MIDI Week Singles: "The Mourning Tree" - Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (VSD)

 

"The Mourning Tree" from Everybody's Gone to the Rapture on PlayStation 4, Windows (2015 - 2016)
Composer: Jessica Curry
Album: Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (Original Soundtrack)
Label: Sony Computer Entertainment
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Developer: The Chinese Room

I started Everybody's Gone to the Rapture a few weeks back after deciding that I needed a bit of a palette cleanser after playing Unreachable (stay tuned for that article in the coming weeks).  Initially, I had started filming my gameplay like I've been doing for a couple of games over the last several months, but then I decided that this was just going to be for me.  I might take some pictures here and there, but the experience of playing the game I was going to leave to myself and not worry about recording it to upload it to YouTube.  This was for me.

Then I reached the scene in the chapel and then the music came up and after reaching the outside of the house, I knew that I needed to exit out of the game and replay it and film it, again just for myself so that I could view this amazing sequence of visuals and music all over again.  And so today we have the song that played during that second half of the sequence, "The Mourning Tree."

I've tried looking up what is being sung during the first half but those lyrics currently are eluding me.  The lyrics for "The Mourning Tree" are easily accessible although I'm not going to do a lyric analysis about that*.  I will say that the first time I played through this, I wasn't paying attention to the lyrics until the line, "I heard you coming home."  And that's when I was hit hard in the feelings department.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Of One Single Day

*Although I will say that the mention of "the bomber's drone" and that the game takes place in 1984, makes me feel like this would be a WWII song, although this is an original song composed for the game.  

Game EXP: Benign Land (VSD)

 [Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Benign Land through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.] 

Benign Land
Systems: Windows, Linux
Release Date: January 24, 2025
Publisher: Afternature Productions
Developer: Leandros Ntolas
Time Spent: 93 Minutes

I am, admittedly, woefully ignorant about the Troubles, the time predominantly in Ireland between 1969 and 1998 when Irish republicans fought for Irish unification and separation from the United Kingdom, while Ulster loyalists along with the United Kingdom fought to keep Northern Ireland part of the UK.  There is a whole lot more to it than that inadequate sentence, but that's the best I can do right now without just copying verbatim the entire Wikipedia article.  So I knew that going into Benign Lands, a video game adaptation of an immersive visual arts experience about Ireland's history with the latter half focusing on the Troubles, what I was getting myself into, but only just and again, admittedly most of the imagery went over my head.

Beforehand, I knew the generalities of the conflict.  I knew about Bloody Sunday, but couldn't give you an exact date, and to be honest, I'm not great with remembering specific dates of historical importance.  I knew about the Good Friday Agreement, but again, I couldn't give you any kind of specifics.  I knew that there were bombings carried out by the IRA, but I couldn't give you locations.  I'm sure that it was covered to a certain extent in any of my World History courses from Jr. High through High School, but only that the conflict was still ongoing because I graduated High School in 1998 and I couldn't tell you when our textbooks had last been updated.  I knew that certain neighborhoods in Belfast were separated between Catholics and Protestants, but I didn't know that they were called "Peace Walls."  I also knew nothing about the Prison Maze, the multiple hunger strikes, or any other dozens of things that were not deemed important to go over in the flurry of information during history classes.

So this is where I was going into Benign Land, pretty bad I admit.  I was hopeful though because the game says that the original experience was created from an outsider's perspective, which I misinterpreted as meaning that the player didn't have to know anything about the Troubles in order to get the message of the game.  What I didn't know was that the outsider was actually the developer, Leandros Ntolas.  Again, that was on me for not being better prepared before starting.

Now, before we get to the actual gameplay, there needs to be some hardware context.  I played on the Steam Deck because I knew that my laptop would not be able to handle anything that uses photorealism as its basis.  I first started the game on Wednesday night and immediately knew that I was going to have to make some graphical adjustments because just in the menus, the game was maxing out at 12 fps.  I also noticed that the GPU was running at 99% while the CPU was hovering around 45%.  Not a great sign.  So I lowered the graphics down to Low and was able to get a max fps of 24, but even that felt exceedingly sluggish as you'll be able to tell down below in the playthrough video.

First, I couldn't tell what was going on when I tried to invert the Y-axis for the right joystick.  I could hear and see the click, but the box itself never changed so I had to go into the controller configuration in the Steam settings to make the necessary changes.  I can't always tell from the other playthrough videos I watched, but the way the game felt to me was that I was swimming through thick viscous water, that the controls were sluggish and response-delayed.  The first time I played (and the video I recorded) there were countless times I found myself looking up at the ceiling or down at the ground as I found that I was often overcompensating with the right joystick.  There also seemed to be a baked-in mechanic that slowed you down if you were going in the wrong direction of where the portal to the next scene was, coupled with invisible walls hampered my desire to explore.  There were also two instances above where the portal didn't seem to initially take and made me think that there was something else I needed to do.

