Game EXP: Escape First 3 (NS)

 

Escape First 3

Systems: Windows, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Nintendo Switch

Original Release Date: March 21, 2020

Publisher: OnSkull Games

Developer: OnSkull Games

As with the previous two games in the Escape First series (Escape First and Escape First 2), Escape First 3 is a collection of three themed escape rooms where you solve puzzles in rooms in order to escape within a predetermined time limit.  Escape First 3 was the first game in the series that Conklederp and I played, partly because in the second game there was a sequel of sorts to a room in the first game so I did not want to start with Escape First 2, and we just liked the premise of all three of the rooms in this collection.  So this was the first game in the series that we played although I decided to put out the articles for the games in chronological order because I felt that made more sense.  

The first thing that stood out to me (after playing the first two games) was that there was no textual indication of which escape room you were clicking on, although once you did you were taken to the screen/room which gave the backstory to that specific room.  At the time when I first played, it did not bother me at all, but after playing the first two games and seeing where they decided to go with this third title, I felt that it was a bit of a downgrade as far as UI and presentation go.  Similar to Escape First 2, you could not invert the y-axis, which at first I was afraid was going to significantly hamper my ability to play the game, hoping that there were not going to be any speed or dexterity based puzzles; thankfully there were none.  Again, I will try to refrain from talking about or giving solutions to specific puzzles (with the exception of one room because of how aggravated we were playing it), so onto the rooms in the order that we played them in!

"The Secret Inheritance"

There is really no better-designed escape room in this collection than the one we happened to start off with and really set a high bar for the rest of the rooms in this collection.  Right off the bat, we were able to wander and look around the room, noticing clues that we could mentally make note of like the various runes of different colors, locks on boxes and cabinets that were both letter and number combination locks as well as one where you had to solve a tangram to unlock a box.  Our first clue lead us to a codex in a glass case to unlock something or other and was very satisfying when we heard the tone of a successfully completed puzzle.  The point is, the puzzles here felt very true to ones that could be designed for a physical escape room.

Because this was the first video game escape room we played, there were a couple of moments where we were confused either by the interface or unable to recognize what a specific item was or why that item was not able to interact with the environment.  We used a walkthrough only once (from what I remember), but that ended up being because we had forgotten about an item we noticed earlier, but I had left it in its place because I was already holding an object and did not want to put it down.  There were also two instances of items clipping through the environment, the first when a piece of paper that had a clue to a puzzle fell into a desk, and the second when a book we needed clipped into the floor and would appear for literally a split second (which meant I had to mash the grab button until I actually picked up the book).

"The Secret Inheritance" was probably our favorite escape room from this collection, which was a bit of a disappointment because 

"Keep of Lost Souls"

We were not prepared for this escape room.  That is to say, Conklederp and I went in thinking that we were going to be playing a medieval-themed escape room set up in a similar way to "The Secret Inheritance," but instead we ended up playing what felt more like a fantasy-themed video game full of puzzles.  I realize that that sounds odd and/or contradictory.  In nearly every article in this series, I have talked about how physical escape rooms should be created, in that the designers should never expect players to bring in any information needed to solve puzzles (like knowledge of astronomy or botany for example), and that all of the information needed to solve puzzles should be given to the players.  Conklederp and I ended up getting stuck on either the second or third puzzle because we were approaching the puzzles like you would in a physical escape room, not like you would in a video game.

There was a lock that had a worn red/brown look to it compared to the silver/grey appearance of the other locks in the room.  There was no description of the lock in-game that you might get if this was in a point-and-click adventure game, or even a survival horror akin to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, letting the player know that this lock was, in fact, different than the other locks in the room.  From the walkthrough, we found out that we could smash the lock with a heavy object, so I used a heavy object in the room to break the lock.  There was another box secured by a padlock that we thought would require a key to unlock because you know, it was a padlock with a keyhole, so we searched the room over and over looking for a key or another clue that might lead us to one.  As it turned out, the only way to open the box was to break the lock with a crowbar with no indication that that action would be the solution or even possible.  I looked at Conklederp and said something to the extent of, "Okay, I think I know how to approach the puzzles in this game from here on out," although I ended up being somewhat wrong on that because the puzzles became more difficult and obscure to solve.

There were numerous puzzles in this collection of rooms that I was completely lost on.  One solution even ended up being so obscure that I know for a fact I never would have been able to solve it without a walkthrough.  There was an unfinished circle of stones that I knew I had to complete because there was a piece of stone close by that I could interact with.  The last stone, however, was the one that really threw us.  This stone ended up being located in the first room (we were currently in the third room) and actually part of a wall and unless you happened to have the curser go over that specific part of the wall and notice the dot reticule change to a hand, you never would have known that this was the stone you had to hit with a hammer to knock loose.  The last puzzle in the game, from all of the clues and objects we had, could only be solved by a process of elimination, but in a way that was stupidly time-consuming and designed to eat up the last precious seconds of the clock.

