Thief: The Dark Project sits at a critical turning point for first-person gaming – released less than a month after Half-Life, it continued Looking Glass Studios’ pioneering creation of immersive, fully 3D settings that defined PC gaming in the late 90s. Ultima Underworld and System Shock had already given the industry a new bar to clear, and as other studios began following that path, Looking Glass unleashed, over just three years, three of the best games ever made. Thief, System Shock 2, and Thief 2 are so good, so timeless, and so important that their release caused the studio to collapse and dissolve, like a shonen character who sacrificed every ounce of their vital energy in one desperate attack that changed PC gaming forever.

In Thief, you play as Garrett, a freelance burglar, formerly associated with the shadowy Keepers, who makes the rent by robbing his way around the city [called, simply, The City] he lives in. Now on his own, he takes jobs for fences, finds himself increasingly at odds with the more organized underworld, and eventually catches the attention of some seriously ominous clients.

What the game’s setup lacks in naming sense it makes up for in spades with atmosphere. The City is a mix of medieval urban sprawl and steampunk mechanisms, stone-block and wood architecture augmented with metal piping and gas lamps. The mystical and mechanical merge and compete, with mages still working primal elemental magic into usable crystals [which Garrett can attach to arrows for various effects] but increasingly displaced by the marvels of technology. Meanwhile, the citizens span the gamut, from homeless wretches pitching camp in the spider-infested caves beneath, criminal gangs claiming public sewage systems as their lairs, to the wealthy merchants in their palatial estates and religious orders worshiping in cathedrals rich with art.

The game is divided into distinct missions, each taking place in a single enclosed map, and filled with guards, monsters, loot, and a handful of key objectives. Most missions, as you might guess, primarily require you to retrieve some object, then make it to your extraction point, and the path you take and pockets you pick along the way are up to your discretion. Between levels, you have an opportunity to purchase some gear with all that discretionary loot you collected in the prior mission – arrows of all kinds, flash bombs, land mines, tips from informants or fences, and so on. You also have three difficulty levels to choose from, which affect not only the minimum loot threshold required for completion and optional objectives progressively tacked on to your assignment, but also some additional restrictions, usually a moratorium on outright killing.

Even when you’re not outright forbidden from taking lives, it’s generally preferable to move quietly, as the melee combat is pretty unpleasant. You get a sword, and most enemy types will go down to a few swipes even when fully alert, but reading their movements and not getting hit in turn is difficult, the noise tends to draw more foes, and it just takes longer than avoiding them entirely or dispatching them with a single well-placed blackjack blow. Thankfully, this is a rare stealth game where the stealth is actually good.

There are two factors in avoiding detection – visibility and sound. Your visibility is conveyed at all times by a ‘light gem’ at the bottom of the screen, brightening up in relation to how well-lit the current location of your body is. Beside the gem is a smaller indicator that lights up when you’re considered ‘visible’ from a distance, but the smaller graduations let you tiptoe closer to a transition point carefully without giving yourself away accidentally. So long as you’re in near-perfect darkness, even the most alert guards will walk right past you and any corpses you’ve piled in the inky night, as long as they don’t literally trip over you.

The game’s handling of sound is even more impressive. The most important feature is sound propagation – the sound effects played to the player aren’t simple bubbles that change the volume on distance and direction, but have to reach ‘paths’ between rooms. That means that footsteps from the next area actually sound like they’re coming from the doorway, and are even muffled if the door itself is closed. Every sound also gets modified by the surface it’s happening on, and this is worked into the level design in clever ways. Low-end or utilitarian spaces floored with wood, dirt, and stone are all pretty medium loud, while the elite residences where the good loot is hidden tend to have extremes of plush carpet and absurdly resonant marble tile. Each room even has its own acoustic properties, causing sounds to echo more in a big, bare space. Guards tend to be quite noisy by default, constantly coughing and muttering while patrolling, which helps you identify where they’re going, keep track of their numbers, and not bumble into them as often as you would otherwise.

A huge part of the gameplay is in adapting to, exploiting, and modifying those properties. Water arrows are almost entirely useless aside from dousing torches… which makes them among the most critical tools at your disposal. Loud floors alert you better to patrolling guards just as they give you away, and a moss arrow can create a patch of permanently silent cushioning for you to stalk around on. You can use special noisemaker arrows, regular arrows fired into a hard surface, or just trash like empty bottles and dinner plates thrown around to distract someone looking where you don’t want them to. You can even fire grappling ropes up to wooden beams to climb your way up to another floor if you’re crafty and observant enough.

All these mechanics, neat as they are on their own, would be wasted if the missions themselves didn’t take full advantage of them. Thankfully, the level design is among the best ever made. The very first level sets the stage beautifully for the rest of the game, without feeling like anything but a perfectly believable little heist. Later missions elaborate on those themes and add more variety to the hazards and objectives but all continue to build on the idea of exploring a large, open area, combing through it for loot while avoiding or neutralizing whatever’s guarding the place, and escaping.

Almost every mission is extremely memorable – infiltrating a prison via a haunted mine, exploring a sprawling, booby trapped mausoleum one night, and then an ancient city that has sunk into the magma a week later. One of my favorite missions has Garrett pose as a Hammerite novice to enter a cathedral that’s active and guarded night and day, casing the joint until he’s ready to crack some heads and grab the gold. Another starts with you barely escaping assassination, tailing the bastards as they lead you to their employer, and then picking their boss’s pocket out of spite while clearing his house of valuables just to leave a message. And the plot is paced out just as wonderfully alongside the gameplay. Early missions are straightforward, contained jobs, building off each other naturally and believably to bigger things. You eventually impress a patron enough to land a serious gig, which takes up most of the second half of the game, as you collect MacGuffin keys required to land the big score, and then the final levels have you dealing with the fallout of that job.

Each mission is introduced with a cutscene, and these are some of the best setups in gaming history; simple, restrained, but still incredibly evocative and informative. The majority of them are just narration over top of still images, yet they still convey, in only a minute or so each, a richness of backstory, tone, and setting beyond what modern games accomplish with dozens of hours of mocap’d actors and half a dozen writers.

And speaking of narration, this game simply would not be the same without the voice of Garrett, provided by actor Stephen Russell. Garrett’s lines are, no equivocation, utterly flawless. Every word spoken, whether in a cutscene or in-game, sears the character’s personality directly into your mind, without a hint of overwriting or haminess. The resulting character is a perfectly epitomized anti-hero, not some annoying villain making a turn or corny criminal with a heart of gold. He comes across as cynical without constant sarcastic wisecracks, selfish and cold but not cartoonishly evil, principled without tediously expounding on his values. There’s fantastic voice work throughout by other characters as well, and the game would be worse off without all the hilarious guard conversations and such, but it’s Russell’s Garrett that steals the show. Of all the reasons I could say this game could ‘never be made’ now, that quality of writing and level of restraint in a videogame is high up there.

The first game was rereleased shortly after as Thief Gold, which primarily expands the scope by adding three entirely new missions to the middle section of the game, and rearranging some content from existing levels into those. I’d like to say it’s a straightforward upgrade, but honestly, it’s hit and miss. Of the three levels, I only actually like the last, find the second to be middling and disappointing, and I truly hate the first. Their inclusion also really dampens the importance at least of the Lost City mission, and I don’t find any of the other changes particularly interesting or essential either. But Gold is the way it’ll come on any digital platform, and though you apparently can downgrade the game to remove the extra levels, I don’t know that it’s worth bothering unless you’re really that curious what the game was like without Mages bellowing in your ear.

Sadly, even the base game has its flaws. As excellent as the sound design generally is, and as impressive as the technology underlying it is, there are still a bunch of things that are just balanced fucking wrong and will blow out your eardrums for no good reason.

A lot of the game’s level design requires you to get pretty good at the ‘mantling’ system, which is itself really impressive and is almost like Assassin’s Creed parkour in first person… in 1998! Well, except that, as you might expect from a game of that year, it’s kind of stiff and inconsistent – you absolutely need to be moving and looking almost perfectly perpendicular to the edge of the surface you’re trying to catch and climb up when you hit it, and if there’s some kind of bump or it’s just hard to see, you’ll slide off without knowing what you did wrong even if you know how it works, and the game doesn’t explain it in sufficient detail anyway. Stealth games like this tend to force you into savescumming anyway, but any time I’m expected to do something more strenuous than walk up a staircase in Thief I reach for the quicksave hotkey.

Enemy AI is pretty stupid, leading to guards that seem completely deaf, dumb, and blind right up until the moment you accidentally touch an invisible trigger, causing a guy to leap out of his bed and slam his sword into your neck literally mid-snore. Like most stealth games, even on max difficulty, unless you’re imposing your own restrictions and trying to ‘ghost’ every level, the stealth that the game hinges on can be trivially and, honestly, pretty quickly disassembled just by bonking guys when you get a chance and stacking them up in a nearby corner. Later enemy types don’t really improve the situation, aside from Hammerite Haunts – zombies shuffle around kind of ineffectually and can be chopped down to render them harmless, beastmen are pretty bad at combat and can be murdered easily without any stealth, and there’s no real bosses or elite challenge to overcome. Even the Hammer Haunts mostly just act as guards you can’t blackjack and can slay you easily in a direct fight.

Some of the missions are genuinely annoying to navigate, making it even worse when you miss an objective or can’t find the way to proceed and wind up having to go back and forth multiple times. This is epitomized in the worst of the Gold added maps, which has you crawling back and forth through a sewer network to get keys, open drains, and scrounge up loot. Speaking of loot, I played through the game this time on Hard, and not Expert, and it’s not because I don’t like a challenge. Now, I always love a game differentiating difficulties in interesting ways, and Thief does just that, and commendably. What I don’t like are the increasing loot quotas, which outright prevent you from finishing a stage if you haven’t found quite enough little baubles on top of hunting down whole extra secret areas and avoiding murder.

The last time I did a replay of the Thief games, I did so on Expert, and in too many of the missions it just wound up tacking on at least another 20 minutes of bullshit, looking under beds, jumping like a little kid to see what’s on an out of reach shelf, squinting in dark rooms trying to find the last few FUCKING coins or whatever so I could move on, and I swore by the end that I’d never put myself through it again. It really isn’t that much harder anyway, you can avoid killing guards with a bare minimum of self-control, and being FORCED to collect more money while also incentivised to hoard resources is just ass backwards, in the way of Demons Souls making healing items drop more often if you don’t die frequently.

But for all my complaints, nothing can really tarnish the magic of Thief. While it may show its age and occasionally be even rougher than you remember, it remains the best of its type, outshining more modern attempts to emulate its innovation. If you’ve never actually played Thief, you must, at your earliest opportunity – it’s not just a fantastic game in its own right, but one of the most essential experiences in gaming. Even if it’s just been a while, it’s probably been too long.

Thief Gold can be purchased on Steam and GOG.

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I initially wrote this post in 2024 before starting my page. Most of these older posts will not be available for free subscribers, but I’m making an exception for those that wound up being ranked in the top 10 of my favorite games from each year.

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I initially wrote this post in 2024 before starting my page. Most of these older posts will not be available for free subscribers, but I’m making an exception for those, like this one, that wound up being ranked in the top 10 of my favorite games from each year.

Isles of Sea and Sky is an atmospheric maso-core block toucher step-puzzler.

From the same developer as Triga [a short puzzle game I know about but didn’t play], Isles of Sea and Sky has been a long time coming. It had a few demos as more and more elements were introduced in development, and I played them all. I’ve been looking forward to this game for years, since back when it had a different name and you had to download the demo off the developer’s itch.io page. It’s finally come out [well, mostly, I’ll get to that] and I bought it immediately.

Isles is fundamentally a block pusher puzzle game. You play as a little bare-chested islander guy, and your only input other than walking over tiles is pushing against them. Early on, the old standbys turn up, and you do a lot of pushing boxes onto pressure plates to hold doors open and the like. But the game picks up pretty quickly, on top of having a fairly open layout, and your options start to expand. As the title implies, there are several separate islands spread across an overworld, each with their own puzzle themes and elements to unlock, which you reach by riding a giant sea turtle. Most screens have a few separate ‘puzzles’ to solve, though they frequently weave together or lead into each other in some way. The main reward for solving puzzles is stars, which are the thing that completion % is determined by at the end, and there are also many gates both on islands and in the overworld that open at certain star thresholds. Some simpler puzzles or exploration reward you with keys, which are consumed to permanently open certain gates. Finally, each elemental island has a multi-stage progression, where you explore it to find the screen with the elemental ‘lord,’ get the key that allows you to tackle most of the island’s puzzles, use that to find at least six of the elemental stones, and then return to awaken Elementals of that type throughout the game world. At that point you’re mostly able to collect a few stars and move on, but there’s a final puzzle layer on each elemental island which rewards you with a permanent ability upgrade.

