The Bedroom Dweller

Usually I tend to over exaggerate the title of my reviews for the purpose of comedy. But this time, the title is spot on. Created by Lukaz Piskorz (AKA vanripper, AKA the creator of animated series Daystone) and published on May 11th, 2020, the game tasks an action hero with plunging deep within the depths of hell to acquire hellish ladies for his harem. Will this game be as fire as the game’s setting? Let’s sleep on it.

Helltaker is a top-down puzzle game with 10 stages. Your objective in each stage is simple: get to the girl. The Helltaker can move one square at a time, and can push both undead skeletons and rocks around like they’re nothing. But, the Helltaker doesn’t have time to meander about. He only has a limited amount of moves, indicated by the number in the lower left. Each move takes one point of willpower, and stepping on hazardous spikes takes 2 willpower! If the Helltaker runs out of willpower, he must try the stage again. Once he gets to the demon, the demon will strike up a conversation, leading up to a choice. If he makes the right choice, he live and moves on to the next level. If not, he meets some form of cruel end at the hands of said demon.

The art for the game was done by Lukaz himself. The artstyle has a mix of both chibi and gothic qualities. The art for the demonic ladies is pretty good as well. The demons mostly wear black and red clothes, with white hair providing much needed contrast to complete their ensembles, giving them an air of both cutsey charm and menace. The best girl is Pandemonica, by the way. This is an indisputable fact, of which I am certain there will be no dispute over. Correct?

The music for the game was provided by one Mittsies on YouTube. The OST contains 5 tracks, all of which are incredibly quality. I may not be a music aficionado, but I would describe it as light electronica, with pounding beats that mimic the thoughts racking your brains for the solution for that one puzzle COME ON HOW IS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE?! Sorry, I lost my cool there for a moment. What I meant to say is that this game’s soundtrack will have you tapping your foot to the beat as you try to solve the game’s puzzles. I can’t blame you, especially when even the characters can’t stop grooving.

During this time, we are all trapped within our dwellings, just like yours truly. Some of us can’t help but think about more exotic, desirable locales. Taking a vacation, per se. But we often forget the tedium of travel, especially by plane. Crying children, turbulence, jet lag, getting drop kicked out of the plane by a Hulk Hogan wannabe, having your wife cheat on you with a fish, or having to grill a steak because of the subpar plane food. Hold on, what did I just write? Events like that are just par for the course in Air Marty, a point-and-click minigame collection developed by Myles Jorgensen, and published by Dipster Productions. It follows Marty, a man on an airplane with his wife, on his way to his vacation. But of course, thanks to Murphy’s Law, anything that can go wrong, does.

Just to preface, this is the first game i’m reviewing that actually costs money, so I may be more critical of the game’s faults. Air Marty costs a mere $4.99 USD, so it most likely won’t affect this review too much, but I will be keeping this in mind.

The best way I could compare how Air Marty plays would be to the WarioWare games. You control Marty in the various microgames using some combination of the spacebar and/or the arrow keys. Each minigame is prefaced with a brief cutscene that sets up the (often absurd) scenario, then a screen giving you a brief description on your goal and buttons to use, then you’re thrown into the minigame to figure it out. Each minigame has a win and lose scenario, which leads to different minigames, and eventually one of the game’s 64 endings. Some are incredibly short, while others last for about a minute or so.

The game’s visuals are all over the place, but in a good way. Most of the backgrounds in the cutscenes appear to be hand painted, and the minigames vary in presentation. Anything from pixel art, to renaissance art, to high quality renders, and anything in between can be found in the minigames.

The music is quite interesting. Those familiar with the LISA trilogy may experience a feeling of familiarity. This is because the soundtrack was made by the impeccable Widdly 2 Diddly (AKA Austin Jorgensen), the mastermind behind the LISA OST. He even did some of the visuals! The music often flip-flops between retro synths and classical orchestra. It’s hard to nail a genre for Air Marty’s music, but it serves it’s purpose well.

The people of our world are plagued with many fears. Some of the most common being afraid of the dark, the ocean, and as my man H.P Lovecraft said, the fear of the unknown. If you happen to have all three of these fears, then by the gods this is your 10-minute worst nightmare. Swallow the Sea is a 2-D exploration adventure game set in the deep sea, developed by ItsTheMaceo on Itch.io, a collaborative game developing group.

In Swallow the Sea, you play as a creature that resembles an egg cell. You control this little guy by holding left mouse and pointing in the direction you want to go. The cell can also perform a dash by right clicking, which is necessary to break certain barriers. You’ll be dashing quite a lot to snag your prey, and evade the dangerous denizens of the ocean. Your visibility is limited to your direct line of sight, anything else is veiled in darkness, which becomes even smaller if you get hurt. Your objective is to consume anything smaller than you, and evade anything bigger than you.

