First Impressions: Goldenheart (VSD)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Goldenheart 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.]

Goldenheart
Systems: Windows, Steam OS
Release Date: November 19, 2024
Publisher: MAVC
Developer: Millenniapede
Time Spent: 5.9 Hours
Playthrough Videos on YouTube

Before I started Goldenheart, I had read people describing the game as either a return to The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind or even a first-person Legend of Zelda akin to The Ocarina of Time, and honestly, I don't see either of those comparisons.  The in-game description of the combat difficulty can be switched between Story (easy), Normal (normal), and Souls (hard), presumably because the combat is more punishing, like a Souls-like game, but I don't think that's a valid comparison either.  Goldenheart is a first-person adventure and exploration game with combat that takes a stamina bar into account.  There are no standard RPG elements, such as leveling up, although you can find hidden gems that increase your HP by 1 scattered throughout the world.  Weapons are only acquired at context-sensitive moments, and the only incentive to kill enemies is to chance either a health or an arrow drop since there isn't any kind of EXP.  One of the biggest differences between Goldenheart and most other action/adventure RPGs from the early 2000s, and the reason why I had to stop playing, was that I realized that Goldenheart came across to me as an NES-era adventure game built in an early 2000s retro-style-engine but ignoring one of the most important advancements adventure games had made in the last 30 years, a manual save feature.

Now, I don't hate Goldenheart, and I wouldn't even say that I dislike the game.  There's a lot that I like here, despite having to change the aspect ratio every time I turn the game on.  I like that the story is intentionally vague at the start, when your troupe/band/group is waylaid by an increasing amount of monsters on the road between villages.  It's never made clear what your character brings to the group that you're in, although possibly because you're chosen to try and find a way through, maybe you're one of the few who are somewhat experienced with weapons, although you do require training from another member of your group prior to heading out into the world to look for Marren, another member of your group, and to ultimately find out what's going on in the world during which you uncover more expansive world-building lore involving an ageless warrior named Cazanseco who hermited himself away in a tower to further study life-extending magics and who is likely somehow connected to the evils that the world/area/region is now experiencing.

As I rewatched all of the videos I had recorded of my time playing Goldenheart, it made me a little sad that I felt as frustrated as I had, and all of that frustration was centered around the saving mechanic.  Saving in Goldenheart can only be done by reaching checkpoints.  This is a problem for several reasons, the biggest of which is that to me, it discourages exploration and experimentation.  When you have save points relegated to unknown checkpoints, it feels like the game is purposefully being hard for the sake of being hard, but not in the good way that Souls games or even Super Mario Bros. can be hard.  It's being hard in the cheap way that NES-hard games will use gotcha-moments or purposefully obscure enemies in the background with foreground elements.  The best way I can describe how saving in Goldenheart works is that feeling you get playing Neverwinter Nights, Morrowind, or Resident Evil (the original or the GameCube remake), or any adventure game that doesn't have autosave, and you die after not having saved for the last 20 minutes.  By limiting saves to only at checkpoints, Goldenheart has artificially recreated that feeling of realizing that you haven't saved and that you're going to need to repeat the last 20 minutes.  That feeling of self-loathing for forgetting to pull open the menu and clicking a button, taking all of a couple of seconds because you got caught up in the story and action, is a horrible feeling.

I do have a solution, and a rather simple one at that, too, because I'm not about to criticize (this time) a core game mechanic without offering some kind of a solution.  Scattered throughout various areas of the game are wells that exude a purply-pink mist that heals the player to full HP when they come in contact with one; coincidentally, this is the same substance that has kept Cazanseco alive when everyone else around him died.  Had these wells also functioned as a place to save the game along with the checkpoint saving feature, this would make exploring the game so much more tolerable.  Giving some agency back to the player is what I feel this game would need to make it just that much more accessible and playable.  This way, there is still some level of player choice when it comes to saving and you prevent the player from save-scumming through some of the more difficult areas.

I decided to stop playing after dying in a challenging area that contained constantly respawning enemies (both melee and ranged), and multiple color-coded locked doors.  Maybe the lack of desire to continue also had to do with dying while in a conversation that I couldn't stop, which put me back 12 minutes, which I know isn't a lot when I write it out loud.  And while I did make it back to the same area 3 1/2 minutes later (because I avoided all of the enemies I knew I didn't have to kill, it was a hard death to take.  But that death left me feeling deflated, so when I died in the maze, I dreaded the thought of having to go back through this area, not being able to avoid the respawning enemies and finding the key(s) all over again.  I just didn't have it in me.  And so I exited back to the main menu.