I feel like there were some good puzzles in this series of rooms and the atmosphere was fairly well executed with letters added for flavor and mood, but all of that was overshadowed by how poorly so many of the puzzles (not just the ones mentioned above, but at least four or five additional ones) were designed that that is all I am to think about when I think about this stage.  It put such a bad taste in our mouth that we said if the last room played like this one, then we would not get any of the other games in the series (which obviously did not turn out to be the case because we got them all).

"The Abandoned School"

Thankfully this third-and-final room was a closer return to traditional escape room puzzles than the "Keep of Lost Souls", although a lot of the puzzles were scattered around an abandoned high school with locations including the library, principal's office, multiple classrooms, and locker rooms spread across multiple floors connected by multiple hallways.  This was a massive area to explore and only a few times felt overwhelming as to where I felt I was supposed to go.  Thankfully there were a few mechanics in place that negated the feeling of needing to acquire an item in one room to use in a different room later down the line. 

I think our favorite aspect of this escape room was the setting as the location felt universal, even if neither Conklederp nor I had been to a high school with this specific layout.  Both of us graduated high school and the layout felt very authentic and I felt that this was key to instilling fear in the player.  Yeah, this escape room had more of a horror aspect to it with doors that would frequently lock behind you, doors that would open on their own, writing appearing on walls.  There was even a bug in the stage that when I looked at certain mirrors, the game would go completely black.  This first happened in a bathroom with multiple mirrors but only seemed to happen with one specific mirror, but I first thought that the lights had just gone out because they had before in previous (un-mirrored) rooms.  At this point in our Escape First career, there had never been any characters that appeared in any of the rooms so far, but our minds went wild with the possibility of jump scares.

There were a few puzzles that we either overthought or just confused us so again we had to resort to using a walkthrough when the in-game hint system failed to be as specific as we needed it to be.  One puzzle, in particular, had us organizing post-it notes that were initially haphazardly placed, but the secondary solution required that we remember the original order that the post-its were placed in.  We did find the solution by chance.  I would probably need to see that puzzle again to see if we did something wrong before saying that it was designed poorly.  The last puzzle though could have been implemented a little better as it required the player to place objects in a specific order, but how that order was determined was a bit ambiguous, without getting into further detail and revealing any more spoilers.  The point is, had there been a small addition to these objects, it would have been more of an "ahhhh!" moment and a great end to an otherwise well-constructed escape room that had great pacing in terms of telling the story and creating fear.

Escape First 3 ended up being a mixed bag, possibly because this was the first game we played in the Escape First series, and our feelings towards "Keep of Lost Souls" might have been different if we have started with the first game as far as approaching the game from more of a video game standpoint.  I do stand by my criticisms that a number of the puzzles were not well constructed, even from a video game standpoint, especially the one where you had to solve the puzzle by trial and error and ate up a lot of time and just felt tedious.  As with the previous games in the series, I would recommend keeping a walkthrough open for when the in-game hint system fails to be as specific as you need it to be, although at times it would give us the solution if we asked for hints more than twice on a single puzzle; but this only worked for a handful of puzzles and more than half of the time we just received the same hint after hint delay timer reached zero.  There are not a whole lot of options when it comes to video game-based escape rooms, and this entry is pretty great when it is following the general rules of physical escape rooms.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Game EXP: Escape First 2 (NS)

 

Escape First 2

Systems: Windows, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Nintendo Switch

Original Release Date: June 20, 2019

Publisher: OnSkull Games

Developer: OnSkull Games

Escape First 2 is the third escape room game that we have played by OnSkull Games on the Nintendo Switch, although it is the second in the Escape First series, with Escape First 3 being the first game we played and you can read about the first Escape First here.  This is somewhat important context only because there was one escape room here of the three that was reminiscent of the one we really did not like in Escape First 3, so it put us in the right headspace in order to be able to enjoy the setting and puzzles.  Like the other games in the series, Escape First 2 is made up of three individual escape rooms that can be played in any order.  In-game they are presented as old and weathered movie posters from the 80s.  The three rooms are titled, "The Psycho Circus 2," "Escape Room Factory," and "The Torture Chamber."  I really enjoyed this presentation over the other two games with the first being simple box and icon titles, and the third being vague moody images of the buildings where the escape rooms took place without any titles.  If OnSkull Games were to make an Escape First 4, I would love them to go back to this style in Escape First 2.

First off though, I wanted to mention something about the controls in the game.  In the first Escape First, you could invert the y-axis, which you probably know by now is my preferred camera control option in first-person video games.  For whatever reason, this option was now offered in Escape First 2 and I cannot think of why that choice was removed.  I did force myself to learn to play with an uninverted-y-axis but it felt pretty awkward for more than half of "The Psycho Circus 2" and I am sure that Conklederp did not appreciate the semi-erratic movements of the camera in helping with her feeling slightly motion-sick.

