#IndieXmas: A Winter's Daydream (NS)

Disclaimer: I received a copy of A Winter's Daydream on Nintendo Switch from developer Ebie-Hime and publisher Sometimes You for Xinthus' #IndieXmas.  The game was given and received without expectation or promise of a positive review, only that the game be played and the experience shared through social media channels.  All of the words unless otherwise noted are my own and all screenshots were taken during my own playthrough and are from my own experience.

First off, I have never played through a graphic novel before.  I felt that I understood the concept, but what I ended up playing was a lot simpler in execution that what I was expecting.  Going into A Winter's Daydream, I thought that there would be some points that would come up where I could direct conversation, picking dialogue options, or deciding the order that certain events happened.  All of the events would happen, but the order that these happened would have been up to me.  Instead, what happened was more like an ebook with pictures and accompanying music.

One other expectation I had was that there would be images for all of the characters involved, kind of like how in games like Fire Emblem Three Houses and Final Fantasy Tactics there is a character icon that pops up for whomever is talking.  With the game starting out with the main character Yuu with exposition being delivered, I expected further characters and what I got was a little disappointing. 

During the conversation that Yuu has with his family (Mom, Sister, and Father), there is only one character illustration for Otoko.  I thought maybe there would be illustrations for the parents as the conversation continued, or that Yuu's illustration would come back, but it stayed on his sister for the entirety of the scene.  I started to wonder if Yuu was weirdly staring at his sister, but no, there were not any more character illustrations.  Later, the room changed, but then Otoko came back and it was just her again.  Throughout the whole game, there were only five character illustrations for about a dozen in-game characters, two of which had only a handful of lines compared to the Mother's dialogue which had so much more.  Again, maybe because the game was independently developed and published there was not a lot of time and money spent to create characters for each person in the book, but from a player's standpoint, it felt lacking.

Because the game is released on the Switch, I only played in handheld mode and for the first half-hour or so, I played with the Joy-Cons, pressing the A-button to continue the dialogue.  I was very thankful that I could use the touchscreen functionality to tap the screen so that I could hold the switch in one hand without the Joy-Con attached (so that there wasn't additional strain on where the Joy-Con connects to the screen) and drink coffee with the other.  It is just a convenience thing that I appreciated.

Now that the mechanics and gameplay are out of the way, I guess the remainder of the article could fall into the realm of Book Report.  I do not want to write a book report, but I will summarize* to the point that I am giving away some story spoilers, which is kind of what book reports are all about right?

So, the story involves the character of Yuu who goes to university in Tokyo and is returning home to his town which is a fourish-hour train ride north of Tokyo.  Yuu's sister Otoko is 15 or 16 and still lives at home with their parents.  She's portrayed as the annoying sister who loves to rag on Yuu at every chance she gets.  The parents are supportive for the most part of both kids, but there is obvious favoritism that the father has for Otoko.  During the New Years' break, Yuu decides to go visit his grandmother Umeko who lives alone in a smaller village, which is another two-hour bus trip away, presumably in the opposite direction of Tokyo, just to be further away from a metropolitan city.  Once he reaches his grandmothers there's some introspection on the part of Yuu about his lack of interest as a kid when visiting his grandparents; the grandfather passed away some years before this story starts.

During their initial talk, it is revealed that Umeko cannot make it to a local shrine because of ailing health and reminisces about being a young girl again and when she first met her late husband at the shrine.  If you can guess where this story is going, then you are about on par with me.  Cue shooting star, cue both going to bed in their respective rooms, cue Yuu waking up to find a young woman in his grandmother's clothes cooking breakfast in the kitchen.  Yes, during the night, Umeko transformed mysteriously into her younger self, 70ish years younger.  She decides that she is now well enough to go to the shrine for New Years, but needs to buy a better-looking kimono than the one she last wore when her husband was still alive.  So Yuu and Umeko head to Yuu's home town via the rickety bus.

The rest of the story is a combination of awkward instances where Yuu is made uncomfortable as various people imply that him and his grandmother Umeko are dating (compounded by the Umeko joking to the bus driver that they are in fact dating); to other people, she is a cousin from out of town; and telling Otoko that she is a friend who's just a girl visiting from Tokyo when they run into her in a semi-modern cafe that's deemed too old and not flashy enough for Otoko and her friend's liking.

