Game EXP: Miss Rosen's Wowtastic! Marching Band (NS)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Miss Rosen's Wowtastic! Marching Band 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.] 

Miss Rosen's Wowtastic! Marching Band

Systems: Nintendo Switch

Release Date: October 10, 2024

Publisher: Meringue Interactive

Developer: Meringue Interactive

Time Spent: ~4 Hours

I have almost nothing negative to say about Miss Rosen's Wowtastic! Marching Band, a strange hybrid of visual novel, puzzle-sorting, and fighting game.  The format fits the Nintendo Switch wonderfully both with the controller and touch screen although when I first started I was saddened that there were no motion controls, but we'll get to why that would've been a bad decision a bit later.  I'm also going to have a hard time writing something coherent about this game because just like Tux and Fanny, trying to accurately describe Miss Rosen's Wowtastic! Marching Band is like trying to explain in writing why a joke is funny.  You have to be there in the moment to hear the setup, see the visuals, and hear the punchline in the context of the visuals and what happened five screens prior just to catch the callback.

But let's give it a try anyway.

Miss Rosen's Wowtastic! Marching Band is the name of a fictional children's variety show where the titular character of Miss Rosen, who herself is a "living" clockwork majorette figure visits various locations and talks with special guests.  Each of the guests has a problem for Miss Rosen to solve which involves performing an items sorting puzzle where the player has to fit a certain number of objects within a given space within a certain amount of time.  After several puzzles and dialogue to move the plot along, the setting changes and the process repeats which is the only negative thing I have to say.  Each new chapter/episode begins with nearly the same dialogue from Miss Rosen, which works well if you're only playing one chapter/episode at a time, but if you're binging the game, then it could feel repetitive very quickly.  I had to only play up to two chapters at a time and then come back the next day

The absurdist nature of the entire game makes all of this work.  A lot of the character models look like something out of a kid's toy box, and even the explanations behind how the game operates inhabit a similar mindset.  Dunno, for instance, is a small boy who only looks that way because he has a bandana covering his face, masking the fact that he's actually a full-sized Tyrannosaur.  Or the fact that apart from the visual novel aspect of the game, the only other thing you do is put objects within the confines of a container.  Some of the puzzles get pretty complicated later on in the game such as objects that move on their own, or objects that have to be facing a specific direction before they will be "accepted" as part of a completed puzzle.  

There were quite a few puzzles that took me multiple attempts to complete and the game does offer a pass if you're unable to complete a puzzle after three attempts.  While I appreciated this offer to skip a puzzle, I managed to complete every one, although I used the touchscreen for finer accuracy for some.  For me, the Switch controllers, or likely any controller, were too finicky and not precise enough to get, say, a dinosaur and three enemies in a single book.  With the touchscreen, I found that I could move objects literally a pixel at a time which made solving puzzles in the late game a lot more manageable, even if they took multiple attempts.  For the most part, the sorting puzzles were enjoyable and continued with the absurd nature of the game.  

Without spoiling much, there were even mini-boss fights that incorporated the same sorting puzzles while still maintaining coherence with the rest of the game:

I had a blast playing Miss Rosen's Wowtastic! Marching Band once I stepped back and stopped trying to play as much of the game in a single sitting as possible.  When treated like a short TV show and only playing through one or two chapters/episodes at a time, preferably per day even, I found that I was able to enjoy the repetitiveness.  The story too was engaging in a bizarre and silly manner, and I did enjoy the crossover with Meringue Interactive's previous game, About an Elf that looks to be in a similar vein to Miss Rosen's Wowtastic! Marching Band that I will likely pick up at some point in the near future.

Long live the Meringuverse!

