2016 Game Review Haiku, #3 – Where is 2016?

Search sharp photographs
In France, for switches, secrets
The new year is here

–

Here we go again. Another year of me attempting to produce quality Japanese poetry about the videogames I complete in three syllable-based phases of 5, 7, and 5. I hope you never tire of this because, as far as I can see into the murky darkness–and leap year–that is 2016, I’ll never tire of it either. Perhaps this’ll be the year I finally cross the one hundred mark. Buckle up–it’s sure to be a bumpy ride. Yoi ryokō o.

Rain’s filled with rain, but also monsters and unsettling experiences

The afternoon after 2015 became 2016, and the world was completely different/the same, something inside me stirred and demanded that I at least complete one game on this very first day of the new year. Like a ceremonial ship launching, of setting out to sea and beginning an unfamiliar voyage. I can’t really explain compulsions like this; surely you don’t want to have convince me why you grabbed that Snickers bar while in the check-out line at the market when you weren’t even hungry.

Anyways, I felt like I had been ignoring my PlayStation 3 these last few months since Fallout 4 came out and I got an Xbox One, so I powered it on and began to scroll down my lengthy list of games. A handful of which I purchased, with the majority being downloaded “freebies” for being a PlayStation Plus subscriber. It’s a hodgepodge of big and small games, and I stopped on Rain, an atmospheric platforming adventure game based around precipitation. I only wish it had been raining in real life as I played, in one single session, but it was a cold, quiet winter afternoon outside. A digital rain soundtrack had to suffice, plus the purring of two cats on my couch.

Rain is set in a nameless Western European-inspired city, in an invisible world revealed only by never-ending falling rain. You play as a little boy who finds himself lost amongst the rain-slicked cobblestone streets and chasing after a young girl. She herself is being pursued, for reasons not immediately known, by ethereal monstrous beasts hidden in the rain. For half of the game, you are simply trying to make contact with this girl, always ending up a few steps behind her with some roadblock in the way; the second half of the game sees the two kids working in tandem to defeat these monsters and the Unknown–a leader amongst all the baddies–and make their way home. The story itself is minimal and actually hard to decipher by the end, told only in blatant text on the screen. It kind of becomes a tale of literal light versus dark, health versus sickness, familiarity versus foreign, but I’m sure there are other ways to interpret things.

The twist to Rain‘s mechanics of hiding from monsters and using the environment to solve platform puzzles is that the little boy becomes visible to the monsters when standing in the open rain. If he finds shelter under a roof, he is invisible. This creates some stealth sequences, which are honestly full of tension as you creep past the monster, only able to see the light splashes in a puddle or wet footprints the little boy leaves behind on the ground as a clue to where he is. Yup, when you are invisible, you are invisible. It can be daunting at first, but you’ll get used to it over time and learn how to control somebody you can’t see. Other than that, you’ll do some running away, you’ll push and pull items to make new platforms, and you’ll work with the little girl to lift her to unreachable ledges.

One aspect of Rain that I actively disliked and even began rolling my eyes and muttering under my breath at is that the Unknown, that stalking, leader of the rain baddies that chases after you from chapter one, just kept coming back from the dead. Every time you think you’ve stopped it and can safely resume your journey, it rises from the grave with an ominous soundtrack in tow. This happens even two or three times during the game’s ending, which is already far too long as is and not very clear on what these little ghost kids were up to. Lastly, and this might be a minor complaint or a major complaint depending on your feelings towards collecting things as you play, but Rain‘s collectibles are only available after you complete the game. I went back via chapter select and got a few, but they really aren’t even worth collecting unless you want the three Trophies associated with nabbing them all.

From a concept perspective, Rain is really cool. It has style, a gorgeous soundtrack peppered with piano and accordion, and a lot of potential, but it doesn’t really deliver. The puzzles are at first neat and interesting, but they repeat in every chapter and often don’t do much with other elements, like the muddy water that makes you visible even when out of the rain. The game itself is fairly short, around three to four hours to finish, but poorly paced. I did enjoy staring at the imaginative, spindly monsters one could possibly picture emerging from the mist in…well, Stephen King’s The Mist. When compared with the likes of other short, narrative-centric experiences like Journey, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and Botanicula, this could have been so much more.