As for the individual rooms, again I will give our impressions of each room, in the order we played them, while not going into any specific solutions to any of the puzzles.

The Psycho Circus 2

While this is a sequel of sorts to the first escape room in Escape First, there was not anything here that required the player to have already played that first game or "The Psycho Circus" room, it nearly provided an out-of-game explanation as to why the player is back in another circus setting.  So you can just jump right into this room and not be missing anything.

This room itself was quite a jump up from the first "Psycho Circus" in that you played in more than one room.  Conklederp and I felt a bit dumb at first nearly failing to figure out the first puzzle, but in my defense, when I entered the code into the number pad, I did get the correct "bling!" sound effect, which I took to mean that the code I had entered was correct, but the box it was attached to would not open.  We ended up figuring out that the code I had entered was in fact not correct and when I entered the correct code, there was an additional clicking sound, presumably of the box unlocking.

There was another puzzle that we thought we had figured out, but the locking mechanism was a directional lock, where the input is like a directional pad with a center button to complete your input.  What confused us about this lock specifically was that we thought we had entered the correct sequence, but instead of five inputs needed you were supposed to enter nine.  I cannot say if the blame on not knowing how many inputs to enter was on us or the lack of direction from the game, but we did have to look up a walkthrough to finally see that the solution we had spent the last 25 minutes figuring out was incomplete.

"The Psycho Circus 2" ended up being the first room that we did not finish in the requisite amount of time.  You are given 60 minutes and as the clock ticked down in the last room surrounded by puzzles that we just came across, we were convinced that the game was going to black-screen us and say that we failed.  Or I was really worried that a clown was going to come sprinting from the first room and straight into us, but since there had been no character animations in any of the other games, I thought that this would be out of character for the series.  No.  Instead the timer continued counting down past zero, so when we finished our time was -13:-17, or 13 minutes and 17 seconds past the 60 minute timer (or 73 minutes and 17 seconds).  So we really appreciated that the game did not end forcing us to replay through the earlier puzzles, although we did have the solutions so it would not have taken us too long.

"The Torture Room"

We did this room next out of fear that it was going to be similar to one of the rooms from Escape First 3 that we did not like, in that it played more like a video game than an escape room that you could physically go to, which is what this ended up being.  But constructed in a much better and more escape room-like way.

What I mean by this played more like a video game was that there would be puzzles that required you to interact with the environment and objects in ways that you could never do in-person, or at least in the escape rooms that we have done.  Actions like setting a tapestry on fire to reveal a fresco that gives a clue to a puzzle, or cutting a rope holding a heavyweight to break through a section of floor revealing a hidden passage.  While very cool concepts, they are not things that you would find in an escape room.  So having this mindset going into "The Torture Room" helped a lot as far as what we were expecting and how we approached the puzzles.

We did ask for a couple of hints during this puzzle and only looked up a walkthrough out of fear that we missed a clue or that a physical clue might have clipped through the floor (which we have seen in the past, but not to the extent that it broke the game).  I think a number of our troubles stem from the translation of escape room-type puzzles into a video game setting, where you lose a certain amount of tactile information that you would normally be able to receive by being in the room with puzzles, clues, and other surrounding objects.  For instance, there was an object we received after completing a puzzle, but it was a little difficult to tell what the object actually was.  We ended up determining that it was a wadded-up rag, and once we knew what it was, we knew exactly where to go to use it.

As with "The Psycho Circus 2," we ran over time on this one as well, again by about 15 or so minutes even with the starting time being 90 minutes.  One thing I noticed about this room compared to a lot of the others we have done, was that there were a number of rooms with their own puzzles separated by a couple of corridors.  All of the other rooms had puzzles that you had to solve in order, but this one had a few puzzles that could be solved at the same time if you were playing this as a multiplayer game (although multiplayer is not compatible on the Switch port).  This allowed Conklederp to work out a logic puzzle (using whiteboard dungeon tiles and dry erase marker because we did not have pens/pencils and paper handy like normal people).

Despite "The Torture Room" feeling more like a video game with some escape room-type puzzles, I think both Conklederp and I were surprised by how much we enjoyed this room.  One critique was that the room description said that "...hearing screams from the room next door..." I was expecting there to be more ambient background sounds befitting of a dungeon and torture chamber, but there was only a low-drone ambient music-esque tone and the occasional sound effect associated with dropping items and solving puzzles.  The puzzles themselves were somewhat fitting to the setting, and they themselves were a lot of fun to solve, which is what all escape rooms should strive to do in the end.

