Underneath my yellow skin

Author Archives: Minna Hong

Demos on my mind, part four

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Let’s talk more about demos. I have tried several more, and I do think the fun of plowing through a half-dozen demos has considerably dimmed. I’m still looking for that hidden gem, but there is just SO much slop. I think I have found one decent game for every twenty crappy games I see. I was talking yesterday about things that seem to be missing from so many games, and I want to continue that in this post.

One thing that I’ve noticed is how many copycat games there are. This is to be expected and it’s not just limited to games, of course. Anything that becomes popular gets hundreds of others trying to copy what made them popular. The problem is that most of the copies if not all of them fail to get to the heart of what made the original special.

I will use FromSoft as an example because they fit the brief perfectly. When they first came out with Demon’s Souls, there were more naysayers than supporters. In that time, games very very much hand-holdy and making sure that the player felt overpowered and unable to die. In fact, dying was made pretty toothless with the ability to respond without any negative effect becoming the standard.

FromSoft (especially Miyazaki) came along and said, “Nah, fuck that shit, yo.” Not those words in particular, but the sentiment. Demon’s Souls was hard and gave no quarter. I have not played it, but I have seen others play it. It’s hard and grueling as you would expect from a From game. More to the point, it does not coddle the player.

You could say the same for Dark Souls, which I have played.  Several times. Both Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls grew to be cult favorites, and Miyazaki was pressured to porting the latter to PC. It was awful. A really terrible port. It’s only because of a mod called dsfix that anyone could play it on the PC at something resembling ok. Because of that, I did not have to experience the Blighttown slowdown (it ran at literally 2 fps for some people).

Fast-forward to 2021 when FromSoft released the biggest game of the year, Elden Ring. It became a huge commercial hit, and it’s what made them cross the rubricon (heh) from niche to mainstream. In the time between Demon’s Souls and Elden Ring, their success has spawned countless soulslikes. A few have been good, while the vast majority have been serivecable, bad, or horrid.

This is the way it goes when something hit sthe cultural conscienceness. There are a bunch of lemmings in any industry (and shareholders desperate to jump on the latest trend–see the debacle of the live service nonsense of the last year), and they will milk the shit out of a trend until there is nothing left but a limp, lifeless husk. In the first few years after Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, there were no copies, obviously. Then the first Lords of the Fallen (Deck13 and CI Games) came out in 2014, and it was the first Souls clone (at least of any notability).

I did not like it, and it was pretty divisive among the Souls community, but it was hailed for at least giving it a shot. Deck13 brought a few interesting ideas to the table, but I found the movement to be sluggish and uninspired. And, in what was going to be a recurring theme with soulslikes, they really leaned too hard on the ‘our game is HARD’ aspect, especially when it came to the bosses.

Side note: I have beaten this drum a million times. I do not play From games for the difficulty and the HARD bosses. In fact, I consider that the price I have to pay in order to have another wonderful, twisted Miyazaki world to explore.

Anyway. This is how we have soulslike slop. And this is what’s happening in cozy gaming. It’s a genre I really like, especially when they get deep with the stories. That’s one of my favorite things about the genre. And, don’t get me wrong, there are still meaningful stories in cozy gaming. It’s just that it’s being overwhelmed by the slop. And the vastly inferior iterations.
Let’s take a huge indie darling, Stardew Valley (Corcerned Ape). It was made by one guy over many many years. He is still working on it, even as he’s working on his new game (Haunted Chocolatier).

I played about an hour of it, and it wasn’t for me. I can acknowledge, however, that it’s a game that has had a huge impact on the gaming industry, and especially on the cozy games genre.

As a result, we have seen so many farming sims that look exactly like Stardew Valley. I have seen that aesthetics more times than I care to admit. And, for the most part, the games keep the things I don’t like about Stardew Valley without really innovating on the gameplay. It’s reached a point where if I see that hay-colored farming ground and that certain pixel-art style, I don’t even look at the description of the game.

Speaking of farming games, my lord. There have been such a proliferation of them. I tried a demo of a few today, and none of them were very good. A few of them had great art style, but the gameplay was either nonexistent or just plan bad. On the other hand, there were some that had both bad graphics and bad gameplay. I just shook my head and closed the game without remorse.

There have also been a huge influx of cooking games. I love cooking games. I have played many cooking games. One of them, Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! (Vertigo Gaming, Inc.) is on my top five favorite non-From games of all time.  But, these knockoffs are even worse than the farming ones. In this case, there are so many that are terrible. They are lazy ripoffs of Diner Dash (Playfirst) or Papa’s Pizzeria (Flipline Studios) with barely even a palette swap.

