Underneath my yellow skin

About those two indie games, part two

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I’ve played the second day of Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox), and I have much to say about it. (The first day was the demo.) It has retained the “you’ve done all you can do” message from Flamey, which I appreciate. Of course, I can still wander around, pick things up, and turn things in to the, ah, archive thing to make money. I’ll explain that in a bit. Here is my post from yesterday in which I wrote about how much I was looking forward to this game and to The Incident at Galley House (William Rous, Evil Trout Inc.).

I did mention, though, that my emotions were mixed about Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit. I played the first part of it when Netflix was trying out its beta gaming desktop, and I played the demo of it when they broke free from the Netflix shackles and could put the game on Steam. The demo is the first day, much like what I played on Netflix.

Side note: I want to do my mini-rant about sequels. For games in this case, but just in general, too. Quick side note to the side note: series should go to about seven units. I’ve had a firm belief about this since I was in my twenties. I’ve seen too many writers feeling like they have to milk their main protagonist for all they’re worth. I don’t blame them, obviously, because you gotta get paid, but….

Let me give you an example. I used to read Sue Grafton’s alphabet series (starring Kinsey Millhone) voraciously. I really liked it when it first came out. However, M was the turning point as it was the last one I enjoyed. Part of the problem was that she set the books so that each one followed the last, timewise. Meaning there was only a few weeks between each book in the books whereas they came out every year or two? I think? That means that even when the actual years went into the internet era, Kinsey was still using a brick phone that did little more than just receive calls.

It got tiring after a while, and it really felt constraining. Plus, the problem is that when you have a really popular protagonist, you can’t mess with them too much. Every book, Kinsey had to say that she cut her own hair and that her landlord is an eighty-year old hottie. I know she had to set up each book in the same way, but it got really old by the time I hit N.

Back to Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit.

The second day took about an hour to finish. I appreciate that it doesn’t take a huge amount of time, but I did feel a bit overwhelmed by all the different quests I were given. I don’t know if I’m remembering this inorrectly, but I felt that quests went much more slowly in the first game, and I wasn’t given as many on the daily.

There was a pacing issue in the first game where the grind seemed too real, and things took too long to do. Again, I appreciated the real-time pacing. I liked being made to wait until the next in-real-life day to continue a quest. However, the economy was a bit too stingy in the beginning. It was too hard to get the things you needed in the first few weeks. I remember looking to the forums when I couldn’t get an ingredient I needed and found out that it was hard to get. I felt like I was barely scraping together enough money to buy what I needed.

By the middle of the game, I was positively rolling in it. I had no need to worry about money, and I could buy whatever I needed. I much prefer that to scraping by, but I wish there was more of a balance between the two. I know it’s a hard balance to get, though, so I’m not going to be too put out by it.

Also, in this game, there’s less of that friction. That’s a word (friction) I kept using in the last post, but I can’t help it. It’s something that games struggle so much with, and it tends to swing from one extreme to the other. FromSoft happened at a time when games were made to be as easy as possible so gamers didn’t ever have to feel like they were failing.

Miyazaki said, “Yeah, no.” Not consciously, maybe*, but he gave no quarters. And that started the era of games being brutal for the sake of being brutal.**

I think this game suffered from the same criticism–well, at least a similar one. Not that it was considered difficult, but you did have to have patience to play it. I know that I might be hanging too much importance on the fact that the changes happened after they got bought out by Netflix, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

By the way. Mad props to the two founders, David Edery and Daniel Cook, they took a cut in salary to buy back Spry Fox from Netflix and they increased the profit for their employees. I paid a higher price for the game than I could have because I wanted to give more to them (same with the other game I talked about yesterday, but I’m not talking about that game here because I have not played it yet).

I have a warm feeling playing this game. I’m eager to see where it’s going and if I’ll gel with any of the bears as much as I did with some of the NPCs in the last game. I’ll write more about it the further into the game I get. There have been a few QOL improvements, but there have also been some that I’m not as sanguine about. As to the latter, I’ll see if they change with a future patch.