"Escape Room Factory"

This room was more of a combination of classical escape room puzzles and more video game-like mechanics where you would use clues from around the room to generate a four-digit code to unlock a box, and use an object to physically break another to open another locked box.  Because of the title, I was hoping to be able to explore and solve puzzles behind the scenes in an escape room, maybe hearing things going on in the main room while you are solving puzzles behind the scenes.  Sadly, expectations were not met on that level as the entirety of the room is played out while in a bathroom with no visible entrances or exits.

I will mention one aspect of a puzzle because I genuinely lol'd.  There was a set of keys sitting atop a pipe, but at the time, there was no visible keyhole that needed unlocking.  But since the keys were out in the open, I thought it best to at least grab them and then put them someplace where I would remember them and possibly place other objects that I might use later since there is no inventory management in these games.  So I went over to the keys, grabbed them, but they immediately fell down into the pipe.  I could not help but laugh because there was an escape room we did with my sister The Kid, and friends Folly and Himo a few years ago where we nearly lost a key in a similar way that we needed to fish out with a fishing pole; there was another escape room that required us to use a fishing pole to pull keys out of jacket pockets across a room (which was a horrible design because once the keys fell on the floor, there was no way to pick them up).

I can only think of two things in this room that I took issues with.  The first was more from a perspective and lighting that would not have been an issue if this was an in-person escape room.  There was a switch that I flipped when I thought it was interacting with something else in the room.  The lighting of the object was too dark to tell that what I clicked was actually below what I thought I was clicking, and it did not help that what I thought I was clicking you could also interact with, but I did not have the correct object yet.  The second issue was that there was a puzzle that required the player to perform a mathematical equation in a way that was not written out correctly: "x=x+x/3+1"

While this equation can be solved, the answer being x=-6 is not an answer that works in the puzzle and not how the multiple answers needed to solve the puzzle can be completed.  After consulting a walkthrough, part of the solution was to round up your answers, of which there is no indication that you are allowed to round up/down answers especially since some of the possible answers do come out to whole numbers.  Again, the problem I have here goes back to my stance that an escape room should give the players everything they need to solve the puzzles and that the players should not have to bring in any outside knowledge.  Sure simple addition/subtraction/division/multiplication might be required in some instances, but this equation and the needed answers should have been presented differently.

"Escape Room Factory" was the only one of the three rooms that we managed to complete in fewer than the 60 allotted minutes, I think within 5 minutes.  The math puzzle above really ate at our time because I felt that I was close to solving the puzzle, but in the end, we caved and used the walkthrough.

After completing all three of the stages, Conklederp and I were mostly happy with the escape rooms included in this collection.  We appreciated that when we ran out of time on the first two rooms that we were allowed to continue and that the timer began counting into the negative because having to start over would have been doable, but significantly less fun.  And even with the issues mentioned above with puzzles deviating from how we felt escape room puzzles should be constructed and presented to the players, we thankfully and unashamedly used walkthroughs when the in-game hint system failed to be as specific as we needed it to in order to continue.  And for the most part, the rooms here did provide a lot of fun, which should be the goal of escape rooms.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

MIDI Week Singles: "The Decisive Battle" - Final Fantasy VI / III (SNES)

 

"The Decisive Battle" from Final Fantasy VI / III on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation, iOS, Android, Windows (1994)

Composer: Nobuo Uematsu

Album: Kefka's Domain - The Complete Soundtrack from the Final Fantasy III Video Game, Final Fantasy VI Original Sound Version

Label: Squaresoft, NTT Publishing, Polystar

Publisher: Square

Developer: Square

When those first seven seconds from this track start, you know that this is not going to be your normal run-of-the-mill battle.  This is boss battle music.

For me, it is the bass and organ that stand out for nearly the entirety of the song.  The MIDI strings at around 0:30 do carry the melody for a while, really for the next 20 seconds, but I still tend to focus on the bass for the whole song.  I would be remiss to not point out the drums too because those are some great MIDI-sounding drums.  There are just so many memories that come back with this song (and really the whole Final Fantasy VI / III soundtrack.

That is really all I have until next week when the partial-real-reason for featuring "The Decisive Battle" will be made clear.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I Raise My Head And See

Game EXP: Escape First (NS)

 

Escape First

Systems: Windows, Oculus Rift, HTC Valve, Nintendo Switch

Original Release Date: May 10, 2018

Publisher: OnSkull Development

Developer: OnSkull Games

First, a couple points on the context before we get started.

Conklederp and I first played Escape First 3 because that was what I had purchased, thinking that it was the third game in this series meant that it would be of better quality, and it also had escape rooms that interested us more than the brief description given for this first game.  Second, Conklederp and I have played a number of in-person escape rooms, primarily with our friends Himo and Folly.  I am not 100% sure what our track record is, but I know it is well over 50% as there have only been two escape rooms that we have failed to complete.  But that is not this article.  This article is about Escape First, a video game adaptation of escape rooms originally designed for VR and ported over to the Switch in February 2020.  So we are fairly experienced in this physical arena and were hoping that what we were about to play would be similar enough to in-person escape rooms that we would have fun.