Swallow the Sea does an excellent job of selling its setting. It’s murky backgrounds contrast with the saturated creatures, which are just bizarre enough to look like they came from the Mariana Trench without coming off as cartoonish. The music also strives to make you feel alienated and afraid as you scramble around, trying to scrounge up food. And that tense piece when that purple THING shows up... EUGH.

Waluigi, the laughingstock of the Mario franchise. Rejected from Smash, and seen as little more than a joke character by most. You may be surprised to find that he is one of my favorite Mario characters, aside from Professor E. Gadd and Popple. There’s something about his gangly eccentricity that draws me to him, and for the longest time i’ve wanted to see him in the starring role of a game. That very thing was provided by Thunder Dragon on October 31st, 2011. Psycho Waluigi was created by the founder of Mario Fan Games Galaxy, a well reputed site for mario fangames, who also created the Mario Quest series and Toad Strikes Back.. Does Thunder Dragon have the stuff to make a decent fangame himself? And did he do the purple-clad cretin justice?

The story of Psycho Waluigi goes as follows. Waluigi is flying around in his hot air balloon. After harassing some birds, he and his balloon take a nasty fall, winding up in the mystical land of Unconcia. He’s awoken by a strange entity called Psycho Iris. It informs Waluigi of his current circumstances, and explains to Waluigi that he is now a psychic! He then encourages Waluigi to use his newfound powers to take over Unconcia.

Psycho Waluigi’s controls are quite simple. The arrow keys are used to move Waluigi and his psychic aura, Shift to jump and Ctrl for using your psychic powers (pro tip, remap jump to “x” and psychic to “z”, thank me later). With his psychic powers, Waluigi can pick up and chuck any poor sap that gets in his way. But that’s not the extent of his powers! Waluigi also has the power of mind control! Some enemies have special powers. When Waluigi grabs a special enemy, a bar will fill up, indicating your dominion over the creature’s mind. Pressing or holding Ctrl will cause you to use the creature’s power! Until your meter runs out, of course.

Psycho Waluigi is best described as a mix of Mario’s platforming, Kirby’s copy abilities, and Donkey Kong Country’s unique levels. The mind control lends itself to interesting environmental puzzles. Some of my favorite levels are Wreck and Roll Kingdom, where Waluigi moves wrecking balls with his mind, Terror Toy Kingdom, where Waluigi is trapped in a pitch-black toy factory, and must possess enemies to see what he’s doing, Burning Leaf Kingdom, where you can set fire to the brush with your mind, and Home Hardware Kingdom, which isn’t actually a kingdom, but a hardware store. But that won’t stop Waluigi!

The graphics are quite comparable to most of Nintendo’s first party offerings. I’d say it looks most like Wario Land 4 on GBA. The wonderful GBA aesthetic goes well with the music, which sounds just like it came from the console. The soundtrack has a variety of 32-bit remixes of tunes from throughout the mario series, most notably from Wario Land, Warioware, Luigi’s Mansion, and stages associated with Waluigi, like Waluigi Pinball and Waluigi’s Island.

Gun Godz is a first person shooter created by publisher Vlambeer, and was released on May 1st, 2012. The game proclaims it’s about guns, gangster rap, and the rich culture of Venus. In the dime a dozen field of first person shooters, does Gun Godz do enough to stand up on it’s own? Let’s find out.

Gun Godz, like most of the classic 16-bit shooters the game is inspired by, is light on story. You are being held in a prison underneath a hotel on Venus. This hotel is the only building on Venus, which is owned by a triangular record label named Yung Venuz, who also happens to be a god of guns. Your goal is to blast through the hordes of guards, and make your way through 12 levels to challenge the gun god himself.

Gameplay is quite simple: move, shot other things that move, get to the end of the level. The further you get in the game, the more guns you get. These include a handgun, a shotgun, a minigun, and a bazooka. Gameplay harkens back to the original Doom, albeit with less demons and more rap. A variety of aliens and a sewer monster will be standing in your way, using different weapons with the one goal of preventing your escape. The gunplay is fast paced and fun, and the quantity of enemies is never to the point of being overwhelming.

Visuals are about what you’d expect for a Doom-like game. The 16-bit visuals do their job, but can sometimes be a bit repetitive for my tastes. The enemy design, however, is something I enjoy. The sprites are just crunched enough to portray what they have to, but with a few missing details leaving the player to fill in the blanks.