 

 

 

*That’s an argument I’ve had several times–whether Miyazaki loved his players or hated them. I always maintained that he was indifferent to them. He just wanted to make the gorgeous, twisted worlds without any thought to the player.

**Which, by the way, misses the whole entire damn point. It’s the exploration and the grim fantasy that matter. Yes, there’s difficulty in From games, but that’s not the point.*** It feels almost incidental for most of the game. Like, yes it’s difficult and yes the worlds are intricate with no crossover.

***Well, mostly. Not going to get into that in this post because I’ve written about it ad nauseam in the past.

 

 

 

Two indie games I’m holding my breath for

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I am eagerly looking forward to two indie games. One was released yesterday, and one will be released today. The former is The Incident at Galley House (Willim Rous/Evil Trout Inc.), and the latter is Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox). As I thought, I can not yet return to Schrödinger’s Call (Acrobatic Chirimenjako) because each chapter takes so much out of me.

I want to be clear that this is not a complaint–not at all. I am appreciative that this game is maknig me feel things. I just have to pace myself because I have a hunch it’s only going to get sadder from here on out. Sadder and weightier.

Let’s talk about the two games I mentioned in the first paragraph. The first is by the devs who did The Roottrees are Dead. I loved that game, and it made me feel clever. However, I did what I always do, which was to binge it until I finished it, and then I felt slightly sick. It was as if I had over-indulged. I went right into the DLC, but after about twenty minutes, I had to stop. It wasn’t the DLC; it was me. I had burned myself out on it, and I just could not do any more of it.

Hm. I might be able to go back to it now.

Anyway.

Their new game.

It’s not a new game, exactly. Last year, they had a text-based game called Type Help. I had heard of it, but I did not play it. People in the Discord who have played it were raving about it, but I’m just not big on text-based games. I love to read, but not when I’m trying to play a game. I don’t know why, but that’s just how it is.

This is…not the sequel to it, exactly. It’s an adaptation with a glow-up and some extra content, apparently. I don’t know much about it because I don’t watch trailers for games I know I’m going to play if the games are mysteries or need you to go in unspoiled. I had heard that this is definitely a game that you don’t want to know anything about before playing, much like The Roottrees are Dead was.

I know it’s a murder mystery. That’s all I know about it. The graphics are good from what I’ve seen–which again, isn’t much. I’m trying to avoid everything, and that means that I know very little about it. There are 59 reviews on Steam, and they are Very Positive. That’s the extent of what I know about the game.

As for the second game. I’m so excited about it, but I’m also apprehensive. Why? There are so many reasons. First of all, Spry Fox, the devs, were bought by Netflix (willingly, I hastily add) after the success of their first game, Cozy Grove. Which, by the way, is on my list of top five favorite non-From games of all time. I think I have it at fourth. It was my go-to game for so many days in a row, and after my medical crisis, it was one of my comfort games.


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Schrödinger’s Call–and other similar indies

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I want to talk more Schrödinger’s Call (Acrobatic Chirimenjako), other indie games, and why certain ones hit me so hard. Here is my post for the A Quick Review of this game. I ended it by saying I had a feeling that I would have procrastinate before playing the third chapter, and that is the case so far. I mean, it’s only been one day, but still. I find my brain drifting to it over and over again, but then, my brain skitters off again.

I mentioned in the last post that I felt so many feelings as I was playing the game. At the end of the second chapter, Mary was so broken that I broke with her. I don’t know how many chapters the game is, but I have a feeling that I’m going to go through it more and more with each chapter. I will say that I’m a bit worried as to how they are going to end the game.

This is the area where I think there’s so much danger. Because there is usually not as much description in a video game as in a novel or maybe even a movie or TV show.  So a game has to rely more on pure emotion*. I have seen a fair few indie games that were great until the last act, and then they completely fell apart.

Whether it’s that they didn’t have time to finish the game; they had an idea they couldn’t quite manifest; or their ending was, well, misguided, it can ruin an otherwise great game. Or at least bring it down a bit.

Back to Schrödinger’s Call. I just watched the launch trailer so I could include it in this post. And I broke once again. There is something about the game that just pierces any defense I can erect, and I can’t keep a shield up for the life of me.

