2016 Game Review Haiku, #19 – Samorost

Divert asteroid
Change its path, make things happen
Avoid anteater

–

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.

Matching four of a kind in Gems of War is indispensable

Early on during my Nintendo DS days, I played a lot of Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, as well as Mario Kart DS. But more Puzzle Quest than anything else. It successfully combined role-playing, strategy, and puzzle elements in one addictive pill to swallow, and threw in a fun, if cookie-cutter storyline to follow. At some point, I showed it to my sister D, and she got hooked, asking to play any time I came down. Eventually, I just left the cartridge with her since she could play it on my mother’s Nintendo DS easier–and faster–than waiting for me to visit every few weeks. Anyways, when I was into it, I was into it, and Puzzle Quest was this nearly perfect storm to kill fifteen minutes and feel like you were accomplishing something and having fun, marching down a path.

Hold on. I just pulled out my copy of Puzzle Quest and popped it into my Nintendo 3DS. Looks like my save data is still there, as well as my sister’s. My character’s name is Ferpina, and she’s a tough-looking, dagger-wielding, redheaded warrior at level 50. Oh my. When I load up the current mission, it’s called “The Final Battle,” and a message says that I managed to escape from Lord Bane’s clutches, and that I must try again. That means either I never actually beat Puzzle Quest or I did beat it and this is the last moment it saves your progress. Ha, I just tried taking on Lord Bane and he whipped my butt hard, so I have to imagine I never saw credits roll.

Well, good news and bad news–the developers behind Puzzle Quest are back (505 Games), and their new game is just as appetizing and fulfilling as before, if strikingly similar. In Gems of War, you create an avatar–I’m a cat lady warrior–and then match gems to power your array of spells, as well as match three or more skulls to deal direct damage to your opponent’s team of enemies. If you take out each troop on the opposing side, you’ll gain gold and souls, both of which are used to buy more soldiers, as well as level up the ones you got. Rinse and repeat until you take hold of all the kingdoms, of which there are currently fifteen. It’s quite close to what Puzzle Quest was, but with some free-to-play stuff here and there, though none of it has been bothersome or in the way at this point.

For Gems of War, I’ve been sticking to a specific team, really enjoying the way these troops interact and gel with each other. In my first slot is either a red mana or yellow mana weapon (I keep flipping between them) that does damage to a single enemy. Then I have a Boar Rider, currently strengthened up to level 7, followed by a Templar for boosting shields, and a Golem for exploding skulls and reducing enemy armor. Boar Rider is maybe my favorite troop, as its ability is to clear out an entire row, deal damage to an opponent’s troop, and then take a free turn afterwards. If you are playing strategically, you can use this ability to gain multiple turns in a row and keep the attack pressure on your enemy.

Still, I mash buttons during the intro and outro “dialogue” sequences, which exist only to give you a story-related reason to do battle. It’s fine, but fluff, and I’m never very invested in any narrative here. I just want to do all the quests in a kingdom and then claim it as mine. I also feel like there are perhaps too many choices when it comes to troops and you can waste a bunch of souls leveling up the ones that don’t matter or aren’t great for long-term play, which is why I’m rocking a team of one common and two rares because that’s all I’m comfortable experimenting with. Some of the rarer cards look neat, but aren’t immediately easy to use.

Perhaps my favorite thing about Gems of War is that, so long as you don’t go spending all your coins like a kid without a care, you can play duel after duel after duel. There’s no energy system here to stop you from playing. Each duel costs 50 gold to start, and that’s easy scratch to have and hold on to, even if you end up losing a few. Other free-to-play games bum me out in comparison to Gems of War, simply because they make it a struggle to even play and make progress. Not in this realm though.

Also, allow me to list what other match-three (or try hard to match four for better results!) games I’m currently juggling alongside Gems of War:

• Frozen Free Fall: Snowball Fight
• Pokémon Shuffle
• Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition

Okay, three. That might not seem like many, but it is when they are all at once similar and dissimilar to each other. It’s like trying to eat four cheese sandwiches at the same time, but each one contains a drastically different tasting cheese that lingers on your palette and actually begins to affect how you taste the other delicious sandwiches. Also, you like cheese, so this is one of those first-world problems, where it’s only really a problem if you analyze it too deeply. If you have a better analogy than this, please leave it in the comments.

Well, back to matching I go. These skulls aren’t going to combine themselves. See you after I’ve conquered every kingdom in the realm, leveled up every troop I like using (sorry, Zombie), and decked out a variety of teams to their fullest capacity, each capable of handling a number of situations tossed before them, whether it’s a boss fight or simply trying to stay alive as long as possible in an arena battle. In short, “To (Gems of) waaaaaaaaaar!”

Going too far to cure the Curse of the Mushroom King

The Curse of the Mushroom King looks stellar, but inhibits every element of point-and-click adventure games that I absolutely loathe, which is a real shame as there’s a cuteness to its look and randomness. However, it never overshadows the frustration of clicking on every single thing a dozen times and brute-forcing your way ahead by trying every item with every other item in your inventory or object in the world until you want to rip the main character’s face off when he makes some snarky remark about you not even thinking about things logically. Phew. That was a long sentence. Keep it together, Abbamondi.

