Review: Hypnospace Outlaw (PC – Steam) ~ Dreaming Up Nostalgic Investigations

Steam store page – Wikipedia – Official website

So, when I’m writing this, it is 2024. I turned 31 years old back in February. I still love playing video games and surfing the internet since I was a young lad. Besides that, I also have a fascination for anything that has to do with dreams and their meanings. And then a game called Hypnospace Outlaw turns up on my radar. A game that promises to bring back the early years of the internet that I remember. Not only that, we are going to have to moderate the internet with a new technology that allows people to surf the internet while they are dreaming. We have to play as an unnamed enforcer to keep the internet safe and on top of that, we can create our own pages and mod this game easily. But before we start spending time on that, let’s find out if the base game is actually good and if it’s worth to start playing this game or if it’s something we should skip. Also, feel free to leave your thoughts and/or opinions on this article and/or the game in the comment section down below. Besides, dear enforcer and MerchantSoft, this isn’t harassment, this is a fair review/critique of the game. Removing this from HypnoOS isn’t the solution.

Dreaming Up Nostalgic Investigations

In this game, you play as an unnamed enforcer for MerchantSoft. A company that developed a headband that allows users to surf the web in their dreams. Your goal is to clean up the HypnoSpace for everybody. You start in late 1999, where your first case is assigned. When your first case is assigned, you are left to your own devices, and you can explore the internet by yourself. And let me tell you, there is a lot of internet to explore.

The story of this game is fascinating. You get to dive and explore through various pages on the internet about various things. A long time before social media was a thing and everybody had a website for their own creations. The HypnoSpace has several zones, with each their own theme. If you remember AOL, you will know what I’m talking about.

If you want to get the most out of this game, I highly advise you to take your time with this game. Don’t rush it at all. This game is sadly rather short if you only follow the main story of the game. It’s only 6 hours long and shorter if you know what you are doing. I mean, the speedruns are only around 11 minutes. The strength of this game is the depth it has. This game has three main chapters, and there are clear triggers that separate the chapters.

The deeper you dig and the more you read up, the more interesting lore gets revealed. I actually started a second playthrough to try and find the things I missed. And honestly, this game is one that gets ruined by playing it with a guide in any sort or form. Do not play this game with a guide. It’s a lot less rewarding if you play it with a guide in your first or second playthrough. The wonder of getting lost in all of these pages is just so nostalgic.

Now, while I was playing, I was wondering if it would appeal to the younger players out there. I’m somewhat on the fence about that. While it tackles a lot of subjects that are still somewhat relevant, I honestly think that it’ll mostly click with those who grew up with the internet of the ’90 to early ’00. With that said, I think that it still might click with the younger people, but know that the internet was very different back then.

Point-And-Click Detective

This game is a point-and-click adventure game in any sense of the word. You get a case, and you have to explore the internet to see if anyone broke the rules or not.

Each infraction you find, will reward you with HypnoCoin. You can use these coins to buy various things in the Hypnospace. This can go from stickers, wallpapers, themes, applications to so much more. But be careful, it’s quite possible that some of these downloads are infected with malware. And back then, malware was a lot more visual and less aimed at serving you a lot of ads or stealing your information.

The controls of this game are quite easy. You mostly click with your mouse and input things sometimes in the search bar. If you know how to do basic things with a computer, you’ll very quickly find your way around with this game as well. While I sometimes struggled with opening apps, I didn’t have too much trouble with the controls. Thankfully, there are some options to tweak the controls to your liking, like disabling that double-clicking opens apps. But, I’m a Windows user and the double click to open apps is just hardwired in my brain.

Visually, this game really looks like you are playing with the old internet. When I noticed that there was a mod that changed the OS into Windows 95, oh boy, I was sold. There are various themes for the OS in this game, and they go from amazing to silly. There is even a fast food theme. Now, if you read that this game is mostly created by a team of 5 people, it’s even more impressive. Not only that, one of the main designers of Dropsy is part of the team.

The creativity of this game never ceased to amaze me. Let me continue on the trend of the visuals and say that the little details on how the webpages look is just so realistic. The little typo’s here and there, the rabbit holes you can jump down, the crazy visuals on various pages… Even the “help me, I can’t remove this” and “Test 1 2 3″… I made me crack up and remember my early days when I used to write webpages in plain HTML with barely any coding knowledge as a young teen.

While I knew that wiggling the mouse sped up the loading of the webpages, I just never really did. I just enjoyed the webpages loading slowly and having that experience again when I was a teenager before Facebook or any other big social media started to take over. Yes, even before MySpace. While I only experienced the late “pre-social media internet”, I do have amazing memories of it.

On top of that, you have the amazing wallpapers and sticker packs you can buy and play around with. With this, you can really make your desktop your own. But, something that really triggered memories for me were the viruses you can encounter. Back as a young teen, I was a lot less careful in what I downloaded and seeing the visual mess some viruses can create in this game, it triggered some nasty memories.

Memories like how one time, I got a very nasty variant of the SASSER worm and each time I installed something new, my computer would lock up and crash. Yes, even when you tried to re-install Windows, it locked up and crashed the installer. After a lot of digging, I found that it was caused by a program starting with boot and I had to screw out my hard drive, connect it with somebody’s computer and then remove the start-up file from there. I also had a piece of malware that looked like the ButtsDisease virus in this game. Where it started to change all the text on a webpage to another word. Oh man, those were the days.

So, during your investigations you can encounter various things. Things like people breaking the rules, and you have to report those. You mostly need to focus on one of 5 categories. Copyright infringement, harassment, illegal downloads/malware, extra illegal commerce and illegal activity. Each law gets several infractions, and you do have to look for them. At one moment, I really that to take notes. I really have to say, taking notes for this game is really helpful, you even have the notes’ app in HypnoOS.

Sticking in your brain

Now, something I have to commend the developers for in this game is that they also took accessibility into account. Something I have to commend the developers for as well is the amount of content in this game, even when the main story is extremely short. I already talked about the visuals and how much I love them, but the music in this game is something else.

Some of the music tracks are really stuck in my mind and I wouldn’t be surprised that if I ever write another article in my favorite game music series, some of them will pop up in that. Some tracks are real earworms and got stuck in my brain. The music for some of the parody products in this game is so good, that I wish they were real.