I think it’s partly because I often feel like the world’s last Confidant. That’s my role in my family, and it’s something I tend to do with other people as well. I hear all the deep, painful secrets, and I’m the one to be compassionate and empathetic. I have unironically called myself my mother’s emotional support human, and she has just as unironically called me her therapist.

This game does have times when you have a choice as to what to say to the person on the other end of the line. I find myself fighting between saying what I really want to say and choosing the more palatable answer. Or rather, the one that will soothe their pain. The funny thing, though, is that they often react badly to the lie. Or rather, they know I’m lying. When I choose the harsh answer that is what I really feel inside, they are comforted.

Most of the time. Sometimes, they want the lie. Or at least to hear it. But then they want the truth. I find it endlessly fascinating to see my mind weasels playing out in a game. The dev has very neatly captured the circles my brain runs around in.


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Schrödinger’s Call–A Quick Look

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Back when Silk Song (Team Cherry) was being raved about, I read an article (I don’t remember where) about how there was another indie that was getting better reviews. The article was being cheeky because the game in question was a tiny indie called Schrödinger’s Call (with a cat face as the o in the first word, dev, Acrobatic Chirimenjako), and it had a small fraction of the reviews that Hollow Knight: Silksong had. Still. The reviews were impressive (I read them). Now, it has 89 on Metacritic and a 90 on OpenCritic whereas HKS has 90 and 91, respectively. And, to be completely honest, Schrödinger’s Call had about a quarter of the reviews that HKS had.

Still. Stellar reviews for both games.

Schrödinger’s Callhas a demo on Steam, which includes the whole first chapter. Because of the reviews and the little I read about the game (I tried not to read too much), I installed the demo, and I was immediately intrigued. Not by the art style which is not my taste at all (kind of penciled anime, if that makes sense. I’ll include the trailer below.

It’s moody and dripping in atmosphere. You play as Mary, an amnesiac who is the focus of the game after something cataclysmic happen. She/You turn out to be something called the world’s last Confidant. I won’t go into details as to what that means, and I’m going to try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible. It’s really a game you want to go into with as little knowledge as possible. I can’t really talk about it without giving some light spoilers, but I’ll do my best to keep them at a minimum.

*SPOILERS*

Here’s my favorite part of the opening–there is a black cat named Hamlet. Well, he has a more formal name, but I’ll leave that up to you to find because it’s very clever. he’s snarky and crytic, but he’s the key to everything that’s happening. At least, I think he is. I’ve only played two chapters so far. And, like a real cat, Hamlet comes and goes as he pleases.

I’m rewatching the demo trailer to see what they say. Mary is the keeper of the phone. OK. The trailer tells you the basic premise. The moon falls to the earth. And it shows the phone a lot. Beyond that, Hamlet tells you a lot of things when you wake up from being unconscious. You don’t remember anything about your life, and as you’re sitting an a daze, he tells you that you’re the world’s last Confidant–meaning someone who listens to people who are stuck in their own thoughts and can’t free themselves enough to move on. I’ll tell you no more than that.

Wait, hold on. Is this yet another indie game that deals with death and dying, I hear you ask? That does seem to be my jam, doesn’t it? I would not call it cozy, but I am loath to say why. I mean, it’s mostly an interactive novel, though you do have to make choices.

Let’s talk about those choices. This is one place where I have conflicted feelings about it. Because the game has a deep meaning and it hits me right in the feels. But one of my small frustrations is that the game doesn’t let you choose the wrong answer to qustions that have multiple answers.

I mean, I get it. The game wants to you to go down a certain path. And they want your choices to mean something, but the choices don’t when if in the end, you are told to make another choice. Not in so many words, but the game won’t continue with the wrong choice you made. I get why they can’t map it out for both the answers, but then why give me the illusion that I’m actually making a choice?

