#IndieSelect: Him & Her (NS)

Disclaimer: I received a copy of Him & Her from publisher QUByte Interactive for #IndieSelect.  The game was given and received without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and that experience be shared through social media channels.  All words and pictures in this article, unless otherwise specified are my own and from my own playthrough.

The premise in Him & Her is pretty simple.  You play as Him, and you have to get to Her, then you progress to the next stage.  The challenge here is that after the first couple of stages, Her is hidden somewhere in the playable world.  Think about how Meat Boy needs to reach Bandage Girl to progress to the next level.  It is like that.  But there is more to this game than a vain attempt to recreate Super Meat Boy because Him & Her is not here to do that mainly because there is no timer.  If you throw in a bit of and yet it moves, you are getting closer to what this game has to offer.

This is Him & Her:

In Him & Her you are able to manipulate the environment by rotating the playable world, but only while walking onto another surface.  When you run at a wall, the world rotates so that that wall is now the ground.  You are able to bypass this world rotation by jumping off of a surface to another, platforming if you will.  And really, the mechanic used to rotate the world is my only gripe with the game as I feel that the action of the rotation is too snappy.  If there was a way to smooth out the rotation, I think it would feel better, to me at least this is part of where the challenge comes in, as well as being able to cheat some of the later stages as well.  In two stages, in particular, I was able to jump off of the ledge I was standing on and in the process of falling, I came into contact with Her, thereby finishing the stage and bypassing a lot of puzzle elements.  I would be surprised if this had not already been taken into account when the game was being developed and just a shortcut of sorts.

And Juuuuump!!

However, shortcuts are not always accessible or possibly worked into every stage, so problem-solving, noticing environmental cues like the branches of a tree just barely visible at the bottom of the screen indicating a safe place to land, and being able to remember what areas of the stage look like when rotated while off-screen are important skills that you learn and develop as you progress through the game.  Him & Her does do a very good job of introducing additional elements to the stages so that you do not feel that you are solving repackaged puzzles for the 20th time.  By about 1/4 of the way through the 68 stages, the game introduces the player to insta-death spikes, swinging platforms (the swing depends on the rotation of the world), transportation portals, and switches that turn on/off platforming blocks, some of which appear off-screen and may not be 100% beneficial in all cases.  And as is the case with any puzzle platformer, I have run into a mix of difficult puzzles that take me 10+ tries to figure out, followed by a stage that I am able to complete in fewer than 30 seconds on my first attempt.  Progression was going along nicely.

Or at least as far as Stage 19, which was the wall that I hit, and hit it hard I did. 

Now These Switches, They Do What Exactly?

Him & Her has two difficulty settings, Easy and Hard, so when I slammed into Stage 19 on Hard, I decided to give the game a go playing on Easy to see if there was something I was missing.  Well, Stage 19 on Easy was just as difficult, and honestly, playing through the 18 earlier stages, I was not able to discern any differences in difficulty. After over a cumulative hour playing Stage 19 on both Easy and Hard, I had to stop.  I felt that I was not getting anywhere productive and that I was retrying the same actions over and over, hoping for some kind of a different result, or I would miss a jump, or I would get too close to the corner of a platform causing it to rotate me into a field of spikes.  The frustration was taking over and the game was ceasing to be fun.

Having now played Him & Her for a couple of hours, I can say that this is a fun game with an easy to understand primary mechanic (world rotation) and with there being 68 playable stages, if I ever make it past Stage 19. And for $0.99 (currently on sale for $0.49), there are a lot worse ways to spend less than $1.00, this is just one of the better ways.  Or at least, I think so.

~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian

Like the Flat Brink of a Cloud

MIDI Week Singles: "Flower Garden" - Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (SNES)

"Flower Garden" from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1995), Game Boy Advance (2002), SNES Classic (2017)
Composer: Koji Kondo
Album: Nintendo Power - Play it Loud! Original Soundtrack Volume 1, & Super Mario Yoshi's Island Original Sound Version
Label: Nintendo Power, & NTT Publishing
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EAD

I started playing Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island quite a while ago, back, I think, when I first got the SNES Classic as it was a Super Mario game that I never played, probably because I thought the concept of Baby Mario was too childish for my 15-year-old sensibilities.  But I had the music, as part of the "Play It Loud!" compilations album and I loved the music that was incorporated into Tetris Attack.  So I started playing and right off the bat, in the first stage of the first world, was one of the songs that I loved from the soundtrack.  "Flower Garden."

I find it to be just a super chill tune that sounds pretty advanced for a game on the SNES, and could easily be music that was composed for and released on an N64 cart.  I have complicated feelings about Yoshi's Island, which I will likely get to later, but at least the music from the first series of stages in World 1, I will have this groovy little tune with its harmonica-esque melody warbling in and out of my ear.  Good tunes.