I should also mention that my review of the game will, to the best of my ability, not include (m)any spoilers or solutions on how to solve any of the puzzles.  There may be inadvertent hints in the pictures, but that may only be obvious once you are in the game and already know the solution.

Escape First is made up of three individual escape rooms with their own setting and theme where you have to solve a series of puzzles within a set amount of time so that you can escape.  There is no death, no enemies running at you while you try and punch in a 16 digit sequence in fewer than 10 seconds.  Just you in a room with puzzles to solve.  You start out the game in some sort of lobby, like you passed through the front door of business which also happens to look out on some beautiful high desert scenery.  You are given the choice of your three rooms by title, "Psycho Circus," "The Red Button," and "Lost in Time."  

To us, the puzzles in these games were organized in a way that once you solved one puzzle, it leads you to the next puzzle with maybe some clue to a future puzzle that you needed more pieces to solve.  Normally we do not like escape rooms where only one thing can be solved at a time because that tends to mean that there are people with nothing to do or you have too many people trying to solve the same thing.  Having this set-up in a video game setting works well because there was only one screen and one controller.  While in each room, you can receive hints on the puzzle you are currently working on, and a 5-minute timer before you can receive another hint.  Each of the rooms in this game had a 45-minute timer, which we only felt pressured on one puzzle while solving the last puzzle. I did tinker with the controls a bit, inverting the y-axis (because for whatever reason you were unable to in Escape First 3) and Conklederp and I dove right in.

"Psycho Circus"

This room was pure escape room.  You started out in one room with all of the puzzles surrounding you, keypads on drawers, and drawings/symbols on those drawers hinting at what clues you needed to punch into the keypad to open a new drawer or locked door.  Everything was pretty straightforward, although, with one puzzle, Conklederp and I did overthink the clues which forced us to use the hint system.  We realized that we were taking too many clues into account to determine the keypad code and we really only needed the clue that we had found.  Pretty common for us in physical escape rooms too.  There was one puzzle that we could not understand the clue to and were able to solve the puzzle by process of elimination.  There were also a couple red herrings in the room that had no relation to any of the puzzles, which was nice.  One very cool thing with this room was the background sound that played during the puzzle.  There was the ambient sound of the circus happening outside of the room as well as various attempts to unnerve the player, which were frequently effective.

"The Red Button"

This room was mostly fun, although there were some issues with the clues given and how the developers expect the player to solve puzzles based off of the clues given.  I feel like in physical escape rooms, there should be the position taken by the people who develop puzzles, that the puzzles have to be solved only with information that is given to the players.  No player should need outside information that they bring in with them, not given to them, in order to solve any puzzle.  If there is a clue that mentions a Denver Omelet, as an escape room designer, you should not expect players to know the ingredients and how to make one.  In "The Red Button" there was an instance similar to the Denver Omelet where the clue referenced something that might be considered common knowledge.  This was a puzzle that I used the hint for, and it said something vague like, "Take the first two numbers from the letter and add the number of ingredients in [clue]."  After this, we looked up the solution online because we still were not getting anywhere.  There was another puzzle that referenced a clue from a previous room that we came through, but the door leading back to the room where the clue was became locked so we could not access what the in-game hint was referencing and we had to wait another 5 minutes to get another clue, which did end up giving us the answer.  

While I loved the setting and a number of the puzzles in this particular room, I was not as compelled by the story and it felt like there was too much that did not make a lot of sense.  While I am all for telling a story for why you find yourself in a room where everything is locked behind puzzles and there is some misdirection in some of the facts, I still want to feel that there is some logic behind the story going on.

"Lost in Time"

The last room in this game was probably the strangest.  There were still puzzles you solved to unlock locked cabinets and chests, but this room diverged in that instead of keypads you were entering numbers into, here you were entering time on various clocks.  In this room, I felt that we did our best in terms of being able to decipher clues and solve puzzles.  We did end up using the hint system once towards the end, but it felt more like we were confirming one of two theories we had on how to proceed because at that point we had around only 10 minutes left.  We did eat up a fair amount of time following clues to the wrong conclusion, but that is one of the best things about playing escape rooms with people is that you have other avenues of thinking besides your own, especially if you get stuck in a rut.