The music in this game is a mixture of various styles, and I find some of them more catchy than the others, but it’s really impressive at how many styles there are in this game. If you know that this game has over 4 hours of music in it, that’s an amazing feat.

There is even a whole suite where you can create your own pages, music and mods released by one of the main developers of this game. It works only on Windows and you can read more about it on the itch.io page of Jay Tolen here. There were even various community events where your stuff could appear as an Easter egg in the main game. Yet, these tools are now part of the main game and are in your installation folder.

Speaking about this, modding this game is extremely easy. There is even a build in mod browser, and it’s a piece of cake to install and downloads mods. If you use the in-game mod menu, you don’t have to reboot the game for most mods to take effect. Just go to the main menu, choose the mods button and install the mods you want. Now, there are a lot more mods out there then just what you can find in the in-game mod browser, so check them out here.

The game has an autosave, it doesn’t really show when the game gets saved. There are three save slots, so if you want to replay the game, you can pick another save slot. Now, if there is one mod I highly advise is he expanded endgame cases mod. This mod expands the game quite naturally and is a lot of fun and additional challenge. But don’t read the description when you haven’t finished the game, since it contains quite a lot of spoilers.

This game can be quite tricky. Sometimes the solution isn’t the easiest to find. It’s even possible you don’t find the solution to every puzzle out there. Now, there is a built in hint system for this game. It’s somewhat hidden to avoid immersion breaking, but for a small HypnoCoin fee, you can get a hint to progress. I really love this system, since I rather have you getting a crowbar to get yourself unstuck than you getting a guide where it’s very easy to other things and spoil the whole experience. Since the fun of this genre depends highly on solving the puzzles with what’s given to you. If you want to get a hint, just search hint.

Overall I have been extremely positive about this game, and I have to say that overall this game is extremely well-made. I rarely found any moments where I thought, this isn’t right. But does that mean that this game doesn’t have any negatives? Well, sadly enough there are a few things I didn’t like about my experience and that I want to talk about.

First of all, I wish the default text-to-speech voice wasn’t the default language of your system if you aren’t English. I’m from Belgium and my text-to-speech voice reads English extremely weird. Thankfully, I had the English soundpack installed on my computer so after I went into the BIOS settings, I was able to quickly change it to the English one and it sounds a lot more natural and better.

Secondly, this is an issue in general with point-and-click games but the replay value just isn’t here. Once you explored everything, you have seen everything. There are various mini-games, but those are quickly beaten. While I personally don’t really see this is a negative, since not every game needs high replay value and sometimes playing it once and having the whole experience engulf you is the idea… I want to mention it, if somebody is looking for replayable games.

Third, you can find more infractions than what’s required to close the case. While I can understand that the game doesn’t tell you how many other things there are out there for immersion reasons, as somebody who wanted to experience everything, I was sometimes a bit annoyed that I couldn’t make sure I found everything. If only there was an option you could toggle to see completion percentage or something of that nature. Since, because of this, it’s possible to lock yourself out of achievements or content in this game.

Yes, this game has achievements and some of them are extremely tricky to get. It took me a lot of researching and exploring in HypnoSpace to find all the material. Thankfully, taking notes really helped me to find it all.

And the final thing is that the final chapters of this game feel a bit rushed and undercooked. One of the final cases is a breeze to solve if you have written notes during your playthrough and it feels like there is content cut out of the game. The ending comes a bit out of nowhere and if you didn’t explore everything or didn’t register certain things, the ending won’t make sense to you and it will loose it’s impact. Thankfully, the mod I shared earlier resolves this to a degree.

That’s all the negative I could say about this game, in my honest opinion. When this game clicks with you, it clicks really well and doesn’t let go at all. But, I’ll leave my final thoughts after the summary of this review. So, I think it’s high time for that since I have touch upon everything I wanted to in this review.

Summary

The bad:

-Text-to-speech should use English by default

-It’s possible to miss content or lock yourself out of it.

-The game is rather short.

-Rushed ending.

The good:

+ Amazing nostalgic trip

+ Amazing music

+ Fantastic writing

+ Easy to use mod tools

+ Great puzzles

+ Great controls

+ …

Final thoughts:

Hypnospace Outlaw is an amazing nostalgic point-and-click adventure trip through the late ’90’s internet. This game might not be for everyone, but when it clicks… Oh boy does it really click. Now, this is also a game you shouldn’t rush. The charm of this game is in all the little details and references that are hidden in the pages and the world building of this game.

While the game is rather at the shortside for point-and-click games, I don’t see it as a big problem to be honest. The journey that this game took me on was a lot more worth it to me than having a long game. Since, I think it would have lost it’s charm if this game kept going and going.

While I personally have more memories with the internet time period that came right after it, the developers are already working on the sequel to this game called Dreamsettler. I honestly can’t wait to play that one, since the quality that this game has is just top notch. The music is catchy, the visuals are amazing and it alls comes together in an amazing nostalgic trip that makes you want to play more.

There are some minor blemishes on this game, but you can work with them. Like I said before, when this game clicks, it really does click extremely well. I’d compare my experience with games like There Is No Game or SuperLiminal. Amazing small titles that leave a lasting impact on those who play it. All of these games are passion projects that turned out amazing and get a recommendation from me.

If you enjoy playing unique point-and-click games and/or if you have nostalgia for the old ’90’s internet, I highly recommend that you give this game a try. While this game is on multiple platforms, I highly recommend that you play the PC version since it has mod support that gives you even more toys to play with and expands the game even more.

I had a blast with this game and it’s a breath of fresh air for me. I’m angry at myself that I rushed my playthrough, but now I have installed several mods and I’m so going to replay this game after I have published this article. I also want to earn every achievement in this game, since I really want to see everything. I’m also extremely hyped for the sequel to this game and I can’t wait to start playing that, since that is going to be an even bigger nostalgic trip for me than this game. And with the amazing set of developers behind this game, I think we get another gem in our hands.