After returning back to Umeko's village, Yuu and Umeko go to the shrine only to find it dilapidated and in poor condition after years of neglect.  Umeko does end up running into the ghost of her dead husband who is also looking as young as she, they have a sentimental moment before he vanishes and Yuu and Umeko head back to her home.  There they talk about what happened, then go to sleep in their respective beds.  In the morning, Umeko has returned to her normal form, Yuu returns to his home town where he gives Otoko a present he bought her the day before and they all go off to a New Years festival.  I thought that this was a decent end, and end it was as the credits rolled.

But that was not the end.

There was an epilogue of sorts that caught me off guard.  This epilogue ended up being another conversation between Yuu and Otoko that to me felt like it carried on too long.  About 23 minutes too long, but that was just how the story went.

After finishing-finishing the story, I read the "making off" letter that the developer had written with how they came up with the story.  The nugget of the story had to do with a series of consensual incest stories that took place in Japan involving grandparents and their grandchildren, but that they wanted to adapt this format so it was significantly less creepy.  I just think it might be hard for the player/reader to get into that headspace with this theme as an undertone even if there really was no actual incest perpetuated between Yuu and Umeko.  I mean, sure, okay.

Now, I am not sure how indicative A Winter's Daydream is of all visual novels, not in tone or story but in function, that all the player does is press a button to progress dialogue or essentially, turn the page.  If this is indeed how this genre typically plays out, I can say that I am not really on board, which makes me a little sad, but that just means that it is not for me.  I am not going to say that it was a poorly written story or that it is a bad game just because the story nor the format of the visual novel did not stick with me, just that this particular format is not what I would typically look for while browsing a digital marketplace.  

But that is just me, and it may be the perfect avenue for someone else, and that is perfectly okay.

~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian

That's An Easy Thing To Say

*P.S.  Believe it or not, this was the best I could do to summarize this story.  There were many elements and beats that I left out to not tell everything that went on, just what I felt were the most important parts, and even then I left some out.

Yoikes!!

P.P.S.  I also apologize to Ebi-Hime if I got wrong any of the finer or broader story points.  I wrote this article a few days after finishing the game and only looked back through the videos and screen shots I took for information I was unclear about.

Second Impressions: Final Fantasy VIII

So I cracked and bought FF VIII.  I don't regret it.  yet.  This is my second time playing FF VIII, the first was many years ago on my PC.  

I've played about an hour of the game, and I'm enjoying it so far.  As a protagonist, Squall gets a lot of flak for being moody, but I kinda like that.  I was a moody teenager too, so I can relate.  Plus, his instructor and love interest mostly just laugh at him for being moody, which really takes the edge off.  Maybe that's easier to see now as I approach middle age, but teenage moodiness is so typical that it's best to laugh or ignore it, or generally treat a person gently.  

alright, he is pretty moody

It's still very early in the game, so I'm just out of the tutorial stage.  I am pretty psyched for the Junction system.  The way that it is used in place of equipment is nice, because it allows me to focus entirely on Guardian Force Junctioning in order to build and customize the characters.  The Junction system is so deep, that there really isn't room for any other kinds of equipment.  

Also, I have to say I really love the 'Draw' method of spell gathering.  It's just nice to freely gather resources during cheap random encounters.  It's also nice to find new spells when fighting new enemies.  It reminds me vaguely of the 'steal' ability in past final fantasy games.  I use it, jsut to see what's there.  However, the success rate is much higher, which is nice.  

Finally, the graphical update looks great.  The game isn't advanced by any means, but it is crisp.  While the backgrounds are a little bit lower res than the characters, and this makes them clash a little, so far it doesn't bother me.  I definitely appreciate having sharper graphics, rather than the pixely mess that is the original Playstation graphics.*  

This game can't be less than 30 hours to beat.  Probably more.  Given my recent track record, I'll get really sick of the game at about 15-20 hours.  We'll see.  Having the option to take it to work and play at lunch or before work is a real advantage.  And I think I generally have a greater tolerance for grindy jRPGs than other genres.  In the mean time, I'm enjoying this blast from the past.

-D

*Don't worry PSX, I still love you!

