Day 2 impressions
Fossil Echo
This is bar none the most beautiful game I've seen here! The demo starts off at a really "oh...I'm controlling this now?!" feeling where I was just stunned by the look and animation to forget this wasn't concept art. It has a bit of roto-scoping feel, or maybe that's just me thinking about Prince of Persia. It's a cinematic platformer through and through, so it can be a bit unforgiving. The devs apparently watched people fail time and time again on a platforming segment on the first day so they tweaked some things overnight. While I was playing a bit with human enemies and found the timing to be too hard, they tweaked it right in front of me in a few min haha. Put this game on your radar if you're at all into lovely art or cinematic platformers.
Planet of the Eyes
Another 2D cinematic platformer, this one has quite a retro 50s sci fi colour palette and even the robot itself looks a bit 80s with its chunky design. I love the snail-like eyes following you, gives a more surreal vibe. Pretty typical fare of moving objects around to cross gaps but the game really kicks up a notch when the Log Ride segment shows up. Much like the log ride in Teslagrad, it's an intense ride, where you have to edge backwards and forwards to make the log descend but not fall off yourself. Has one of the most horrific deaths in a game where if you fall on yellow spikes, they literally skewer your robot into its little parts
Cave! Cave! Deus Videt (episode 1)
I guess I should really get into visual novels now after Aviary Attorney and now this, if they're going to look so striking now. This one is about art museums and also about women, it seems. A couple of women are the main characters, voicing frustrations with their lives and one of them finding so much satisfaction with Hieronymus Bosch art (the dude famous for painting heaven and hell, etc). As someone who saw Bosch art in my history books in school, that was kind of rad. There's one puzzle where the woman mentions colours and their representation, so you have to pick the right one (white for ambiguity, green for earth, etc). If you make the wrong choice, a set of eyes flash and a loud noise shakes you, so definitely want to avoid that! The story seems vignette-y as you jump from one woman to another. "Hoodie" has such a cool look. I just wish the dev was there so I could ask some things
You can play Episode 0 right
now, vote for it on
Steam Greenlight if you want to.
Line Wobbler
It's an amazing game. You know what? This one is tough to explain. Or tough to visualise. So I took a video of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yv3hGYGVk5c
So yeah, pretty experimental but loads of simple fun. It's described as a "1D dungeon crawler" and is apparently procedurally generated. As you can see from the video, you move green dots around that can be sped up by moving the joystick harder. If you whip or "wobble" the joystick, the green dots let off a yellow wave that can be used to kill the red enemies. There even is a pink boss battle continuously spitting out red grunts so you have to get through them first and kill the pink boss but three times and in the opposite direction. I couldn't hack it, so I gave other people a try. Unique experience so give it a go downstairs at the Leftfield Collection in the back if you're going tomorrow.
Blues and Bullets
3D detective noir adventure game with one on-rails shooting section. It will be episodic, and the devs are hoping to release the first episode of five around May-June. There are some dialogue choices and the writing can be quite funny at times. I think the funniest aspect of the story is that the detective has become just a dude who makes burgers now. You walk around your restaurant, give a lady officer some blueberry pie, and then an annoying cop a burger. I put ALL THE SAUCE in his burger, which led to him feeling sick, and from what the dev Ramon said, this will affect a future event haha!
There's one flashback to when Eliot Ness was a detective, and here's where the on-rails shooting occurs. It's a bit abrupt and awkward, like moving the analog stick and lining up headshots takes way too much time and cause this was last minute, you're aiming + shooting with Left Bumper + Right Bumper rather than the triggers. The enemies were a bit spongy. One part got me laughing where I killed a dude on the stairs next to my cover, and then two others decided to get right there for my easy potshots. The dev said they're not sure what to do with these sections, whether to excise them, but I don't see foul in having some shooting in a detective game. LA Noire did way too much of that, and it's interesting to hear the devs were making this as students back in 2009 before that game came out.
The most interesting part of Blues and Bullets comes up next, where you end up at a house investigating a grisly murder where someone has been crucified with steel bars. You search for parts of the body that can be used as clues such as teeth having pulled out so he has a mouth full of just blood or a glass being wedged into the back of this poor fella. The camera controls here where you can move the camera on a rail and use the right analog stick to look around are a bit slow and imprecise. Technical niggles aside, picking up the clues around the house and then fitting them onto the board (like the ones you see in serial killer cases on TV where they show the connections) was pretty cool cause you have to think about which clue would fit with what bit of the case. If you're successful, it all culminates into a recounting ala Vanishing of Ethan Carter. I love any kind of detective game, so this is right up my alley.