Sticking to the gameplay for a minute–it’s pretty basic. You’re piecing together what happened to the person Mary’s talking to on the phone. They don’t have much memory, either, and the way to unlocking their memories is by empathizing with them. At least, that’s the way it’s been so far. I’ve only done the first two chapters because each chapter is meaty and heavy. Meaty as in there’s a lot to do in each one and heavy in that the themes are heartbreak and more heartbreak.

Oh! One thing I didn’t mention. The characters are animals, which seems to be my favorite way to have characters in a game. Three of my top five non-From games have animals as characters (Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall); Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games); and Cozy Grove (Spry Fox). I don’t know what it says about me that I’m more able to relate to animals than humans, but I’m fine with whatever it may be.

I mentioned earlier that the art style is not my favorite,  but I have to say that except for the main character, I do like how the characters are drawn (especially Hamlet). What can I say? I like my cats black, round, sassy, and mysterious. Mary is impatient when Hamlet disappears suddenly, but that’s a cat for you. They come and go as they please, and that’s what I love about them.

I like that each episode/chapter is a mystery of sorts. Because the person I’m talking to on the phone is stuck, I have to free them. That means delving into their past and figuring out what is making them stuck. Along the way, I will get a few other people to talk to, and I can usally help them find peace as well.

This game is so coded for me. Talking about death and tugging at my heartstrings. Making me the one who has to help people move on. But first, I must listen to their woes and help them recover their memories.

As I said, it’s a heavy game. It’s already broken my heart more than once. I have been gripped with despair, pain, and compassion. I have teared up, and I have wanted desperately to comfort people/animals who aren’t even real. The end of the second chapter completely broke me. I’m not going to talk about it, obviously, but I felt everything Mary was saying. So deeply in my heart. I felt the pain that she felt. I wanted to cry out with her, and I finished the chapter in a daze.

I have to say that I can only play one chapter at a time. I played the demo several weeks ago (I think?), and immediately bought the game. Then, I kept wanting to play it, but my heart and brain weren’t in the right place to do it.

I feel like I’ll do the same thing for the third chapter. As much as I want to keep going, I have a feeling I’ll need a break before I tackle the next chapter.

Gaming, layoffs, physical discs, and me (part four)

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I’m back to talk once again about Xbox and what the fuck is going on in the industry. Xbox has big main villain vibes, but it’s not just them. It’s not even mainly them. They are just the most obvious symptom of an evergreen disease–corporate greed. That’s the disease. It’s always the disease. It probably always will be. That’s part and parcel of America; it’s built into the fabric of American society. We just take for granted that we are at the whim of our corporate overlords, and there is nothing to be done about it. Oh, and here is the post from yesterday in which I talked about how deluded (and heartless) the C-suite at Microsoft is when talking about Xbox profits.

I read a work blog, and any time the conditions of the American workforce is brought up (especially the fact that our healthcare is tied into our employment), Europeans pour in to tell us how appalling it is and how they can’t believe it. I mean, true, but we don’t need to hear/read it every time. We know it’s gross and terrible, but it’s not as if we can just move countries on a whim. Or overhaul our entire employment system with a snap of the fingers.

Journalism is dying out in general. Gaming journalism, in particular, is on its way out, too. And life as a gaming dev is hard AF. I don’t see how in good conscious I could encourage anyone to go into the gaming industry today*. Then again, it’s not like there are a ton of industries I would encourage anyone to go into, anway. But, especially not anything entertainment and/or journalism related.

Things are dire in this realm. People in the industry are feeling pretty bleak. There are some saying that it’s going to get lower before it goes higher. Others are not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. Every day, it’s just bad news after bad news.

Which, come to think of it, is much like the regular news as well. *Sigh*

One thing I will say is that the physical discs issue–by the way. They didn’t even tell their partners that they were doing that until they dropped the news to the public. And, yeah. That did not go over well. Sony really thought they were just going to drop that and let it wash away. (I use Sony and PlayStation pretty interchangeably in this post for complex reasons I don’t want to get into here.)

