2016 Game Review Haiku, #4 – Absent

A girl vanishes
This mystery must be solved
Time travel will help

–

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.

Matching pairs of tiles and rotating never felt so good

I’ve been a huge fan of all things mahjong since the good ol’ college days when I discovered some Flash-based version online that I could play in a resized browser while having AIM conversations next to it with friends and girlfriends into the late hours of the night and the early hours of the morning. It kept me active at a moment’s glance despite my angry eyelids wanting to shut and bring in Mr. Sandman. Conversely, I also adored the time I spent with Picross 3D. You might be wondering what the two of those have in common, and it is beyond evident once you sit down and give Microsoft’s Taptiles a go.

Taptiles, beside being a free download on Windows 10, is mahjong, but with a twist. Usually, a mahjong field is static, either from a top-down perspective or three-quarters view, meaning you can’t see what is behind a number of tiles until you clear the ones on top away first, working only with what is before you. This time around, you can rotate the stack of tiles Fez-like to see every clickable, decorated rectangle, which means you can’t ever really get stuck. Can’t find another tile with those squiggly blue water lines on it? Turn, turn, turn, and you’ll either see it on the other side or find another pair to make to clear the path forward. I’ve only run into a few spots where I ran out of moves, but the game just auto-shuffles the tiles for you.

There are three modes of play in Taptiles: Dash, Origins, and Relaxation. Allow me to sum each of them up in a few sentences. For Dash mode, it’s a race against the clock, with the only way to add more time to it by quickly matching tiles and using special power-ups to help you finish more rounds faster. Truthfully, I found this too stressful and not what I’m looking for when it comes to a game of mahjong. Origins mode contains larger, more challenging puzzles, as well as more relaxed time limit, though the later stages still expect you to move fast. This mode requires some quick thinking and reflexes, but is more enjoyable in the end. Lastly, there’s Relaxation mode, a.k.a. my mode, which offers calming puzzles without the pressure of a ticking clock.

There are also daily challenges. Five, to be exact. Each day, of every month. They range from easy to difficult, and the better you do at them, the more points you’ll earn, which helps increase a progress bar towards acquiring bronze, silver, and gold medals. To be honest, I’ve only logged into the daily challenges a few times to do the easy puzzles; I’m not finding anything worth investing heavily in with this feature, though, for some, I’m sure it’s a cool addition for bragging rights.

I’ve noodled with a few of the timed modes, but my main go-to in Taptiles is Relaxation mode because it lets me play like the good ol’ days, where I can leave it open and do some mindless Internetting, returning to it now and then to clear out a few tiles and watch the board get smaller. Sure, I’m not racking up any sweet non-stop matching bonuses, but that’s never been what mahjong is about. At least to me. I clicked really fast for a bit there and got the Achievement for a speed bonus chain of 30; that said, don’t expect me to pop the one for 150, as that is far too stressful on both my heart and eyes.

How do you prefer to match up a whole bunch of bamboo, character, and circle tiles? With or without a timer? In real life, on a tabletop? As a means of therapy for battling dementia? I honestly want to know.

Room 11: Xmas Tree will challenge your Christmas clicking skills

I don’t believe I’ve played any other “escape the room” games from Ichima’s Room series, which is not to be confused with The Room, a puzzle game series on mobile phones, though I’ve definitely played ones similar to the style and complexity of its logic puzzles. Such as Find 10 Yellow Cupcakes and Polar Escape. Basically, you are trapped in a confined room or house, with the main goal of getting out.

For Room 11: Xmas Tree, the tease of seeing a Christmas tree decorated with colorful balls just outside the window is enough to motivate me to make my escape and get up close and personal with it. Standing in your way are a number of obscure, locked boxes and doors. You can gather some items along the way which may help you get more items, but the bulk of puzzles require some head scratching and logic-based answers. There’s no whacky side quest to configure a key from bent chicken wire and heated up using the flaming breath of a dragon you found via a hidden hole behind the cupboard, which only revealed itself by knocking to the same tune played by a discovered music box. It’s all about seeing a pattern of numbers, colors, or symbols, and later applying to something else.

Honestly, I can think of only a handful of games that required me to take notes as I played. There was Fez, for sure. Way, way back in the day, I think I scribbled down where some treasure chests were for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but other than that, most games give you everything you need. Especially modern titles. Need a passcode for a locked door? Pick up a scrap of paper and it’s added to your inventory of passcodes, ready to be automatically used on the door without you actually having to read it or memorize it. There was a moment in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots‘s later act that asked Old Snake to remember some numbers, and I actually assumed the game would do it for me, so it surprised me when I was told to input them and didn’t actually remember; thankfully, the game moved forward nonetheless.

