Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: a quick look

The Spirit Lift (prettysmart games): A quick (?) look and review, part two

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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.


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Carto (Sunhead Games): A Quick Look

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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.


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Hades II (Supergiant Games): A Quick Look, part three

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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.)


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Hades II (Supergiant Games): A Quick Look, part two

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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.


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Hades II (Supergiant Games): A Quick Look

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There has been one game I’ve been looking forward to all year with a mixture of hope and fear. A sequel to one of my favorite non-FromSoft games that has been in Early Access since May of 2024, and I have been studiously ignoring its existence because I did not want to know anything about it until I played it. It’s Hades II (Supergiant Games), and it’s finally out.

I did not play the first game when it was in Early Access, either. I didn’t really pay attention to it until it officially released, and then I decided to give it a go to scratch the Binding of Isaac (Edmund McMillen) itch. I will admit that I did not gel with the game at first. It didn’t feel quite right, and I almost gave up on it at some point. The controls were not what I expected or wanted them to be (RB to interact is not my jam), and I really thought it was not the game for me.

At some point, though, I gave up and gave in. I was addicted to the game, even though I didn’t think I would ever  beat the big boss. In fact, I was considering turning on God Mode which decreased the damage you took each time you died, up to an 80% decrease. I thought it was an elegant solution to the question of difficulty without putting in different modes. You can turn God Mode on and off whenever you want.

I did not put on God Mode in the first game, and I did, indeed, beat the final boss. But, as the kids say, that was when the real journey began. One of the most incredible things about that game was that after a hundred hours of playing the game, I still heard a new line of dialogue (whilst going for the hundo chievo). And the game is programmed so that the enemies remember what happened on your last run (or, more accurately, are programmed to comment on it). So if you die to, say the first boss of the first floor, she will say something about it the next time you meet her.

I really like it because it makes it seem like the game is interactive. I know it’s just coding, but still. To get new dialogue based on something I did in the game was really cool. They have over 20,000 lines of dialogues, which, for a roguelite-like game that is mostly action is amazing. It meant that every time I had a conversation with someone, whether it was back in the House of Hades or on the field of battle, it was more likely to be unique than not.

Also, while, yes the relationships were transactional, I still felt affectionate for some of the characters. More for some than the other. And I got a scene in the game that I have never heard/read anyone else talking about, so I wonder how many people got it. It was pretty far into the game, and you had to do a lot to get there. It was so worth it, though.

When Supergiant Games announced they were doing a sequel to Hades, I was so excited–and fearful. Supergiant Games were known for doing eclectic games with none of them like the other. I did not gel with any of their three previous games, even though I tried each of them. They were known for doing something innovative and fresh with each new game, so many people were curious as to what Hades II would be like. And as I said, I was wary/fearful about the sequel because I did not want it to be a reskin of the first game with a slap of polish on it.


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Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock): A Quick Look, part three

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Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock) continues to frustrate me. In yesterday’s post, I ruminated on those frustrations to a lengthy extent. I think part of the reason I’m so frustrated with it is because I can see what it’s trying to be–and what I want it to be. Also, when I’m not loving a game that is beloved by so many other people, I have to ask myself why. I tend to think there’s something wrong with me, but then again, I tend to think there’s something wrong with me in general.

I want to like this game. I need to be very clear about that. I really want to like this game. It seems like it should be up my alley. It’s heavy on the emotions, and many people reviewing it talk about that aspect of the game.

Which, I’m down for! Except.

How do I put this gently and kindly? The emotions feel very hollow to me right now. Too much is revealed with little prompting, and that doesn’t make me feel comfortable. I mean, in real life, but also in the game. I know that’s how some of these dating games work, but it’s not really my jam.

I already have one person telling me that she would not mind going on a date with me, even though we’ve talked a handful of times. I don’t mind that so much because some people work that way, but it feels rushed to me.

In addition, there are dramas and intrigues between people that I think are going to make me uncomfortable. Again, this is how real life works, yes, but it doesn’t feel earned yet in the game. I think that’s my main issue–all the gameplay and resource gathering is so incredibly slow; yet, the relationship building is rushed.

Let’s talk about the relationships, shall we? I like most of the peoaple, but I don’t really have time to talk to them because I’m trying to get all the resources I need to get shit done. I do try to get my once-a-day talk to each resident done, but I find myself resenting it, frankly. Espceially as I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I have to give gifts to them to further our relationship. I risked giving the old sea salt a fish stew as a gift, and he thanked me for thinking of him–then added something about even if my thinking was bad or wrong or something like that.

