I firished Creature Kitchen (The Rat Zone) today. Once I was done with it, I went back and 100%ed it. I did look up where a few ingredients were and one recipe, but other than that, it was pretty easy. I was able to get most of the achievements while playing the game, which is how I ilke to do it. I don’t like having to grind for a meaningless achievement. (Looking at you, FromSoft and the ten hours it took for me to get that certain achievement in DS III, and that was a short amount time compared to many others).
The achievements in this game were for the most part reasonable. There was one that was kinda ridiculous, but, fortunately, it was fairly easy to do. Just tedious. I get why it was included (thematically appropriate), but it didn’t add anything to the experience.
Honestly, I don’t get it. I have seen it said over and over again that this is a creepy game, and it simply is not. It just isn’t. This is the hill I will die on with this game. I don’t see even a whiff of creepiness/scariness. Am I the one who is wrong? Probably. Or rather, I’m probably in the minority as I usually am. I will say that I’m starting to feel a tad bit gaslit about this because I don’t see it at all.
Normally, I can at least get a glimpse of why people feel the way they do, but I don’t see it at all in this game. I see cute. I see cozy. I see crunchy pixel graphics. I see charming. I see, yes, creatures. I do NOT see creepy. I do wonder if I’m being punked. Is this kind of a long con where everyone is in on it?
Setting that aside with difficulty, the game kept me engaged until the very end. Without any spoilers, I felt like it was giving me a big hug, and I smiled a genuine smile of warmth and appreciation as the credits rolled.
The story was simple and sincere. I was wondering if there was going to be a twist, and there wasn’t. Not really, anyway. I’m going to put a spoiler tag on this, but it’s not really a spoiler. I’d rather be safe than sorry, though. I tend to err on the side of being spoiler tag heavy.
In the Discord I’m in, there’s an ongoing debate about spoiler tags and when they should be used. My thing is that it doesn’t hurt to slap a spoiler tag on something, so why not? There are times, though, that it looks we’re writing confidential FBI docs.
I have been moaning about the glut of mediocre games on Steam in the last–well, several months if not years. Steam Next Fest has become a drag. I’m not saying there aren’t good games in the Steam Next Fest; I am saying that it’s really hard to find that gem. That’s why I depend on groups likke Wholesome Games to give me a heads up on what’s new in cozy gaming. In this case, they had a trailer for a game called Creature Kitchen (The Rat Zone). I have included it down below. I don’t usually go for the crunchy pixel look, but there was something endearing about this one. I don’t know what it is, but I was drawn in.
Then, I found out it was a cooking game, and I was sold. I didn’t even need to know the story or anything else. Me cooking for different animals*? Hell yeah! There was a demo, so of course, I installed it. I didn’t have much of an idea what to expect, so I went in with an open mind. I did love the fact that the game had an eighties feel to it. It’s in first person, but for whatever reason, my nausea remained at a very low level. It’s manageable, and I only had to take a break once.
I can’t overstate how charming the game is. And how it leads you gently from point to point. For the most part, I had no problem figuring out what I was supposed to do. Only once did I get stuck, and it was a glitch in the system. Meaning, it was a fault of the game–not anything I’d done.
By the way, my biggest complaint–and it’s not even that big–is just a bunch of small QOL issues. Such as it doesn’t constantly save, and you can’t auto-save. Which means that you can lose a small bit of gameplay. Like, a minute or so. It’s not great, but I’m also not too pressed about it.
Another small complaint–the frying pan mechanic is really frustrating. You have to cook a piece of food on one side for a few seconds before flipping it to cook the other side. Much like you have to do in real life, yes, but you have to flip it at a certain angle that is counterintuitive to me. And if you don’t do it just right, then it falls out of the pan and into the fire. And you have to cook it again. As someone who has awful dexterity in my fingers, this is agony to me. And it doesn’t add anything to the gameplay experience.
I sympathize with devs who want to include mundane activities, especially in a cozy cooking game, but–by the way. This has been called a creepy-looking cozy cooking simulator. I may be missing something, but it’s not creepy at all. I mean, there’s
Birdigo (John August, Corey Martin) is my casual/cozy word game that I am currently playing. It’s a word game that is a combination of Scrabble and Balatro (Local Thunk). You are a bird and you have to score words to make the filgght to each stop on a route. There are different conditions for each route, and you have to finish one to unlock the next.
There are feathers that modify something for the whole run. Like, you get ten flaps per each X you play. Flaps are points. There is also a power stat, and you multiple the two. I never know exactly how many points I’ll be getting per hand, which makes things very interesting.
