Musing on #CrueltySquad and it's interesting that the best way to actually make enough money to complete the game is to have made some very lucky decisions right at the start, when you didn't know what's going on, otherwise you'll be stuck doing in-game years of tedious work (in this case fishing)
Like no matter how gaming literate you are, unless someone you know helps you out at the beginning, you don't actually stand a chance. Like my dad used to say "it's not what you know, it's who you know"
In the end, once I figured out it was possible to get there with literal hours and hours of grind (canonically in-game it took you 30 years to save up enough money to buy a house) I don't regret simply hacking my savegame for the sake of stream brevity
I wonder if the metaphor here is: Faced with an inherently unjust society where it's simply not possible to succeed via "normal" legitimate means, is it really that much of a surprise when some people turn to crimes instead?
Especially a game like this, and IRL, where the rich and powerful commit horrendous crimes and get off completely scott-free. The classic analogy: If your boss pays you £100 below minimum wage (theft), they get a slap on the wrist and a fine, but if you take £100 out of the till you go to jail.
The former is a minor blip on a spreadsheet somewhere, the latter could be the difference between someone's kid getting to eat this week
(continued in reply)
Cruelty Squad: Videogames and the killing of far-right influencers
-
Cruelty Sqaud: Videojuegos y la muerte de los influencers de extrema derecha
#videogames #crueltysquad #charliekirk #fascism
https://youtu.be/-5YbY-Jx0cU?si=fMuMcBBCfgKPb-Xw
Cruelty Squad, Charlie Kirk and Controlling the Narrative | Renegade Cut
➤Cultist level has some annoying spinning bar you need to walk across. Falling off lands you on a bouncy pad that launches you WAYYYY to far into the air.
➤This will normally kill you upon hitting solid ground, but somehow I clipped through it, survived, and took out the few guards in the room below without getting killed.
➤Final level is very tough. I'd say it feels more like a puzzle where you need to figure out where to go or what to do. I took it section by sections and it wasn't too bad.
➤You get a Divine Link in that level, but it's unclear what it does. Also, I have to pay money to revive again?
➤I got an ending of escaping from somewhere. This is the end of the normal levels since I didn't find any secret ones.
➤The strangeness of the game carries it. It was less fun and more interesting. I didn't really use any of the more expensive augs. They must be for finding secrets. Plenty of cryptic corners and sights.
#CrueltySquad #VideoGames #Gaming
➤You can buy and sell organs. I only realized this after picking up a kidney by accident. There's fish too?
➤I've died enough they cleared my debt and it doesn't cost money to revive anymore.
➤To some extent it feels like the levels are meant to be speedrun. You can reach the targets and get out fairly quickly if you tried.
➤Mall level has a giant robocop enemy. Very scary and hard to beat!
➤Swamp level sucks. The water is poisonous and you have to go into it at parts. Losing too much health to the enemies is the same as dying. Blue berries heal you and yellow stop the poison though!
➤Casino level had some weird zoom and autofire sometimes. I think an enemy was doing it to me?
➤I actually switched around my augments for the escape your apartment level. I took out enough so I could run for the exit.
➤I don't think I've found any secrets. Without the death penalty now I'm more inclined to explore.
#CrueltySquad #Gaming #VideoGames
➤This game is weird. It's like a deep fried Deus Ex.
➤So far you pick a level and try to take out the target(s) and make it to the exit.
➤Headshots dispose of enemies quickly. Being accurate is very important.
➤The levels are large and there seems to be many areas that are optional. I got killed by some tiny worm things that poisoned me in the first level.
➤Game is tough. You die quickly and you owe $500 each time you die.
➤You can get some augmentations. There's some strange stuff that I'm not sure is useful.
➤To reload you have to hold a button and pull the mouse down. Extended engagements are stressful.
➤There's a stock market. You can access it at any time. I've been building a money buffer so I haven't tried to use it yet.
➤The music is really bad (likely intentionally) and the font is hard to read (also intentional).
➤I think picking up new weapons in the level unlocks them for future use.
#VideoGames #Gaming #CrueltySquad
【Game Log: Mid-March 2025】
I spent much of the last fortnight with a sinus infection/mild pneumonia. I've spent that time either playing too many video games, or none at all.
Major Timesinks and Finished Games
My major achievement in this period was that after 630+ hours of gameplay, and Nearly 10 years after I bought it on Steam, I finally finishing Caves of Qud. I've only ever played classic mode (ie, proper roguelike, "permadeath", etc) so this is naturally very difficult. I will not discuss specifics of the ending, other than to say it is both beautiful and fitting. It expands the scope and concept of the game's world exponentially, without a second of it feeling out of character.
I put more time into Old-School Rally, and I've nearly finished what's available in its current version. The game is still very good, but I've noted a big negative. The later tournaments drive on the newer tracks in the game, where stuff like the (rather terrible normally) in-game navigator is generally greatly improved. But there are also a few terrible navigator advices that can only be explained by being deliberate deception. Which IMHO fucking sucks, and makes me think less of the game.
I also went back to Parking Garage Rally Circuit, the fake Sega-Saturn game about drifting around parking garages, and finished off most of whats available. The physics and style of the game are still great. But I probably won't go back to it for a while, purely because there's also not that much there so far.