Sadly a lot of that last paragraph made it hard for me to either enjoy and/or understand everything to do with the visuals.  True that I didn't catch most of the visual references, but I can only blame myself for that.  The rest of the blame lies with the Steam Deck and that this game, even on low settings was too much for the system to play smoothly and in a way that felt enjoyable.  While a lot of the visuals were impressive and beautiful to be in the presence of while I walked/floated through each environment, I was saddened that I felt more frustrated than anything with how the game played than anything else.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

On Our Fellow Men We Prey

Game EXP: The Climb - Quest 2

 

The Climb
Systems: Windows, Oculus Rift, Oculus Quest, Oculus Quest 2
Release Date: April 28, 2016 - December 3, 2019
Publisher: Crytek
Developer: Crytek
Time Spent: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This isn't going to be so much of a regular Game EXP article because I didn't really have one planned before I sat down and started writing, but I couldn't think of what else to call this.  So Game EXP it is.

The whole point of this is self-promotion, but why else use a website to talk about video games if this isn't self-promotion? Anyway!  Over the last week, I've been keeping the Oculus Quest 2 headset at work to play with it during my lunch breaks, and because I have more arm, leg, and ceiling room at my office.  And I've jumped back into the first The Climb game having already gone through The Climb 2 several years ago.  I also found out that I can record videos in a slightly wider than a square screen, so that makes for better YouTube videos too.  And this last week, I uploaded an unremarkable video of one of my playthroughs and it was hitting around 75 views every hour, which is pretty bonkers for me.  So I started recording more videos of each of the climbing routes and uploading those.

And thus we now have a playlist with five and growing videos up.  I preface that there's not anything great or groundbreaking in these, it's just me playing The Climb and in the case of the Hard climb in the Canyon stages, failing miserably for nealry nine straight minutes.  In my defense, I am vocal in my opinion that the 'cleaning off the holds' mechanic in The Climb is so intuitive that the actual mechanic is broken and thankfully was fixed in The Climb 2.

But just to give you a quick taste, here are two climbs, one from the Bay stage, and the viral video from the Canyon stage.

The Bay - Zen Bay (Easy)

The Canyon - Red Rock (Medium)

Over the coming days/weeks, I'll upload more climbing videos and I'll probably do the same with The Climb 2, because I really do love this franchise, even if some of the mechanics in The Climb are just bat-shit horrible.  We'll talk more later.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
The Thundering Echoes of Great Destruction to Come

MIDI Week Singles: "Grazelands Dawn (feat. Jeremy Soule)" - The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind (PC/VSD)

"Grazelands Dawn (feat. Jeremy Soule)" from The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind on Windows, MacOS, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One/S/X, Linux (2017)
Composer: Brad Derrick, Jeremy Soule
Album: The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind (Original Game Soundtrack)
Label: Bethesda Softworks
Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
Developer: ZeniMax Online Studios

Playing The Elder Scrolls Online DLC/expansion Morrowind has me frequently visiting Vivec City, primarily because it's the only city that I've found in the south (thereby starting area) that has both crafting tables, shops and banks all in a fairly confined space, all within short distance of a wayshrine.  That means any time I log in (so, daily), I'll usually spend 10-15 minutes in the often crowded area to fulfill equipment writs and deposit more consumables into the bank so my inventory isn't overflowing with ingredients, 50+ potions, and scrolls.

So with all of that in mind, I hear "Grazelands Dawn" a lot, which is wonderful because it's a gorgeous peace on its own, but one that also integrates "The Road Most Traveled"* from the original Morrowind soundtrack.  Yes, both the title of this song, and its integrated homage suits roaming the wilds of Vvardenfell more than it does running between crafting stations and the bank, but I don't really care.  Having that little motif crop up at 0:43 and 4:1 while blended seamlessly with the rest of Brad Derrick's composition here brings a little skip to my cockles.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

But Take Heart My Friend, You're Not Alone

Demo Time: Fourth Time Around (PC)

 [Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Fourth Time Around through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.] 

Fourth Time Around Demo
Systems: Windows, macOS
Release Date: March, 2025
Publisher: Pennywhistle Studios
Developer: Pennywhistle Studios
Time Spent: 28 Minutes 27 Seconds

I have to keep reminding myself that the Fourth Time Around Demo is only a demo because, holy hell, it was effective.  The disclaimer is upfront that a fair amount of the demo is not going to make sense or tell a cohesive story that the player will be able to follow or fully make sense of, but that really played to the strengths of establishing an uncomfortable and tense feeling throughout the whole 28 minutes.  So rather than try and parse what I played, I'm just going to embed it right here.

Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there.  Kind of?  My biggest hangup, and what hampered my otherwise perfect cinematography, was that there was no option to invert the Y-axis on the camera, but since the game is more of a walking sim and less of a first-person shooter, I found I was able to adapt somewhat well.

