Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: point-and-click

Inspector Waffles (Goloso Games)–A Quick Look

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This is both A Quick Look at Inspector Waffles (Goloso Games) and a rant about point-and-clicks in general.

A brief history: Eons ago, I thought I would really like point-and-clicks. Why? Because I like detective/murder stories/mysteries. I tried a bunch of the Wadjet Eye Games (Lauren Blackwell series), and my god, were they an exercise in frustration. So much pixel hunting. So much nonsensical “logic”. I had to make connections that made no sense in my mind, and within minutes, I was poring over a walkthrough to see whatI needed to do.

I am not gonig to mince words. I had way too high expectations for the games, and I hated every one I played. I don’t think I’ve finished any of them. Not the classic ones and not any of the newer ones. In fact, one of the ‘newer’ ones I tried was Unavowed, also by Wadjet Eye Games. I was unbelievably excited about it because it looked amazing, and it seemed like it had an interesting story. Unfortunately, it had the same nonsense as the earlier games, and I didn’t finish it.

Another was Kathy Rain: A Detective is Born (Clifftop Games). It was set in the ’90s with a motorcycle-riding, cigarette-smoking, hard-bitten female protagonist (the titular Kathy Rain). And even though I had to use a walkthrough to do several of the puzzles, I was really engaged with the story. I actually finished this one, and I was so let down by the third act.

I’m not going to reveal what happneed, but I could not have been more disappointed. The devs carefully built up a taut mystery with several strong characters, only to cop out in the end. I finished the game, really wishing they had gone done a different path. I remember hoping that they would do better in their second game. However, sadly, even though they had planned on doing a trilogy, they stopped with one game because it did not do well at all.

This is all backstory for my A Quick Look at this game. I didn’t realize it was a point-and-click. I bought it ages ago on sale because it had a cat as a detective. That was it–the whole reason.

As is my wont, I forgot about it for years. Now, I’m on an animal detective kick, and I decided to try this one out. It has that crunchy pixel look (meaning you can’t really tell what anything is because they are too blocky to discern). It’s fine. It’s not my preferred graphic style, but it’s not unpleasing to my eyes, either.

The game immediately irritated me, though. Why? Because the systems to interact with things and talk with other characters are clunky. I was looking for the controls, but could not find any. My heart sank when I realized that it was a point-and-click. And that you have to go through the same dialogue every time you want to talk to a character. What I mean is that if you want to ask a suspect about an item, you have to go through the tree in which that item would fit first. I could not figure it out until I looked it up, messed around, and something clicked in my brain.


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Elden Ring needs a friend

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I’m nearly done with my second playthrough of Elden Ring. That’s a joke because during my first playthrough, I was convinced that Leyndell Capital was the last area of the game. No idea why, but I was. So when I reached it, I was thinking I was in the end game. This was a bit over 100 hours into the game and it took me another hundred to finish it, by the way. I could go into Leyndell Capital now if I wanted, but I’m not sure I do want. Leyndell Capital was by far the hardest area of the game (for where it is), and it made me rage. Being one-shot by an enemy is NOT fun at all. Being one-shot by an enemy that late in the game? Infuriating. And yes it’s partly my fault that I had such little health (in fact, that’s why I put 12 points into vigor just to get to 30), but it’s not fun to have mobs of enemies who each one-shot you. Hopefully, I’ll be able to withstand it better now, but I’m not ready to go there yet. Mentally, I mean.

I need a game that I can chill out to at my laptop. I have Game Pass, which is a great deal, even with the hike up to $14.99 per month. Bunch of free games that you can play. Just like that. I played Boyfriend Dungeon (Kitfox Games) on Game Pass, for example. There are two games I have installed that I want to try. One is Tunic by Andrew Shouldice. It’s a Soulslike, Zeldalike game with an adorable fox as a protagonist. I tried the demo, thinking it should be right up my alley, but it was not. My spatial difficulties caused me frustrations plus the difficulty spike was not fun. There is a way to turn off the difficulty in the real game and supposedly, the difficulty doesn’t ramp up so drastically in the real game. I really want to like the game so I’m going to give it the old college try.

