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 whateever 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.
Oh! That’s another thing. You have to find a supply and pick it up before it’s added to the pantry. I like that.
And there’s a Polaroid camera (so the game feels set in the seventies/eeighties?) with which you have to take pictures of various, ah, creatures to see what their favorite food is. Then you have to make it for them a set amount of times, and they will give you a key so you can open a cabinet, the fridge, the freezer, etc. You’ll get more ingredients, and the recipes get more complicated as you go.
Then there’s a mysterious creature that gives you a key that ends the demo. The second it was done, I immediately wanted to play more. It’s out already so I added it to my cart. It was such a lovely little game. I keep expecting it to take a turn and get creepy, but maybe I just made that up in my imagination. I’ve included the trailer above, but I haven’t watched the whole thing. If I’m going to play a game, I don’t watch the trailers. At least not before I play the game.
Another demo I tried was Gori: Cuddly Carnage (Angry Demon Studio). The protagonist is an orange skateboarding cat in a post-apocalyptic neon cyber punk world. Why was it on my wishlist? No idea! Probably because there’s a cat as the protag. The main gist is that the, ah, cuddly toys turned demonic? I think? Animatronics? Something like that. They are pissed at the humans, and they deem Gori the cat to be on the side of the humans.
The environments and bright and poppy, but there’s a dark undertone to everything. You have to skateboard everywhere, but the game is very forgiving as to what counts as grabbing a rail. In fact, you can make your board grab more easily, too. The board is sentient? Maybe? And you have some kind of companion? I’m not sure beecause I was concentrating so hard on grinding and riding the rails, brah!
It was a surprisingly engrossing game, and the boarding wasn’t hard at all. I really appreciate that because my coordination is shit. It’s also funny, which I enjoy. I always like my angst to be mixed with dark humor. Also, I liked slicing up zombie unicorns with my version of a Beyblade.
There are several combos, but you can also just hammer one button over and over again if you want. I did like doing the combos when I could remember them, and there’s a satisfying finisher that gives you health back. You can upgrade at an upgrading booth, of which there was only one in the demo. The boss fights were not hard, which is what I prefer when I’m playing a non-FromSoft game*.
It wsa a fun game, but not one that I felt compelled to immediately buy. I’ll probably get it when it’s on steep sale down the road, but I’m not itching to play more of it. I was glad to try the demo, though. It was a hoot.
That’s all for today. I will write about the other demos I tried tomorrow.
*To be clear, I don’t prefer hard boss fights in From games, either, but I accept that there will be (my) blood. Er, hard bosses in From games.