The Itch.io and Steam descriptions tout that this is a game without jump scares, which I think is true for the most part, but there were several sudden moments that creeped me out.  When I first gained control of the camera on the train and saw the woman's face scribbled out, it gave me a bit of a start.  The frequent camera glitches seemed to always put me on edge.  Then the green cabin scene when you click to "Leave" and when you turn there's a field full of the same woman in all of the poses you previously saw her in earlier in the stage gave me literal shivers down my shoulders and back.  And once you get the gun both times made me woefully uncomfortable both in the game and its implications on the story.  I also loved the moment at 12:27 when the kitchen started filling with white noise that became the phone ringing as I found it played on my anxiety about talking on the phone.

I don't really know how else to talk about this demo any more than this, which I recognize is fairly paltry.  It really felt like the whole of the demo was informing players on how they're going to feel when the full game is released and even if only half of the game makes me feel as unsettled and tense as these 28 minutes, then I'm all in.

And if you want select moments from this playthrough, I made a couple of trailers, I guess you'd call them because just like Liminal Dimension, Fourth Time Around lends itself very well to creating unsettling snippits.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

Playing Those Crowdfunded Games

I'm not against pledging real-world money to a crowdfunding campaign, even if that pledge is essentially a pre-order for a game that doesn't have a release date.  Such is the case when you pledge on one of the many crowdfunding websites, which I have done for several games over the years, thankfully with a relatively high success rate of the game being released on time.  But the gamble of crowdfunding a video game isn't the reason we're here today, instead, we're here to talk about actually sitting down and playing those games once they're released. 

Going back to 2018, I've sponsored/helped fund six games that I thought looked like they'd be fun to play.  But then, why haven't I played them, or at the very least, why did I only start them up and not continue.  I don't think it was a lack of being fun because I did enjoy what I played of 9 Years of Shadows and Lords of Exile, but I've never started Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened.  So for the remainder of our time here, I'm going to go into List Mode with a little bit of commentary.  I'll order games chronologically by the date that the crowdfunding ended along with when I finally received the game and the system I picked it up on, because additional context is always helpful.

Hatch Tales: A Heroic Hookshot Adventure (Formally Chicken Wiggle Workshop) - Campaign Ended: April 5, 2018 ; Rec'd: October 22, 2024 - Nintendo Switch

I'd been a fan of Atooi for several years and have played several of the games that Jools Watsham developed and released over the years.  I received a review copy of his last game, Chicken Wiggle and for the most part enjoyed that game, so when this Kickstarter came about for a revamped game with added features, I thought, "Sure, why not!?"  Well, by now you can read almost anywhere about people being upset at Atooi for the six years between the end of the campaign and when the game was finally released, later evolving from Chicken Wiggle Workshop into what is now Hatch Tales.

Now, I have played Hatch Tales a bit, more so than any of the other games listed below, but that is primarily because The Squire really likes to play it and wants there to be more playable levels on my Switch profile, so every once in a while, I'll boot it up and try to 100% a level or two.  It is a fun game that plays a lot like Chicken Wiggle so I'll give it that, and there'll likely be a Game EXP article later in the year.

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened - Campaign Ended: 4/14/2022 ; Rec'd: March 29, 2023 - Steam

I had finished The Sinking City about a year-and-a-half before this campaign ended and I was pretty excited to play a Lovecraftian Sherlock Holmes game.  I knew about the original game released in 2007 but had never played it, and I do have Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter which I had read nothing but good things, so I thought, "Why not?"  I like what Frogwares had done with The Sinking City and this seemed like another way that I could support this company.

I haven't yet played this, likely because I keep going back and forth about wether or not I should play the original 2008 game first, or just jump right into this one.  And if I didn't already have a copy of it through GOG, I would probably go and buy it right now (as it's on sale for $0.99).  Maybe I will play that one after all.

9 Years of Shadows - Campaign Ended: 4/21/2020 ; Rec'd: November 9, 2023 - Nintendo Switch

I can't remember how or where I first heard about 9 Years of Shadows, but I really liked the aesthetic and I think at the time I was really hankering for a solid Metroidvania that harkened back to Syphony of the Night and the DS era of Castlevania games.  I also loved that the playable character was a woman wielding a halberd.  That seemed pretty bad ass.  That was really it.

I did play the game for a bit after it was released, maybe less than an hour and I enjoyed what I played, but I think I got distracted by some other games at the time, likely still playing Tears of the Kingdom.  Yeah, we'll blame The Legend of Zelda on that one.

Lords of Exile - Campaign Ended: 5/19/2020 ; Rec'd: February 14, 2024 - Nintendo Switch

I first heard about Lords of Exile because the developer, Carlos Azuaga, kept popping up on my For You feed on Twitter (since bought out by right-wing racist-enabling billionaire and first gentleman Elon Musk) where he would ask for comments on various aspects of his game development.  Again, I loved the NES-era Castlevania look of the character sprites, but also that the look of the game wasn't hamstrung but the limits of the NES; similar to Curse of the Moon.