To be honest, so did I. I mean, what was there to do? PlayStation in the past pretty much just did whatever the fuck they wanted to do with little to no pushback. Given that Xbox has floundered for several years, essentially giving PlayStation free rein. I wrote free reign at first, which works, too (meaning that PlayStation is acting pretty much as a dictator). And, really. They slid it in while the Xbox turmoil was going on, so they probably thought they would be able to go unnoticed.

Well, joke’s on them. There was such an uproar about it; I was quite surprised. It was loud. It was angry. It was sustained. I thought it would wash away in a day or two, but no. People were furious about it, and, weirdly, it’s the one thing that actually bolstered me. The reaction, I mean. I had been so beaten down by the news (gaming and general), I was numb. Everything sucked. Nothing was going to get better. Why bother?


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Gaming, me, and all is bad; part three

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In the gaming industry, there is a saying I keep hearing. “Put out a bad game–get laid off. Put out a great game–get laid off. It doesn’t matter.” Sometimes, people will add, “Put out an OK game–get laid off.” The point is that no one is safe. It doesn’t matter how well your game does–you can be on the chopping block.

The biggest example of this is id Software–the developers of the DOOM and Quake games (both of which are considered the grandparent of the first-person shooter). They have been consistent with their games coming out and being warmly received. Their last DOOM game came out last year to much fanfare, and it had an update this year.

In Xbox’s current brutal ‘off with their heads’ rampage, they laid off 136 employees at id Software. The co-founder of id Software (who has long since left), John Carmack released a milquetoast statement that said nothing and included a tasteless and, quite frankly, cringeworthy remark. He would have been better off not saying anything at all, quite frankly. Greg Miller from Kinda Funny Games and Tamoor Hussain from Gamespot talked about it passionately on KFG, and I’ve included the clip below.

With Obsidian, they did not get laid off, but they got yanked off the Forsworn sequel they were working on and told they were doing the new Fallout. This is where mixed emotions come in. No one was asking for a new Forsworn (or rather, very few people), and everyone was clamoring for a new Fallout. The last game in the main series (Fallout 4) came out in 2015! No wonder people are hungering for more.

In addition, there is a Netflix Fallout series going on, and it would have been a perfect time to have a new Fallout game come out. This is Bethesda I’m talking about, by the way. They are the ones who own the Fallout name, but Obsidian made what is arguably the favorite in the series–Fallout New Vegas.

The CEO of Microsoft has said that since being hands off hasn’t worked, it’s now time to be hands on (I’m paraphrasing). I can’t say that I disagree with the premise. Bethesda has two IPs that are basically printing money, and they haven’t done anything major with either series in several years (and, no, Elder Scrolls, I’m not including the countless time Skyrim has been remastered, remade, repackaged, and put on different devices).

On the other hand, it feels really tyrannical to order a team to make a new game that is not the one they intended to make. Yes, even though they have made one before. They were in the middle of making a sequel to their latest game! To be ordeerd to stop that and do something completely different, well, that would not sit well with me.

Everyone is angry about it, and rightly so. It’s been a bloodbath, and the worst part is not knowing when or if it will stop. Also, are any of the upper C-suite taking paycuts? I think not. They can’t do without their third home in Martha’s Vineyard, now can they?


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The state of gaming and me, part two

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So, amid all the wild shenanigans that Xbox and PlayStation have been wading through creating, EA decided that they had been quiet for far too long. EA, once voted the worst company in America for two years running in the tens. Watching PS and Xbox get so much pub f or self-imploding must have really gotten on their nerves. “I got to get me some of that!”–some muckety-muck at EA, probably.

Why do I say that? Because they did something so bonehead and unfathomable (well, it’s fathomable when you remember that companies are souless entities who only care about making a profit and not at all about people or their customers), people are calling for a…boycott of sorts.

In a nutshell, they released their new college football game and took out the “easy mode”. I have included a video down below from SnowBike Mike who works at Kinda Funny Games in which he explains what the issue is. As I understand it, there was a slider that allowed you to adjust to how much experience points you earned in two of the offline modes. Andy Cortez read from an article written by Lewis Parker at Kotaku that outlines the problem. Spoiler–microtransactions. It’s microtransactions. Actual, there’s nothing micro about it. It’s just transactions, really.  There’s more to it, but basically, they’re saying you have to pay actual real life money to get the XP rather than use the slider–which no longer exists (at least the easier side of it).