I have said before that I will always take a developer that soars towards the sun and singes their wings than one that just bumbles on the ground, bumping into every rock along the way. When I think of the couple dozen demos I’ve tried out in the past few days, of the ones I just impulsively installed to give a whirl, there’s only one that I thought could be a good time.

Side note: the number of word games trying to be the next Balatro (LocalThunk) is depressing. I mean, I get it. Balatro was something truly special. I don’t like deck-building, but I could not put that game down.

More tomorrow.

Moar demos, no problem (part three)

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I’m back to talk more about demos. No, really I am not going to derail myself or get stuck in a footnote. I’m going to stick to demos and why I do and/or don’t love them. (Let’s see how long I keep that promise. My prediction is one paragraph.)

I was talking to Ian about how the Steam Next Fest has blown up into something unrecognizable. There are literally thousands of games in the Fest, and I mean several thousands. I think there are close to/over five thousand; what the fuck is up with that?! That’s way too many games. I blazed through a bunch of them yesterday, installing several on my Steam client. I tried a few, and, well…let’s just say I should have been pickier. The slop, it was slopping. In yesterday’s post, I talked about what I expected from a demo, and I’ll continue that in a bit.

I did the equivalent of going into a store, grabbing everything that’s on sale, and tossing it in my bag. To be fair to me, I did make sure they were in genres I actually played, but that was about it. And because I am very ggenerous towayrds indie devs, I put up with more than I should have.

At the end of the last post, I was talking about the things that really frustrated me in a game. I’ll keep going down that path now. Oh, and these are things that should be in every game. I’m not asking for anything hard, mind. Just things like what the controls are.

Side note: I have a hard time with controls if I’m using K&M because I use the Dvorak system. Most games use QWERTY, and while some switch back automatically, others don’t. Some might let me switch it myself, but others don’t. So I can’t use the Dvorak system at all. I will be fair and say that there is no optimal choice for me because I don’t look at the keyboard as I type, so if the instructions are in Dvorak, I’m lost.

This is one reason I prefer controller to K/M. I will say that I like to use K/M for typing games, of which I played one today. I will talk about it a bit later because it was one game I liked. Mostly.

Here’s the thing. I have different categories and ratings for games, depending on if it’s a triple A game or an indie game*. if I’m paying seventy bucks for a game–well, I’m not going to pay that much for a game, really. I very rarely play triple A games, and I certainly did not pay full price for them.**


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Let’s actually talk about demos, part two

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Ok! I’m going to talk about demos today. Here is my post from yesterday in which I derailed myself mightily. It has one hell of a footnote, which is so me. But first, let’s talk about the Steam Next Fest in general. Like many things, it has outgrown its usefulness, and now, there are literal thousands of games “featured” in the fest. As you can probably guess, that’s pretty useless and makes it very daunting to find something worthwhile.

What I did was just go through what Steam showed me as quickly as possible, adding several demos one after another. Many of them were cute and cozy games, and there were a few that looked…dodgy. Not dodgy as in scammy, but dodgy as in, “These are not ready to be shown.”

Side note: We know I love me a cozy indie game. I am willing to overlook a lot in an indie game because I know they are often made by less than ten people. And if they have heart, well, I don’t mind if the gameplay is a bit janky.

However. There is a difference between a janky game with heart and just a bad game. Or rather, a game that is rushed to release. Look. I get it. The market is so tough right now. Getting a game any kind of traction these days is a fool’s errand. If you have your eye on the Steam Next Fest, you are going to do your damnedest to get your game ready on time.

You have to be clear-sighted, though. If your game is not ready to go, though, you might actually do more damage to your game than benefit it by pushing it out early.

Here’s where I’m going to say something that’s not very nice.

Some games are shit. They just are. They are clearly meant to be pushed out as quickly as possible with no thought as to is the game actually good or not. There are some companies that churn out the same game over and over again at a quick pace. This was something I saw a lot of in casual gaming, but I never thought it’d creep over into ‘hardcore’ gaming.

Let’s be real, though. The cozy game genre is easy to exploit for devs who are just pushing out the same game over and over again–with maybe a palette swap if they’re feeling frisky.

I’m including a video below by Ellen from Outside Xtra, titled, “I’m Done With Cat Slop”. She’s a huge cat lover as am I, and since she’s a pretty well-known YouTube games content creator, she gets people sending her tons of cat games.

She did a video playing cat slop games (as she was calling them, as a send up of friend slop games), and this video was one in which she explained why she wasn’t going to do that any longer (after showing her playing several cat slop games).

I’m firmly on her side. I have played so many games with cats in them, and there are several of them that are pure shit. Today, I tried one that was about cats and sushi. It was horrible, and more to the point, it didn’t work. First time, the cats did come to the sushi conveyor belt to order sushi. Second day, they did not. Nor ever after that.