The way the game breaks up introducing puzzle elements and pushing the difficulty higher, on top of letting you poke at puzzles you aren’t yet able to do, makes the game feel a lot richer than many similar puzzle games. It genuinely feels like a big pivot when an island’s elementals come to life, and playing with them to feel out the nuances is a lot of fun. The game also does a great job of guiding you through ‘tutorials’ without a single word of instruction or forced input - usually the first screen you encounter with a new puzzle mechanic will be constructed to allow you to see what its primary function is, and then leave it up to you to experiment on other screens they show up on to piece together the details. The game has a surprising variety of puzzle elements and depth to each one, including a lot of interactions that don’t come up often but still make a decent amount of sense. There’s even one zone with pseudo ‘boss fights’ that are a surprisingly enjoyable change of pace, and don’t outstay their welcome.

Isles also has a really fantastic style and feel for a puzzle game. Each major island has its own unique chill music track that never gets grating or distracting, all the sprites and animations feel fully fleshed out and detailed, and there’s even idle animations for all the elementals to go along with your player character falling asleep. Even the sound effects and jingles are excellent. The game has unlimited undo as well as a separate full screen reset button, and deaths are handled with a bare minimum of fanfare, automatically undoing your last action after a short animation. The movement and pushing, which you’ll be doing a lot, has been given about as much speed as possible without feeling imprecise at all. I never felt like doing anything was a drag or hassle, and there were never any puzzles that required enough inputs to warrant a mid-screen checkpoint.

Once you awaken all four elemental types, a gate to the ‘final’ area opens up on the tutorial island, and after some puzzles involving the interactions between each pair of elemental type, you can complete the game. You can then restart after seeing what percentage of the stars you’ve found and continue on - there’s that third layer of each elemental island’s progression to finish, many smaller islands with some unique gimmicks scattered around the overworld, a final large island involving evil shadow clones, and a handful of other things to solve, most of which reward you just with stars. That’s pretty much it - continue as much as you want, up to 109 [at time of writing] stars, and then you’re done - I don’t think there’s a ‘true’ ending or anything like that for your trouble… yet.

That brings me to my main problem with Isles of Sea and Sky, which is that it’s not really ‘finished.’ It’s finishable - in fact, you barely have to do half the puzzles to get to the end, and all the stars and items you can catch a glimpse of are obtainable in some way already. However, there are a few glaring loose ends, islands wreathed in permanent clouds, routes through the reefs you can’t seem to get your turtle to, and screens you can’t ever visit on most islands, which are bound to trap an unsuspecting puzzler into hours worth of humping random wall tiles. After I gave up on trying to find a way to a particular island that seemed within my reach, I finally checked around and discovered that the developer has stated vague plans for ‘future content’ and that most of those things I’d been trying to get to are just placeholders. Now, I’m jazzed at the idea of getting to pick this game up in a few months or so and have even more cool islands and puzzles to explore, but it’s a little shitty the way this has been done, especially considering the game is not, like, in Early Access or a beta phase anymore. I’d have been a lot happier with at least a minimum of signposting dead-end content, even if I know why it kind of has to already be partially implemented [to keep from breaking save files when additional content is added and screens potentially altered].

There are a few other tiny issues too. There are a handful of bugs, like a couple tiles tagged as walkable when they shouldn’t be, secrets that aren’t flagged by the game’s in-game indicator, objects depicted on the map from prior versions that aren’t really there, and so on. These should probably be mostly cleaned up soon, since the developer’s been pushing relatively rapid patches in response to reports. Some of the puzzle setups can be a little frustrating to get your head around initially, and the way shortcut gates are permanently disabled can probably be confusing to new players. So far, there was only one star I’ve found that I would say has a genuinely dickish solution, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s also the only star I’ve found that isn’t obviously a star present on the screen initially. Finally, the game makes somewhat heavy use of secret paths and ‘illusory walls’ in a sense, where some spots just have invisible ladders or pathways open up when you walk in front of them or bump into them. The game does attempt to indicate these very lightly, with faint glyphs on floors indicating either where you need to go or where you CAN go if you find them, but it’s easy to miss them in a dense screen, and especially later on, some of them are actually missing their indicators, and if you don’t have all the equipment upgrades, it’s tough to tell what objectives you need to find a secret route to versus ones you just need a new ability you don’t know about yet for. On the first island they occur, specifically the underground, the start of secret paths is at least indicated very clearly like cracked walls in DROD, but later on there are definitely a few where you just have to wall-hump each tile like in Wolf3D or Doom.

The last thing I want to mention is the name. Isles of Sea and Sky might sound like a surprisingly bland and SEO-unfriendly title for a game with so much passion and creativity poured into it. Well, it is - the game used to be called Akurra, until the dev abruptly announced that it was being changed to avoid the perception of cultural appropriation. It seems kind of silly, especially since stylistically the game still leans pretty heavily on that Pacific Island Tribal vibe, but you know what they say - give the sharks a tiny bit of blood, and they’ll definitely give you good reviews. Honestly it’s not a big deal, but the last few demo releases had me confused as I repeatedly forgot the new ‘improved’ name, and I really don’t think it’s doing them any favors even if it’s not hurting things either.

I ripped through Isles of Sea and Sky in record time for me with a puzzle game, and that’s not a slam on its difficulty - it gets quite hard, I just really enjoyed it enough to push through in a few long sittings. [plus I’d already done the first hour or two multiple times via the demos] I’m getting close to 100% stars, and I’m definitely going to be back once the rest of the content gets finalized. I think if you’re not a big puzzle fiend, the full price might be a bit rich, but if you liked things like Baba is You or A Monster’s Expedition, it’s probably worth picking up whenever you feel the itch - just maybe take a peek to see if all the islands are actually completed before beating your face against the post-game.

Afterward

Post-release, the developer resolved most of the problems I had with the game, culminating in the Mysterious Update, which added a pretty significant amount of post-game content, puzzles that go several layers deeper than anything required to ‘beat’ the game, and honestly a bit more than I was prepared for. I probably won’t ever completely finish it, but it was a thoroughly pleasant replay, and it stands as one of my favorite puzzle games. I recommend this game even more strongly than I did in its release year, when it just barely made it to tenth place in my personal ranking.

Isles of Sea and Sky can be purchased on Steam and itch.io.

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I initially wrote this post in 2024 before starting my page. Most of these older posts will not be available for free subscribers, but I’m making an exception for those that wound up being ranked in the top 10 of my favorite games from each year.

Read more

Gunlocked 2 1.0 – Euro-shmup Survivors has crossed the threshold, its full release including many more pilots, new bosses, and most importantly, a big rebalance to make level-ups more impactful and interrupt the game less frequently. At least, that’s the idea. To be honest, after a couple runs, it doesn’t seem that different from how I remember. I did like the option to continue a successful run into infinitely increasing scaling until you succeed in a final blaze of glory.

GRIME 2 release – aww man, cmon. Do I really have to play this one? I suppose I will eventually, but GRIME was neither my favorite or least favorite ‘vania, so I’m fine waiting a while.

Legends of the Round Table release – If you’re excited to get a chance at rewriting Arthurian legends via extremely dense deckbuilder tactics, well, check out my longer preview from last week. Sadly I’ve got enough on my plate right now as it is.

Blood Facsimile Early Access – One of the things on my plate. I tried this game’s demo out during Next Fest and decided this week I was curious enough about its development to jump in already. I haven’t seen anything really new yet aside from the more thematic intro, but I’m looking forward to poking around in it a bit more.

Shinobi: Art of Vengeance hardcore mode and DLC – One of my issues with the new Shinobi game is that it was a bit too forgiving, and this week’s update seems laser focused on addressing that, by reducing your survivability, changing enemy placements, and adding new boss attacks. It’s not quite enough for me to want to do a whole replay right away, but I’m sure I’ll appreciate it if I ever do. The update coincides with the release of a somewhat self-indulgent paid DLC where you do some [apparently mediocre] stages and then fight crossover cameos from other SEGA franchises, like Majima from Yakuza and Dr. Eggman. Weird, in a kind of endearing way but not what I want to spend ten dollars on in this economy.

Tlatoani: Aztec Cities 1.0 – If you hadn’t seen this yet, I highly recommend Scanline’s early preview of it from last year. Essentially, this is an Impressions-like city builder, a lot like the Czech developed Nebuchadnezzar, but focused on Aztec-era Mesoamerica rather than Mesopotamia. Among its key features are a focus on orienting and placing religious structures in aesthetically symmetrical alignments, balancing your commitment to various feuding deities, and keeping your city walls patrolled to inhibit raids from rival cities and ruralites. It’s one of the more exciting developments for those enamored with historical city planning, and I want to play it so bad I can almost rationalize not finishing Nebuchadnezzar first… but I’m still going to make an attempt on that soon.

Into the Radius 2 1.0 beta – as sequel to VR Stalker-like ItR approaches its full release date later this month, the devs have allowed beta access to the ‘complete’ game, and I’ve popped in just to take a look at the expanded story and introduction.

Okay, I’ve gotten talked at enough. I think I’ll just wait for the official out date so I don’t have to hold this guys hand any more than necessary.

I Am Jesus Christ release – He is risen.

Granser Act 1 release – it will be hard for Pugware to follow up the strange and surprising Skautfold series in a way that will satisfy me, but I’m still plenty happy to jump aboard the Granser train for a JRPG with classic bones. I’m still early on but the combat is basically a better balanced version of the turn-based battles from Knight’s End, the voice acting is… much better than I expected, and the amount of detail and worldbuilding is shocking. I love the guards crying out ‘I have a family’ as you kill them.

The State of Games Played

After being slightly embarrassed by a comment implying I’d forgotten about Thief 1, I spent most of my free time this week just knocking the second half of that game out. It’s been a blast revisiting one of the best games ever made, at least, for most of the levels, and it didn’t take me near as long as I expected – I’d forgotten how straightforward a lot of the later set-piece heavy missions were, and I had no interest in dicking around or pursuing the Expert objectives this time around. And now that that’s done, I can move on to an arguably even better game.

Then, in my pursuit of clearing inventory and getting through games that I’ve been nibbling at for far too long, I loaded up The Myth of a Godslayer and took on another solid dungeon.

Off and on, I took a few more stabs at Lost Flame, mostly dying unceremoniously to wild shit like all my gear spontaneously turning into hostile tentacles. I still haven’t gotten as far as my first run with a legendary weapon that ended up in Evil Ghost Hell because I saw it on the menu and decided to warp there immediately. I guess that one’s mostly on me.

Writing

Well, was my Death Stranding essay everything you’d hoped for? It certainly did it for me.

I’ve started the Thief: Gold write-up, but it’s probably going to be a few days before I finish it, as it’s both a very good game and a very important one.

Then I should be able to whip together a Gunlocked 2 post – there doesn’t seem to be that much more to find out about it that I haven’t already gathered from its early access.

Other

This was a pretty big week for releases, and the rest of this month should have a few more surprises - I think we’ll finally be getting release date announcements for some games on my radar this week.

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1. Down Under?

As you start playing Death Stranding 2, you may notice that a LOT of the voice actors have distinctly Australian accents! This isn’t just a hiring quirk or a mistake on the part of the localization team, though! Death Stranding 2 actually takes place on the Australian subcontinent, and almost all of the characters are Australians! Even some characters from the first game are replaced by their identical twin counterparts who were raised in Australia! Well, that explains a few things!

2. To Like or Not To Like?

Throughout the game you’ll be pressured to trade in your precious Likes earned from deliveries to reward NPCs and other players for building structures, placing signs, and posting on social media! Weigh your options carefully – those Likes, once given, can never be recovered! Save your likes for those who really earn it, by placing ladders you didn’t know you needed or putting the 40^th sign on the entrance ramp to every shelter!