I played the first stage in the game to get a feel for it and was a little surprised that it wasn't quite what I was expecting.  Not just a Castlevania homage, there were mechanics I wasn't expecting that I will get to when we cover it in an upcoming Game EXP article later this year.

Chono Sword - Campaign Ended: 12/10/2020 ; Rec'd: December 9, 2024 - Steam

Just like Lords of Exile, I had been seeing posts by developer SpaceDuck cropping up a lot on my For You Twitter feed and I like the isometric view and the overall world aesthetic.  That was about it.  I watched several short videos showing in-game animations through development and I like it.  So I threw money at 21cDucks.

Being the most recent game I've received, I haven't yet played it.  I know I should, just like every game on this list and it was Chrono Sword that actually inspired me to make this list and in turn, this article.  I began wondering how many games I had pledged money towards and why I hadn't played m/any of them.

Meifumado - Campaign Ended: 03/21/2022 ; Rec'd: July 6, 2024 - Steam

Meifumado like the last two games I saw crop up a lot on Twitter and liked the look of something akin to Blasphemous, set in a post-apocalyptic world, but with a different regional feel.  Granted this wasn't a Japanese company, but one based in Belarus, which therein lies a lot of the issues with this game.  Their crowdfunding campaign started March 1, 2022, less than a week after Russia invaded and declared unofficial war on Ukraine.  As the campaign came to an end a few weeks later, the government of Belarus supported Vladimir Putin's war machine and so economic sanctions were placed on Russia and their supporters, including Belarus.  This meant that foreign money that had been pledged to Old Bit Studio was now being withheld, which is the short of it.  You can read their May 19, 2024 statement on Kickstarter here.

My reason for not playing Meifumado yet doesn't have anything to do with any of their troubles or being angry that this video game developer happened to be from a country that was supporting another country's hostile invasion of Ukraine.  I understand that the game released is not exactly what was promised or by some reviews on Steam simply call an unfinished game.  I just haven't gotten around to it.  And like I've said a lot about other games, you can look forward to a Game EXP later this year.

And that was kind of the whole point of this article, well one of two points.  The first was to put down in a list the games that I've pledged money to, and to say that this is the year that I play all of these games, and gods willing, will write about all of them too.  I haven't looked any of the games up on HowLongToBeat, but I don't imagine that they're any 50+ hour epics in there, maybe closer to 20+, depending on my skill and surviving an onslaught of enemies, especially in the last four games.

But that's my declaration this Friday, January 17th, 2025: I will play all of the games listed here and likely write about them, either in their own Game EXP article or en masse.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

In This Strange Illusion

P.S.  What do you mean the Switch 2 was announced yesterday morning!?  Great, this is going to eat into my crowdfunded game time now.

P.P.S.  And don't get me started on Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs box that I have sitting in my office after playing successfully through the first card once after two failed attempts.  That game ended up being more complicated than I had anticipated and not exactly what I thought I was getting into.  And did I mention that the rules were written in a classic 2015 fashion?  Whooboy and not for people who were not already familiar with Gloomhaven.

MIDI Week Singles: "Mount Crystal" - Conquest of the Crystal Palace (NES)

 

"Mount Crystal" from Conquest of the Crystal Palace on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1990)
Composer: Tomohisa Mitsuyasu
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Asmik Corporation of America, Quest
Developer: Quest

There's just something about that driving drum beat that starts out the song that gets you pumped about getting ready to climb a mountain filled with aggressive golems, birds, slug-crab-things, piranha plants, and skeletons.  That's really all I know about "Mount Crystal" from Conquest of the Crystal Palace although I do recognize the cover from when I would visit Placer TV/Video in the NES era. 

I'm not even going to try to analyze the melody because I'll get most of it wrong.  So I'll just say that I really enjoy this song, be it for climbing a mountain early in your quest, or just as background while you plod away in QuickBooks hoping that your meeting that's supposed to happen in 20 minutes is canceled because you've already had one meeting today.  And then the song loops back to the beginning and you now have the sudden urge to drive out to the forest and climb a mountain; even if there aren't any crystals involved.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
You Drink Too Much Coffee, I Drink Too Much Stout

Game EXP: Baby Blues Nightmares - Toddler Horror Game (VSD)

 [Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Baby Blues Nightmares - Toddler Horror Game through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.] 

Baby Blues Nightmares - Toddler Horror Game

Systems: Windows, Linux

Release Date: September 16, 20204

Publisher: Steelkrill Studio

Developer: Steelkrill Studio

Time Spent: 3 Hours 48 Minutes

I had moderately high hopes for Baby Blues Nightmares - Toddler Horror Game even though the first-person toddler perspective survival-horror genre only has a few games to this niche sub-genre, one of which I first played in Among the Sleep after it was released following its successful Kickstarter back in 2014.  In "Among the Sleep," you play as a toddler in onesie pajamas as they navigate a somewhat disturbing fantastic setting of real-world locations melded with fantastic story-book-like settings, all the while avoiding gigantic horrors that turn out to be an alcoholic parent.  You also have a smarmy-cabby-like-talking teddy bear as a companion.  In Baby Blues Nightmares, while you are another onesie-clad toddler, you now find yourself in the real-world location of your house and Red Belly's Funhouse & Childcare facility where you're tasked with locating your dolls to help you fight off and defend yourself from the titular character of Red Belly.

