how well you did, and this can encourage replays of a level. I wish there were actual rewards for doing so like maybe an art gallery and such, but I never cared about scoring systems in games. Sayonara Wild Hearts has a beautiful art style and visuals, but there were times I felt the game was showing off too much. As mentioned, there are a lot of flashing lights and colors and this can often distract you from what hazard is about to approach. I’m slapping a massive seizure warning onto this game, because expect to get one upon playing the first level. I really like Sayonara Wild Hearts. It’s not too long of a game though. It can be beaten in under an hour, which may affect some opinions on the game due to how it’s thirteen dollars, but I bought it on sale which happens often. This game is great and in a lot of ways I strongly recommend it. In the end I would give Sayonara Wild Hearts an 8.5/10 for being pretty good.
To The Moon
Do you want to get sad? Cool, play this game. To The Moon is probably not the best video game on this list, but it’s probably I’d recommend checking out the most. It’s an RPG Maker narrative focused puzzle game, and the story it has to offer is one that made me feel really sad by the end. You follow two scientists, Eva Rosalene & Neil Watts, and they work for Sigmund Corp. Using a special machine they can enter people’s minds, explore their memories, and change them so they can experience their deepest desire before they die. Their current assignment involves Johnny, an old man slowly dying on his deathbed. His wish is to go to the moon, but learning why he wants to go to the moon is the interesting part. I’m about to spoil To The Moon, so if you don’t want spoilers I’d suggest you skip and come back once you have played it. The game is three to four hours long and it goes by quickly, so you’d be doing a disservice by not playing. Anyways, you get to learn more about Johnny and the sad life he had. His wife River was a woman he cared for ever since they met, and during their elderly years they would grow distant as all River did was make paper bunnies and didn’t communicate as well. You eventually learn River was diagnosed with asperger syndrome and that may explain why she slowly stops talking to people. Johnny felt confused when River didn’t fully explain things to him, and when she passed he felt regretful for not being able to do more with her. He spent all his time and energy on her. Trying to make her happy and he even built a house for them. Only for her to pass before he lied on a deathbed.
Upon exploring Johnny’s mind further you discover some bits of it are distorted, and getting past the distortion you learn more about Johnny. Originally you thought Johnny met River during his high school years, but they actually met during a carnival when they were mere kids. A few days afterwards Johnny’s mother ran into his twin brother, Joey, and Johnny was traumatized with how his mother was responsible. This then led Johnny’s mother to diagnose him with a heavy dosage of beta blockers to forget Joey existed, but this also erased his memory of meeting River. This would then upset River as Johnny can’t remember their original meeting, and she never revealed it to him as they got older. Her aspergers got even worse and sent her into a depressive state. This is why Johnny spent a good chunk of his life sad and confused, because he cannot fully remember what happened. The two scientists then create a reality where Joey lives, which prevents him from getting beta blockers and forgetting, but they also make it so that he meets River later in life. They both fly together to the moon and the real life Johnny passes away. It’s a very sweet ending and it made me appreciate life a bit more. How despite all the troubles we face we can still create those happy moments. As a game, To The Moon isn’t great. You slowly walk around each scene, interact with specific objects, and solve a tile puzzle. None of which are hard and you can take as many turns as you want, but the story is what makes To The Moon worth checking out. I strongly recommend this game and I may play some of the other games this dev has created. There’s at least two more. I give To The Moon a 9/10 for excellence at best.
Dredge
Dredge is so far one of my favorite indie games of 2023. It is one of the most unique experiences of the year and it manages to do what I thought no other video game could do. Make fishing fun. You follow a lonesome fisherman navigating the night, but a mysterious fog clouds his vision and forces him to crash. His ship gets wrecked, but the inhabitants of a nearby town pull him to safety. They offer him a new boat in exchange for fishing for the town, and the work proves to be easy at first as you fish along the shores. A few days pass and the one of the fishies you end up catching appears to be strange. Its pores are bubbling and several, the teeth are razor sharp, and there are several eyes forming around it. The town inhabitants say they occasionally get things like this, but a mysterious man tells you something isn’t right. This is the Collector, and he says something is wrong with the water. He wants you to find five relics scattered around the region and bring them back to him so you can perform a ritual.
The core gameplay is fun, because while you are doing nothing but sailing around and fishing it’s the progression that makes it great. Collect fish to sell for cash, and dredge for resources so that you can upgrade your ship. Use said cash to afford upgrades or equipment you can equip to your vessel. Whether that be different fishing rods to fish in different spots, better lights to see during the night, or engines so the ship moves faster. Your ship also has a cargo space similar to that of Resident Evil 4. Everything you hoist out of the water will take a different shape, and it’s all about trying to make it all fit so you can carry back more rewards. When you collide with an object you lose inventory space and potentially an item, and if you collide three times before you can repair your ship it’s game over. What makes Dredge even more interesting is the night and the sanity system. During the night things become harder to see. Rocks visible during the day will vanish, and slowly your insanity will build up. Insanity is also built up whenever you lack sleep or encounter one of the few monstrous fish later in the game. Insanity will cause you to see things you normally wouldn’t see. Whether that be eyes surrounding you, seagulls that steal your cargo, or new monsters that will try to attack you. You can be restored to a sane state by sleeping, but you can’t always play safe as time moves quickly as you travel and fish. You’ll have to take risks and know when to say “screw it” and brave the dangers that come during the night.
Dredge has a lovely art style and each of the five biomes you sail across are distinct from each other. The game has easy to use controls despite being a boat game and the music is relaxing as you enjoy the fresh breeze and crashing waves. It’s also not that long either, lasting around five hours and another one hour if you pursue the true ending. I really enjoy the story and the big twist it leads to if you can get to it. Skip to the end if you don’t want to be spoiled. Anyways, as you play through the game you uncover messages describing a loving husband and his wife. For the bad ending you learn the Collector is the husband and he’s trying to bring the wife back to life. He does so successfully, but awakens a lovecraftian horror that destroys the world. If you pursue the good ending you discover a couple came to the region years ago. They dredged up a mysterious book from the waters and upon opening it a curse spread throughout the land. That book sounds similar to the Collector’s book, and upon forcefully taking it you discover that this man is a reflection of yourself. You were the man who dredged up the book, and you were trying to justify to yourself bringing your wife back to life. We’ve addressed a lot of games today that deal with guilt, but this is one of the best ones. You can either perform the ritual nonetheless or toss the book back where you found it. An eldritch horror eats you and the game happily ends. Dredge is a game about learning to accept loss. It’s not a happy ending, but a good one.
I honestly don’t really have any major complaints with Dredge. It’s a bit short, but I feel like any time more than that would have made it feel dragged out. The core gameplay loop, story, artstyle, music, and pacing all add up to create a luxurious horror game about a boat and the sea. I highly recommend this game and I can easily see it being on my end of the Game of The Year list. I give a 9.5/10 for excellence at best.
Thanks for sticking till the end.
Comments