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Let’s talk about demos in general

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Before I talk about more demos I’ve played, I want to talk about demos in general. Steam Next Fest is happening right now, and while it used to be a gerat way to see what is new and coming out, now, it’s just way too massive. There are thousands of games on Steam, and, let’s be real. They’re having sales all the time, so it’s nothing special. Here is my post from yesterday on a few demos I really enjoyed.

What it does mean, however, is that there are tons of new demos. I have been adding them like they’re going out of style, and I think I added six or seven. The thing about–ok, I forgot what I was going to say here. But I will say that there were a few games I didn’t like, a few I did like, but not any today that I really like.

I’m going to analyze what catches my eye when I’m playing a demo and what turns me off.

First of all, if it’s first person, chances are I’m going to turn it off rigcht away. That’s just because first person almost always makes me nauseous. I don’t know why Cerature Kitchen (The Rat Zone) from yesterday didn’t, but my theory is beacuse it’s not trying to be photo-realstic, so my brain can accept it as not real.

Another thing that irritates me is if there’s no tutorial. Look. I can figure most shit out, but if there’s not a basic tutorial, I’m going to be frustrated. I played a game that I really wanted to like, but I was lost as to what to do. And it’s a type of game I play often. There are certain tropse that it did not follow, much to its detriment. People like to give tropes a bad rap, but there are times when they are needed .

Once again, I’d like to say that since I mostly try the demos for indie games, I give them as much benefit of the doubt as possible. However, at the end of the day, if I can’t actually play a game, then there’s no point to it.

Here’s something I hate in any game–timed mini-games. One game I quite liked had a mini game for when you were catching bugs (part of the story). It’s the old ‘hit the button when the bar is in the green zone’ except in this case you have to hold down the LMB (no controller) and let go when it’s in the middle of the green bar.


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Demoing to my heart’s content, part two

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I’m back to chat more about Steam demos. I’m so pleased that the vast majority of indie games have demos these days. I wrote yesterday about a word game I really liked called Rita (Spork Tank), and I’m back with a few more I played today. And yesterday. There are a few games I didn’t like, but that was because of controls. One was an old game that is highly thought of in the cozy genre, apparently. It controls horribly, and you have to manually save at the lightposts (I think that’s what it was?), which, no. That’s not happening. I am not about a game that makes me lose progress if I don’t manually save because my memory is shite. Also, in this day and age, that’s just silly. Yes, this was a remake/remaster of an older game, and I get that they probably wanted to keep the old-timey feel to it, but progress is a good thing. We don’t have to have terrible controls and manual saving just because we had to have both in the past.

Let’s talk about the first game I really dug. It’s called Creature Kitchen (The Rat Zone), and at first, I was trepidatious beacuse it’s first person. I get nauseous from playing first-person games, but for whatever reason, the negative effect from this game is minimal. I think it might be because the game is not very realistic so my brain isn’t mistaking it for real. It has the look of an ald horror game, and I’m expceting it to get creepy.

I didn’t know much about it before I tried the demo except it’s very positively reviewed. And it’s about cooking? Maybe? And there’s a raccoon in it (it’s on their store page). That’s all, but I was eager to try it out because I like cooking games and raccoons are cute. You can fight me on that last fact all you want, but it’s just the truth.

There’s minimal tutorializing, but it wasn’t very hard to figure out what to do. F is for flashlight because it always is in games like this. I do like that I didn’t need batteries for it. I hate having to find batteries for flashlights in games like this, and I will quit immediately if it’s required. Anything where I have to keep an eye on something’s time is a game that will stress me the fuck out.

I don’t play these kinds of games to be stressed, even though many of them have stressful elements. There is a point when I rebel and quit the game altogether.

In the house, there is a note. I studiously ignore it as I explore the house. I know the game wants me to read the note, but it’s not the boss of me!

The main gist of the game is that you have to find recipes, and then you make the recipes. They are very simple and the game mechanics are pretty crude. I’m fine with that except the frying pan because you have to flip the egg and have it land back in the pan. I have zero depth perception so I can’t get it to fall into the pan properly. Fortunately, I can just keep doing it because the pantry has endless supplies.


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Demo(lition) derby and what’s good

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One thing about Summer Game Fest is that it has a ton of different smaller fests in which I can see so many new games. And, if they’re indie games, they will almost always be guaranteed to have demos. I love that about indie games, though I worry that it’s a burden to the indie devs. The bonus to me is that I get to try a whole bunch of games that I might not have paid attention to otherwise.

Do I need more games? Of course not. I have such a big Steam pile of shame, but as is the way with PC gaming, I keep adding more to the pile than I take away (by playing them). It’s too easy when there are so many steep sales. A content creator I once watched pretty regularly said, “If you hesitate to pay 99 cents for a game, you probably don’t want it at all.” I thought about it, and he was right.