3. It’s A What Now?

While technically, Death Stranding is a walking simulator, series co-creator Hideo Kojima insists it actually is better defined by a new genre label, the Strand-like, generally referring to games that are similar in themes, perspective, and game mechanics to Death Stranding. Death Stranding is considered to be the pinnacle of Strand-type games… so far! But don’t think it’s secure on the throne... almost every major title coming out in the next year or so can claim to be a Strand-like!

4. Dark Strands!

It’s a little known fact that Death Stranding’s awkward, arbitrary sounding title was chosen for a very good reason – to draw a parallel to the game’s greatest inspiration, Dark Souls, by having the exact same initials! DS, DS, you get it! Now, when you hear that DS2 improved in almost every way the formula from DS1, don’t get so angry! Maybe they’re talking about Dark Souls 2!

5. Ride On!

As a Strand-like, [and a walking simulator] the first Death Stranding was originally intended to take place entirely on foot. Series star Norman Reedus, however, refused to cooperate with development until he secured the promise of a sick motorcycle his character could be shown on, as a cross-promotion for his travel show Ride. After several months of Reedus doing crazy faces any time the motion capture scanners were on, Kojima finally relented… but he had his own trick up his sleeve!

6. It’s All Greek To Me!

The motorcycles in Death Stranding are not your pappy’s hog! These high tech bad boys sport not two, not four, but THREE tires! This means they’re technically not bicycles, but tricycles – these words sneakily include the Greek words for ‘two’ and ‘three!’ This pun ties in with other wordplay throughout the game, but it’s one that even hardcore fans tend to miss!

7. Whatcha Haulin?

Next time you’re on a delivery, take a look at your cargo screen – the developers have hidden some hilarious Easter Eggs in the item descriptions, Dark Souls-style! From shock-absorbent underwear to revolutionary Playstation consoles, the number of in-jokes and references are incredible! Just don’t open anything without permission… some of these spoil quickly!

8. Grab a Slice!

Speaking of quirky deliveries, you might have noticed that both games feature pizzas! That’s right, the iconic delivery item of countless cartoons and movies! But did you know that pizza is actually a real type of food, and not just a media trope? Pizzas are a common staple in many American cities, popular as a quick hand-held snack or as a full meal! The next time you see a pizza delivery in a show or videogame, remember that it’s based on a real cultural practice!

9. Golden Touch?

As you’re carrying packages across the land, keep an eye out for shiny yellow crystals! These can be collected and used as crafting materials, but they hide yet another secret! Look closely, and you can see that they are all in the shape of a human hand! Nobody is really sure why, but it’s pretty neat!

10. Give Me a Hand!

Your odradek scanner is a funky piece of equipment! Besides scanning for packages and showing you where ghosts are, it has some other functions that the game doesn’t tell you about! Have you ever seen it wave, or give you a thumbs up? It seems the scanner can act just like a hand! So why can’t Sam use it to hold a package, or a gun? Maybe Kojima’s just saving that for Death Stranding 3!

11. Fair and Square!

Wombats are known for producing cube-shaped fecal matter!

12. Not A-Lie-ve Man?

You might think you recognize Sam’s best friend Deadman, as the character is based on the likeness of actor Guillermo del Toro, but did you know that Deadman is actually voiced by a different actor?

This is quite possibly a reference to the fact that the character of Deadman is supposed to be an artificial chimera of reanimated tissue… just like in Frankenstein! Coincidence? Or another Kojima premonition?

14. Tron Legacy?

Death Stranding is rich in influences, but one that few people pick up on is the use of colored lighting on clothing and devices, distinctly reminiscent of the bright blues and reds of the Tron series! The developers have not confirmed or denied that the designs are inspired by the legendary franchise, but come on! What other science fiction movie has motorcycles?

15. Hang Tight!

Having trouble keeping your footing while hauling packages? Pay attention to the popups! Holding the trigger buttons makes Sam grab onto his shoulder straps, steadying his backpack, and making it less likely you’ll fall down! And if you still have trouble, try walking on flatter ground or carrying less at one time! If your route carries you down too steep of a slope, don’t worry – just throw the packages down the hill and pick them back up at the bottom! Work smarter, not harder!

16. Heartbreaking!

One of the most important characters in Death Stranding is Heartman, whose iconic symbol is, of course, the common heart! But did you know that the human heart actually looks nothing like a drawn heart shape? It’s hard to swallow, but every time you use a heart emoji, you’re spreading dangerous medical disinformation!

Yes, even that Like, Heartman!

17. Urine Luck!

When Sam drinks too much of his stamina-restoring Monster Energy flask, nature calls! Whip out the Wicked One and drain the main vein, and you’ll do more than ease some pressure! Tiny edible creatures known as Cryptobiotes are attracted to spots where Sam has relieved himself, forming nutrient-rich colonies that are ripe for the picking! And these colonies show up in other people’s worlds as well, infesting the land with teeming piss spots! So the next time you consider hitting the head, remember – you could be saving someones life with your next outdoor whizz! The more high traffic the area, the better for everyone!

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Nothing Beyond This Point release – I played the demo of this… for brevity’s sake, let’s just say action game at the start of last year, and have been keeping an eye on its progress since. Now it’s finished, and I was in a mood so I picked it up immediately and got a bit further than what I remember from the demo.

The game, in case you’d rather not read my initial thoughts, is basically a twin-stick shooter where you play as an Inferno [though it looks just like a Blaze from Minecraft, doesn’t it?] and most of your attacks aside from basic melee deplete the Rods encircling you. Those Rods also count as your hit points, and to regenerate them, you need to stand still and channel for a few seconds. That means you effectively have infinite regenerating health and ammo, so long as you can find a window to catch your breath, but you need to constantly balance aggression and defense.

The exploration is also interesting – the world you’re trapped in is a Void, devoid of landmarks and terrain, aside from, of course, the landmarks and tracks you can follow to find progress. The way this actually works in the game is that most screen edges just make you loop to the other side of the current screen – some secrets involve you doing this repeatedly in a pattern a la the Lost Woods of Zelda, some transitions are locked off, and you can unlock a map in certain areas. There’s plenty of upgrades and permanent choices to make already, and the second boss is kicking my ass, so I don’t know how long the game will take or if I’ll do another run of it, but I’m enjoying it so far.

Lost Flame 1.0 – a very proper rogue-like, with an attempt to make equipment and skill usage crucial and interesting. Every weapon has particular moves associated with it, and using moves in combat, such as lunges and parries, consumes some limited stamina. Stamina regenerates to full between combat encounters, but is strict enough that you stand a real chance at running out and being left weak and panting with a desperate bandit still standing.

I’ve not gotten too far – just to the first bonfire, which teleported me to a Souls-ish hub world with various service NPCs [who are voice acted, shockingly] and teasing locked doors.

I then explored the hub too thoroughly and caught the attention of a cavalier who obliterated me. Maybe the tactical depth won’t hold up through the course of a full rogue-like but it seems pretty well-thought-out so far.

Devil Spire Falls Bosses update – another update that makes me want to start another fresh character, and let’s just say thank God the dev added Avians because I’m so sick of walking around for 20 minutes at the start of every seed trying to find a single settlement. The new field bosses are genuinely imposing and epic… at least when they don’t somehow kill themselves trying to catch up with the birdman they’re chasing. Just… just gotta remember to keep an eye on my stamina...

The State of Games Played

I continued to hop into Haunted Lands on and off even once I’d finished my write-up – I still have some secrets to track down, some challenges to check off, and some fun to have, though it unfortunately lacks the dedicated post-game encouragement that Zexion had, so I probably won’t be attempting any speedruns or restricted runs in it. Still an absolutely fantastic game, and one I’ll definitely replay periodically in the future.

Speaking of replays, the post last week from Fortune Summoner’s developer did its job, and got me to pony up and redownload that blast from the past. I’m several hours in now, finally got to the point where the difficulty curve becomes somewhat shocking, and I feel vindicated that all my fond memories weren’t just nostalgia. This game is just as fantastic as I remember.

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about Esoteric Ebb, though. I’ve just been chipping away at it slowly, savoring the encounters and conversations that seem to spin off into genuinely interesting tangents and possibilities. I’m also wearing a friendly mimic around. What could go wrong? I suppose I’ll find out eventually, as The Cleric’s motto seems to be ‘fuck around, at every opportunity.’

As I murmured about last week, I did move on with my Galactic Disasters conquest in Approaching Infinity, with an attempt to blast through Nanopocalypse Now! I mean, I beat the Blight first try, I stopped the Nanopocalypse on my Sector 1000 run, this should be a piece of -

Aw, fuck. I’m licking my wounds now in a cozy Hard mode run with the Point of No Return disaster enabled [only one visit to each sector allowed] and aiming for a Monk victory, which is going much better. I even started using a Gruff Hunt-Leader, who can tame a huge number of hostile aliens and gives me a little personal army on a lot of planets.

And I’ve also made some time to continue my revisit of Death Stranding 2. I can’t believe I never went back to Mexico on my original run to get the handgun and staff upgrades. I’ve been less patient and stealthy with enemy camps this time and having more options for full aggression is a big relief.

Incidentally, I also played some...

DEMOS

Legends of the Round Table – this overcomplicated, overdramatic, and highly stylized adaptation of Arthurian legend is pretty much exactly what I’d hoped Pentiment was more like. You play as the Once and Future King himself, [and any noble knights who happen to be in his immediate retinue] reliving the legends, the battles, and the interminable fetch quests that define the mythological legacy underpinning the conception of a united Britain. But despite essentially being a point-and-click adventure RPG where you ride around talking to maids and lords and wizards, it’s also much, much more.

Unfortunately, ‘much more’ also includes deckbuilder. You have a hand of cards, each with a value, a season, and an aspect of chivalry, which you can use during any roll to give yourself a boost… which might ALSO result in other effects, and can get legitimately complex. For example, even in basic fights, each defense roll you perform not only has a pass/fail value, which you can try to exceed with a strong card, but the total number you get to with your card can allow you to at least redirect the attack to a specific spot on your body. [or away] Or, when you charge someone with a couched lance, having an odd total for your attack roll means that even if you land the hit, your lance will shatter, forcing you to draw steel to finish things up.

Oh, it gets way more complicated. Nearly everything you do has some extra depth – performing behavior unseemly for a knight, such as striking an unarmed opponent, attacking a man whose horse you’ve cut out from under him while mounted yourself, or pounding on a guy who’s surrounded, all incur dishonor… but only for those of higher station. To maintain your respect, your nobility, your aura, you have to allow dazed combatants to come to their senses and rearm, dismount to fight a dehorsed warrior in the square, and most importantly, allow a striken foe to beg for mercy at your hand. And none of this of course applies to your inglorious footsoldiers, who you can order to commit all sorts of gaucheness in battle, as long as your hands are clean, and they do not succumb to Cowardice. It all reminded me distinctly of a portion from ’s post on ambitious Arthurian adaptations:

The battle rages like this for pages at a time. Knights are always smote down horse and man, the fallen calling ‘gramercy!’ (grant mercy) to the victors, as kings “on foote” are rehorsed by their followers. It goes on and on and on and ON. The effect is dizzying, almost maddening. As the reader gets lost in the noise and chaos of battle, it is easy to forget who is alive, who is dead, who is on whose side. To include no less than eleven kings and describe each of their various fortunes in the battle of Bedegraine as well as the twenty-one named followers of Arthur and what they were up to and how many times they get knocked down and get up again (a la Chumbawumba) is a ridiculous, over-the-top, and even indulgent decision.

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There’s a lot going on, and even the small taste of it in the demo is a lot more compelling and overwhelming than I expected. The idea of having to manage the wounds, both in body and honor, of dozens of retainers and cavaliers, while also learning arcane spells and juggling artifacts, sounds just as wildly ambitious and overwrought as any epic poetry or rock opera, but from what I can tell, it might actually stick the landing. We won’t have long to find out either way - it’s out Tuesday.

It’s got one big problem in my opinion: the voice acting, while fine, is just one lady narrating everything and voicing every one, and I hate that audiobook thing of someone doing 30 different ‘voices.’ Reminds me of The Siege and the Sandfox, and not in a good way.

