Tag Archives: game reviews

Warlock: Master of the Arcane, Strategy Wiz

Posted on by thre3zekiel

WMoA_logo

 

I’m not sure if I ever said it, but I love strategy games.  Warlock: Master of the Arcane is a game that sticks out in my mind as a perfect example of the genre.  It takes after my all-time favorite strategy series, Civilization, and really gives fantasy gaming some serious respectability, rather than just another action-thrill ride through a well-known and profoundly over played fantasy series.  Lord of Magical Fashion Accessories aside, Warlock is a semi-serious game from a franchise known to do everything but act all self-important and serious.  This title in the Ardania franchise reminds you that, while you might be micro-managing the economics of an empire while keeping the ravenous hordes of enemies, ghouls and humans at bay, it’s ok to giggle a bit.

So part of the reason for posting this is I played this game a whole lot over the spring and finally realized the sequel came out.  Another title that suffers from lack of respect, this title received a 71 from Steam’s game critic system, the meta-critic.  I am at the point where I will tell you not to trust the meta-critic with this one.  Warlock is far above a number of other worse strategic titles.  So, Ardania is a realm comparable to that of Heroes of Might and Magic, considering how often the denizens are killing each other, but it is much more comedic.  MnM’s “anti-hero focused, villainy rises to power” game was a story about a demonically possessed man that convinces all his friends he is actually a good guy before killing their daughters and summoning his father, a demonic deity, to eat their souls: a demon-Jesus, hence it is called Dark Messiah: Might and Magic.  Ardania’s version of this was Impire: you are a the dark lord, evil mastermind of horribleness.  Trouble is, you were summoned by a schmuck, so you are a tiny imp.

To start Warlock, you get to configure the vast map on which you’ll play.  I am an obsessive lover of turn-based strategy games, so I always set the size up really high.  There are also the usual parameters to configure (number of foes, win conditions, difficulty) but the most interesting adjustable value is the number of alternate worlds.  Aside from the main map that you can play on, there will be a number of alternate worlds parallel to the primary one.  Now, as far as I’ve gotten (I’ve built a sprawling empire of monsters) I have yet to encounter the portals for this mechanic.  I know that I am worried about it, though.  Good chance that, knowing my luck, the first one I find will be the link to the dimension of darkness and evil shadows will pour out to consume our souls.

it's like a pretty steampunk butterfly of world-generating glee!

It’s like a big steampunk butterfly of world-generating glee!

Once you have you world set up, you pick you ruler and jump in!  One of the more disappointing elements of the game is that it has 3 playable races (4 with the DLC): humans, monsters, undead and Arethi elves.  Arethi elves are basically just emo elves.  Now the humans get the most gold production, monsters  have the best food production, while elves are good at all three (but not comparably so) and they have the best research.  I favored the monsters for two reasons, first being I like to eat and eating makes my army bigger.  I can always steal money from enemies.  My favorite element of the monsters is that they have the most variety to their army.  You start off getting ratmen and goblins and, for my character, you move into lizard people, the Koatl.  I can also get a giant fucking turtle as an ultimate unit!  It’s great!

The way city-building is almost exactly like Civilization.  You have a central city that grows in population and thereby grows in power.  Your capital will come to have a full-on bitchin’ castle at some point, which fires at nearby enemies.  You’ll construct buildings on the nearby land and assimilate resources necessary to fantasy empire-building: food, gold, mana and research.  Now, where this game differs is that research is not used for technology, but for magical spells.  Each spell has a supportive, offensive or strategic use of some kind.  Things like lightning strikes and fireballs are obvious, but things like water-walking and terrain-alteration is just interesting and useful, especially when turning farmlands into wasteland.  The final spell is the Unity spell.  Similar to the spell that hippies attempted o cast in th 1960s, the Unity spell makes everyone sit down and sing cumbaya and smoke pipe-weed, that shit’s for sissies.  It is much more fun to kill everyone and take over their shit.  Of course, if you take over their cities, you will have to contend with the lack of farmlands you caused without an ounce of forethought.  Another thing that was irritating about this is handicapped production on all fronts when controlling the city of an enemy race.  This seems a bit harsh, but if I, a human, was forced to rub elbows with goblins and ratmen, I would be irate and difficult to rule, too.  I am ruled by humans and I am already irate on a regular basis!

Welcome to my seat of ultimate powaaaahhh!

Welcome to my seat of ultimate powaaaahhh!

Some of the problems posed to you as a ruler come down to building a city in the right place.  While in normal strategy games you can build mostly everywhere with minor economic modifiers that might come to be frustrating.  Build a farm on the roiling lava plains and your building will cost you 3 gold per turn AND you’ll have 20% reduction in whatever that building produces.  So, generally, don’t fucking do it.  Also, should you decide that a burning plain with rivers of lava is an acceptable risk for military advance, your units will have to contend with a movement penalty and a 50% defense penalty.  Not worth the fucking trouble, unless you run your shit like Pickett.

Further features of this game involve a modest plethora of special resources, like donkeys and pumpkins.  I really enjoy the things that can be done with these, too.  I have my koatl houses that I build in swamps, a shrine of the rotten pumpkin, order of the stubborn knights and other things.  Stubborn knights are powerful and ride donkeys.  They are eternally stubborn and hold grudges as high as universal mandate.  As you play, you will notice the hordes of wild animals.  These serve function of barbarians from the Civ series.  They are random marauding groups of enemies that serve as something to kill besides other players.  There are also some special enemies in the water, like krakens, which will murder the fuck out of your ships until they’ve seen some battles.  They guard treasure troves that are well worth the fight, including items for your Lords.  These lords can be hired and deployed to deal massive damage or healing.  Employ them right and you will slaughter enemies by the droves, employ them poorly and they will be the funniest most expensive character bios you’ve ever forged an empire to buy.

One of my favorite features of this game are the missions.  Throughout the game you will be randomly assigned missions to kill neutral foes, AI foes or build things.  You might also get a mission from the gods to build a shrine in their honor, which can only be built on special holy sites.  This gets you sway with the god in question and, in turn, their favor will grant you special features.  I am currently struggling through the demands of a needy deity that wants me to want him.  He demands that I build a shrine to him on a holy site.  It’s a little annoying and I really want to make that god happy so he’ll give me shit, same way religion works in real-life.  Not open to the idea of pissing of deities with phenomenal cosmic power.

The go kill bears mission. The pivotal moment in every epic story line.

The go kill bears mission. The pivotal moment in every epic story line.

 

In my opinion, this game was given no quarter by the meta-critics.  It is a stupendous game with some flaws that don’t ruin the fun parts.  Not to mention it is reasonably priced.  You can get Warlock Ultimate edition on Steam for 24.99$, which includes all the DLC with the core game.  You can also get the fucking entire Majesty collection for 69.99$.  I am pretty sure I own 90% of these games and I still want to buy it.