P.S. One thing I want to say about the Playstation final fantasy games is that I love the pre-rendered backgrounds.  While they are very dated, I really think they work.  It's fun to explore the environments from all of the different static camera angles.  I feel this is true to Resident Evil games on PSX as well.  There's just a nice cinematic effect.  

One idea that popped into my head while wandering around the Garden in FF VIII is that this would be a wonderful format for an adventure game.  Really, the downtime of an RPG is basically a point and click adventure game.  Go here, click that, talk to this person.  I would play the hell out of a Final Fantasy point and click adventure game with PSX style design.  

#IndieXmas: METAGAL (NS)

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of METAGAL by developer Retro Revolution from publisher Ratalaika Games through Xinthus' #IndieXmas.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and that experience be shared through social media channels.  All of the words in this article unless otherwise noted are my own from my own experience playing the game.

I enjoyed METAGAL.  There were also times when I hated it, and it usually went in that order.

METAGAL is very aware that they are pulling a lot of the core aspects of their game from the Mega Man series, although there are some notable differences/additions to the formula created back in 1987.  You play as a woman/cyborg/robot who is tasked with fighting through stages of robots in order to save your fellow robot/cyborg who was captured and turned against you/the world.  During the opening cut scene, you become equipped with an arm cannon a la Mega Man and Samus.  Your playable character, Meta, even gains new abilities after defeating enemy bosses.  But, there are a number of mechanics that separate METAGAL from the games that it is paying homage to, but we will get to those in a bit.

Stupid Camping Robot In Front of a Gear!

The biggest change in the Mega Man formula is two-fold.  First, you have unlimited lives, which makes sense in the world of video games today after games like Super Meat Boy helped to popularize dying as infrequently as possible and completing the level as fast as you can; you know, speedrunning.  While there are checkpoints that function as checkpoints do, you are also able to pick up gears that serve a dual function.  First, they allow you to restart upon dying at a pre-determined location semi-close to where you died.  Second, they can be used to heal a portion of your life, which then forces you to debate if healing Meta for 20% health is worth it to make it to the next checkpoint, or do you die and use a gear to respawn closer than the previous checkpoint.  I actually do like this mechanic.

Throughout all eight levels in METAGAL, they all seemed to follow a similar progression in how I felt about them.  The start of the level is usually pretty fun as you figure out what the gimmick is going to be.  In the flame stage, there are cataracts of lava that will instantly kill you, along with cannons that blast out torrents of fire that will also instantly kill you.  In [another example].  By the first checkpoint, I will have probably died a handful of times, obviously depending on the stage, but typically it is between that first and second checkpoint that I start losing that sense of fun.  By the time I reach the boss at the end of the stage, I hate the entirety of the level.  In the penultimate stage before the final boss fight, there is a section that specifically feels like it was designed around second and third playthroughs as it plays like a learn-as-you-die approach.  Take a look at one of my many failed attempts before going into a description of what you have to do to actually clear the area.

Seriously though, fuck this section.

In this area, you have to use the Flame Dash across a gap, switch sub-weapons to the Spring Mine to launch yourself up to a ladder, then switch back to the Flame Dash before jumping up to a platform and hopefully, by then your sub-weapon meter is full again so that you can use the Flame Dash over the gap collecting the sub-weapon refill so that you can switch to use the Spring Mine again (but the area is confined so if you miss your first attempt you might have a second attempt before the flame engine-thing blasts you to death.  And after that Spring Mine jump, you still have to do the sub-weapon switch a handful more times before you reach an area that allows you to use the gear respawning you past all of that nonsense.

I guess I failed. . .but did I really!?

The inclusion of a rating based on your time, the number of times you died, the number of enemies killed, and [other] all are tallied to give you a final rating from D to F; it's probably A to F, or even S for a perfect run, but I never did better than a D in any of the eight levels.  And here is where I will possibly get ridiculed: I never felt compelled to do better in any of the stages.  By the time I was finished with each stage, I was so frustrated with short sections that were agonizingly difficult for me that I had no wish to go back and try the stage all over again, even with increased sub-weapons to be more equipped to shorten my time and increase my attack power.  The other thing that I do not like about rating the stages in this game is that it makes the game feel less cohesive, and more like random levels you are playing just to beat the high score.  I recognize that that could be a motivator for some people, but I happen to not be one of them.