Since I played on the Steam Deck, I didn't have to do much to get the game to play the way I wanted it to.  I didn't need to use any compatibility settings and the game ran at a consistent 30 fps with a combination of Ultra/High/Medium graphical settings.  I did have to map a few keyboard buttons to the L4 and R4 back buttons like Left-Ctrl to crouch and Q to pick up and interact with certain items in the game.  In Chapter 3 after acquiring the map and tinkering with the not-always-intuitive control UI, I tried creating a shortcut for the map to the 1 key (the game lets you create shortcuts for up to four items using the 1,2,3,4 key), but I couldn't get the game to pull up the map for me when I pressed the button on the Steam Deck. By default, the 1 key is mapped to the Up button on the left touchpad, but since that didn't seem to work, I created another mapping for the Up on the directional pad, but that didn't work either.  Another gripe I had to deal with was opening drawers to use as steps to get on top of dressers and the like.  Like a good Amnesia game, you had to click and hold on the drawer then manually slide the drawer out.  The way that the controls on the Steam Deck were set up, was that I to either use the Claw Grip to press the B button with my index finger and swipe the right touchpad (or the right joystick, but I never did this), or use my right thumb on the B button and swipe with my left hand.  Very inconvenient all around, but thankfully I was never forced into this kind of maneuver while being chased.

Another complaint rests with the saving mechanic and its implementation.  In the opening stage, from what I could tell, there were no save spots and I didn't notice any autosaving happening.  Only after reaching Chapter 2 are save spots introduced, which feels rather late considering the first chapter really felt like an otherwise well-constructed tutorial chapter.  Don't get me wrong though, I love that a separate nap room is a brilliant use the environment and maintaining a sense of continuity for the player playing as a onesie-clad toddler.  However, later in Chapter 3, I discovered, I think, that you're able to save only once per room, with no indication from the game that this is a mechanic.  In my Chapter 3 Part 2 video, at about 24:30, I figured I would unload the items I had collected and then save and quit, but I couldn't without the game telling me why, which is why I assume save/nap rooms are like one-time-only consumables.  I might've chalked it up to a glitch, but it happened again in my Chapter 3 Part 2 video (x:xx.xx).  I'm not against a survival horror game having limited saves (a la the original Resident Evil), but that information needs to be relayed to the player.

There were several other mechanics that I ended up either not using, or didn't see the point of, mainly the tricycle.  In Chapters 1 and 3, a tricycle with a trailer to load with items is available.  In Chapter 1, you only ride the tricycle out of the garage and around a corner before you either stop at the sight of your mom being creepy, or you just continue another couple of yards before that goopy mass bursts through the hedges and ends your ride.  I never felt that this was enough of a tutorial or plants the incentive with the player that the tricycle was an integral part of the game to warrant locating it in Chapter 3 as a necessary survival mechanic, especially since you had to locate the spare wheel first.  For me, by the time I really understood the map and where I was in it at most times, I felt confident in being able to navigate around the facility while being able to avoid Red Belly.  I also felt that I had better mobility on foot if I needed to make a quick turn, or if I needed to crawl into a duct or a locker to avoid Red Belly, assuming that the time required to dismount from the tricycle or even make an about-face would hamper me from being able to make a faster escape.  So even though I found the spare wheel, spray paint, bike bell, and teddy bear, I felt no need to actually find the tricycle.  And relating to running away from Red Belly, I felt that the rate that your stamina replenished outweighed the amount of time it would take to open up the menu to drink a bottle of milk in time to continue running away, so I never ended up using milk to replenish my stamina; unless I completely misunderstood what Fresh Milk was supposed to do.

I have mixed feelings about the in-game map that you find, since it's not readily provided and easily accessible.  when I first came upon the map, I nearly missed it because it was darkened by the blood/goop on the ground and I only saw it because of the white hand that appeared over it.  Upon seeing the size of the facility, I was pretty overwhelmed especially this is a map in a video game operating in a very non-video game manner.  There is no compass, there is no "you are here" on the map, and a lot of what is depicted on the map could be categorized as subjective to what is actually in the room.  But that does make a certain kind of sense.  The map is hand drawn, presumably by Aiden or someone a little older, so it's not going to be as accurate and as easy to follow as something you might find in "The Elder Scrolls Online" or "Assassin's Creed: Origins."  By the end of the game, I was finding that I wasn't looking at the map as long to figure out where I was, but to figure out how to get to where I wanted to go as I already knew my location, but while I felt more comfortable navigating this massive space, I still wasn't overly thrilled with the color scheme of the X's denoting the dolls, or something important, or a point of interest as under certain lights, they all kind of looked the same.