As it is with all things, there is something in this that pisses me off unnecessarily.  Anywhere you haven’t explored there are clouds.  CLOUDS MAN!  I fucking feel like there is a roving bands of stoned hippies just over each horizon, and, like all hippies, they break down camp whenever anyone that might spoil their convention of hallucinogenic enjoyment. Fucking hippies!  I wish I could march my fucking army down their throats and murder all of them with the rage of monstrous fury! Then subsequenly enslave a remaining few so our society would have a fresh supply of dubious plant-life to smoke recreationally in the states of Washington and Colorado.

Double-Up Discussion: Hover This, Rhombi

Posted on by thre3zekiel

Hov_this

 

It took me a few tries of playing this before I realized it was a Flappy Bird clone, just not exclusive to the iOS.  Granted, there are a few amusing elements that make this worth a download.  Of course, the gameplay is as simple as tapping the screen repeatedly.  You can play it on a bus, in a doctor’s office lobby, hell, you might even play in traffic, but I wouldn’t recommend it.  Enough fucking morons on the road without you flapping your bird in the middle of it all!

When you start this game up, you will notice that it has similar artwork to flappy bird, but instead of navigating a run of vaguely Nintendo-esque green pipes, you flap through blocks.  I am pretty sure you are flapping a box, though…. Yea, further research has revealed it’s a fucking box.  I am not sure if this was the intent or laziness of the developers, but you can certainly buy a new sprite for the “flapper” you control.  Ah, so it is more than just an epic heroic story about the box that taught itself to fly.  Here I was going to nominate this game for some dadaist art award.  Aside from a new flap to tap, you can also buy new blockers ( the obstacles you flap to avoid ).  In the default game, these are tall rectangular pillars that I thought represented the equilateral oppressors seeking to stop box-flight as part of their traditional beliefs.  But flappy box would not be contained!  His dreams would be fulfilled and everyone would learn the beauty and freedom of the skies!  Ok, so it looks like this was done to inspire you to buy shit from these people.  On the bright side, you can get a squid that flaps through some kind of cream-puff piles.

after almost twenty minutes of this game, I was hoping the vile was actually full of cyanide

after almost twenty minutes of this game, I was hoping the vile was actually full of cyanide

Don’t want to pay some in-app purchase shenanigans?  Yea, me neither.  So collect the flappies.  Little fuckers are basically coins that you can use as an alternative to real money.  Granted, 2000 flappies translates to $4.99 apparently.  I’m not sure where the third-world country of Flappidia is, but that shit is way over inflated.  Whatever, send some goddamn republicans their way.  That ought to fucking devalue their fucking coin a bit!

As for free gameplay elements, your game looks like a sepia-toned screenshot of a similar flappy game rendered by a hipster via Instagram.  You can grab a ‘C’ coin and it will change the colors.  Just avoid the impending ‘8’ coin to keep from going back to hipster drab.  There is also a ‘V’ coin that lets you change to vector graphics and a shrink potion that reduces your size, cause sometimes wider isn’t better.  Then there is this random fucking power boost.  You hit this baby and all bets are fucking off.  Your little box goes kao ken x 100 and blasts through all the blockers.  heh heh, take that you fascist polylateral pricks!

Rhombi_app

The company behind this game, Mycaruba Studios, seems to have taken a name that is an anagram for Aycarumba! something that I thought Mexicans said all the time while eating tacos and wearing sombreros.  What?  I was a dumb kid that grew up watching culturally insensitive cartoons that literally cannot be fucking shown on t.v. anymore.  You know, Looney Toons.  Anyway, this game looks like it was made to torture anyone with tequila in their veins.  You are this little Rhomboid vessel with contrails streaming from your side-angles.

Somewhere in the ship is a gunner that is thoroughly bored with his life.  He refuses to aim or fire the weapons remotely fast, so, being the navigator and in control of the steering and thruster mechanisms, you are not going to go down without a fight.  Your job is to steer the ship around and hit the enemies with the immobile laser mechanism on the front.  Now, I designate this the front, because it points up at all times.  You steer the ship by touching the screen and dragging down, moving your finger left and right.  This is a little tough at first, but you get the hang of it.  Pull your finger down a ways, too, and you’ll have some, albeit frantically scant, time to react to enemies coming at you from behind.

Actually, I had a lot of fun with this game.  It gets me nostalgic for true retro games on my Commodore 64.  I say it is the enemy of tequila because that picnic blanket pattern changes colors, and when you get to higher speeds and start steering to dodge, it made me feel a little dizzy and nauseous sitting down.  Enemies are similar rhomboid shapes that will spin weirdly then dart after you.  Sometimes they’ll ride alongside you just to dip in toward you for the kill.  Zapping the little ones with your laser will blow them up, but the bigger ones take a couple hits.  Bastards.  I wish I had a screenshot to put up for this game, it actually is fun to play a little bit.  But what you see on the logo is pretty much it.  Just with more shapes and constant lasers.

The moral of this article is fuck in-app purchases.  I never understood them and while developers need to get paid, they don’t need to wring every last cent out of every player they can corral into tapping their shiny little icon on the Play Store or the App Store.  Fuck that stupid shit.  Both of these games are free to download on the Play Store.  Not sure about the App store, but probably.

Everyday Ghosts, Ambient Walkabout

Posted on by thre3zekiel

EG_title

 

In the spirit of looking in on more interactive experiences, I was directed to this game by @DannyG1888.  Apparently over the past weekend, some Devs got together and decided to jam.  Everyday Ghosts is one of the 9 titles that came out of this one.  The event lasted the weekend between 35 indie developers working to create a little art for the interactive world.  You can download the full Ghost Wheel? Bundle here!  These games were also made in approximately 35 hours, so keep in mind they are not masterpieces of the art form, just worthy submissions with heart and sweat in them.

Everyday Ghosts was the brainchild of @DANNYG1888 and @IMPLODINGORACLE.  Your main character actually looks very similar to the avatar on Imploding Oracle’s twitter.  This was explained for me:

 

The character you play is someone I’ve been making little stories & adventures about for a long while.  I just think it’s neat to throw ’em into new scenarios.  There have been others and there will probably be more.

– Imploding Oracle, Everyday Ghosts

 

So the main character, a more trendy version of the lead singer from Gorrilaz (top right), is someone that we might expect to see again.  Who is the other character?  I thought it was a female, but according to the devs, the character is intentionally left androgynous

 

I really hadn’t assigned a gender properly to that character. I just made them pretty androgynous. Feel free to interpret that character however you feel.

