Graveyard of Airships

well I took a brief tour through some of the older, odder Bomberman games (except Wars, which I may try another time because holy shit) and didn't find myself particularly hooked into any of them but I DID get to see a lot of different pictures of Pommy as compensation

is that... daylight? there's something wrong with the Awful Silly Block Eating Simulator at SGDQ 2026, because it's starting bright and early! regardless, the judges agree: shitty wizard @sianea and I must manually watch as always. this is not the one that got away, for some reason.

with a record-breaking 16 games this was our longest day of school yet, but I can share my notes:

10 Snoopys move slower than 9

heros is not spelled with an E, but Dr. Wiley is

there are 22 ways to die in the year 2027

truffles are like mushrooms, only better

I'd say modern metroidvanias became much more palatable for me thanks to two specific game design choices that caught on after the Soulslike boom: Estus-style refillable heal-on-the-go, and enemies that stay defeated until X reset condition

cuz the main thing that bothered me trying to play older ones (even revisiting titles like Harmony of Dissonance and Aria of Sorrow on my Castlevania binge) was how inelegantly these games employed enemies as copy-paste hurdles to exploration. kinda like random encounters

idk, you'd think it'd be extremely obvious but it's surprisingly harder than I thought to tell if it's actually changed. that and I'm just waiting for it to come back at any moment somehow

most of the achievements for Crescent Tower were entirely reasonable. even the post-game "super boss" didn't take much more than maybe an hour additional play after finishing, reworking the party to be stronger and better equipped. but the hardest single task according to the people posting in the Steam discussions is collecting every item. it's just cranking away at an RNG slot machine over and over, with very few optimizations to be made.

going off my playtime, it took me about six additional game hours to round off the 40-50 items I hadn't initially gotten. I even capped out the in-game money counter. and each monster has a super-rare drop, with odds originally cited as 1/128, though I can't attest to whether or not that's been patched.

it certainly felt like it, though.

finally got through Crescent Tower, a modern-retro RPG that stood out to me from next fest a while back. hits like a happy marriage between Etrian Odyssey and early Final Fantasy. bought it back in December and only got about halfway done before losing steam for a while. it's just one of those games when you get down to it.

what I like best about it are all the ways you can tell the designer's love of retro RPGs allowed them to design around some of the common pain points and come up with something fairly streamlined. as examples go, there's no Inn function whatsoever and your party just fully heals every time you return to town (except for dead characters). the magic system is original FF-style with spell slots for each level of magic, but the Elf race (or later, anyone wearing the right gear) can meditate once each combat to restore 1 slot of every level. the game is structured around filling in your dungeon map floor by floor using torches and maps, but eventually you learn magic or even passive skills that can handle mapping, lighting, and unlocking doors. everything is built to relax whatever annoyance or upkeep cost may present itself initially until eventually, you're breezing along. I thought it was well done.

lightly dipping into next fest again and the whole time I was sampling this fully 3D, seemingly high-effort strategy game Brigandine Abyss

finished my first clear of Blasphemous 2 last night and continue chipping away at 100% achievement progress. I think my initial impressions hold true and I enjoyed the game, but definitely less than B1 (and Nine Sols, which felt very similar)

not finished but so far... it passes all the baselines you'd expect for control/graphics/etc set by the first (even if I do think the execution animations for most enemies are lamer than before). but I'm finding myself enjoying the design a lot less, like the new upgrade systems, multiple weapons, overall feeling more "metroidvania." I don't like the wooden statues at all - there was something comfortable in B1 about having the option to change out all the different "build" items anytime you like on the fly