Four Games

I've had a very open schedule so that means I have been playing actual videogames and can form new opinions on them. 

Titanium Court

This game is highly lauded, having won the IGF Grand Prize this year. I would describe it as a "Match 3 Tower Defense" game. In the first phase of a battle you can move a grid of tiles around, getting resources when you match 3, and the layout is important because in the battle phase certain tile types will affect enemy movement and attacks. During the battle phase you spend resources to do attacks or send out units to fight/gather resources. Certain tiles show up which give you access to shops, treasure chests, and some have different effects. It's a well thought out game where you need to use your whole brain. 

Visually, TC uses a limited color pallate and pixel graphics, with a majoirty of the characters and scenes being redrawn stock images within the visual style of the game. This gives it a pretty unique look. The soundtrack is a soothing lo-fi guitar strumming and is what really sold me on the game during the demo.

The problem is the game's writing is grating on me. Your character is the matriarch of the titular Titanium Court and you are in charge of an army of faries, who all seem to be in on the joke except for you. There's a fairy called Puck who speaks in riddles and won't tell you what's going on. The layout of the court itself is always changing. The game will sometimes slam on the brakes in the middle of a run to give you 15 pages of dialog about something "really important". I want to like the game but find it annoying to play, basically. It reminds me of board games that have a zillion rules and if you forget one it exposes you to a massive amount of damage. I keep waiting for the game to click for me like it did during the demo. 

Whenever I am reading the 15 pages of dialog for this one character it reminds me of the writing of "homestuck" which would stop the narrative to go on massive months long tangents and entire universes of background characters who would disappear into the void suddenly and without warning. Titanium Court won the IGF grand prize so I'm not worried about hurting the developer's feelings exactly. There isn't anything I'd change about the game, it just annoys me I guess? 

Old School Rally

OSR is basically a remake of N64/PSX era rally games, complete with simplistic graphics and a simple physics system. It's basically a car shaped object game, I played it for around 10 hours because sliding around on the dirt is very satisfying. I would describe the game as "breezy" and not challenging. The corses are generally wide so you don't really hit anything and feel like you can really drive fast. Getting turns correct feel really good.

The cars drive identically, and even though there's damage it doesn't feel like it affects anything. You can repair damage between rounds but there's never any tradeoff - usually in rally games different parts of the car get damaged and you have to pick which one you fix (once in Dirt Rally 2 I broke my headlights enough to where I was driving a night stage without being able to see !). The co-driver's pace notes are very simplistic and often come really late.

The "retro" graphics are actually way worse than what was considered contemporary to PSX at the time, colin mccrae for the PSX looks way better than this. You only race the clock too, there are no opponants and the game doesn't get very hard. I do wish it would have themed the rallies a bit better - they take place in several countries and are sort of randomly thrown into a sequence.  Lastly, it's a big grind to unlock the cars - some are won via races but a lot have to be purchased with money which takes forever to earn.

So why do I like it so much? It doesn't ask much of me. The chunky low poly cars look cute. I can put it on while listening to a podcast and have a good time. It's fun to drift around dirt roads. That's really it, a lot of rally games have a lot of structure to them that adds difficulty or pressure and turns what would normally be a nice breezy activity into something stressful. It adds just enough structure to make it worth my while but itsn't aimless driving around. 

Vampire Survivors 

Wow only like 3 years late to this one. The castlevania motif is cute. This game basically took everything that added friction to most action roguelikes and removed it. You move with one stick and autoaim for virtually everything. You cut down swarths of enemies and get periodic random upgrades. 

The waves and sheer variety of enemies keep things interesting. The simplistic graphics mean that it's cheap to make everything - the sprites doen't even have animation except for walking. It does not surprise me so many people are copying the formula.

It reminded me very much of a slot machine I played in Arizona - but instead of dispensing money it dispenses XP. The game is basically using operant conditioning to get you to keep playing because the act of getting XP and picking the best of 3 upgrades over and over is a pretty good dopamine loop. 

Probably going to play this more while I have podcasts on in the background to feel "Productive". Maybe research "builds" or something. One doesn't have to really think when playing Vampire Survivors which is part of the appeal, and part of what makes it a 

MegaBonk

I wanted to play VS and then a post VS "Survivorlike" to see what elements it kept and which ones it iterated on. 20% of the appeal to this game, for me, was being able to play as an anthro fox right out of the gate. 

But this is almost exactly the same structure as Vampire Survivors, down to the UI design and XP gain. It adds a few things but the formula is the same, down to individual weapons and upgrades. Adding a 3rd dimension to the game adds a lot of fun movement options. The boss enemies and general wave design has a bit more thought to it, but it's a "3d survivors like" that feels just as mindless, with the addition of jumping adding a bit more cognative load to the game. 

A lot of people mention the grating "meme" humor in the game, it isn't a showstopper but feels like grains of sand grinding away at a game I would normally be into. With a visual style that would go beyond "generic fantasy" setting this game would probably bump a little more. So many games are trying to go after the PSX/N64/Dreamcast era but don't really go for the stylistic choices they're known for and instead have lowpoly+lowres textures. 

will I play more "survivor likes"? will I make one? I dunno. might be fun. I would like to make one that is more inspired by the PSX era with the inclusion of house music, a more coherant and stylish visual design, and getting away from the "generic fantasy" setting. Maybe make it co-op and add proximity voice chat. I dunno!