I mean, what? Not only was the fish stew not what he wanted, but he was going to insult me as well? I actually know one of the things he wants, but because the meat shop was closed for three days in a row, I could not get what I needed until Tuesday.


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Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock): A Quick Look, part two

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I want to talk more about Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock). This is part two of my A Quick Look at the game. Here is my first post in which I talked a bit about my first impressions. I said in that post that I was worried that the game would get out of control. I didn’t phrase it like that, but that was the worry that was running through my brain as I played the game. I was chafing at the fact that my stamina bar was so tiny and that every action took so much energy. I knew that there were ways to mitigate that at some point in the future, but I wasn’t sure I was willing to play the game until then.

I’ve played nine hours or so. And I have to say that I’m still waiting for the game to balance itself out. I feel like I’m spending all my time just trying to stay three steps behind and not fall behind any further.

There are several things that are closed, and I was wondering how I was going to open then, and what would trigger the ability to open them. I never thought anything other than I was going to be the one to unlock/open them because that’s how these games go. The one closest to me was the mine. I’m not sure what triggered the specific townperson to come talk to me about the mine, but when she did, I laughed at how ridiculously easy it was going to be. It was something like give the woodworker two hundred gold, ten planks of wood, and a few stones (I looked it up. It’s 100 gold, ten planks of wood, and five stones), he’ll open the mine.

Seriously. That’s it? And no one could do it earlier? I don’t demand that everything in my games be realistic, but come on. That’s ridiculous.

This is one of my issues with the game. I can suspend my disbelief to a great extent for a cozy game if it hits me right (see Promise Mascot Agency,Kaizen Game Works), but this game is not doing that.

I mentioned yesterday that one of the weird things about the game is that if you can’t talk to a townsperson any more on any given day, they just stand there. You can walk through them, and they don’t even blink. It’s a really strange choice. In addition, if they’re in their place of work, they will just sit there/stand there docilely as if their body is just a husk.

Now, there are more things you can do with each person, but that actually makes it more frustrating because, well, let me put it this way. There are roughly twenty townspeople. You can have a meaningful conversation each one once a day. Now, I can also give them gifts and talk to them about specific tasks they’ve given me. Also, if I’m doing a bulletin quest for them, there’s the choice to talk to them about that as well.


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Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock): A Quick Look

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I heard about a cozy farming/dating sim called Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock) and saw it had a demo on Steam. I decided to give it a go since I gave up on Tiny Bookshop (neoludic games) (long story, will do an official review at some point). I liked the demo well enough though I did have some reservations about it. But, there’s a black cat you can pet; Erika Ishii is a dateable character in it; and I was intrigued by the premise so I bought it. The time I spent in the demo transferred to the game itself, which was nice. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t mind either way because I don’t expect it from an indie demo. AAA game? Yeah, I expect it, but I still won’t be anything more than miffed if it’s not there.

There will be light spoilers in this post, but nothing too big. The basic premise is that you’re a city woman called Tara who goes to a small town to help her grandmother with her (grandmother’s) farm.

I will say it’s it’s strange to play a game that doesn’t have a customizable character or an invisible protagonist (meaning you can’t customize them, but they’re not visible, either). I don’t usually play games that don’t allow me to customize my character.  Wait. That’s not true, at least not for the last several games. Still. It felt weird in this game.

Also, I wish I had retained that this started out as a mobile game (which I had seen from looking up the game, but had immediately forgotten) because it does feel like one to a certain extent. Not in terms of content, but in terms of gameplay, how much grinding you have to do, and the whiff of microtransactions No, there are no microtransactions in the game, but there are the ‘this crop will take four in-game days to grow’ issues, which are very annoying.

So here’s the premise. Tara is a young city woman who is laid off and broke up with/was dumped by? her fiance at roughly the same time. She flees to her grandmother, Hazel’s, farm, ostensibly to help her ailing grandmother, but also to lick the wounds of her broken heart. The farm is in disrepair, and it’s up to Tara to fix everything.

In the demo, I spent a lot of time just going around meeting people. Weirdly, the mayor gives me an order that I have to meet every resident of the town (for which I got an achievement), and the game makes a big deal of it. It has Tara asking several people if they had to do it, if they thought it was really weird, and just in general highlighting it beyond what I thought was reasonable. It was an odd tone at the beginning of the game.


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Tiny Bookshop (neoludic games)–A Quick Look, part two

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I’m still playing Tiny Bookshop (neoludic games), and I have more to say about it. I left off part one by saying this is the perfect small bites game; I still think it is. I also said that I had several small complaints, and I want to expand on that a bit.