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

All the Good Times Baby

Demo Time: It's Kooky - Land of Aotearoa (VSD)

It's Kooky - Land of Aotearoa

Systems: Windows, Linux,

Release Date: Q3 2024

Publisher: Roshan Nowshad

Developer: Roshan Nowshad

Time Spent: 10 Minutes

It's Kooky - Land of Aotearoa is just that, a kooky little point-and-click find-it game from New Zealand-based indie game developer Roshan Nowshad.  Not being a resident of the Southern Hemisphere, I had to look up "Aotearoa" to find out that it is the Māori name for what was later named New Zealand, or specifically, the North Island.  This is all somewhat important as will be made evident a little bit later.

The bulk of It's Kooky is a point-and-click timed finding game and the demo consists of three separate stages with each stage making up a single black-and-white drawing uncrowded with people* where you look for things that are out of place.  We're talking really out of place, not just someone holding a shovel in a kitchen or five forks at a place setting, but more like a horse wearing swim trunks and sunglasses while wakeboarding behind a 17th-century European jolly boat.  Or a bear (I think it's a bear, or it could be a giant bipedal capybara; no, yeah, it's a bear) running while holding a large two-tiered birthday cake.  You know, kooky things, things that are out of place.  Each stage has a counter of the number of silly things you have to find and at the end, you are told how fast you found all of the objects.  You're also unable to zoom out to see the entire picture, otherwise you could just click everything in a few seconds.  Forcing the player to zoom in and pan around a bit not only elongates the amount of time spent in each stage but also allows the player to have a closer look at some of the amusing illustrations.  Surprisingly, or maybe not because this is a demo, but I noticed no randomization in the placement of some of the characters you're supposed to find, so every time you start, everything is in the exact same place. Sadly, this means that apart from younger children who are just starting out playing video games, there is little replay value.

Māori and New Zealand history also play an interesting part in this game.  Before you start each stage, there is a title screen that sets the location for where you will be looking for strange and silly things that don't belong; not that a person sitting in a recliner up in a tree canopy would be normal in any time period.  These bits of information range from something you might find in a history textbook, to information that the State of Florida would likely decry as being too woke.  At least in the demo, the historical information did not seem to play any factor in what was needed to look out for, but it honestly made me feel a little "eh" looking for a bird rollerblading on a stump after reading about how European colonizers deforested 99.7% of kauri forests on the North Island in the 19th century.

I think I would self-categorize It's Kooky - Land of Aotearoa as a wind-down game, something to play after a higher energy or mentally taxing game, like Dark Souls or Final Fantasy VII.  But then only so long as there are new things to find rather than replaying previous stages where you already found everything that's a bit silly.  It would also be incredibly short as I spent 10 minutes on the Steam Deck in total and that was only three stages and 30 silly things; although the last stage does introduce an additional item to locate in specific stages.  There are other games in the It's Kooky franchise and they both look to be in a similar vein, although they vary in price from $2.99 - $1.50, so I would expect It's Kooky - Land of Aotearoa to be similarly priced.  And really, for that amount, maybe this game doesn't really need to be any more than it already is.  A bit of silliness, a bit of New Zealand history, some amusing art, and some appropriate background music.  Maybe that's just enough.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

*P.S.  What I mean by "uncrowded" is that yes, there are people as you can see above, but we're not talking Where's Waldo level of crowds.

Game EXP: Four Last Things (SD)

 

Four Last Things

Release Date: February 23, 2017

Publisher: Joe Richardson

Developer: Joe Richardson

Time Spent: 3 Hours 6 Minutes

Four Last Things is a video game that I feel like I am very much the target audience.  I love Hieronymus Bosch.  I love Baroque, Classical, and Romantic era music.  I love point-and-click games.  I love Monty Python.  My mother longingly refers to me as her "little heathen" (or you know, a fallen Catholic).  The goal of the game is pretty simple, to commit all seven of the "Seven Deadly Sins" and then be absolved.  There is an actual story as to why you have to commit these sins, but that is the straightforward explanation as to why you are doing what you are doing.  In classic point-and-click fashion, you accomplish this by talking to people, picking up items, giving items to people, and performing tasks.

