I Love a Bunch of Games

Review:

It’s sometime in the future. If fighting over scraps doesn’t kill you, the sandstorms will.

But things are looking up for Ashlynn and her mom. Or rather, down. They’ve been accepted into the underground bunker of Camden, where the showers are cold and the conversations are steamy.

In theory, at least. I completed four in-game weeks—about an hour and a half—and despite earning a few relationship points, none of the encounters with my fellow eligible bunker-dwellers seemed to be going anywhere.

My worklife fell into a similar rut. A cup of coffee in the morning, followed by a day of cleaning and filing at the clinic. There was a bit of excitement when a stomach virus hit our closed society, but two days later, we were right back to the old routine.

As We Know It is flat, repetitive, and devoid of character. Whatever intrigue there might be in the premise of love in the post-apocalypse is undone by pedestrian writing. Is there political corruption in the heart of Camden, or are good leaders sometimes forced to make bad calls? What are we willing to trade for security? The game raises big questions, but I’m not sticking around for answers.

+ Lots of choices. Most of the time it's easy enough to predict the outcome a choice will have, and it's easy to back up and choose again if you're not satisfied—helpful when trying to romance a particular character. + Outside of occasional comma splices, the writing is grammatically solid—a rarity in the world of indie visual novels. + Generally clean and competent presentation. I wasn't wowed by the audio or visuals, but everything is fine. + Big, bold character names at the top of text boxes, so it's always clear who's talking. (Okay, I'm really only mentioning this because I forgot to say something yesterday, when I reviewed a visual novel where there was rarely any indication about who was speaking.)

– Characters have personality traits, but they don't have personality. There's no life in these words. – Everyone has one pose, with changing facial expressions. Characters are drawn with slightly exaggerated features, but they're still pretty close to human proportions. The faces need to be a lot bigger. Subtly shifting eyebrows and lips aren't enough to create visual interest when most of the screen is filled with static backgrounds and static bodies. – The relationship point system is unintuitive. I'll share an emotional, flirty scene with a character and not see any change in my score. I'll bump into that character in the hallways and keep walking, and suddenly our love level has jumped up 20%...which doesn't seem to affect how we act or the things we discuss. – When welcoming newcomers to the city, the mayor talks about earning beads that can be traded for luxury items. Where's that game? How about a little life management and simulation in this dating sim? Instead, jobs are just a couple of mandatory, repetitive text boxes each day, and you're always provided with whatever you need, without any budgeting or decisions to be made. Boooring.

🧡🧡🤍🤍🤍 Bottom Line: Given the choice between life on the surface or returning to As We Know It, I'll take my chances with the sandstorms, thanks.

#JakeReviewsItch is a series of daily game reviews. You can learn more here. You can also browse past reviews...

Review:

Sweet and Pure are magical girls. Some evil force has possessed Pure. She attacks Sweet. A series of flashbacks remind the heroines of the power of friendship. Pure shakes off the corruption. Evil is no match for the power of friendship. Nothing can harm these two as long as they’re together.

At the default text speed, taking time to read all the dialogue without skipping anything, a single playthrough takes less than five minutes. That’s not a complaint—the laughable writing lost me in minute one.

At a few points, you’ll be asked to pick a card, which determines which flashbacks are shown. These are blind, arbitrary choices that have no bearing on the outcome of the story, and do little to flesh out the characters, their relationship, or their world. Each of my three runs felt equally pointless and unfulfilling.

The low-resolution, limited-palette, dithered aesthetic is appealing. There are only three characters, each locked in a single pose, but they change outfits and facial expressions often enough to maintain visual interest. If you’re going to keep saying there’s a sword in Pure’s hand, though, maybe draw the sword? As for audio… It doesn’t exist. No music. No sound effects.

+ Looks nice enough. + Ends quickly

– Poor writing. – No audio. – Arbitrary choices

🧡🤍🤍🤍🤍 Bottom Line: I don't know much about anime, but I'm pretty sure if you want magical girls to teach you about the power of friendship, you have better options than as long as we're together: magical girls sweet & pure.

