2015 Game Review Haiku, #18 – A Landlord’s Dream

Implants can change you
Make you something big, better
Until they don’t work

–

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.

Home is people, not a place in A House in California

I’m working my way through Cardboard Computer’s backlog, building towards the day where I bite the bullet and begin playing Kentucky Route Zero despite not all its episodes being available…yet. I recently traipsed through their conversation-heavy Balloon Diaspora, and now I’m here to talk about the quiet, unassuming charm of A House in California, which is a text-based adventure game with minimal graphics, but a lot of oomph.

In short, A House in California is the surreal journey of four characters working together to bring a house to life. I did a little research and learned that it was inspired aesthetically by the 1980’s Mystery House from Roberta and Ken Williams, which focuses more on greed and murder than remembering family and the pieces that were always there, what they stand for.

Similar to traditional point-and-click adventure games, you interact with the world and items in it via a tray of different actions at the bottom of the screen, such as “look,” “listen,” “repair,” and so on. It’s a little more abstract than your standard “look at” and “pick up” mechanics like in Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, and it takes a bit to comprehend that to transition from screen to screen requires using the right word on the specific thing, such as “remembering” the stars to transport your protagonist to the moon, and not simply clicking on the edge of your field of vision. My favorite action was “learn,” which, like a Snapple bottle cap, tells you an interesting fact about whatever you’ve selected.

The challenge in A House in California is figuring out what action to use to progress or trigger the next sequence. The actions change with each of the four characters–Lois, Beulah, Connie, and Ann–so you have to be willing to explore and experiment. Thankfully, you can eventually exhaust your options, so you’ll figure it out in due time, though it took me a few tries to get the little boy to appear in the computer screen. There’s no inventory to manage or dialogue to select, and that’s fine–this is a story driven adventure, and the story does not need to change in big, sweeping manners, though I won’t say I understood how all four of the characters were related or affected each other.

A House in California‘s dreamlike environments are fascinating to explore, like swimming in slow motion through a Salvador Dali painting. Granted, visually, it is lacking in detail, but imagination can carry each scene to a new level, especially the ones with the singing birds and loose butterflies. The sense of discovery is strong in every location, and the game’s soundtrack backs the soft, soulful narrative, creating a safe, soothing sense of the olden days. Of wandering around outside a house and examining the flowers, the fountain, the jar of fireflies. I personally don’t recall doing it as a young boy, but A House in California makes me believe I did, which is comforting.

Where do you go in Go North, but forward

I’ve never been good at or immensely interested in text-based games. I mean, I didn’t even find the text-based computer game Reign of Grelok in Fallout 3, which paid homage to 1980s classics of the same style, like Zork and Planetfall–and I scoured nearly every inch of that game’s post-apocalyptic world for far too many hours. I also gave up on Frog Fractions once it stopped being about diving deeper into the ocean on that numbers-munching dragon and more about navigating yourself out of some small, cramped hatch.

And so, with that history behind me, I went into Go North not really expecting much, hoping to just stay interested and get through it. Well, I certainly got through it, but I’m not sure what the point was. In fact, I came away from this stroll forward from…um, I guess Jim Spanos and friends, feeling like it was mocking either itself or the genre greatly. It ends with a seemingly inside-joke, which might be hilarious to the creators, but fell flat with me, the player.

But what is this game, you ask as we get to the third paragraph? Here’s some descriptive text I myself didn’t write, but rather found on Go North‘s GameJolt page. See if you can grok it:

You know, sometimes, hope is needed in humanity to brace the terrible and the enchanted. To engulf our hearts with embers of the night, as we flow like lava under the moonlit skydome. Are we not men? In our minds, we are. Are we not soldiers? In our minds we are. And bewildered you stand if only to enjoy each other’s mindsets. But without further ado, the perception of the single, greatest, mind-changing game is here.

Poetic, frivolous, forever fallen into the hands of few

Yeah, I don’t know. It’s a text-driven game where you type “go north” to advance to the next screen. I tried typing “go east” and “go west” every few screens to no avail. You do this until the last screen, where the twist/inside-joke plays out. All the narration is overdramatically voiced over by someone either trying too hard or not trying hard enough–regardless, it’s a struggle to listen to.

Let’s chalk Go North up to both not my thing and not made for me to appreciate. Perhaps one day I’ll find a text-based adventure game worth my while, but for now, I’m off in another direction-most likely south–to play something else.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #13 – Detective Grimoire

Solve a Boggy crime
Use logic, clues, but no hat
Facile and foreseen

–

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.

