2015 Game Review Haiku, #27 – Jolly Rover

James Rover, pirate
DeSilver robs his clown dreams
Voodoo your way home

–

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.

If Salvador Dalí ever made a videogame, it’d be Off-Peak

There’s nothing to be ashamed about here, but I love the so-called “walking simulators,” a sub-genre dubbed during the Gone Home debates of 2013 over whether such-and-such was worthy of being called a videogame. I get that these more methodical, gun-less experiences are not every gamer’s cup of button-pushing tea. I can understand that, but for me, plopping me down in some new and untouched world and asking me to simply walk around it, slowly, and see how it ticks is one of the greatest joys videogames can give me. Heck, for most of my many early hours in Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, I just walked from town to town via the king’s road, scouring houses and bookshelves and talking to citizens, avoiding fights at all cost. I didn’t actually want to be a wizard or warrior, simply a man or woman (or cat being) with plenty of curiosity and the means to travel the world.

That said, not all walking simulators are equal, as I found Dear Esther beautiful but boring. Seems like I need either a lot of things to examine in close detail as in Gone Home or something zany to happen every three footsteps like in Jazzpunk to keep me actively engaged. Off-Peak from Archie Pelago cellist Cosmo D is more of the former than the latter of that previous statement, but the stuff you are examining is so bizarre and jarring that you can’t help but walk around in a daze–eyes wide, mouth agape, brain nearly breaking. It instantly reminded me of the first time, as a wee boy, I got my hands on a book of paintings by Salvador Dalí, the Spanish artist and Surrealist movement leader best known for his depictions of melting clocks. I was young, a dedicated reader to all things cute, cuddly, and in the comics section of the Sunday newspaper, and then suddenly I was slept away into a foreign land, where the common quickly became uncommon.

Off-Peak is a short first-person adventure game, centered around a train station. You, whoever you are, must gather up pieces of a torn train ticket and move on with your life; as you search this giant area and its subsequent nooks, crannies, and hidden passageways, you’ll run into a number of colorful characters, as well as witness equally as colorful art, whether in statue, painting, or graffiti form. What’s really nice is that this world is yours to explore at your own speed, in any direction–the ticket pieces can be collected in any order. Quickly, you’ll discover that things in Off-Peak are a bit…off (peak), a world where the fate of musicians and artists is unclear, but their tools are highly praised and desired. Meanwhile, the sprawling train station provides a handful of food and entertainment spots for every kind of commuter to help pass the time between rides. Naturally, someone is reaping the benefits of such a money-making hub, and you’ll end up crossing paths with this element before the end.

I did not understand the story, nor the dressings around it, but it all remained fascinating nonetheless. The board game room, the ramen noodle shop, the Chinese garden filled with strange shapes and statues…I couldn’t help but drink it all in. Even the part where you climb a set of stairs for seemingly forever with nothing much to see, only a smooth electronica jazz soundtrack to pepper your footsteps. Considering the game was made by a musician, music plays a vital part to both the narrative and exploration, and I found nothing to dislike.

Undoubtedly, Off-Peak is not for everyone. It is a collage of sights and sounds, with nothing traditional to it, unless you believe walking around a space to be a standard classic of the industry. Um, which I do. The game’s conclusion didn’t satisfy me from a story perspective, but again, that wasn’t what I was digging for here from step one. However, if any of what I’ve written about has got you all tingly on the inside, then do yourself a favor, grab a copy of the game over at itch.io, and lose yourself in another realm for an hour or so. Wall art will never be the same afterwards.

An endless supply of handsome princes to Little Briar Rose’s rescue

The original version of Sleeping Beauty by the Brothers Grimm, meaning the non-Disney take or even the more recent stab via Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent, tackles such hot topics like adultery, bigamy, murder, rape, suicide, and even cannibalism. Yes, this is how fairy tales went back then. Thankfully, Little Briar Rose from Elf Games is not quite as dark as its source material, both in look and narrative, though we never do see what happens once the prince makes it to the castle, leaving that ending to either your Disney-slanted imagination or something more horrifying, the kind of twist that George R.R. Martin would appreciate.