The other is a game called NORCO by Geography of Robots. It’s set in Norco, a real town in Louisiana. It’s called Southern Gothic and is a point-and-click mystery game, but it doesn’t have the inane mashing together a bunch of disparate items to make a key bullshit that the genre still stubbornly maintains is a good thing. Kay is the protagonist and her mother has died, so she goes back home to Norco. Her brother is missing as well. The town is going to ruins in part because of the oil company crushing out the life of the town. That’s my basic take on the story and the pixel art is lush. I’ve included the release trailer with this post.


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Point-and-click hit-and-miss

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what a nice night for murder.
Thimbleweed Park is lovely, I’ll give it that.

I like mystery novels. A lot. I read them, and I write them, and my god, I want to find a good mystery game. I have tried. My god. I have tried so hard. I’ve played the Poirot games. I’ve played many of the Sherlock Holmes games. I’ve played the Blackwell series. Any time a good point-and-click comes out, I eventually try it out, hoping against hope that this will be the one. I had really high hopes for Murdered: Soul Suspect, and I played it well past the point where I actually gave a damn about it. It had such a good idea. You’re a cop who used to be with a gang but cleaned yourself up well. Your wife is murdered (I think? I don’t remember. She’s definitely dead), and you become more of a loose cannon after her demise. That leads you to chasing after a killer without backup. The killer kills you (not a spoiler, really, as it happens in the first ten minutes or so), and for the rest of the game, you are a ghost trying to figure out what happened to you. In the meantime, you help other ghosts free themselves from this realm by figuring out how they were killed. I mean. This is right up my alley. Murder! Mayhem! Detecting! Paranormal activity! Helping other beings with their lives! It has ‘me’ written all over it. It should have hit me in all my sweet spots…er….but it didn’t. I can’t tell you why, either, not exactly.

I really enjoyed Kathy Rain, a badass chick who has to explore her past, and this is set in the…I want to say eighties. I put up with the usual point-and-click bullshit (esoteric logic that only makes sense to the developers) and relied on the walkthrough for the puzzles. I put up with backtracking for hours through four or five different rooms so I could pick up one thing from the one room, trek to the fifth room to use the thing, then bring the thing from the fifth room to the second room to do the thing that I knew I was going to have to do when I passed through it, but I couldn’t do at the time because I didn’t have the thing from the fifth room–that I couldn’t pick up when I first saw it. I put up with all that because I loved Kathy Rain–the character, I mean.

So, I liked the game despite the shortcomings of the format. It was the writing that drew me in, and I cared about what happened to Kathy. I wanted to know why her father disappeared when she was a kid and why her mom went crazy (I think. It’s been some time since I played it). So, it was to my dismay when in the third act–

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Point-and-click away from the genre

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a ghost is taunting me.
KayKay is not impressed with my throwing skills.

I started Unavowed with cautious optimism because it had gotten rave reviews. It’s made by Wadjet Eye Games, and they are much revered in the world of point-and-clicks. As I mentioned before, however, I loathed their Blackwell series, which everyone else (who likes the genre) adored. I tried two of those, finishing one, and I hated every second. It’s a shame, too, because they should be right up my alley. Psychics and paranormal activity, people going crazy, all of it gold. Yet, the bullshit of the genre really stood out early on, and I could never get over.

To recap, the bullshit includes having to go to a ‘room’, doing one thing, going to a room three rooms away to do another thing, then pick up an esoteric thing and bring it back to the first room to do something else. In the beginning of Unavowed, they avoided this trope, and I was pleased. All the puzzles were logical, and, yes, you might have to traverse the same terrain several times, but it didn’t feel forced. The first two chapters were solid, and I was hopeful that it would continue to be a good game.

I liked the story, even if it was a bit contrived. My character, mulan rogue (I always name my characters that when I can), is an actor (could have chosen cop or bartender as my ‘class’), and the game starts with a demon being cast out from inside me. Then, we go back in time and find out how I happened to be inhabited by a demon, and the rest of the game is finding out what the demon was doing while in my body and for what purpose. It’s interesting to run into people who knew me from my demon-infested time and to see how they react to me in the present. I chose to be a woman, too, and I wonder what would have been different if I chose man or demon. I’m especially intrigued about demon, but I have a hunch it’ll just say something like, “That’s not your real self. Try to remember!” and make me pick man or woman.

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