Well, these tiny escape games do not hold your hand. Room 11: Xmas Tree saw me jotting down everything I came in contact with that was not immediately evident. I have things like MDUDMMU and OOO8OO88O hastily written down like some madman’s manifesto, but it’s all a necessity when you are jumping from one complicated puzzle to another and can’t keep everything clear in your headspace. I figured a few out on my own, but the majority required a lot of back-and-forthing with my notebook to figure out.

I found a YouTube walkthrough of Room 11: Xmas Tree that finished the thing in just under five minutes, but it took me much longer to breathe fresh winter air. That’s because, right from the start, I simply went screen by screen, clicking on every single element until I got no more cryptic clues or Christmas ball ornaments. Then I had to begin to review my notes and figure out how each clue applied to everything else, which often would give me another item to use or more puzzle clues. I’m okay with taking my time, as adding a countdown clock or something like that would really prove too frustrating. Though a soft, soothing soundtrack, not necessarily related to Christmas, would have gone a long way here.

Think you’re up to the challenge? Well, grab a pen and notepad, then head on over here to start your deducing and click-click-clicking.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #60 – Room 11: Xmas Tree

Christmas is outside
Click everything, in order
To solve, be merry

–

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 only way to Quarrel is with an anagram solver

Words are wonderful; trust me, I copyedit for a living. Not surprisingly, I enjoy a great number of word-based games, such as Scrabble, Scattegories, Apples to Apples, Zip-It, Balderdash, and so on. Basically, if it lets me flex my word-creation or word-pairing muscles, I’m in. However, I’ve never been great at seeing anagrams, especially under a tight time limit, which is why I quickly dropped away from Quarrel a week or two after I got it back in January 2012. You might have noticed that I “completed” it a few weeks back, giving it its very own haiku.

By “completed,” I am talking about the critical path to defeating everyone in the Showdown mode, as well as dominating the known Quarrel world through the domination mode. Both these modes are various scenarios where you battle against one, two, or sometimes three AI-controlled opponents, all fighting for colored territory. There is online play and a number of challenges and Achievements to go for, but I think I’m mostly done going after those. Also, by “completed” I totally mean cheated.

The process went like this. Since I always was picked to go last in both the Showdown and Domination modes, this meant waiting and watching. If an opponent attacked another opponent not named PaulyAulyWog, my girlfriend and I would quickly look at the eight letters given to us, pause the action, and then load up an anagram solver on her cell phone. After plopping down all the letters, she’d select an eight-letter word and tell me what to create. I’d do this as quickly as possible, though sometimes my fingers would slip or I’d hit the wrong letter by accident, forcing me to panic and swiftly amend my error. So long as I got the anagram submitted in time before the two other players put in their answers, I was awarded an extra back-up unit, which are beyond helpful. The process, more or less, went the same when I got attacked, but it was never a guarantee I’d win because I might not have enough letters or still was too slow when buttoning in.

Honestly, I don’t feel too terrible about using an anagram solver for Quarrel. I would for nearly every other word-based game, especially the ones I mentioned earlier. For many of the Showdown and Domination matches, the first fight against you is absolutely crucial for determining how well the remainder of the round will go. If you don’t win or at least take a prisoner early on, it’s basically over, and not a whole bag of fun to sit through everybody’s turns knowing you are a lost cause. Perhaps there are people out there that see a string of six to eight letters and immediately, within seconds, know what the strongest word to create is–I am not those people. Before giving in and relying on an anagram solver, I attempted to play these two modes, only getting as far as two or three rounds in, and those were farces, with me somehow staying alive long enough to watch everyone else kill each other and feast on their remains when the smoke cleared.

When you’re tasked with creating a three- or four-letter word against an opponent with the same objective, speed often trumps complexity. However, when you have the opportunity to make an eight-letter anagram, you make that eight-letter anagram. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what arsenite or ergatoid means; they are knockout words, and the faster you put them down, the stronger your army will grow. You might be quick enough to remember those eight mixed up letters and pause the game yourself to search for a word, but I recommend having a partner next to you. Eventually, my girlfriend would begin memorizing the first four letters, and then I’d pause, giving her the last four, and saving us a second or two of time. That might not seem like much, but Quarrel‘s AI opponents do not kid around. Unless we’re talking about Dwayne, that is.

So yeah, Quarrel. There’s a lot to like; on the flip side, there’s a lot to dislike, and perhaps it speaks to the quality of the game’s challenge that I had to look outside my noggin for extra help. Again, maybe there are super geniuses out there with fingers like that one bot from Ghost in the Shell that can figure out the anagram right away and submit it faster than light. I suspect many might not suffer the same difficulties as I did, but this is one puzzle game that was more frustrating than fun, even when you figured out the way to win.

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.