But what is Little Briar Rose, other than a different name for a complicated tale of a comatose princess? It’s a point-and-click adventure game using a stunningly gorgeous stained glass art style, revolving around this plot: a princess has fallen under a curse that puts both her and her whole kingdom to sleep, with thick briar bushes blocking the way inside her kingdom, and the only way to break the curse is for a prince to awaken her with a true love’s kiss on the lips. However, in order to clear away much of the thick briar bushes and open up a path forward, the prince must first help the magical denizens of the forest. There are wishes to be granted still. Some are basic fetch quests, some involve a wee bit of puzzle solving, some are multiple choice-driven, and they all require a lot of backtracking.

Overall, Little Briar Rose isn’t a very long adventure. I think there are a total of five or six screens to explore, with plenty of revisiting between them all to solve every last puzzle and clear away those thorny vines. One puzzle asks you to construct a house based on a crude drawing, another requires you to gather specific information and relay it correctly, and the remainder involves finding items and giving them to the right non-playable character. Here’s the main deal: you’ll need to talk to everyone you’ve met, multiple times depending on the situation, to be set on the right track. If you feel stuck or unsure how to push the puzzle forward, go and talk to every merman, fairy, and gnome you see. Even that crow atop those mushrooms. Talk, talk, talk. Some of the dialogue is a little tedious to sift through, but it is well-paced and amusing for the most part. Obviously, the game’s art style is a delight to behold–and I wanted more screens to gawk at more colorful images–though the limited soundtrack grows tiresome quickly.

Interestingly, you can fail at several of the puzzle scenarios in Little Briar Rose, resulting in the death of your prince. No worries though as a new one quickly shows up to carry on the previous one’s torch and try again. This prince will have a new name and differently-colored hair and clothes, but otherwise, it’s just another empty husk to move around the game’s world and do your bidding. Adventure games like Gemini Rue and Beneath a Steel Sky have implemented death before, but they actually abide by the laws of death; here, it doesn’t make sense or even feel necessary. All it does is kill a few more minutes, making you backtrack to whatever puzzle you were at, as well as redo the steps you previously took to begin solving it if you forgot to save beforehand. I’d rather have seen some kind of “lolz you so wrong, prince, try again!” message rather than this, and trust me, I saw enough new princes spawn to earn an Achievement notification. Seeing as that was the only Achievement to pop up during my time in Princess Aurora’s land and that there’s no way to even view them, it came across as a waste.

I don’t want to come across too negative, as it was an enjoyable and certainly unique adventure gaming experience. At least there was no cannibalism. You can grab a copy for zero dollars for either Windows or Mac OS X at Elf Games’ website. I also scrolled through the developers’ blog, and it seems like Little Briar Rose is going through some revamping, with new art to come. I might give it another go down the line, curious to see what else changes.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #22 – Little Briar Rose

Thick, briar bushes
Block the prince’s path, to love
Click pretty stained glass

–

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.

Don’t worry, everyone, for I found all 10 yellow cupcakes

I have a bunch of Grinding Down posts in the work, all in different shapes of completion and on pretty diversified topics, such as marbles, sneaking around and stabbing tourists, and battling monsters that grow stronger ever turn, but I’m not really feeling motivated to write about any of them at the moment. Here’s my rule–don’t force your writing. Write when you are inspired or when you just can’t stop typing, when the ideas in your head are bouncing around, gasping for air. When it is fun and not a hassle. So, instead of churning out words and phrases I feel no connection to at the given moment, I’ll wax on a bit about a little Flash distraction I stumbled across recently called Find 10 Yellow Cupcakes, playable in your browser over here.

In Find 10 Yellow Cupcakes, you must do just that. It follows the same logic behind Escape the Barn. It’s an “escape the room” style point-and-click adventure game, with the twist being that, in order to escape this rather calm, if barely furnished home of yours, you must first gather up ten yellow cupcakes. For who, you surely ask? I don’t know. Let’s say it is either aliens or really picky friends, as they will not stoop low enough to eat green cupcakes. Anyways, eight of these cupcakes are hidden throughout the house, and there’s some item-driven puzzling involved to get the last two into your collection, but you’ll find these cupcakes by clicking on things, opening drawers and doors, and entering in passcodes to breach security locks.

