Game EXP: Last Day of June, SUPERHOT VR, & Fire Emblem: Three Houses (PC, OQ2, NS)

Last Day of June
Systems: Windows, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: August 31, 2016
Publisher: 505 Games
Developer: Ovosonico
Time Spent: Unknown

[The Reason: This one was a little hard to write which I actually get to in the body of the article.  There was another reason that fundamentally changed the game for me, which is also a spoiler which I will get to below, because it is story related.  So that's really it.]

I finished Last Day of June a [few years] back, but I felt like I needed some time to process the traditional game mechanics that made the game a game, the entire story, and the method of storytelling.  I previously talked about playing through the first couple of hours in a First Impressions article back in mid-September [2019] where I already briefly covered the general mechanics of the game such as affecting the timelines of the various characters you play, but there is a lot more to it than that and significantly less daunting than I had thought it was going to be.

As I speculated, events that you do with one character's story have an effect on the village when you play a new character.  Piles of leaves that previously dotted the walkways disappear when you rake them away using another character.  If you collect the rope for the boy to have him fly a kite with the old man, he will no longer be playing with the dog, unless you collect the rope to tie down the boxes on the truck, then the boy will be playing with the dog instead.  When I was able to confirm that the mechanics in-game would operate in this way, I was afraid that this method of playing through one storyline to alter another in order to access a new area/item was going to be a mental chore of keeping track of what does what in what timeline in order to do what in another.  Thankfully the way that Last Day of June utilizes this is just enough to make it clear that that is how the game works, but not so much that you need a flow chart.  Each character that you can play has only two possible paths for them to take in their story and how it affects the two main characters, however, some events in one story will open alternate paths in another, but they always seem to be obvious enough to not induce headaches.

You know what, I think I am talking myself in circles so my advice is to play the game for yourself and you will see what I mean.

~*Spoilers*~

[I also read a while back that as you play as Carl in each of the stages, that he is actually able to go back in time to try and change the events that lead to the car crash killing June.  I had played it as him going back in his mind to see how things might have been different.  Then at the end of the game, the cannon explanation is that while Carl is able to travel back in time, he manages to switch positions with June right before the accident where he ends up dying instead of June.  This was a bit of a shock to me as by the end, I had interpreted that Carl had always been the one to have been injured in the accident and that the actual game was Carl's mind trying to interpret and make sense of what happened.  That in the final stage as the world starts crumbling away, that was Carl finally dying.  I actually like my head-cannon significantly better because it was what I saw and felt while playing the game, or at least when I was coming to realize that June was not in fact the one who died during the car accident.]

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SUPERHOT VR
Systems: Rift, PlayStation VR, Oculus Quest 1/2

Release Date: April 30, 2019
Publisher: Superhot Team
Developer: Superhot Team
Time Spent: 2H 11M 54S

[The Reason: I waited a while to write about SUPERHOT VR for a couple of reasons, the first being that I was surprised that it only took me just over two hours to go through the main campaign.  Granted there are additional modes that you unlock after beating the game that are variations on the levels you already played.  The second was that I found out while doing research about the game that the levels in SHVR are drastically different than the ones in the original version of the game and that there was in fact a continuous story that was happening in both versions of the game.  If you want to read a semi-more in-depth description of the game and its mechanics, I'd recommend our First Impressions article.]

SUPERHOT VR was an absolute blast to play and I had been wanting to play it since it was first announced for PC probably sometime around seven years ago.  I feel like, along with Beat Saber, SHVR is one of those quintessential games for any VR system because of how immersive the game is.  Levels play out in 360 degrees and it can be very easy to forget to look behind you for an enemy combatant while slowly trying to dodge another enemy in front of you with a shotgun.

My biggest critique is how the story was reworked in the VR adaptation, in that I was surprised that there was even a narrative connecting all of the different locations and levels together.  To me, it just felt like I was in a small apartment (the HUD) and playing through different stages presented as a puzzle.  I did not really give much thought as to why the apartment was becoming more degraded with broken equipment as the game progressed, but apparently, that was part of the story I had 100% missed.  I had read that some people were upset with the redesigned levels, that one ending where you committed suicide was taken out because the developers thought that that was not the best way for people to experience the game and that there were better ways to construct the narrative and I agree 100% with that statement.  Especially in a VR setting, putting a digital representation of a gun to your virtual head and pulling the trigger is a strange mindset to ask the player to go.  Granted the whole of the game you have these red enemies shooting at you so that could also be a very real and legitimate reason for not wanting to play this.

