Playing
This week I’ve tried a few new titles and returned to some older ones. Here’s some thoughts I gathered.
Tiny Rogues
As the genre has evolved, I have personally found that a lot of rogue-lites ditch the traditional RPG stat and inventory formula in favor of player stats that align with the specific mechanics of their game and it’s unique systems. While I think this is an overall good move, I do have the itch to equip and unequip certain build changing items in runs, managing my STR, DEX, INT, so on and so forth. I think tiny rogues really allows me to experience that feeling while also providing more of an arcade freeform combat feel than the strict grid-based combat of rogue-lites that lean toward the traditional.
Returning to Tiny Rogues this week was fun because a lot has changed since I was last around. The game is in early access on steam and you can really feel that in a positive way. Rather than few systems, no variety, or loads of bugs, Tiny Rogues has an astounding level of polish and is constantly cropping up with new features. What I once expected would be a simple “easy to learn hard to master” rogue-lite with an ascendancy system has completely shifted now into having a much larger amount of meta-progression and a host of new features. I enjoyed exploring these new systems, but did have a sense of feature creep once or twice, wondering how many more of these systems could be added before the game started to feel bogged down.
While I enjoyed my time this week I think this title will go back on the shelf for a while. I’m looking forward to seeing where things stand after another update or two!
CRUEL
I picked up Cruel on a whim when developer Ellisa Tucci quote tweeted it’s release trailer saying “your boss should let you stay home today”. Impressed by the endorsement and willing to do anything a woman tells me to, I bought it that day and started playing.
One of the areas that cruel really shines to me is it’s “juice”. The game feel, sound design, effects, and animations all work together so seamlessly to make a really polished product. This level of polish makes the game’s otherwise relatively simplistic gameplay loop feel complete.
While I only have an hour in so far, I’ve played quite a few “runs”. I find that it’s a good game to pick up if I only have 15-20 minutes to spare, because I usually die within 5-10 minutes. But, it does always leave me feeling like maybe I can get just a little further next time, making sure I come back for more.
Animal Well
Clocking in just under 12 hours, I finished Animal Well’s story. That being said, I know from the way that my friends and others have talked about the game that there are several other “layers” of complexity to “solve” in Animal Well, but I’m going to take my time doing those and might put Animal Well back on the shelf for now to explore other things. I will say that I found the main story stuff in Animal Well to be quite fun and entertaining. The backtracking when I was unsure of what to do next did feel tedious at times, but those moments were quickly forgotten after finding the next new area and exploring to my heart’s content. I never made an official game of the year list for 2024 on this page but if I had, even just what I’ve experienced of Animal Well is compelling enough for me to add it.
Bits and bobs:
I also played Liars Bar, Digseum, Windblown, TBOI, Elden Ring, and UFO 50
Making
Late one night last week I was struck with the inability to sleep and the idea to express the concepts of a game as a playable demo. Now, I don’t know enough about Godot yet to create a playable demo of a concept I have, but I do have a functional knowledge of Scratch. And, seeing as I had yet to make a scratch project for my CS50 course I decided to do so. The concept I came up with is something I titled “Tupinaire” and you can read the full concept here. The link to the scratch project is here.
My next idea is to get more comfortable with Godot by trying to port Tupinaire over to it. Or maybe I’ll try something else.
Thanks for stopping by to read this! Means a lot. See y’all next one.