It's not a great feeling when you feel that you've been enjoying a game only to realize that one of the core mechanics is something that has tainted an otherwise well-constructed game.  I feel sad that I'll likely not find out what happened to Jaconian's troupe, whom he left back in Histahnia Village, or how Cazanseco and his search for eternal youth has affected the world and the monsters or if it's just as simple as bad guy with bad mutant monsters; I get the feeling it's not that simple though.  Maybe I'll just watch someone else's playthrough from where mine left off.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
The Stars are Shining with Consense

Demo Time: Ayasa: Shadows of Silence Demo (VSD)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Ayasa: Shadows of Silence Demo 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.] 

Ayasa: Shadows of Silence Demo
Systems: Windows, Steam OS
Release Date: December 21, 2024
Publisher: Aya Games
Developer: Aya Games
Time Spent: 58 Minutes
Playthrough Video on YouTube

The shortest way to describe Ayasa: Shadows of Silence is a mix between LIMBO and Little Nightmares but with significantly looser controls and at times all with a very confusing depth perspective.

The game starts out in an oddly visceral pan through a serene forest, follows a butterfly through acrid pink smoke past the rotting corpse of an elephant to reveal a clear-cut forest on the outskirts of a large upwardly constructed city right as an air raid siren blares and a nuclear bomb is detonated in the heart of the city while an army of naked, eyeless and grinning humanoid marches on the said city.  A lot is going on in this opening, all happening in fewer than 30 seconds.  I don't know what it all means.  The game then opens as the camera pulls back from a young girl, who we'll call Ayasa because it seems like a name and I can't find anywhere on the Steam store page that says it isn't the name of the character, as she wakes up, presumably immediately after the bomb went off in the opening.  It certainly is an impactful opening, to say the least.

Once the game started, I moved the graphical settings down from High to Medium since the game was maxing out at around 22 fps on High, and around 45-55 on Medium.  I kept these settings throughout the rest of the game as it seemed to run fine and needed no further alteration.

Then at about 4:08, the chase began as the left side of the screen filled with purple and black smoke as withered grasping hands emerged from the encroaching storm.  And then I ran off the cliff and died.  I respawned back at the beginning of the stage, forced to watch as Ayasa once again woke up next to the wooden crate.  What was a little frustrating was having to sit through this 21-second sequence (I timed it) before you could start running towards the right side of the screen hoping to get maybe a split-second headstart on the cloud of hands.  And then I ran off the narrow plank bridge.  And then I waited another 21 seconds before I could take control of Ayasa again.  In total, I died four times trying to get across the bridge, which isn't too bad, but at the same time, it does feel a little excessive considering this is the first seconds of the game.

Because this is only a demo, I felt like nothing I did made any kind of sense.  There were areas with large sentient plants that looked like something out of Alice in Wonderland, there were giant ROUSs, there were the naked smiling creatures, and again, there was the purple and black pulsating cloud of flailing arms.  Everything seemed to be after Ayasa and everything was a one-hit kill.  Thankfully though, unlike the very beginning of the game, there was never again a requisite 20-second unskippable cutscene upon respawning, because the section in the burning village would have been more of an absolute nightmare than it already was; because who enjoys dying 15 times in just as many minutes if they're not playing Celeste?

Once the Ayasa makes it inside a few of the buildings in this burning village, the game truly feels influenced by Little Nightmares, although there isn't a lot here before the demo ends.  There are some building interiors and just as much crawling through tunnels and ducts before you reach the penultimate room, but that is about as close as a comparison as I can make.  The camera angles are similar, but the structure of the rooms feels more normal and less fantastical than the oversized proportions of the rooms in the Maw.  The penultimate building was interestingly designed in that you start in a foyer and have the choice of an anteroom that one of the naked creatures inhabits, but that is a dead-end room, which is only revealed after you reach the door and discover that you can't open it.  Or a flight of stairs that leads to a large open room where a massive floating eye scans the room with a red light that incinerates any organic flesh it touches.  The exit is a well-hidden hole in the wall on the second floor, but because both of these rooms contain easily triggered one-hit-kill enemies, it can be very easy to become frustrated and lost.  But once you find the hole in the wall and fall through to the room below, the demo abruptly ends.