And with that said, I think it’s high time to wrap this article up. I want to thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 100/100

First Impression: Another Code: Recollection (Switch) ~ The Remembering Of A Remake

Nintendo.co.uk microsite – Wikipedia page

Next year, I’ll be blogging for 15 years. I have taken a look at quite a lot of games. Now, if you go back to the start of this blog, you might notice that I only started in May 2013. The three years before that, I wrote a personal life blog in my native language. I have since deleted that for personal reasons and started blogging in English in 2013. On my Dutch blog, I wrote an article about Another Code – Two Memories, but I haven’t written one for my English blog. Yet, I have mentioned it in 2014 in a top 25 list of my favorite DS games of all time. I have written an article on the Wii sequel called Another Code: R – A Journey Into Lost Memories in 2013. While my old articles aren’t up to my personal standards anymore, I still leave them up to see the growth I have gone through over the years. Now, these two titles became classics in my eyes. When Cing went under, I didn’t hold up hope of these games ever seeing a sequel or a remake. But, we got a big surprise this year. Suddenly, both games were coming to the Nintendo Switch and not only that, they were remade from the ground up. Did these two games grow like I did in my writing, or is it something that should be better left to the past? Well, that’s what I’m going to discover with you in this article. Feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of the article, but now, let’s dive right in.

Editorial note: shameless self-promotion: if you want to see me and my buddy Klamath playing through this title… We started streaming it. So, more opinions can be found in the streams. Here is a link to the playlist.

The Remembering Of A Remake

In this game, we follow the adventures of Ashley Mizuki Robins. In the first part of the game, Ashley got a letter from her presumed dead father to come to Blood Edward island to meet him on the day right before her 14th birthday. On that journey, she meets a ghost named D, who has lost his memories.

In the second part of the game, we fast-forward two years. Ashley takes a camping trip to a lake. When she arrives at lake Juliet, she gets flashbacks from when she was very little. Not only that, she meets a young boy whose father wanted to build a holiday resort at that lake but was blamed for the pollution of the lake.

Since this game is a point-and-click game and is quite story depended, I’m not going to talk more about the story than the two small blurbs above. In terms of the story, this game tells a very heartfelt story with very nice life lessons. The writing in this game is extremely well done. The build up towards the ending of the story is very natural and stays true to the themes of the game. The biggest theme in this game is memories and history. Overall, this game is quite relaxing, and the story is never really in a rush to move forward.

New in this version is that there is voice acting. While not the whole game is voice acted, most of it is and the non voice acted scenes have little grunts and vocalizations to indicate the emotions of what’s being told. I have to say that the voice acting in this game is fantastic. I wish the voice actors of this game had more of an online presence, since I had a hard time finding other works by these voice actors. The fact that these voice actors didn’t really promote that they worked on this game on their socials is a shame.

The voice acting in this game brings so much charm to the game. For this article, I replayed parts of the original DS and Wii game and I kept hearing those characters talk in the voice of the remakes. They fit the characters like a glove, which is a hard thing to do since when you have voiceless characters… Everybody has their voice in their head, and that doesn’t always match up with the official voice acting.

Now, in terms of differences between the original games and this remake… There are quite a lot of things. On the Cing wiki, there is a long list of changes. But I would highly advise you don’t read that before you finished the game. Since, it contains a lot of spoilers. I can say this without spoiling anything. The list of changes on the game article page has no real spoilers. If you haven’t played the originals, you won’t really notice a lot of the changes. Especially because most of the changes are done to improve the flow of the game and the story. Other changes have been done because some puzzles used the special features of the Nintendo DS or the Nintendo Wii in unique ways.

Arc System Works worked together with several members of the original development team, and I have to say that it really feels like this is the definitive way to experience these stories. Both stories now flow into each other, and it feels more like one big story. If you didn’t know better, you could think it’s just one huge game with those major chapters. They have done an amazing job of translating the story into a modern area without destroying the original messages and atmosphere of the story.

Fuzzy memories make imperfections

In terms of visuals, this game goes for a cel shaded look. This makes the remake of the original DS game look more in line with the Wii title. In the original DS game, the game was played as a top-down puzzle game, with some moments you could see a 2D scene that you could explore.

Visually, this game is quite detailed and looks amazing. Yet, I have noticed some rough models here and there. A book here, a window there. Some of them really stick out like a sore thumb. Now, I might be very critical on these things since I review games as a hobby. But let me tell you this as well. Overall, this game looks amazing. Timeless even. There are only a handful of objects that could use some touching up.

I have the same opinion on the animations. Overall, the animations are fantastic. Seeing the first game in 3D was breathtaking. It brought the game to life in such a different way, and I’m all for it. There were a few stiff animations, but if you aren’t looking for them, I can guarantee you that you won’t notice most of them. I especially love the comic book style cutscenes where the characters speaking go inside their own square next to each other. The animations in these cutscenes add some charm to this game, it makes the more relaxing nature of this game shine even brighter.

The controls of this game are excellent. Sometimes the motion control puzzles are a little bit wonky, but overall they work perfectly. The only thing I really don’t like is how, by the press of a button, you can see the orientation of Ashley. Now, what do I dislike about this? Well, it has a sort of build in walkthrough attached to it. This is something that’s too easily accessible, and I have pressed the button too many times.

Something I’m mixed about is how the additional lore spots are now somewhat easier to find. In the original DS game, you could find special cartridges with additional story lore on them. In this game, the hiding spot is located on your map. So, if you have missed one, you can quickly see on your map in which room you need to look. Now, some of them are hidden in very tricky places. During the stream, I have seen Klamath walk past two of them several times. If you want all the additional lore, you will have to keep your eyes peeled.

If you have played any point-and-click adventure game, you’ll know what to expect here. Personally, I compare this game quite a lot to Broken Sword 3, but without the platforming. You can explore the environment, and you have to solve various puzzles. Something unique is that you can also take pictures. And let me tell you, keep every mechanic the game teaches you in mind. The fact you can take pictures is something that is going to be quite helpful during the solving of the puzzles.

The only complaint I have is that solving some puzzles have a bit too much menu work involved. I especially remember one puzzle in the first part of the game where you have to weigh coins. Instead of them being all five on the table, you have to take them from your inventory each and every time. And the annoying part is that the last two you used, move to the last spot in your inventory. There are a handful of puzzles where some quality of life improvements would be very welcome.