You know what, I am just going to include a video I took of a playthrough from the seventh stage, "Corpo Office" which shows a sequence of five stages, most of which I have to playthrough multiple times because I kept getting hit by the Welcoming Committee.  Just a quick heads up though (heh), that if you are prone to motion sickness, the video below might make you nauseous as I do a lot of ducking and weaving and even I experienced a little bit of motion sickness and it is my own video.

So that, in a nutshell, is SUPERHOT VR.  There is some pretty far out mechanics later in the game that I wanted to keep hidden for now, and also it was something that I would often forget at times that I could do, especially in stages that I found particularly difficult.  But this is a fun game to just come back to for 15-20 minutes.

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Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Systems: Nintendo Switch
Release Date: July 16, 2019
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Intelligent Systems, Kuo Shibusawa
Time Spent: ~120+ Hours

[The Reason:  I actually had an entire article written for this game, or at least the first half since there is a time jump in the game that felt like a natural splitting of the articles.  However, I never came back to write Part II because I could not figure out how best to write about this game that from my perspective, had two possible endings through six possible routes; I know now that there are only four routes to the two endings.  Because of the choices I made as far as which house I decided to become The Professor for led to a series of possible outcomes, and on top of that, which students if any I recruited away from their starting houses would change possible outcomes for the various characters, and how I decided to take the story leading up to the time jump could ultimately lead to another set of outcomes.  It honestly just felt too overwhelming to write about an entire game when I had only played maybe 16.6% of the playable game (and this was before the DLC was released at that) even though I had reached an ending.]

As I stated above, there is so much to this game.  I know that I spent just over 120 hours on my first playthrough and that was taking one of four possible paths in the game, before the DLC that added another house to the mix.  There are just so many choices, some benign and others that will directly affect the outcome of the game.  Do you choose a male or female Byleth to play as?  I chose a female because I usually find that more interesting from a fantasy narrative standpoint where more often than not, the protagonist is male.  Which house do you choose to be the professor for?  The Black Eagles, the Golden Deer, or the Blue Lions?  I decided to go with the Black Lions because Dimitri seemed too steeped in willfully blind racism and the members of the Golden Deer seemed a little more aloof.

In the first half of the game, there were a lot of game elements from on-foot exploration, mini-games like tea time, sparing contests, academics, cooking, dining with students (I actually did not do this because the only way to start this was to have dinner with Sylvain and I refused to engage with that pompous piece of trash), fishing, and courting one of the students to be your future romantic partner, which is actually a pretty messed up and problematic power dynamic (although you can also romance any of the applicable school staff as well).  I did end up using a guide for both the tea time mini-game to choose the correct questions and responses to help build my relationships with various characters, as well as another guide in knowing what gifts specific characters would prefer to receive.  In the end, I recruited Ingrid away from the Blue Eagles and I tried to recruit Leonie (since I brought her along on a couple early training missions) but that ended up not working out.  I also chose to recruit Seteth, Flayn, Manuela, and Shamir, but Seteth and Flayn left after I decided to side with Edlegard against the Church of Seiros, because of course, I am going to side with someone who is actively fighting against the bigotry and holy righteousness of a conservative religion.  Although, when the choice came up in-game, I actually chose to side against Edelgard at first out of anger for what felt like her betrayal during the fight under the school, then there was the cutscene where I actually saw what it was she was doing and to the extent of why she was doing it, I realized I had actually made the wrong choice and reloaded my save file and decided to remain with the Black Eagles; thereby Seteth and Flayn left and decided to stay with the Church.

I honestly thought that the time-jump mechanic, as to how and why it happened, felt a little cheap, but I understand that the storytellers wanted to get the player deep into the war that followed without all of the hassles of having you play through five years of war.  I was also a little surprised at the number of battles against former students there were from previous houses, although it only makes sense that they would exist in this game.  As the game progressed and it felt like a war against the other houses was inevitable, I knew that it was going to happen in one form or another, but I was really interested, and impressed, with how these combat encounters were handled.  These enemies, former students, felt so much more fleshed out than one-sided bad guys in the bad army.  Some battles were particularly tough to get through (emotionally), but they also felt appropriate to the story and the characters involved.