Gal.04 Warp was fun because of her protective shield which also doubled
as her projectile arm-cannons.

The one thing that could actually motivate me is that after beating the game for the first time, thankfully regardless of the scores you get in each stage, you are able to play the game all over again, but this time you can choose to play as one of the other characters.  I tried out them all, and was rather impressed that each starting stage, while essentially telling the same story, was specifically adapted to the strengths and abilities of that new character.  For Gal.04 Warp, there was a section where you had to warp yourself through a wall replacing where an enemy was, and for Gal.01 Shield, you had to use the sub-weapon power to give yourself a speed boost and ability to perform a super high jump.  I did not progress very far though because that would have taken too long overall and frankly there are a lot of sections in nearly every stage that gives me anxiety just thinking about.

Watching the fall of the enemy castle, in true Castlevania
fashion.

And that is what METAGAL really boiled down to for me.  Each stage started out fun but turned into an anxious ridden level that I agonized over until I was through.  I did enjoy that I used the sub-weapons I earned from boss fights in a way and frequency that I have not done in a Mega Man game, but the frustration I felt by the end of the level clouded over the fun I had by figuring out what to do to proceed.  I was only a little disheartened by my D, E, and F grades, but that never stopped me from plowing my way through until I took out the final boss.  There was the typical reunion with the other cyborg-GALs and the promise of a sequel in true Mega Man fashion; although the game was released three years ago and I have found nothing about a new METAGAL game.



~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian
We Play the Game with Skilfull Hands

MIDI Week Singles: "Snow" - The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (PC)

"Snow" from The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall on the PC (1996)
Composer: Eric Heberling
Album: Daggerfall: Music of Tamriel
Label: Bethesda Softworks
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: Bethesda Softworks

I wanted to use a song that while not necessarily having to do with Christmas even though that happens to be today, but something that encapsulated the season that we now find ourselves in.  One song that quickly came to mind was this one, which is used in both The Elder Scrolls: The Arena and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, but I decided to feature it from this particular game, mainly because I have not beaten it despite by handful of attempts.

What I like about this music, is that outside of the context of the game, I feel like there is a sense of winter here.  The jingling of the bells that begin with the song and continue throughout, to me at least are very much associated with snow, sleighs, and Christmas, which are typical of winter.  Even the melody which starts out simple enough with a flute-like instrument and then builds to include the digital orchestra seems to embody the sense of pine tree forest on rolling hillsides the morning after fresh snow has blanketed the surrounding landscape.  There is no sense of danger, only wonder and the beginnings of adventure.

Or at least that is the feeling I get while listening to this song.



~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian
At The Edge Of The World

#IndieXmas: Drowning (NS)

Disclaimer:  I received a free copy of Drowning on the Nintendo Switch by developer PolygonalWolf from publisher Sometimes You for Xinthus' #IndieXmas.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be shared through social media channels.  All of the words in this article unless otherwise noted are my own from my own experience playing the game.

I want to preface this article by being upfront, in that I do not feely fully qualified to review this game to its fullest extent.  This is through no deficiency of my own as someone who did not finish the game or did not like the format of the game.  Drowning is a game about depression, suicidal thoughts, and other mental health issues.  I do not see myself as someone who can break down this game into all of its parts and meanings and as I continue through this article, I mean no disrespect for anyone reading this who does exhibit signs and symptoms consistent with depression, suicide, or any other mental health issues depicted in Drowning.  So rather than going into an analysis of the game, I am just going to cover my thoughts while playing.

Drowning plays as a first-person walking simulator that contains written dialogue and descriptions that appear on screen as you explore the linear world you find yourself in.  Before starting this game, I knew nothing about it aside from the screencaps that accompanied Xinthus' Tweet announcing its inclusion among the #IndieXmas games. The game starts with a "Year 8" subtitle card and then you find yourself in a forest clearing of sorts with a little path running down the middle.  Because I like to explore in games that I am playing, I naturally tried to walk through the grassy areas, but quickly found out that the play area is only the walking path that you find yourself on.  