I Am Jesus Christ – sorry, just to clarify, that’s the name of the game, not a bizarre declaration. This game is itself kind of a bizarre declaration – I don’t think anyone’s really had the cojones to do a game like this since MDickie’s The You Testament.

Anyhow, yes, you play as Jesus of Nazareth, still living with his parents in his 30s, apparently, when an angel appears before him and tells him to get out of bed and find a job. I mean go to the river and find John. And then, immediately, you’re cut loose. You can run, jump, parkour around, talk to random NPCs, open your map and discover Ubislop pins all over showing where you can collect verses, lore entries, argue with Pharisees, and so on.

Following the main quest reveals even more miracles – our Savior has Batman Detective Vision that he can toggle on at the cost of Faith, there’s achievements you can unlock to earn a higher Followers stat, I’m starting to feel a little dizzy, you apparently unlock a variety of spells, oh, sorry, I mean divine miracles, there’s even a minigame to resist Satan’s temptation in the desert. Hang on, isn’t this the minigame from the PS2 Harry Potter games?

To my surprise, the game is actually pretty entertaining, even beyond the novelty of jumping around some cottages as Christ the Lord and engaging with the Asshole Physics to obstruct patrolling Roman legionaries.

I have my doubts about it living up to The Greatest Story Ever Told [tough bar to clear] or even being an effective teaching implement [the voiceovers actually matching with the subtitles and text on screen would fucking help] but hey, it’s better than Synaxarion: Great Martyr Theodore the Tyro.

Divinum – when I covered this during Next Fest a few weeks ago I mentioned that I’d unlocked an accelerated preview of the game’s higher level mechanics, and might dip in later to check it out. I finally did that, and was even more impressed than I was initially by this sidescrolling character action game. The rest of the demo is essentially just a [very long] series of checkpoints, each one having a spawner that presents three combat gauntlets of increasing difficulty before opening the way forward. Each checkpoint also has a shop where you can purchase your choice of an increasing variety of badges to equip, giving you genuinely fun perks, like automatic lightning strikes and life leech, as well as more adrenaline skills to mix up your combos or strike big hits.

The later gauntlets even include whole boss fights, which really present decent resistance, and let you practice with all the skills and perks at your disposal. My favorite was the skill that lets you blink to the nearest facing enemy’s back and do an immediate hit, which you can then chain into a combo to stagger and start juggling them, launching them into the air for a final, big spinning slam to earth. Solid combat, fun skills and perks, now all it needs is for the full game to have relatively satisfying exploration and I’ll be willing to take a look.

Writing

Haunted Lands is the most excited I’ve gotten since Zexion, and another example of why I bother to go so hard so deep at Next Fest. I hope I at least manage to dredge up one game that good in June.

My next big non-writeup article is coming along, and should be out in a few days. If you’ve been paying attention, you might have a guess as to its subject...

Other

There’s a lot coming out this week, a lot I’m currently playing, and a few things I really need to pick back up and get around to finishing. But the weather is also getting better so I’ve been out doing yard work instead of gaming as much as I should. Maybe I could wear a VR headset while driving the riding mower...

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Haunted Lands is an action platformer in an EGA graphics style, emulating the look and some of the feel of an old DOS game. You play as a ragtag band of crusaders, sent into hotspots of occult activity to purge the area of all cultists, undead, and demons, halt their sinister rituals, and retrieve any artifacts [and money] within.

The game takes place over five missions, a mix of creepy mansions, dank caves, towering cathedrals, and toxic waste dumps. Each excursion, you pick one of your members, load them up with equipment, and then drive over in your Jeep. The only ways out at that point are to backtrack to your vehicle, make it through the final boss, or give up and lose all your progress and collected loot, but get a chance to choose a different character or change up your gear.

The missions are pretty strictly linear, but very long, very dense, and consistently engaging. Many stages have sections that branch out, forcing you to tackle a few areas in parallel before progressing. Each mission has at least two major bosses, and there’s a ton of secrets and extra loot to find.

One of the coolest features of the game is the diverse player roster. There are three archetypes, who function very differently mechanically, but can all beat every stage just fine, and one alternate member for each archetype that has their own nuances. The gunners are kind of the default, using long-range, hitscan rifles that can only be fired horizontally or at about a 45 degree angle up or down, have a very limited dodge roll for invulnerability, and must reload their guns periodically. The beasts are the berserkers, using only melee swipes, dashes that can also deal damage, and channeled pounces that let them stun and shred a single enemy. Finally, the mages can hover and teleport horizontally, and have multiple levels of charge to their magic bolt shots that each have unique behaviors.

On top of the core differences, each character can gain Wrath from attacking enemies that can either be spent on quick, explosive attacks, or saved up for a spectacular ult. My favorites were the Ranger’s dual revolvers, which can lock on to enemies to deliver a precision magnum round, the Sorceress’s thundercloud, which passively fires bolts of lightning to clear out chaff while you focus on heavier targets, and the Werewolf’s Spirit Pack, which causes any attack he lands to be followed up by pouncing ghost wolves which shred minibosses.

Each character is fun to play with in their own way, and each level has some spots that one will struggle with while another can… struggle slightly less with. There are also a few areas that only one archetype can reach, usually containing a hidden item for that class, and giving you a cool incentive to replay missions with different characters. There’s no backstory or much in the way of framing besides the intro and outro text for each mission, but the different hunters all have a little bit of personality just in their design, animations, introductions, and most of all, in what they do at your safehouse when you aren’t using them.

But the real defining quality of Haunted Lands is its difficulty, which is brutal, unrelenting, and absolutely masterful. It is a genuine challenge just to make it through the first mission in the game, and while you do get more equipment as you play, the game ramps up just enough to keep a consistent level of resistance the whole way through. Nothing requires extreme precision or repetition, enemies and bosses have well-defined behaviors and intuitive attacks, and the game never feels like it does anything remotely unfair, but it is reliably extremely demanding. Enemy variety expands as the game goes on, with new threats being introduced almost as intimidating minibosses before being worked into the standard pool, and you learn to deal with them the same as you would anything else.

The challenge forces you to grasp every little detail of your character and the enemies – I can tell you the exact hit point values of nearly every enemy type in the game at a glance, I know how much damage a charged gunner blast does, how many tier-2 charged mage shots will be needed to kill a demon, what can be pounced on by a beast and what angles to safely approach any flying monster from. It’s incredibly gratifying to be forced to get this familiar with a game without feeling like I’m exploiting oversights to overcome bullshit.

Some of the sections between checkpoints can wear you down, every hit you take and shot you miss has the potential to be a real problem for you, and some of the big gauntlets get overwhelmingly hectic if you start to lose the ball. This is where every character’s unique health mechanics come in – gunners get a limited number of crosses to block hits, replenished infrequently at checkpoints, mages only get a single shield, but can spend a Wrath point and hold their breath through a lengthy animation to restore it at will, and beasts passively accumulate extra health from shedding blood.

Almost every boss fight is tight enough that I found myself attempting them over the course of a half hour or more, making the fact that you get a checkpoint right at the start of the fight much appreciated. They’re also just spectacular fights in general, although a few feel a bit too locked to cycles, with long invulnerability periods where you just have to hang out and dodge through attack patterns before getting your turn. I still had a great time defeating them, though, even when I had barely clawed my way to the encounter to begin with.

The equipment is surprisingly deep too, with a small grid inventory that you can place items into for a mission, each one having some pretty noticeable impact, and competing compellingly for the limited space. Besides hidden items found directly in stages, and one awarded for completing the tutorial with each character [which teaches you most of the nuances of that particular class anyway] you can also spend the silver collected from rare locations at a shop to unlock even more options. Silver doesn’t reappear once you’ve collected it, so there’s no grinding for upgrades, just exploration and completion, and it’s worth it. Items like the cylinder that gives gunners a partial reload when they roll are a must-buy, there are items that make certain challenges easier or attack faster, there’s items to improve your survivability, and there’s a ton of variety once you get far enough in.

Some of the stages have a particular item type tied to them that doesn’t have any direct effect, but equipping all four of them and finding the spot to use them unlocks an alternate, challenge variant of the stage’s mid boss, and the reward for going out of your way for these optional fights is a second type of currency you can use at another shop to buy massive 2x2 relics that completely augment your characters… including a baby dragon egg that gives you a pet who spits fireballs at enemies for you. Adorable.

The graphics are stunning – the spritework is outstanding, and the effects are glorious, with enemies becoming visibly damaged and then bursting apart into dynamic chunks of pixel gore, their viscera lingering on stages and still visible if you backtrack. Enemy attack animations have the right amount of telegraphing and intuitive effects, and there’s a sick slowdown when your character unleashes their ult. Music and sound effects are also excellent, and like the difficulty, the quality of the visuals and audio never lets up or slips. Outdoor areas feature impressive, parallax backgrounds, secret locations are identifiable with a keen eye without needing to rub against and slap every wall, and the game is dripping with little details.

There are a few minor faults worth pointing out. One confusing aspect are the key items that are required to access the alt bosses – you’ll collect, or even buy one, and then it just kind of vanishes, with no obvious place to look to see how many you have, what they do, what they’re good for. Turns out you have to press the bumper in the equipment screen to shift to another tab, revealing that they must be equipped and taken into the stages to use them, which is a cool limitation, except that nothing on that screen [aside from a popup the very first time you access it] tells you that that button does anything, not even the tiniest indicator that there IS another tab to look at.

Another thing that could be clearer is how the checkpoints actually work. Some doors have text pop up above them that says ‘QUICK SAVE’ and going through them does indeed ‘save’ your progress, and lets you start from that point, with your current health, Wrath, and collected items, should you die. However, and this is a big ass caveat, it does NOT actually save your progress, as in lock it in to your save file, meaning that if you quit out for whatever reason after hitting a QUICK SAVE door, you won’t start back at that location. Instead, hard saves, which can be reloaded from, only occur at the more infrequent NEXT AREA doors, which then have a big angel statue at their exit to indicate your restart point.

What’s worse, the missions are rife with loopbacks, shortcuts that let you go from spots tens of minutes deep back to the start, so you can bail out in your Jeep and return to your safehouse with your items and silver secured. However, these shortcuts do NOT remain open… coming back will force you to go through the whole first part of the stage afresh, with all the doors and ladders you just opened access to sealed back up. Now, each area does have a second or even third access point, which lets you skip whole zones of the mission once you’ve found them, but using them locks you out of completing mission-wide score/time challenges, and the warning about this probably pushes people who are better off just moving forward with the stage into starting the whole damn thing off from the start every time.

All of this, combined with the genuinely grueling difficulty, means a lot of people are just going to bounce off Haunted Lands without being able to make any real progress. It’s tough, but it’s absolutely worth the trouble, and most of all, I think it’s all totally reasonable once you actually understand the structure. If you put the effort in, and try not to be too thorough on your first visit to each mission, getting to the point where this game clicks is a rare joy. Seeing a group of demons spawn in, snapping off the exact number of shots required to see their flesh slough off, pumping rounds back in as you move forward, always ready for a new surprise, is a feeling that’s hard to match. And despite ‘only’ being five missions long, the game is not short on content at all – it probably took me over 20 hours to finish the final real stage, and I immediately dove back in for several more hours to take another crack at the first few missions with new characters, exploring as thoroughly as I could to find new gear, challenging alt bosses, and even finding a whole bonus stage or two.

Honestly, maybe the biggest oversight of the game is its price – not that it’s excessive, but that it is too low for the jaw-dropping quality that’s come from a solo dev. This game would be an absolute bargain at three times the price he’s asking, and six bucks USD might color it as more of a bite-sized budget title than you’re really signing up for. Make no mistake, this is an indie that’s worth more than a drive-thru value meal, and could easily match up respectably against the biggest names in its league. It is a wonderful game, and one that hits a lot harder than you might expect.

Whatever you’re doing now, drop that shit and go try Haunted Lands. Chances are good you’ll be dashed to bits upon its first level, bitterly embarrassed and desperate to blame the game for every one of your own failings. But endure, and you’ll see true beauty through the blood, sweat, and tears.

Haunted Lands can be purchased on Steam and GOG.

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I initially wrote this post in 2024 before starting my page. Most of these older posts will not be available for free subscribers, but I’m making an exception for those that wound up being ranked in the top 10 of my favorite games from each year.