Part of me is torn about replaying the game because I know what the "False Church of Seiros" is and what they represent, so I do not know how I could replay with a different house and knowingly side with them, although I guess the same could be said for people who went up against Edelgard as I know there is a lot of online animosity towards her character.  I could just choose the Black Eagles again and choose not to side with her, but at the same time, I am somewhat interested in seeing how the story unfolds with the other houses as well.  If only you could choose to still side with Edelgard when she declares war while still choosing either the Golden Deer or the Blue Lions, but that is a path I have already played. . . so many choices.  The point is, there is so much content in this game as a result of all of the choices you make, as well as all of the content that you can only see if you choose a particular house at the beginning of the game, with character interactions and where their story leads in the end.  I probably will play through this game again. . . maybe after I retire and I have more time on my hands between all of the other games I have not yet played.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
The Mirror Falls Behind You

First Impressions: Descenders (NS)

Descenders

Systems: Windows, Xbox One, Xbox X/S, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch

Release Date: May 7, 2019

Publisher: No More Robots

Developer: RageSquid

I picked up Descenders for a couple of reasons.  First, I liked the idea of a mountain biking game akin to 1080 Snowboarding.  Second, the tracks are procedurally generated so you can, hypothetically never race the same track twice, although the locations for each track are identical so the environment/vistas are the same depending on which location you choose to start at.  Lastly there was a response by the developer towards someone who was offended at the inclusion of an LGBTQ Pride flag as a cosmetic customization option that you have to choose to enter yourself.  So when I saw that the game was on sale in the middle of December, I thought I would throw some money at the developers/publishers.

Having already written a little bit about my inability to really shine in games that focus on performing tricks, I enjoyed the ability to not have to perform tricks in order to succeed at this game, although needing to complete a series of maneuvers in the tutorial section right off the bat was a little worrisome.  Most of the tricks required you to perform a bunny hop (hold down then press up on the right joystick) while accurately riding up a not too wide ramp (while holding ZR to maintain speed pedaling) then rotating the body of the rider either using the left or right joystick, so there is a bit of coordination involved.  Thankfully, there was nothing that was too difficult and there was a bit of a learning curve when it came to the physics engine, but even now I am still trying to learn how to make more subtle moves with the joystick.

My first attempt at the Tour Ride in the Highlands did not go so well as I previously had just been messing around in the free-ride hub area.  Once on the actual course, I felt that the controls were more sensitive, but that was probably just from feeling that I needed to stay on the track; more mind over reality I think.  I quickly found that performing tricks while on the course felt more difficult because of the added pressure of your Health Meter which decreases by 1 every time you crash, so unlike 1080, you do not have a health meter, but instead have a one-hit and dead mechanic (although you are not really dead-dead).  When you do crash, thankfully there is a checkpoint system that is usually placed a bit before each ramp/stunt so that you have enough room to gain speed especially if you are expected to jump over a pit of boulders.

Not really knowing how the game Tour Ride functioned, I was a little surprised by the choose-your-own-path aspect, so when I had wasted three lives on the first track, I was a little bit scared by how many options I had.  Well, I ended up not even finishing the second track because I crashed while trying to avoid a ramp.  So I tucked my bike between my legs, did not gain any additional cosmetic options, and returned back to the hub in shame.  I was honestly a little saddened that my first run(s) in Descenders was not as fun as I had hoped it would be, but that was not my last time.

The next day I got back on the bike and paid a little more attention to the tracks, and more importantly, my lives.  I did try to avoid a lot of the ramps (you can't suffer fall damage/crash if you don't go off a ramp!) and just focused on getting to the finish.  I also started noticing the Optional Objectives, but most of the time they involved some variation on performing a trick, so again I avoided completing those.  Although I was being more careful than my first time, I was very excited to see that there was a "Medic" track that granted you additional health upon completion.  

So I continued to ride the bike down various tracks heading further to the right of the map screen towards a Skull icon on the map which turned out to be the final track for that area.  The objective here was to make a jump over an elevated train track and I knew that that was not something I was going to attempt with having only one life left at that point.  So I pedaled down the hill, swung to the left of the ramp, and rode under the train only to have the game call me a Chicken!  I was okay with that because I made it across the finish line.  This second time through the Highlands was a lot more fun although I knew that I was still just scratching the surface of the game.