Let's briefly review the game's ending, as there is some potentially heavy and triggering material here.

After collecting all five of Aiden's lost dolls, he is all of a sudden on a narrow path leading up towards the unknown, flanked by scenes from his recent memory.  Most of these scenes could be considered memories, except that there are a few that are before Aiden's birth, but I understand the desire and need for an exposition dump here at the end of the game.  You pass scenes of spousal abuse that were pretty difficult to hear since the scenes looked more like animatronic displays with simple movements.  But still hearing the repeated slaps/punches was difficult to listen to.  It is then revealed that Aiden's father murdered his mother, likely at the beginning of the game during Chapter 1.  I'm not quite sure how to feel about the semi-rosy ending about Aiden ending up in foster care while having experienced all of this trauma, before, during, and after the actual gameplay.  Was then Aiden's running around Red Belly's Funhouse & Child Care facility supposed to have only occurred in his mind, or did Aiden's father take him there and then somehow lose track of him?  I assume that's who Red Belly was in the game, a visage that Aiden placed over his Dad when he was in a violent and abusive rage.  And then the stinger at the end of the game actually made me really sad, seeing Red Belly's hand rise up from the base of the crib while knowing that this is likely a figment of Aiden's imagination, but that he is currently and will likely relive this trauma while in the foster care system for years and likely decades to come.  I don't know if I can or want to further analyze Aiden's living situation and past/present trauma because I'm not set up for that kind of analysis; also reading a book where physical child abuse happened against a child by a once-loving parent coupled with this game is hitting particularly hard right now.  

It's a difficult topic. While I don't mind using video games as an avenue to talk about and discuss trauma, I don't know if "Baby Blues Nightmares" is the best game to be that vanguard. But honestly, who am I to tell someone that what doesn't sit well with me is the wrong approach, especially if the game was created as a coping mechanism? But that's just how I feel.

Despite all of that, there was quite a bit that I actually enjoyed. I still think that having a survival horror game from a child's perspective is still novel when handled well.  Having to think about how you're going to unlock and open a door when you can't even reach the door knob is a neat idea. I didn't mind the immersion-breaking mechanic of a toddler throwing a wooden truck hard enough to break a sheet of glass and then crawling up and over the shards of glass without taking any damage, that just would've been annoying despite it only happening a handful of times.  There were a handful of well-placed jump scares that weren't dependent on the player being a child that I found genuinely frightening.  Moments that involved stationary dolls like clowns in Chapter 1 and the wooden puppet in Chapter 2 I thought were well executed.  Each jump scare involving Red Belly I thought was well timed and helped to maintain the physical weight and terror of this creature as he/it never felt that it was some flitty entity moving about the facility.  There were a couple jump scares related to finding Aiden's coveted dolls but they didn't always happen after acquiring each doll, which made the actual scare that much more impactful.  I also liked the auto-blinking mechanic as it kept me on edge, not knowing if something was going to appear between blinks.

You know, despite there being significantly more criticism that I had to say about Baby Blues Nightmares - Toddler Horror Game, I did enjoy it for the most part, and despite all of the negative things I had to say about it.  While there were some mechanics that I enjoyed, others didn't feel well implemented or even necessary, but that didn't take away from the moments I was enjoying the game itself.  I never felt that the game was cheap in its jump scares, and being able to hide from Red Belly successfully without getting caught was always satisfying; in that the two times I was caught felt fair, that I had messed up and not that the game broke its own rules.  Oddly enough, being lost with the map was probably the lowest point in the game for me, but at the same time, figuring out the map and getting to where I needed to go was the high point.

If you'd like to watch one or all of my playthrough videos, they're up on YouTube here; although I do apologize for the videos being darker than they were on the Steam Deck, I'm still working on that.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
The Shadows Come to Dance, My Lord

MIDI Week Singles: "Four Brave Champions" - Castle Crashers (PC)

 

"Four Brave Champions" from Castle Crashers on Xbox 360/One, PlayStation 3/4, Windows, OSX, Nintendo Switch (2008 - 2019)
Composer: David Orr
Album: No Official Release*
Publisher: The Behemoth
Developer: The Behemoth

Over the last several months, The Squire has wanted to play Castle Crashers in the morning before we leave to take him to preschool.  When I first booted up the game for him, I had forgotten how damn good the opening titles music was, but since I'm not usually able to listen to more than the first 10-15 seconds of the song before The Squire button mashes his way to the character select screen and to the map screen, I thought I'd find the music and put it up as a MIDI Week Single.