Read more

I initially wrote this post in 2024 before starting my page. Most of these older posts will not be available for free subscribers, but I’m making an exception for those that wound up being ranked in the top 10 of my favorite games from each year.

Read more

I initially wrote this post in 2024 before starting my page. Most of these older posts will not be available for free subscribers, but I’m making an exception for those that wound up being ranked in the top 10 of my favorite games from each year.

Read more

Cleared Hot Arcade mode – while we won’t be seeing a second chapter for a good while yet, this patch purports to improve performance, especially on the Steam Deck, which was a sticking point for me earlier in EA.

I haven’t had the chance to test it out on the Deck, but I have tooled around in the new Arcade modes, which are pretty good fun. The skee-ball and minigolf minigames especially are impressive and clever gimmicks. Now get back to work on chapter 2!

Toziuha Night Atreu Mode – just in time, days after me uninstalling the game for the first time in months, Order of the Alchemists rips off another part of Order of Ecclesia and added an extra playable character who uses a gun as their primary weapon. From the moment Atreu appeared in-game I knew what he was a reference to, but I honestly didn’t expect the developer to go all the way and make him fully playable.

I say ‘fully’ because technically he is – you can, as far as I can tell, play the whole game with Atreu, leaning on his shotgun blast and grenade lob skills primarily as his actual pistol shots do very little damage, triple jump by shooting the air beneath himself, and very little else. He can’t change equipment, he doesn’t seem to get access to any elemental circuits, he still needs to collect key items to get through arbitrary gates, and worst of all, he can’t use any consumable items. He can pick them up, but the inventory menu for using them is just gone, which means he cannot heal. Yikes.

Tainted Grail weapons update – a free content expansion that seems to mostly consist of a bunch of extra unique weapons to find. Most of these designs seem… let’s say heavily inspired by Elden Ring weapon designs in particular, which is not a bad thing.

Possibly more interesting is the note at the end of the news post announcing this DLC, which teased a couple games coming from publisher Awaken Realms’ internal teams. The one that caught my eye, Hoarder, is a horror… ‘clean-up’ game, and actually looks to have some clever gameplay, humor, and maybe even a half-decent story. The news post mentions that the project director is a co-creator of Darkwood, and the trailer was good enough that I wishlisted it despite not playing horror games much.

Crimson Capes seamless co-op – I played the demo to this sequel of Windmills during a Next Fest last year, and while it was pretty interesting, I didn’t wind up getting it. Now, it’s received an update to allow for seamless co-op, without the need to re-initiate the session, which is great if you like to play with a friend. I would probably never do a game like this in co-op but it has reminded me that this game exists and might be worth grabbing soon.

Devil Spire Falls - the good times are over: “Cut Impact to Force by 50% again. Stop complaining about it or I’ll nerf it until you can no longer throw enemies even if you’re a max level hulk with 999 STR kicking a level 1 mushroom”

You know, I think impact values are fine. No further notes.

Death Stranding 2 PC port – My nearly-completed save file is stuck on a console many hours away, so while I usually wait to pick up a second copy of a game like this, I need to finish it sometime.

The State of Games Played

I’m already through Mexico and into Australia on my second run of Death Stranding 2: On the Beach. Boy, it really speeds things up when you can skip cutscenes in a Kojima game. I got a good laugh when the chapter 2 title came up and I held the button to skip cutscene and it went directly to chapter 3. I’m also laughing again at Norman Reedus’s delivery of lines like this:

I don’t think I’ll have the energy to bulldoze through the 80% of the game I’ve already seen too quickly, although I will be popping into DS2 and making progress when I can, if only because I have so much fun with the photo mode in these games.

I finally finished the last stage of Haunted Lands, and am going to assume, maybe incorrectly, that I’ve seen enough of the optional content to do this game justice in a write-up, so I don’t have to spend another week combing through extremely long and difficult levels and banging my head against improved miniboss variants. This is one of the best games I’ve played in a while, period, and I want to write about it sooner rather than later.

I also completed the Battle of the Blight in Approaching Infinity, which was probably the most engaging and tense setup for a gimmick run in a roguelike I’ve played, and got me fired up enough to immediately boot up my other run where I was heading to Sector 1000 and finish that off too. Meeting the Engravers was absolutely worth the effort, and having a fresh crop of ships to unlock, meta-progression bonuses to unlock [even if I don’t use them] and challenges to impose on myself has made me consider doing each of the modes added in the DLC so I have an excuse to write it up and thereby gush more about Approaching Infinity.

Writing

Nioh 3 definitely exists, and I totally wrote a post about it.

I’m currently psyching myself up to write up Haunted Lands, and should be publishing this week alongside some more bonus content. I also have to work on a project with a fast-approaching deadline… stay tuned!

Other

Idosra 2 has officially been announced, teasing a revamped structure, more abilities, and maybe most importantly, an engine update from Stencyl to Godot. The first game has had some trouble on some Windows machines, which is a pretty major issue, one that a new engine might help with, and one of the aims of the shift is to port the first game into the new engine. This is all very exciting news for me.

I really enjoyed this post from the developer of Fortune Summoners explaining their inspirations for the game, including gamebooks like the Fighting Fantasy series and Sorcery! I’m not sure why they decided to post this now, but it’s reminded me that I’ve been meaning to pick up the second release and see how it is. And it’s a cute post.

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The Nioh games are Team Ninja’s attempt to get in on the Souls-like fever of the 2010s. They’re also easily my favorite of the non-Fromsoft Souls-likes, a potent mix of character action, exploration, and RPG progression that I don’t think anyone else chasing that dragon really nailed. They’re far from perfect, but Nioh and Nioh 2 [and all their DLCs] scratch a particular itch that I think even Fromsoft themselves can’t, and with a strange stylish flair that helps them stand out from the pack. I’ve spent the past several years watching the release of Wo Long and Rise of the Ronin thinking ‘why don’t they just make another Nioh game already?’

Well, they made another Nioh game, and it is one of the most ‘another’ Nioh games imaginable. Nioh 3 takes the Nioh format, gives itself the ‘open world’ tag as the world looks on in mild confusion, and then struts around like it’s won a gold medal. And that’s pretty much it.

Let’s start with that so-called open world, because it is at once both the biggest change in the series and the most overblown claim the game makes. Just to be clear, Nioh 3 is not actually an open-world game in any meaningful sense. It technically has very big maps, yes, with tons of pins indicating micro-objectives and collectables, and you can explore optional side areas and just kind of run around killing respawning shit in a big field. But these ‘open worlds’ are split into three distinct maps for the major acts, unconnected and unrelated, with most progression limited to a linear path to the start of an isolated area that plays out essentially the same as the ‘mission’ structure of the first two games.

And instead of making the game feel bigger or more coherent, it actually makes it feel like all the content has just been smeared thinner over a wider area. Missions that would normally be a dense tangle with layered floors, nooks and secret areas to uncover, shortcuts and ambushes, are now just a bit less so. You get a lot of your skill points, weapon skills, and a multitude of distinct currencies by combing through the giant, sprawling maps, sniping balloon ferrets, kicking open chests, chasing ball cats, collecting Korok seeds, clearing enemy camps…

The ‘open-world’ maps are technically chunked out into smaller regions, and each one has its own level scaling and completion percentage to chase. Reaching higher tiers of completion for a zone gives you permanent bonuses, and eventually just reveals every point of interest in that location, infesting your map screen with pins and checkmarks as a reward for putting checkmarks on enough pins. The level scaling sounds like a big deal, but it really isn’t past the first chapter – I went the ‘wrong’ way at the start of the game, beelined up a route that turned out to have been the highest scaling available, and wound up brutally overleveled for all the rest of that map, but the differences become pretty muted past that point. The game is just kind of easy in general, though it’s hard to say if that’s the result of sloppy balance, open-world scaling, or me spontaneously getting much better at games in my old age. Compare that experience to the first two titles, where skipping optional missions means you’re doing pretty much the entire story extremely [but enjoyably] underpowered.

The pseudo-open-world format also means the level design suffers. Prior games had a real mixed bag, with some frustrating levels, some fantastic levels, and plenty of kind of forgettable and interchangeable ones. In Nioh 3, frankly, they’re all pretty forgettable. ‘Dungeon’ areas are mostly split between urban crawls through buildings, most of which feel about the same as any interior space in any Nioh game, and ‘Crucible’ areas which are all the same reddish hellscape of random lava pools, ragged cracked spikes, and floating platforms. The addition of a jump button… hell, actually a double jump, right from the start, also means that playable spaces are actually a lot less interesting and thoughtfully designed. Areas with roof items are now generally accessed by just hopping up some hay bales or whatever instead of finding a ladder, a lot of enemies can be cheesed by just changing elevation and catching them as they hop along to catch up with you, and the game has to make even more obnoxious use of invisible walls to box you in.

But jumping isn’t just relevant in exploration – there are now jump attacks, aerial combos, and more flying enemies to account for your expanded mobility, and it’s all just whatever. The combat in Nioh 3 starts out feeling a lot more complex than Nioh 2, just as Nioh 2 ramped up the options from Nioh 1, but a lot of the changes end up amounting to just that – changes for their own sake, with little perceptible additional depth.

The most major change to the action is actually the one I was initially most upset with, but won me over as I played more – the style shift. Unlike the first two games, where Ninjutsu was kind of a side track of refreshable attack and utility items you could sink some points into unlocking, Nioh 3 splits your character into two distinct forms – Samurai equips heavy armor and somewhat more standard weapons, and Ninja gains access to replenishing uses of their techniques and uses a totally different set of weapons. The differences are deeper than just equipment too – Samurai is encouraged to block and counter attacks rather than trying to avoid them, and so has the ability to do a perfectly timed guard, while Ninja has extra i-frames on dodge, and gains full invulnerability when narrowly dodging an attack.

They really do wind up playing very differently, but remain useful situationally regardless of your general playstyle. I loved swapping over to Ninja form to chuck out a few exploding shuriken, or when I had to be more slippery with a flailing boss, then twisting back into Samurai to string together an empowered chain of combo attacks. Each form equips a different guardian spirit, giving you quick access to a variety of special moves and elements, and both can still use Onmyo magic, which is now derived from enemy soul cores rather than a skill tree.

The downside of the quick access to ninjutsu is that Ninja form abandons the entire Stance system that the series’ melee combat revolves around, and half of all weapon types in the game therefore lose about two thirds of their movesets. Really, Ninja doesn’t need that much variety, since the form is more about flipping around through giant hitboxes and plinking shit with throwing stars or grenades, but it is sad to see so many weapon types essentially relegated to ‘rapid back hit on a stunned enemy’ duty.

But even the Samurai form somehow feels like its movesets have taken a step back. More moves are now bound to inputs that require you to tilt the movement stick backwards or forwards, on top of timing a block or whatever; too many moves are restricted to a single stance, and can ONLY be bound to a particular action, meaning tons of them are mutually exclusive for no really good reason. Even once you have enough skill points to start maxing out the weapon types you’re using, a lot of moves or combos for certain weapon types feel kind of awkward and stiff, like they’re missing some kind of linking move that either you can’t have equipped or just doesn’t exist. With only about half the total number of weapons getting three stances anyway, it doesn’t seem like the combat controls should have taken a step backwards, but that’s how it feels.

Another big disappointment is with the enemy variety, which is probably 80% reuse from the first two games. Now, Nioh 2 also had a lot of enemy and general asset reuse, but with a big twist – the Burst attacks added between games, and the flashy, risky, rewarding counters to those new moves, meant that even common enemies could launch a seriously scary assault that would catch returning players off guard. Those enemies still have their Burst attacks, as do the new enemies, but there’s nothing more, no new twist, no unique interaction, nothing but a few additional enemy types, none of which are visually or mechanically that interesting.

Even bosses are underwhelming – the handful of genuinely new, large yokai type bosses are decent, and have movesets that do push you to swap forms and deploy all your tools, but again, the “open-world” means that field bosses, almost entirely just copy-pasted from the first two games, are plopped around in random spots, or crop up as gatekeepers, sometimes multiple times through the game. The worst bosses, though, are empowered human NPCs, who can deflect, dodge, just kind of… fucking ignore your attacks to one-shot you through hyperarmor. All of which a player revenant or normal NPC encounter might do, but now with the added novelty of having about 500 times more health, and a stamina bar that might as well not even exist, so exacting and aggressive you have to be to have any hope of draining it before being forced off and watching it spring back to full in a fraction of a second.