– Imploding Oracle, Everyday Ghosts

 

The entire game is really more like a level from a larger title.  It is just a slow walk ( or a ninny-frolic if you mash the jump button ) through a haunted junkyard.  It makes a sort of sense that a junkyard would be haunted, since it is where items go to die.  Perhaps they could still cling to some element of those who owned it?  I believe an object can carry some element of an owner, and it doesn’t even need to be varnished with blood, like in the Red Violin.

When the game spools up you hear see only the title screen and then the roar of an engine.  Fading in slowly, the scene you are met with is that of your character at the entrance to a graveyard just after sunset, watching as his partner enters.  At first I thought this was a video, but I pushed a button and moved, so I went with it.

EG_start

a lovely ambiance

Personally, I think the androgynous partner looks like a female, so I will call them “she” for ease of typing.  So, following her into the graveyard you realized you can collect these floating spectral gears.  Upon obtaining them, you will start to see changes.  Around you a host of spirits begin to appear as you collect each one.  One of the baffling elements about this game is the dialogue.  Its tone rests somewhere between casual diffidence and outright aloofness.  Each spirit says something to somebody, but in the fashion common to spectres you will see them saying things to someone they think you are, rather than to you directly.  Each ghost, or group of ghosts, seems to focus on a snapshot in someone’s life.  Now, I highly fucking doubt all of these people died in a junkyard, unless it is the Bermuda junkyard, or something.  But face-melting physical anomalies aside, this interactive experience seems to hold a less sinister and more curious emotion.  Your character isn’t terrified, but rather perplexed by the ghostly visitors.  And just as they appear and deliver their quixotic dialogue, they recede suddenly into the ground.

so I sez to that guy, I sez, no you're a spectral image of your former self!

so I sez to the guy, I sez… No!  You’re a spectral image of your former self!

After wandering the junkyard a bit, you can leave.  Honestly, it is possible to leave at any time, but it is more interesting to walk around and chat with the locals a bit first.  Sometimes subtly lachrymose, other times bizarre and funny, these spirits definitely leave you scratching your head.  If you are wondering when the music discussion will come up, it won’t.  The only sound that accompanies you through your exploration of this junkyard is the howl of the wind, which deepens the deathly feel of the game.  This title is a free play and a good introduction to those who want to experience the more artistic side of games.  I wouldn’t really classify it as a game, since it really is just a short interactive experience that leaves you wondering who these two main characters are.  Personally, I hope to find the characters from  popping up again soon, like Waldo in a sea of faces.  There are a couple more game-like pieces that came out of this event as well.  Download Everyday Ghosts and 8 others from the Ghost Wheel? Game Jam!  Why wait?  It’s fucking free!

Plague Inc: Evolved, Eradicate Humanity!

Posted on by thre3zekiel

PIE_Logo

 

So I wiped out 99% of humanity today and still fucking lost!  Plague Inc: Evolved is a game for the strategic mastermind in all of us.  Take control of an infectious disease, evolve and kill everyone ever known by everyone you’ve ever known.

This title starts out simple enough, but gives you an idea of the scope you are dealing with in order to get there.  Initially you can only control a bacteria, but later organisms include prions, viruses, nano-viruses parasites fungi and some things I have never fucking heard of.  You then name your virus.  In prior Plague Inc titles (previously known as Pandemic) I always named my disease something insidious sounding like Writhing Death or The Manacles.  I lost every time.  So one day I made a disease named Booty Shoe out of denominational ennui.  Booty shoe eradicated the world population.  So this one got to be Nut Slipper.  I started Nut Slipper out in Indonesia, and altogether solid start location for any disease.  It has ports for oceanic export, planes for aerial export and it’s a warm, moist climate, which puts it two evolutions away from stepping out into the greater world.  Plague Inc seems to have 3 phases of play.  It’s not actually a part of the game, but the way the flow of the game seems to develop.  I call these phases initial spawn, transmission and eradication.  In initial spawn, you get DNA points for evolution from a few gameplay milestones in the beginning.  This is where your disease starts in its natal region and starts to breed.  When you spread out little by little to people in your starting country, Indonesia in this case, you’ll see little red and orange bubbles appear.  Pop these for the DNA points to evolve your disease.

Exponential infection rates and the game gets excited over a few thousand? Psh.

Thousands of nuts are apparently warm and cozy. Why is this bad?

In Plague Inc, you don’t order your little bacteria where you want them.  Consider the game a simulation of the spread of a potential disease.  Your disease will spread on its own in an organic fashion across the various methods.  You control the disease by mutating it, granting it new characteristics along the way.  These characteristics fall into three categories: transmission, abilities and symptoms.  Transmission is how the disease is carried from one host to another.  These can be things like livestock, insects, air, water etc.  Being in Indonesia, I evolved air and water right away.  Now, the game also made it so that transmission via water would be hard off the bat for my disease.  Something about sanitizing boats.  But evolving that water transmission negated the effect.  Nothing would stop Nut Slipper from sailing the seven seas!  This brings us to where you are spreading to every country in the transmission phase.  You get DNA points for spreading to new countries and infecting large portions of the population.  People don’t need to know you are around yet, but you get the DNA points for infections.

Now one of the things that you get concerned about really fast is how well your disease spreads to other countries.  Does it like the climate?  How rapidly does it spread? Do they use class 3 or 4 antibiotics?  All legitimate concerns.  It used to be that getting your disease into Madagascar was a sure-fire win, but now fully infecting Greenland, Canada and other cold-climate countries is the true challenge.  Your disease will spread the slowest in these locations and if you get lethal too soon, you’ll kill the hosts before they can spread it to other people.  That is a no-go.

Only fifty-one percent of the world population is dead!? Time to step up my game.

Only fifty-one percent of the world population is dead!? Time to step up my game.

Once you have enough people eating, drinking and breathing in your disease it’s time to start the extinction of humanity!  This is my favorite part because once people start dying the music, which has sinister techno-ambiance, goes from ominous to downright fucking creepy.  It starts off with the EKG heart monitor noises woven into it just below audibility and the moves on to include some kind of sirens.  I think they might be the noise that ambulances make in countries not mine.  Ours are pretty obnoxious.  Either way, it moves on to people hacking and coughing and children singing ring around the rosey.  Awesome, ambient and creepy as fuck.