Armikrog
My god, is this really beautiful. Being from the developers of Neverhood, that's not surprising. The atmosphere of that game is back, although with full-on and absolutely top notch voice acting. Apparently Tommynaut is the dude from MST3K (Michael J Nelson) and the dog's voice actor from Pinky and the Brain (Rob Paulsen). If you're going to play this tomorrow, PLEASE LOOK OUT THE WINDOW 4 TIMES! Maybe it's just the adventure game fan in me, but I knew if I kept on looking out, I'd see cool stuff each time. A monster chases some smaller creatures, the blue one gets eaten, and is then pooped out, who is then eaten by a fellow creature. Circle of Life! You can control the dog by just clicking him, and can go into little holes. The colour-blind look is a nice attention to detail. Only as the dog can you figure out the symbols needed for one puzzle later.
It's still very early. Sound is missing in spots. The shadows all look the same, probably placeholder. There is a game-breaking bug if you decide to do things out of order. The first cutscene goes from fully animated to becoming storyboards. But I'm really glad they showed the game at all in whatever state, cause those kind of bizarre worlds are begging to be explored.
Heat Signature
I've seen plenty of this game but have only until now, got the chance to play it. Can I just say, some of the best camera zooming in a game? Cause you can zoom really far out when you're riding in space and then zoom all the way in when you've hijacked a ship and it becomes like a top-down stealth-action game like Hotline Miami. There's some great inertia to moving the spaceship around, which makes for attaching to other ships for docking a bit finicky. Thankfully, right mouse click allows you to slow down so you can get more precise with the docking. I didn't realise it until playing it, but this loop of hijacking a ship, getting killed, body being thrown out back into space, and using your remote-controlled spaceship to retrieve your sorry ass body before you pass out in 20-30 seconds is pretty flipping awesome!
Volume
I've played this before, so no need to explain to you the intricacies other than it's a non-violence stealth game. The few things new in this build are the new mechanics. You can jump over walls now and wear a masquerade (mask) to do a bit of social stealth that lasts for a few seconds. Jumping over walls just feels really good. I just like vaulting in games and the animations for some reason. It's a very precise game. Since quite a few pure stealth games are pretty much puzzles, it feels more of a puzzle game of figuring out a course of action and then executing it. A tricky one is if you decide to change rooms, you'll be dropped right in front of an enemy. So before changing rooms, throw out a bugle (noisemaker) that bounces off surfaces and you can remotely activate it with just the second mouse click. Once you've alerted the guard to go somewhere else, then warp to the other room and go about your business.
I don't remember hearing any voice acting last time I played it, apparently the dude you play as is voiced by a Youtuber (charlieissocoollike) and your AI is Danny Wallace. I love the colour palette changing up for each level, like one level is all pink and it's gorgeous.
Tulpa
Ok, so I had no idea this game was already out. So many games come out on Steam now, that it can be sometimes hard to keep track of even though the premise and concept of this game is pretty cool. It's a grim 2D adventure puzzler where you either control a girl or a dead floating guy. Since the guy floats he can go to certain places but also then you can use a mouse cursor to grab objects, so like making a claw to drop a crate for the girl to push into a pit to traverse across. The puzzles themselves are intuitive and fun. There's a narrative reason for keeping the girl and guy nearby because you lose sanity if he's too far away. The surreal art and colour palette was great, and since I already bought it for half price from their booth, I'm excited to play more of it. Apparently, the story gets way more intriguing.
Beyond Eyes
Wow. 3D adventure game where you play as a blind girl and need to fill out the world by feel. Definitely reminds of Unfinished Swan. The soundtrack is touching. Just an all around enriching experience. The game was being played on gigantic TVs and yet the art for an 3D indie game still stood strong which goes to show good art direction saves all. The effect of filling out the world looks cool, like you're painting in real-time.
I really like that there's a consistent colour theme which is purple, which happens to be my favourite colour right now
You see the purple on the edges of the filling effect, and the blind girl is wearing mostly purple.
You can sometimes go off the beaten path to explore other optional areas like a group of chickens. They're just there, the area doesn't lead you back to the main route but just to add flavour and visuals to the world. I would sometimes just walk all around an area just to fill out the white space even though I knew those were dead ends. There are negative things that you'll avoid, like the crows' shrieks or dog's barks that send out waves of sound. You don't fail or anything by going close to them since the girl won't enter those waves. One very cool thing is near the end of the demo where you suspect a woodpecker hitting on a tree but as you get closer, it's actually a traffic light sign.
I asked the devs if there would be more optional exploration and auditory-to-visual illusions cause those were the coolest aspects, and they confirmed