Now, you gotta pay a hundo to get your coach leveled up properly. Someone calculated that you would have to win something like a hundred championships to do it ‘naturally’.

Well, well, well. Reading through the article, it seems that EA has backed down. I don’t know if it’s enough for the people who want to buy the game/bought the game, but at least understood that what they did was not cool. So very not cool.

Some content creators were really upset, too, because they promoted the game and played a demo of it that did not have microtransactions in it. In other words, EA knew what they were doing was shady, and they deliberately hid it forom the very people they were depending on to promote their game.

Which is astoundingly short-sighted. Content creators can generate so much good will for your game–or, by contrast, call for their followers to ‘play, not pay’–which one content creator did in response to the news of the microtransactions. Also, it wasn’t as if EA could have hidden it for very long–and, indeed, the outcry was swift and vicious. The reviews on Steam are mostly negative (we’ll see how that changes with the new news from EA), and all of them are clear about the fact that it’s because of the greed and not the gameplay. Most people think the actual gameplay is great.


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Indie games, physical discs, and why I should care (as a PC gamer)

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I have spontaneously added a new tag–gaming hell. That’s because gaming is hell right now. Not literally, of course, but metaphorically. Some of it is out of the control of anyone in the industry–such as AI driving up the prices of RAM (long story, don’t want to talk about it) so that new consolse/PCs are going to be absolutely ridiculous in prices. I was thinking of buying a new PC a year ago, but I decided to wait it out beacuse graphic cards were already outrageous (because of tariffs), and I was hoping things would calm down.

Oh wait. At the end of the last post, I was talking about a game that came out yesterday that I so wanted to like (after talking about it in a previous post). I don’t know why I’m being so coy about it. It’s Moonlight Peaks (Little Chicken Game Company). I had my eye on it from when I first heard of it–when was that? Was it the Wholesome Games Direct in February? Was there even one in February? Anyway, it was a vampire farming sim. Yeah, you heard that right. OK, it’s not exactly a farming sim, but there is farming in it. And romance. And other life sim stuff.

You will forgive me if I was reminded of another game that was similar to it. One that I played the shit out of, had a chibi-ish style to it, too (well, more cartoony than chibi, but reminiscent of), and was a farming sim. It’s called, Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock), and I enjoyed it so much, I platated it. Here is the post I wrote about it for my game of the year awards last year.

I played it for several dozes hours, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have written many posts about what I loved and didn’tt like about the game, so I won’t belabor the point. I will say that I really loved the heart of the game, the fact that it incorporated magic into it, and how much diversity was in it.

Quite frankly, I was looking for something to replicate that feeling. I like a good sim, but I’m quite picky about what works and doesn’t work for me. I was really hoping this game would scratch that itch because on paper, it should be right up my alley. You’re a vamp who runs away from home and into a community filled with discord and strife? And you have to find a way to make the warring factions make nice (I’m assuming). There are werewolves, vampires, and other manners of fae (I think), which is great for me. I love that shit.

What I’m trying to say is that there was everything that I liked in this game. A farming/life sim. Magic and fantastical creatures. Not the chibi look, but I can grit my teeth and deal with that. Benig a vamp! I love vampires. I should have been all over that. But I just wasn’t.


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Birdigo, indies, and when a game just misses, part four

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I have one last post in me for the 100%ing  of Birdigo (John August, Corey Martin), and then it’s time to move on. I’m so relieved that I got the plat so that I don’t have to play the game again. That is no diss against the game, but a diss against my obsessive nature.

Side note (yes, this soon into the post): In the Discord I’m in, there’s a joke that me and a woman who is very similar to me are the same person. She recently moved to Minnesota, too, so that makes it even funnier. Separately, there is another woman who I’ve become quite close to offline (meaning in DMs). We like to joke that we are the same person as well. Shes’ the one who alerted me to the fact that I might be neurospicy, and I’ll be forever grateful to her.