Zoinks, it’s a murder mystery that only Detective Grimoire can solve

I’ve been much pickier with indie gaming bundles as of late, even passing up on the recent one from those Humble Bundle bastards based around one of my favorite tabletop gaming mediums–cards. Oh well. I did end up downloading free copies of Card City Nights and Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space, though, so far, that’s all I’ve done with those titles. Both are of the print-and-play ilk; I need to sift through the rules a bit and see if these games are easy enough–and silly enough–to jive with my gaming group. We recently tried to play Nuns on the Run, only to get bogged down in the rules and lose interest before even playing a turn.

Hey, speaking of bogs…Detective Grimoire. Yeah, you like that transition. It is just one of the many names included in the Humble Weekly Bundle: Adventures! promotion currently happening over you-know-where. I’d directly link to the topical page, but it seems that website is constantly changing, and nothing lasts forever, so make good with your Googling skills if you feel the need to see more. Of the many point-and-click adventure games added to my Steam library from this recent purchase, it seemed like the easiest and most inviting of the bunch.

Here’s the story, right out of an episode of everyone’s favorite American animated cartoon franchise Scooby-Doo. Detective Grimoire has been summoned to investigate a murder. The owner of a small tourist attraction, called Boggy’s Bog, has been found dead outside his office, with many believing the key suspect to be the very mythical creature the attraction is built around. Dun dun dunnnn. Of course, something else is surely afoot, and it’s up to Detective Grimoire–now hatless, but not hapless–to rattle the locals for clues into what really happened in this lackluster swamp.

Gameplay involves going from scene to scene across the swamp and clicking on the obvious parts of the screen, especially the ones that flash until you click on them. Sometimes this reveals a clue, and other times it leads to a mini puzzle, like moving papers out of the way on someone’s desk to see what was beneath them. You’ll also come across a small cast of eccentric characters, and you can speak with them, as well as toss clues or other character profiles in their faces to get a reaction. The clues act as your inventory, and through talking to the locals, you’ll gain more tidbits about each one. You’ll also unlock the ability to challenge someone, so long as you have the right logic and clues to back it up–for instance, piecing together why Mr. Remington went home early from the cafe on the night of his murder.

Detective Grimoire‘s two best qualities are how it looks and how it sounds (minus one thing, which I’ll get to in the next paragraph). Generally, I have no interest exploring swamps, but the digitally painted screens here are quite lush and inviting, and the characters, along with their dialogue animations, are unique and a joy to behold. I think the cutscenes could’ve used more polish, but everything else is nice to look at, especially the user-interface. All clues get their own drawings, which is much more gratifying to look at than simply a list of words. Sound-wise, the orchestral soundtrack swells and dips in all the right moments, and there’s this lofty, soft voice that reminds me of a religious hymn echoing around in some grand chapel. It’s easy to listen to and not distracting.

That said, there are a couple things I didn’t like about Detective Grimoire. First, it was too easy. So long as you exhaust your options, you’ll eventually get to the end of this mystery, and the only part that gave me pause was the challenge against Echo, as its wording was more confusing than anything else. Second, every time you get a new clue or a clue in your notebook is updated with additional information, a chime sounds, and it is a really goofy, extra loud, and out-of-place sound effect, often playing over-top someone’s dialogue. Lastly, the end credits whizzed by at an alarming speed; I understand the developers wanted to get to their post-credits sequel tease, but it shouldn’t have been at the cost of crediting the people that made and worked for the game.

Overall, Detective Grimoire was an okay sliver of adventure gaming, though nothing that will stick with me for a good while. I figured out what was going on much sooner than our titular hero did, which lead me to believe there might’ve been a twist, but nope, everything worked out as expected. It makes a jab at Professor Layton early on, but has a long way to go before it can even consider itself a passable clone, let alone a better game. Think I’ll try A Golden Wake next from the bundle.

A young alligator astronomer’s journey to find a star in Lost Constellation

Lost Constellation, as a supplemental to the forthcoming Night in the Woods, did its job–and did it splendidly. I’m officially onboard for Infinite Ammo’s full-blown videogame, which, in their words, is “an adventure game heavily focused on story, characters and exploration, with some platforming to get around town.”

Lost Constellation is all that, but condensed and only slightly related. In short, it’s a ghost story, a bedtime tale, a journey within a journey. Mae’s grandfather is the narrator, weaving together the night-driven adventures of Adina, a young alligator astronomer, and her journey to find a star, keep a promise. As she travels through the cold, harsh woods, Adina will stumble upon a number of interesting–if mostly untrustworthy–characters, like a blue fox that wants to sell wanderers coffins, a cat that is not a wizard cat, just simply a cat, an old, weather-controlling witch, and ghosts of the once living. Oh, and snowmen, but Adina makes those herself, rather than runs directly into them; more on that later.

