#game87

Today it is hot. Max 38 C in Melbourne. The last couple of weeks it has remained cold here while large chunks of Australia has gone through a heatwave, but now we have it too. There have been so many fires, so many homes have been destroyed, but like many things the extremity of it has become normal, expected, something that passes into the haze of the increasingly bizarre news cycle, the unaccountable governance of this country. Sydney and Brisbane and lots of places in between have been shrouded in smoke for weeks. I have seen pictures.

I am coming down with a cold. My throat burns every time I swallow. Getting a cold while it is very hot is quite unpleasant, possibly more unpleasant than getting a cold while it is cold.  

I have so much work to do.

Where did the year go?

Chroma Squad is a turn-based combat RPG. I am not very into it. Possibly because I do not feel like playing a turn-based combat RPG right now. But then, I can’t ever imagine being into Chroma Squad.

Maybe I have a bad attitude.

I don’t know if it’s the game’s fault, or mine, or how I would go about clarifying this. I don’t know why I have enjoyed some similar turn-based grid combat games, like Into The Breach or The Banner Saga, but I can’t ever imagine enjoying Chroma Squad’s, and I don’t know why. Though figuring out would probably be the point of this blog post, if I was feeling more lucid. The lesson to be illuminated.

Chroma Squad is about a group of stuntpeople who work on a Power Rangers-like show. Disgruntled with their director, the group break off to make their own show like the Power Rangers-like show they were just working on. They call it Chroma Squad. Each episode brings a different fight scene that you’re ostensibly filming for TV.

I like this framing narrative. It is my favourite part of the game. It’s cute and sometimes funny. But it doesn’t make me want to keep playing it.

When I was six or seven years old, I was very in to Power Rangers. I would watch it most days after school. At lunchtimes, my friends and I would play powerrangers in the bushland of our school yard. Sometimes there would be too many of us for each of us to be one of the established canonical rangers, so we would have to invent new rangers with different coloured suits. I wore a red-ranger costume to a birthday party once, even though the red ranger wasn’t my favourite.

I once wore a Power Rangers shirt to hockey training. One of the older kids pointed it out and laughed. I felt ashamed, because like all my school friends I was no longer watching the show, had probably already begun to think it particularly stupid and childish. I don’t know why I was wearing the shirt. An overseas aunt had sent it to me, not knowing my obsession with the show had ended. Kids move on fast.

In Chroma Squad your TV show earns money, depending on your audience numbers. More people watch if you tick extra objectives on the way, like performing acrobatics or killing the enemies in a certain order before the boss. The money you earn can be used to upgrade your studio, or buy equipment for your characters. You can boost hitpoints and audience percentages and skills and stats. But I couldn’t get enthusiastic about any of this.

There’s also crafting. Bleh.

Crafting.

The older kid at hockey started calling me “Power Rangers”, though I never wore the shirt again. And then he continued to call me Power Rangers whenever I’d see him around Perth in the years after. I never knew his name or recognised him first before he called out “Power Rangers!” from across the shopping centre, from the tennis club I was walking past, from wherever. But this continued well into my late teenage years. Power Rangers!

At first it was bullying – there’s nothing quite like being reminded of your love for a children’s TV show once you know that show to be the most uncool thing there is. It made me feel ashamed. Later on, I’m less sure. It was weird that he remembered me at all. Maybe it was even endearment.

I wonder who he was. What his deal was. What he’s up to now.

I’ve been trying to play Chroma Squad. But I’m not that into it; I can’t stick with it. I’m getting a cold. I need to go buy some tissues. I need to walk to the shops in the thirty-eight-degree C heat. I have so much to do that I’m not doing.

Chroma Squad came in the Humble Gems Bundle in November 2016. The day the bad thing happened. I’ve played it for 70 minutes.

It also came in the Humble Freedom Bundle that was made in response to the bad thing, the following February. I have the spare key if anyone would like it.