Today, in the Discord, they were cracking wise about being neurospicy (ADHD for one and ADHD/autistic for the other) and how they had to pay the neurospicy tax. One penalty was the result of getting interested in an activity, being passionate for about ten seconds, and then losing all desire in it. They both commented earsier than I did, so when I wake up, I get a bunch of fun posts to read and respond to.

The two I mentioned above were commiserating about all the things they had stored in their closets because of this neurodivergency trait. They joked that this is how it was for children, obviously, as they were adults and most definitely did not do that. I laughed in rueful recognition when I read their comments because I most definitely did not do that, either. I was a grown-ass adult who most definitely did not have closets filled with jigsaw puzzles I’d never even opened (which I posted).

Anyway, this is the reason why once I go past a certain point in an activity, I have to keep going until I do it. It didn’t matter if I was happy about it or enjoyed it; I just had to do it.

Let’s talk about that final achievement. It was winning one run for the last route (Short-Tailed Shearwater). This route had 22 stops with the last stop being 20,000 flaps (points). This is middling when it comes to number of stops and number of flaps. I don’t know why this was the last to unlock as it wasn’t special in any way. In fact, I think that’s part of the reason I struggled with it. It was just meh–and a grind. Oh, here’s my post from yesterday in which I talk about the second achievement and indie games in general.

It’s funny because in looking up the name of the last route, I ran across a guide as to how to win. The first tip was to stick to one strategy. I laughed ruefully because I learned that way too late. I would say this is probably the most important tip as it’s too easy to get swayed–especially for me and my neurodivergent brain. But it really benefits you to establish your strategy early and stick with it.

It also benefits you to try to find the synergies that will boost your strategy. Of course that’s where RNG plays a part in that you have to decide which strategy you want to use and stick with it. That means that you have to pass on oter legit strategies even if they show up later.


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Birdigo after 100%ing it, part three

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I have a bit more to say about Birdigo (John August, Corey Martin) and indie games in general. At the end of the last post (which you can read here), I mentioned that I was surprised when I got the ‘win each round with one word’ achievement. It was anticlimactic because I did not realize I had won it until after it was over. I had been going at it for so long, I didn’t know quite what I was supposed to do when I actually won or how I was supposed to feel.

It reminds me of when the boys fought

*SPOILER*

Malenia for three days in their Elden Ring (FromSoft) playthrough. And, yes, it’s amusing to me to spoiler tag a boss from another game in this post. Part of the series evolved into Rory soloing every boss as long as there were no NPC summons to summon (and even sometimes then). In Elden Ring, they decided through trial and error that he would not use the spirit ashes for bosses. Krupa said to Gav that he (Gav) would one day rue that decree, but to Rory’s credit, he adamantly refused to use the spirit ash during the Malenia fight.

They edited down the footage, obviously, but they revealed that it was fifteen hours in total over four days. They did not even show any of the footage for one of the days. I think? They split it into three episodes, and each was over two hours. The last was almost two-and-a-half hours. It was epic, and the struggle was so real. The reason I mention it is because when he fginally beat her, the celebration was muted. I mean, the initial celebration was pretty hyped, but it subsided quickly. It became much more an expression of relief than excitement. Rory said something about not knowing what to do because he should be running back to fight Malenia again (massive paraphrase). He died 265 times to her, and you could see it wearing on all three of them in the last episode.

Anyway, this is me whenever I go for a plat. I go blank on the inside and something deep inside of me almost gets angry. Like, “You’re not the boss of me, and I’m going to do this!” Who it’s saying it to, I have no idea. Also me, probably. This is why I don’t do competitive sports–I’m way too hard on myself when I do.

It’s funny. It’s not so much that I care about winning and losing–though I do to a certain extent. It’s just me feeling like I’m not doing enough. It’s all about me winning and losing against myself–not me winning and losing against anyone else.

I just now realized that Birdigo sounds like vertigo. D’oh! Huh. The video I’m including is an interview with the two devs. I didn’t realize that the game was a card game first (called AlphaBird). Huh. Made by the same two guys. Thats’ pretty cool!


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