As I started moving around, this triggered the first sentence in the game to be "typed" out on the screen, which reminded me a lot of the way narration was handled in What Remains of Edith Finch, but here the narration is through text only and no spoken dialogue.  What I find interesting though, is that looking back at the game after having played it, I can hear a voice reading the text and not just the tip-tapping of the words being typed out.

When the story first started, it felt that I was reading a letter that was being written from one person to another, seeing as how there were phrases that were directly addressing someone else.  It became clear early on in Year 8 that the narrator and the recipient of the narration was not a healthy one, but the exact relationship did not feel exactly clear.  It obviously felt like a toxic relationship and even though the title card for the game showed a man with a backpack walking through similar terrain, to me there did not seem to be any indication if it was a man writing to/about a woman, a woman about another woman, or any other combination.  Some of the Tweets I saw while other people were playing referenced the playable character as male, but it really could be played as any gender, for which I applaud PolygonalWolf.

As the game progressed through Year 9 into Year 10, the environment began to change, instead of being in the morning/afternoon, the sun in the surrounding landscape had since set and seemed to be at dusk.  I noticed that the narration was also turning more inward, more introspective.  And even though the narration was talking/writing to someone, it started to feel that there was not an actual person there.  Was the person the narrator talking to just a voice in their heads?  Had the person telling the narrator that they could no longer trust their long-time friends, creating doubt about relationships and school just a voice in their heads?  Thinking about the game thus far in this new light put an entirely new spin on the story that was being told, from a toxic relationship to one that dealt with mental health issues that I know very little about; which means that I am not capable of deciding if this is indeed what the developers had intended, or if it was just a voice of doubt that a lot of us experience in our lives.

In Year 11, the stage started on a bridge, which felt like a literal depiction of being stuck on a path with nowhere else to go but the direction you are headed, be it positive or negative.  This stage did hit me pretty hard once I was now thinking about the narrator talking to themselves instead of another person.

Year 12 was hard.  By this point, I had been playing for maybe an hour-and-a-half, so I had been with the narrator as they had been slowly descending deeper into their depression over the course of four years, to say nothing about the previous eight years that took place before the game started.  What I found difficult was having this text I was reading with my own voice in my head (since I was not reading it out loud) coming to the conclusion that they wanted to end their own life.  I can understand if some people find the story and narration as trite, but for me, it had been very effective as a storytelling device.  Text such as "I am in the middle of a vast ocean," "And I can't keep my head above water anymore," and "I'm nearly out of breath" was a difficult process.

As this stage progressed, moving only forward, I found myself mentally telling the narrator that things were going to be okay, that there were other paths for them to take.  I wanted to somehow help, and not pushing them towards the only end that they felt was available to them.  Thankfully for my own sanity as a player, just at the narration was reaching its darkest point, a new voice was introduced.  The text too was illuminated, something that had not been done up until this point.  This bright text, the questions being asked and the reassurances being given felt like what I wanted to ask were finally being addressed.

That being said, I knew that simply asking questions of someone in this state would not mean an immediate solution.  And as the path I was walking began to lead downhill, when I came upon a cabin in the middle of the path, I immediately questioned the purpose of the cabin.  Was it a safe refuge from depression?  Was it supposed to be a manifestation of putting up walls against outside influences or this new brightly lit voice?  I did at first walk around the cabin, a little surprised that I was able to do so, but then I thought, at least in video game terms, that if I bypass this cabin, maybe there is another path to this story that does not end well, and then I began to see the cabin as a safe refuge in the middle of a dark forest. Ultimately I decided to enter the cabin.

In the game's epilogue, to me, it felt like there was progress that was going to be made.  That our narrator was coming out on the other side of their depression, not that it was "cured" per se, was an important distinction.  To me what the end of the game meant was that our narrator was able to seek out help.  The bright atmosphere did feel a little reminiscent of a depiction of an afterlife, but the narration was a lot more uplifting than what you would expect post suicide.

I have only two criticisms, the first being that your two speeds for moving are either slow, and slightly faster.  This could obviously be a design choice since you want the player to be able to read the text as it appears and there were a couple of areas where I was able to run through the text before it fully formed.  In the late game, around Year 10, there seemed to be only one movement speed.  The second critique is that there is no option to invert the Y-Axis.  There is no real need to look around too much in the course of the game as compared to either a first-person shooter or first-person exploration game, but there were still hills that required the player to look in the direction they were walking and I at times found myself lookings in the wrong direction.  By the end of the game, I had become more comfortable with the control scheme, so it was not as much of an issue.