I don't know how to feel about the Ayasa: Shadows of Silence Demo.  On one hand, I like the art style and I like the homages that the game is pulling from without feeling like it's trying to be either LIMBO or Little Nightmares, at least from what is present here in the demo.  I don't like how floaty the controls feel, especially when you're trying to run over a narrow bridge followed by a non-skippable 21-second intro scene.  I also really hated that sequence in the burning village where I died 15 times, but maybe that's just on me?  I feel like I'm partially curious about who and what the naked smiling creatures are as well as the giant eye and how they're all related to the nuclear explosion at the beginning of the game, but I'm not so curious that I would buy the game on day 1.  I'd probably wait until it's been out for a few years and maybe pick it up during a future Steam sale or if it's included in a Humble Bundle.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

Game EXP: DeathOmen (VSD)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for DeathOmen 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.] 

DeathOmen

Systems: Windows, Steam OS

Release Date: February 5, 2025

Publisher: CreativeForge Games

Developer: Jeff Winner

Time Spent: 2.8 Hours
Playthrough Video Playlist on YouTube

DeathOmen is an atmospheric-horror walking sim that builds tension through interspersed jump-scares with some questionable mechanics.

The game starts with your character waking in a darkened room with a laptop.  The laptop seems to be a central hub for cameras placed throughout the house, twelve in all, and one particular room where a woman lays awake on her bed unmoving.  There is also a strangely designed storefront where you can buy a hot dog, medication, or a flashlight.  This storefront is one of the more clunky aspects of the game and what looks like AI-generated artwork for the icons doesn't really fit thematically with the rest of the game.  These same icons pop up again once you enter the code to leave your room and step out into the hallway when the game tells you that you're hungry and should eat sometime, presumably a hot dog purchased from an online marketplace.

I then spent the next 32 minutes trying to figure out what the game wanted me to do.  I explored the explorable house with a handful of doors being locked without a "This door requires a key" notification, which was actually nice because that told me that I didn't need to worry about trying to open that door.  There was another keypad on a door downstairs that I figured out after reading an apparent letter to myself.  The first half, being the last 16 minutes of our first video was actually quite tense as I was fully expecting something to jump out at me or to find something happening on the cameras via the laptop upstairs.  By the end of the first video, the first 22 minutes, I felt mostly engaged, but when I quit, it was because I didn't know what else I was supposed to do.  In the second video, all 16 minutes, there was close to no feeling of dread or wondering what was going to happen because it was essentially just a repeat of the last half of the first video.  Wandering around the house trying to figure out what to do.  It was only after reading the Steam Forums and watching a walkthrough video from Zhain Gaming, did I discover that what I was missing was an annoyingly placed USB drive hidden behind a book on the bookcase in the downstairs office.

I genuinely don't understand this design decision.  There's no reason that I can understand to keep the USB drive so secretly hidden from the player since this is essentially what ends up propelling the game forward through to the end of the game; I think it was supposed to have been the player character who was the one that "hid" the USB drive in the first place.  The developer even acknowledges that the USB drive is often a difficulty wall that has come up with other players.  

Once you have the USB drive, it gives you access to the laptop on the desk in the office which has a similar interface to the laptop upstairs, but instead has access to a different series of cameras.  I can only assume that this is your character's regular job as an offsite video surveillance specialist as you acquire $1 every time you click to the next camera in sequential order; although I don't know how you're supposed to "report" anomalies like the paper on the fridge states.  Like the USB drive, acquiring money to make purchases from the online marketplace is a form of gating off the player from the next section of the game, requiring you to purchase an item upstairs and then travel down to the front door where the item is immediately delivered and dropped off on the table just inside the front door.  At one point I did try to buy the flashlight because I had the money, but the game told me that I didn't need the flashlight yet so I couldn't buy it; until a few minutes later when I needed to go into the basement and the game told me that I should buy a flashlight before going into the basement.

The remainder of the game is a series of tasks, requiring you to return to various rooms in the house to pick up items before the game tells you that your character is tired and should return to bed for the night.  While exploring the house and returning to rooms to collect items is when all of the jump scares happen and I do admit that most of them are very well timed, never giving you long enough to look at what it is that's scaring you for you to develop a clear image of who and what is doing the scaring.  When there is a static-induced jump scare, there is a slight chance that it will trigger a countdown timer with a classic "mental trauma" icon and the first time it happens the game prompts you to take your medication.  So then you must return to the office to click through cameras to earn at least $30, after which you return to your laptop upstairs to buy the meds which are then delivered back downstairs by the front door.  Thankfully, and oddly enough, you are given 10 doses of your medication and there were only three or four instances in the rest of the game that required you to take your medication; in a separate playthrough I watched what happened when the timer reached zero and it's just an instakill screen with "Fatal Panic Attack" blazoned across the screen in bright yellow text.

Throughout my entire playthrough on the Steam Deck, the only issue I ran into was that I couldn't invert the y-axis natively, but I was able to invert the touchpad in the Steam Deck controller settings, similar to what I had to do with Hell Dive.  This meant that the touchpad was always inverted, making navigating any menu with the cursor a little awkward, but manageable; significantly more so than had I had to play the game with standard y-axis controls.  I didn't change any of the graphical settings and the game ran anywhere between 30-52 fps.

Overall, I found DeathOmen to be a mixed bag in the best way possible.  The story was a little convoluted in both its telling and its final explanation for why all of the events were happening the way that they were.  The purpose of the two laptops with their multiple cameras felt more like a mechanic whose sole purpose was to require the player to perform an action to trigger an event to progress the game without it feeling well integrated with the rest of the story.  And the atrociousness of the online store and the USB drive.  But once you acquired the USB drive and the rest of the game progressed at a reasonable rate.  The jump scares were well timed and paced so that there was a feeling of dread as you walked through the house, constantly wondering if you did actually close that door or when that door opened and by whom.  DeathOmen also didn't overstay its welcome taking me a little over an hour once I located the USB drive (although I probably could've saved some time had I remembered that there was a spare fuse for the electrical panel in the nightstand).  Good tension and jumpscares hampered by a mediocre story and occasionally confounding mechanics.  Take that how you will.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
I Don't Want To Die Alone

First Impressions: Grimm's Folly (VSD)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Grimm's Folly 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.]

Grimm's Folly

Systems: Windows, Steam OS

Release Date: March 14, 2025

Publisher: Gray Days Entertainment

Developer: Gray Days Entertainment

Time Spent: 86 Minutes

Grimm's Folly started out somewhat promising, with a series of environmental puzzles offered in both first and third person perspectives, along with an oddly placed time trial racing mode that I had yet to determine its significance on the larger whole of the story.  You play as the character of Alex, who has been mysteriously taken into a realm called the Mind Palace by an unknown entity in an apparent swapping of matter, along with a hyper-intelligent crow who seems to know more about this place than your character.  As you play, you primarily control Alex in a first-person perspective, but at will, you're able to switch over to play as the crow who waits for you at your next puzzle location.  As the crow, you're able to fly around the playable area and, for reasons yet undiscovered, engage in a timed race mode where you fly through golden rings as fast as possible.  As you uncover puzzles and different enclosed locations in this Mind Palace, which includes unoccupied but fully furnished buildings, you uncover more and more of the lore behind this place, your captivity, and, I presume, a way to escape.

Now, the game is longer than the 86 minutes I played, but I encountered on two separate occasions glitches with the camera controls.  Playing on the Steam Deck, I didn't need to do any controller/button remapping on the back end, and the game natively offers inverted y-axis toggling, so that was a nice change of pace.  The first time something strange happened was at about 14:00 when I was searching through the school/library building.  At that moment, the game took control of the camera to focus the player's attention on the crow that was sitting on the telescope as well as the journal on the table.  After this integrated cutscene, I was not able to look down, which you can tell as the camera shakes every time I pressed the joystick up.  I thought maybe if I changed perspectives to the crow, be it by taking control or playing the time trial, it might reset the camera, but apparently, only saving and quitting was able to fix the problem.

The second time occurred when I started our third video and discovered that the Look Sensitivity setting was all wonky.  I tried moving the sensitivity around to different settings, but even that had my turning at an excruciatingly slow pace.  The biggest change I was able to make was by reducing the Look Sensitivity to effectively zero, saving and quitting, then starting back up and increasing the setting to max, but again, that still made the game unplayable.  My only other option would be to start up a new game and hope that this problem is fixed, but the thought of starting over, even as early as I feel like I am in the game, is not something that I'm eager to do.  The two possible outcomes from this are either that this will fix the problem and I start from the beginning or that the sensitivity is still not working correctly and the game auto-saved over my only save file.  So again, I'm not enticed either way.

It's all rather a shame because I thought the dual mechanic of controlling a crow and a human could have been intriguing, even if the time trial came across as a bit silly and out of place.  I liked being able to swap over to the crow when I wasn't sure where I was supposed to go and could look around (as the crow) to get my bearings.  I was interested in knowing more about the crow as well as how and why the crow couldn't see the player character even when they were standing right in front of each other.  Was that a purposeful choice narratively, or was it due to developer limitations?  Maybe both?

So this is where our journey with Grimm's Folly ends.  Sadly glitched/bugged out of the energy and gusto to continue or, at the very least, to find out what happens if I restart the game, which isn't a particularly great feeling to have.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

P.S. Our incomplete playlist over YouTube.

First Impressions: The Voidness - LIDAR Survival Horror Game (PC)

 [Disclaimer:  I received a review key for The Voidness - LIDAR Survival 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.] 

The Voidness - LIDAR Survival Horror Game
Systems: Windows, Steam OS
Release Date: October 30, 2023
Publisher: Steelkrill Studio
Developer: Steelkrill Studio
Time Spent: 72 Minutes

Well, apologies to Steelkrill Studio for not being able to finish their game.  I tried, but I know from how I feel after only playing these 72 minutes that this is not the kind of game that I would be able to finish and say that I ultimately enjoyed.  I like the concept, but there are a couple of mechanics that hamper some of the current, as well as potential future enjoyment.  We have a playlist up on YouTube of my shortened time playing the game which we'll get into below.

The gist of the game is that you play a former astronomer who wakes up in an empty space station on a newly discovered planet and is unable to locate her fellow crew members. An anomalous space referred to as The Void on the planet is the likely culprit.  In an environment where all light ceases to exist, you set out to find any remaining crew members and contain The Void.  That on its own is a great premise that I could get behind.  But then we have to get down to the nitty gritty and ultimately why I had to pass on this game after only 72 minutes.

First off, the controls.  You're not able to invert the y-axis, and as I was playing this on my laptop, I wasn't able to make use of the Steam Deck's wonderfully robust control customization options.  I first thought that I could play through the game without inverted y-axis controls, but once I entered the Void and had to navigate by LIDAR, it became more difficult to navigate and easier to become disoriented.  Secondly, there is a whistle mechanic, which makes sense at the beginning of the game, but as you're in the Void and there are multiple times where you're prompted to be as quiet as possible, having a whistle mechanic doesn't make a lot of sense.  What's even worse is that whistling is mapped to the space bar.  Jump is also mapped to the space bar, but you can't detangle whistling and jumping, so any time you want to jump, you have to whistle first and then quickly press the spacebar again to initiate a jump.  I did try remapping the Jump to X, but pressing X still made my character whistle and then jump.

Last is the saving mechanic.  I probably should have picked up on this, as Steelkrill seems to use the same saving mechanic in another game of theirs I played, Baby Blues: Nightmare Horror Game, but you're only able to save at a save location once.  I get the desire to make saving something to cherish and feel relieved about, and it's easier to come to terms with when you're in a world of darkness lit only temporarily by your LIDAR device.  I feel it also doesn't make any sense story-wise, either.  When you find a computer terminal, you're able to save, but only once.  Maybe if I had saved back in the station and the computer either froze or fried, it would make sense that you can't use it again, but in the Void, there was no such indication that anything bad happened to this terminal, being able to save only once, especially this early in the stage after the game automatically saves, just feels like bad placement.  Having the save terminal at the end of the flooded hallway before you have to double back would make more sense.

After dying twice (yes, I know, only twice), I knew that this was going to play a bigger part in my enjoyment of the game, especially once the game introduced the hunting enemy mechanic that I actually died to my second time playing.  I liked the story, I liked the general aesthetic, and I liked the LIDAR mechanic, but the combination of the controls and the save mechanic was where I felt like I couldn't continue anymore.  I wanted to enjoy The Voidness - LIDAR Survival Horror Game, but in the end, I couldn't figure out how best to hold on to it.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
She Neither Hears Nor Sees

Demo Time: HELLBREAK (VSD)

 [Disclaimer:  I received a review key for HELLBREAK 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.] 

HELLBREAK
Systems: Windows, Steam OS
Release Date: April 2025
Publisher: Biotech Gameworks, Double Barrel Games
Developer: Double Barrel Games
Time Spent: 64 Minutes

The best way I can describe HELLBREAK is that it's a budget DOOM arena horde mode rogue-lite.  What I mean by all of that is this:

• The monster design looks very similar to the creatures in DOOM (2016), down to the first enemy that throws projectiles, which are also called Imps and have slightly elongated heads.
• Hell (heh), even the HELLBREAK cover art is a direct homage to the original Doom cover.
• You play in a literal arena where enemies endlessly spawn in until you either die or you kill the boss (I assume there's a boss as I've seen them in screenshots, but I personally never lasted longer than 5 minutes)
• You can unlock permanent upgrades like access to new weapons, or a bonus to health drops, but only after you complete specific tasks, some must be completed in a single round, while others are cumulative.
• During the game, you earn blessings that modify your current session, such as "Gain 2% movement for each enemy in a 5 meter radius" or "Your max health is reduced by 20%, but you regenerate 1 health per 25 meters you move," which resets every session.

We have a playlist up on YouTube here to watch gameplay and menu toggling for the 64 minutes I played.

That's really all I was able to figure out during my two sessions with the game.  I had access to two different arenas that were different enough from each other that they didn't feel like reskins.  I can understand the appeal of HELLBREAK with the mechanics, unlocking additional abilities, weapons, and arenas, but the game just didn't click with me even though I enjoyed a lot of what I played.  Maybe the progression wasn't significant enough, or the challenges were just too grindy to feel like I was making any kind of headway after each match.  Or maybe I'm just not good at arena horde mode shooters, which is also a very real possibility.

I don't think that HELLBREAK is a bad game by any measure; it's just not something that I would see myself coming back to time and time again.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
How Far You Are From Home

Game EXP: S4U: CityPunk 2011 and Love Punch (PC)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for S4U: CityPunk 2011 and Love Punch 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.]

S4U CityPunk 2011 and Love Punch

Systems: Windows

Release Date: January 8, 2025

Publisher: GCORES PUBLISHING

Developer: U0U Games

Time Spent: 6 Hours 42 Minutes

Wow.  Just, wow.  Really.

I don't think I've ever played a game like S4U: CityPunk 2011 and Love Punch (just S4U from now on).  From what I could tell as the credits of the game were rolling, I didn't do particularly well in my decision-making while interacting with characters, or in my "side job" of trying to help people online with their problems, or in my job as an architect.  I didn't really develop any relationships for the character of Miki, either online or in her real life.  I didn't really do well overall, and by all accounts, I'm pretty sure I got the "bad" ending, but even after all of my failures, I felt that I reached a conclusion that wasn't "You suck at life, please try again."  There was an end to this phase of Miki's life, and seeing her through that and seeing that U0U Games had a thoughtful end even when performing as poorly as I did (or at least, as bad as I felt I did) still gave me a kick in the feels.

The pretext of S4U is that you're Miki as she looks back on her computer and wants to open up a password-locked photo album but can't remember the password.  To recover the password, she opens up what is essentially a screen recorder program called Magic Player.  When you open the Magic Player, you start a new game where you play through Miki's past from three months ago.  The majority of the game is played as an interactive visual novel where you use your real-life keyboard to type out pre-generated responses in chat windows while communicating with co-workers, clients, and family.  There are also a couple of mini-game-type activities integrated into the narrative that feel well thought out and not immersion-breaking.  It's a class in multi-tasking and keeping track of conversations and appropriate responses based on who you're talking to since, at times, you're allowed a choice of responses, some of which are time-sensitive.

The story takes place in a fictional 2011 set between June 17th and July 6th, over nine playable days.  Each playable day is structured in a similar way.  Miki logs onto her computer and engages with customers who hire her either directly or through her "handler," Nil, as an "online mouthpiece" for people to help them with whatever their situation is that they're willing to pay for.  One person might need help trying to figure out if their significant other is cheating on them.  Another person might need help establishing a professional-level contact.  Another person might need help tracking down a colleague who has been missing for three days and risks their own job if they're not found.  Over the course of the game, you find out that your clients are not always forthcoming with all of the relevant and necessary information, so you have to wing it and try to guess how they might respond.  This is where I really faltered throughout the game and I can't blame any of it on localization issues, of which there were some, but ones I only noticed while rewatching my playthrough.  

I don't know what can be deciphered from my apparent lack of how to respond as a character pretending to be someone else while trying to elicit information or get clients to respond in a specific way that ends up with Miki earning an income outside of her architectural job.  I know as a real person, I'm not already great with small talk, which might not apply here, but it could also be applicable, and I don't actively engage in online forums (Reddit, Discord) with any regular gusto.  But that could really only apply to situations where Miki is offered multiple responses when trying to express how the player is feeling while also attempting to interpret how the character of Miki is feeling while also guessing how the person that Miki is currently being an online mouthpiece for would respond in any particular situation.  Maybe it's not as complex as I'm making it out to be, but at times, it really felt that complex in the heat of the moment.

As I briefly mentioned, I can't chalk up any of my failings to anything to do with the localization of the game from its original Japanese to English.  I can only imagine how much of the original game was filled with both regional and national colloquialisms that would have a hard time being translated into any language.  There were also several grammatical and syntax errors, but again, I really only noticed those while rewatching my playthrough.  There wasn't anything serious that made me feel that an error in translation was holding me back or leading me down the wrong dialogue tree.  I think it's probably related to the Transposed Letter Effect and not immediately noticing grammatical errors while not actively looking for them.

That being said, I wasn't always able to follow the subplot of the whole Cyber-Life and TT thing.  I got that there was something about a larger corporation(s) and regular civilians and online people, and maybe Internet-based consciousness.  There was stuff interspersed throughout about AI-generated content and the effects that has on different aspects of everyday life, which, while not really applicable in 2011, felt very pointed in 2025, but that can be forgiven since it's a fictional 2011.  There were articles on the Tico newsfeed that I would try to read and place within the larger world building context of the story but I know there was a lot that went over my head either because I failed to make any connections between the jobs Miki was doing, the role that Nil and/or Pi played in both the micro and macro telling of Miki's story, or that I just let something slip while glancing over the newsfeed while catching up on client interactions.

But again, despite feeling lost for sections of the game and story and overall feeling like I didn't really "do very well" overall, I felt that this story impacted me a lot more than I had thought going into the game.  During the phone conversation with Miki's mom at the end telling her that she wanted to visit with Miki's sister Daisy and that she wanted to buy her a computer costing 10,000 (which was significantly more than I was every able to make), after being laid off from her architectural job felt more like a loving emotional gut punch than the mom holding anything over Miki.  The way I interpreted that interaction, there was nothing but love and caring behind her actions.  Sure, there was the constant mistake of her Mom referring to Miki still being in college (in her dorm, unless I misunderstood something), but none of this interaction came across as holding anything over Miki's head or flaunting wealth.

There's plenty more I could talk about in regard to the gameplay, mechanics, mini-games, how I played, and the amazing work of the sound team.  A lot of this will reference videos and elements that you can watch from our playlist over on YouTube.  So, let's quickly bullet point this.

• Loved typing on a virtual keyboard with my real keyboard, partly because my laptop has a latex key cover over chiclet-style keys.
• I loved having different responses.  I loved that this carried over to both in-person conversations and interfamily text messages.
• I loved that there were mini-games like the architecture sketching program and the loading bar.  I'm sure there were others that I wasn't able to unlock due to choices and decisions I made.
• I loved that there was a board that I feel would have been filled up to the left of the computer had I completed more of the interpersonal side quests.
• I loved the sound of the keyboard, and even the vending machine sounds were all very satisfying.  Even the music was soothing and fitting for this style of game.  I'm sure that I could've expanded Miki's collection of music had I not been so focused on trying to save money.

I don't know if I'll immediately go back and replay this game, seeing as how it felt like there were a lot of branching paths that were based on decisions and replies I made, some in the moment and some more thought-out than others.  I feel like I would need a flowchart of all the responses I type,d and that's not something that sounds like fun for me.  I'll probably look at other walkthroughs to see what needed to be done and what else there was in the game, but for now, I'm content with Miki's story and the conclusion that was reached.  A little sad, a little melancholy, a little hopeful.  This was one avenue for Miki's story, and I'm glad that I was able to experience it.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Let Me Wake You Up

Monthly Update: March, 2025

 

And somehow, we're already in March.  Or just 17% of the way through the year, or if we really want to get snarky, only 4.4% of the way until our current scenario either is upgraded to the non-shitty version, or we sink deeper into this experiment in white christian nationalism and fascist oligarchy we currently call the United States; I don't expect you to watch all 65 minutes right now, but I highly recommend it if you havne't already watched it.  And major kudos to Volodomyr Zelinsky for rebuking Russian State Media talking points that came out of the mouths of Trump and Vance.

And then there's the bullshit in the SAVE Act reintroduced as a proposed bill by Chip Joy which would bar people from voting and registering to vote if the name on their birth certificate differs from that of their "legal name" (e.g. the name on their driver's license, hunting licenses, passport, school ID, etc).  And while the wording in the current "wording" of the SAVE act allows people that this would affect to "provide additional documentation," there was no specific definition as to what that documentation would be.  This means if this travesty passes, it could be left up to the states/counties, which means a return to Jim Crow-era voting laws all over again.  One state/county could require that a woman who changed her name after getting married to only supply her current government-issued ID and a copy of her marriage certificate, while another state/county could require the following:

• Copy of Government Issued ID:
• Only passports, state driver's licenses, and hunting permits accepted.
• College IDs, High School IDs, not accepted.
• Copy of long-form birth certificate.
• Copy of marriage certificate.
• Signed affidavit from an official notary that all of the documents are legal and present at the time of signing.
• All of the above are required every time a ballot is requested.
• Likely forbidden from using mail in, or absentee ballots.

Yes, I'm getting into nothing but speculation here. The only people that's not good for are the same ass-hats who want to try and enact these kinds of laws, decrying that it's all part of a nationwide mandate when Trump was elected by an overwhelming majority; Trump received 49.8% of the popular vote, which if we're going to be pedantic, is not the definition of "majority" in the context of the voting population of the United States. Still, yes, Trump won both the popular vote and the electoral vote, so I don't think I'm trying to engage in election denialsim.

And Musk is trash, too, while we're at it, mainly because he's a nazi sympathizer, but less damaging and still related to his character is his acquisition of attempted gaming cred.

Now that we've successfully transitioned to gaming culture, we can now continue with our regularly scheduled program.

Unintentionally, despite the last 8 months or so, there've been a lot of Game EXP articles from games I've received.  I had thought this well was drying up, but then there was an uptick on the YouTube side of things, and that just makes me look more attractive to indie publishers.  Maybe.  There'll likely be a continued slough of Game EXP articles for the next coming weeks, at least through the middle of March and then I'm going to let things slow down a bit so I can play more of the games that I've actually paid money for: Fallout 4, Triangle Strategy, The Elder Scrolls Online, Wolfenstein II: The New Collosus, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Dragon's Dogma, and that list of crowdfunded games I said I would get to back in my January 17th article.  And all of the games in my Ultimate Spreadsheet Database.

Movie-wise, nothing.  New TV show-wise, nothing.  I did start Hand of Fire, the final book in the Shandril's Saga trilogy by Ed Greenwood, which continues my chronological journey through the novels in the Forgotten Realms setting; which if you're just joining us, I began because the D&D module, Rime of the Frost Maiden said that it used several older D&D novels and source books as inspiration and reference materials for this and I hadn't read those yet, so now I'm in the middle of 1357DR, although several hard-to-find books happen earlier that I've yet to read.  And I'm still reading House of Leaves, and I couldn't tell you how many pages I've read in that book because of all of the jumping around in the text.

Lastly, all this week we'll be releasing a series of playthrough videos for an interesting visual novel and immersive typing sim, S4U: CityPunk 2011 and Love Punch, along with playlists for The Voidness, Goldenheart, Death Omen, and Ashen Arrows, so stay tuned for those as we progress/survive through this month of March.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

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