You might think finding ten yellow cupcakes is…a piece of cake. ::rimshot:: I’m here to tell you otherwise. Allow me to share with y’all some cupcake-unearthing tips. Remember to interact with everything that looks interactive, like light switches or curtains or even the drain in the sink. Also, in order to use an item, click on it in your inventory and then click on the “About Item” button to see if up close and use other items on it. Lastly, don’t forget, you only care about yellow cupcakes; if you come into possession of a cupcake of a different color, munch away.

Find 10 Yellow Cupcakes is a short, tasty bit of pointing and clicking and deducing, with a minimalistic look and sound design. That’s fine. I wasn’t looking for much here, but once I began gathering cupcakes, the tug to collect them all pulled me along, even when I got stuck over the last two cupcakes. Granted, I knew what I needed to do, but struggled with the game’s interface to get the job done. You also don’t get much feedback or resolution once you find all ten yellow cupcakes and hightail it outside, other than a “hey, congrats, d00d” image. Still, much like a cupcake is all you need when you’re hungering for something sweet, but not too much, MayMay’s latest game satisfied me until dinner. That said, I don’t consider this big enough of an experience to add it to my games I completed in 2015 list.

Awakener has young adventurer Fadi performing a number of tasks

Evidently, I still have a bunch of Ben Chandler’s earlier point-and-click adventure games downloaded on my laptop, waiting patiently. Ready to be played, like good little patients. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. That is, only if I use my mouse cursor to click on them and hit “run.” That might not sound like a tricky puzzle, but some days, some cold, tired, lonely nights, it can be a true struggle to do anything other than crawl under the heated blanket with a cat and burn the dark hours with a continuous stream of Netflix. That said, I decided to check out Awakener over the weekend and was surprised to discover it was both a short and straightforward experience, peppered with wall-breaking humor and flashy animations, like when Fadi finds the dagger.

Here’s the deal. A nine-year-old boy called Fadi thirsts for adventure much in the same way a drowning man thirsts for air. Er, no. That’s probably too dramatic. So, when asked to retrieve a potion from the local store by his Aunt Sylvia, he sees this straightforward challenge as much more, as a not so simple task. With point-and-click adventure games, it never really is anyways. In order to retrieve this potion, this Spirit of Hartshorn, which should be potent enough to wake the sleeping man outside his aunt’s home, Fadi will have to jump through some non-literal hoops, supplying people he meets with just what they need to give up whatever item they have to help him progress. I mean, that statue isn’t going to dress itself.

As it turns out, Awakener takes place across a single screen, though it does scroll left and right, so you could argue that it is like three rooms connected with no loading. This is not a detriment, as some developers can do a lot with a little. I personally liked the bite-size environment to scour, as it never felt overwhelming, and the backtracking only took a few clicks. You’re in a sort of open market area, with a couple houses and a bar, though you can’t go inside anywhere; no worries, as everyone you need to converse with for puzzle actions is outside, getting some fresh fantasy-limned air. Just like Chandler’s other earlier works, such as Fragment and ~airwave~ – I Fought the Law, and the Law One, the characters and environments are brightly colored, zany, with some nontraditional takes on geometry.

Awakener‘s puzzles are all item-based, which means speaking with someone to figure out what item they need or how to get the item they already have. You’ll never hold too much in your inventory at one time, which keeps things pretty simple to figure out. The solutions are fairly obvious, like helping an assassin on her assassination quest, though I did get stuck for a minute or two on how to obtain the soldier’s pike, not realizing it was a timing issue. Also, if I recall–it’s been a few days now–all puzzles are solved using a single item on a second single thing, with very little item combining at play.

Ultimately, this is a short, early comedic stab from Ben Chandler, one still worth checking out if you have a few minutes to spare and like clicking on things. The dialogue is amusing, especially if you are a fan of adventure games and can take a few jokes at a genre you enjoy, though don’t expect much in the sound department. You can grab a free copy of the game over this a-way.

Nothing works properly for Abel the Stringshaper in A Landlord’s Dream

It only takes three screens to tell the story of A Landlord’s Dream, but, for a Monthly Adventure Game Studio Competition (MAGS) entry, this is all it needs. Amazingly, there’s a world here, cyberpunky and mysterious and sparkling with inspiration, not that far off from dystopian Los Angeles from Blade Runner or the futuristic, augmented Detroit from Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It may not be entirely fleshed out in every instance, but there’s a lot to digest, with plenty of room to grow and become something bigger. Certainly, the conspiracy goes deeper than just the landlord.