Drowning was a heavy game, one that I was not fully expecting when I started despite the name of the game.  I do not know if I can say that the game was fun or entertaining, but it was something that I was definitely glad that I was able to experience.  The format of a video game offers a very unique experience to put the player in the mindset of someone experiencing years of depression and possibly other mental health issues I again am not qualified to diagnose.  I recognize that this would not be a game for everyone, but it is a game that I do recommend.

~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian

Instrumental

Game EXP: The Adventures of Elena Temple: Definitive Edition (NS)

Disclaimer:  I received a complimentary review copy of The Adventures of Elena Temple: Definitive Edition on the Nintendo Switch from developer GrimTalin.  They reached out to me if we were interested in playing a review copy of the game to which I agreed.  I did not promise to give a positive review of the game in exchange for the review code, nor was a positive review expected in exchange.  All words and descriptions unless otherwise noted are my own from my own experience playing the game.

The Adventures of Elena Temple: Definitive Edition releases multiplatform-wide on Tuesday, December 24th, 2019.

The Adventures of Elena Temple: Definitive Edition developed and self-published by GrimTalin is in its truest form, a puzzle-platformer, but it is so much more than that.  Before we get into the lamb and stout of the Definitive Edition though, we should go into The Adventures of Elena Temple, which was released back in May 2018.

What I love about The Adventures of Elena Temple (TAoET) are the multiple layers in and out-of-game that make this production great.  Before you even start, you are given the option to choose a filter for the game, each with their own has their own heartwrenching backstory about how the game was released on many off-brand computer systems and consoles only to have the game fall deeper into obscurity.  When I first played the original TAoET, I was a little disappointed to find out that the game you play is identical between the Apple off-brand Maple computer and the Nintendo Game Boy Advance knockoff, the Nintendgone Some Toy Advance.  It was probably too naive and demanding of me to expect that each system would have a different variation of the game instead of one of seven different filters.

But the filters are so much more than a different color scheme that you can select like on the Game Boy Color.  Sure the colors are semi-accurate based on their fictional system, but there each is accompanied by a frame showing the system the game is being played on along with the environmental surroundings.  For the Nintendgo Some Toy (knockoff Nintendo Game Boy), you are in what looks like a child's bedroom circa early '90s.  But along with this frame, you can zoom in and out which will allow you to see more of the room while still being able to play the game, or you can zoom in so that the playable area takes up as much of the screen as possible.  The music though does not change depending on the frame/filter and the sound effects also remain the same, which again, might have been expecting too much for them to be unique.

For The Adventures of Elena Temple: Definitive Edition, there have been some additions to the base game that is The Adventures of Elena Temple.  First and foremost are the inclusion of two additional games that function as sequels to the main game, "The Golden Spider", and "The Orb of Life."  Each game uses the same engine as the base game, now given the subtitle "Chalice of the Gods," but there are some new mechanics in each, such as spiders that move along a web when triggered, nearly invincible ghosts that chase you around rooms, and portals that transport you throughout the screen or across multiple rooms.  The objective though is still more-or-less the same: collect coins scattered throughout rooms which unlock a final series of rooms that lead to the end game.

In "The Golden Spider," Elena once again delves into an underground cavern in the search of treasure, but unlike the 49+ rooms in "Chalice of the Gods," "The Golden Spider" only has 16+ rooms, which may not seem like a lot, but the challenge is still there and, for me at least, is a little more manageable.  With each room containing its own separate group of puzzles which forces you to find a gem to put into a pedestal before progressing to the next room.  Additional features in "The Golden Spider" are blocks with rotating spikes which make traversing rooms a lot more hazardous than before.  Coins were also more liberally placed throughout the rooms, and here the chests contain 2+ coins instead of the diamond that they held in "Chalice of the Gods."  I really felt that "The Golden spider" was a concentrated experience, taking all of the best parts of "Chalice of the Gods" while building on mechanics that while new, did not feel out of place.