One of the things that I greatly appreciate about Four Last Things is that the game never got too big (looking at you "Dropsy").  The majority of the game is played on 10 screens, some that scroll to encompass multiple screen widths (nothing vertical), and at the most, I might have had eight items in my inventory, including a piece of paper/velum with which sins I had already committed and which ones I still had left to do scribbled onto it.  This is to say that the game never felt overwhelming as some point-and-click games end up being and with the exception of one solution (that actually led to two sins), the game never felt too complicated.  That being said, I did have to look up a guide for three of the sins and I will get into those in the P.S. to try and be as spoiler free as possible here.

I have made the executive decision to talk as little as possible for the rest of the article because a large part of the game is experiencing it as you would experience a comedian.  It would be like trying to write a paragraph about why a particular joke is funny to the writer.  Like, how and why I found "1997 Toyota Corolla" so hilarious in Tux and Fanny.  And because I played this game on the Steam Deck, I only have pictures and no videos (I have not figured out how to make that a possibility yet), and like a good joke, there is often a dialogue of set up and separate dialogue for the punchline.  There I go explaining a joke.  Like I said I would not do.

Four Last Things is full of these moments and while it did take me just over three hours, a person who is better able to parse point-and-click puzzles better than I could probably finish the game in less than half the time.  My biggest complaint about the game is that there is no manual save option and I noticed that the game would only save after specific events like when you picked up a new item or successfully sinned; which means that there are technically a pre-determined number of times the game saves.  And that is really the only negative thing I can think of about this game.  A lot of the puzzles were well thought out and there was plenty to do that kept me entertained that was not directly related to the act of sinning, and the game coming in at about 2.5-3 hours was the perfect length as there did not feel like there was any padding for padding sake.  Good thing there is another game in the same vein available immediately with another on the horizon.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

With a Step to Your Left, and a Flick to the Right

P.S.  From here on out, there will be a partially specific spoiler for a couple of the sins.  Most of the sins could be committed within a couple of steps, like talking to one character who leads you to another character where you get an item, then you go back to the original character and commit the sin.  One sin in particular required a lot more steps than any others in the game, an item that I did not know was even an item as it blended in with the rest of the back/foreground, and another object that I did not know that I could interact with.  Essentially, you had to use a jug (item I didn't know existed) and fill it up with ale (from a cask I didn't know you could interact with) and give it to a drunk guy who then walked away from you, who you were supposed to follow into a different screen to collect his urine (before he stopped urinating) to then give to a doctor as a sample who then allowed you access to three jars, one of which you were supposed to use on another character.  This was the only puzzle/sin that was this complicated.

Another puzzle (or was it the same puzzle???) required you to talk to a character and after choosing a dialogue option that distracts them (they move their head away from you), you have to drag a specific object from your item menu onto a somewhat small target before they look back, maybe fewer than five seconds.  If I were playing on a computer, this likely would not be a problem as my hand/mouse dexterity speed and skill is decent enough, but playing on the Steam Deck's touchpad, I made this attempt five or six times before getting it to work.  And that was only after four or five attempts with the wrong object and the dialogue went by too quickly for me to read to know that I was using the wrong item.

Lastly, there was another puzzle/sin that required you to have a portrait drawn by a blind painter with various dialogue options describing yourself.  If you described yourself wildly incorrect (Homunculus/ Light Hair Light Eyes/ Riding a Horse/ in full plate armor), the painter would tell you that they could tell when you are lying and they refuse to paint your portrait.  If you give them your correct description, they paint your portrait, but only once.  Had I not looked up a guide for one of the two sins I needed help on, I would not have known that I needed to use the blind painter and get him to paint someone else who was not your character even though they are lying.

