#greak

Earlier tonight I saw a social media post from the creator of Sudokovania talking about it being nominated for the third annual Thinky Awards. I don't know him at all, I'm just the sort of person who will see a total stranger celebrating a thing and toss out a good for you. So I was really surprised when he replied to my quick little congratulations by thanking me for writing about it on this very blog months ago, citing that post as where it seems like most people first heard of the thing. That surprised me, because while that is easily the second-most re-posted thing I've ever written on here besides the Ranma thing, and if you search for the game, one of the first things that comes up is my little visual aid for how the map regions work (*cough* reposted without credit to some forum or other), but I feel like I'm pretty damn small potatoes over here.

More importantly though, it really brought a huge smile to my face to hear that I helped a really cool game reach a wider audience. It's funny, because a lifetime or two ago I was actually a proper Professional Game Reviewer for some site, and I have NEVER been thanked like that before. Well OK, there was one time when I actually totally savaged this super-derivative bit of shovelware, and the publisher was just happy to learn someone actually gave it a former review. And there have been a handful of times when I've been doing bluesky summary threads of what I streamed on twitch/youtube that week where a developer somehow found it. And that kinda gets into why I'm writing this post here, because I just realized I'm not sure, after years of doing it as a regular weekly thing, that I have ever even once mentioned I stream a dozen games a week generally blind and toss'em on youtube later. I am... not great at promoting my stuff. Kind of a tangent but I get like NO views on those streams/youtube uploads so if you maybe wanna hit one of those subscribe buttons or leave comments or whatever random other things on that stuff it'd help me... actually get paid for uploading all of these given youtube's weird arbitrary systems, and catching the monday night streams is cool for socializing.

But anyway, point is I have been working towards streaming a good 20 minutes give or take of every single game I have, eventually, mainly just going through my steam library, which is predominantly random stuff I've never heard of that came in various bundle deals for practically if not actually free. So usually I'm playing things blind, and out of the 1000+ games I've done this with, every so often I hit a really amazing diamond in the rough that I end up absolutely loving and have absolutely never heard mentoned anywhere, by anyone. An in-law of mine keeps saying I should do some sort of list video with these, and I should, but as kind of a trial run/remembering I never mention these here, lemme just share what I have on oh, let's say 10 of these, arbitrarily. In no particular order.

1. Contrast

This came out in 2013 and seems to have gone straight into bargain bins. I can't for the life of me understand why. From where I sit, this should have hit like Portal. It's a pretty short puzzle-platformer with a really striking visual style and weird world, fantastic soundtrack, adorable voice acting, and really just fantastic puzzle design once you get your head around the nuances of the main mechanical gimmick of jumping into shadows after manipulating the environment to make them properly useful to you. Doesn't overstay its welcome, ends on a heck of a reveal that makes me genuinely upset it never got a sequel. You can pick it up practically for free. Please just grab it, acclimate to its quirks, and run through it, I practically guarantee you'll fall in love with it.

2. Genesis Alpha One

This one I don't think has the same universal appeal as Contrast, but it scratches a very particular sort of itch that very few games do, and none of those are at all recent. It's one of those games where you gradually build out and customize a spaceship and a crew, explore a big procedurally generated map (a key bit I missed in the tutorial above is you wanna move on the map grid then run your scanners for a while to reveal everything in a 3x3 area), but it's more or less entirely from a first person perspective, where you're running around your ship from console to console, personally going on away missions, and it all has this very schlocky shoestring budget '80s sci-fi look with lots of gel lights fog and conspicuously trashbag looking surfaces. Very Roger Coreman. And most of the gameplay involves pulling up useful materials either from going down to planets or sifting through debris, often having hostile creatures and/or weird spreading biological matter stow away, so you spend at least half your time crawling through ductwork because some land octopus laid a few dozen eggs under the floorboards and now they're all munching on your power cords, or some plant sample turned a whole deck into an alien jungle with swamp thing orcs growing off the vines. I put a TON of time into this one.

3. There is No Game: Wrong Dimension

I played this on the recommendation of a friend's very young daughter, so I wasn't expecting much, but turns out it is a super well-polished, funny, heartfelt, surprisingly meat-y adventure game with a very Homestar Runner sense of humor, and a bit of a meta vibe where the anthropomorphized Game does not want you to play it due to some personal trauma. Surprisingly varied gameplay, all really engaging. And the plot actually ends up being pretty sweet and heartfelt by the end too. Such a pleasant surprise.

4. Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery

One of the breezier games I'm putting on my list. Very laid back and cozy, with some real strong Studio Ghibli vibes. It's a mix of not-too-taxing puzzle solving, and just sort of slice-of-life meditation for the most part, with a plot worth carrying about that you gradually piece together. A bit Amelie, a bit fantastic mystery, and again, just cozy as all hell. It's the first game from an indie Taiwanese studio, who have only done one thing since (The Star Named EOS) I'm also going to need to play someday. Took me about an hour but I was really engrossed the whole time. One of my girlier picks here I suppose but get over yourself if that turns you off.

5. The Legend of Tianding

Sticking with surprisingly great games from small Taiwanese developers, this game about "the Taiwanese Robinhood" from the Japanese occupation thereof is very much going for a look and feel reminiscent of Viewtiful Joe. There really just aren't enough Viewtiful Joe clones out there, and between the historical setting and the bold move to just subtitle all the original voice acting rather than dub it for Western audiences appeals to me a lot in a cultural enrichment sort of way on top of just being a really visually striking solidly designed platformer.

6. Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death

And speaking of ambitious indie games taking the big risk of taking inspiration from the Clover/Platinum Games lineage, I have to bring up this one. Dating back to when Xbox Live Arcade games had real tight file size restrictions, someone made this glorious little character action game with the rare Black protagonist, a super inventive setting and high energy feel that are just extremely Contra, plenty of spectacle and set pieces, solidly fun combat, and the occasional cutscene using this really artistic technique with the camera slowly rotating around a still tableaux, slowly advancing through time on each pass through the scene. It just punches WAY above its weight class for the circumstances of its creation and gets so charmingly ridiculous.

7. Old Man's Journey

Jumping back to another heartfelt artsy game of a puzzley nature, this gorgeous wordless watercolor adventure gets so much mileage out of one very simple gimmick where most of your interaction with the world is in the form of pulling chunks of scenery up and down following some very simple rules. It's another fairly breezy one, lasting about 90 minutes, which feels like the perfect length both to explore the unique mechanic, and tell a bittersweet story about regrets, family, and a deep love of the sea.

8. Gray Matter

Coming from Jane Jensen, creator of the Gabriel Knight games, this SHOULDN'T be some obscure buried gem, but I've certainly never seen anyone mention it. It's a fairly standard point and click adventure going in hard on an odd mix of stage magic and ghost research. I did a full playthrough without being aware of a very important but hard to see UI element pulling up a journal that explains your character's current goals and staight of mind which left me very guide-dependent as I did a full let's play, but even with that bit of confusion it really drew me the hell in with the interplay of two viewpoint characters who are just fascinatingly human, with some real flaws and questionable morals, but extremely believable personalities, and it blindsides you with some surprisingly wholesome lesbians towards the end. It's been years since I played it but it's still really sticking with me.

9. Greak: memories of Azur

An absolutely lovingly hand-drawn exploratory platformer, eventually giving you control of a trio of characters in a really well-realized original fantasy setting. Haven't played nearly as much of it as I like, but there's such a richness and clarity of vision I'm very much looking forward to exploring its world and seeing where the plot goes. It feels a little Dark Crystal, and plays a bit more like a Wonder Boy or Iconoclasts than something I'd call "a Metroidvania." Incredibly strong first effort from a Mexican studio that seems to have won a number of rewards and had a very wide release, so once again, I don't understand how everyone I know seems to have totally slept on this one.

10. Gravity Circuit

And rounding out this list, we have a wonderful little Mega Man X-like. The visual style is somewhere halfway between the most obvious inspiration and an NES game, and the gameplay while largely what you'd expect, platforming and taking on robot bosses after selecting from various bosses is surprisingly melee based, with a really great grappling hook mechanic and all sorts of other fun movement tech. Of all the clear homages to old classics on my long list, this might have the most interesting mix of wearing its influences on its sleeve but having a real strong identity all its own.

SGDQ 2022 - Greak Memories of Azur

SGDQ 2022 Day 3 Again