Gameplay is exploration-based, with Adina moving left or right, discovering items and characters to interact with. She can also pick up and carry snowballs, which are great for hitting things out of trees or summoning a guard via some rung bell. Expect plenty of dialogue to unfold, the majority of which is amusing and interestingly presented, and there is the occasional dialogue choice to make, though they never seemed like the sort of decisions that would change what might happen next. Merely a different way of asking the same thing. Maybe Night in the Woods will explore this deeper.

The soundtrack by Alec Holowka is strikingly soft and eerie. Beautiful and off-putting. Happy adjective and sad adjective. Perfect for a walk in a strange forest under starlight. I’m personally a big fan of “Tundra” so much that I left the game up in a part where it played while I did some household chores, letting it loop (this was before I knew the developers had a separate site for it). The whole soundtrack actually reminds me a lot of Mass Effect, Transistor (minus the jazzy drums), and Fire Emblem: Awakening, all snowballed into one very low-key, laconic, haunting concert.

One of the big focuses of Lost Constellation is collecting special items and constructing a snowperson out of them. Or around them, if you will. You end up making four or five across Adina’s time in the woods, and the game lets you take a screenshot of your finished work, saving it directly to your desktop, free of charge. I will now share with y’all my four snowpeople, in all their creative glory:

Overall, I’m pretty proud of my work. From what I’ve gathered based off screenshots and animated GIFs for Night in the Woods, it seems to be set in a modern city and during autumn, so this snowperson-crafting mechanic might not show up there. Perhaps we can help Mae create monsters from piles of leaves. Either way, I hope something like this is in there again, because, while not challenging at all, it made for a fun distraction and at least made the slight bits of backtracking rewarding. When I watched Giant Bomb play Lost Constellation last week, they found a dog collar for one of their snowmen; I did not, which makes me wonder if there is some randomizing happening under the hood.

Again, Lost Constellation is a side thing, a slice of maybe what’s to come for Night in the Woods. It has me intrigued over this world and the holiday called “Longest Night” and this astronomer Adina (though not-so-much about Mae). I don’t know everything, but I’m looking forward to learning more, and I have to wonder how much of what is in Lost Constellation will pop up elsewhere. Regardless, here’s hoping for a 2015 release. Or heck, even another pay-what-you-want supplemental. I just want more.

Balloon Diaspora is a game of odd, fascinating conversations

I feel bad for anyone who isn’t still fascinated with balloons. It might mean you’ve lost your innocence, your childish wonder at the originally incomprehensible. Just fill this flexible bag with a gas, such as helium or air, and watch it expand, float, fly. Even now, I sometimes can’t understand it, and this probably plays into my fear of planes, big hulking machines of metal soaring through the sky and staying there for hours. A good chunk of media that I love heavily features balloons of all shapes, colors, and sizes, such as Nena’s “99 Luftballoons”, The Red Balloon, which I first watched in my high school French class, the robot’s best friend in Doki Doki Universe, and the balloons that debuff your characters in Suikoden, curable only by using a Needle. That’s only to name a few; I’m sure more balloons exist in my mind, floating just out of memory’s reach.

Balloon Diaspora, clearly by its name alone, is about balloons–hot air balloons, to be specific–but only in terms of plot. It’s really more about chatting with locals, strange stick figure folk whose culture is instantly foreign. I mean, they hunt for seagulls with fishing poles to begin with. But yeah, you, who I ended up naming K, arrived in a broken hot air balloon basket–which could be a reference to the strangeness that we know as Oz–and is looking to patch it up. K needs six pieces of cloth to patch the balloon up, and exiles from a place called the Balloon Archipelago are willing to help, for a little help in return. Fetch quests and dialogue trees abound; it’s like a JRPG minus the combat and boom anime babes.

Look, it all boils down to this: Balloon Diaspora is a series of interesting choices. Not right, not wrong, just choices–yours, whoever you believe yourself to be. My version of K came from across the Gusty Sea and was a very reserved, secretive, and compliant adventurer; I gave up little and went along with a lot. The game continuously asks questions that carry weight, but no tangible consequences. It evokes emotional agency and is an extremely effective way of empowering the player in a short period of time. Often in games where you are given a list of choices, it is easy to see them separates into different categories at a glance: friendly, unfriendly, neutral. Not here. I found myself hesitating at nearly every question tossed K’s way, thinking over the answers, considering all the options. One conversation resulted in only negative responses, and I had to determine which way was more in line with my thinking…and no, I wasn’t pleased with the pick.