Meanwhile, the one albatross about Nioh’s neck for the entire series has not changed at all – the loot is still insane and fucking pointless. Chests, minibosses, even a lot of enemies expire in a shower of bright glowing items, shimmering in rarity-indicating color coding, the vast, vast, VAST majority of which is utterly uninteresting – weapon types you have no intention of using, variants of your weapons that have a different spectrum of trivial, arbitrary bonuses, consumables you’ll never clear out space on your quickbar to use, armor that looks stupid, is too heavy, and isn’t even part of a set.

Every boss explodes in a shower of crap that you’re obliged to run around Hoovering up, every time you open your equipment menu is a groan-inducing slog through hundreds – I’m not fucking kidding, hundreds – of things to scroll through as you fight against your eyes glazing over, every few hours you’ll have to sit down and spend a couple minutes just channeling Marie Kondo as you purge the endlessly swelling list of shit that, hey, I don’t know, is this number slightly bigger than this other number? Does ‘imbue water’ spark joy in me? What does Pleiades (Ailing) even mean? Here’s a better question: who gives a shit?

Even once you’re playing NG+7 and engaging with the blacksmith system to carefully construct an equipment set that actually has bonuses that stack and meaningfully augment each other instead of just having 30-odd totally random effects, at what point are you ever going to care getting +6.7% better Ki Recovery Speed (but only after a Critical)? And, this being an open-world pile, or kind of one, New Game is going to involve you spending a lot of time picking up garbage that isn’t even remotely statistically comparable to things you’re already using, as opposed to a steady progression of at least moderately harder hitting sticks. Nioh 3 does attempt some mitigation – there’s loot filters, I think you can technically make your character auto-sell any items below a certain grade, and there’s a very thorough search engine built into the inventory and all crafting menus so you can pull up the exact weapon or armor set you’re looking for. You know what would be better, though? Dumping the ARPG loot pinata shit entirely.

I’m not done complaining though, because Nioh 3 is also a let-down in the one area I was most surprised by in Nioh 2 – the story and character arcs. While Nioh 1 was a kind of confusing series of disjointed vignettes that made little sense to anyone but scholars of Sengoku era politics, Nioh 2 somehow managed to tell a relatively coherent story, focusing more on fewer characters, and tying it back to the first game. Nioh 3 is a return to form, sadly, and is even more all over the place than 1. Since each chapter takes place in a totally different time period, you barely even get multiple cutscenes to see the main characters you’re supposed to be interacting with, supporting, fighting, much less have any context for why you’re slashing your way through another mountain pass, another abandoned village, another fortified cliff. Oh, and the voice acting is terrible.

The Nioh 2 DLCs took your character on a kind of victory lap series of time jumps further and further into Japan’s past, so there’s precedent for time travel and radically different settings even without leaving the Big Island, but Nioh 3 mostly wastes even this concept. The first two chapters essentially revisit the Nioh 1 time period and the Nioh 2 DLC 1 period respectively, and the only really unique chapter is the final one, which takes place in the grim-dark future of the 1850s. And the game doesn’t let you get ahold of a revolver even though an NPC has one. Embarrassing. Why even bother?

I say this as someone who really likes the Nioh games, and had some fun even playing this one – this game has almost no real reason to exist. It does very little that the second game didn’t do, the few new things aren’t broadly good changes, it doesn’t run particularly well or look any nicer, it doesn’t even do the bare minimum that new Nioh stuff usually does, and add a single new weapon type. I mean, unless you count Ninjas holding katanas differently. It’s just more Nioh. Not even more good Nioh. Just more. I thought about trying to beat all the side quests, trying to press into NG+, trying to wring a little more out of this sequel, but absolutely nothing about it has convinced me that I’d ever have more fun in it than just playing Nioh 2 again.

So that’s it. Nioh 3 is Nioh 3. It’s warmed-over Nioh, a sloppy pile of Nioh heaped on a plate and dropped on your table with a shrug by a tired waitress. Some Nioh from a couple days ago, still fine, won’t make you sick, won’t dance on your palate. It’s Nioh that’ll form a fuckin’ turd. Why, you mad you got the Nioh you’ve been waiting for? Wait here a couple months, I’ll go back to the kitchen, see if they can’t microwave some DLC for ya.

Nioh 3 can be purchased on Steam and Playstation 5.

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Haunted Lands release – the second of my Next Fest picks has already come out, and immediately sunk its claws into me. In fact, I wound up playing more of it than nearly anything else this week, and will therefore be discussing it more in the next section.

Daimon Blades major update and price reduction – this looter-slasher from E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy developer StreumOn had a rough entry to Early Access, but this week’s major patch has also included a permanent dip in the price – 20 bucks is a far more reasonable ask considering this particular insane French pile is even more unfinished than they normally are, and it’s low enough now that I can justify dipping my toes in finally.

Synthetik 2 Iron Fortress – Jesus Christ. More like Orange Orangtress. All four screenshots from the news page are like that too. Forget France, what the hell is going on in Germany? You guys okay? You know that’s just solid fucking orange, right?

Teardown multiplayer update – I don’t know that Teardown will really benefit from a co-op mode, or, like, some kinds of deathmatch modes too? I really don’t know what it is Teardown needs, though, and the specific genre of friendslop where you frustrate each others attempts to accomplish something productive seems like it would mesh well with Teardown’s sloppy and imprecise ‘puzzle’ structure. I won’t play it again, but this might make it more appealing for someone.

Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered Challenge Mode – this trilogy of remakes was one of the Christmas haul items I have been hoping to make time for this year, and an update to add some new bonus content, adjustable challenges, and new costumes sounds like a good reason to pick it up already…

Except the reception seems to be widespread repulsion. Recent reviews suggest that the update was outsourced, the costumes are AI generated, the content underwhelming, and the patch makes the game buggier than it was before, none of which is particularly difficult for me to believe. Huh. Maybe I’ll wait this one out a little more.

Solasta 2 Early Access – speaking of Early Access games that are acting a little too big for their britches… man, 40 dollars for one act? I get that they stepped up the graphics by about two generations but did a thousand people really pay 40 dollars for an early build of a sequel to Solasta? I don’t even know anybody who played Solasta but me. Where did all these psychos come from? And don’t say Baldur’s Gate 3 got everyone excited, BG3 was like 20 years ago.

Anyway, I didn’t like the first demo for this at all, but I liked the original game and what little of its DLCs I managed to try before putting it on the backburner forever and forgetting it existed so I’ll keep an eye on this developing situation. As a friend of mine said, Solasta 2 has ‘regular sized shoes to fill.’ But man. 40 dollars.

AOE 2 Champi nerf – speaking of throwing away money, you rat bastard fuckers, I paid for champi scouts, I should be allowed to rush my opponents three minutes in. It’s pay to win not pay to make a bad unit. I seriously cannot believe how hard the devs tore into the champis. It’s like they opened the spreadsheet of every variable tied to the unit and went ‘all of it. Just destroy it. Every single number here, change it for the worse.’ REALLY? Was it REALLY a problem that they built outposts TOO FAST? Was THAT why everyone was crying over a couple infantry showing up before they had their coffee? Outpost building speed? Give me a break.

The State of Games Played

The majority of my playing time this week was Haunted Lands. I can’t get over how good it feels, how diverse the characters are to play, and most of all, how genuinely brutal it is, in a way that is grueling but fair.

This is the first game in a while where how soon I get through it has more to do with the actual difficulty of the game than with me making time for it – almost every time I sat down at my computer since this came out I’ve immediately booted it up, psyched to claw my way to another checkpoint, and almost every boss so far has taken me longer than the damn bosses in Nioh 3.

The graphics, the music, the visual effects, everything feels incredibly refined, like a dream of retro gaming brought to life. Even if it completely falls apart from here on out [and I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually gets even better] it’s earned its price from me three times over already. If you’re not falling in love with this game already, all I can say is sorry, because this game is what I’m going to be focusing on until I get through it, and that might take a while.

But I did get around to playing a few other things – I wrapped up Toziuha Night: Order of the Alchemists after having picked away at it for months, and it was good to finally stick a fork in that one. Maybe someday I’ll give it another run, try out the Witch mode, see if the game is more enjoyable with a vague memory of what order to do areas in, but for now I’m just happy I saw it through.

I also finished the finale of Nioh 3, and puttered around a bit in the NG+, which is pretty open and free-form, though honestly not a lot harder so far. I remember starting the NG+ in Nioh 2 and getting demolished by the basic goblins, though to be fair I was very underleveled at that point in that game. The additions to NG+ in 3 don’t seem to be that much more beyond what’s typical for the pre-expansion games in the series, so I think I’m close to writing this one up and moving on until the DLCs show their faces.

While prepping my archival posts before the write-up of Toziuha Night, I took a look at the update history for BZZZT and realized there was one that addressed one of my biggest problems with the game at release – the lack of incentive for getting gold medals on stages. After revisiting the game, unlocking some of the new stages, and reminding myself how good the controls and music are, I have made the decision to unlock the write-up for it for public viewing. If you’re at all excited for Croak or the new Super Meat Boy, drop everything you’re doing right now and check out BZZZT.

I made a new character to explore some of the added content and skill balancing in Devil Spire Falls, and got a lot further than I have since the run where I ‘beat’ the game multiple times. Unfortunately, I also started encountering a bug where I would lose collision when going inside and just fall through the floor and get reset to the entrance infinitely. I can fix it by saving and reloading but it happened to an NPC I wanted to talk to for a quest and they didn’t get reset, and I’m getting to the point where I just want to submit a bug report and wait it out.

I have made it most of the way through the first day in Esoteric Ebb, met some great characters, had a couple hairy combat encounters, and ate a shitload of apples. I’m especially glad to have this sort of low intensity counterpoint to Haunted Lands, though I do feel a bit bad that Ebb got so rapidly overshadowed by another of my own picks.

I’m continuing to find myself clicking more with Battlefield 6, though I’m still extremely frustrated by the seeming lack of support for alternate modes and player-driven servers. The ‘hardcore’ experience especially is tantalizingly close to perfection, but spoiled by going too far in too many areas to still be consistently fun.

And finally, I have purchased the new Galactic Disasters DLC for Approaching Infinity, and gotten far enough in to an attempt at conquering The Blight to remind myself why this is the best roguelike I’ve ever played.

I also appreciate the developer’s comment in the latest news post regarding future plans and hopes for a sequel – you don’t really NEED to remake this game or go a totally different direction when the format is so easy to add to, append, build options for. But I would still be on board for anything else this dev decides to do in the future.

Writing

I felt a little useless this week until I looked back today and realized how much I’ve actually managed to do – including a write-up for a game that’s been simmering in the back of my mind for almost a year. And speaking of write-ups, I’m planning on dropping the Nioh 3 one early this week, as long as there’s no major disruptions and I can stop playing Haunted Lands for a couple more hours.

Other

I watched the 1953 movie It Came From Outer Space and it was amusingly bad, not just as a science fiction story, not just as a ‘horror’ film, but as a movie generally on top of everything else. The stilted lines delivered monologue style directly to the camera, the flaccid pacing, the aimless plot, it’s all barely elevated above self-parody. But my favorite thing was the aliens repeatedly and unconvincingly insisting that they are ensouled beings who merely masquerade as emotionless doppelgangers of humans to move freely in inhabited areas because we’re too racist.

The lady doth protest too much, as they say. If you don’t hear something say that and immediately have alarm bells going off in your head you’re probably already completely annihilated by ChatGPT so there’s no point in pursuing this further. Mostly this just made me really want to rewatch the FAR better Invaders From Mars from 1986.

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A few years ago, this game entered Early Access, and after having my curiosity piqued, I also bought and played the developer’s first game – Toziuha Night: Dracula’s Revenge. OotA is a direct sequel to Dracula’s Revenge, but they are very different games. The first Toziuha game is a pretty by-the-numbers Castlevania clone – a linear platforming action game where you swing a whip and lob axes at zombies. It’s definitely not the worst game of its kind I’ve played, but it’s also very rough, very amateurish, and brings very little of interest to the format.