~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian
Hösten kommer och Sommaren går

Monthly Update: June 2020

You may or may not have noticed but we have not been posting for the last two weeks here at Stage Select Start, which has been for a couple of reasons and all happened around the same time.

Back on Monday, June 1st, Conklederp gave birth to our (our meaning Conklederp and Jaconian) child who I will, until they come up with their own online handle, refer to as Goblino (and 100% no this is not a reference to crotch goblins which I did not know was a thing until a few months back, long after we started using the name Goblino).  So the last two weeks have been spent learning how to take care of this lil' guy, following his cues, sleeping when we have been able to (somewhere between the 8 - 12 feedings and changing per day), and just learning what it means to be a parent in June 2020.

And a few days before Goblino's birth George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer on Monday May 25th in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  And then there was the incident in Central Park New York on that same Monday May 25th where Amy Cooper called the NYPD because Christian Cooper (unrelated) had filmed her and her off-leash dog in a wildlife protected area where dogs are required to be on-leash at all times, saying that "there's an African-American man threatening my life." (The NYTimes article was posted on May 27th).  73 days before George Floyd was murdered and Christian Cooper was threatened, on Friday, March 13th Breonna Taylor was murdered by police in Louisville, Kentucky when she was shot eight times during an apparent drug raid involving two suspects who were already in custody.  18 days before that on February 23rd near Brunswick, Georgia, Ahmaud Arbery was hunted down and murdered by two white men in a pickup truck, and who were not arrested until a video surfaced on May 5th showing the events that happened.  535 days before, on September 6th, 2018, Botham Jean was murdered in his apartment when an off-duty Dallas police officer entered the wrong apartment thinking that it was hers and killed him.  And in the last week, three black men have been found lynched in public spaces (two in CA, one in NY), all of them deemed suicide by officials.

When the protests over George Floyd's death started in Oregon on Saturday, May 30th, I was already unsure about posting an article on Monday, with a life as usual approach.  I did not want to come across as tone-deaf to what was happening nationwide and I did not initially have a plan.  Then Conklederp and I had Goblino a few days later so being a father took precedent over finishing up and posting on Monday, June 1st, Wednesday, June 3rd,  Friday, June 5th, Monday, June 8th, Wednesday, June 10th, Friday, June 12th, or Monday, June 15th.  I genuinely did not know how I was going to proceed in the coming days/weeks, which is a privileged position to be in.  I count myself fortunate in so many ways, recognizing the privilege in all of the ways that I do have.  First and foremost right now, that the company I work for afforded me two weeks paid paternity leave, something that I thought might be sufficient, but now know that I could have had another two months off to spend helping out Conklederp with Goblino and just getting to further develop our dynamic, and being able to figure out a manageable sleep cycle that would work well with my working from home schedule.  Also privileged because I have a job during the pandemic that is not considered essential for the continuation of society at large, but I am still able to be employed full time and being able to work from home on company equipment.  I am also a cis-gendered white male so I was able to watch Star Wars as a four-year-old and identify with any of the characters I wanted to.  That is privilege and I recognize that I have it as much as I do.  

And if the last two weeks look to be any type of indicator, I feel like my posts will be fewer than they had been in May; considering that I am posting my Monthly Update half-way through the month.  I still do have things to say about games as well as social issues that have no direct bearing on our usual content.  For that type of information, I will direct you to both our Twitter account and our Instagram account where I do frequently post stories to information that I have found helpful and/or retweeting for the same purpose.

Thank you for sticking with us and feel free to reach out for anything.  We're here, and we're listening.

~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian

MIDI Week Singles: "Overworld BGM" - Super Mario World (SNES)

"Overworld BGM" from Super Mario World on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (1990), Game Boy Advance (2001), & Nintendo 3DS (2016)
Composer: Koji Kondo
Album: Super Mario World
Label: Warner-Pioneer
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EAD

It has been a couple of weeks since our last MIDI Week Singles post, as well as our last regular post, which will be covered in Friday's article.  But as we return to a semi-regular posting schedule, I wanted to use a song just for the pure joy of the music, without trying to make any kind of statement with the song, or from a game that either myself or Dr. Potts are currently playing.  So my mind went to Super Mario World, and the "Overworld BGM" being the main theme that so many of the other themes in the game are based around.  From "Underworld BGM" to "Underwater BGM" to "Athletic" (the second overworld theme), to a number of others in the game.  This is the primary building block for the majority of the music in the game, and possibly because of that fact, we have not covered it yet in our weekly series.

Which is why I thought that it would be the perfect song after our two-week absence.  To me, this song is pure joy, and what I still consider to be the pinnacle of 2D platforming, both in terms of world design, music, and nostalgia.  And right now, this is what I personally need, and if it is something y'all need too, then have at. 

~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian
The Prophecy Was Written