In Bad Viking’s The Curse of the Mushroom King, which can be downloaded for free on iOS and Android or played in one’s browser, you play as a character called…Bad Viking. Hmm. I’m not sure if “bad” is being used in the same way that my comics are or if he really is terrible at all things viking or if it’s just a nickname that stuck. Anyways, he gets on the wrong side of the Mushroom King fast by refusing to have some soup, getting cursed for his rudeness. The curse is that he’ll never again be able to enjoy the taste of PB&J sandwiches. This is upsetting to him, and I completely relate, but only if the jelly is grape and nothing else. In order to lift the curse, Bad Viking must retrieve an eclectic list of items–like a dragon’s egg and a banana–to make a special potion.

It’s a short–but not that short–point-and-click adventure game where you have a literal list of items to gather. This sort of scenario is fairly common for the genre. Unfortunately, while there may only be five items to collect in total, each item has multiple steps, with some paths crossing others before you can complete them. I’m okay with this, truly, but only if there is some in-game guidance. Don’t hold my hand, but at least give me an idea of what I’m supposed to be doing. Here, in The Curse of the Mushroom King, you barely get any nudge as to what to do next.

Let me give an example of a puzzle that I simply couldn’t understand; I was forced to look up the solution online. From the very beginning of the game, the bartender refuses to speak to Bad Viking until he has met the wizard. That’s all he says, and no other characters mention a wizard or give a hint to where he/she might be and how to summon them. Later, you find a stone plinth with a hole at the top by the tree with the bees; for some reason or another, if you place a cannonball in it, the wizard appears, ready to spit some mathematical riddles your way. Now, clicking on that stone plinth prior to placing the cannonball there gives no indication that you should do something like that or that even doing something here is how one could call forth a magical man from another realm. It’s a tortuous, convoluted puzzle, and only one of many more to crawl through.

My other problem with The Curse of the Mushroom King has to do with its art style, which I enjoy greatly from a cartoonist’s perspective. However, the colorful graphics make it hard to tell what it either an item or thing you can interact with. Nothing is highlighted differently when you hover your mouse over it, which resulted in my clicking like a mad fiend on everything I could before moving on to the next scene. You also end up having a ton of items in your inventory within a few minutes of playing, which meant I needed to try every combination of items possible, even if it didn’t make sense logically. I remember struggling with this issue in Deponia.

Sure, without a doubt, The Curse of the Mushroom King is nice to look at, but a soundtrack, dialogue tree system, and better way to distinguish interactive areas from background art would help make this a stronger recommendation. As is, there’s too much pixel hunting and guessing going on here. That said, a few other games from Bad Viking look intriguing, like The Dreamerz and Escape to Hell, so we’ll see if these problems are persistent across the developer’s other work. In due time, of course. I’m still feeling cursed from this one.

Absent’s time travel trip is a bit rough around the edges

Surprisingly, or maybe it’s not surprising at all because we now live in an era when you can’t look left or right without something free being dangled before your hazy, consume hungry-limned eyes, there are quite a number of free adventure games on Steam to try out. I’ve already played The Old Tree, but there’s also Emily is Away, Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and The Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist (that’s one game name, by the way, starting at the doctor part, which I ended up playing in the time it took me to finish this post, whoops), Only If, and Missing Translation to look forward to in my ever-growing pipeline of even free things I don’t have time to play right now. Le sigh.

For the moment, I’m giving Absent from FNGames a go. I saw some posts about it over at the Adventure Game Studios forums, which I like to frequent now and then to see what people are working on and what’s out in the wild, especially since many of those titles don’t get a ton of coverage from the major websites. It was originally released in 2013, but made its cost-effective debut on Steam in 2015. Other than that, I went into it fairly blind, other than obviously seeing a screenshot or two to confirm it was, in fact, a point-and-click adventure game of the traditional sense.

Absent stars the determined if somewhat aloof Murray Schull, a young man attending college and who walks as if he has a permanent wedgie that he is internally debating on picking in public. One day, his best friend Steve’s girlfriend, Crystal, disappears, an event that spirals out of control and puts Murray on a path of danger, disillusionment, and death. Also, time travel, but that really only comes into play towards the very end. Oh, and Murray is haunted by visions of both the past and future, which factor into the puzzles and his decisions on what to do next to find answers as to Crystal’s disappearance.

To say I was taken aback by Absent is being kind. This game really surprised me, for good and for bad. First, a lot of adventure games I snag from the AGS forums are short, tiny little experiences. Snippets of an idea, a few screens to explore. Like A Landlord’s Dream. Absent features plenty of unique animations, is fully voice acted from beginning to end, and took me over six hours to see its credits roll due to the amount of story, puzzles, and, this is not a plus, backtracking involved. Sure, sure. Visually, it is not going to win any awards or even get my eyes to dilate with pleasure, but the graphics take a backseat for an admittedly overambitious story and dense amount of content to poke at.