Now the extinction of humanity won’t be reached by making your disease resistant and transmissible alone, and this is where it gets tough.  In the eradication phase you get DNA points for wiping out populations and destabilizing governments.  Symptoms are the method for reaching these goals.  If you take symptoms too early in the transmission phase, your disease will be detected and cured fairly rapidly.  Take symptoms too late and you will not have enough points to develop the truly lethal symptoms.  Occasionally you will spawn random symptoms, but the game can be paused in order to devolve those and earn some DNA points.  With your bacteria, you want to aim for 70% – 79% of global infection to start taking symptoms, and when you take them take them fucking hard.  When I pump up the symptoms I will take them 3 – 4 at a time and let them go.  People start dropping dead faster than the game even knows how to react, and by the time the first death hits the news, hundreds of thousands are lying in their living rooms clinging fecklessly to their last breaths.  Even with Nut Slipper taking the world by storm, I was still greeted with this fucking screen at the end.

ninety-nine point nine percent of the world is dead and it is not considered a goddamn victory

ninety-nine point nine percent of the world is dead and it is not considered a goddamn victory

I am only partially joking about that, too.  I wiped out 99.9% of humanity and it was still not considered a fucking victory!  To give you an idea, the people who survived lived in Greenland, Canada, Italy and Sweden.  Everyone else in the entire fucking world was dead.  My problem was that I took symptoms around 65% world infection and killed all my hosts too fast.  I have no fucking clue how Italy, of all goddamn places, fucking survived, either.  I guess they didn’t go to the Olympics in London that year…   Granted none of them survived unscathed, but they survived.  One of the more fun features of this game is how you can make spectacular effects occur, like projectile vomiting, by combining various symptoms.  Projectile vomiting occurs when you have coughing and vomiting at the same time.  Once you have started to wipe out the population of planet Earth, people will start to do research in an attempt to survive.  This is signified by a blue plane that flies around.  You can slow them down by clicking little blue bubbles, too, but the best part is when you stop research by killing everyone in a country.  Then the country just goes dark as everyone slowly collapses.  This game is a tough one, but rewarding for the strategic enthusiast.  It can be gotten for 14.99$ on Steam and.. wait this is early access?  Well for an early access game, this one sure is well done.  Worth the money, in my honest opinion.  It also feels like one of those games that some people think might save the world by thinking about how to solve realistic problems, except in this one you are the problem.

Of all the things this game does right, there is one thing that still haunts my dreams.  The children.  When you start to go nuclear, as stated, you hear a group of grade-school children singing Ring around the Rosey.  I swear to fucking god this is the creepiest thing I have ever fucking heard in ever.  It is like the children of the corn, or some shit.  The music is fucking awesome, mind you.  That just enhances how creepy the children are.  They are like the fucking harbingers of the goddamn apocalypse!  I will be waking up in a cold sweat singing ring around the rosey tonight, I just know it.

 

Double-Up Discussion: Color Stairs, Fluff Eaters

Posted on by thre3zekiel

colorstairs

 

The first game of today’s double article is Color Stairs!  An interesting concept for iOS systems, you can get this game for free on your iphone or ipad.  It can be found on the iTunes store at this location.  A fairly simple concept, this is a game easier explained than played.  You control a little square and you have to get it as far along the treacherous rainbow-colored terrain as possible.  You will fall in the spaces between one set of platforms and the next, though, so the game makes it easy to keep track of progress.

You’ll pick this up and underestimate it from the start.  Smooth jazz jams on as you tap the screen to move your square.  To start, you’ll tap to drop the square.  I had numerous pit-drops off the bat as the platforms are scrolling while the square is in the same spot on the screen.  Eventually, though, the law of averages has to fucking even out and you’ll get it on a platform.  When it does, tap the screen and don’t stop.  When you see a gap, swipe upward real quick and you’ll jump that shit.  It is a little jarring to get used to, and prolonged gameplay may result in motion-sickness, but once you get a good rol, you want to stay on that shit.  My best play got me to 143 points.  How do you gain points?  They accrued every time you tap the fucking screen.  Sound simple?  You fell into the same goddamn trap I did!  Try it.  Just try it.  It is fun, frustrating and, honestly, satisfying.  But you do not feel bad putting it down: everything required of a good app game and good puzzlers alike.  Do I need another screenshot?  No, the above logo pretty much says it all.

flufflogo

Fluff Eaters is not out yet.  This half of today’s double-up is a preview as of the typing of this article, but it will be released on the 14th!  Check it out on its website!  This game honestly has all the makings of the next big app game that young girls and middle-aged men will latch onto.  A cute main character, lovably devious foes that are charming in their own way and a simple base concept.

Basically, you are playing jacks.  You know, the game played arbitrarily on every sidewalk by young girls in the mid-nineteen fifties.  You bounce a ball and pick up as many jacks as you can.  In this, though, you bounce a cat.  Bouncy the Cat, as a matterafact.  Now these little fuckers, called Fluffs, waited while Bouncy got out of bed and fucked up his personal lounge spot!  This is some unprecedented douchebaggery on their part, so Bouncy needs to get his revenge.  Each level you are tasked with bouncing Bouncy and tapping goals.  Tapping fluffs gets you through the level, but each level there are these little fish crackers to collect.  Getting the crackers gets you more points and killing fluffs gets you through the level with less points.  The goal is to tap all the objectives and then move on.  A simple concept that gets more and more difficult.

... but you end up on whacky levels wondering what you are even supposed to do after enough time.

… but you end up on crazy complex levels wondering what you are even supposed to do after enough time.

I am not going to lie.  For all this game’s adorable trappings, cute sound effects and silliness, it is a pain in the ass to complete.  I found myself on a level where the platforms are angled and you have to catch Bouncy after he gets the crackers but before he hits the WALL OF GODDAMN SPIKES!  This cat would hate me for real, and not just because I am a dog person.  I dropped his ass on more than a few spike traps and into pits, launched him off screen, missed the catching tap and let him double-bounce: you name it, I fucked it up.  And this game gets challenging.  I give serious accommodations to anyone that can get through more than a few acts in this game. Aside from being challenging, it has really good visuals, fun scenery and lovable characters, even if they do seem like a euphemism for cat dander and hairballs.  If you are a fan of fun, cute and humorous app games, this is a title to pick up, and for the asking price of 0.99$ it is a relative steal.

The Parsnip Theory, Lunchroom Throwdown

Posted on by thre3zekiel

parsnip

 

If every highschool kid in the world could design video games, The Parsnip Theory would probably be the first game they make.  Though it has a few rough edges, its design and gameplay are certainly an experience worth a play, especially with friends.  It is a shareware game available at itch.io. One thing to keep in mind is that this game is in its alpha stages.  It is listed on itch so that people can test it, play it and enjoy it for what it is so far.