But this is all just me complaining about apparently not being intelligent enough to figure out either of these puzzles as I tend to overthink things

Game EXP: This Way Madness Lies (PC)

Disclaimer:  I received a review copy of This Way Madness Lies from Robert Boyd with Zeboyd Games.  The game was given without the expectation of a positive review, only that we play the game, share that experience however our platform saw fit and create a review of this game to share on social media platforms.  Unless otherwise noted, all pictures and descriptions are from my playthrough of This Way Madness Lies.

 

This Way Madness Lies

Systems: Steam

Release Date: November 10, 2022

Publisher: Zeboyd Digital Entertainment LLC

Developer: Zeboyd Digital Entertainment LLC

Time Spent: 12 hours 26 minutes

This Way Madness Lies is a magical-girl comedic Shakepspearean JRPG from Zeboyd, the developers of Cthulhu Saves Christmas, Cthulhu Saves the World, Breath of Death VII, Cosmic Star Heroine, and Penny Arcade's On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness 3 & 4.  If you have played any of those games, then your experience here will be similar, but if you have not, then buckle up.  I will be honest though, out of the three references and styles this game derives from, I was unfamiliar with the magical-girl aspect, although I am aware of Sailor Moon and that the transformation scenes were specifically referencing that anime.  As far as Shakespeare, while I am not as versed as The Kid, I have seen a handful of Shakespeare's plays both in full form and in condensed form at Renn Faires, as well as several film adaptations over the years; Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing is probably my favorite.  So while I might not have gotten all of the questions correct during Shakespeare trivia, I did know a fair amount of the references.  And as far as JRPGs go, I mean, come on.

This Way Madness Lies follows six girls who are part of a Shakespeare drama club at their local high school, the Stratford-Upon-Avon High Drama Society, where they perform plays by William Shakespeare and in their off time, fight against the Nightmare realm from invading and destroying the continuity in Shakespeare's fictional worlds.  The premise itself is rather silly and even the characters in-game point this out, but the events happening in this game have apparently been happening for a while as the characters confront the invading Nightmare creatures with zeal they have developed before the events in this game.  There is not too much though devoted to how long these attacks on the world of Shakespeare's plays has been happening, but the impression is that it has been going on for some time as a few past adventures are mentioned throughout the game.  Similar to how Cthulhu Saves Christmas was a prequel to the first released Cthulhu Saves the World, I would not be upset about a prequel showing how Imogen and company received their powers and started upon their adventures; but that might be a few years away if at all.

The game is also very classic Zeboyd Games in that a lot of the characters are self-aware that they are characters in a video game and there is a fair amount of fourth-wall breaking.  The writing too is very much in the style of previous games from Zeboyd with witty banter between the characters, the enemy descriptions, and how the game itself interacts with the player.  In This Way Madness Lies there is the added semi-optional mechanic of offering the player a modern translation of semi-Shakespearean English during certain dialogue scenes.  Anytime there is a play being performed or a character from one of Shakespeare's worlds talking, you can, if you want, see a tongue-in-cheek translation of what is being said.  At fist I was a little meh about this mechanic as I felt that I have understood enough Shakepseare to not need a modern translation, but I should have known better because of what game I was playing.  The translation is not intended to be a direct interpretation of the dialogue, but instead is just more comedic writing.  I found it very hard not to screenshot every piece of original and translated dialogue because of how hilarious a lot of the translations ended up being.  There were even a few instances where there were no interactions between characters happening, usually while traveling through worlds between monster encounters, that I wished there was another chance to use the translator.

While This Way Madness Lies is heavily based of JRPGs of the SNES era, there are several liberties Zeboyd Games takes which essentially makes this game somewhat of a JRPG-lite.  First off, you are able to select the overall difficulty of the game upfront, from Easy ("Easy Enemies, For those who love story") up to Hard ("Hardest Enemies, For those who love mastery") and within that difficulty setting in-game, all of the enemies are visible on-screen and some battles are avoidable.  Some of these enemies require the player to time their sprints between enemies like they were Simon Belmont in Dracula's castle, or you can just run into the enemies and engage in battle.  Even outside of battle in the menu screen, you can instigate a battle against enemies found in the level to grind more than would otherwise be necessary to get through the stage.  