A Landlord’s Dream comes to us from LostTrainDude, and this is the first game of his or her portfolio that I’ve touched, but I suspect I’ll dip back into some older work, such as A Night That Wouldn’t End, which is an intriguing title to start. Anyways, this short hop around a building is about Abel Lowen, a Stringshaper and sleepy band member, who is awoken in the middle of the night by his apartment’s alarm clock on the fritz. Once he’s finally up and at ’em, Lowen realizes that almost nothing technological seems to be working properly–not his phone, not his alarm system, and certainly not his implants, the ones that power his musical talents. Venturing out into the hallway, he quickly sees that he’s not the only one experiencing problems.

Gameplay is your standard point-and-click adventuring stuff. You can left click to use/interact with items and right click to learn about them. Lowen has an inventory too, though you won’t hold very much over the course of three screens. Inside your inventory, you can examine objects further or click on them to use on whatever person, place, or thing you desire. In terms of puzzles, they are mostly logical, though I got stuck for a bit on how to create a distraction despite having the idea down; eventually, I just tried every combination of items until something happened, which did not make me feel smart, only frustrated.

A couple of other nitpicks I ran into with A Landlord’s Dream. Technically, there is some pixel hunting for some of the tinier items or interactive spots, such as using the cell phone on the door alarm, and the game ends with the UI still accessible during the end credits sequence. Small quibbles, but they are there nonetheless.

I’m usually not the sort that replays point-and-click adventure games, but if this one got reworked a bit and lengthened in all the right areas (more screens, more info about implants, more characters to chat with), I’d be down for helping delirious men with prophet-driven hallucinations and scaring cats to create distractions again. I don’t know, but something about the grainy pixel art of this digital world really resonates with me.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #20 – Awakener

To wake the sleeper
Help assassin, buy pennies
Oh, dress the statue

–

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.

Ascend towards an unknown destination in The Old Tree

According to Steam, I completed The Old Tree in twelve minutes. Thankfully, those were twelve really good minutes spent in a bizarre, surprising world, starring a microscopic octopus-like alien blob, as well as a couple other cartoonish characters, like that insect bellboy. It’s a short experience, but satisfying, and there’s obviously room for so much more.

From Red Dwarf Games, The Old Tree effectively mixes point-and-click adventuring with beautifully interactive art. Think more Samorost 2 than Botanicula, but both fit the vibe when it comes to imagination and creativity. Anyways, in this atmospheric free-to-play title, you help guide a tiny alien thing, which I’ve seen referred to as both Dumbo Octopus and Baby Cthulhu by fans, to an unknown destination. Basically, you’ll hit a number of progress-blocking puzzles, where you have to figure out what to click on in the environment–and in what order–to open up the path for our leading creepy, crawling turnip to keep moving. Despite some of the surroundings, the puzzles are mostly logical, such as how you can’t open a door as easily when it is submerged in water, meaning you need to empty the tank first. I really liked getting around the insect bellhop and his/her need to control the light switch.

Strangely, there’s quite a sinister air hanging over The Old Tree despite nothing terrible happening and–spoiler–a happy ending for the little alien dude. Maybe it has to do with the dark lighting or use of unnerving insects in human-like positions, and the quiet, haunting soundtrack probably doesn’t help much. Either way, I kind of dreaded every new scene, waiting for things to take a serious turn for the worse, but it never happened. I guess that is more on me than the game, but I might not recommend this as a bedtime story just yet. Maybe stick with Kirby’s Epic Yarn for the meantime if you are looking for a blob-driven narrative.

That said, I’ll definitely keep an eye out for Red Dwarf Games’ next project, which is called Tales of Cosmos, already on Steam Greenlight and aiming for a 2015 release. Similar to Lost Constellation and Night in the Woods, a freebie taste of what’s to come really helps rope me in for the long haul, and I hope it works on others, as there is something special here in the art direction, something worth exploring in a larger capacity.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #19 – The Old Tree

Newborn alien
Help it travel, up and out
Mind the bellhop, cat

–

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.