"The Orb of Life" acts more like a direct sequel to "The Golden Spider" as the story introduces a new life mechanic that I at first was not a fan of, but then I discovered how to manipulate it; kind of.  The game introduces a life meter in the form of hearts and each time you die, you lose a heart, typical video game stuff.  I was at first worried that once reaching zero hearts that that would lead to permadeath, but that was not the case.  The other related mechanic is a sword next to a bonfire that acts as a respawning checkpoint.  The catch here is that any rooms explored and coins collected since the last checkpoint will all have to be re-explored/collected.  As the game progressed, I found myself keeping better track of where the checkpoints were so that I could backtrack, hit the bonfire to reestablish the checkpoint and refill the hearts before exploring further.  The other major game mechanic introduced in "The Orb of Life" was portals, which made traversing rooms more of a challenge as you often had to think ahead of where you wanted to be.  There was one room in the late-game involving a room full of portals that gave me some issues, but after dying a number of times and accidentally warping out of the room, I was able to solve this particular puzzle.  Less of a mechanic and more of a feature, are the inclusion of locked gates (that stay open but only after being opened from a specific direction), and one-way platforms and floors.  For the most part, the puzzles were an interesting mechanic to add to the game.

Two more advancements in the Definitive Edition were a series of achievements (in the Nintendo Switch version, these only function in-game, whereas in the Xbox and PlayStation version probably function like regular achievements) and in-game mods that can alter the way you play.  During my playthrough of all three games, I was only able to unlock two mods: one for being able to double-jump, and the other gives you infinite bullets instead of the standard two bullets.  I did try using the double jump, but because so much of the game is built around near pixel-perfect jumps while avoiding a ceiling of spikes, I found that double jumping made me more anxious. I chose not to use the infinite bullets because I felt that a number of the room puzzles require you to manage how you use your two bullets before having to locate bullets on screen, that this felt more like a straight-up cheat code than a mod.  Maybe if/when I decide to go back through the game to 100% "Chalice of the Gods" I may use the infinite bullets mod.

The Adventures of Elena Temple: Definitive Edition was really a blast to play. The controls were tight and I never felt that I died in a way that felt cheap or unfair.  The music was super catchy and I wish that a soundtrack existed and even though the sound effects never changed between filters, they still worked well regardless.  So if you are going to pick up any version of the game, I would highly recommend the Definitive Edition as it includes everything that you would get from the base game, The Adventures of Elena Temple, but includes two new stories, 40 achievements, and four mods.  That being said, if you want to support the developer you can buy the base game, and if you already have The Adventures of Elena Temple,  you can buy the Definitive Edition for $0.99.  

For me, half of the fun of the game was switching between filters/frames, which you can now do in the Definitive Edition with the L/R shoulder buttons instead of having to back out of the game to make the change.  Even though the game stays the same, it was fun playing one version like on an old Apple //e or on a knockoff Game Boy Advance.  I think what all three of the games boils down to, is that they are well-made games and that I had a lot of fun playing Elena Temple's adventures.



~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian
He Who Overcomes Will Inherit All This


For those of y'all wanting to know how well I did in each game, here are my end-of-game scores:

Chalice of the Gods

Maybe on a subsequent playthrough, I can manage to die fewer than 20 times?

The Golden Spider

I guess I'm going to have to go back and find out where that final Orb is huh?

The Orb of Life

And here I thought I 100%'d this game, but I guess I keep missing those elusive scrolls and extra hidden rooms.

And now that you've made it this far, I present to you the trailer!

#IndieXmas: Pic-a-Pix Pieces (NS)

Disclaimer:  I received a copy of Pic-a-Pix Pieces on the Nintendo Switch from Lightwood Games for Xinthus' #IndieXmas.  The game was given and received with no promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and the experience be shared through social media channels.  All of the words contained in this article unless otherwise noted are my own from my own experience playing the game.

Pic-a-Pix Pieces by Lightwood Games is exactly what it looks like.  It is a picross game where you do not just fill in blocks, but fill them in with pre-selected colors in order to create a piece of a larger picture.  Pictures range in size from six up to 20 individual blocks of 10x10 to 20x20 sized puzzles and vary in difficulty from easy, being able to be completed in a few minutes (for me at least) up to very difficult which can take me upwards of 20 minutes per puzzle.