One of the big parts of this game is the soundtrack. The tracks all draw from the gangster rap genre, but are sung in the fictional Venusian language. It gives the soundtrack a distinct alien feel, which of course fits the setting. I’m not normally huge on rap, but for some reason, it just works with me for this game.

Everhood is an RPG-rhythm game hybrid being produced by Foreign Gnomes, and is slated for a 2020 Q4 release. It follows the adventures of a wooden puppet (presumably named Red) in the Everhood, trying to get his arm back from a thief. Is this game worth taking a look at? Let’s see.

The game is light on story, since this is just a demo. While Red (who bears a striking resemblance to Geno from Super Mario RPG) is sleeping, a blue, gnome looking character steals one of his arms and runs of into the forest, leaving the puppet to give chase.

Navigation of the overworld is simple. You can move both cardinal and diagonally, and can even dash by double tapping. Saving your progress is done by talking to a street lamp. But the simple navigation is critical to letting you access the game’s battles. By god, THE BATTLES. There may only be 6 battles in the demo, but they’re some of the most enjoyable fights i’ve partaken in a while.

Battles take place on a 7x5 grid, in which movement is grid based. Red can move 1 space at a time, and can also jump to avoid the projectiles being sent by his assailant, whoever that may be, from a helpful frog to a snot-nosed club VIP. The best part about each fight is that they have their own song, to which the enemy attacks to the beat of with their own unique bullet hell. I don’t want to spoil the rest of the fights, but let it be known that the last fight of the demo is fucking phenomenal, but steer clear if you have epilepsy.

Looking at the game’s visuals consist of a gorgeous pixel style, conjuring thoughts of the SNES, but still vibrant enough to stand on its own. It gives off a blacklight neon feeling, akin to a DDR game. The animations of Red’s opponents and some of the backgrounds had my eyes glued while engaging in rigorous headbanging. Even the smaller overworld sprites pop out with an adorable energy.

Of course, a good rhythm game needs a good soundtrack, and Foreign Gnomes delivers. The soundtrack is a mix of hip-hop, electric, synth, and a tiny bit of metal every now and again. As mentioned earlier, each fight has it’s own song which matches both the character and their attacks. I can’t really articulate how it matches the attacks, but when you play the game, you’ll understand. 

BirdGut is a hand-drawn 2-D puzzle platformer created by one Micah Boursier, released on March 19th, 2019. I found this game through my steam recommendations. Seeing as it was a free game, I gave it a shot. What did I think of it? Well, read and see, viewer.

Story

The game’s story is quite simple. The bee hatches, but not properly, being born 1 larval stage behind. He is kicked from the hive to fend for himself, and is soon eaten by a bird. This isn’t a normal bird, though. It brainwashes the bugs it eats and forces them to operate its organs! However, because of our friend’s stunted development, he’s too stupid to be brainwashed. He then takes it upon himself to destroy the bird from the inside-out, freeing himself and the enslaved bugs.

Gameplay

BirdGut plays similarly to games like Limbo or Little Nightmares, but is far simpler than those two. Our bee friend is armed with a single jump, but can push other objects in the game world. The controls are simple, but they get the job done. Bee needs to solve environmental puzzles in order to proceed, which can include evading guards, operating machinery, or using turrets to hit targets, amongst others. Bee has to navigate through 9 levels of the bird’s digestive system to get to the “missile chamber” and blow it up.

The levels are structured in a linear fashion, and each contain an optional hidden skull for you to find. I found the levels to have a fair amount of challenge that followed a smooth difficulty curve. Except for one level. 

fuck the small intestine. The small intestine is the 6th stage of the game, and it’s structured unlike any other stage in the game. It’s a god forsaken platformer maze. One of the sawblade rooms killed me more than anything else in the game! AND THAT SAWBLADE SECTION IS JUST ONE SMALL PART OF THIS MAZE! AND SOME OF THE PATHWAYS AND ROOMS LOOK IDENTICAL!  It gets more focused towards the end, but still, the small intestines are without a doubt the worst level in the game.

Visuals and Music

As stated earlier, the whole game is hand-drawn by creator Micah Boursier. The simplistic monochromatic artstyle helps to put focus on the platforming, while also selling the setting fairly well. It keeps the oppressive, dystopian atmosphere a forefront, with all the security, the clearly brainwashed residents, and the heavy industrialism present from the intestines onward. 

The music was made by one Taylor Baum and one Miguel Arada. The soundtrack is very quiet and ambient, sometimes implementing a piano when needed. The soundtrack mixes soft, squishy sounds with mechanical hums to sell the premise of an industrial society inside of a creature.

Conclusion