Leading into my third time playing, I discovered a couple of important aspects of the game.  First, when you complete the Optional Objectives on each track, you gain additional health which is incredibly important when you go up against the Boss Jump at the end of the course. Second, unless the Optional Objective is to finish the track in fewer than 50 seconds, it is perfectly okay for you to avoid the finish line to ride back to go over jumps if you have objectives like "2 Near Misses," or "6 Seconds of Air."  Third, there is a Day/Night cycle, and the more tracks you do in a course/area, the less daylight there is and since all of the tracks are in backwoods-type areas, it is likely that there are no spotlights illuminating the course, so attempting tracks in the evening is probably not advised.  Fourthly, there is an in-game achievement-type system that can be completed... to unlock cosmetic items?  Maybe, I'm not 100% sure on this, at least on the Switch edition.  Lastly, I found out that you can skip the first area, The Highlands, if you manage to complete the Boss Jump three times, presumably to show competence in riding your bike down a hill/mountain/track.

There are a couple of other in-game mechanics that I have not touched on such as crew team/crew, gaining reputation, getting sponsors, free riding, Daily Challenges, and likely a lot more that I am not recalling off of the top of my head.  The point is, there is quite a bit to this game that I know only a little about and have either just found out about or have yet to discover.  Four attempts in and I am having quite a bit of fun having my avatar fly down the hillside on a mountain bike peaking around 70 kph while avoiding trees, boulders, castle ruins, and apparently trains. 

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Lift Yourself Up

Game EXP: Saturday Morning RPG (NS)

Saturday Morning RPG

Systems: iOS, Android, Windows, OSX, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch

Original Release Date: April 5, 2012

Publisher: Mighty Rabbit Studios

Developer: Mighty Rabbit Studios

Playtime: 5-10 Hours

I previously talked about Saturday Morning RPG back in July after playing through the second of five episodes, although the formula going from episode to episode is essentially the same.  The main character Marty is presented with the problem for the episode, typically involving the evil HOOD forces under the control of the evil mastermind Commander Hood.  Speckled throughout each episode as you make your way through various maps, characters present Marty with side-quests, but only if you actively talk to characters.  I mention that because, at the end of every episode, you are given your stats which include how many quests you completed along with an overall rating.  With the exception of the first episode, I have never managed to find or complete all side quests or found all of the enemies to fight.

I mention this because as there are a limited number of side-quests and enemies in each stage, both of which are the primary ways in leveling up, you are somewhat relegated by how much you can level up each episode.  That being said, you are able to replay episodes presumably to finish uncompleted side-quests and to gain additional levels.  I say presume because I only played each episode once as I was not compelled to replay any of the episodes because I felt that I was at an appropriate level by the end and each new episode did not feel that I was underpowered.  Then there is the feeling of completeness both in terms of personal bragging rights, and if you wanted to try to complete either the in-game or system-specific achievements.  Playing on the Switch, being awarded in-game achievements was more of an afterthought and when they would pop up on the screen, my primary reaction was, "Huh, what was that for?"

Story-wise, I was moderately entertained.  Each episode did capture that ridiculous premise of an evil nemesis always attacking the same town/city/region in their attempt for world domination.  Tonally, it did capture a lot of the Saturday morning network cartoons of the 80s and early 90s before Nickelodeon and other specialty cable channels really took off.  There was violence, but really only superficial violence.  All of the local bad guys felt like they were based on 1950s greaser biker gangs as if the people writing cartoons in the 1980s had grown up in the 40s-50s.

And as for the game mechanics, I feel like I covered the majority of that in my First Impressions article and I won't delve much deeper as not much changed or developed after the first two episodes.  I did try multiple ways to not have to spin/rotate the joystick on the Pro Controller and Joy-Cons when scratching the stickers to get the buffs before a battle, but nothing seemed to work as well as using (and abusing) the controller.  And even then, I felt that I could never have a sticker with a scratch difficulty rating higher than two stars if I wanted to use most/all of the buffs.  I tried "scratching" (really just rubbing my finger on the screen) in small quick scratches, I tried only around the edges of the sticker, I tried using multiple fingers and nearly every time I could get one or two single star stickers before the fight started.