Order of the Alchemists, on the other hand, is a much more ambitious project, an attempt to emulate the later DSVania games, and of those, the last, Order of Ecclesia, in particular. The parallels are frequent and obvious – you occasionally absorb new attacks via floating glyphs, there is a hub town with NPCs that send you on side quests, even a lot of the enemy designs and attacks are distinctly similar.

The world of the Toziuha Night games revolves around two forms of power: either making a pact with a powerful underworld demon, called a Toziuha, or having innate control over one element… and I do mean element in the atomic sense. You play as Xandria, an iron Alchemist who joins the Order with the sole intent of getting her revenge on the man who killed her foster family. After disobeying orders and getting bested by a chlorine Alchemist in the short prologue, she wakes up post-recovery, san health insurance, and must explore the region while recovering her strength.

As an iron Alchemist, she… mostly just has some blood magic, though it recharges so slow it’s not actually a big part of the moment-to-moment gameplay. Instead, she relies on various additional Elemental Circuits which she can bind to her iron whip, and castable spells/subweapons, both of which consume her [very slowly] regenerating mana. Many of these have a damage type of the more standard fantasy RPG variety to correspond with their Periodic Table element – Nitrogen causes cold damage, Sulfur fire, and so on. Enemies, as you’d expect, can be either weak against a damage type or resist or outright absorb it. You also have a backstep, and can eventually gain a slide and dropkick that lets you pogo off of enemies. Feel familiar yet?

The game’s pixel art is decent, certainly a step above its predecessor, and the effects are generally pretty good too. The portrait art is where a lot of the personality comes through – characters are rendered in a hand drawn, big-eyed style, which is very charming in a DeviantArt gallery sort of way, and a bit unnerving when it comes to the main villain, who kind of has those Ted Cruz Kind Eyes. There’s also a bit of the developer’s Nicaraguan pride in the consumable foods that give you status buffs, which are all given their local names and detailed descriptions despite the game taking place… I don’t actually remember where it takes place, but I assume Europe-ish. I also liked the way the setting and story merges magical fantasy with, like, a roughly turn-of-the-century level of physics and chemistry, including the magical superweapon being a plutonium bomb core, and the villain’s plan to use a hydrogen Alchemist to turn it into a thermonuclear warhead.

Unlike Order of Ecclesia, OotA takes place on a massive, mostly coherent map rather than a series of distinct offshoots, and this is simultaneously the game’s biggest asset and its greatest failing. The areas are nice and distinct, and the game has proper Metroidvania style mobility upgrades, in addition to the key and spell gating typical for later Castlevania games. There are branches, niches, and whole areas of the map that you’ll be coming across throughout your adventure, most of which will be inaccessible on first encounter, teasing you to return for a clean sweep. Good, that’s great. We like that, don’t we?

The problem is that Order of the Alchemists is, to be frank, just not very well-structured. I think the root of the issue is its status as an Early Access title – it was built up over a year or so of periodic updates, each one adding a bit more playable space to the already existing area, and like with Abiotic Factor, that means that the finished product has inherent pacing issues, segments that seem to drag on or lead abruptly or awkwardly into the next, confusing progression, and things that feel out of place if you’re not encountering them as a recent addition to your running playthrough. Many of the areas you’ll have to go through, probably multiple times in a run, are pretty long, and the fast travel locations are not exactly convenient to most goals and backtracking.

The map is what I would consider to be the bare minimum for a modern Metroidvania in terms of features and clarity, and in this case it’s still just not enough. There are far too many locked gates, environmental hints, out-of-reach ledges, and so on, and while you do get a bunch of different markers to manually annotate your map with, they’re fucking terrible.

Look at these. Which of these should I use to indicate a door that opens with a switch on the other side? What about a path blocked by a pillar with a giant skull in it? How about grappling hooks? A route that requires some mobility technique I haven’t intuited yet? An obviously special statue or foreground detail that has no use yet but likely will in the future? Do I just put question marks all over?

Then, once you do gain a new ability, or more likely, fail to find one and start making desperate stabs all over in the hopes of finding one, how do you know which way to go, which areas definitively dead end, and which you can still eke out some progress in? Well, I didn’t, and so many of my play sessions were consumed by me backtracking, combing through areas I’d already pretty much finished, beating my head against dead ends and sealed paths, waving at every NPC I could reach, hoping they might take mercy and cough up some hint that would end my agony. By the last few hours, I gave up, and found a fully annotated map online to guide me, and even then I got lost or found I’d done things in the wrong order.

The game also struggles mightily with balance issues. Early game is incredibly brutal, and was even harder before some patches – you would die in just a couple hits, the only reliable recovery option is reaching a save point or backtracking to one, and status ailments are oppressive. It feels almost as hard on Normal difficulty as OoE is on Hard, at least until you get a couple levels under your belt. Then, once you get some decent subweapons and can afford to stock up on potions when you go through town, the difficulty falls off in general, punctuated by occasional insane spikes, usually coinciding with the appearance of actual insane spikes as part of platforming gauntlets. Statuses remain dangerous enough to be a constant drain on your resources even once you can fill up on curatives – getting cursed and not immediately fixing it means you’re fighting without any subweapons or whip buffs until you get to the next save point, and that’s not usually a situation you want to be in.

Speaking of subweapons, they’re a mixed bag – some are pretty fun to use, some are flashy but take too long to channel to really use them in practice, and a few are just overpowered and make every other option obsolete. The main culprit is the upgraded shuriken, which lets you throw three stars down at an angle, pure non-elemental damage that can one-shot most regular enemies, burst down even minibosses respectably, is barely resisted by anything, and most importantly, is extremely mana efficient. This skill has been hit with multiple nerfs since release and it’s still probably the best subweapon, just by virtue of being the one that works reliably, doesn’t require any kind of aiming or foresight, and doesn’t lock you in place for several seconds.

One interesting feature is the ability to purify ores dropped from enemies and use them to craft special items and consumables – in fact, you need to do this in a few spots to make crucial quest items. It is, unfortunately, kind of tedious to do much of this, because you have to buy up stock of TWO different item types to synthesize pure elemental metals, and you have to grind the ore drops on top of whatever other drops you need, and some of those drops are absolutely obscene. Some of the gimmick endgame stuff requires upwards of 100 random drops. I ain’t running back and forth killing zombies for two hours just to save on a couple mana potions.

Bosses are a high point, both in terms of balance and design – most of them are hard, but appropriately so, and even when they do cause ailments it feels less like an irritating fluke than when it happens via a normal enemy clipping you. It’s actually a bit sad that so many late-game bosses can be almost brute-forced with potion chugging, because they mostly feel pretty good to fight legit. There are even secret no-hit rewards for bragging rights just like in OoE.

The game has four different endings, and each one requires you to go a bit further out of your way to unlock it. To avoid abject tragedy, you need to backtrack from the threshold of the final boss to tackle a hidden optional one, and the true ending then requires a lengthy sequence of backtracking, side quests, NPC conversations, and secret item collection that only begins once you’ve done that. The map woes intensify if you’re not resigned to spoilers at this point – hope you’ve manually written down where to find every conspicuous bird and statue in the game, because there sure as shit ain’t no bird or statue icon you can use in-game for that! Oh, except one of the birds only shows up at night [as in, system clock time… I think?] anyway, so if you’re hoping to do this all on your own you’re probably CAPITAL F FUCKED. The dev patched the statue quest so you actually only have to visit one of the statues now instead of all seven or whatever it was, but I guess he kept in the one bird that only appears at night.

I’m not done flipping my shit either because there’s also a mandatory rhythm game song you have to play to reach the true ending! AND IT’S REALLY LONG! But I’m not actually that mad, because it either bugged out and thought I beat it when I canceled an attempt out of frustration or it had a slaughter rule built in.

The game’s got a hard mode, in case you somehow thought this was all too easy, and it even has a gimmick magic-only mode now too, which is a cute inclusion from the post-SotN ‘vanias. Too bad the mana regen is still pretty sad even on the WITCH mode.

All my complaining aside, I really did enjoy Toziuha Night 2… at least, when I felt like I was getting somewhere with it. I think the game could use a bit more refinement in controls, a massive amount of rebalancing and, please God, at least some token effort at improved clarity and signposting for the midgame. But for a solo dev to take on the massive leap from “indie Castlevania 1” to “indie the last good Castlevania” as only their second or third game ever is commendable, and despite some rough edges, I think the amount of charm and personality to the game helps it stick the landing. I mean, also the fact that Konami hasn’t made a good Castlevania in almost as long as the developer’s been alive, that probably helps make it look better too.

Toziuha Night: Order of the Alchemists can be purchased on Steam, itch.io, and Nintendo Switch.

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I initially wrote this post in 2024 before starting my page. Most of these older posts will not be available for free subscribers, but I’m making an exception for those that wound up being ranked in the top 10 of my favorite games from each year.

I played the demo for BZZZT a few years ago, and was pleasantly surprised. It looks like a pretty generic spike-dodger platformer game, which is a genre I’m not a big fan of, but everything about that demo really clicked with me. It felt good, it was fun, and had a surprising level of polish. If it had come out relatively soon afterwards, I’d probably have picked it up right away, but I had all but forgotten about it by last year, when it finally came out.

BZZZT is a pretty straightforward platformer - you jump and dash through cycling hazards and make your way to the exit of the stage, optionally collecting floating golden bolts along the way. After you clear a stage, you are awarded with a trophy for collecting all the bolts or beating the par time, or a bigger trophy for doing both in one run. Taking a hit or falling down a pit results in an instant death [at least on normal] and you respawn right at the start of the stage for another go. The stages themselves aren’t terribly long, and the challenge level is fairly stable, but there are no checkpoints within levels, so you really do have to finish them fairly.

It’s harder to praise a good platformer on a mechanical level than it would be to pick apart a bad one, so I’ll just leave it at this - the controls are tight, the obstacles are fun, and the game has an almost perfect flow that makes a complete run extremely satisfying. Unlike the usual ‘masocore’ examples, BZZZT never feels like it’s pulling a mean trick on you just to trip you up or waste your time. It’s extremely rare to get to a spot in a stage where you seem to be forced to wait a cycle out, and I never found myself unsure of how to proceed.

The game also looks very nice - obstacles, enemies, and interactive elements are all readable, the colors, lines, and effects have a good amount of pop, and despite largely being about platforming in cyber tunnels, there’s a lot more visual diversity than you might expect. You even get to go outside and go swimming in a few stages.

But the real glue holding BZZZT together is the music. They did a lot right, and again, it’s more difficult to explain why it’s good than it would be to shit on a bad or boring soundtrack. One of the biggest perks is that the music continues seamlessly through your deaths and restarts, and even rolls over into each new stage, smoothly transitioning to new tracks as you enter the stage they start on. There’s a totally new track every few stages, so you never get forced to listen to any one thing for too long, and none of them are horrible or irritating. In fact, I really like a few of them.

A recent update added a few extra side areas, hidden behind gently indicated secret walls, which give you an optional challenge to clear and a collectable chip as a reward. These aren’t a huge difficulty spike, but they do give you a reason to revisit a few stages even if you aren’t chasing a 100% trophy, and a few of them even toss up some new gimmicks or gameplay changes. The game also has a handful of secrets that can just be used to bypass or shortcut some stages, usually at the cost of ramping up the difficulty by spawning a few extra enemies, which is clever.

There’s one big problem with BZZZT, and that’s simply that it’s short. Very short. I beat the game on normal with little difficulty in a bit over an hour, and revisited about half the stages to collect all the bolts and secret chips almost quickly enough to refund the game. That’s not a lot of game, even for an extremely highly polished indie title, and the main issue with that is that there isn’t any compelling reason to devote a lot more energy to it. As far as I can tell, nothing is locked behind getting a perfect clear on every single stage or finishing the game on Insane, which just limits you to 7 total deaths in a run and deletes the file on your seventh death. Now, I want to be clear, I’m not actually going to refund the game, and I probably will play it again, just to blast through the stages bumping the music - it’s not really a terrible value in any way. I just feel like a little bit more gatekeeping would give the game some more legs. I wouldn’t mind being forced to sit up a little straighter, sweat a bit more, even if it’s just for a token congratulations at the end.

BZZZT is a tight package, doing a great job at avoiding all the things that generally piss me off about the genre. It’s just a bit light on the content for its full price - so it’s a good thing it’s currently on sale, under the roughly ten dollar high water mark I’d recommend it at. Maybe someday I’ll make an honest attempt at clearing Insane, but I still wish there was some internal reason to do so.