Turn-based strategy has many forms, some good, some bad.  Many involve alternate play-areas that allow you to play with armies as pieces on a Risk board, while still others give you a base to return to and beef up your troops.  Parsnip Theory is a simple game with one face: lunchroom mayhem.  Every time you play, you join a team of kids, who all look the same, and you start launching tomatoes at the other teams.  Controls in this title take a minute of fiddling to really figure them out properly, but they are intuitive and allow you to consider your moves like a chess player before you fully commit to them.  Each of your teammates starts a round with 7 moves.  Throwing a tomato costs 2 moves, each space costs 1 move to traverse and crouching is 1 move as well.  This means that, without moving, you can get 3 shots off per round.  If you have to move more than 1 space in a turn, you could end up losing 1 or 2 of those shots, so timing is a big part of this game.

My first couple runs of Parsnip Theory ended with my team as nothing more than gooey smears on the tile.  I would just charge out there, tomatoes blazing, and hope for the best.  Have you ever played XCOM?  Yea, you run out there guns blazing and your people will end up in the hot place really fast.  Parsnip Theory is no different.  Although the graphical style makes it tough to tell, there are tables in this lunchroom.  I would expect tables to stand out a little more, but these ones sort of look like drainage grates laid throughout the room that, for some odd reason, you are fully incapable of walking over.  These grates, however, are actually tables.  If you have your team members crouch behind them, you can use them as cover.

Move behind cover, Aaron! You're under fire!

Move behind cover, Aaron! You’re under fire!

Now, above you see my characters crouched behind a wall, waiting for that little blue guy to come out behind his wall.  What I didn’t realize was that he could see the guy up top, and  splattered him accordingly.  We still mourn the loss of Aaron.  But moving with cover is a good way to operate in this game.  If you can set up your team to ambush a foe coming around a corner, he might get one shot off at one of you, and the next turn he’ll get three more, but that’s it.  He won’t be able to get off enough shots to take down any of you, and you’ll have him splattered in barely more than one turn.  The hellish onslaught of tomatoes takes down 10 hp per hit, so you’ll likely take him out and have plenty of moves left that second turn.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you are in highschool with a bunch of fucking baseball stars.  These kids will lob a barrage of perfectly-aimed tomatoes at you from the other side of the lunchroom like a howitzer loaded with tomatoes.  The AI seems to favor taking advantage of long-shots at weakened enemies because you likely won’t see it coming.  The AI of this game, really, is way better at this than it has a right to be.  As I said, several times I played through and took out one or two enemies, and got smeared.  The AI wasn’t all focused on me, either.  The other teams were going back and forth at each other like nobody’s business.  They just managed to mop the floor with me every time.

Graphics in this game are acceptable, except for a few little issues here and there.  Sure the table don’t look like tables, but I rather enjoyed the look of my little team mates.  Sure, hair color and clothing is all the same, but after playing a few times, skin-colors are randomly assigned.  Also, your people all lack arms and legs, so their hands and feet hover in space where the ends of their extremities should be, Rayman-style.  The difficulty in this game was a little rough, but you learn the best way to battle your foes after a while, and it’s not too tough to adjust.  There are a few things that this game could benefit from: variety of attacks, the potential for someone to miss, some stronger graphical definition, but for a piece of shareware, this game is enjoyable.  I would advise playing it with some friends to get the most out of its gameplay.  The AI players are just a bunch of dicks.

Another feature of this game that my brother will discuss at greater length is the level editor.  Should you get tired of the single level of play in the game, you can always go and make more of them.  A level editor is always a good idea, and in a game like this grants players the ability to make it their own way.  You hate the lunchroom?  Fine, have a fucking food-fight in the art department, you damn lunatic.

We stand victorious over the blood.. err.. tomato-spattered lunchroom.

We stand victorious over the blood.. err.. tomato-spattered lunchroom.

Of everything I about this game, there is one thing that I HAVE to mention.  I do not under any circumstances recommend this to anyone with photosensitive seizures: you might not make it past the title screen.  The background is this warping, color-changing spaghetti (or something) that looks like one of the lunch aides slipped fucking LSD into the juice boxes.  In their psychedelic-induced frenzy these kids have taken to defending themselves against the phantasms of their own imagination the only way they can deign: by lashing out with salvos of edibles projectiles.  This is my story, and I am sticking to it, since the game itself doesn’t really have one yet.

 

Among the Sleep, Crawling in the Dark

Posted on by thre3zekiel

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My wife calls this the “freaky baby game” and not because of the baby.  Everything about this game is unnerving and it all adds up to an enjoyable experience in fear-inducing games.  My wife hates it when I play this in the dark cause she keeps having to run in and check that my screams are caused by the game and not something terrible… like a stubbed toe.  Those are horrifying.

If you come into this game off the adrenaline high that profoundly horrifying games like Amnesia produce, you will not be enthused.  I have to admit, I couldn’t play Amnesia.  It was that fucking freaky for me.  I quit playing only about an hour into the game, and I hadn’t encountered any enemies yet.  Among the Sleep was a much more accessible game for those who don’t want to pour hours into complex puzzles, creeping through terrifying dark castles and losing your mind.  Horror-lite, is the best term for this game, and I found it rather enjoyable.

Among the first elements of the game that you notice is the fact that you are a goddamn 2-year-old.  Your mom has you in a high chair, she’s feeding you cake, you play with a ball and you have as much control of yourself as a drunk muppet.  Not to disparage the game, it controls beautifully.  Toddlers on the other hand are called toddlers because they don’t have the basics of biomechanical locomotion down, yet.  Look down at your body, and you notice a tiny, onesie-clad body that takes haphazard steps.  Environmental manipulation is difficult at times, too.  You are a baby, after all.  Your tiny little hands grasp uncertainly at objects.  It is almost adorable.  Except for the fact that you are scared out of your shit trying to rationalize the world around you.  In the very beginning of the game your crib gets thrown across the room, spilling you onto the floor.  You spend some time crawling around, which lets you hide from foes and get into tight places, but you can stand up on your little baby-legs.  When you do, you move slowly, but you can run briefly before stumbling over into the crawling position.  Frequently, the game makes use of this by making you want to run so badly, but you can’t, you know, being a fucking baby and all.  Not exactly a Kenyan track star.  Also, you can hear the tiny little baby breaths and your character hides in the dark, sucking in air like a noisy little vacuum.  Another feature that highlights the fact that you are a baby is the esc screen.  Hit escape and you bring up your tiny baby hands to cover your face.

Remain still and the teddy bear will go away.

Remain still and the teddy bear will go away.

Early on you realize there is trouble in paradise, and being sensitive to everything around you, it shows.  Babies don’t know much, so they have to experience the world around them in terms of emotions.  Thus, when something scary happens, your screen gets dark and twitchy, like it’s being chewed on by a langolier.  This occurs early on when mommy answers the door.  You hear a male voice and then mommy starts yelling.  That’s when the screen gets all ugly, but mommy soon comes back and it’s all ok again.  She brings a present to you, which you get at later no thanks to your mother, and inside it is the scariest toy ever.  Your travelling companion is a terrifying possessed teddy bear.  At one point he plays with your train set and hides your elephant from you.  But I know the fucking truth!  That little bastard is possessed by a dark entity bent on turning you into a ruthless serial killer!  Either way, teddy is apparently your only weapon.  When you get scared, you have to hug him and he glows in the dark, like a carebear stare that is less powerful and gives your position away to enemies.

<THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD!>  Since this game only came out a few months ago, I have to do this.

While playing this game, you notice some really interesting tidbits.  There truly is something sinister lying just beneath the surface, and it isn’t just the spooky ambient soundtrack.  Anyone who watches Grimm knows that what people thought were stories are often used to represent something more sinister.  Although it might not be the fact that werewolves exist, fairytales like Grimm’s fairytales were actually mechanisms used to rise children in a time where they could have been ripped apart by wolves just outside of town.  No one would have noticed for a good few hours either.  So rather than saying “don’t go into the woods or you’ll get ripped apart by wild animals” they would probably say “don’t go in the woods or you’ll be eaten by a witch!”  This is much easy to offer to children than, you know, sheer abject terror.  This game uses the same vehicle to convey and otherwise occluded backstory.  Some guy brings a wrapped package to the door on your birthday and gets into a fight with mommy?  Yea, that was dad.  I guess they were having some kind of issues, so daddy doesn’t live at home anymore.  Later you go through this level with paintings on the walls, one of which features a woman and a well.  As you approach it changes from the woman coming out of the swamp toward the well, her standing at the well and then her drinking deeply from the well with water running down her dress.

Toward the end of the game, you see mommy drinking from bottles (which litter the floor in another level) and she turns into a monster.  This made my jaw drop.  So apparently mommy is also an alcoholic and having some serious issues.  Considering your character stumbles out of a closet at the end of the game, I have to assume this means that the whole game is basically the result of child neglect by a irresponsible bitch that wants to keep the child away from a potentially loving father.  This is a little on the rough side, since a lot of single mothers work hard to ensure that their children get the best they can provide.  But no one is perfect, and some people outright deserve to be dropped off a cliff.

O, shit, mommy is drinking from the jack daniels well again!

O, shit, mommy is drinking from the jack daniels well again!

This game takes a real big adult issue and shrinks it down to a baby size.  It is really deeply affecting, especially since at the end, your mother is the one who rips the arm off your teddy bear, and you character still starts rubbing her head as she sits crying on the kitchen floor.  I cried a little, since this one hits a bit too close to home, having had a number of friends growing up who experienced something like this.  All told, this game is a true horror story that focuses more on the story elements and leaves those “terror from the darkest wilds” elements to more drawn out titles.  After all, how much can you really tell about the story of a baby?

Among the Sleep is a great title, but the thing that really got my gaul up about this title is the number of startle scares it gets out of you.  I mean you creep around a corner, BAM! chair flies at you.  Turn around and something behind you is moving by itself, or something flies out of a random hatch you didn’t know about.  STOP FUCKING DOING THAT!  Man, you’re gonna scare the shit right out of me!   I guess that is their fucking plan, though.  Bastards.

Viscera Clean-Up, Engagingly OCD

Posted on by thre3zekiel

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So this is what it’s come down to.  Viscera Clean-Up detail is a glorified janitor simulator in early access, but don’t close the screen yet.  You’re not exactly wiping some kid’s puke up off a tile floor or mopping up piss.  You are the guy that cleans up after the events of other video games and tragic events, but this seems to be made by a people who are disenfranchised with the world in general and are used to monotonous, soul-crush jobs.  Like the British.

Ultimately, this game is just like building a puzzle.  You are given a big mess to organize, and piece by piece you work the mess down to an easily manageable pile and then finish up.  Now, starting this game is a bit of a chore.  You begin and blood and guts litter the floor, are painted on the walls and the entire scene is a very “modern art in rouge.”  You have several very fucking important machines that help you get your job done.  First, there is the Slosh-o-Matic, dispenser of buckets full of water.  Then there is the furnace, it is the disposal method of choice for viscera both human and alien.  Then there is the What-a-Load container machine, which disposes containers marked with the “biological hazard” symbol.  And finally, the vending machine, which provides access to all manner of useful objects.

This game provides the all-too-realistic experience of being a janitor fitted with the cheapest mechanism for cleaning available in futuristic times.  By all accounts, you should have access to a fucking auto-cleaning zapper mechanism!  But the most high-tech device you have is the Muck-Guyver, which provides a radar “ping” that beeps faster and in a higher pitch the closer you are to a “mess.”  Way too many times have I finished cleaning up a section of a room littered with the remains of a scientist, used the Muck-Guyver and the region still came up hot.  I look on the ceiling and curse the gods, realizing that the some of a victim didn’t fucking reach the floor.  At which point you have to stack a bunch of boxes, or whatever environmental detritus you have available, and scrub the goddamned ceiling!

Your main “weapon” is a mop, so the Slosh-o-Matic isn’t just a funny little feature.  It is your main support element.  And don’t even think for five fucking seconds that this shit is all user-fucking-friendly!  Every time you hit the dispense button, there is a shot you will get a bloody body part instead of a bucket of clean.  This means it will drop out and splatter fresh blood all over the ground and the machine.  I like to imagine that this is because the machine is really a teleporter, and a careless technician just lost an arm or something.  A slosh-o-matic is necessary, though, as your mop gets dirty through usage.  You can only mop a heavily-soiled section of the floor for five mouse-clicks before you start just spreading the muck around, so you have to get a fresh mop bucket and rinse the mop.  One dunk only, though!  Your mop buckets will get soiled, too!  Dunk your mop in that and you will just be smearing a fine paste over surfaces leaving a trail like a snail on its period.  And watch your goddamned step!  Knock over a bucket containing ANY level of grime, and you will have just poured out a mess all over the floor again.  Prepare for agony.  My wife came in worried about me only to find I knocked over another fucking mop bucket!

vcdspill

Dirty mop? Spilled bucket? This might end with suicide.

 

If your buckets get dirty, too, how the fuck are you supposed to clean for a protracted period of time?  In this space-age setting your company has resorted to the most sensible and fiscally responsible means of disposing of things: setting them on fire.  Apparently the Joker was right, everything does burn!  Even steel buckets full of fucking water!  Now, this is a little silly, but once you have mopped up enough blood and such to get to the bullet cartridges and organs lying in the open, how can you get them to the furnace reliably?  Why, you simply put someone’s assorted remains into a yellow bio-hazard bin and burn them, of course!  Bins are pretty sizable, too, and seating most of two people comfortably.  But be fucking mindful of your goddamned surroundings!  Have a bloody stub sticking out of the bin?  You will smear blood on anything it might touch.  Considering the fact that doors in this don’t open wide, you will end up scrubbing walls and doors a lot, too.  And don’t be that manly man that has to cram eight people, a thousand bullet cartridges, five soiled knives and a take-out box into one fucking disposal bin.  That shit will cost you!  Things inside the bin will get heavy for you and you will drop that shit.  Even if the bin isn’t that fucking full and you are hitting shift to go slowly!  Run with organs and you might as well paint everything red.