Relaxing with puzzles

There are some amazing new features in this game as well. One of my favorite things is that you can access a big board where all the relationships between the characters are mapped out. Not only that, when you open the profile, you can read a small note about them. If you click on Ashley’s profile, you will read a small hint on what to do next. So, if you put this game down for a while, you can catch yourself up quite quickly.

Also, something I adore is the attention to detail in this game. For example, in one of the puzzles, Ashley digs into a building blocks box. After she found what she was looking for, you will notice a small building she built next to the box with the blocks she took out. There are various other moments like this, and it adds to the charm and realism of this game quite a lot.

The more relaxing nature of this game not only comes through the visuals and gameplay, but also through the music. The music in this game is a rather calming and relaxing soundtrack. The main motive is piano through the whole soundtrack. Other major instruments are violin and acoustic guitar. The soundtracks fit this game like a glove. Now, it is tense when it needs to be, but it never steps out of its lane. It keeps being that relaxing soundtracks that brings this game more to life, and I have no complaints about it.

The biggest strength of this game is the charm of it all. The writing, the music, the sound effects, the puzzles… It all flows together so well. While the game is only roughly 15 hours long, if you know what you are doing, it’s a very enjoyable time to play through. In this remake, the game also auto saves now but outside of cutscenes, you can save at any time in 15 different save slots.

Currently, I’m over midway in the second part of the game and I have been enjoying it quite a lot. While the game has it’s minor shortcomings like some rough object models and some annoying menu’ing during puzzles… I’m falling in love with these titles all over again. If you would ask me if the remakes or the originals are better, I’d have to say both. Both versions still have their charm but if you want to experience both these titles, I’d really advice to go for the Switch version. Since, it brings both titles together in a lot better way.

I mostly have minor complaints about these remakes. Like how silly it is that you can only have ten pictures saved and deleting them is a bit too fincky. But overall, the issues I have with this game are mostly minor. Maybe a bit more time in the oven or a polishing patch will bring this game to perfection.

A lot of other reviewers are giving this game lower marks since it’s slower paced or it’s a remake of a rather obscure duology. I personally disagree with these lower scores. These two games deserve another chance in the lime light since they are quite amazing games. I personally don’t mind the slower paced gameplay, since it’s refreshing to be able to wind down with a slower game. On top of that, if you look at the care the developers put into remaking this game and bringing it to modern audiences while not chaging too much to alienate fans of the original is such a fine line to walk on… And they never fell off that line in my opinion.

I can totally understand that this game isn’t everybody’s cup of tea. But, the complaints that this game is linear and doesn’t have a lot of replay value, I find ridiculous. I mean, does every game need to have a lot of replay value and let you explore a wide open world? No, it’s okay to play a game where you need to go from point A to B. It’s okay that the story looses some of it’s charm because you know how it’s going to end. It’s how that experience impacts you, that’s what matters.

The reason why I’m so happy to see remakes of these DS and Wii titles is because we now have remakes of amazing titles like this one and Ghost Trick for example. Now, because these two games have been remade, I’m holding out hope that Cing’s other titles like the amazing Hotel Dusk and it’s sequels are being remade as well. And if they are, I hope the same team is working on them since the love and care they placed into remaking these two titles is amazing.

I remember Klamath’s reaction when I suggested this game for streaming. He was worried that it was going to have low numbers and not a lot of interest. But, after our first stream, he started calling this game a hidden gem. I mean, if this game can have that kind of an impact on somebody who loves point-and-click games and the fact that we had a very high number of viewers watching our streams, it must mean something.

This game has a lot of impact and I hope that others who enjoy puzzle, adventure and/or point-and-click games give this game a chance. It’s something different especially since it’s slower paced but if you let it take you by the hand and if you walk along the journey, you won’t regret the powerful journey you are going on. It’s a journey that will stick with you and sometimes a memory will pop back into your head. You’ll remember the fun and relaxing times you had with this game. While the game isn’t perfect, the positives far outweigh the negatives and it’s one of those games where going along with the ride is the most important. Since, the ride of this game is one of the best point-and-click games I have ever played.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I’m curious to hear what you thought about this game and/or the content of this article. So, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below. I also hope to welcome you in another article, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

First Impression: Spirit Hunter Volume 3 – Death Mark II (Switch) ~ Ghost and Ghouls in School

Nintendo.co.uk microsite – Wikipedia – Death Mark Wiki

It’s finally here! The 3rd game in the Spirit Hunter series. If you have read my blog in the past, you might know I have been waiting for this game since the studio launched the crowdfunding campaign for this game. Back in 2019, this game got successfully crowdfunded. The game came out in Japan in December 2022. The English version was going to come out in October of last year. But, it got pushed to this year, and we saw a release on the February 15th, 2024. While a lot of other amazing games have come out this month, I have been mostly playing this game. Does it live up to my expectations, or did it ruin the series for me? In this article, I want to talk about my honest opinion on the game, while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of this article. So, it’s time to dive right into this new volume in the Spirit Hunter series.

Editorial note: to avoid spoilers, the screenshots will only be of the first chapter of the game.

Ghost and Ghouls in School

Unlike the previous volume, NG, we don’t play with as a totally new character. As the name implies, we continue the story of the first volume, Death Mark. If you are afraid that you need to play Death Mark again to understand the story in this game, don’t worry.

The game explains who the returning characters are, and the game doesn’t spoil what happened to them in the previous game at all. Some characters hint at their chapter in Death Mark, but not outright spoil it. The way how this is handled in this game is impressive. This way, you can play the games out of order without getting a lot, if any, spoilers on the previous titles.

While you can jump into this game without playing the previous games, it’s quite helpful if you have played the previous titles. The references won’t fly over your head, and it makes the writing that more enjoyable. In this game, you take on the role of Kazuo Yashiki, the protagonist of the first game. A few months after Death Mark, he gets called by the headmaster of Konoehara Academy since there are rumors of a spirit haunting the school. This spirit called “the Departed” is posting disturbing notices of killing a student at night. The investigation is started after the first student has disappeared, and the second notice has been found.

Compared to the two previous games, there is some more voice acting in this game. While not everything is voice acted, it’s more than the previous two titles. It’s not fully voice acted like Corpse Party, but the voice acting mostly happens when a character gets introduced or at very special moments. The voice acting in this game is quite well done, and I only wish there is more in the next games. Since, I honestly think that the voice actors really nailed the personalities of their characters and might make the game even better.