Side note: I was talking about my wishlist in the Discord I’m in. I use it as a way just to remember games that catch my eye as I’m watching one of the umpteen fests going on. Look, they rattle of twenty to thirty games in a row and my memory is now shit. I’m not going to remember them past thirty seconds. Plus, wishlisting them helps the devs.

I tend to have a dozen or two demos installed at any one time. Then, they haunt me until I play them. By the way, I’m playing Dark Souls III (FromSoft) once again, and my god, I’m falling in love with it all over again. It was my favorite game before Elden Ring was released, which means it was my favorite for six years. Then, it slipped to being tied with Elden Ring for first. The more I played Elden Ring, though, the more it pulled slightly ahead.

I did a ranking of the From games. I gave Elden Ring a 9.75 (I think?) and Dark Souls III a 9.5. Now, though, I’m enjoying myself tremendously back in Dark Souls III. I found a new way to cheese a boss (from the Reddits), and while it took some time, it was loads of fun. It’s a boss who doesn’t aggro until you walk up to it. I’d known that you could use Pestilent Mist, a top-tier sorcery that eats away at humanity to cheese it. It takes 30 intelligence to use, though, so I don’t usually use it until the DLC at the earliest–or on NG+ and beyond.

What I discovered was that this boss was able to be poisoned. (He’s a giant skeleton, so why he’s  able to be poisoned, who knows?) There’s a pyromancy called Poison Mist (which in this game is purple. In Elden Ring, it’s green). I walked up to the boss and stopped short of the spot where I would prock him. Then, I just blew the mist on him (it’s a breath pyro) twice. I had to do it twice to prock the poison. Then, I would watch as his health was slowly ticked away. Each application took off almost a thousand health points. It took nine applications, which is strange because this boss is supposed to have 15,000 HP. (Added: I figured it out. The numbers were for each hit, and not additive. Meaning the last hit took off nearly a thouusand HP on its own, and the others did waht they did.)


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Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit demo, A Quick Look (part four)

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I have one more post in me about Cozy Grove: Camp Spirits (Spry Fox), even though it’s not going to focus as much an the demo. The f irst game was so important to me, and I never thought it would be that way. I thought it was just going to be a cute little game about gathering resources and helping spirits in limbo make their last journey. I mean, death is not usually a cozy subject, but I was used to it being prevalent in cozy games. Of my top five favorite non-From games, four out of the ive have something to do with death. The only one that doesn’t is Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! (David Galindo), and that has to do with food.

Cozy Grove, as I’ve said, is third or fourth. Probably third. There are several reasons for it. One, it’s just such a heartwarming game. I came to care deeply about the bears, and helping them on their last journeys was something I took seriously.

One of the stories that struck me the most was that of someone I did not particularly like. She was the mayor, and she was always trying to get me to do things to promote the town. When I started hearing her story, though, I learned that there was much more to her than I had previously imagined. Also, she revealed some pretty terrible truths about herself that, weirdly, made me like her better. It’s the flaws that make us who we are, and her showing her vulnerability and, quite frankly, ugly side made her more relatable.

My favorite bear, however, was one from the DLC. She was so down on herself, insecure, and self-effacing. She liked science and origami, but in life, she had an abusive boss who was cruel to her in several ways. I related to her so much, and I wanted to ease her pain.

She actually made me feel so much sorrow in my heart–and a bit uncomfortable because I was a too much like her.

In the last post, I was talking about what I wanted from the sequel–which is coming out in a month!! I am so stoked. I can’t emphasize enough how much I grew to love the first game. I mean, I liked it from the start, but the steep grind in the beginning was frustrating.

I went over that in the past post, so let’s move on with what else I want from the sequel. I want to reiterate, though, that I’m not expecting nor wanting anything radical. I’ve talked about how sequels have such a difficult time because on the one hand, it has to be recognizable as the first game. People fell in love with the first game for a reason. And people become very passionate about what they like about the game.

Let me bring up Dark Souls (FromSoft). It became a surprise hit in a way that Demon’s Souls did not. I’m not going to recount the reasons why because I’ve talked about it a million times before. Suffice to say, the sequel was doomed to fail. And not because it wasn’t directed by Miyazaki (he moved on to Bloodborne). The expectations were too high, and there was no way the sequel was going to meet those expectations.

I have said that Scholar of the First Sin (the remake of the second game) is a fun game and a good game. I used to say it’s not a good Souls game, but I have changed my mind. There are parts of it that are frustrating as hell, but over all, I replay it much more than I do the first game.


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Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit demo, A Quick Look (part three)

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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.


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Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit demo, A Quick Look (part two)

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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.

Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit demo: A Quick Look

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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.


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