Let Mom Sleep

Spoilers for the final puzzle in Blackwell Epiphany.

We go straight into it in the next line.

In the Blackwell series (again) you save ghosts by pulling them inside of Rosa and then helping them over to the afterlife. This is done by using Joey’s tie on them when they become aware. This is the only time you can get inside Rosa’s headspace. Any time you try to use the tie on Rosa, Joey will comment on how he can’t do that and it’s not a valid interaction. 5 games of this and you get the hint that you can’t go into Rosa’s headspace unless you’ve pulled a ghost in there.

Skip to the final final boss and you need to trap it inside a magic circle. You do it on the floor below and they just cancel it and teleport back up. The street outside is also too close and you need to go further away. The street is the furthest place and you can’t go to any other areas. This is the one time you can use the tie on Rosa to get in her head and make the circle there.

But really the permanence of chat options. What I mean is that you can enter into dialogue with a person and consequently give conflicting answers to their questions with no consequence. If the puzzle is through these dialogue options then it gives you a way of brute forcing the puzzle to an extent.

I’ve recently finished the Blackwell series by WadjetGames and in this specific example of making Jamie Graham realise she’s dead that what I’m talking about is pretty apparent. So obviously you get some dialogue which can set the scene and give some information, one time stuff, it’s all good. But to make her realise that she’s dead you need to get her to talk about three things about her past. One of these is where she’s from. You get the choice of “Right here” “Up North” “Down South” “Out West” “The Midwest” and “I travel”. Only “Out West” progresses the conversation but you can say every other option and she won’t mind you saying something else each time. And from there you need to know it’s Illinois out of 6 options which, again, you can say all 6. Finally “Mattoon” which you only unlock the option for through reading her emails.

I gotta say, I really hate unwarranted contact damage in games. If an enemy is covered in spikes or is on fire then that’s justified. I can understand why touching that monster would hurt me. But I’ve recently finished Hollow Knight and got gradually annoyed at enemies that deal damage for touching them and those that even do double damage. It’s really stupid when it’s things like Slimes or other soft enemies.

Games without contact damage always make an effort to show charging or other attack animations and this even demonstrates going the extra mile to have logical enemies. Perhaps the frustration is raised in Hollow Knight as minimum enemy damage is one mask (heart) so even touching the littlest guys is as damaging as being stabbed by a large knight’s spear.

*every other lyric muffled to the point of incomprehension*

Armikrog is one of those point and click games but with a novel aesthetic of claymation to go with it. It’s impossible to say that it doesn’t look charming but does it hold up as a game?

And the answer is yeah, kinda. You play as Tommynaut and sometimes his ‘dog’ Beak Beak after you crash into some kinda facility. You click on stuff and you move it or put it into your inventory. Then use it on something else. Problem is most of those items are levers or door handles and it’s never much of a puzzle working out what goes where. The actual puzzles can get your brain scratching but not for too long. Most of these come with a filmed cutscene to go along with the solution and those look lovely and give an overall view of the station.

The unending desire to persist.

(via https://skfb.ly/699TX)

Pretty relaxing.

I regret nothing

Everyone knows the story of Broken Age. The first main stream game to hit a massive funding goal and kick off the whole kickstarter thing we still have. A game split into two halves with 16 months between them. It does seem a bit excessive considering both part 1 and 2 are in the same area with the same characters. What is however is one of those Point and Click Games from Double Fine. So be sure to expect some mostly random puzzles, likeable characters and good humour. Unfortunately, I didn't like most of the characters or the humour but you can't win them all.

Broken Age is bit of a light PnC in that there isn't a lot of inventory stuff to it. You don't pick up many things and there aren't a lot of characters to interact with. Even less who have anything more to say than 'I have a puzzle, hope you have the right item on you'. Some of the puzzles and things you have to do are fun and clever but some others fall into using X on Y with little thought required because it's basically spelled out for you. The art is really something special, each scene beautifuly drawn up. The voice work is pretty solidly done and the music is pleasant to listen to but nothing overly memorable.

Hexcells, Hexcells+ and Hexcells infinite are a trio of puzzle games focused around placing down blue tiles and eliminating black tiles to give you further clues. The basics are that each hexagon has 6 sides and a black shape will tell you how many of those sides have a blue tile attached to it. You work out which sides those are, fill them in and hopefully find another black tile to continue around the puzzle. At the end you are given hexes based on how many mistakes you made which then open up the next set of 6 levels. It's not a tight requirement so you shouldn't need to redo puzzles for hexes.

Of course the puzzles start out easy and slowly introduce a new mechanic one at a time. Each of them having a specific simple tutorial level that explains how they do and don't work. Then with each of these it becomes less about where a blue tile goes but more about where it cannot go and filling in those tiles. Unlike my sudoku, i can't pencil in a tile that I think should be removed or marked leaving me to do my deductions on the same area multiple times. Something like that would really help. Towards the end I was thinking how nice it would be if the number clues in the black/blue tiles decreased to 0. A lot of my mistakes were filling in an extra tile once that clue had been compeleted, perhaps thats the skill of the puzzle and I'm just bad.

That’s it. We got him. We got him.