2016 Game Review Haiku, #1 – Rain

Puzzles in the rain
Hide from the Unknown, seek light
Ending is too long

–

Here we go again. Another year of me attempting to produce quality Japanese poetry about the videogames I complete in three syllable-based phases of 5, 7, and 5. I hope you never tire of this because, as far as I can see into the murky darkness–and leap year–that is 2016, I’ll never tire of it either. Perhaps this’ll be the year I finally cross the one hundred mark. Buckle up–it’s sure to be a bumpy ride. Yoi ryokō o.

Help Craig escape his house and get back to making potions

First, let me clear something up: Craig is a black and white game/demo for a future game that takes place on two screens. I already used the first screen for my completed haiku review, which left me with the second screen for this final impressions post; alas, the second screen is more white than black, which throws a wrench into my Grinding Down style of using big, blocky white letters atop it. That’s why the above image is green, but please understand that’s not how Craig looks after escaping his house. I’m not here to misrepresent.

In Craig, you are Craig, a long-nosed local potion maker who wants nothing more than to get to his potion shop and start his day. Unfortunately, to his horror, some hooligan has barricaded him inside his own house overnight. Thankfully, Craig is a resourceful soul and can use the materials and items inside his house to escape, though it’ll take a bit of examining and trail and error to do so. I’ll spoil this much and say you do get outside, though the next roadblock involves getting inside your locked-up shop.

It’s a point-and-click adventure game, which means you’ll be clicking…a lot. Once you click on something, a list of options appears. You can “look,” “greet,” “pull,” “use,” and do other context-specific actions, and each action results in a humorous slice of writing. Make sure you greet every single object, no matter how silly that might seem. Seriously, the writing is what makes Craig worth exploring for twenty or thirty minutes. The gameplay is fine, but you’ve done this all before, and the puzzles are fairly logical to deduce, once you figure out that you’re supposed to read the ripped up recipe in the items menu and not actually try to put it back together with some kind of adhesive. Also, if you notice a “?” attached to some item, that means you don’t have enough information yet to perform the extra command; come back later.

Craig was made in about a week by someone under the username of Pai, and though it encompasses only two screens and is more of a tech demo than anything else, the writing and characters are there. I’d love to see Craig become a full-fledged release, with a focus on creating different potions from a variety of items, as well as a personal quest to build up his manly physique. If such a thing pushes forward, I’ll be right there behind it, ready to click, more than ready to greet.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #59 – Craig

Locked inside his house
Craig must look, greet, pull, and use
All clickable things

–

From 2012 all through 2013, I wrote little haikus here at Grinding Down about every game I beat or completed, totaling 104 in the end. I took a break from this format last year in an attempt to get more artsy, only to realize that I missed doing it dearly. So, we’re back. Or rather, I am. Hope you enjoy my continued take on videogame-inspired Japanese poetry in three phases of 5, 7, and 5, respectively.

Jane Sinclaire’s on the pixel hunt for the mysterious city of Adera

My mother, when she was heavily gaming on her less-than-subtly pink Nintendo DS, leaned towards titles where the main goal was to mostly find hidden objects on a single screen full of objects, with usually some cockamamie narrative wrapping to provide the player with just cause for exploring this underwater sunken ship or that ancient ruler’s treasure room. You know, mega hits like Yard Sale Hidden Treasures: Sunnyville and Nancy Drew: The Mystery of the Clue Bender Society. These quests occasionally featured other styles of puzzles too. I feel like Adera from Hit Point Studios fits the same mold, which is why I gave it a shot, though its production qualities are much more refined.

Adera is an episodic adventure about Jane Sinclaire, an auburn-haired archaeologist in search of her previously thought-dead grandfather, as well as the mysterious city of Adera, after receiving a message from him. The first episode, “The Shifting Sands,” is free to download and play and will take one roughly a couple of hours to complete, especially if you are searching for every butterfly and animal totem collectible like I did. I think it came out for Windows 8 a couple years ago, but I played it on my laptop, which got Windows 10 as a free upgrade some months back. All that said, the game is clearly designed for tablets and touch surfaces and still retains a lot of the language, such as instructing players to swipe left or right to move between locations when, in reality, I have to click a blue arrow with a mouse.