To really avoid spoilers, I’m not going to talk too in depth about the story in this game. But what I can say is that overall, the story follows the structure of NG quite a lot. I haven’t finished the game yet, but so far I have been enjoying the story. Surprisingly, this game is twice as long as Death Mark. If you know what you are doing, you can beat Death Mark in, give or take 11 hours. NG can be beaten in, give or take 16 hours. According to howlongtobeat.com, this game is 25 hours long.

Now, this game doesn’t feel like it’s taking 25 hours to complete to me. While I’m playing on my Nintendo Switch, where you can’t really see your playtime very well, I did write my playtime down for a while and honestly, I can totally believe this game can take you between 20 and 25 hours to beat. The story flows so well, that you get the impression it’s shorter. I think that mostly has to do with the lack of padding there is in this game. This game doesn’t waste your time and gets right into the meat of the game. This game takes you on a journey and doesn’t let go. It tries to keep you on the edge of your seat to see what’s going next, and it succeeds in that for the most part. But for a horror game like this, this breakneck pace is a knife that can cut both ways.

Tamer Ghosts

In some ways, this game is a lot tamer compared to the previous two titles. All the chapters in this game involve the student body of the academy in someway or another.

I can’t really put my finger on why, but I found this game less scary than the two previous titles. This game has its scary moments, but it’s a lot tamer in its scares.

Maybe the rather fast-paced flow of the game isn’t doing it any favors. There is not a lot of time for the actual scares to sink in and grab you by surprise. Thinking about it, padding is quite essential in horror games. Since it gives you the time to let it all sink in. The strongest moments of horror in this game are the cutscenes before the final spirit battle at the end of a chapter. The small cutscene of the spirit entering the room is something I want to see more of.

Another thing that isn’t doing this game any favors is how lame the actual jumpscares are in this game. In the original Death Mark, we had some very creative jumpscares and a lot of them fit the context of the story extremely well. Now, NG had a few cheap and easy jumpscares. But, it dared to even insert jumpscares and creepy moments in the pause menu. Now, I can totally understand people not liking jumpscares and I really like how you have an option to disable them in the options’ menu in this game. I left them enabled to see where the creative jumpscares are in this game.

I was extremely disappointed. Every jumpscare in this game is during scene transitions. And not only that, if you play on a controller, your controller rumbles several frames before. The tutorial actually tells you that it’s a feature so you can brave yourself. This is an extremely stupid mechanic and is a step back from the previous two games. Currently, I’m midway in the game and I have only seen a maximum of four jumpscares. And I can only remember 1, while I can remember several from Death Mark and NG. This way I’m less on edge and the actual scares have less of an impact on me.

It was really promising in the first chapter, where you get introduced to special events that can actually drain your soul (health) if you make a mistake in your investigation. The potential to make you think twice before you investigate something would make a player very nervous. Are you sure this is the right path forward, or will it lead to loss of your soul? Especially since a spirit interaction can happen at any moment, and you need your soul power to be as high as possible for that. I’ll talk about that more later.

Yet, this mechanic is extremely underused. After its introduction, it’s barely used at all. Apart from some forced moments, I have barely seen any of them. If we ever get a volume 4 in this series, this is a mechanic they surely need to develop further. Also, the penalty for these moments is way too weak. Especially, you have a button to quickly travel back to the save room to fill your health to the maximum.

Something else that makes this game tamer is the fact that it blocks off some exploration. There were several times when you were stopped from exploring the hallways of the academy because you get tunneled to the right location to investigate next.

I honestly felt that after chapter 2, this game got a lot tamer and the scares in this game are somewhat underused. It’s a shame since there are a lot of improvements in this title that will take the series forwards. A perfect example is when you select a wrong choice, you don’t have to replay the whole interaction anymore. You start right back at the start of the act with the loss of some soul.

Also, you don’t have to pick the right character anymore while facing the spirit. Since, you can actually choose the standby characters during your suspension acts and spirit fights. Granted, this takes away from the puzzle elements in this game, but it fixes that you have to go back to the save room to change character and go back to face the spirit. It saves a lot of hassle with juggling saves.

More game this time

There is a lot more game in this volume compare to the two previous games. First, the exploration is extremely different. This time, you don’t go from room to room or from scene to scene. You can actually walk around with your character. There are some moments where you explore a room, and it goes back to the style of the two previous games. And I love it. The controls are extremely responsive and easy to understand. The only issue I had is that the skip button sometimes didn’t work after the first press. But it’s something that didn’t really bother me that much.

Another major improvement and gameplay element in this game is how there are collectables in this game. Yes, in each chapter there are various teeth of lost souls you can find. These have two benefits for you to find them. The first is that when you collect enough of them, you can actually level up and increase your amount of soul power you have. Let me tell you, this comes in extremely handy since some fights can be brutal if you haven’t solved the puzzle in your mind yet.

Another benefit of collecting these teeth is that it unlocks more information of the characters in this game. It’s a nice addition, but not the main reason you should collect them, since the additional information is mostly for 100% completions and don’t really serve a gameplay mechanic beyond that.

Now, what can you do with these teeth? Well, this time the collectable is more than meeting somebody if you collected all the “D-Man Cards” in NG. Now you can purchase special items with them. These will help you in combat quite a lot and are somewhat essential if you don’t want to quickly get in a game over loop. But I’ll talk about the tense moments and spirit fights later in this article. Just like the D-Man cards, these teeth are chapter based. So, make sure you explored everything before you move on to the next chapter if you want to collect all the teeth.

Now, there are also blackend tooths that can appear. These curse a whole area and drain your soul power while you are in that area. You can’t leave that area before you have found and destroyed the blackend tooth. This is an amazing mechanic I would love to see happen more in the series. I would also love to see it being more creative, since after you found them, the puzzle is solved. I would love to see in a sequel that you have to use a certain item or interact with it in a certain way to destroy it.

The stats system comes more into play this time around. There are several puzzles where you need to have a certain character with you to solve. And it’s made even easier, since you can quickly see the stats of the other characters in the chapter from the pause screen. While it’s sadly underimplemented, it’s a step in the right direction and I would love to see more.