Afterward

Later in the year, the developer added a Very Easy difficulty option as well as a further set of unlockable bonus stages, 24 in total, which are locked behind certain thresholds of Perfect stage trophies. You don’t need to fully 100% the game to unlock everything, but it does plenty to incentivize you to do more than just plow through the story stages once, and at this point I’d consider the amount of content and challenge required to see it all thoroughly satisfying. And the music is still good enough I have it on rotation in my own personal playlist.

If I re-ranked the 2024 games today I think BZZZT would go a bit higher than it did - 13th overall.

BZZZT can be purchased on Steam, GOG, and Nintendo Switch.

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I initially wrote this post in 2024 before starting my page. Most of these older posts will not be available for free subscribers, but I’m making an exception for those that wound up being ranked in the top 10 of my favorite games from each year.

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I initially wrote this post in 2024 before starting my page. Most of these older posts will not be available for free subscribers, but I’m making an exception for those that wound up being ranked in the top 10 of my favorite games from each year.

Read more

Game Releases and Updates

Blade and Sorcery Sentara update – ultraviolence simulator gets another load of free content, this time centering around the shopkeeper’s pirate-themed home culture. In addition to new maps, new enemy types, a new armor set, and obviously some new weapons, there have been improvements to the buoyancy simulations to make NPCs more realistically drown. Fantastic. I haven’t gotten far enough with my current character to unlock the magic flintlock teased in the news posts, but I have been having fun with the magic breath potions.

Void War Destroyer and Techno-Crypts – a robotic commander and a new type of facility to invade. Again, my current run hasn’t stumbled across any techno-crypts, but they also ironically wouldn’t have much luck looting one, as they’re a bunch of filthy death cultists puking poison clouds everywhere.

Tokyo Xtreme Racer update – one of my biggest problems with this game was how repetitive the battle music got. Well, now you can change the tracks around however you like, even putting boss music in as the default battle song, and they added original versions of the new tracks too. You can even use the custom collab songs from the recent DLCs, which is nice. On top of this, they added replays, a few new cars, and most importantly, the ability to buy and drive a work truck.

Tin Can VR update – this tiny survive-room simulator tasks you with holding out in an escape pod as you’re bombarded by radiation, meteors, and mechanical failures, now in VR. VR really elevates this game a lot – flinching and turning to face the sound of impact, fumbling with parts, dropping shit and losing it, all even more immersive than before.

I still wish there was a little more going on, like the ability to start a run with a few parts in storage as a little meta progression unlock, but I’ll at least see how long I can last with the most nerve-wracking sound effects since Sonic drowning music.

Esoteric Ebb release – one of my picks from Next Fest is already out, and already a contender for RPG of the year.

Tainted Grail rebalance patch – for some reason, in addition to some fleshing out of the third act, this patch includes a bunch of nerfs to mid-late game equipment, mostly hitting crit chance and mana shield builds. I don’t usually agree with nerfing builds in a single-player game, but on the other hand, I wasn’t doing a crit-chance build anyway so I don’t care much.

Banquet for Fools release – this followup to Serpent in the Staglands has finally left Early Access, and from the demo I played a few weeks ago, it might be worth checking out… if I wasn’t already juggling too much, maybe I would.

Devil Spire Falls NPC update – with a host of new options for ordering your hapless subjugated peasants and battered bandits around, teaching them skills, and even changing their role, this sandbox RPG is one step closer to… becoming a cozy farm builder? Aww, shit.

Approaching Infinity new ships, mine layer, and DLC – the last DLC’s ship-builder allowed players to begin games with highly customized vessels, and thanks to a little contest hosted by the developer, two submitted builds have now been officially added to the base game, as fully unlockable starter options. These ships even fill roles that weren’t well supported by the default roster, or were added by other recent updates [specifically the bounty hunter ship] and make use of new equipment. The game also now has an optional meta-progression feature, with a few permanent boosts available for selection at character creation and unlocked by pursuing similar goals and quest lines as the ship and profession unlocks. Neat.

Next week will see the release of another DLC, this time adding optional run-wide conditional challenges, including massive questlines and a ‘no sector revisits’ mode. But I might be most excited for this enhancement, hidden in the patch notes:

There is now a “sniffing” sound when the smell of a planet is revealed.

The State of Games Played

Besides a lot of demos, I mostly split my time between Diablo II and Nioh 3. In D2 I’ve respec’d my Warlock into Echoing Strike – the definitive ‘broken’ build, and also a decent amount of fun. The new Terror Zone changes are also mostly fun, but I have yet to get even a single Sunder charm drop, and based on the numbers I’ve seen thrown around, I might not ever. Good thing there’s not a lot of physical immunes.

I also started a solo Paladin through normal, twinked up with gear to ease the progression of turning him into a Hammerdin to make it through Hell and a Smiter to kill ubers. Boy, I hope Warlock torches exist already.

Nioh 3’s final[?] act has been dragging on for a while now, and I’m about to push on into what I assume is the very endgame, abandoning the extra collectables and sidequests so I can see what NG+ offers. I have to say, I’m not too impressed by the fact that one of the few new bosses is an Ulcerated Tree Spirit from Elden Ring. On the plus side, I did enjoy the hand-cranked Gatling guns that you can commandeer.

With my proper VR headset back in my possession, I could finally try out the new Thief game, commit horrific acts of violence in any of the many combat simulators I have, fly planes or spaceships all I want… but what I actually did first was put some jigsaws together in Puzzling Places. Ahh~

I’ve spent a couple hours in Esoteric Ebb, chuckling at quite a few conversations, unlocking my first companion, and eating out of the trash. I might pursue the actual main quest, just as soon as I’m done grilling this gnome I found about the philosophy of Alignment shifts.

And finally, I have warmed up considerably to the new map in Battlefield 6, which just… has something to it that’s missing from most of the rest of the game, and I can’t put my finger on it yet. Maybe it’s the gas clouds that give you some amount of cover from snipers and campers, maybe it’s the elevation and back entrances to points, maybe the trenches and bunkers just remind me of prior games. Whatever it is, it doesn’t translate to the rest of the game, at least not yet.

Writing

I was both very busy and very burnt out last week, so I didn’t actually write anything – I barely managed to write this post. But I should be back in top form this week, hopefully coinciding with some game completions and finally making use of my backlog of notes.

Other

I’ve got to assemble my new desk today. Wish me luck. At least the weather is nice.

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I’ve pulled out a selection of demos I think were really worthwhile, and which I’m looking forward to playing a full version of, many of which I’ve played some more since writing up my initial impressions. Each title will link to the post I mentioned them in first, and they’re in simple order of first appearance, rather than any sort of ranking this time, mostly because going through and thinking about the vagaries of stated release dates and release windows is too much effort.

Blades of Fire

The more I played this demo, the more convinced I was that MercuryStream are on to something special – this game is 2010 personified, full of weird ideas hammered together, and then honed to a razor’s edge. The impact of combat, the bulky character design, the phoned-in voice acting, it’s all evocative of a bygone age, like a forgotten cult classic unearthed and brushed off decades after its time. Hopefully the full game continues to deliver at this level.

The Eternal Life of Goldman

This game still has work to do in enamoring me to its platforming, and in making me care about the bottom-level narrative, but I’m already sold that it’ll be worth a playthrough on sheer spectacle alone. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a game with this much effort in its presentation, and to such impressive effect. I just hope there’s enough substance behind the flashy facade.

The Magus Circle

This is a genre that needs a healthy dose of innovation, and Magus feels like it’s delivering at least an experimental round of that. Getting deep into the waves, glancing nervously at my spells timing out, trying to scrawl out the proper glyphs while weaving through waves, I felt a glimpse of the way forward for Survivors-likes. It took me several attempts to beat the first boss, and my eventual success didn’t come down to grinding meta-progression or picking combinations that arbitrarily synergize the way it would in nearly any other example of the genre, but in getting better at drawing the shapes and playing competently. And the upgrade that gave my glyphs a fear effect, that helped too.

Shifting Sands

On a deeper replay, I found even more to enjoy about this isometric extraction looter – traveling merchants with powerful gear to sell, encounters with friendly scavs out in the wastes, sneaking into a more dangerous outer ring region to nab some loot and flee. Playing with mouse and keyboard made the inventory Tetris more fluid than on controller, and while I think the game still needs some control refinement in general, I think it’s got the gameplay basics dialed in pretty well already.

MOTHERSHIP

I’m putting this on here as a selfish hedge – if this developer manages to spend a decade making this remotely worthwhile, seeing their vision through while improving… every part of this experience, and I’m still around, I want to be able to point to this article to prove that I had incredible, piercing insight. And if nothing happens and this game evaporates and nobody thinks of it ever again, nobody will remember this inclusion anyway. The house always wins.

PROTON VR

This is essentially a fangame for one of my favorite VR titles, but it might wind up being even bigger and better on top of taking the best bits from COMPOUND. I have extremely high hopes for this, and it’d take some real work this time to actually disappoint me, especially now that my VR headset is back in my hands.

BOOST VECTOR EX

For a genre [or rather, subgenre of racing] that I don’t engage much with, this kept me coming back, with enough variety and style to win me over. I doubt I’ll ever be particularly good at BVEX, but I’ve had plenty of fun being mid with flair to pick this up.

Starvester

Continuing to ponder this particular orb may prove corrosive to my soul and sanity, but I’m going to do it anyway. In many of the same ways I feel like The Magus Circle takes the tired Survivors-like genre in fresh new directions, so the same is for Starvester and the Clicker clique. I’m genuinely interested what else this game can pull out to spice things up, and how soon I’m going to get to live out my fantasy of parasitically draining entire star systems.

Valerie

For all of the beautiful, polished, and highly stylized platformers that have been part of this event, I think this is the one I’m most excited to actually play. Hopefully I get a chance soon, and the rest of the game is as smooth and fun to explore as the little bit of the demo I played was.

Croak

Speaking of great platformers I can’t wait to play more of. I went back and got myself enough gold medals to unlock the last stage of this demo, and I had a pretty good time doing it. The speedrun requirements are strict enough I think I’ll have real trouble getting full golds, but if the quality and variety remains high, I’ll have no complaints about getting enough to at least unlock every level.

Blood Facsimile

I spent a bit more time in this after my first impression and found a bit more promise to this weird little game – levels actually link together in interesting ways, there’s more weapon variety than I expected, and there’s a sort of Metroidvania mobility upgrade system too… or at least I found a double jump. Now I just need to find a grappling hook or a missile pack and we’ll really be doing it.

Tiling Town

I must have booted this up at least three times before figuring out how to proceed past the 90 degree bend stage, and then I started knocking out sections one after the other, bam, bam, bam, uh… oh. Maybe over… no… huh. Okay, I’m stuck again, and I’ll probably be stuck until I glare at every single puzzle long enough to make a breakthrough. And like I said initially, if you like this style of puzzle game, this seems competently made and satisfying enough to scratch that itch.

Ardenfall

If an Unreal Engine 5 coat of paint on maybe the worst Elder Scrolls game didn’t quite do it for you, you might have more interest in Ardenfall. I went back through and pursued a few alternate resolutions of the demo’s little introductory quest, including clocking the first NPC you meet accidentally while clicking through dialogue. Hey, any game where you can punch an elf is pretty good.

Esoteric Ebb

And if a variety of amusing choices is what makes or breaks an RPG for you, Esoteric Ebb promises some esoteric options indeed. Of all the games on this list, I’m probably most excited for this one, which is good, since it’s coming out in a matter of hours rather than weeks or months.

Time to become a true menace to society – a willful purveyor of dwarf propaganda.

Haunted Lands

Another game that impressed more deeply on a revisit than at initial outing, I found myself thoroughly enjoying Haunted Lands once I swapped over to the retro-gaming Mage hanging out in my base of operations and took her through her own class-specific tutorial. Each of the four characters available have their own mechanics, equipable gear, and attacks, and hers are probably my favorite so far – can you tell I’m a Peach main in Super Mario 2?

Another week in the mines, another duty done, another round of promising previews proselytized. I hope this has been as illuminating for you as it has been for me, and I hope at least some of these games are as good as I think they might be.

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