#JakeReviewsItch is a series of daily game reviews. You can learn more here. You can also browse past reviews...

Review:

Get a prompt. Get a grade. Get another prompt.

ART SQOOL claims grades are determined by artificial intelligence on the criteria of COLOR, COMPOSITION, LINEWORK, and APPROACH, but it sure feels RANDOM. I’d draw a vibrant, detailed image using every tool at my disposal, get an F, and be told to repeat the assignment. I’d scribble a crude smiley face in response and get an A.

For those who didn’t go to art school, I gotta say: Pretty accurate.

Trying to create great art in ART SQOOL is a fool’s errand. The canvas is tiny, without the options that make good digital art tenable, like zooming in or drawing on layers. The undo button is temperamental. There are just 16 brushes and six paints, most of which aren’t available from the start.

There’s a surreal world of sky islands to explore. The character has infinite air-jumps, so getting around is easy; it’s just painfully slow. Since the mouse input is used for drawing, camera control is all on the keyboard, and it is awkward. You’ll need to peek around every corner, though, to find the missing art supplies. Not much of an art tool. Not much of a game.

+ It has style! Lots of blobby pastels. + Drawing based on open-ended prompts can be fun. + A no-pressure time waster. + Saves all your images. It's fun to look back at them months or years later and try to guess what they're meant to be.

– Great art can come from limitations. The drawing tools, however, aren't limited enough to encourage new ways of thinking or expansive enough to compete with other software. I felt like my options were to put a lot of effort into a drawing that would end up looking compromised or little effort into something that's disposable, anyway. So it all feels disposable. – Getting around the world is a chore. – If there's a game that could benefit from online integration, here it is. What's everyone else doing with these prompts? I kept thinking about Jackbox and the Miiverse—bad drawing tools made fun through community. – Random, discouraging grading system.

🧡🧡🤍🤍🤍 Bottom Line: Here's your assignment: Download an old version of Kid Pix and open a random Wikipedia page. Draw the title. Upload your picture to Tumblr, and tag it with #WikPix. You are now having the ideal ART SQOOL experience.

#JakeReviewsItch is a series of daily game reviews. You can learn more here. You can also browse past reviews...

Antecrypt⚡ is a twin-stick shooter where movement stick works exactly the way you'd expect and the aiming stick does not. It drifts here and there, totally at random, landing in the right place about as often as a stopped clock. It's a weird, maddening hook, made all the more frustrating by a weapon that burns through its batteries quickly when fired, which can only be recharged by standing in the range of the aiming reticle. It's a skill-based game with the compellingly random highs and lows of a slot machine, all wrapped in a cool, confident package. Great visual design, great enemy design, great level design, great progression system—if you haven't already read the review or given Antecrypt⚡ a try for yourself, get on that. Special mention also goes to clever metroidvania Arachnopunk, which is an admirable effort, even if it's not so hot in execution. Arigatou, Ningen-san! is nothing revolutionary, but parents of toddlers should check out this interactive picture book.

Disrupting the Game by Reggie Fils-Aimè

The local library finally got a copy of my old boss' book.