The tense moments like the Live or Die from the original return as Suspensive Acts in this game. Instead of your soul power being a countdown clock, you now how two things to worry about. The first thing is that you have soul power. Each action costs a certain amount of soul power. Not only that, each action has a chance to succeed or fail. If it fails, the next time you preform that action, the success chance increases by quite a lot. Also, a wrong action can give you a big penalty to your soul power.

While I can totally understand that this new system isn’t going to click with everybody, I honestly think it’s perfect. The only thing I dislike is that the options are a bit too limited. If you spend your time collecting the teeth and buying the items, the amount of choices you can pick from makes the spirit fights a lot easier. So, it’s a balancing act. How difficult or easy do you want to make it for yourself?

The biggest issue people have with this new system is that it’s based on RNG. I can totally understand that from a gameplay point of view, but it actually helps to make this game even more scary. Since, actions can fail and not everything can happen perfectly from the first time.

On top of that, this game has several endings. Like the previous titles, it depends on how good you purify each spirit. This time, you get even more tested upon how well you understand the spirit you faced. This time you don’t destroy or purify the spirit during the fight, you actually have to do one more interaction and depending on that, you get towards a certain ending. Honestly, I can’t really choose which system I like more. At one hand, now you are tested if you understand the grude of the spirit, but on the other hand… Now, you don’t have two ways to finish the spirit fight and you having to figure out if you did it right. Both systems are quite enjoyable and maybe in a sequel I would love to see both appear.

Visually, this game is really amazing. The game has a very similar style compared to the two previous games and the art this time around is amazing. Several times I was looking in awe at my screen at the spirit designs. Apart from the spirit entering the room, there are no real cutscenes in this game. A lot is done by big 2D drawings with the text describing what’s happening. To avoid me talking in circles, I’ll just say that the visual style of this game didn’t dissapoint. You can even choose between two outfits for the main character.

I really want to talk more indepth about the visuals and describe them more, but I’m not going to do that to avoid spoilers in this article. But let me tell you, this game has amazing design. You’ll get the most out of the visuals and the scares when you are playing this game not too far from the screen. There are some details on the spirits you can miss if you are setting too far from the screen. The first time I encountered the Departed, I didn’t notice some details since I was playing on my big TV and I set three meters away from that. But, the second meeting was while I was playing on the train to work. That time those details caught me off guard and I actually jumped a bit.

In terms of the audiovisual design, this game is pretty good as well. The sound effects in this game are pretty good. Some of them are re-used from the previous games but why change a winning formula? But the music is something that’s extremely well done. I already added the soundtrack to my playlist, I love it that much. The music is hitting the same atmosphere compared to the two previous games but it’s also standing loud and proud on it’s own two feet.

Now, there isn’t an autosave in this game just yet. So, don’t forget to save every so often. This time around we got 99 save slots. While the actual save file only tell you if you are at the start, middle or end of a chapter… We do have a lot more save slots now.

Also, we have a gallery in the main menu where you can see the different artwork, character profiles, play through the sound track and also watch the spirit introductions. You can even choose which partner is with you without having to replay that chapter. And there is also an “extra menu” that will unlock when you have beaten the game… What will that be… I’ll find out soon.

So far, I have been enjoying this game quite a lot. This game changes the formula of the previous two volumes quite a lot and makes it more like a scary game than a scary visual novel with some interactive elements. The biggest complaint I have with this game is that there are a lot of things very undercooked. Some mechanics are barely used or don’t have a lot of gameplay to them like the blackend teeth or some just fall flat on their face like the jumpscares.

But, I’m really loving what I see in terms of evolution through the series. I really think there is a lot of potential to make more volumes in the series. If this game was meant to test the waters with the new mechanics, then I have to say that is was extremely successful. I can’t wait to beat this game and see how the story will end. Now that there is more gameplay in this game, I even dare to say that this game might interest people who enjoy playing adventure games as well. The negative/weaker parts of the game don’t outweigh the positive and good parts of this game in my honest opinion. There is a lot of potential for growth. I look at it that way. And what we got is an amazing foundation, especially since there aren’t really any mechanics or things that don’t work. It’s just that they lack some depth.

Now, if you are a fan of the previous two titles, Death Mark II knockes it out of the park and then some. If you have never played any Spirit Hunter game, this game comes highly recommened if you enjoy horror and/or adventure games. Don’t let this series be a hidden gem and give it a shot. To me, this game was totally worth the wait. And honestly, I’m actually crossing my fingers for Spirit Hunter volume 4. Since if they can do this with the series, oh boy… Can’t wait to see where they go next.

And with that, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then… Have a great rest of your day and take care.

Speedrunning Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine GBC – Level 5 – Shambala Sanctuary

Level 3+4 speedrun article

While my focus has shifted away a bit from speedrunning, I still sometimes try to beat the records for the Game Boy Color version of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. Now, since we got a new game announced, called Indiana Jones and the Great Circle… I honestly think it’s a great moment to continue that series on my blog, where I explain the starts and fastest ways according to me to beat the game. I want to say as a disclaimer that I’m talking about the current level speedrun records. The_Kovic made an awesome TAS of this game, I mainly want to talk about the current human speedrun. So, let’s dive right into it. Feel free to leave your questions, comments and/or thoughts on this article in the comment section down below.

Current records

One term I’ll explain is something I talked about in the introduction, I talked about “TAS of this game”. TAS stands for Tool Assisted Speedrun. This means that it’s created using tools like save states, slowdown amongst various others. Also, in these runs we can control the input to the frame. Basically, this means that we get a look if the run is perfected.

Now, comparing the route of the TAS through the game and the route of the current record, we basically don’t see a lot of differences. The biggest difference is that the movement is a lot cleaner and a lot of extremely risky jumps and tricks are preformed. From watching the video, the current TAS is, give or take 7 minutes 5 seconds.

Currently, the record for Shambala is 7 minutes 51 seconds, set by myself on December 10th 2023. I know it can go lower since I have already done it. But, due to me messing up my OBS settings, the video is anything but watchable. I decided to not upload the video, but I know it’s possible. Currently, my personal best is 7 minutes 40 seconds. I’ll explain how to save time in this article, since I even think it’s humanly possible to go even below that by a tiny bit.