Unlike traditional JRPGs, there is no equipping weapons and armor here, instead you equip traits that augment each character's stats, their abilities and consumable items to use during combat.  So while there might some poo-pooing about not being abe to find and equip better gear, determining which abilities each character will have during combat and which traits might better suit the character based on who is in the party has its own levels of complexity beyond picking the most recently earned skill.  And for me, even after 12 hours and fighting every monster I came across, as well as a few self-instigated battles, there were still about 10 or so abilities that I never unlocked per character.

Because this is a Zeboyd game, items respawn after each battle to be used indefinitely, and most abilities during combat are single-use until the character defends and then their used abilities recharge/combe back.  Although when you start the game you can only equip three items, you can find backpack upgrades in treasure chests throughout the levels; some chests are semi-hidden while most are visible but take some treking and minor-maze solving to find out how to get to them.  I usually found that I would have a healing potion, a potion to cure status ailments (although I never really seemed to bother with trying to cure ailments like poison as they never had very noticeable effects, or I just was not paying as much attention as I should have been).  There were also items that could cause damage to one or groups of enemies and I found that I liked having these as options for when I did not want to use up a characters abilities or if they did not have any attacks left (only having buff or ailment causing abilities left).

Unlike a lot of previous Zeboyd games however, the enemies do not get stronger as the battle progresses, which I was happy to see not happen.  But as with earlier games, the characters fully heal and revive if they are killed at the end of each battle, which makes the fact that enemies are sometimes more difficult than your average random monster battle in a JRPG (Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest) a little bit more foregiveable.  It is also nice that leveling up happens to the entire troupe, not just who is currently with you in your party and wether or not everyone survived.  It is just nice consideration to take the player's time into account and not have to worry about all of the characters leveling unequally to the point that one character is level 45 and another character is level 37 while the game levels the monsters towards the highest or lowest level character.

While the game has six primary characters (or does it have more!?), Imogen does fill the roll as the primary main character as she is playable for the entire game while the rest of the characters will swap in and out, sometimes in story-based ways and others in contextual circumstances.  Not having full control over who is in your party is part of the reason why leveling in the game happens the way it does, as you otherwise, again, might have severely under or overpowered characters.  Although by the end of the game, I did have my favorite tactics for going into battle which lead me to having certain favorite characters.  Beatrice for instance has the Toxic Cloud ability that poisoned all of the enemies who would take poison damage on their turns although the enemies would never die from poison, instead taking them down to 1 HP.  She also had the Doom ability which caused 150% dark damage to an enemy that was already poisoned.  I personally found the poisoning ability invaluable especially once enemies got into the 3000+ HP realm as they would take 200-350 damage along with whatever damage my characters did with their own attacks.  Although for whatever reason, possibly a combination of the traits I had equipped to Beatrice (and possibly because I also had the "Unique" trait equipped to Rosalind which made her "Less likely to be targeted by enemies"), but I found that while most characters died infrequently during battle, Beatrice ended up being "killed" 10+ times in the second half of the game.

Let us talk about the music for a bit.  Joshua Queen returns to score the music, who was the composer to Zeboyd's previous game, Cthulhu Saves Christmas.  The music is great and what I would expect from Joshua Queen (I talk as if I know the guy).  There is really only one exception and that is in the first dungeon/area.  The track, "Every Rose" itself is a good song and I have nothing against the song, but just over two and a half minutes into the song, the singing starts.  Granted the track starts back over from the beginning after each battle, but if you backtrack (like I tend to do) looking for every treasure chest and possible hidden locations, you are likely to spend more than two and-a-half minutes without getting into a fight.  Having this particular song as background music felt strange, mainly because I do not remember ever playing a JRPG where there was a song with lyrics playing in a dungeon map.  I could see it being used as the music in the final dungeon battling your way to the final boss, but having it in the first dungeon area felt strange in a way that I can really only explain as off-putting.  Again, the song itself I enjoy, but I question the choice of it being used this early in the game, and there being actual singing.  Maybe I am an old curmudgeon and like my JRPG dungeon music to be instrumental, but I feel like this song could have been looped before the singing started.  But do not be surprised if in the next week or two we end up featuring a song from this soundtrack on MIDI Week Singles.