This game very much has that “Just one more run” feel to it. Not quite as much as Balatro did, but that’s a good thing. I got so lost in that game; it really felt like an addiction that I just couldn’t quit. I lost actual days to the challenges, and at one point, I was so focused on finishing the Orange Stakes on the Plasma Deck, I had lost all the joy of playing the game. It’s supposedly the easiest deck, but it was the hardest one for me. I just could not get the hang of it, and there was a point where I was actively hating the game. That’s when I walked away from the game.
This is one of my issues (and probably partly because of me being neuroatypical): When I get into something, I get obsessed with it. It’s all I can think of, and I cannot let it go. It can be a good thing, such as with my martial arts. It allows me to focus on, say, the Double Fan Form until I taught the whole thing to myself. It took a year, yes, but I kept at it through the tough times. I don’t know why I didn’t quit–well, yes I do. It’s sheer stubbornness, really. I’m not competitive with other people, but I’m very competitive with myself.
I challenge myself to be the best, however, and sometimes, I’m too hard on myself. That’s because I’m Asian; that’s how we do. It’s also because I had parents who didn’t say much of anything nice about me or to me. Yes, that was partly an Asian thing, but it was also dysfunction. One thing I say to people is just because something is cultural, it doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. What I mean by that is that every culture has its negative aspects, and I used to bristle when people tried to hold up Asians as the model minority because it’s just another way of not seeing us as individuals.
How the hell did I get here from where I was? I’m not sure, but whatever.
I’m back for the third and final post about the Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox) demo. I want to talk about what I liked and didn’t like in the demo. I have said that the aesthetics are not my style, but they grew on me in game one. Let me rephrase that. The environments are vivid and the bears are cute; it’s mostly the player character that leaves me feeling a bit empty. I got used to it, though, anad I loved being able to dress them up as I wished. There were so many cute outfits, and I had to buy them all.
Here’s my post from yesterday about the basics of the first game and how the demo has differed so far. In this point, I’ll talk more about that and what I hope the sequel will have. And won’t have. Oh, and I’ve included the trailer from the original game below since I’ve included the trailer for this game in the last two posts.
I left off the last post by talking about how the quests seem much easier to finish in this game than the first, at least in the demo. I have mixed feelings about that because while it was frustrating in the first game to have to wait literal days to finish quests, I’m not sure I like finishing them in a matter of minutes, either. Then again, they may just be the first steps to a bigger and longer quest. I think I would be pleased if that was the case. I think that would be a good middle ground. Have some quests that can be finished in the current session and some that might have to wait until the next day.
Actually, that might have been how it was in the first game. It’s been some time since I’ve played it, so I’m not sure. It’s weird, though, because the ones you do in the moment seem to be too easy to finish. I will say I was frustrated by one thing. There’s a way to fix the bus, and you have to find several different parts. I could not find one part for the life of me, and I realized that it’s because they did not want you to find it in the demo. Or maybe not at all beacuse once the bus is fixed, presumably it can be driven. Though how it was drivin onto an island, I am unsure.
I hope that the cast of bears I have to help will be as memorable and endearing as they were in the first game. I’m a bit wary of the content creator bear, but I mean it is part of the current social landscape. Meaning, it’s a valid job, so there’s no reason it shouldn’t be represented in the game. And yet, I’m a bit wary because they are already doing the ‘like and subscribe’ vibe that is so off-putting to me. They, themselves, though are very sweet.
I like that in the first game and in this game so far, there are a wide variety of characters. It’s one thing I appreciate in cozy games–so many of the devs are deliberate about maknig their games inclusive. Not just racially, but sexual orientation, disabilities, gender identity, neuroatypicality, etc. Even religion has been touched upon in some games, as well as spirituality. Death is definetely dealt with, too–and in a sensitive manner.
I want to talk more about the Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox) demo for several reasons. Here is the post I wrote yesterday about it in which I talked about the basic mechanics of the first game. I had to do it because the second game uses much of the same mechanics, has the same aesthetics, and (so far) has the same story beats.
Here’s one thing, though, that the first game had that this game so far does not. I mentioned that one of the biggest hooks of the first game was that it ran in real time (sort of). The story events often spanned several real-life days, which meant you could not do a whole event/quest in one day. Not even if you played for several hours on end. If you had to wait a day or two for something to happen, you had to wait an actual day or two.
There were seasons that lasted two months each with a transition month in between each season (I’m doing this by memory and may be off a bit). There are resources that only showed up in certain seasons, which was an interesting call. I’m talking bugs and trees, and maybe flowers? I don’t remmeber if those rotated as well.
