Crashbook #34

14 thoughts on “Crashbook #34”

1. ROUTINE: started playing a week and a bit ago, thanks to a friend kindly giving me a copy on steam. they really loved it; i am not there yet. its quite short: one full playthrough video on youtube is 6.5 hours long, though with the amount of hiding and waiting for enemies to move on that ive done, its going to be closer to 10 hours when i finish it. im 2/3rds of the way through, but i know theres still some more amnesia-like monster-avoidance gameplay ahead of me, and thats pure stress for me—not enjoyable and very draining. but i suppose i ought to finish it, especially since my friend spoke very highly of the ending.

   Denshattack: there is only one question: can you do MULTI-TRACK DRIFTING!!?

   The Killing Stone: i enjoyed The Magic Circle and The Blackout Club for what they were, although both were a little broken. you have reminded me that i downloaded the demo for this but have not yet played it.

   Metro Gravity: screenshot looks enticing! “mind-boggling musical adventure with rhythmic combat and compelling lore” turns me right off.

   NULLPTR: i couldve sworn you played this on a thinky games stream? but maybe it was joe? i played the demo before that, at least a year ago now, and it was great. its puzzle mechanics felt fresh and its design sharp. i think you would particularly enjoy it.

   Tharsis: played a demo of this a very long time ago. to me it felt a bit too random, a bit too dependent on the luck of the dice. kind of the opposite problem mechanically from citizen sleeper, which only rarely had me struggling to achieve a thing with its (otherwise similar) die roll system.

   VHOLUME: instantly wishlisted from that screenshot and description.

2. ooooh Particle Man. dang.

   New Inkle looks intriguing. I should really try some of the old Inkles. Haven’t recovered from my hard bounce of Highland Song but perhaps will try again, but also I understand it’s not typical.

   Q-UP is “from the twisted minds that brought you Universal Paperclips…” which is one of the two-and-a-half good idler/clickers so that’s a pretty strong recommendation for “how can this concept that looks like it can’t possibly be playable work?” The game behind that ellipsis is Babble Royale, which as a fast-paced multiplayer word combat game is something I’m definitely not interested in, but not in a way that makes me think this looks less interesting. Though I still haven’t check out the game from a couple Crashbooks ago that was “word is that this far outstrips its terrible-sounding description.” Or ever finished Inscryption. Hm.

   Vholume does sound/look really cool, but alas no Mac! I’ll sour-grapes myself with the mention of target times in the description. Someone let me know if it comes out for Mac.

3. The Killing Stone: i have now played the demo. it is at its core a deckbuilding card combat game, very much in the slay the spire vein. and both to my great surprise: with first person 3d interludes for story development, and very well-written shakesperean dialogue (with an option for modern day english for those less appreciative of iambic pentameter).

   the demo is the tutorial section and the first full “ritual”, i.e the first series of encounters and combats up to and including the first boss. it took me almost 2.5 hours to finish, although i was reading all the optional dialogue, and all aloud, which takes longer.

4. A surprising number of games here that I have played! Which is to say, four.

   Tharsis was beloved by Dylan (formerly of AR) about eight years ago. It’s brutally tough, in my experience, and you should expect to fail a lot. You can also eat your crewmates.

   I dabbled in Q-UP after Aftermath wrote about it, but didn’t persevere. I think there’s a whole metagame you can legitimately get into, but it’s largely a parody and I felt I got the point pretty quickly. IDK, maybe I didn’t!

   I have HORSES installed and waiting to play, one day when I can run all the way through it.

5. Ahem. I wrote “played”, but I meant “heard of”. I have played two of them. 🙂

6. Nice to have a reminder that there’s still some originality in the indie scene. Too often it can feel like it’s an endless slew of roguelite… deck builder… roguelite deckbuilder… metroidvania… roguelite metroidvania with deck building mechanics…

   Blippo+ looks especially (and invitingly!) bizarre.

7. Particle Hearts first impressions:
   It’s almost certainly not 3D Knytt Underground. It starts with some overwrought text and a maybe three-minute overwrought opening cut scene.

   But it suuuure is gorgeous.

   As alluded to in the reviews, the checkpointing may be a problem. Honestly enough of a problem that they should patch it. I just quit (which was a good idea anyway, I only wanted to sample it) after missing a landing due to wobbling my camera a bit, and it kicked me all the way back to the beginning of the level, maybe ten minutes before. This could be an issue when the levels get more challenging. I’m hoping it stays at fairly unthreatening for a while, or maybe I’ll just git gud.

   Gorgeous though. Have I mentioned that?

8. Much appreciated the first-hand experiences from the crowd. During Christmas I’m hoping to finish The Game and get around to playing something new (I’ve only been on Dave’s Word Game and some Eufloria Classic recently; I’d like to complete Spooky Express also…)

   vfig: Yes, that was Joe on NULLPTR duty. Plus: if there’s one phrase that puts me off “story” it is the use of the term “lore” which seems to convert it from ‘something artistic and interesting’ to ‘content to hook you’. I do get slightly upset in private when my son refers to expository sections in shows as “lore drops”.