Story aside, as it is ultimately generic and only there to put you in exotic, mystical locations so you can slide tiles around and collect cog wheels, the cutscenes and transitions from room to room are actually quite nice. Better than I expected, to be honest. Adera also features some voice acting, and nothing atrocious stood out like in previous point-and-click adventure games, but Jane is mostly on her own in this adventure, as her partner Hawk–cool name, bro–works on fixing their broken helicopter. She inner monologues a bit, but also write in her diary; alas, the font used is tough to read, and so I skipped most of her passages.

My favorite puzzles are the same that my mother enjoyed, which are finding a list of hidden objects on a screen littered with junk and misdirection. I don’t know. There’s just something especially relaxing about these in the same way that I’m into word finds; my eyes take control and scan away, seeing things in front of other things or catching the sliver of a handle, which might belong to a knife, which, oh, look, there’s a knife on my list of things to find, click it, yes, that was it and…oh, sorry. I think I drifted a bit there. See what I mean? There’s maybe three or four of these in “The Shifting Sands.” Anyways, there’s a handful of other puzzle types to solve, but none of them are terribly hard to figure out, and the places you need to investigate–at least on the middle difficulty I selected–glow purple, so you won’t miss any key items. If need be, you can always hit the “hint” button for a clue, but “hint” buttons are for chumps.

While the first episode of Adera was free to play, it’s looking like $19.99 will snag you the other four slices of content. Hmm. Think I will pass. Unfortunately, I’m not fully hooked enough to invest that kind of pocket change, especially when I can find other hidden object games relatively easy online when I need a fix, and so I’ll leave the ponderous, courageous Jane Sinclaire where I last saw her, among the shifting sands, her pockets full of pointless animal totems.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #58 – Adera (Episode 1, “The Shifting Sands”)

Find hidden objects
Archaeological plot
Familiar, but fun

–

From 2012 all through 2013, I wrote little haikus here at Grinding Down about every game I beat or completed, totaling 104 in the end. I took a break from this format last year in an attempt to get more artsy, only to realize that I missed doing it dearly. So, we’re back. Or rather, I am. Hope you enjoy my continued take on videogame-inspired Japanese poetry in three phases of 5, 7, and 5, respectively.

Smells Like Art’s grand idea to turn poop into portraits

Every now and then, I pop over to the Carmel Games website for two reasons. One, I honestly want to see how Dakota Winchester’s Adventures concludes and am patiently waiting for it to pop up when available. Not because the plot of where the third ruby is hidden is keeping me up at night or because the characters are a Joss Whedon-level of memorable, but because I like reaching conclusions for things I start, whether they are books, shows, or a less-than-stellar puzzle game. Two, I’m fascinated with the quality of these specific point-and-click adventure games.

Well, there’s no new adventure up yet for Dakota Winchester, but there’s been plenty of new additions from the last few months to peruse. I only have the name and a tiny sliver of art to go on, and so I went with Smells Like Art in the meantime, which actually does not reveal much about itself based on those two credentials. Turns out, it’s a game about poop. Well, dealing with poop. you know, making the best of a bad situation. Our hero Bosko has just inherited a bathroom off the highway from some dead relative, but quickly discovers it is in terrible shape in terms of…acceptable hygiene standards. He decides to change it into an art gallery instead.

That’s the plot. Don’t dig too deep into it. Grossness abounds. The puzzles themselves are not terribly difficult to figure out, as they more or less follow a logical path, save for the part where you are turning feces on the wall into framed artwork. You have a small inventory and can combine a few items together while using others on people or things in the environment. There’s only so many places to visit in the game and, generally, once you’ve acquired everything in the location there’s no reason to revisit, unless you found a pen and know a man who loves pens. You can speak to less than a handful of cartoony characters, but there are no dialogue choices, and they only say a few lines total.

Once again, the writing is silly and too direct, with most of the female characters voiced by a man with effects added afterwards. This doesn’t make them sound like a woman, but rather a woman on drugs or mutating into a small demonic critter. Not a fan. I’m totally fine with old-school adventure games where no characters speak out loud and you have to read everything that they say and imagine their voices in your head. I wonder if all of Carmel Games’ creations contain voicework like this, or it’s just been my luck with the few I’ve tried so far.