On January 22nd, 2022 I also set the current record for all treasures in this level. The current record is 8 minutes and 57 seconds. Now, this run doesn’t use all the most optimal jumps and tricks. This is something that can go lower. In the guide, everything that’s in cursive is additional information for the all treasures route.

The route

The level starts with a little dialogue box that Indy needs to hurry up because the Soviets aren’t too far behind. In the PC version, the Soviets only turn up after you pick up a certain key. In the Game Boy Color version, they are already there. If you want to run this level, I highly advise you to learn where the 5 guards are in this level.

I had several runs where I lost time due to bad guard movement RNG. The first guard is when you move up. Just run past this guard to go to the next screen. Yet, if you are doing all treasures, the first treasure is to the left here. So, pick that up first. Usually, I pick up that red gem while at the right most edge of the texture and already turned to the right to run back to run up.

Keep running up towards the building, which is actually Shambala. It doesn’t really matter where Indy stands to open the door, since the game forces you in the middle of the entrance when you enter it. When you enter, you’ll notice a block to the left. Don’t make the same mistake I quite often make. It’s faster to go to the right block and move that one to the side first. So, move the block to the side and press the button that gets revealed. Do it for the right and left side, in that order.

After that, move upwards on the left side of this room towards two doors. Something I do that’s different to the TAS is I press the third button before I enter the next room. The TAS presses the button when we exit from the other room. Personally, I think it doesn’t make a lot of difference timewise, maybe 2-3 seconds. The reason I directly go for the switch is that I don’t want to forget to press it. The guard is usually now facing away from Indy and walking towards the other door. The TAS route is riskier, since there is a high chance that the guard is facing towards you when exiting the other room and can get a few shots off. And those can be quite dangerous, since the TAS even finishes this level with one health point left. Anyway, for the next room, you need to take the left door.

Now, the next room has three parts to it. It also has three bricks to move, well, depending on the route you are taking. But be careful here. There are two guards roaming around in this room. RNG can really screw you over here depending on how these guards move. Now, if you take the all treasures route, you have three bricks to move. The one for the treasure is at the far left in this room. If you are confident in your jumping, it’s possible to stand on the left most edge of this block and jump up towards the green gem. If you aren’t, move it once right and then jump up towards the green gem.

Now, we take the middle section. This is a little bit to the right when you enter from the left door. You’ll see two gears moving on the wall. Move the block over once to the left. If you stand on the right most edge and face right, you’ll be able to land on the higher platform with the gear. Feel free to move it closer if you don’t feel comfortable with those edge jumps.

After you picked up the gear, move towards the right most section. Now, we do the same block pulling thing here as well. If you can, try to jump up towards the ladder. The less climbing you do, the more time you save. Climbing is really slow in this game. When you reach the top of the ladder, we see the first Ice Monster of this level. Usually, moving to the top row of tiles and jumping over it towards the door avoids damage.

Now, in the following room, we have a hallway and two higher sections. Go towards the section on the right and move the block on the top left of the platform once down and once to the left. Here I lost 4 seconds in my record because of some horrible movement. The following trick might be in my head since the TAS doesn’t do it, but I usually do it. The reason why is that it’s the most consistent way I have to make 100% the cutscene of opening the room on the left triggers without you having to move another block. And that’s not pulling the top block towards the other square but pushing it. Don’t forget that on the top right of this section there is a gold bar treasure, after pushing the block is the perfect moment to go grab it. After you push over that block, go to the bottom right of this section and pull the block towards the bottom square. The reason you need to pull is that it saves time to not have to go around the block after the cutscene. Also, practice the jump of landing in the middle of the hallway or beyond that. You’ll need that later. Now, move to the newly opened section and move towards the other top corner. There you’ll need to pick up a rod. And, if you jump a bit higher, on the next tile a set of coins. After that, leave the building. Be careful to dodge the guards and the ice enemy on your way back. If you feel extremely risky, you can save time by jumping towards the ladder in the ice enemy room to save time, but if you don’t grab the bottom pixels of the ladder it’s game over.

Now outside… we move to the right of the building. Now, the fastest way to arrange the boxes is moving the two stack once to the right and the one stack once towards the left. Doing this jump without loosing time is extremely tricky but would save a lot of time over pulling the blocks into the easiest configuration. It’s a lot of edge jumps here, but I have done it and it’s possible. So, jump up and towards the platform to pick up the blue gem. After that…

… we go left of the building. Here I lose 2-3 seconds of time in my record because of some bad movement and not grabbing the two stack box right away. The easiest and fastest way to progress is pulling the two stack box one towards the top of the screen. After that, jump on the one stack and diagonal to the right to enter the next room. After entering the room, pick up the treasure at the left. Do it now, otherwise the guard RNG will be hell. Now, we need to go in the door next to the climbable wall.

From now on, the easy part of the run is over. Now come a bunch of sections that can potentially make you lose a lot of time or just end your run outright. There is a treasure at the bottom right of this room. Pick it up first. Now, jump over the gap and move towards the broken tile at the top right of the room at the gears. While facing the gears, open your inventory and pick the ratchet. You’ll need to move to the left 4 times in your inventory and press A. This is meant to block the bell from falling back down.

Now comes one of the first sections that can cost you a lot of time. I highly advise you to practice this next section. Just take a look at the stream Klamath and I did. The idea is that you jump back and forth between the two broken tiles. The timing is extremely strict. You’ll hear a sound effect when you hit the tile in time. When you hit the tile and don’t hear the sound effect, the bell is going to fall down and you have to start over. So, try and try this bit until you are good at it. After 7, yes 7, jumps back and forth, the bell reached the correct point. Now, the camera will pull up to show the location of the bell. Whilst it’s moving down, move towards the door at the bottom left of the room. It’s possible to exit the room before the camera reaching the bottom. Since I missed this once during my record, I lost 12 seconds.

After exiting the room, a guard suddenly shows up. The fewer hits this guard does on you, the better. Yet, the space is quite tight and it’s difficult to avoid him. Now, we need to climb up the wall. Jump towards the climbable wall that’s closest towards the door we just entered the room from and climb up. Now, we do something that’s unique to the Game Boy Color. Whilst climbing up, you will have to drop towards another ladder. For the first drop, it’s fine if you move over to the left. For the second drop, climb towards the top and let yourself drop towards the right and hold up. It’s scary to do, but hold up during the fall. Otherwise it’s game over for sure. After you climbed up, go to the left and exit this room at the top left door.