I finished the game after between five to ten hours and honestly, the ending came as a bit of a surprise both in terms of story and pacing.  I knew that I was on the fifth and final episode, but I guess in typical Saturday morning cartoon fashion, after the final confrontation with Commander Hood on a space station (or was it a base on the Moon?), he ended up escaping to cause evil another day.  I probably should have seen that coming, but because I didn't, the end of the game felt a bit hollow.  Like I finished a chapter and then the book was taken away, but honestly, I was okay with that.  Saturday Morning RPG had moments when it was fun, the music definitely helped keep my interest but the gameplay did get repetitive and I was happy to no longer be playing.  Maybe if a 10th Anniversary Special Edition Episode 6 is released next year I might pick it up to see if it is just more of the same or if there are improvements or any changes at all.  

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Go Ahead And Feel The Beat

MIDI Week Singles: "Carol of the Bels But Louder" - Cthulhu Saves Christmas (NS)

"Carol of the Bels But Louder" from Cthulhu Saves Christmas on the Nintendo Switch, and PC (2020, 2019)
Composer: Joshua Queen
Album: Cthulhu Saves Christmas (Official Soundtrack)
Label: Bandcamp
Publisher: Limited Run Games
Developer: Zeboyd Games

Last year we featured one of the songs from Cthulhu Saves Christmas and it seemed only fitting to once again feature another song from the game.  Purposefully chosen for how much this song hits the theme on the nose, you have Christmas music, winter music, and contextually, penultimate boss battle music.  Essentially I can break down why I love this arrangement to a couple of points:

• "Carol of the Bells" is just an awesome 102-year-old song on its own; which apparently was originally written as a Ukrainian New Years' folk song in 1916 called "Shchedryk."
• It's similar to but still different enough from the version by Trans-Syberian Orchestra that it doesn't sound like you're listening to their arrangement. 
• Because this is the boss battle and possibly other reasons being connected to Cthulhu and cosmic horrors, there is a musical reference to the Dies Irae around 2:52 - 3:06.
• There is a choir.

That is really it.  Joshua Queen has done a great job not only with writing music to an existing franchise but also arranging a classic Christmas song adding in his own touches rather than just rehashing something you could hear on the radio*.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I Am Opening Realities

*P.S.  I specifically mentioned the arrangement by Manheim Steamroller not because I think it's overplayed radio schlock, quite the opposite.  I love this album as it was our family's go-to when we would put up the Christmas tree every year.  And it makes me a little sad that more songs from this album aren't as frequently played on the radio.   But oh well.

Game EXP: Missing Features: 2D (NS)

Missing Features 2D

Systems Released: PC, Nintendo Switch

Release Date: December 18, 2020

Publisher: QUByte Interactive

Developer: High Level

Play Time: 5-10 Hours

I really enjoyed playing Missing Features: 2D and I love the concept.  If you are familiar with Evoland then it was kind of like that but in a 2D platforming world rather than in the RPG/JRPG genre.  I would say that the first five or six levels were just straight up fun with a great mix of difficulty and the concept of putting together a game as you play through each of the stages.  These early levels are what exactly what I was hoping the game would be.  The next three levels really presented more of a challenge, which is not to say that they were not fun, but the difficulty factor was encroaching on the fun factor.  The last two levels I completed were an un-fun slog and I stopped playing during the twelfth level.

The concept behind Missing Features: 2D is that you are playing a game that is missing features.  Your character avatar is missing so you are an empty green box.  The landscape is missing so it is just a featureless black plain.  There is no music, there are no sound effects.  Essentially, you are playing Pong the platformer.  But without sound.  As you progress through each stage, you pick up computers which add features to the game and the visual loading process is what adds a lot of the charm to the game.  When you collect a computer, you do not know what feature you are going to be loading permanently into the game, although typically the computer unlocks a feature that will directly allow you to progress through the rest of the stage, be it the double-jump or dash ability.

Each stage is made up of stereotypical platforming elements.  Platforms, spikes, enemies, projectiles.  But not all of those elements start out implemented.  Even the background and the stage's music are non-existent when you start each stage.  And like a lot of well designed platformers, you are not expected to be able to perform all the abilities you have at the end of the game and gain the necessary skills to pull off complex maneuvers.