Visually, Balloon Diaspora is a dark place. A void with little life, though what life lives there does stand out. The trees are unique, the non-playable characters, while similar in structure, do stand apart, and I love the way the camera zooms and turns as you point and click to maneuver through the levels. Color pops up now and then, used effectively. Equally sparse though is the soundtrack; sparse, but delightful. A somber, beautiful piano-driven piece plays as you travel from location to location in a friend’s balloon basket, and some text at the corner of the screen tells you that you can skip ahead any time you want. I never did. It’s too pretty not to hear. Other than that, I can’t recall too many other music pieces standing out as I searched around for a really good joke to trade for cloth.

The creators of Balloon Diaspora also have another game out, currently still in the works–the episodic Kentucky Route Zero. It looks atmospheric and astounding, heavy on the narrative, but I think I am growing weary of the episodic format. Life is Strange and Telltale’s Game of Thrones both seem really cool too, but I’d now rather wait until the entire season is done and can be played in a single sitting–or as close together as I like. That said, I’ll keep Kentucky Route Zero in mind for down the road and continue to look at balloons in childlike wonder.

If you want to give Balloon Diaspora a try, it’s free to download over here.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #11 – Balloon Diaspora

A foreign culture
Your balloon needs six patches
To fly, to return

–

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.

Fulfilling Johnny’s last wish to go to the moon in To the Moon

If thought Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition was a surprising palette cleanser to the lackluster The Incredibles, then I have to imagine this is an even stranger, grander change of direction. Yup, I followed up shooting pig cops in their bacon strip faces and quipping once amusing pop culture quotes with a heavy expedition through an ill man’s mind. In fact, I had wanted to play this last January, as that seemed to be a month where I was experiencing a bunch of those much-discussed indie titles, like Gone Home and Journey. Alas, that never happened, but here we are a year later, ready to give this four-hour tale of a man’s dying wish its due.

Dr. Eva Rosalene and Dr. Neil Watts work for Sigmund Corp. and have unique jobs: by entering patients’ heads and altering memories, they can give people whatever they want, with implemented memories affecting or creating new ones, all on a path to the desired result. Please note, this only happens through the memories, as you are not actually changing what happened in someone’s life. Think of it as…wish fulfillment. As far as I can tell, this service is mostly used for patients on their deathbeds.

In To the Moon, Rosalene and Watts must fulfill the lifelong dream of the dying Johnny Wyles, which is the game’s namesake: he wants to go there, though he’s not sure why. The doctors then insert themselves into an interactive compilation of his memories–think of the shared dreaming idea from Inception–and traverse backwards through his life via mementos to plant the seed of being an astronaut where best. Naturally, there are a few hiccups, along with Johnny’s quickly deteriorating health.

To the Moon is built on the RPG Maker XP engine, a program used to create 16-bit role-playing games in the classic sprite-based style of Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy. That said, To the Moon is not an RPG. There is no inventory system or party system or way to gain experience, though the really quick joke early on about a turn-based battle against a squirrel was amusing. The game’s focus is more on puzzle solving; you do this by finding key memento objects which will allow you to go deeper into Johnny’s memories, and then collecting five pips of energy to break into it. Once you do, there’s a relatively simple yet satisfying tile-flipping puzzle. Later on, there’s a one-off section where you can shoot projectiles and have to avoid traps, but it doesn’t last long and is more cumbersome than anything. It broke a bit of the atmosphere, to say the least.

To the Moon‘s soundtrack, featuring a theme song by Laura Shigihara and the remainder of the piano-driven tunes by Kan Gao, has been praised by many critics. And rightly so. It’s soft when it needs to be, as well as deeply brooding and uplifting. When it swells, I couldn’t help but feel myself inhaling and holding my breath. The soundtrack is its own beast and a special part of the game, dictating the way scenes play out, since you can’t get a ton of facial reactions and such. When I first booted up To the Moon, I sat at its title screen for a few minutes, playing with the moonlight, but really mostly listening. It makes a fantastic first impression and never lets up.

I found To the Moon to be fantastic, and I’m annoyed I dragged my feet on it for so long. I wish I had been able to play it all in one session–it’s around four hours long–but I started it late in the evening and had to return to it the next night. The writing is smart, heartfelt, and funny all at once, save for a Doctor Who joke I didn’t grok, and everything gels together–the music, the graphics, the puzzles, the pacing. Yup, even that horse-riding section. Since I love all things memory-based, such as Remember Me and Inception, I did find the explanations for how the memory implementation works here a little contrived, but I went along anyway; it’s more about the characters than the science.

You really don’t come across that many games willing to tackle the themes of old age, illness, love, regret, sacrifice, and playing god, all while doing it in reverse, which is why To the Moon is exceptional. It’s a story worth seeing unfold.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #9 – To the Moon

Granting dying wish
Means memories must change, twist
To the moon, Johnny

–

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.