Completing the trifecta of faux-retro arcade games, I also returned to Super Polygon Grand Prix. A take on Virtua-Racing with a distinctive style, but fairly barebones. In the months since I've played it, the opponent AI has greatly improved and also become insanely difficulty. But in a way I find very satisfying. The physics of the cars is also notable, which somehow nails an arcade take on an F1 car that is not complicated, but still feels like it gets out of control in the right situations and in the right way. Absolutely delighted with its progress.
Expelled! is the latest game by Inkle, and also a sequel to Overboard!. In this game you play a day in the life of a student in an English girls boarding school post-WW1, attempting to exonerate herself after being falsely accused of pushing another student out a window. I've mostly had a lot of fun with this, the premise is a lot of fun and the writing is excellent. The wit in this game is some of the driest and darkest I've seen in games. However it also has a bit of a slow start, with a mechanical bait and switch, that doesn't really land. Additionally I'm about 60% through the game (it breaks down several sub goals for you, many of which I've achived,) and can see a few paths to progress, but thinking of the mechanical progress of getting that far in a run is enough to make me want to play another game.
Nubby's Number Factory is a game where you fire balls at pegs and hope to collect enough points to progress to the next round. Then several interacting power-ups become available and things become exponentially crazy. The game seems to be broken and crashes a lot, or the maths don't work as advertised. But also it's completely insane and amazing.
I saw the game Lingo 2 mentioned, so I immediately went and played the original Lingo. It's a first person puzzle game where the answers to assorted puzzles are entered into text boxes. The introduction of the vagueries of language (and more importantly spelling) are risky in these games, but so far I haven't run into any major problems. Granted there are a few seemingly big puzzles I've skipped right by so far, so I imagine the game lives and dies on how satisfying these are.
Tried Out or Revisited Briefly
Botany Manor another puzzle game, this time about replicating the growing conditions for plants in a large mansion so that seeds may bloom. Interesting concept, but I found it a bit grating. Particularly the contextual clues in the world seem to be drowned out by "noisy" ephemera that looks like it should be an interactable clue but isn't.
ULTRAKILL had a big update. So I played it some more. It's as hectic as ever, and the graphical updates look good without ruining the style. I've completely lost the muscle memory for it though.
VVVVVV is still excellent. I felt a bit rusty with the controls, but they are still good. The empty area in the middle of the world is much larger than I remember.
Ostranauts seems to be slightly less of a mess, and doesn't randomly pause so much.
I tried replaying a bunch of the Cruelty Squad levels I'd finished when I first played. The games still got whatever made it work in the first place. But interacting with the insane mess of disparate side-mechanics (stock trading, fishing, organ harvesting, etc) just made it even more perfect.
Midnight Margo is an experimental game from Faravid Interactive. It depicts mental health management using RPG mechanics. It's a neat concept with some really good voice acting. I found it a chore to even get out of the first room. It's only $AU1.50 though.
Blobun is a cool puzzle game where you play as a slime bunny and have to stretch your body to cover all squares without overlapping yourself. Cute style and very neat. I'm looking forward to playing more.
Wanderstop is about a burnt out warrior who is rescued by a country tea shop owner. I've tried twice to get into this game and just can't for whatever reason. While the style and music are neat and the plot is at least potentially interesting, the pace is excruciating and the tutorial feels like three tutorials fighting each other. The best I can say is that it had "I'd literally rather do anything else" as a dialogue option right as I wanted to save and quit the game.
The Final Earth 2 is a SimTower-like game about building vertical cities on floating islands. It works well enough, even the goal-oriented nature of the stages is paced well enough that it doesn't feel that dissimilar from open-ended city building. This is still not my preferred setting for a builder though.
Classic Recommendation
VVVVVV
It's a retro-platformer from 2010 in the style of ZX spectrum games, where instead of jumping you flip gravity. It has simple and precise controls, but a lot of challenge. One of the best soundtracks ever.
All Games Played
Caves of Qud: GREAT (Notable)
Old School Rally: Good
Parking Garage Rally Circuit: Good
Super Polygon Grand Prix: GREAT (Notable)
Expelled!: Good
Nubby's Number Factory: Good
Lingo: Good
Botany Manor: OK
ULTRAKILL: GREAT
VVVVVV: GREAT
Ostranauts: GREAT
Cruelty Squad: GREAT
Midnight Margo: OK
Blobun: Good
Wanderstop: Mediocre
The Final Earth 2: Good
#CrueltySquad
WAKE UP EARLY : HAVE A TEN YEAR PLAN : INVEST IN BIOCURRENCY : ACCEPT THE CEO BASED MINDSET : MASS OF FLESH PUPPETED BY NEURONS : ENDLESS TRANSACTIONS
https://youtu.be/nzPIGABOyQc
YouTubeI'm amazed that the wacky FPS game
#CrueltySquad (which has become popular and has favorable reviews) was made in an engine that's also easy to use and is fully open source.
#GodotEngineIf you love
#CrueltySquad or
#tabletopgames please consider backing HyperMall's Kickstart. It's an amazing system that my players and I love. Perfect for role-playing deleting corpo scum from the world
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hammercitygames/hypermall-unlimited-violence-physical-release
LumKitty
Maik Civeira
PaseoBaggage
Unoriginal and Uncreative
kiophen 
Comb 🍯
Ertain
Vladimito