When you start out the game, you are a a filled-in box and eventually you become an unanimated character sprite with a blocked outline, which is essentially your hitbox, the specific area that is affected when you run into an environmental hazard or an enemy hits you.  As strange it is to have a non-moving avatar is for your character, I found it to be the most useful and practical, especially in a platforming game.  Knowing where your character's hit box starts and stops is significantly more important than having a sprite that looks amazing, especially if your character's animation is going to have their foot elevated mid-jump, but that they can still be hit where their foot is not.  The same goes for environmental hazards.  When you have a triangular spike but the hitbox for the spike is a rectangle, that presents a visual problem when making jumps over and around spikes.

In Level 10, I was able to capture enough screenshots showing my character dying without visually hitting anything, which is infuriating when you are expected to land on a small lip of a ledge before jumping across a gap while dashing mid-air over another row of spikes.  In another section (in the clip below, and ignoring the first spikes I het because I did not press the dash button at the absolute apex of my double jump), there were ceiling spikes that would hit your without physically coming into contact with you, being another problem with the hit boxes.  This made various areas of level 10 and absolute slog to play through because I felt that I was no longer trying to improve the way I played, but just make it through section by sheer luck, which in my opinion is no way to design a game.  Another issue I had with Level 10 was how late in the level you gained the music.  For a level this difficult, I feel like you would want to have the player gain the music early on to at least keep them interested, assuming that the music is good, and for the most part, the music was pretty good.

My biggest critique with Missing Features: 2D is the difficulty curve.  For the majority of the game, the levels felt fun and I would look forward to the new feature that I would unlock and how that would improve and modify the existing gameplay.  By the ninth stage, once levels started feeling like they were going to take a fair amount of playing to get the new mechanics and recently integrated features down, specifically the mid-air dash, I began to dread starting the game up.  By the 10th level, I genuinely felt that I hated the game, in part due to its difficulty, but also because of the lack of user-friendly options for the type of game that this felt like it was trying to be.  

On top of all of this was how the checkpoint system was implemented.  Sure, you could argue that the existence of checkpoints implies that they make the game easier because you no longer have to start back at the beginning forcing you to be better at the game, but in this game when the difficulty ramps up to the point that getting passed jumps/enemy placement feels more like luck that actual skill, I say bring on the checkpoints.  But the checkpoints are only good during your current playthrough, meaning if you turn off the game, you have to start over from the beginning and collect all of the missing features you had previously collected.  But more importantly, you have to luck your way through the level again.  This problem is alleviated somewhat by playing on the Switch in that you can just pause the game, and put the system to sleep, but this means that you are unable to play any other game until you either quit the game or beat the level.

You know what, I am going to end the article here because I feel that I could just go on for a couple of more paragraphs about how Missing Features: 2D let me down.  I will say that I love the concept, I enjoyed the early levels and even to a certain extent, the complete mismatched sprites for the characters, in-game elements, music, sound effects and enemies added a kind of charm to the game, like you were playing a game pulled from random bits of pixel art downloaded randomly from the internet.  But the difficulty of the game got the better of me and I no longer enjoyed playing the game and when that happens, I do not really feel the need to force myself to slog through any more levels.  Had the level 10 been the end, I might have forgiven the game a bit, but after Level 11 and onto Level 12, like this article, I just had to stop.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Sleepwalking to the Gallows

P.S.  On that last screenshot, the stalactite did in fact hit me, but my issue with it was that where it fell from was out of frame, so there was no indication that you could trigger one to fall by standing there, which is what happened.  I believe the was 

#IndieSelect: Underland (NS)

Disclaimer:  I received a copy of Underland from publisher QUByte Interactive as part of #Indieselect.  The game was given and received without expectation or promise of a positive review, only that the game be played and the experience be shared on social media channels.  All of the words and screenshots, unless otherwise noted, are my own from my own experience playing the game.

Underland

Systems: Windows, Nintendo Switch

Original Release Date: February 5, 2021

Publisher: QUByte Interactive

Developer: Minicactus games
My Play Time: ~2-3 Hours.

Underland by Minicatcus Games is a sidescrolling puzzle game where you navigate two astronauts through environmental puzzles to help them reach human civilization that has found itself living underground after the surface of the Earth becoming inhospitable to human life.  That is the premise for each of the 30 levels in the game where you start out on one side of the screen and make your way to the elevator on the other side leading down into the next level.  How you make your way to the other side of the screen, what tools you are allotted to use in each level, and how the physics engine operates the fluid in each stage are what make Underland a fun and engaging puzzle game.

