Electron Dance Highlights
Transmission: The Bonfire Peaks Sessions
Over the last month, I made the foolish attempt to take on difficult Bonfire Peaks (Corey Martin, 2021) puzzles, live on Twitch. All three sessions are now available as a single video on YouTube. There is a lot of failure and thrashing around. But there is also some success, including the end of the game.
My Twitch channel can be found at twitch.tv/electrondance. Previous Transmissions are available on the dedicated E/TX YouTube channel.
Crashbook #4
I have a list of games.
It is a list of games that I have not played. There is no guarantee that I will ever play these games. There is no guarantee any of these games are good. But maybe someone else will play them. Maybe someone else will discover they are good.
In this episode, 16 more games are added to the Crashbook.
44/ Spaceflux
Spaceflux is the one and only fractal FPS! The surreal online and split-screen shooter where the map contains itself. Experience arena deathmatches like never before in fractal worlds, infinitely repeating landscapes and fully destructible maps.
Crash notes: A bit like HyperRogue: FPS Edition. But also not.
Windows | Steam Link | Early Access
Discussion: The Gravity of Reality
The November newsletter has whoooooshed into existence (sign up if you want to read it):
I imagine if you play as God intended, this isn’t a problem, but if you’re a rookie spacemarble pilot like myself who struggles to ride the bladed edge of the game’s physics, it’s a total crapshoot.
Dear subscribers, if you feel like chatting about anything at all from the newsletter, please speak your mind in the comments here.
Fractures
This is the third part of a five-part series on INFRA. The previous parts were Optical Delusion and The Abandoned Church.
INFRA was a game I misunderstood. I had fallen in love with the dream of a game I imagined INFRA to be... and then ignored the unsettling creaking coming from the foundations.
Initially, it was harmless design choices that were easy to dismiss out of hand. NPCs appropriated as an impassable barrier. An elevator which conveniently fails. An unimportant notice to go along with an important one. The endless rows of binders marked “useless stuff”, “nothing” and “random stuff”.
I was confident that INFRA was a serious game and held fast to this conviction for most of its playtime. I find this strange. Because of the mushrooms, man. The bloody mushrooms. Creak.
Puzzleworks, 5: Tres Undos
Tres Undos (Knexator, 2021) is a short 17-level puzzle game which is played in a browser. It’s a blockpusher whose undo is afflicted with some... cursed magic. Think of those Braid (Number None, 2009) levels where you could turn back time to undo but effects on green objects could not be fixed. Think of those Recursed (Portponky, 2016) levels where green objects maintained their state despite every time you jumped into a chest, everything inside was reset.
There are no green objects in Tres Undos. But there are yellow and red ones.
It’s a blisteringly hard puzzler which I described on Twitter as “a sequence of hate crimes against your brain”, especially as you need to figure out its strange rules as you progress. I’m going to spoil the beans below so, if you want to jump in fresh, go play it now. I will leave you one important tip - the weird-looking square block on the fourth level is just a wall.
Nutshell: Vicious, non-intuitive blockpusher but satisfying if your sort of thing.
A Walking Simulator With Guns
Last month I played through Industria (Bleakmill, 2021), a most curious first-person shooter. Developed over several years, a brief glance suggests an homage to the Half-Life series with glossy to-die-for production values.
Yet it twists and squirms against this blueprint: it doesn’t want to be just another gun game.
Crashbook #3
I have a list of games.
It is a list of games that I have not played. There is no guarantee that I will ever play these games. There is no guarantee these games are any good. But maybe someone else will play them. Maybe someone else will discover they are good.
In this episode, 14 more games are added to the Crashbook.
30/ Pill Baby
A stylish hack and slash game about an immigrant girl beating up parasites and feeling tired. Play Anna, finding a job and moving to a new country. Explore her new life, struggles, loneliness, relationships, language barrier.
Crash notes: From the team that brought you Soul Searching. Trailer is trippy.
Windows | Steam Link | Unreleased
Discussion: The Great Cycle
The October newsletter has been transmitted to your inboxes in the month of November (sign up if you want to read it):
The indie boom wasn’t a return to an era of simpler games, but it did dust off designs from that era that had been neglected in the pursuit of progress.
Dear subscribers, if you feel like chatting about anything at all from the newsletter, please speak your mind in the comments here.
Crashbook #2
I have a list of games.
It is a list of games that I have not played. There is no guarantee that I will ever play these games. There is no guarantee these games are any good. But maybe someone else will play them. Maybe someone else will discover they are good.
In this episode, ten more games are added to the Crashbook.
20/ Alt-Frequencies
An audio mystery set in a time loop. Record, rewind time and broadcast snippets of radio shows to expose radio hosts, conspiracy theorists and politicians.
Crash notes: This reminded me of Doggerland Radio (A C Godliman, 2018) which I wrote about after experiencing it at Rezzed in 2019.
Windows, Mac, iOS, Android & Switch | Game Link | Released 2019
Discussion: The Forbidden
The September newsletter has been transmitted to your inboxes (sign up if you want to read it):
Each creates an arena for tiresome debate although YMMV. I file them under Parkinson’s law of triviality: questions so trivial to understand that everyone will have an urge to share a strong opinion, even when it might be better to keep our mouths shut.
Dear subscribers, if you feel like chatting about anything at all from the newsletter, please speak your mind in the comments here.
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matt w on Transmission: The Bonfire Peaks Sessions: “The big question! What are the games being tributed in the Dimension Of Puzzle Game Tributes? There’s the fork from…” Dec 7, 23:47
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on Crashbook #4: “Those complaints about Slipways in Pico-8 are valid. But I was surprised at how it grabbed me despite those pains.” Dec 6, 07:33
on Crashbook #4: “I finally tried Slipways myself after posting the link. I found the low resolution and constant scrolling really challenging, so…” Dec 6, 07:26