   Shaun: I’ve also bought Horses and hoping I can take a look at it sometime in the next month!

   CA: Ha, I’d been wondering myself if I was including too many deckbuilders in the Crashbook 🙂

9. I’ve seen increpare post about Oeuf on Bluesky for a while, and only now has it occurred to me: Why isn’t it Stephen’s Egg Roll?

   Merry Christmas everybody! God bless us, every one!

10. matt: audible ‘ouefs’ were produced.

11. usually for breakfast i have two eggs, but when i am in france, one egg is un oeuf.

12. Oh wow, Cadence. Coos in Oddada/Micron/ELOH/Sound Blocks. That’s going straight on the wishlist! In fact, I’m downloading the demo now. No idea how you solve the puzzles from the video, but it looks satisfying and clean. The ‘Create’ mode is a nice addition too.

    Bugtopia reminds me of a cute earthworm game I’ve seen pop up on Bluesky a few times. Had an adorable trailer with a kid narrating it… aha! Wirm! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1934870/Wirm/ I’m a bit wary of ‘collectathon’ and ‘idler’ games. They seem like traps to me!

    Cor, Archrebel Tactics looks gorgeous. As a Frozen Synapse fan who missed out on Laser Squad, I’ve been eagerly awaiting this one!

    Now Metro Gravity I played the demo of after one of Dominic Tarason’s posts and it seemed promising but then I got frustrated with some of the early flying enemies and didn’t return to it. I loved the gravity shenanigans though! I will say, a similar game that I adored was Pseudoregalia which has some exquisite movement and 3D platforming. It’s difficult to put my finger on it but between the music, environments and hazy/foggy visuals, it’s just got this particular atmosphere which really gelled with me.

    I remember laughing a lot at the trailer of Who’s Lila? but never picked the game up.

    Ooo, Caput Mortum gives me slight Northern Journey vibes which is A Good Thing, as is being short… 😀

    The colour palette and illustrative style of Prophet Margin (great name!) is so lively and bright.

    Yeah, Pixel a Day’s Advent videos have been a nicely daily dose and Tharsis stood out to me too alongside There’s a Gun in the Office.

    I mean, Vholume. Yes. And of course one of the Babbdi/Straftat Lemaitre brothers is involved!

    I haven’t played it but I’d love to know what you folks make of Horses by the way.

13. Coos in Oddada/Micron/ELOH/Sound Blocks.

    Gregg: what does that mean?

    Particle Hearts update: There have been times when I have had dim thoughts of that samurai pop-up book point-and-click game, which might have been stronger if I remembered its name… oh yeah Tengami. This is unfair! There are exploratory areas in which you can do things for real, and the main levels which are platform-puzzly are… ok so far. And I think it is an improvement over Tengami that it has a story, though I am actively hostile to finding out what the story is. And yet, and yet… With something that is so purely based on visual delight like this, I can’t help wishing that it was more like Feather? The best parts are exploring the overworld and looking at things.

    The checkpointing is not as much of a problem as I’d thought, because changes within the levels persist, like once you push a button it stays pushed. Haven’t been playing it much partly because I got back into Blue Prince, which may go further into abeyance now that the semester is about to start up.

    Anyway what I came here to say is that Liz Ryerson issued a very strong recommendation for furry queer jankgraphic BDSM Sokoban Salad Fields, but I’m not totally sure yet–even as an avowed Sokosickie I find some of the levels too big. And there’s no undo! what’s up with that?

14. Oh sorry! Oddada was one of my favourite ‘games’ from 2024. A whimsical and tactile music-making toy (a bit like Electroplankton meets Windosill). Micron was a puzzler from some years back where you had to arrange barriers to bounce balls towards a goal, and as the balls bounced around they made rhythms, music and sometimes just ambient sounds. It was really lovely! ELOH on mobile was very similar but more compact and prescribed. I remember it outstaying its welcome and it not being as satisfying as Micron. And Sound Blocks is a music maker but it revolves around placing blocks on a grid and sequencing things. It’s still in Early Access but I thought it looked and sounded cool enough to Kickstart. I like these kinds of thinky musical games or more friendly/playful music makers. So I cooed at Cadence, in the same way I did those!

    After playing the demo of Cadence, however, it’s a weird beast. The tutorial tells you how to play but not what the win condition is, or even how to read it so there’s a lot of intuiting and feeling that out. You’re basically trying to create a loop that continuously feeds a rhythm or beat to a cat with headphones, but a key part of that is working out how the beats move and bounce around the circuit to trigger more beats (to keep it going). Once I had an idea of that, I breezed through most of the early levels, and the later ones were relatively straight forward too but I do wonder how easy the puzzles are to work out without fiddling, iterating and testing things. It’s based on sequencing and knock-on effects so I think you’ll only be able to see so far ahead so I’ve got a feeling it’ll be a bit trial and error. I didn’t find the solutions that’s satisfying either, as solved puzzles or rhythms! The create mode looked pretty powerful but the interface and controls felt clunky and unintuitive. I will say though, there were loads of block types in there so I wonder how they’ll play out in the puzzles?