It was an interesting decision, and the devs did it in part because they wanted players to be thoughtful about the amount of time they played the game a day. The counter to that was they had rotating side quests plus a bunch of other things you could always be doing (such as resource gathering) so you could spend more time in the game a day than they wanted. Also, with all the side quests, you could spend all your spare time in that game.
I had mixed feelings about that philosophy. In the beginning of the game, the grind was excruciating and real. There’s a fine line between asking your players to be patient and just wasting their time. In the start of this game, I feel it’s slightly on the latter side. However, there was enough that engaged me so I kept playing. I will admit I looked a few things up to see if I could hurry things up, but the inevitable response was to just wait.
I can’t remember what the ingredient/resource it was that I couldn’t find, but I found myself getting more and more impatient. Every day, I would log on and check to see if the resource was there. Every day, it was not. I don’t remember how much time it took to get that one resource, but I did manage to get it at some point. I think it was within a week.
I was frustrated by the grind and how slow everything was going. And yet. There was something about the game that kept me coming back. It was the bears, for sure. I really liked several of them and learning their stories. Their lives were often tragic, but there was a lot of heart on display, too. I could relate to something with almost all of them, and there were none of them that I wanted to throw into the ocean.
I liked doing favors for them and making their last journey as panless and peaceful as possible. I didn’t always like them, but I was willing to be their listening ear.
In addition, there was something comforting about doing my routines every day. Check all my resources. Talk to all the bears who had open quests. Go to Mr. Kit’s store–by the way. I love Mr. Kit. He’s a big fox, and he runs the store. I really want to know his story, but he is tight-lipped in the first game. I believe I asked him a few questions about himself, but he deflected them. For someone whom I talked to every day, I knew very little about him.
He was so useful, too. He sold different hairstyles, and I loved switching them up on the regular. He also sold clothing, and I bought every single one. There were unique outfits, some of them season-themed, and I always liked switching them up on the regular.
Mr. Kit also sold storage space, and it got really pricy the more you bought. Of course it did. Once you got a taste of it, you get hooked and need more. He was the only vendor who sold storage in the game, so of course I was going to keep paying him for it.
One of my negatives of the first game–wait. I’m here to talk about the demo of the sequel, not the first game.
The quests go by so much more quickly in the sequel, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. I know that it’s probably because of the criticism the devs received for the glacial (and steep) beginning part of the first game, but I also think it’s because it was initially a mobile game. There were no microtransactions in the game, and it was free to play.
I’m assuming there will be a price on it when it comes to Steam, and I am more than fine with it. The original, which came out on my birthday in 2021, was $14.99. That turned out to be a steal–I would happily have paid twice that price by the time I was done with the game. Yes, I know that is a fallacy because would I have paid $30 up front? I would have hesitated. Mightily.
Then again, I took a big chance on Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock), which was $25 and had an art style I didn’t love. Why do I always think it was thirty bucks? I don’t know. But I went back to read what I wrote about it, and I said that after playing the game, I would have payed fifty bucks for it because it was so crammed with content. Much like I felt about Cozy Grove.
I’m not sure I like how easily the tasks are accomplished in the sequel, though. Just to reiterate. Part of the charm in the first game was having to wait hours/days in real time to finish tasks/quests/story beats. I was hoping that since the game was coming back to Steam, maybe they would rejigger the tasks/quests. I realize that’s really hard to do, thouggh, so I can understand why they wouldn’t want to do that.
That’s all for today. I think I have one more post in me so I’ll be back at it tomorrow.
Let’s talk more about the demos I’ve played recently. Yesterday, I started talking about the Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox) demo, which is the sequel to Cozy Grove. As I mentioned, it’s one of my top five non-From games of all time. I think I’d put it at three or four. (Behind Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall) and Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games) definitely. I’m not sure if I’d put it before or after Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! (Vertigo Gaming. They are essentially tied.)
The art design is not my cuppa, but it grew on me. I liked the environments for the most part and the bears–it’s just the humans that turned me off, actually. It’s a bit too cutesy for me, but I can get past that because the game is so engaging.
As I said, one of the key hooks in the first game is that it ran in real time (sort of), and you could only do a set parts of the storyline quests per day. There were always side quests you could do at any time (and they rotated, so I got pretty tired of finding six cogs buried in the leaves (made-up example, but indictative of the side quests) for one of the bears every two weeks or so).
This was one of the games that saved me after my medical crisis. I was sad that I had broken my streak of days playing the game when I had was in the hospital for two weeks, but then I picked it up again once I was able to play games again.