You know, overall this was a pretty decent collection of escape rooms that we had fewer issues with than Escape First 3 (more on that in the Escape First 3 article next week).  I did not experience any glitches or bugs that made the game unplayable or the puzzles unsolvable, so major kudos to OnSkull Games for a great port.  I guess an appropriate way of signing off would be to say that for less than $5 (for a selection of three escape rooms), Conklederp and I were both very happy with Escape First, so much so that we got Escape First 2.  You could probably play through all three escape rooms in a single sitting, but for us, in whatever wave of the pandemic, we are currently in with a lot of places going (back) into wearing masks all the time out in public, having an escape room to look forward to after getting Goblino to bed does make for a pretty great night in.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
And In The End You'll Finally See

MIDI Week Singles: "Murmurs of the Fallen Gods / Slaughter of the Abominable Hordes" - God of Blades (AOS)

 

"Murmurs of the Fallen Gods / Slaughter of the Abominable Hordes" from God of Blades on Android, iOS, Ouya, macOS, & Windows (2013)

Composer: Justin Kovar

Album: God of Blades Official Soundtrack

Label: Bandcamp

Publisher: White Whale Games

Developer: White Whale Games

It has been about eight years since I last played God of Blades on my Samsung Galaxy SIII Mini, but when I was, there were a surprising number of fun games that I dabbled in.  God of Blades, an auto-running hack and slash was one of those.  A strange science-fiction fantasy game with pulp-fiction covers between chapters with esoteric-sounding music that would play in the background that was present enough during the clangs and chunks of one-on-one combat for the game to feel more complete.  Comprised of two songs with the second* (starting at 0:37) song playing during the first chapter as you learned the mechanics and basic techniques to kill your enemies and not (so frequently) die.  The baseline that runs through the majority of the song is perfectly suited for an auto-running game keeping you from feeling like you are going to fall behind, pushing you forwards, and the Hammond Organ (around 1:08) you cannot say anything bad about.  

Seriously, if you say anything bad about the Hammond Organ (or whatever organ is being simulated here) you can take that opinion and leave with the horse you rode in on.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

You're Almost Just What I've Looking For

*P.S.  I, unfortunately, have not been able to find out where the first part of the song, the "Murmurs of the Fallen Gods" played in-game

First Impressions: Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir (3DS)

 

Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir

System: Nintendo 3DS

Release Date: April 13, 2012

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Koei Tecmo Games

I recall hearing about Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir within a year of it being released and I kind of wrote it off as a gimmicky game that was only trying to make a buck off of the 3D effect of the 3DS and the camera on the system.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, that this was part of the Fatal Frame survival horror series that revolves around the Camera Obscura used to fight off malignant spirits.  I think I had thought it was more like an app that had ghosts pop up around your house and you fought them with the camera on the 3DS, not part of some established franchise.  However, even knowing that it was part of an existing franchise might not have fully changed my mind, but only after Conklederp and I purchased a house that was built 100 years ago and while doing research earlier that year on our article about weaponless survival horror video games did I think, "Huh, I think I would like to play this game."  So I forked over the $15 and started playing it after we moved in.  Again, this was around the time that some of the 3DS buttons stopped working so I put the game back on the not-so-proverbial shelf.

Last week, after deciding that I was going to stop playing The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks (more on that in the actual article), I plugged this game in and restarted.  On my first attempt, back in 2017, I played for 22 minutes and made it through the first page of the book.

Okay, let me backtrack a little bit.

Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir is part visual novel, part survival horror, part Alternate Reality game that uses an accompanying physical book (called "The Diary of Faces") at specific points in the game.  You progress through the game by talking to characters who appear in your actual space by finding them with the outward-facing camera.  The game prompts you when to use the Diary of Faces and is pretty patient with you while you wait for the camera to focus on the page.  There is some combat in the game that is pretty similar to the main title in the Fatal Frame series, in that you keep the camera focused on the enemy while a power bar fills up and you either attack with a full bar or ward off an attack while causing only a fraction of damage.  That is really all I know as I am now only 44 minutes in and have gone through and have flipped to four of 16 pages, so maybe a quarter of the way through?

The one thing after the last lead-up to and through the battle got me thinking about the mechanics and functionality of the game.  Spirit Camera is a survival horror game in that you have to survive various encounters with spirits, there are jump scares, and a general unsettling atmosphere created by the locations and the story.  How the game achieves this though is where I am having mixed results.  Because this is a horror game, I want to play with the lights off, to feel more immersed in the haunted pages of the Diary of Faces, but the quality of the camera on the 3DS (and probably any economically priced 3D camera developed in 2014) requires there to be sufficient light for the camera to read the pages to generate the in-game content.  And the Diary of Faces should be placed on a non-movable flat surface (ie: not your lap) because having the game can be a little finicky if the angle gets off just a bit.  TL;dr: you need to play this survival horror game in a well-lit room with plenty of light and at least one flat surface.

