Well, well, well. So we meet again. As per usual, I’ve dragged out my awards posts because I can. As I explained in the previous post. my gaming was off this year for one big reason–I spent two weeks in September in the hospital and then months after recovering. Now, in mid-December, I’m mostly better. Yet, I still don’t have that much interest in trying new games because, well, I’ve had other things on my mind. I mentioned in the last post various games I tried and fell off of. There’s one game I started recently that I’m roughly halfway through. I have high hopes that I’ll finish it.
It’s Wytchwood by Alientrap. I love the colorful art style and I adore the protagonist called Witch. She’s hench (hefty), tough, sarcastic, and takes no shit from anyone. She also has a kettle on her head for some reason. The basic premise is that you have to get four big souls for a goat (don’t ask and hey, that’s pretty much the premise of Dark Souls except for the goat part) and you mostly do that by gathering ingredients and crafting things. It’s perfect for playing in an hour or two spurts while relaxing on the couch. I think I’m roughly halfway done (I have two of the four souls) and I look forward to finishing it.
With that said, on with the awards!
My co-GOTY from 2020 that keeps getting meaty updates
Spiritfarer
The tagline for this game is: Spiritfarer is a cozy management game about dying. It’s also gorgeous with its hand-drawn pastel environments, each one distinct from the others. I am still not over the death of Gwen, the hard-bitten, world-weary, broken deer with a soft heart who compulsively drank black coffee and just as compulsively smoked cigarettes. I spent so much time avoiding bringing her to the Everdoor because I did not want to part with her and it absolutely broke my heart when I finally took her there.
The game is by Thunder Lotus Games, and they have had three updates in this year (I think. That they were this year, I mean. It’s hard to tell because pandemic and then hospital stay, but let’s just take it to be true). The last was released this week , the Jackie & Daria update, and it’s meaty. And heartrending. And annoying. Here’s my least favorite thing about the game–the actual gameplay. I’ve noted before that games that are not explicitly platformers suck in platforming. That’s the case in this game and in the third and final update, there is a platforming section that is just irritating. The controls are squishy and my reactions are terrible, anyway. And in a game that’s about uncovering the little details about people’s lives and pathos and death, I don’t want to be doing shitty platforming.
Putting that aside, however, I’m really loving these two characters. I wasn’t as into the previous updates in part because I finished the game before the first update and doing the update content felt detached from the game in general. The first was the Lily update, which is Stella’s (the main character) sister. The second was the Beverly update, which was Stella’s neighbor. I pretty much just did the new content without doing anything ese whereas with this update, you have to do some stuff that is in the main game in order to advance the new quests. This update is massive. I still wish I could have done the new content during the game itself, but I can’t blame the devs for going with what they had.
I like the two new characters. Jackie is a foul-mouthed hyena who is an orderly in a hospital. I get the feeling it’s a mental health hospital, but I think that’s just the impression and not the actuality. Daria is a bat in a catatonic coma and you mostly talk to her in dreams (I think). She’s the one you have to do platforming to talk to at times. Jackie is on the brink of a breakdown, which is causing him to lash out at the patients–especially Daria.
Oh, I also had to do Buck’s Literary Review, which was bullshit. It’s a treasure hunt in which you’re sent a ‘map’ of where a treasure would be. Except the map is a crude drawing with very vague shapes on it–no more than one or two. I used a walkthrough for that point because there’s no way I was going to pinpoint each coordinate. there were six of these and I just finished it. Which means I’ll have to escort Buck to the Everdoor at some point.
The game is evoking all the feels again. Thunder Lotus Games has put out the Farewell Edition of Spiritfarer because this is the last update. It’s one hell of a debut for Thunder Lotus Games and I cannot wait to see what they do next.
The game that I can say ‘just ten more minutes’ and it’s suddenly 2 hours later
Dorfromantik
When I first heard of this game by Toukana Interactive, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It’s placing hexagons, which brought back vaguely bad memories. I didn’t know why I felt dread when I thought of hexagonal games, but there it was.
I watched Johnny Chiodini stream it on their YouTube channel and was instantly charmed. It’s a game about placing hexagonal tiles with the same resources next to each other and getting points for it. That’s it. That’s the whole game. It doesn’t sound like much, but I can play it for hours on end. There is something so satisfying about making bigger and bigger, say, forests. And each resource is color/picture coordinated. So forests are green with little trees. Railroads are brown with railroad tracks.
The game is easy to learn and easy to play. You can do it with a podcast on in the background or a video that you don’t have to watch. After I got out of the hospital, it was one game I could play without putting too much effort into it. That’s not meant to be a diss, by the way. I know it sounds like one, but it’s exactly what I needed after coming out of the hospital. A game that tickled my brain cells, but didn’t overtax them.
You can make the game harder, obviously, by adding self-imposed rules such as having to hit a certain amount of points. For me it’s 10,000 that is hard to hit, but not unattainable. I’m sure you could do other things like saying you could only add to a resource area a certain amount of times or not place certain resources next to each other.
The main point of the game is that every tile has a resource on it and you try to place them next to each other. Some have a goal you have to meet like, say, 10 wheats. The more goals you meet, the higher the number goes. Sometimes, the number will be a hard stop, meaning you can’t exceed the number. Other times, there’s a + after the number, which means you can go past the number. I prefer the latter, obviously. For whatever reason, the forests never have a precise number. Probably because they’re always in bulk whereas the other resources can be in the single digits.
The gameplay is simple, but incredibly satisfying. This is the ultimate in comfort games and was a godsend after I got out of the hospital. It’s one I can see myself continue to play for many years to come.
That’s it for now. Will return in another post for my final three awards of the year.