When I was in the hospital, one of the physical therapists told me that one way to do rehab was to play video games. My brother laughed and said that I could probably handle that. The PT said that she and her son played an hour of Breath of the Wild (Zelda) every night together.
On the fourth or fifth day I was home , I fired up Dark Souls III (FromSoft). At that time, it was my favorite game of all time. I was still wobbly, so I didn’t do any fighting. Instead, I ran around Firelike Shrine, which is the hub world in this game. It’s a reimagining of Firelinke Shrine from the OG Dark Souls, and it’s fucking gorgeous. The first time I walked into it, I had tears in my eyes. It was a sight to behold, and it warmed my heart.
The first time back after doing a respawn in real life, I had tears once again. I could not believe I was alive and running around in my favorite video game in my beloved big hat (Sage’s Big Hat). I was so overcome with emotions and grateful to be alive.
I 100%ed The Spriit Lift (prettysmart games) today. The immediate feeling I had was relief. Relief that I could quit playing the game and move on with my life. This is something I hate about trying to 100% a game, by the way. How much I hate the grind and tedium by the end of the game. Dark Souls III (FromSoft) was my favorite game until Elden Ring (FromSoft again) dropped. When I went for the plat/hundo chievo, I was naive as to how much it would take out of me. By the end, I was hating the game with all my heart. And this was a game I played every day as my comfort game. When I got the plat*, I exhaled slowly, put down my controller, and did not touch the game for several months.
I did eventually pick it up again, but it was a journey. That plat was brutal and trash, by the way. I have a completely unsubstantiated theory as to why the From plats are so terrible. It’s because Miyazaki did not want to do them, but he was pushed to do so. So he made them awful as his way of retaliating. Again, I have nothing to base this on, but it’s a theory that makes sense.
And the reason that Elden Ring‘s is a dream in comparison is because it was meant to be a mainstream hit/breakthrough. That’s not a diss on the game, by the way. It’s my favorite FromSoft game by a hair over Dark Souls III. Something can be a massive hit and still be unique to the vision of the director. I really hate people who act as if something that has mass appeal is automatically a sellout.
Ahem.
Back to this game. Here is part one to my review from yesterday. When I realized that I was close to the plat, I should have just shut down the game and walked away. Why? Because I knew what it was going to do to me. I knew that I get obsessed and my brain turns weird. I knew that I would keep on grinding until I got the two or three meaningless items I needed to get the plat.
I did not want to do it, but I knew I would.
Did I walk away? Of course I did not. I got into that flow state that I hit when I’m focused on an objective. Here’s the thing, though. With the Dark Souls III plat, I knew what I needed to do. I did not like what I needed to do, but I knew each grueling step. The worst was ten hours grinding to get a certain covenant item. Anyone who went for the plat and didn’t want to do the online PvP knows what I’m talking about.
I’ve been playing a bunch of demos in the hopes of finding a hidden gem. One of them is Carto (Sunhead Games). In Googling for the developer, I found out that it’s an indie dev of four people in Taiwan. Very cool! I think I knew they were Taiwanese, but my memory is spotty these days.
I was charmed by the arct style which is hand-drawn and looks like it could be a pop-up card. It’s pastel/water color-y, and some people say it has a delicate paper look to it. I loved the looks of it, and I loved the main conceit.
The basis of the game is that you are Carto, a young girl who is traveling in an airplane with her grandmother when the airplancrashes. She is separated from her grandmother and just starts walking. The main conceit is that there is a map you have to piece together. The edges that connect have to have the same terrain–river to river, forest to forest, beach to beach, etc. When you do it correctly, new events spring up.
I loved the demo and snapped it up when–hey, wait. It was released on October 27, 2020?!? No wonder I had an easy time finding a video walkthrough of it.
I’m shooketh. I thought it was a recent release–as in last month. Huh.
Anyway, I enjoyed the first chapter. The second? Not quite as much because it was short and kind of choppy. Also, the story is frustrating. When I first land on an island, there is a culture there that has the tradition of a child leaving the island and never coming back once they turn fifteen. No one knows why that’s their tradition, but it is.
I know traditions don’t always have a clear root to them, but this felt very video game-y as a premise. I’m not saying it could never happen, but it was so bare bones. In addition, once I went with the young girl on her send-off, that premise was quickly dropped as if it never existed.
This is one of my issues with the game–each chapter feels detached from the one before. Granted, I’m only four chapters in (I think?), but it’s quite a jolt to have a completely different story for each chapter. I think in part because it feels so shallow. I get that the mechanic is the heart of the game, but that has worn thin for me.