Going into this game, I pretty much knew what I was getting myself into.  I have had some experience with picross games, mainly through Pokemon Picross and My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, both on the 3DS, as well as a number of picross games played on Conklederp's iPad.  So I am no stranger to this format, but the biggest difference here, for me at least, is that the puzzles incorporate separate colors that are pre-determined when you start each puzzle.  Instead of just filling out squares with black boxes, here  you might fill out four boxes with yellow, three boxes with orange, one box with orange, and one box with blue.  Where those boxes are in the picross grid is where the puzzle lies.

The concept it pretty simple, but then again the concept of Sudoku is simple as well and anyone who has ever played the game already knows how more and more difficult the puzzles can get.  A feature that I have seen in most picross games is the ability to check your work, but that usually comes at a price, either diminishing your final score from the coveted 3 STARS down to 2, or perhaps a time penalty.  Here, the game simply tells you if you have any mistakes (by pressing the Y button) and if you do have mistakes, the game offers to fix them; I think that is where the cost is, that you end up with a silver or bronze medal for the overall picture instead of a gold medal.

Like this puzzle, which is the last puzzle in the game looks to be pretty difficult.  I skipped it after taking this pic.

Because this game is available on the Switch, I did wonder if and how it would make use of the touchscreen, which seemed only natural for this type of game.  For the most part the controls in the game are pretty intuitive with either A or B buttons being used to apply the color, or if you use the same color over an existing square, then it will remove that color back to being blank.  What the game does not do is replace an already filled square with a new color.  So if you have an orange square and you notice that it should be green instead, you either have to select the eraser tool (by touch or the directional buttons), or have the orange color selected and click on that square, then select green and fill it in again.  It feels more cumbersome than it really should be.  Also filling in squares that you know are blank with an X seems like it takes extra steps to complete, but thankfully both joy sticks can move the cursor so you can move the cursor while selecting the X with your finger.  Maybe I am just making things more difficult for myself?  And then I found out that you could place an X simply by pressing the B button.

Another part of the way that Pic-a-Pix Pieces uses colors along the border is that I will sometimes finding myself tripped up but those colors while I am trying to figure out where the colors are supposed to go in the puzzle.  Even more so on the puzzles where you only have two colors where there are a lot of alternating blues and blacks for instance.  Maybe this is not an issue for some people, but for myself I sometimes find it distracting.

While I am talking about colors, Lightwood Games has an added feature that is specifically designed to be adaptive for people who have some degree of color blindness.  Some games I have seen have a handful of options that will change the colors around to be more user-friendly, but what Pic-a-Pix Pieces has is a full RGB slider that lets you change the colors to whatever you want, allowing for the whole spectrum of color blindness; I can only guess though as I personally am not color blind and have not run this by anyone who is.

Lastly I wanted to touch on the music in the game, which would not surprise me if it was purchased music and not written for the game.  This is not a knock on the developer's choice of music as it reminds me of music that I might find in Paperboy on the NES, and there have been a number of indie games whose music I have loved (Heroes of the Monkey Tavern, and The Adventures of Elena Temple) who were unable to, for whatever reason, have original music.  The point is, the music, while somewhat catchy does get a little repetitive, especially on the harder puzzles where I feel like concentration is a must.

Pic-a-Pix Pieces is currently (as of 12/19/2019) on sale for $3.99 marked down from $7.99, which both seem like decent prices.  Although, I personally would probably not purchase at the regular price point because while I do enjoy picross puzzles, I do not know if I enjoy them that much.  If I think about it a different way: would I buy a physical paperback book of picross puzzles to do on a roadtrip for $3.99?  I definitely would if I was specifically looking for picross puzzles.  And there look to be upwards of 20 pictures comprised of 100+ individual puzzles so the content is here.  And if you still are not sure if picross puzzles are your thing, there is a demo available to test out the waters.

~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian

Instrumental


P.S.  One thing I might have added, which would fit in with the puzzle "Pieces" in the title, is if  after completing the set puzzles for the particular picture, if you had to rearrange them to actually piece together a puzzle.  To me, at least, that would add an extra element that might be fun.