Sleeping dogs is one of the more well known twists on the GTA gameplay by focusing on its Chinese Location. Fights are more hand to hand than with guns and missions are fully based on triad operations. You play as hunk Wei Shen, an undercover cop, pulled into going undercover in the Sun on Yee in order to uncover their secrets. What follows is a story about secrecy, loyalty, betrayal, family and the conflict between crime and justice.

Your typical GTA fayre follows, move into icon in the world, watch cutscene, follow the world marker (optional: listen to conversation whilst driving to destination) and then rough up the guy or steal the vehicle. Being both cop and criminal, Shen has access to both police missions for following up on leads and drug busts and triad missions for earning trust and finding out the story of the Sun on Yee. At all times, you gain experience for your actions: police experience drops for property damage and hurting innocents whilst triad increases for violence and your effectiveness in combat. These leads to levels and upgrade trees which include some tasty skills. As for world pickups you'll pray to health shrines you find to increase your health and find zodiac statues to turn in to the dojo for new combat moves. Those new moves feel great to use in combat and fighting hordes or guys is always fun. Shooting exists but you don't keep guns in your inventory. Either a mission gives you one or you take it from an enemy.

Ori and the Blind Forest scratched a great itch I had for a metroidvania. A large map, moves to learn, backtracking with your new abilities and the controls were nice and tight. The story focuses on the Great Tree in a forest which caused a massive fire, destroying everything, basically. Ori, a light entity, was saved from the fire and he's gotta put it all right and save the forest.

You start the game with your weak shooting, then get your double and wall jumps and eventually Bash (more after that too). A really fun ability that lets you launch of enemies or their projectiles, sending Ori one way and his target the other. This is used pretty well for defeating enemies effectively, defending yourself, platforming and puzzle solving. In addition you can make Soul Links which are your DIY checkpoints. A great idea which can be upgraded to heal you. As the game went on, I was mostly making them to heal myself rather than for the checkpoint functionality. Your other skill upgrades are set into three trees: Utility, Combat and Efficiency. These let you focus on what is most important to you and you can move about as you wish. You'll pick up enough exp in the world to get them all.

Pixeljunk Shooter is a novel twin stick search and rescue with a bit of shooting in the mix too. A Group of scientists/miners are stuck in the planet and it's time to get them out. You fly around with one button for shooting/missles and another for your grabby hand, which will rescue the science guys or pull on hatches or even grab little grenades. Each level is split into a four smaller areas, you can't go back to the previous area and can only move to the next area when all scientists are dead or rescued. Gotta be honest, I ended up being the one to kill scientists most of the times. The enemies don't go for them nor are the levels set up to kill them in a certain amount of time so it was all my bad shooting.

You're allowed to kill 5 scientists a level before you game over but it's very hard to reach that point, especially with the pickups erasing a death for you. The game is a lot more like a puzzler giving you ample time to plan your next move or how best to destroy some of the environment to save someone. You have all the time you need unless you overheat. Lava and water play a decent part in this game; you'll need one to erase the other. Being near lava makes you hot and overheating is a death but water will instantly cool you off. It's fun to manage.

Dust: An Elysian Tail has a cliche story about a master warrior with a strong case of amnesia (Dust). He just doesn't know who he is but he meets a helpful, comic-relief companion (Fidget) who will do anything for him and hopefully sort out his predicament. Also a talking and wise sword. The three embark on an action adventure quest to reclaim memories and beat the bad guy. The world is split up on an overworld map but the areas can be quite expansive but unfortunately there aren't a lot of branching paths which leaves little to explore. The only puzzle you'll be solving over and over is bringing a bomb plant to a bombable wall. They didn't want to expand on the idea much.

Dust will be fighting all the enemies with a paltry 4 combos and this game wants you to fight a lot of enemies. Additionally Dust can spin his sword around or spin through the air called the Dust Storm. This pairs up with Fidgets magic to power up her spells by making them large but surprisingly, not powerful. It does so little damage it's generally not worth using. Dust can level up, allowing him to place a skill gem into one of 4 stats but your highest stat can never be more than 4 than your lowest. It feels like the game wants to give you build choice but doesn't. On the plus side you can find recipes to make equipment and upon getting the items, can build them right from your inventory. If you're short an item, sell it to the shop and he'll sell them in low quantities too.

Contrast was a short and small indie game that focused on using the shadows for your platforming puzzles. Playing as Dawn and helping a girl reunite her parents in 1950s America isn’t immediately the theme you’d expect but it is applied for a great setting. In shadow puzzlers work quite well if done properly but it’s easy to tell that Contrast cut a lot of corners in order to get the lights and shadows to work. In doing so, some of the platforming is a little buggy, creating instances where you get thrown off a wall as it bends and have to redo a section.

What puzzles are there are mostly pretty good but they tend to run on a single solution, so once you work that out there is no more to the puzzle and it ends. I feel this is unfortunate as some of the puzzles are pretty decent or have a lovely idea to them but they aren’t expanded upon. There are small puzzles based upon memories that require you to jump on peoples shadows before the talking ends to reach a collectable . If the game were longer, I imagine there would’ve been a lot more of these. Collectables feature a Luminary (power source basically) not used too much in game and the note kind which explain the world. Which I’m not a fan of in general.

not sure i like outlines. Makes the guy look too bulky