The difficulty in the game I found to be very progressive, in that there did not seem to be any significant jumps in difficulty that utterly confused me.  The opening levels teach you by doing, which for me, is the preferable way of having tutorial levels.  The first level teaches you about switching between the two astronauts and getting to your objective.  The second level introduces machines as a way of altering the underground terrain to get you to the elevator.  The third level introduces a toxic fluid that is in the way of the elevator, but you also have the earth-boring machine to redirect the fluid but in a way that still makes the elevator accessible.  Since I have now described 10% of the levels in the game, we are going to move on.

One mechanic in the game that occasionally gave me issues was selecting between the astronauts and the machines you could manipulate.  This was done using the L/R Shoulder buttons, but the order that you selected which object/character you were moving was all dependent on where they were located on the screen.  I understand this makes a fair amount of sense, especially when you have machines like the TNT-Bots who are used up when they detonate, but there were times when I thought I was switching back to astronaut #2 and ended up selecting the platform that astronaut #1 was standing on and accidentally shifted it, knocking off astronaut #1 and killing them.  There was even one instance when one of the astronauts was standing on a platform in a way that made selecting the platform impossible, so I ended up having to move the astronaut a few pixels to the right to be able to select the platform again.

For me, I found that trial and error was a useful tactic for finding the solution to some of the more complex problems.  Failing at a stage though could be any number of factors, most of them human error related.  But that was where a lot of the fun in Underland came from was trying out different ideas and seeing how the toxic fluid might move in the trench you dug out, or how few shots with the canon you could use and then what to use the remaining five shots on just because you could.  On a number of levels, you would only need to get one astronaut to the elevator with the rest needing to get both, although the reasoning behind this never felt 100% clear.  There were a few stages where it made sense to need to get both astronauts to the elevator thereby increasing the difficulty and an immediate restart if one of them died (as the game did not automatically restart for you).  Other instances were more self-imposed like if you created too large of a gap for the astronauts to jump with the earth-boring machine, or if you used up your TNT-Bot detonating earth to gain access to an area or free a moving platform you would need to access the elevator.  

The only other issue I had in the game was that there were two levels that felt like completing them was based on luck.  In one stage, you had to let a little bit of the toxic fluid out from behind a door to knock over some crates you would need later to use as platforms to walk across.  But if the crates fell in a way that from what I could tell, you had very little control over, made using them as stepping stones impossible, you were forced to restart the stage.  The almost randomness in how the crates were falling made me consider that I was approaching the solution incorrectly, and I assume that I could have done it incorrectly but still having my solution work, but the design of the level seemed to be pointing me in that direction.  The other level had jets of toxic gas that shot out from the ground, but the timing was like the turning signal from three different cars, in that they would sometimes line up so that all three jets of toxic gas would alternate to make passage through them impossible.  So you would just have to stand there, waiting for the pattern to reach the point where you could probably make it through unscathed.

Coming in at 30 levels, Underland really felt like it was the perfect length.  None of the levels felt like padding to make the game longer just for the sake of being longer.  There were no times that I dreaded the fact that I had 45 more levels to get through just to say that I beat the game.  The end of the game, told in epilogue fashion was nice too, leading to a sequel that was released back in April, but is currently only available on Steam; I would not recommend looking up that game yet if you have not beaten Underland as the description does give away the story here.  I was very happy with Underland, despite feeling that some of the levels did not play as fair as I would have liked, and my occasional confusion with the character selecting, but everything else about the game worked well and I am hoping very much that QUByte decides to bring more of minicactus games' catalog over to the Switch.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Leave the Rest of the World Behind

P.S.  Apparently unable to find the best place for this mention, but I wanted to say that I greatly appreciated that at no time do the astronauts take any kind of fall damage.  They could fall from the top of the screen to the bottom and still be fine.  There were only a few levels in that this could have played a factor, but I am glad that it did not.

Game EXP: Escape First 3 (NS)

 

Escape First 3

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

Original Release Date: March 21, 2020

Publisher: OnSkull Games

Developer: OnSkull Games

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

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

"The Secret Inheritance"

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

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

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

"Keep of Lost Souls"

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

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

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

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

"The Abandoned School"

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

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

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

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

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian