Persist, a backwards platformer with spirit

First you lose your arms, stripping away your ability to swim. Next, the Goddess takes your legs, leaving you as a simple head, only able to roll left or right, deeper down into a dark abyss. And she doesn’t stop there either, relishing in your torture. Persist is a backwards kind of platformer; basically, the further you get, the more standard abilities you lose, reducing you down to nearly nothing, and as the story plays out, it sort of makes some sense why such a being would do this. Don’t be deceived by the game’s retro look and minimalist gameplay–it was designed that way for a reason, and it is totally worth playing.

Again, Persist follows the story of a lone spirit, trying to reach a mysterious Goddess to ask for forgiveness for his past sins so he can ascend to the higher plane of existence. Unfortunately, this Goddess really resents him, which becomes somewhat clearer by the end, and constantly puts him into increasingly dangerous situations, both as a test and a bit of torture. This game was created in just under 48 hours by @AdventIslands for Ludum Dare 26, wherein the theme was minimalism. A couple of other games to come out of that jam that I talked about here on Grinding Down were TOOM and Gods Will Be Watching. It’s absolutely awesome how much can be crafted from the idea of “how little,” and I suspect I’ll keep finding little gems from this jam as time marches on.

For those interested, I played a bit of Persist in my new speculative YouTube adventure called Paul Plays…, and you can check out my lackluster jumping skills in the video below:

 

I did immediately keep playing after the video ends, as there were only two sections left to complete, the one where you’re just a detached head and another that I won’t spoil here. They are very enjoyable and more puzzle-based than everything before it, which is more classic platforming of the Mario kind. The story comes to a head immediately after the last level, and it takes a surprising turn, but it really could have been something more if the writing was stronger and more effectively narrated throughout. I understand that there was a time limit to abide by, but I’d love to have seen a few more levels added or lengthened to stretch Persist out, especially when you’re just a head, as figuring out how to time your rolls from platform to platform was a lot of fun. The small amount of music in the game is quite good; not loud enough to be distracting, but soft enough to jump against, and helps create a rather somber ambiance, which is quite fitting once you learn what the spirit did.

Either way, give Persist a play, and do it sooner than later or else the Goddess might take away your hands, and you’ll have to give up gaming entirely.

2013 Game Review Haiku, #37 – Persist

Must find the Goddess
To make amends, who needs arms
Legs, eyes, a lost soul

–

These little haikus proved to be quite popular in 2012, so I’m gonna keep them going for another year. Or until I get bored with them. Whatever comes first. If you want to read more words about these games that I’m beating, just search around on Grinding Down. I’m sure I’ve talked about them here or there at some point. Anyways, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry.

Wake up or just keep dreaming in Deep Sleep

I apologize for being late to the party–though I’m always late to the party or never invited to begin with, cue the industry standard wah wah waaaaah sound effect–but I’ve just discovered this Game Jolt website, which is full of free-to-play Flash and downloadable games, spanning all the genre categories we’ve come to embrace over the decades, such as action, adventure, platformer, and so on. Basically, it is stuffed with stuff, and I’m sure not everything is the height of excellence, but one will never know until they look. I already examined my fear of lakes with Lakeview Cabin, which I found to be really engaging despite the lack of a clear goal, and now I’m here to share with y’all the point-and-click spookiness that is Deep Sleep.

No surprise here, but the game is about lucid dreaming. That’s the rare phenomenon when a person becomes aware that they are dreaming, existing in a peculiar place between consciousness and not. I can’t really say I’ve experienced it myself, though I do occasionally have dreams where a bell or phone is making noise only to snap immediately out of it and realize my alarm clock is going off. Don’t think that’s the same thing, but the queer feeling taking over my body a second after all that goes down is still hard to shake. It’s not explicitly clear who you are playing as in scriptwelder’s adventure-horror game, but you have somehow gained consciousness within a nightmare and must find a way to wake up.

As a point-and-click adventure game, Deep Sleep works just fine. You move across various static screens and click on items to pick them up or receive a description. Some puzzles block your progress forward, but they’re designed logically, so you basically just have to think about how you would, in real life, open a very hot crank handle to a boiler. Oh, and there’s a wee bit of pixel hunting, as some screens are very dark before you get the flashlight, and even then you might miss some key detail nestled in the corner. I did finish the game without using all the items, so I’m not sure if I just missed the spot to use the piece of coal, golden statue, and hook or if they were superfluous to begin with.

As a horror game, Deep Sleep is pretty effective, though I found it more unnerving the entire way through than downright scary. The “you have to wake up” recording is exceptionally creepy, as is the monster design and unsafe feeling you get as it follows you from room to room. There’s some fantastic sound design, with locked doors still shaking me on the inside thanks to my recent journey through Silent 2‘s apartment complex hallways. The game has a grainy look to it, which actually works better than you might initially suspect. And like a dream, it is piecemeal and littered with gaps in its storytelling, as well as a dab of uncertain world-building, but that’s okay–that’s ultimately the point. It is meant to keep you guessing, a mix of the real and unreal.

It’s clear why Deep Sleep earned first place for the Casual Gameplay Design Competition #10. If the stars ever align, I hope to be able to show you, too. Evidently there’s already a sequel ready for me to play, called Deeper Sleep. I’ll probably check it out soon, or maybe I should hold out for Even More Deeper Sleep. Thank you, thank you–try the fish.

2013 Game Review Haiku, #35 – Deep Sleep

Lucid dreaming can
Distort reality from
Horror, must wake up

–

These little haikus proved to be quite popular in 2012, so I’m gonna keep them going for another year. Or until I get bored with them. Whatever comes first. If you want to read more words about these games that I’m beating, just search around on Grinding Down. I’m sure I’ve talked about them here or there at some point. Anyways, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry.

The gloomiest night in Lakeview Cabin will wear on to a morning

In Lakeview Cabin, as a burly, orange mustached manly man, you can drink beer, get naked, and use an outhouse. You can also mow the lawn, chop some firewood, or hunt a deer for food. Docks on either side of a small, summer island let you take in the lake’s tranquility and contemplate skinny-dipping, which you ultimately can’t actually do, as hopping in the water just spits you right back out onto land. Boo to that. Birds and bugs provide a calm, predictable soundtrack one might expect to hear at such a place. Really, a faultless postcard-esque vacation spot–that is until the sun sets.

Controls are straightforward, mostly because this is a Flash game. You move around left to right with the arrow keys. Z picks up and drops items, while X uses an item or throws it if possible. From what I played and saw after about twenty or thirty minutes, there’s no story text or narration. You just do things until you can no longer do things, and sometimes you’ll die from walking into a bear trap twice, and other times a nightmarish monster–who I suspect is maybe our leading lumberjack’s dead wife or girlfriend–will hop out of the lake and finish the job. Then you press R to retry…or O to “summon her,” whatever that means. I was able to accomplish various tasks, like killing the deer after perfectly setting the bear trap down and then chasing the animal into it, but never defeating the monster. Oh well.

Lakeview Cabin begins more like a puzzle game than anything else. I spent my first day/night cycle just interacting with everything I could, seeing how I could use items I interacted worked with other items. Such as filling up a bucket with water or using the axe to cut a wire in half, exposing electric danger. I also frustratingly stared at items I couldn’t get, like a key and shotgun. Nothing is immediately clear, and only through experimentation and retrying will you progress, but that’s kind of the name of the genre. Do what you must to survive; do anything.

I find lake-based horror to be very effective. Maybe there was a moment from my childhood that I’m just not ready to deal with personally and publicly, but I find the isolation and restriction to be the most crippling aspect of the ordeal, the most traumatizing. Truth be told, I’d rather run from a monster in the woods or even a building, but on a small island you have nowhere to go but underwater. Over the years, I’ve read a good number of Stephen King books and short stories, but Bag of Bones has stuck with me the most, as it is based around an author with writer’s block sequestering himself at his vacation house on Dark Score Lake. The movie What Lies Beneath, which I saw in Las Vegas all by my lonesome as a young lad, has some very effective scenes set around a lakeside home. Also, you can see me writing about this fear of mine in “The Feet Eaters”, a short story  published back in…oh, January 2007. The page seems gone from the Aberrant Dreams website, so maybe I should get around to reprinting it on my own sooner than later. But yeah: horror and lakes. Much as I don’t want them to, they go together like peanut butter and jelly.

I think developer Roope Tamminen has made something special here and could totally see Lakeview Cabin being expanded a bit–perhaps add an inventory to allow for multiple items and maybe some text-based guidance here and there–and put on Steam in the future. That’d be cool, even if I probably never survive past the first night. It’s a funny horror for sure, and one that doesn’t say everything it’s doing, which makes it simultaneously unnerving. Laugh while you die, I guess.

2013 Game Review Haiku, #9 – Shapik: The Quest

Explore magical
Forest to find lost sister
Click to solve puzzles

–

These little haikus proved to be quite popular in 2012, so I’m gonna keep them going for another year. Or until I get bored with them. Whatever comes first. If you want to read more words about these games that I’m beating, just search around on Grinding Down. I’m sure I’ve talked about them here or there at some point. Anyways, enjoy my videogamey take on Japanese poetry.

Playing the Ludum Dare 22 Winners, #9 – Craequ

The number nine spot from Ludum Dare 22’s top 50 submissions is called Craequ, and it was created in under forty-eight hours by Jonathan Whiting. That name is seemingly familiar to me, but after perusing his website I’ve learned that I’ve never played anything else by him. Though his style is unique and heavy on pixels, so I am instantly a fan. Reminds me of VVVVVV. Anyways…

Craequ loads up very fast to a small room with blocks in the center of it. The music has an odd tribal sound to it, almost captivating. One block of the bunch is blinking, and using the arrow keys I can move a featureless white avatar around. No instructions or assisting text is available. I can’t seem to move the blocks and standing on a symbol tile at the bottom of the room makes a strange sound, but otherwise does nothing. I then discover that I can go up to a second screen. A giant, flashing orb teleports me elsewhere when I touch it, and the music changes. I am then introduced to the first puzzle of the game; a trio of movable blocks will open up certain pathways, but it all depends on where you line them up. Eventually, I’m teleported back to the beginning screen where a single block is now moveable. Locking this into the right spot opens up more pathways…and more teleporting orbs. This pattern persists for a few more rooms before I decide that I’ve played enough.

A simple design and even simpler look are nice and easy to grasp, but the gameplay didn’t grip me for very long. I can only go from so many rooms to so many rooms. Craequ definitely fit the theme of “alone,” but maybe a little more guidance or purpose would’ve helped. Onwards to the number eight spot!

A young boy, a forest, and a hero’s adventure

Adventures are the foundation of RPGs, the stuff to build upon and keep everything standing mighty and tall, especially those romps from fonder times when graphics alone could not carry a game. Think about titles like Chrono Trigger, Grandia, Mother, Secret of Evermore, and Breath of Fire II. Any similarities? All open up with a young boy off on an adventure, his parents strangely indifferent to such careless actions, wishing him all the best, but to be careful. Same thing goes with Hero’s Adventure.

Created by Terry Cavanagh of VVVVVV fame, Hero’s Adventure is actually not an adventure at all, especially one starring a hero of some sort. Instead, it’s about a boy who goes off into the shadowy forest, returning home after a hard day’s work. What happens in those woods, stays in those woods…but you can find out by playing the game itself. It’s about a minute long, cynical, and disturbing, with evocative music and really fast battles that, upon popping up, initially scared the crud out of me.

This is the second indie game I’ve played as of late that is short and sweet, but manages to leave a strong impact regardless. The other game was BATHOS, a neat little thing created in a single weekend. I highly recommend y’all checking both out; I know you have the minutes to spare.