Let me get more specific here, before I bring up the parts of Absent I found extremely lackluster, as there are many. Though the story is too big for its britches, I give FNGames credit for going big or going home. Since time travel is the deus ex machina to solve everything come the end events, there had to be some careful planning into setting it for that outcome, and I can appreciate details like how the first Reaper was made and that crack behind the canteen appeared. There’s a good amount of dialogue options to go through with many of the NPCs, as well as numerous unique responses for trying items on items that clearly won’t work with it. Showing everyone Murray’s homework assignment was amusing. Lastly, I dig the look of the ghastly, otherworldly Reapers, even if I don’t fully understand their motives.

Alas, Absent is fairly rough around the edges. Also in its middle area. From a technical stance, sometimes the cursor icon would automatically change to “use” when you hovered over a door or exit to a new area, and sometimes it wouldn’t. The inconsistency varied from screen to screen. There were plenty of times I also didn’t want the icon to change, forcing me to have to left click several times back to my preferred option. A few screens, like in front of the college and the swamp, are a wee bit larger than what you can actually see, so you are constantly changing to the “walk” icon to move a foot to the right or left and find the exit. It’s annoying. More times than not, the subtitles and voice-over work do not match up, and there were a number of typos spotted along the way, which, as an editor, I simply can’t not see.

One of my biggest critiques of Absent revolves around logic. Almost immediately, characters are shown to jump to the wildest conclusions without any rationalizing. For example, within minutes of learning that his girlfriend is missing, Steve is absolutely convinced that she was murdered by so-and-so and will hear no other arguments. Missing equals murdered in this world, and then once he finds out that Crystal was cheating on him, he no longer mourns for her. Like, not even a little bit, claiming she got her just desserts. I think at this point in the timeline, it’s been one day since she vanished. Granted, once the speculative fiction elements really start taking shape, a lot of logic-based decisions can be tossed out the window, but for the early part of Absent, I was hoping to see some more believable reactions out of the cast, especially Murray, who seems to simply be a dude we use to click around on things and cause events to happen. I’m still not sure why he’s the main character we play as.

Lastly, in terms of diversity, Absent is absent. This is a world of white people and only white people. Considering the size of the cast, it is a shame to see it so one-sided, and hopefully this is something that can be addressed in the forthcoming Absent II. I mean, it takes place at a college, for goodness sake, where all shapes, sizes, and color of people from everywhere in the world come together to learn, make mistakes, and learn some more. At least the female characters are voiced by women and not men pitching their voices up.

Still, all that said, I’d recommend checking Absent out. You might not be impressed with the story and safe way it wraps everything up, nor the difficulty of the majority of puzzles, which mostly require item on item interaction save for one involving a sliding ladder, but there’s still something interesting going on here, especially from a small team. Plus, if you like British accents, this game has them and then some. I personally think Steve sounds like Jim Sterling, but that’s just me. Maybe every angry British man does.

Get excited for a free Excitebike on the 3DS

Here’s something cool: when the Nintendo 3DS eShop finally does reveal itself, us 3DS owners will be treated to a free, downloadable copy of Excitebike. And not just that ol’ Excitebike from eons past, no. This is a new version, specially tailored to show off some of the 3D effects this 3DS is somewhat known for. Since it’s free, that’s a-okay. I mean, they could cover the sweet rides in glitter and periwinkle streamers and throw some training wheels on every bike so long as it was free; us diligent supporters of Nintendo’s handheld consoles deserve something for buying early and waiting awhile, right? Right-o.

This isn’t just a shot in the dark either. Basically, for 3DS owners, it’s our first experience with the “3D Classics” line, wherein classic games are updated with new, 3D effects. Let’s hope they do Tennis or Marble Madness next. Some websites are saying this deal might be in Japan only; I sure hope not.

My wife recently bought Excitebike from the Wii’s virtual console, and she had a blast tumbling and turning over as she miscalculated jumps and landings. Now I gotta go home and play a little just to refresh my horrible motorbike skills. At least there’s now two reasons to look forward to this eShop launching: this and Mega Man Legends 3: Prototype Version. I think I already said this, but hurry up, late May!

Free “Back to the Future” episode from Telltale Games

Remember how I said I had downloaded five games yesterday? Well, let’s adjust that number and call it…my oh my, six games. Yup. Shortly before the day was to end, I learned that Telltale Games, makers of the Back to the Future adventure games for the PC/Mac, were releasing the very episode “It’s About Time” for free. For zero Microsoft Space Bucks. For absolutely nothing. No April Fooling about.

All you have to do is register to the website and then the download is yours. Simple as that. I will have to give it a try later after I brush up on my time displacement and find enough plutonium to achieve 1.21 gigawatts. I know I got a bunch of it around here somewhere…