Strangely, for all of Smells Like Art, which I finished in just under thirteen minutes as I obviously work towards becoming a professional speedrunner and racking up millions of dollars through sponsors, “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” plays on loop. I don’t really understand why it was included. I mean, it’s a dance for a ballerina, not background tunes for some dude dressed like Fred Flintstone as he deals with his serious bathroom issues. In this case, I’d rather have no music whatsoever than this for seemingly zero contextual reason. Yup, you’re reading this right–so far, I want no music and no voices. Guess I’ll just turn my laptop’s sound down next time.

Don’t worry, Carmel Games. I’ll be back to sample some more of your bizarre creations. Maybe one day I’ll actually like the adventure, instead of simply going through the motions, clicking on everything, eyes wide in amazement, brain tingling with the words and turns of phrases I’ll use to describe the latest ordeal. If anything, these games help give my creative writing a big burst of energy.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #57 – Smells Like Art

Bosko wins bathroom
Plans to spin it, an art show
Click poop, dig up pet

–

From 2012 all through 2013, I wrote little haikus here at Grinding Down about every game I beat or completed, totaling 104 in the end. I took a break from this format last year in an attempt to get more artsy, only to realize that I missed doing it dearly. So, we’re back. Or rather, I am. Hope you enjoy my continued take on videogame-inspired Japanese poetry in three phases of 5, 7, and 5, respectively.

The Mirror Lied is an experiment intentionally too vague

Earlier this year, I finally got with the times and played To the Moon, which I quickly followed up with its holiday mini-episode. I ate both up quickly, excitedly, and then immediately went to Freebird Games’ website to see if there was anything else to play. Turns out, yes, seeing as I had a copy of The Mirror Lied in my videogames folder for some months now. I’m guessing I never grabbed a copy of Quintessence: The Blighted Venom because I saw that it was incomplete and currently on hiatus. Too bad. Regardless, I finally got around to playing The Mirror Lied a few nights ago, and I have no idea what went down by the time credits rolled, which seems intentional, if not entirely successful.

I’m going to now give you my interpretation of The Mirror Lied‘s plot, but this could be entirely wrong. You play as Leah, a young, faceless girl living in a house all by herself. She has a friend–a bird called Birdy. Somebody keeps calling her house’s landline, telling her what to do, when all she really cares about is watering her plants, choosing the right dress to wear, and exploring the house for secrets. Eventually, she’ll escape, to the roof. Or maybe it’s all a metaphor for depression slash nuclear war slash coming of age slash menstruation. Really, I’ve got no idea, so tell me your take below in the comments.

Similar to To the Moon, this is an adventure game, where you explore your surroundings, gather items, and advance the plot. One strange mechanic here though is that you have a limited amount of time to reach the ringing phone, which makes sense from a logic standpoint, but gameplay-wise it’s just annoying. I’d be watering the magically growing plant only to suddenly learn I had five seconds to get to the phone; figuring out how to trigger the ringing a second time after missing it was hit or miss, with me forcing Leah to wander aimlessly until it happened again. It might have seemed neat on paper, but not in function. There’s also a single scenario where you have to use the inventory menu to load an empty gun full of bullets, which was clunky. Otherwise, just have Leah walk up to stuff, examine the items, and move on.

Interpretation certainly has its place in art, such as with the ending to LOST or that couple of dressed up lovers in The Shining who are clearly into some raunchy things, and videogames occasionally let you determine for yourself what you just went through. The Stanley Parable, despite having a narrator tell you every little detail, leaves plenty of room for your own take on events. Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP says a lot through very little. I still occasionally ponder what LIMBO was trying to get across years later.

However, here, in The Mirror Lied, it all felt like an exercise in simply trying out mechanics and puzzles–nothing more, nothing less. A half-hearted attempt at a narrative to connect everything was provided with Leah, Birdy, and the phone calls, but the rest is left on the back-burner, because it doesn’t matter if you understand what is happening by the end, only that you got there, by figuring out how to unlock drawers, access a computer’s email network, and fill up a bucket with reddish liquid to water your ladder to freedom.

The Mirror Lied‘s developer Kan Gao stresses that it is not a horror game, that nothing will jump out at you. Can’t argue with that.