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【Game Log: Post-March 2025】
Back in a too many random games mood again. My short-term health improved while I simultaneously required assorted tests for more serious issues (all negative thankfully).
Major Timesinks and Finished Games
ENA: Dream BBQ (chapter 1) is an absolute work of art. It's a (completely free) surreal first person adventure game, where you wander around talking to people and interacting with things. It's based on a popular youtube series (though with a different "ENA" to the one in the videos) by the same creator, and absolutely nails everything that makes the videos great. Except it's about four times as long as the entire length of all the videos. There's a fairly decent narrative through-line for a game where the non-sequitirs are the point. The art and sound are incredible, but the animated cutscenes are a step above that. There seems to be a lot of alternate paths/replay value too.
I've rediscovered the joys of Bombe, the Minesweeper clone you solve via algorithmic policies. which appears to now have an autosolving background robot that melts my CPU but saves a lot of time. At least it did until my set of rules became so complex they all hang.
I managed to get a Gamemaker crash screen in Nubby's Number Factory. It's still a weirdly fascinating game. The extra bonus challenges are all garbage though. And every single "boss" in the game beyond the default is locked behind those. So I guess I'm done with it.
My timesink of choice has been Cosmic Collapse, the pico-8 Suika Game clone themed around the solar system. Still good frivolous fun.
Having successfully finished Caves of Qud, I decided to try rerunning the game with a bizarre and unbalanced character build like I did in the early versions. I'm really enjoying experimenting and poking at the edges of the game now. Still ended up disintegrated by an esper hunter while trying to alternately freeze and scorch a bunch of poison emitting giant ants though.
I've put a couple of hours into Rosewater, the latest point and click adventure from Grundislav Games, makers of Lamplight City. Like Lamplight City, it's set in Vespuccia, an alternate universe America where the British Crown still rules. Though in the frontier west this time, and much more of a traditional point and click adventure this time. It has extremely high production values, great characters, and I'm heavily invested in the storyline. Which is why I'm so annoyed my game has been ruined by a having an undocumented feature where the right mouse button skips entire cutscenes AND autosaves after to really make it hard to go back and see what you missed. (Apparently this will be patched out)
Tried Out or Revisited Briefly
Khimera: Puzzle Island is a perfectly fine nonogram (picross) game with cute characters, that commits the unforgivable sin of requiring me to replay puzzles and/or do them at speed to unlock things.
SPELLHACK!! is a deckbuilding game set on a non-specific British microcomputer (rendered in a 3D room on a monitor) that has a neat, if uncanny, style. The games system is neat, but also progresses in real time, which is a bit awkward.
ROGUE LIGHT DECK BUILDER is one of those games where you control a hand in 3D and try to use it to do things, in this case build a deck under a failing light. Good fun gimmick.
Look Outside is an RPGMaker Survival Horror game set in an apartment building where you die/become a horrible monster if you look outside. The game seems to be as much about uncovering the story, as it is about survival/combat. Much like Rosewater it has a game ruining design choice (In this case, dialog menu options only appear after a lengthy delay, so you press the button to advance text and accidentally choose an option from a menu you haven't seen yet).
Psycho Patrol R is just as inscrutable, fascinating, and horrifying as Cruelty Squad is, and then some. I want to play more, but control bindings are not saving currently.
Rain World attempts to tell a story without words, and then immediately plasters words all over the screen as the tutorial completely fails to tell you how to play. Also apparently the slugcat can jump higher and further over plot relevant gaps. The poor initial critical reception for the game aligns with mine.
Either I've forgotten how to play Flywrench, or it's way less responsive in it's current form than initially.
TRAINPLANNER is a fun gamejam game where you arrange train tracks to connect an increasing amount of stations, and put signals down to prevent arbitrary train routes from causing crashes. Simple, but effective. I hope there's a more fleshed out version in the future
March Game of the Month
ENA: Dream BBQ
An absolute triumph. Yume Nikki combined with cdi-Zelda-But-Good aesthetics. A must play.
All Games Played
Caves of Qud: GREAT (Notable)
Nubby's Number Factory: Good
ENA - Dream BBQ: GREAT (Notable)
Bombe: GREAT
Cosmic Collapse: Good
Rosewater: Good
Khimera - Puzzle Island: OK
SPELLHACK!!: OK
ROGUE LIGHT DECK BUILDER: Good
Psycho Patrol R: Good
Look Outside: Good
Rain World: Mediocre
Flywrench: Good
TrainPlanner: GREAT!
It looks like there is something beyond the Sun in
@johanpeitz’
#CosmicCollapse:
Cosmic Collapse Level After Sun
A few days we linked to Cosmic Collapse, a Pico-8 Suika Game clone that, I claim, is better than the original, or its many many other clones. Its graphics are less cloying, its music is much better, its physics are livelier which adds a greater element of skill, and it has missiles awarded at different score levels that can b
https://setsideb.com/cosmic-collapse-level-after-the-sun/#indies #cosmiccollapse #indie #itch #itchio #johanpeltz #pico8 #suikagame
Cosmic Collapse Level After Sun
A few days we linked to Cosmic Collapse, a Pico-8 Suika Game clone that, I claim, is better than the original, or its many many other clones. Its graphics are l
Game Finds: Cosmic Collapse
A fair amount has been said about Suika Game, an inexpensive and addictive Switch game that has players dropping fruit into a physics-enabled bin. Two fruit of the same type that touch immediately merge into a larger fruit, and the goal is to join them together like this until you create a mighty Water
https://setsideb.com/game-finds-cosmic-collapse/#indies #aladdinx #cosmiccollapse #fad #gamefinds #indie #itchio #johanpeitz #physics #steam #suikagame #switch
Game Finds: Cosmic Collapse
A fair amount has been said about Suika Game, an inexpensive and addictive Switch game that has players dropping fruit into a physics-enabled bin. Two fruit of
Merge Planets to Rack up Points, Create a ‘Cosmic Collapse’ – Wraithkal: The Indie Gaming Corner
YHEAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
#CosmicCollapse (cc @johanpeitz )
Julianoë
Unoriginal and Uncreative
acb
SetSideB
Peter "Wraithkal" Christiansen
Marc