Reggie leveraged key differentials to push messaging in new markets. This disruptive way of thinking, and his decisive execution, drove sales in categories that were not previously thought of as receptive to high-margin product. Disrupting the Game is not a tell-all from a video game insider. It's a book by a business executive, aimed at those who wish to follow a similar path. Reggie (he often insists on being addressed by his first name) is a man with an incredible breadth of experience, from hocking Crisco to nearly making Shigeru Miyamoto cry by insisting that Wii Sports be included at no additional cost with every Wii in North America. He's heavy on business buzzwords, which I generally find off-putting, yet there's no denying that the man is an efficient communicator. The major events of his professional life make for a breezy read. That's my biggest complaint, actually. The book is a bit too general and optimistic. I'm still not sure Reggie understands what Nintendo had with Wii U or what went wrong. He spells out the lessons aspiring business leaders should take away from each of his anecdotes, but even in the stories where he admits fault, he seems to come out ahead. I want the lessons that come from abject mistakes. I want details. But Reggie is a slick businessman, and big business keeps details close to the chest. Reading this book won't teach you anything about a typical day in the office for NOA's president. Instead, he focuses on events that have already been covered extensively, like E3 presentations, and console launches. That, and his relationship with the late Satoru Iwata. This is the stuff that makes Disrupting the Game worth reading, whether you care about business or not. It feels like the reason the book was written. While Reggie obviously cares very much about passing on his professional wisdom to the next generation, he needs to preserve memories of his late friend and colleague. I'm glad he has. If you just know the Regginator as the funny "my body is ready" meme guy, I'm not sure you'll get much out of his book. If, like me, you were closely following Nintendo news throughout Reggie's reign (and occasionally seeing him in the hallways at work), you already have a good sense of how he reshaped the company. And if you're really like me, you'll enjoy taking another condensed trip from the days of Bigfoot Pizza to the launch of Nintendo Switch. If you've already read the outstanding Ask Iwata and still miss that lovely man, Disrupting the Game is a must. I just hope the next book approaches all its subjects with the specificity and range of emotions afforded Iwata-san. There's a brief story in the epilogue about teetotaler Shigeru Miyamoto joining Reggie at a New York bar before losing his mind over the establishment's collection of pipes. It so wonderfully captures the magic of the man's curiosity that I now want Reggie to drop whatever he's doing and write Miyamoto's biography. I've always thought he was too shy to allow anyone to write such a book, but if there's anyone who could wear him down, it's Reggie.

Meghna Jayanth: White Protagonism and Imperial Pleasures in Game Design

I'm going to skip the recap and just let Meghna Jayanth speak for herself, either through the above video or the written word. I am not opposed to "imperial pleasures" in games. I regularly commit atrocities in games, and I enjoy it. Conquering digital worlds and amassing absurd in-game wealth isn't hurting anyone, and it's not hard to understand why it feels rewarding. A good game designer, however, does not say, "Let's keep doing the same stuff we've liked in other games." A good game designer questions everything. What's been done before? Why was it done that way? What are the alternatives? Since listening to Jayanth's speech, I can't stop noticing imperialist measures of success in everything I play. It doesn't dampen my enjoyment. I'm just noticing. Noticing and questioning.

Beyond Blue is one of this week's free Epic Games Store games. It's an Endless Ocean-style scuba game, produced as a tie-in with nature documentary series Planet Earth: Blue Planet II. I went for a few dives this weekend and immediately found it weird that my goal was to head beneath the waves and get everything. In fairness, you're not actually removing anything from the ocean. You're vaguely "scanning" animals, but the way it's presented is so aggressively targeting the need to tick every box and earn every unlockable that the splendor of our world and the save-the-whales message of the narrative are quickly lost to find everything, mark everything, own everything, and master the one place on our planet not yet 100% mastered by man. Um, in the name of understanding and conservation, of course.

#JakeReviewsItch is a series of daily game reviews. You can learn more here. You can also browse past reviews…

Review:

Arlo the Rabbit combines one half Kirby and one half Super Mario Bros. 2. The result is less than the sum of those parts.

Kirby provides the attitude and aesthetic. It’s an easygoing, nonthreatening platformer for all ages.  From the interstitial scenes between levels to the way Arlo gets launched into the background to the dance after defeating a boss, every part of the presentation points back to early ‘90s Kirby…which serves as a constant reminder that you could be playing the real thing instead of this drawn-freehand-with-a-mouse imitation.  It’s a shame that the homage hasn’t been seasoned with other references or better yet, some original ideas.

Arlo’s only means of attack is grabbing single-use rocks off the ground and chucking them at enemies,similar to the way turnips and radishes were used in Super Mario Bros. 2. While carrying a rock, however, Arlo’s maximum jump height is cut in half. It’s a neat idea, or it would be if the level design ever took advantage of it.