None of this however will stop me from playing the game.  I love the concept and I am so far entertained by the story, and most importantly, I am excited to see how the various AR pages play within the game.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

Game EXP: Color Zen (NS)

Color Zen

System: Nintendo Switch, Android, iOS

Original Release Date: June 5, 2013

Publisher: Cypronia

Developer: Large Animal Games

Color Zen is a puzzle game that I see advertised on the Nintendo Switch's news posting every couple of weeks or so when they talk about free-to-play games (you know, along with Fortnite, Apex Legends, Arena of Valor, Warframe, and Rogue Company).  This is the exact opposite of every one of those titles.  Color Zen is a logic color-based puzzle game where you move geometric shapes around in a contained space creating colors and eliminating others until only one remain.  Now before I show the video below, I should say that you can only move the shapes that are bouncing along with the music, and that if you move a color into a black shape, it removes that colored shape and the black color.  

So these are three of the early stages in Color Zen:

This free-to-play version is made up of four different themes, with each theme having between 10 - 20 stages to play with additional stages in each theme able to be purchased through the eShop.  Maybe because I am cheap, or mainly because after finishing 40 levels in this game, I feel completely satisfied, so I have not seen what else there is to offer in the way of color-based puzzles.

That should not be a deterrent though.  This game is fairly relaxing, even when I got frustrated in trying to figure out the correct order to have the blocks knock into each other.  There was even one level that I had given up on because I could not figure it out, even after watching a tutorial on YouTube, but then I had forgotten that when shapes have a dotted white line around them, if you double click them, they become immovable but also do not disappear (absorbed) if their color fills the screen.  And then there are stages that I managed to complete but was not sure what exactly I did (which is why I saved the video).

One of the things that I love about this game is how the beginning of each of the stages looks like something that could be hanging in the Museum of Modern Art next to the Piet Mondrian exhibit, not that I am a connoisseur of modern art, but I appreciate that the game feels like you are able to interact with and modify an existing work of art.

There are times however when one level transitions into the new level that I have become overwhelmed.  Like the stage above, because there are a lot of elements that it can become confusing to know where to even start, knowing that by the end, you have to have the entire screen be that same shade of teal-green so you know you are going to have to save that ball in the lower right-hand corner.  See, you have already started the planning process.  Also figuring out how many black or white objects you have to work with as well as the number of objects of a specific color can help you determine if you need to get rid of one of them with the black circles or if they might clear out when the rest of the background changes color.

You might be able to tell from the two videos above that the music is very chill as well and pairs well with the zen in the title.  It kind of nudges you along even when you end up at the end of the stage with a giant pink square sitting in a sea of purple and the game tells you that you need to restart.  The objects that you are allowed to move pulse in time with the music which I thought might be distracting, but I actually found it to fit in well with the visual aesthetic and the music.  Everything just seemed to fit together as one cohesive experience.  

But again, with everything that I enjoyed about the game, I think I am good with the 40 playable levels.  It is a bit of a turn-off that levels are packaged with their respective themes as opposed to buying multiple levels from multiple themes in one bulk package.  Maybe if the levels were not grouped individually I might be more inclined to throw money at the publisher and developer after spending about 4 hours playing.  Although, the packs are each less than $1.00, and there are between 100 - 120 additional levels. . . which then feels almost more daunting.  I guess we will just have to wait and see if there ends up being another article for Color Zen covering Serenity or Nature modes in the future.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Pulses Glow from their Homes

MIDI Week Singles: "Bianca City" - F-Zero Maximum Velocity (GBA)

"Bianca City" from F-Zero Maximum Velocity on the Game Boy Advance, Wii U (2001)
Album: No Official Release
Composer: Masaru Tajima, Mitsuteru Furukawa, & Naoto Ishida
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer ND Cube

F-Zero Maximum Velocity is a game that played quite a bit back in the early 2000s, but I realized I was never that great at it.  The formula is closer to the original F-Zero with Mode 7-type mapping and is all about taking tight turns, avoiding hazards, and having stupidly fast reflexes.  

The opening track in the Pawn Series, Bianca City, is a great introduction, music-wise into how this game is played.  Right out of the gate, the song is trying to push you along at, roughly, 180 bpm, or 3 beats per second.  Now that is pretty fast for a lot of music, maybe not music used in a racing game, but for the opening track on the easiest series, this is a track to get your blood pumping and keep you on your toes.  Or at least it can be if you are playing on Standard or higher difficulty settings.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Cause Everyone's Just Too Weird

Game EXP: ACA NEOGEO CROSSED SWORDS (NS)

ACA NEOGEO CROSSED SWORDS

System: Arcade, Neo Geo Aes, Neo Geo CD, Nintendo Switch

Original Release Date: July 25, 1991

Publisher: Alpha Denshi

Developer: Alpha Denshi

ACA NEOGEO CROSSED SWORDS (Crossed Swords from here on out) is a port of an arcade game that Dr. Potts and I played at some pizza parlor in the town where we grew up.  I only remember playing the game a handful of times, maybe five or fewer, and recall that when the game was taken out of that pizza place, I continued to look for the game until I discovered it last year as part of the ACA NEOGEO arcade ports on the Nintendo Switch.