One thing that this game encapsulates entirely too fucking well is frustratingly tedious tasks.  So you have disposal bins, eh?  Here is a floor littered with a bazillion mother-fucking bullet cartridges.  Pick them up one at a time.  Scientists in this ripped apart by a blood-thirty alien?  Intestines will be scattered around like someone spilled oodles of noodles and you have to pick it up one greasy meat-tube at a time.  Then there are the distances they go to make this a challenge.  Aside from organs pouring out of the bin or bucket dispensers, should you step in a pool of blood, you will track blood everywhere across mom’s new carpet.  There is nothing more frustrating than realizing you just tracked somone’s DNA across your freshly-mopped floors.  And then there is the detail!  Yea, sure, anybody can scrub a few tiles and punch out, but if you just run through and opt-out of spot-checking your work with the Muck-Guyver, you’ll miss something.  One element I discovered was that sometimes blood will run into the fucking grout in the tiles!  And you’ll have to scrub that separately from the rest of the pool!  I am just grateful they don’t force you to go in there with a brush and scrub it out by hand.  Holy fuck!

At the top of the bin, Chad was really getting a-head!

Spacious enough to fit the extremities of several researchers comfortably!

Cleaning up the organs or dead researchers is only the fun part of the job, though.  You’ll find yourself cleaning up crumpled papers, soda cans and other office debris.  There are also other menial tasks to achieve, such as refilling wall-mounted medkits.  I mean, what research facility is complete without the easily-accessible medkit designed for dressing alien claw-wounds?  To this end, the vending machine is a must.  Of course, not all facilities are outfitted in anticipation of epic fight-scenes.  Some places are just dimly-lit and have naturally dingy textures.  In such situations, the vending machine will provide lanterns!  Of course, knock these fuckers over too many times and they explode leaving scorch marks all over the floor.  Vending machines will also offer any number of useless shit, such as pizza slicers and “wet floor” signs.  Granted, I think you get docked points if you don’t put down the signs, so yea.

This game isn’t without its flaws.  Sometimes you’ll have an arm that will get jostled so bad in a disposal bin that it clips through the bin, painting anything it touches.  The bins are the source of a number of issues, as over-stocking the bins causes things to jump around in there like a bunch of nitrogen atoms under pressure.  I also found these strange “phantom pegs” that appear on the electrical cords for your appliances.  At first you might not see them, but if you splatter blood on them, they show up, sometimes only partially.

I guess this is more respectful than just dumping it all in the garbage somewhere.

I guess this is more respectful than just dumping it all in the garbage somewhere.

Aside from being the type of game a serial killer would jack off to, the most irritating thing about it is.. uh.. well I’ll tell you after I spend another 3 hours scrubbing out the toilets and transferring the wasted toilet paper left on the floor to a disposal bin.  Yea, it really is that much fun.  What kind of psychopath has fun in this, do you ask?  Anyone who gets satisfaction out of gradually turning a hopeless situation into an operational facility ready for the next batch of squishy and ethically-irresponsible researchers.

Concursion, Genre-Fusion Salad

Posted on by thre3zekiel

concur

 

I imagine the discussion at Puuba Games when this game was thought up went like this:

“We want to make a game, and have decided it will be a platformer, now Bill…”

Dave jumps in,  “Whoa whoa whoa!  Who decided on that?  I wanted to do a fucking fighter, like double-dragon!”

Bill cuts off Dave “O fuck that! We agreed last week at Chi-Chis that we’d be doing a damn ninja game!  Shinobi redux bitches!”

“And most of us were trashed on tequila and margaritas!  No, last week beforehand we decided on a space shooter!”

Sam cuts in angrily, “What!?  But the indie scene needs my ideas for a non-violent ambient space explorer!”

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               – Puuba Games Board Discussion, probably

On the battle raged for 6 days, 7 nights and on the 7th day, everyone said fuck it! and they each started their own games.  Little did they know, this was Dave’s plan all along.  He wanted everyone to do what they were good at in order to make this game.  You’re a devious mother-fucker Dave.  Devious.

Concursion literally takes 6 different games, disembowels them like digital legionnaires and squeezes them into a bizarre game smoothie.  Don’t believe me?  They brag about it on their fucking site.  Now, the game starts off as a platformer with the usual platformer issues.  Dark Lord Bignbad has captured the princess… Honey Drop.. Honey Bum..(?).. the princess yet again, but this time he shatters some crystals, rending the world and various others.  Your character just shows up at the castle, presumably because he’s a horny (-ed) viking, and sees that she isn’t there.  You then chase after the princess’s hand maiden, who it seems was included as a bad-ass lady character because in a kingdom with no other visible rulers, theirs is still a princess.  At least I don’t think there are other rulers, but if there is a king and queen, it was real shitty of them not to show up at the scene of their own daughter’s kidnapping.  Anyways.  Puuba Games essentially does with Concursion what Irrational attempted with Bioshock Infinite, but does it better and to greater efficacy.  Sure, it is not as sparkly as Bioshock was, but I never once said, “God this game looks great, but where is the game material that I was expecting to enjoy?”  Concursion delivers on all of its promises, whether you like it or not.

In the platformer you play a little red viking that seeks to save the land.  Of course, when your happy ass crosses realms you change into the hero of that realm.  It’s pretty fucking awesome.  So one minute you’re a little red viking and the next you are a ninja, double-jumping and deflecting shurikens.  Cross over into another realm and you man a spacefighter, and another still has you don a jetpack and spacesuit.  Watching the transition is a little bit jarring, but as you play each genre-realm, you become associated with the capabilities of each character.

They have great dumplings in this swirling vortex of universe-rending power.

They have great dumplings in this swirling vortex of universe-rending power.

Transitioning between worlds also grants you certain abilities.  Jump in the platformer, transition into ninja, now you can double-jump that pit in time to survive and go platforming again.  Even the bad guys transition sometimes, but it is really funny to see a dopey dragon-dog transition into a flying hunk of rock and vice-versa.  Those bastards over at Puuba also made mastering these transitions essential to obtaining the key to patching all the holes.  See those little green shards at the top left of my screen there?  Yea, those little fucking things.  At first you are getting them like it’s you’re job, but the difficulty of the game increases steadily, so each level makes it tougher and tougher to get the damn things.  I can already hear the howls of completionist rage.