Stage layouts are uninspired and repetitive. All enemies behave identically, shuffling slowly back and forth across set paths. Bosses offer a nice reprieve, but they’re predictable pushovers.

+ An inoffensive and functional game that can be completed in one sitting. + Walk, jump, throw—just the right level of complexity for anyone who's just learning to play action games. + The chipper soundtrack captures that Kirby feeling. + Pos

– Not much design in these levels. Secrets, dead ends, and bottomless pits all look the same as the critical path. Enemies, rocks, health-replenishing items, and 1UPs are just sorta tossed wherever. – Platforming is only ever tricky because the camera is locked to Arlo's vertical position. Jump, and the camera jumps with you. Here, I have a visual demonstration:

– Boring enemies. Some move on the ground. Some move in the air. Some move up and down. But they're all slow, and they're all completely oblivious to the player's actions. – Crummy hit detection. Or maybe they're just serious about COVID prevention protocols. Get within six feet of an enemy, and watch your health drop.

🧡🧡🤍🤍🤍 Bottom Line: So simple that it might actually be more beginner friendly than Kirby. With only a fraction of the charm and attention to detail, however, Arlo the Rabbit isn't likely to inspire a life-long love of platforming in anyone.

#JakeReviewsItch is a series of daily game reviews. You can learn more here. You can also browse past reviews...

Review:

If you have a very young child and an iPad, download Arigatou, Ningen-san! right away. It’s going to be a huge hit in your house. For those of us who aren’t churning through a stack of picture books every night, the appeal will be limited.

A bird named Tori-san (“tori” is Japanese for bird) lands on your house and explains that animals around town need love and attention, setting off a linear journey to find five animals across three screens.

A snake named Hebi-san (go ahead and guess the Japanese word for snake) is hiding behind a not-at-all-subtly rustling plant. The other four animals aren’t hiding at all, which feels like a missed opportunity.

Once an animal is found, it must be squashed and stretched, with animations that are guaranteed to send any toddler into paroxysms of giggles. And that’s all there is to it.

The two-finger controls are built for a touchscreen. On a PC, this is emulated by holding Ctrl while clicking. It works, but it’s inelegant. The writing is cute enough, but it’s not the star of the show. The music and sound effects are fitting, but again, they’re not spectacular. It’s all about funny, squishy animals.

+ Cuuuute. + Funny! + Perfect for tiny kids who are just starting to take an interest that flat, glowing thing you always have in your hand. + Maybe 5-10 minutes from start to finish.

– The animal-squishing scenes take a little too long for my liking. You squish and squish and squish, and at some point—I could never quite figure out the trigger—the animal says, "Cool, that's enough," and the scene ends. – Little variety. How about some more hide and seek? What if all the animals didn't have the exact same request? – Unintuitive mouse and keyboard controls. The game refers to two-finger touchscreen operations as "zoom and pinch"—wouldn't it make more sense to map these actions to the mouse wheel or the right mouse button? Take it easy on the toddlers. – All text is displayed in both English and Japanese at all times. I love that it's bilingual; I'm confused by the execution. As an English speaker who is trying to learn Japanese, it's too complex for me. Most text boxes contain multiple sentences, so I have a hard time comparing the two languages. A furigana option would be helpful, as early readers like myself will likely find the some of the kanji impenetrable. Since there's no recorded speech, I must assume everything's meant to be read by mommy or daddy. If said parent is already fluent in two languages—these specific languages—they're probably capable of translating the writing on their own, leaving me to wonder why all text is displayed in both English and Japanese at all times.

🧡🧡🧡🤍🤍 Bottom Line: Arigatou, Ningen-san is free, it's cute, and the picture book crowd will flip for its funny animal squishing. By the way, have to looked up "ningen" yet? That one will catch you off guard.

#JakeReviewsItch is a series of daily game reviews. You can learn more here. You can also browse past reviews...