What's interesting about this song is that when it plays during the opening menus, there's only about the first minute and twenty seconds of the song before it repeats, which makes sense because you normally wouldn't have a grand four-minute epic while you cycle through menus.  I say "normally" because that is something that I would do and have done for various games when the title music goes particularly hard, and "Four Brave Champions" is no exception.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

*While there appears to have been an unofficial soundtrack available through Newgrounds at one time, that page no longer exists, but there is a playlist of sorts with all of the music from Newgrounds musicians that I linked to up there at the top of the page.

Game EXP: Minestrone (VSD)

 [Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Minestrone through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.] 

Minestrone
Systems: Windows
Release Date: December 3, 2024
Publisher: Archor Games
Developer: Archor Wright
Time Spent: 28 Minutes

I'm not really sure what to make of Minestrone.  Is it an experimental walking-sim?  Is it a tech demo?  Is it a resume builder?  I wouldn't expect the game to be immediately Steam Deck compatible and even after trying more than five different compatibility options, starting with Proton Experimental and working my way down the list, I eventually settled on Proton [x] because I wasn't experiencing any difference.  The biggest problems I experienced during the game were that there was significant audio clipping and that the game maxed out at 16 frames per second.  Because this is a walking-sim, 16 fps is still playable.

The purpose of the game is to follow a trail of what I assume to be tomatoes through an Italian city and collect ingredients from people who have a green "Talk to me" text floating above them until you have collected everything.  Your tomato collection meter counts up from one to 99 and none of the tomatoes were hidden in a way that became frustrating or difficult to find.  One thing that remains unclear to me is what the actual goal is, to collect 99 tomatoes, or to talk to everyone to collect the specific ingredients like garlic, thyme, and olive oil?  In the game, when I collected the last tomato before I talked to the last person, the game said that I had found the final ingredient, "Good work! Your recipe is complete."  And then immediately after I talked to my final NPC and the game continued until I manually quit.

The only other thing of note in the game is the NPC animations, which while incredibly blurry were very fluid and felt more lifelike than many NPCs in other modern games I've played in recent years. The NPCs didn't necessarily look like they were part of the environment in that they existed within the environment but were not active with elements such as buildings, tables, or chairs.  Their animations would also loop after several seconds, but since there was only one line of dialogue per NPC, there was never a reason to stand around and watch the animations loop.

That's really all that there is to Minestrone.  I completed the game in just under 16 minutes and then walked around for nearly another five minutes to see if I had missed anything.  The description on Steam suggests that there are hidden easter eggs, although apart from one closed storefront with Archor Games, and an in-world advertisement telling me to check out Archor Games on Steam, I don't know what else there was so it's likely that I missed something deeper, or just another another ad.

And really, maybe that's all that Minestrone is.  Just another ad for Archor Games to be like, "Hey, we can make a walking-sim in Unreal Engine 5.5."

And to watch all 20 minutes of my playthrough, I've included it below:

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

Year In Review: 2024

Nothing says a "Year in Review" like lists so let's stick with a good thing and make a tradition out of it!

We're going to start off with games and demos released in 2024 that I played, followed by games that I bought in 2024, followed by games released in 2024 that interested me that I neither played nor bought.  And then we'll close everything up with both the Nintendo and Steam's lookback at 2024; with a heavy caveat that The Squire has heavily influenced both of my lists.

Games & Demos Released in 2024 that I played:

• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Demo (January 18)
• Pacific Drive Demo (February 5)
• Skelethrone: The Prey (March 14)
• Botany Manor Demo (April 9)
• POOLS Demo (April 26)
• INDIKA & INDIKA Demo (May 2)
• Classic Marathon (May 10)
• BAISU (May 30)
• Seed of Life (May 30)
• Whispering Lane (June 18)
• She Could Fly: Documentary Escape Game (July 11)
• Abathor Demo (July 25)
• Light - Die to Survive (July 30)
• Candlelight Lament Demo (August 5)
• Umbral (August 7)
• DATE A LIVE: Ren Dystopia (September 5)
• Ale & Tale Tavern (September 5)
• Judero Demo (September 16)
• Enotria: The Last Song Demo (September 19)
• Miss Rosen's Wowtastic! Marching Band (October 10)
• Hatch Tales: A Heroic Hookshot Adventure (October 22)
• While We Wait Here Demo (October 23)
• Portrait of a Torn Demo (October 24)
• Innsmouth 22 (October 25)
• Miniatures Demo (November 14)
• The Liminal Dimension (November 27)
• Minestrone (December 3)

Games I Purchased in 2024 that I Haven't Played Yet

• Meifumado (July 18)
• Chrono Sword (December 6)

I believe that these two games were the only games released in 2024 that I purchased but have yet to play. Although because these were games "funded" through Kickstarter, I didn't actually pay for them in 2024, I'm still allowing them here because they were released this year. Pendant semantics, I guess.