I am not a platformer pro, either.  I bought Braid, found it insanely too tough and quit playing.  Sure, it’s artistic and mopey and wrist-cuttingly emo, but this is not Braid.  This game is also artistic, in its own way.  In a way that reminds me of Mega Man.  Seriously, this game’s music is the type that I love to hear.  It is full of energy and fun.  I actually alt-tabbed the game so I could listen to the theme music of the Intro level.  Don’t you judge me, play the game and listen for yourself!  Music in this game is also as much a part of the game as the mechanics and the graphics, too.  Each realm has its own version of the same music in each level to which it transitions.  It seems Puuba put some serious ass into this game as the only way I can imagine doing this is to make several versions of the same soundtrack and making the game change the place in the soundtrack upon transitioning.  And in case you are wondering, this takes about a fraction of a second.  It is seamless and really neat.  Even in places as above, where you will transition three times mid-jump, the game alters the music as you pass through those vortices.

The soundtrack here must be titled something like "the finality of laser-induced death"

The soundtrack here must be titled something like “the finality of laser-induced death”

Concursion’s difficulty has a good rising curve, but after a point I got to where I was cursing my ass off.  It really brought me back to my roots on the Super Nintendo with Mario or the Commodore 64, trying to make the Hulk cry for mommy before the dynamite he had strapped to him exploded.  It is the most fun game I have ever sucked at in every possible way.  Real platformers would be facepalming and tearing the controls out of my hands.  But the way this game has you doing things that are hard as hell to awesome and encouraging music is really fun.  I mean, every scenario they put you in, whether you are attacking shuriken-flinging wall-ninjas or dashing for your life from a player-seeking angry spike ball, the music is perfect for the level.  Any of you that have a child inside you not due to a heavy lunch will want to go get this and relive your entire childhood gaming experience in one game.

Some of the levels are done up in vector graphics, some are your pixel-art, if you’re into that.  But all-in-all this game rocks.  There is even a little humor in how the game teaches you how to play.  Like, did you know that ninjas could historically perform a double-jump?  I can just imagine that showing up in one of those highly questionable History Channel shows.  And once you are done running all over the place, the game lets you jump under a discoball for your own personal pelvic-thrust party!

If you would like to buy this game, aptly described on Steam as a difficult indie action platformer with a great soundtrack, it runs 11.99$ on the aforementioned gaming service or 16.98$ for game and music.

nntsss nntsss nntsss

nntsss nntsss nntsss

Absolutely one of the most fun platformers I have ever played, including in comparison to the classic ones.  But the thing that pisses me off about all of this is how hard I suck at platformers!  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love gaming, and I played more Super Mario Brothers than any one person should have as a kid with 4 brothers.  But I was the one that passed the Sega controller during rocket-knight adventures so my brother could teach me how to rocket-jump!  I played the first level after the intro in about 3 minutes and 30 seconds.  When you play that level, you will be astounded by how hard I truly suck.  Please don’t hate, we all have our strong suits and I am not the Jack of Platformers.

Double-Up Discussion: Trippin’ Balls, Freaky Tup

Posted on by thre3zekiel

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With a working title like “Pong on Drugs” you know this game is going to be out there.  I mean look at that title screen.  Is that a flaming fucking taco?  Trippin’ Balls lives up to its name, and the best way to enjoy this simple game would likely to be with a heavy dose of weed.  Then again the title screen might make you hungry.  Those selections on the title page float around, btw.  It’s actually a bit comical chasing them around to learn how to play.. for about 5 seconds, then the chiptune music makes you want to club a baby seal.  No worries, though.  I’ll explain it to you so you only need to see this screen once.

Move your paddle back and forth.  That is most of the game.  Thanks for playin’!  O, right, the other stuff.  So there are two pick-ups.  They fly in your direction from the middle of the screen and you have to catch them with your paddle while still returning the ball.  The blue pick up doubles the size of your paddle, while the other halves the size of your paddle.  Both explained in-game with a penis joke.  That’s not all there is to this game though.  Play it for a little while.  Really, go ahead.  While you’re batting the ball back and forth, you’ll take notice that the entire game screen flips.  Yep.  It’s fucking cruel.  It flips while the fucking ball is flying, too!  That shit gets frustrating, and after a while I just let it go like Elsa.

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Just the still picture makes me feel like vomiting…

One more note for this title.  The chiptune soundtrack is actually kind of fun, and yes, I was one of those kids that listened to midis when the internet was pronounced “A-O-L”.  But I was a kid, my parents wanted to pay for that service, fuck off if you’re judging me.  Anyway, coming from jamming to midis like they were grammy-nominated titles, this one is actually pretty cool.  The graphics in this game, however, will make you want to pull your eyes out of your head.  The playing field is lined with psychedelically pulsing squares and the ball has a shimmering comet tail.  It’s a fun waste of time for only 0.60£ or 1.02$ American on itch.io.

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Freaky Tup is a game with a weird freaking name. I have no fucking idea what a TUP is, nor why it is freaky.  It might be, like, Tee Up, but the game itself has nothing to do with golf in the slightest degree at all.  The idea of the game is that you launch these little pink squiddly guys (similar to the yellow one pictured above) to hit the little angry-face guys.  Honestly, it’s a cute game and if I had kids, this would be on their phones.  Now, these little pink guys squeal with glee or say “yucky” when the enemies explode in a splash of black slime.  Be careful, though!  You have to avoid hitting the friendly (and doofy looking) amoeba blobs.

While you are playing, bad guys and good guys will fly across your screen, and you have to hit the baddies with the pink squids.  Sometimes a glowing golden heart with fly past, too.  Those grant you extra health, whereas hitting the good guys and letting bad guys get through unharmed will make you lose health.  I lost a few times before I got the hang of it, I just got to a point where I had some 4070 points on the first level and lost all patience to get to the next one.  I guess mindless mobile games are just not my fucking genre.  The directions are stupid simple and this can be played by anything with flexing digits.  It can be obtained by the same on the Google Play Store, since it is completely free.

freakygame

I can’t help but think those dopey-faced guys are hiding some insidious secret…

Between these two games, the one thing that pissed me off the most was pretty expected.  I can’t fucking stand playing mindless games!  Seriously!  I just spent an hour and a half launching little pink squids at angry-faced blackheads!  I almost want there to be a premise for Freaky Tup but that would be pointless in itself! Then there is Tripping Balls!  Holy fuck!  I am so glad we evolved past pong!  There is no way I would want to be trapped in front of a black screen moving white boxes to bounce a white ball for HOURS!  AGH!  Mobile games are just not my thing.