Let us be clear about something before we go any further.  I 100% recognize that all of the fondness I have for this game is through blood-tinted nostalgia goggles handed to me from my 11/12-year-old self.  This game is a slog, taking nearly two hours to play from start to finish.  Because this is an arcade port, I could plug as many fictional digital quarters into the game as I wanted and by the time I finally killed the main boss, I had gone through 84 credits or $21.00 in quarters, assuming that 1 credit was $0.25 and I cannot imagine that it was a premium $0.50/credit game.  When Dr. Potts and I would play, I think I would max out at $2.00 at most, more than likely it was probably only $1.00.  Plus what 11-year-old is going to stand at an arcade cabinet for nearly two hours while their family eats pizza without them and bring along $21 in quarters?

In Crossed Swords, you play as Knight of Journey (yes, that is the character's name, or at least what they are referred to as by the King and Princess) who sets out to help the King of Belkana stop the evil Warlord Nausizz.  Partway through the game, the Princess is kidnapped and the King tasks you with saving her.  The game is played in semi-first person in that Knight of Journey has a wireframe instead of a filled-in body so that you can see what types of attacks the enemies are using.  You have a usable shield that can block high and low attacks, but only one at a time.  You start out the game with a sword that you can upgrade by making purchases from traveling merchants and occasionally townspeople will give you an enchanted blade or an heirloom shied; I honestly do not know if you can accidentally miss the townspeople giving you upgraded gear, because if they always show up, then the gear seems pretty much pointless. After all, you have to take it and the game scales accordingly.

The format of the game is repetitive.  You begin a stage, fight three to five (maybe more) enemies followed by a boss, and then you move onto the next stage.  Thankfully, you only fight one enemy at a time although at times you can see a couple of enemies hanging out in the background who you will be fighting next.  Your attacks consist of a high/low weapon attack, a magic attack, a ranged magic attack, and a berzerker attack that will also drain your life and, I think, you can only perform if your power level is maxed out (meaning it is flashing and you have not taken damage in the last couple of seconds.  And taking damage in this game is something that will happen all the damn time.  With each enemy capable of performing high and low attacks, it is up to you to be able to notice the tells, however subtle, which attack the enemy is going to perform.  Because I am the paranoid type, I am about 75.47% convinced that the game cheats, performing attacks in the direction that your shield is not placed in; so if you are blocking high they will attack low and vice versa.

Thankfully, I can cheese my own berzerk attack all I want because I have an unlimited supply of quarters.  This would be a useful tactic, except that the developers must have thought about that because there are several boss monsters (who in typical RPG fashion turn into regular monsters after their first encounter) who can block your berzerk attacks (looking at you Satan Goat, Blue Sword Knight, Gold Wing Knight, and every Crab), so you are left to your own skill and luck hopefully blocking at least one attack which will often give you an opening to hit them at least once.

That is pretty much the entire game.  There is no additional political intrigue happening at the Court of Skaken Castle.  None of the King's advisors was working with evil Warlord Nausizz to kidnap the Princess.  The story is straightforward and your mission is clear from the start, to stop Nausizz.  The final battle against Nausizz felt pretty lackluster.  After climbing through his castle and killing enemy after enemy after enemy after, you fight him.  Nausizz's move-set felt more like fighting an unarmed martial artist with a flamethrower and a magical sword.  There was the expected second form when Nausizz took on his turn demonic form, and that actually felt a bit easier than some of the regular enemy battles (like the Goat Knights and the Giant Blue Knights) except that Nausizz had a stupid amount of health.

I feel like Crossed Swords is a decent arcade game, especially when played in the early '90s and maybe it could be a fun couch co-op game played in a single evening.  It, however, is not a great single-player experience.  The format of the game becomes repetitive by the time the Princess is kidnapped, which should be when the game really takes off.  If anything, it can get frustrating in the later levels with enemies frequently blocking you and not being able to pull off the berzerk attack.  Really the game is twice as long as it needed to be with nearly 50 stages spread out among seven chapters; although you will not visit every stage as there are some points where you choose one of two directions to go, these choices only happen a handful of times.  Had this game only been 25 stages, it could have been a tighter experience and a lot more fun with some replay value to visit the areas you did not go to the first time.  As it plays right now, I have no interest in seeing how the Courtyard was different than the Back Door to the castle, or the Port side of the Land Battleship was different than the Starboard side.  I was also sad finding out that there was no online co-op, although I should not have expected it, so until Dr. Potts and I are again in the same room for an evening (sleepover?), we will have to play our respective digital copies of Crossed Swords.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I'm the Last on the Planets