Games Released in 2024 that I Have Not Yet Bought or Played

• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (January 18)
• Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth (January 25)
• Balatro (February 20)
• Pentiment (February 22)
• Alone in the Dark (March 20)
• Dragons Dogma 2 (March 22)
• Botany Manor (April 9)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants (April 23)
• Another Crab's Treasure (April 25)
• POOLS (April 26)
• Stellar Blade (April 26)
• Animal Well (May 9)
• Senua's Saga: Hellblade II (May 21)
• Duck Detective: The Secret Salami (May 23)
• Still Wakes the Deep (June 18)
• Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition (July 18)
• SteamWorld Heist II (August 8)
• Black Myth: Wukong (August 20)
• Tactical Breach Wizards (August 22)
• Emio - The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club (August 29)
• Squirrel with a Gun (August 29)
• Star Wars Outlaws (August 30)
• Edge of Sanity (September13)
• The Plucky Squire (September 17)
• UFO 50 (September 18)
• Enotria: The Last Song (September 19)
• Home Safety Online (September 20)
• The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (September 26)
• Mouthwashing (September 26)
• Zoochosis (September 30)
• Silent Hill 2 (October 8)
• Neva (October 15)
• Clock Tower Rewind (October 29)
• Dragon Age: The Veilguard (October 31)
• Slitterhead (November 8)
• Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake (November 14)
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl (November 20)
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (December 9)
• MiSide (December 11)

So as you can tell from this last section, I haven't played nearly enough games released in 2024 to have any kind of informed say as to what "The Best Game of 2024" should be.  Of all of the games that I played that were released in 2024, the only one I paid for was Hatch Tales which was from a 2018 Kickstarter, while all of the rest were either free-to-play, demos, or I received through Keymailer.  I'm actually planning on an article after the first of the year going into several of the games that I've helped fund through various online fundraising platforms and for one reason or another, have not played (yet).

So let's briefly take a look at my Nintendo 2024 Year in Review and Steam 2024 Replay.

On the Nintendo Switch, I think the funniest thing is how much The Squire played New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe using my account, so therefore, I ended up clocking upwards of 45 hours in that game.  Or did I?  

I would say that "I think" that this chart feels accurate, except that since this is how Nintendo categorizes games, I guess it is accurate.  All of the top three games have action elements as well as Role playing and adventure, although NSMBUD  is probably considered just straight action since I don't see "Platformer" as a genre.

As for Steam, the genres are a little more varied and less traditional:

I feel like Rhythm is solely from the BIT.TRIP series that The Squire likes to play and have me play, which I'm perfectly fine with; unless he wants me to play as Invisible CommanderVideo, which he does often.  The only game I can think of as Tower Defense is Plants vs. Zombies which I didn't think we played that much, but that's obviously not true.  I'm sure I can track down the Metroidvania games, and I'm positive that the rest of the genres here are from a combination of free games I acquired through Keymailer this year and a bunch of demos that I played too.

The only other metric that surprised me a little was how much I actually played on my laptop, but then I remembered that most of the Steam games I play with The Squire are all played on my laptop and I usually get in an hour or so of gaming on the Steam Deck.  Even though it accounts for 68%, I'm still thankful to the Steam Deck for getting me not only back into my Steam queue, but also making games through other clients accessible since my laptop isn't the powerhouse it never was.

Now, if we were to do the same thing for TV/Streaming shows, movies, and games, we'd probably be here for another couple of minutes, but let's be quick about it.  I read through mostly more Forgotten Realms books ending with Ed Greenwood's Crown of Fire, the second book in the Shandril's Saga trilogy.  I did read Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo and really enjoyed that take on a new fantasy setting that wasn't strictly Western European based.  In TV land, Conklederp and I really enjoyed The Acolyte, the ill-fated Star Wars series, and were both saddened by its cancellation.  We started and are still planning on finishing the second season of The Rings of Power, but finding time to sit down and watch an hour of TV after The Squire goes to bed has been really difficult for the last six months.  This is also why we have yet to start watching Skeleton Crew.  Movie-wise, Conklederp and I did see Longlegs back in August (I think), and then I went out to see Alien: Romulus with Himo.  I think that's it.  I would have wanted to see a couple of other movies, but again, finding an available sitter during a specific weekend is not always the easiest.  And the new Nosferatu was just released, so maybe we'll be able to sneak away for the requisite 3.5 hours to drive, see the movie, grab a post-movie beer, and drive home?  I might also end up seeing the new Superman without Conklederp as I'm not sure if that's her cup of tea.

So yeah, that was 2024.  I don't know if we'll be picking up the Switch 2 if it's announced/released in 2025.  Maybe that could be a Christmas present?  This means any 2025 games will end up being played on the Steam Deck, although there's always the high possibility that there'll still be plenty of indie games released on the Switch as well.  It's also probably getting close to the time to replace my laptop, but before we do that, we'll likely be replacing Conklederp's 2014 (or is it 2012?) MacBook first.  I guess it's just about that time to consult my hastily scotch-taped crystal ball to find out what's in store, assuming that it's not just showing an empty void after the third week of January.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Hide From the Scary Scenes