Crashbook #15

15 thoughts on “Crashbook #15”

1. Valley Peaks also looks kinda like Dank Mountain/A Short Hike to me. I want a Mac port so much!

   Boy, Wilderless looks like Incredibly My Thing. It’s kind of hard for me to imagine controls bad enough to get people to downvote this kind of game. I hope they fix them!

   I’m tempted by the Sokos, but let’s face it, I uninstalled some half-finished puzzle games a while ago because my hard drive was suffering, and I haven’t really felt the need. Like I sort of think I should go back to Wilderplace sometime but I’m not sure? I even uninstalled Inscryption about two-thirds done! (I would like to finish that sometime but the file size is very large.) Mostly I’ve been chipping away, a little at a time, on an absurdly long Slice&Dice run in the easy infinite mode that doesn’t even have an online leaderboard.

   So there is a horror game about killing the Queen and being defeated by a rotting lettuce?

2. Yes, there is a horror game like that Matt. It is called Living in the United Kingdom.

   Wilderplace is quite hard and when puzzle games get very hard I find it tempting to… just leave them for awhile. I’ve done it again to Wilderplace! I’m almost tempted with SokoChess which I’m working through, because I’m never sure if I’m solving them or pushing pieces around until the solution magically appears. I guess it’s not completely like that, but I often feel helplessly lost until suddenly I’m not. It’s not that satisfying, you know? Like I’m not solving but discovering.

   I just tried Slice & Dice yesterday Matt. Jesus Christ. Did anyone warn me this thing is like crack? It may pull me off Slay – and that’s quite an achievement. But the sort of achievement which is like ‘we killed the villain by creating a more powerful villain’.

3. @matt w: Slice & Dice is great isn’t it? I want to play more of that.

   @Joel: DASHPONG! That looks great and reminds me of Videoball which is one of the best local multiplayer games I’ve played outside of Side by Side.

   BABBDI! How bizarre, I finished that a couple of nights before this post went up and it was great. I heard about it on Terry Cavanagh’s free games blog and it topped his year list above Mosaic. It reminded me a bit of Bernband and I just loved exploring that weird space. It’s single-session short so perhaps a Crashbook game you could fit in! 🙂 Curious you mention Sven-Coop too because that’s something I was looking at recently.

   Europa wishlisted. I’m still trying to work out exactly what it is that clicks with me with open world/exploration games. I loved Commune Corvidae, but disliked Sable and Breath of the Wild. I think copy/paste side questing and boring collectibles are a real drag. I definitely think satisfying traversal is important for me. Hmm. Europa looked promising on all those fronts though.

   CRT7 is sounding very interesting and SOLAS-128 was great so I’m keeping an eye on that.

   Aww, Aloft reminds me of the ill-fated Worlds Adrift by Bossa Studios which was like Aloft but an MMO with build-your-own airships and player-made islands with Guns of Icarus-like dirigible combat. It looked gorgeous and brilliant but, alas, not profitable enough to be finished.

   https://youtu.be/b30kzJmKZNs

   The Telwynium looks lovely. I only knew about Powerhoof’s ‘The Inanimate Mr Coatrack’ and, wow, they do a lot of other adventure games! Your Crashbooks are wishlist stuffers Joel! Annoying I can’t wishlist Tendrils anywhere yet…

   I’m no good with magic eye/stereograms. Honestly, I just cannot see anything but fuzz.

   Truss horror game? Too soon. (I love the look of it and by the sounds of it it’s more creepy than horror.)

   I think you mentioned Howl in a previous Crashbook and I played the demo last week and loved it. That’ll be a day one purchase for me!

4. Just missed Joel’s comment!

   “I’m never sure if I’m solving them or pushing pieces around until the solution magically appears. I guess it’s not completely like that, but I often feel helplessly lost until suddenly I’m not. It’s not that satisfying, you know?”

   I know you’re talking about SokoChess there but that’s more or less how I felt with Wilderplace. When I was trying to explain my feelings to Hai about it I said ‘muddling puzzling’ and that’s about right. There’s some logic and working stuff out but sometimes it’s so fuzzy that you just kind of stumble into solutions. I stopped playing it, then kept forgetting about it, then uninstalled it, unfortunately. The undo situation didn’t help either.

5. (Joel: re: living in the United Kingdom; look at the names of the games in this Crashbook again)

   Yes Slice & Dice is completely crack! Sorry for not warning you! I just finished a Blursed run (easy-mode infinite) that went 490 levels. Or rather it finished me. Unlike Cursed, the hard mode of what I did, the game does not keep a leaderboard for Blursed, but as Dylan Thomas said, I think that’s the record.

   I once saw a magic eye for about half a second. This is the only evidence I have that everyone else hasn’t been gaslighting me about them for decades. And it is even more maddening! There was some platformer a long time back where the images were entirely in static, not magic eye, so every still image seemed like blur but if you played it supposedly you could identify objects because the static moved in different ways in different regions. I forget the name.

   I don’t always mind muddling puzzling too much, but there’s something else about Wilderplace, maybe that I just don’t always get the mechanics that well. There’s something about the enemy target selection/pathfinding where their choices can be opaque but also extremely important, and also some of the moves between modes can be confusing. Also I feel like I don’t entirely trust the game at this point I do tell myself I intend to finish it though! It got uninstalled for disk space reasons.

   I also just uninstalled Fugl for disk space reasons, maybe sometime I should try and see if I can get a more recent version than what I have, and that reminds me: I heard about a super secret passage in Feather that takes you somewhere wondrous and once, once, I found it, and then while in the passage I landed on a brazier and got stuck trying to take off again and THE GAME DECIDED I WAS SO STUCK IT KICKED ME BACK TO THE SKY OUTSIDE. I hear talk about the Big Secret of Feather and I think you could drop what you think it is in rot13? I might try again sometime but I feel like I also might look up the location of that passage, though I think I did before, even when I look it up it’s hard to find. (I am not good at spatial navigation in real life.)