First, though, I am still enjoying the game. I still play several days at a time, and go for longer than I had planned. It’s very much has that ‘just one more day’ feel to it, and I give in to the impulse more often than not.

However, there are some small issues with the game that keep me from thoroughly enjoying my time in Bookstonbury-by-the-Sea. That’s t he name of the fictional coastal time, and it reminds me of Boston for whatever reason. I keep calling it Boston in my head, though Boston is not a coastal town.

I mentioned that during the demo, I would stress over making a bad recmmendation. Then, during the first few hours of the actual game, I was over that stress. Now, though, I am frazzled when I get requests like, “I ilke plays. I like nonfiction. I like to read books in a series.” And it’s clearly not possible to get all three. I am having a devil of a time figuring out which is most important. It’s usually the first one, but sometimes, if I find a book that fits the other two statements, I might be able to slide on the first. Or not. I’m not sure.

That’s my issue with this part of the game. Every time I think I figure out how the recommendations work, the game throws me for a loop. Also, I’ve played long enough to get repeat dialogue, so I think that the way it works is that each person has a set number of statements, and then the game just mixes them at random. Each request is rated one to four (or five) stars for easy to difficult. Actually, I’ve only seen one star and four stars, so maybe it’s a binary choice. Hm. I may have seen a five star difficulty, but it might have been four, too.

Anyway, I’m never quite sure what is going to be acceptable and what isn’.t My firiend in the RKG Discord has mentioned the same thing. It feels like a roll of the dice if a suggestion will work or not. And, of course, there’s RNG involved because you can only have forty books on the shelves for sale. I can choose how many of each genre I want to set out, but I can’t pick the actual books.

That’s too much RNG for me. I would like to be able to make a good rec every time or a decent one, but that’s not always possible. I hate not making any suggestion at all. I try to make one no matter what because sometimes, the game surprises me. I have not been able to figure out if the recmmendations actually matter or not except for certain NPC quests, which leads me to my next quibble with the game.


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Tiny Bookshop (neoludic games)–A Quick Look

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I’ve been on a cozy game kick for the last few weeks. I’m just done with hard games. It’s taken me quite a while to realize that I don’t really like ‘hard’ games for a variety of reasons. I play FromSoft games for the exploration, the exquisite level design, and for the lore. I suffer through/put up with the difficulty because the rest of it makes up for it.

I don’t know for how much longer because I’m getting older. I know we all are, but in this specific case, I mention it because I had terrible reflexes even before my medical crisis. And very little depth perception. After my medical crisis, it’s just gotten worse and worse.

It’s been a relief to play games that are cozy and casual. Nothing to stress me out and nothing that makkes me feel sad/bad because I can’t do it. (Holds back massive treatise on FromSoft and the current state of the company.) I am looking to be comforted in my gaming, and the indie/cozy game devs are showing up in spades.

During the Wholesome Direct of 2025 which was a few months ago, I downloaded a bunch of demos (one thing I really love about indie games) on Steam to try. One of them was Tiny Bookshop (neoludic games), and it immediately grabbed my attention. I had considered buying a bookstore once upon a time, and I was attracted to the idea of leaving it all to open a tiny moving bookshop in a small town where everyone knew each other.

I eagerly checked out the demo, and to my dismay, I did not gel with it. I loved the vibes, the visuals, and everything about the enviroment. I just did not click with the characters in the game or the actual gameplay. I didn’t dislike it, but I didn’t fall in love with it the way I thought I would.

One thing that stressed me out was that a customer would ask me for a recommendation, and if they didn’t like what I suggested to them, they would be upset. That didn’t really matter as far as gameplay. Well, I mean, it might have, but that wasn’t the reason I was upset. I just didn’t like when I didn’t get it right or when I didn’t have a book I could recommend.

I was sad when I uninstalled the demo, but it just wasn’t for me. Then, it was officially released ten days ago, and a friend of mine in the RKG Discord (we joke that we are the same person) mentioned it to me that I might like it. I decided to check the demo out again, and to my surprise, I liked it quite a bit this time.

I decided to buy it. This is one of the great things with small, indie games. This game was $19.99 at release and already 10% off. That means I bought it for $17.99. At that price, I’m willing to gamble on a game with a big heart that is made by an indie developer. I recognize it as an absolute privilege, but I don’t mind if I don’t love a game or play it for more than a few hours if I spend less than twenty dollars on it.


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