Something that I wish that was implemented in the game was a skip option whenever the characters transform from their normal going-to-school outfits into their magical-girl outfits.  Each time they transform, the game enters a cutscene that shows each girl with close-up shots as their outfits change, although there is nothing gratuitous and the animations are all very tasteful.  They just take a while as they show each of the four characters, although sometimes due to in-game circumstances there might be fewer.  But the transformation scene does take a while from beginning to end, and I do not know if this was a criticism of the Sailor Moon series or other anime where characters transform, if that was what was supposed to be referenced.  Either way, I wish that there was the option to skip this sequence after the first time through; and keep the length of the last transformation scene for impact.

One last thing that I questioned is only a little bit of a spoiler.  About halfway through the game, the main character Imogen finds herself in a petshop and you are given the choice of one of four pets to choose.  I decided to go with the goldfish mainly because of how different it was from the other fantastical options such as Neko Dragon and Unicorn.  I think I liked the idea of the goldfish maybe actually turning out to be super intelligent, but instead it seemed to be a mundane goldfish.  I cannot comment on how the story progresses for the other pets, but maybe the goldfish is just a goldfish and I should have chosen a different pet if I wanted the pet storyline to abe interesting.  To me, this storyline (for which there is an achievement) did not go anywhere, and while I do like the idea of not everything in a story having a fulfilling storyarch, I was a little disappointed that this in fact did not go anywhere.  Maybe on a future playthrough I will choose the Neko Dragon.

The Steam page for This Way Madness Lies suggests that the game is playable in between 5-10 hours and if you look up at the top, you will see that it took me almost 12 and-a-half hours.  Although I tend to take longer just because of the way I play apparently, reading all of the dialogue, fighting all of the monsters and instigating a couple of fights on my own.  Plus I tended to go into the menu to look over the Items, Abilities, and Traits any time I gained new ones.  Additionally, entering new areas and fighting new monsters with differing weaknesses might require me to go in and more things around to make the characters in my party more efficient.  But even playing at two hours longer than what Zeboyds sees as a full playthrough, I loved that the game is as long (or as short) as it is, and something that I love about Zeboyd games in general.  You get a similar experience to playing a 50+ SNES era JRPG in a quarter of the time and I do not feel like I missed out on anything based on the story that was being told here.  Sure there were references to past events and hints at what could be a sequel (crossing fingers for that and a prequel), but that just helps to make the world feel already lived in and established.

I believe that This Way Madness Lies accomplished what it set out to do, to deliver a short and sweet JRPG, this one of the magical-girl type set in a Shakespearean universe with the obligatory Cthulhu mythos and SNES-era references in the storytelling, monster design, and overall amazing sense of humor.  The writing is again top notch and what you would come to expect from Zeboyd and I am eagerly awaiting either another game in the same universe or their next original game.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Instrumental

Emulator Hour: Daze Before Christmas (SMD)

 

Since Christmas Day landed on a Friday this year, and since I have Thursday and Friday off, I thought I would play a Christmas oriented game for today's article.  Believe it or not, there are not a lot of games that are explicitly centered around Christmas, while some games do have side quests or characters from Christmas lore, not many revolve around this wintry holiday.  There are even fewer that have to do with Hanukkah or Kwanzaa, let alone any that have anything to do with Boxing Day.  When I was looking up Christmas games, Daze Before Christmas had come up, but I had written it off as it was released in 1994 for the SEGA Mega Drive system and since I never owned any SEGA systems, I continued my search.  Then I stumbled across RetroGames.cz and through their in-browser emulator and existing library, I was able to play Daze Before Christmas.  Daze Before Christmas was originally released exclusively in Australia on SEGA's Mega Drive, then ported to the SNES, but only in Australia and Europe, hence why I had never heard of this game before I started the concept of this article late last week.