Why? Well, I’m going tot get into it in detail, and it feels quite mean to say. This game has so much heart, and it’s clear that a lot of love went into it. I am very impressed that this game was done by so few people. and I don’t want to stomp all over it.
I’m back with more on Hades II (Supergiant Games). Here is the post from yesterday. I want to start with a few of the things that bother me about the game because it’s been nagging the back of my mind. Also, I have praised the game to high heaven, so I don’t think it’ll be untoward for me to mention a few girpes.
The first is that every single boss fight has adds in it. Every. Single. One. At least of the ones I’ve fought so far. That would be four levels below and three levels above. And a specific miniboss above. I’m not a fan of the thinking behind, “How do we make this harder? Just throw in some scrubs who are sponges for damage!” I especially hate it in this game because all of the bosses (I think) also have temporary times of invincibility.
The other thing I dislike about the boss fights is that there is just too much going on. So much movement, flashing lights, and quick attacks by the enemies. I have really bad reflexes, and I know I’m just going to have to eat a certain amount of damage per run. I think they could tone it down, though, beacuse oftentimes cannot actually track the boss with everything that’s going on. Just doing a quick Google search, I’m not the only one who thinks this. It was said during Early Access, and it seems that this is one thing in which Supergiant is like other companies–way too much visual noise.
I’m already having a difficult time with the light show going on. I don’t know what I’m going to do later in the game. I’m already feeling visually battered as I fight the bosses. By the way, it’s the same on the levels, but I’m usually OP enough to shrug it off–at least for the first two levels. Except maybe the mini-bosses. They might give me some trouble.
This is the disability tax that I pay when playing video games. There are several obstacles in my way, and some days, I think about giving up on the non-cozy games. One is my age. I’m in my mid-fifties, which means my reflexes aren’t great to begin with. Then, even before my medical crisis, my reflexes were bad. As were my depth perception and twitch responses. All of these are markedly worse since my medical crisis, and I was just relieved I could play my favorite game (Dark Souls III (FromSoft)) when I got out of the hospital. Well, a few weeks after.
I accept that I will be shit at these games. Roguelike/lites, FromSoft games, soulslikes, etc. Some days, I wonder why I even play them. It is so like me to love something/someone that/who doesn’t love me back. I’ve had a long-standing debate with Ian about this. He thinks the FromSoft games are made for me because Miyazaki wants people to try somethnig difficult and succeed. I, on the other hand, believes that Miyazaki is neutral about the people playing his game and doesn’t really care if they succeed or not. (People are usually split into two camps. Either Miyazaki loves the players or hates them. I think he is indifferent to the player and the game is the important thing.)
I’m back to talk more about Hades II (Supergiant Games). It the last post, I ended by talking about the relationships and how I wanted to bonk certain characters. My tongue is firmly in (my own) cheek, but it’s also not a joke. The characters are insanely hot in this game (and in the original), and the artist (Jen Zee, Art Director) deserves a lot of cred for bringing Greek sexy back.
I have been able to make more progress with my main romantic interest (so far). I think I’m in bit now where I’ll just have to wait for the story to progress before I can do anything more with this character. They (generic they, not gender-specific they) used to be the first character I talked to when I got back to The Crossroads, but now I hold them until the last because I’m savoring the wait.
I have talked about how I don’t like the way most games do relationships. It’s usually me having to do things to for that person and it felt very transaction-y. I can’t even be that mad at it because it makes sense for a video game. You can’t just have two (or more) characters interacting and talking for minutes on end. Well, I mean, you can, but then it might as well be a movie.
For as down as I sound on romance in games, I’m pretty sanguine (read, resigned) about it. I know that it’s not going to be as rich as it is a novel or even a movie. I’m fine with that. Mostly. It’s only when a game tries to go further that I get frustrated. If you’re going to go for it, then it damn well better be great.
Supergiant Games neatly sidesteps that thorny question by doing the transactions, yes, but also having decent dialogue and appropriate activities to go with the gifts. This is different than the first game. In that game, you just gave enough Nectar until you reached Ambrosia, if I remember correctly. In this game, yes, you start with Nectar, but then there are other area-appropriate gifts to give (including the Ambrosia), which I thought was cool.
I will say that I’m a bit overwhelmed with how much there is to do in the game. I thought there was a lot in Hades (which there was), and it’s easily doubled in this game. That’s what I’ve heard, and from what I’ve seen so far, I buy it.