6. Was it Lost in the Static, Matt? I have no idea how I know that but the name just came to me while reading your comment!

7. Truss horror game is INDEED too soon considering Truss is entertaining ridiculous fantasies of making a comeback. I feel something strange has happened in the last decade that some people – in this age of apparently limitless information and super-connectedness – can maintain an impervious fictional world bubble indefinitely.

   I haven’t tried STEREOGRAM but I could see them in the examples of the website. I am genuinely curious to give it a go. There is a stereogram in the Unbearable Now, I’m sorry you guys probably couldn’t see it. I’ve no idea what game you are talking about Matt, sorry, no help here.

   I’ll probably chase up Howl for a Thinky Games stream when it comes out.

   Muddling puzzling: You know, maybe this is time for a new article about puzzle experiences!!!

   The big secret of Feather? I’m not sure there’s a big secret of Feather other than what you’re alluding to, but I’ll ROT13 something in anyway. Gurer vf n ynetr haqretebhaq pnir argjbex juvpu zhygvcyr ragenapr/rkvgf. Lbh znl unir sbhaq bar ragenapr ohg gurer ner n ybg qbja gurer. Va n yngre hcqngr, Srngure nqqrq n cbegny gb gur pnirf juvpu gnxrf lbh gb na ragveryl qvssrerag vfynaq. V qb abg oryvrir gurer ner nal uvqqra pnirf ba gung vfynaq orpnhfr gur vfynaq vf nyernql n frperg.

   Congrats on your Blursed run! I was so close to finishing a Normal run yesterday (there are two toots about it). I finished the Normal run on the demo game which only has 15 levels, so that doesn’t count. Maybe I should take on an easy run, just get that under my belt.

   Are there any other games like Slice & Dice? The dice mechanic is riveting. I’m curious if it was improved on from other games and this was a first-time innovation.

8. “Are there any other games like Slice & Dice? The dice mechanic is riveting. I’m curious if it was improved on from other games and this was a first-time innovation.”

   The folks over at Qt3 regard it as one of the best. There are a few others I’ve stumbled across: Circadian Dice and Die in the Dungeon (which isn’t out yet). There’s obviously Dicey Dungeons too but I didn’t click with that quite as much as Slice & Dice!

9. Lost in the Static! Yes! And it turns out to be by Friend Of The Blog Sean Barrett, and also to have been playtested by a bunch of old Interactive Fiction scene-heads. Sean was also an old IF scene-head I guess, he has a well-knownish game with a distinctive mechanic from IFComp ’01. That’s over twenty years ago! Why are we so old?

   And of course, I never played Lost in the Static because it’s PC-only.

   Truss, sorry for triggering. I really don’t know how she can not have got the message but look! There are the Tories, still in power, and somehow doing things! Surely this will stop at some point but I’m sorry.

   So I think I am going to call Slice & Dice a Spire-like:
   permadeath
   strict alternation between a map with minimal (or in this case, no) navigation and combats that are barely spatialized
   combat working largely by building an array of particular moves from preset moves + random equipment drops
   meta-progression by unlocks only [optional?]

   IIRC the game mentioned Slay the Spire and Cinco Paus (?) as inspirations. Dicey Dungeons is another obvious example and there are some other I haven’t played. Gregg, I agree, Dicey Dungeons isn’t as absorbing. Not as much variety in your options and the scaling is off IMO, toward the end of your run you often have a decent loadout so you aren’t using the new stuff you get, your added power comes from extra HP and dice and being able to purchase healthups. Which isn’t as interesting! I did enjoy working through the modes (except elimination round Witch, that was nightmarish), and I really like the story bits and background flavor, but it doesn’t have the staying power of Slice and Dice. Which is crack.

10. Oh Gregg, in relation to the Qt3 thread, at least on Mac you can get to fullscreen and UI resize by clicking the gear and then “options.” Though this might not accomplish what you want!

11. Late to the party but I do love Crashbook for its esoterica and Joel’s ability to find such compelling titles that in many cases I’ve never heard of.

    Joel, Dyson Sphere Program also features curved surfaces. Definitely one to add if you like nice curves.

    Sorry.

    I mean… it was right there.

    I’m on the fence about Colossal Caves as well. Not sure how well it would age without substantial updates, and some would argue that changing the core means changing its identity. But Roberta Williams is involved, and despite Phantasmagoria’s existence, her involvement means an automatic place on certain lists, and rightly so. I learned to read by playing Mystery House (which might, in retrospect, explain a lot about both my personality and my prose).

12. Ah, Dyson Sphere Program, there’s always prior art. Keep expecting someone to tell me “in 1983, there was a game on the ZX Spectrum that did this exact thing”.

    The trailer for Colossal Cave just doesn’t grab at all, either, it reminds me too much of those cheap and garishly cheerful indie games that were sold direct from the internet in the early 2000s.

13. Important news for those who have Slice and Dice installed:
    open it up
    click almanac (the book)
    click stats
    click online
    click “cursed”

14. And I thought I was obsessively playing Slice & Dice, Matt 🙂 Congratulations on all that self-flagellation!

    I’m just committed to seeing how long I can make a Normal streak. Not that long, it seems. Usually that last level is the one that wipes everyone out but occasionally I have a terrible party who keep dying until an imp wipes them all out with a jab of his little finger.

15. If Slice & Dice is crack, I was like Al Pacino in Scarface.

    Taking a little break from the game now!