Daze Before Christmas is the story of Santa Claus who was attacked in the days leading up to Christmas by Evil Frosty the Snowman (or just Evil Snowman) and several other unmentionable types, through a magic spell cast upon all of the presents that would be delivered as well as kidnapping and hiding away all of the elves.  And then there is Anti-Santa, whom Santa turns into...when he drinks tea?  Maybe there is a bit of whiskey in Santa's tea as I am not familiar with any lore/mythology regarding Santa and tea, but what Anti-Santa looks like is a cross between Krampus (in that Krampus is the counterpart to Santa, not the anthropomorphic goat demon) and an Oni sporting red skin, horns, and a blue Santa-styled outfit.  I had to look up on my own what the benefits were of turning into Anti-Santa as there was no manual (that I could find) on RetroGames.  But saving Christmas is the premise and since you are the one and only Santa Claus, it is up to you to make sure that all of the presents are delivered on time to all of the nice children throughout the world.

Maybe because it was only the first stage, but Santa's Hallway seemed light on just about everything.  The platforming consisted of walking downstairs and jumping to slightly further away platforms, opening presents, collecting presents, rescuing (the strangest looking) Elves, and hitting enemy rats/mice with a blast of cold air.  There was also a wall-creature-thing that I think you had to be Anti-Santa to get past, but as I was still figuring out the game and mechanics as I was playing, I did not make the connection until a few minutes ago when I found out that Anti-Santa is invincible (only to enemies, or to spikes as well as I assume he is still susceptible to falling into pits?) and this wall would just bat regular Santa away.  So the first area was painfully easy, but that did not bother me too much as I was using my keyboard for controls, which I know I have been against in the past, using a keyboard for platforming games, but the WASD set up has been pretty intuitive so far, but do not be surprised for me to use this as an excuse later on.

After finishing one level by collecting the end-of-stage Star, you move on to what I thought was some type of world/game board looking map that had you start in the bottom left and you would make your way through the 24 stages to reach the final boss and the end of the game.  For Stage 2, you jumped around this board and I must admit that it took me far too long to recognize that what I was actually looking at as not a map/board, but an advent calendar, which is pretty cool in concept, but because you do not actually move a cursor to select the correct stage, it is a little anti-climactic, but I still love the idea of using an advent calendar as the game map and that it does make sense that there would be 24 levels in the game, which also includes boss levels.  Some boss levels contain a short lead up to the boss fight, while the most recent boss fight I finished was a very long (long for this game) stage consisting of what could have been three earlier stages before fighting the boss.

For the most part, levels are paced relatively well, again, with the recent exception of Stage 17 never coming across as too difficult or too long (Stage 17!).

Something that I have found that I love and is quite impressive here, is that before each stage, there is a piece of artwork detailing some aspect of the stage, often with an amusing depiction of Santa in an exaggerated situation.  The artwork in these in-between scenes seems very detailed considering that they are used only once with some stages lasting only a few minutes, seems like a lot of time to spend on something that you can skip with the press of a button.  This makes me wonder if the story, concept, and art for this game were taken either from a children's book or from some other pre-existing source material.  

And then my time playing Daze Before Christmas came to a screeching halt, which I am going to blame on RetroGames.  In the game after each boss encounter, you play a side-scrolling shooter of  sort.  You take control of Santa in his sleigh being pulled four reindeer above the buildings and houses of a particular city/country and while avoiding other flying objects, you have to deposit presents down chimneys; possibly because Santa is on a time crunch after having to deal with the Cold and Evil Snowman's plan to overtake Christmas... or something, it was never made clear why, just that it is.  And in the case of flying over Russia, you are forced to avoid some large, crudely constructed satellites because Sputnik.  In London, you avoid hot air balloons, in Japan, it is, I think, paper kites and some dog with a jet pack, probably because Japan.

After completing Japan (and after all of the other flying and depositing presents sequences) you are taken to a password screen and then you are supposed to move on from there by pressing the Start button, or whatever keyboard key you have mapped to be the Start button; I had the Tab button mapped to Start for the ease of being able to quickly hit it with my pinky if I needed to quickly pause.  Well, that stopped working.  Somehow.  I have tried uploading a previous save file (right after beating Japan) but I still cannot get past the password screen.  I even tried reloading the page and mapping Start to another key that would make sense to me, but nothing seems to be working.  If I am unable to get the website to accept any press of a Start button, I may have to stop my progress here, and I am actually kind of okay with that despite being surprised at how the game plays.

Daze Before Christmas is not the most difficult game and at times it is just plain easy.  Enemies are easy to spot and apart from the bosses, they all take one hit to kill.  Only Stage 17 gave me pause and a few moments of panic as I could not remember when I last came across a bell (checkpoint), some of which are hidden in presents, and I was hit by some environmental hazards more than a few times.  Most of the time I took damage or died because I could not see where I was landing mid-jump.  Some of the music is catchy and it really takes shape and, at least for me, is the most interesting when it plays on a variation of existing Christmas music, such as "Jingle Bells" in the first stage.  If you have a Mega Drive system or an SNES capable of playing European or Australian cartridges, I could see this game being an annual tradition as it very well could be played and beaten in a single sitting, it is a pretty fun game despite Stage 17.  Or you could just play it over on RetroGames, but only if I can figure out why Start does not want to seem to work for me.

Now I know what I'll be asking for for Christmas next year.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

"Burn in HELL stupid Evil Snowman!

Previously on Braindead (TV series)

Over Christmas Break, Jane and I went to visit my Mom in the great state of Oregon.  When we visit my mom, we usually end up watching a lot of TV, and this time, Mom was raving about a show called 'BrainDead.'  She'd mentioned it over email, and I have to admit that it didn't sound very interesting.  Idunno, the title just didn't grab me, and the setting of Washington DC during the recent election campaign really turned me off.  In fact, the reports are that this was the thing that ultimately killed the show-- election burnout.  

It's too bad, because the show is actually fantastic, and has little to nothing to do with the recent election.  Mary Elizabeth Winestead is a great leading lady, I really enjoyed her in 34 Cloverfield Lane, and I would be down to watch her in anything else.  Tony Shaloub also gives an amazing performance, vastly different from his long runs as Monk or his role in Wings.  Additionally, the entire supporting cast is fantastic, and there are several walk-on characters that light up the episodes they appear in.  The show is generally very funny, but the arc is also gripping. 

Alright, I'll finish up with a brief plot summary and a hearty endorsement.  Which includes mild spoilers, but I won't reveal anything past the first episode.   The story is basically a Washington Dramedy combined with Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Space bugs get into people's brains and change their behavior, which creates chaos in Congress.  Given that sci fi is a really big genre these days, I haven't really seen the Invasion of the Body Snatchers trope used too much.  I really like it.  It works for a great unfolding plot over the series 13 episodes.  

Jane and I have watched through episode 11, so we don't know if the show wraps itself up at the end.  If it doesn't, I really hope another network picks the show up for a second season.  Not since Galavant's cancellation after 2 seasons, have a wanted an 'act of congress' to renew a TV show.  I highly recommend season 1 of Braindead.

#MoreGalavant #MoreBraindead   

-D

 
P.S.  I would be remiss if I didn't mention the delightful song stylings of Jonathan Coulton for the backwraps/theme song of the show.  You should definitely watch through the beginning of episode 2 in your first viewing.