Now comes to the next trick, depending on how well you execute it, you’ll save more time. The idea is that, when you enter the room… you move towards the right edge of the room. Run down and jump down give or take a tile before the edge. Let yourself fall but hold up at the right time. The idea is that we grab the long ladder a bit down there. Failing this trick is a run ender. It’s no short ladder so be careful of dropping off this ladder. Now, after you are off the ladder, move to the bottom left of this room and climb down. Or be even more risky after this ladder snipe and snipe the ladder at the bottom left like the TAS.

Now, in the next room, don’t climb the ladder down. Midway the ladder, drop down towards the gears. You’ll notice that there is a peg sticking out of the wall. Stand in front of that one and open your inventory to go trice to the right to select the gear. Now, stay on the raised platform and move towards the other side of the room. Drop down to take the silver bar and jump up towards the raised platform. Those ice guardians are quite painful and hurt a lot. The more damage you take, the higher the risk you’ll loose your run. Now, jump towards the ladder from a little bit before the last tile to save the most climbing time.

Now, the clock starts moving. Move as quick as you can towards the button and here comes something I’m still unsure about the fastest way to go forward is. I know you can totally skip the cutscene of the camera moving up to show the statue turning like the_Kovic does in the TAS. Yet, in order to do this, you’ll need to preform some tricky jumps perfectly. It does save a lot of time, yet almost five minutes into an any % run and after preforming various edge corner jumps, that annoying bell part… I find the TAS strategy at the moment of writing too risky. I linked to the TAS a bit higher if you want to see how the TAS does it, but I’ll explain how I do it. It costs 10-15 seconds, but it’s a way safer strategy in my honest opinion. Sadly, using the glitch that Indy can move after the button press for a little while isn’t possible, so that costs us an additional second.

So, press the button twice and watch the cutscene of the camera moving up to show the statue moving. While the camera is moving down, we regain control of Indy. Depending on how confident you are with your jumps and your nerves at this point… Press the button between 7 to 9 times. I personally prefer 9 times. It gives you some room for error. The red brick-thing will be either at 9, 10 or 11.

Now, comes the annoying part. We need to go back up. Go towards the raised platform you notice at the middle top of your screen and jump up and enter the door. You’ll notice we exit at the platform at the bottom of the ladder we sniped earlier. Climb up to the top of it. Now, if you want to be extremely risky, you can do what’s known as a corner jump.

It’s an extremely risky jump that can save you a lot of time and is essential when you pressed the button at the bottom 6 or 7 times. The idea is that you jump from where the X is after you climbed up the ladder and hold left up in the air to land where the other x is. Now, missing this jump means a game over. So, you risk it all here. I was around 5 minutes 18 seconds in my record run and as you can see from the screenshot, I walked into the door after the ladder. Now, we need to do a corner jump to the raised platform at the left here. It’s quite the precise jump so that’s why I was only able to do it after my third attempt in my run. Enter the door and jump towards the ladder after exiting the door. Be careful to not miss that ladder, since if you don’t land on that raised platform, it’s an instant game over.

Now, after climbing up that ladder, go towards the button at the top right of this room. As soon as the statue starts spinning, press it. You’ll watch a lengthy cutscene of the statue going on the rails towards the bell. You will see something drop down from the bell and see the door you entered this room from close. This will take +/- 30 seconds.

Let me also tell you, if you don’t have a spinning statue in a few seconds, you best reset your run. Since now the clock needs to reach the red peg and that’s too big of a time waste.

But we are in the final strech of the level. Now, don’t loose focus in these 30 seconds since we are not done quite yet. Run towards the left and jump towards the ladder to save up on some climbing time.

When you reach the top of the ladder, and grab the 9th treasure at the top left of this room, we need to dance around the ice guardian to reach the climbable wall that’s just outside of the shadow part of this section. Now, when you enter the next screen, drop down at the right from the climbable wall.

Now comes the final life or die trick of this run. We need to drop down somewhere along the purple titles. The best way is where I have drawn a red line. Hold up to grab the climbable wall, but not too soon to not grab it at the top. Since climbing is slow in this game and there is still that pesky guard at the bottom. The idea is to grab the climbable wall as low as possible so you can drop down without loosing too much health and not loose too much health to the guard having some free shots at you. You’ll need to face that guard twice, since you need to enter that annoying jumping room to pick up the seed that dropped down. Now, you can save a little bit of time since the hitbox of the seed is bigger then you think. If you stand on the edge of the tile, you can pick it up.

Exit the room and make your way to the building. If you have health enough, drop down from the ledge outside. Once inside the building, move towards the blue flower tile and standing in front of the water… open your inventory and move three times to the right to pick the seed. Now, it’ll turn into a flower. Now, go up towards the right side of the room to enter the right door. After that, go to the right section and climb up the ladder. Here some luck will be involved to avoid the guard. When you climbed up the ladder, dodge the ice guardian again and now you have the run in the bag. If you don’t make stupid movement mistakes… you’ll be able to finish the run in just a few seconds.

Now, move down the hallway we all know to well into the final room. Pick up the final treasure at the bottom right of this room before you do the final “puzzle”. Now, when you stand in front of the fire… stand as close to the middle as possible. I have lost so much time when standing on the edges, it’s insane. In my record run, I lost close to 10 seconds because of this. Now, while facing the fire, open your inventory and move 3x to the right to select the flower. This will open the chest. Move towards the chest and face up and open it. After that, Indy will say that he found Urgon’s Part and the level ends.

Conclusion

Shambala is quite the insane run and after the first four shorter levels, this level is the first of a set of three quite lengthy levels with a lot of tricky jumps and avoiding enemies. Now, currently the world record is 7 minutes and 51 seconds. I have pointed out where I lost time in this article and if you count that all together, you have roughly 30 seconds.

I honestly think that 7 minutes 30 seconds is humanly possible for this level. Maybe even 7 minutes 20. But, that means there is barely any room for error and you need to take a lot of risks and be very lucky with the guards movements.

Usually, when I’m doing attempts for a new full game any % run, I usually know after Shambala if this is going to be a good or bad attempt. Another level is the Volcano, but the reason why I call it my run killer will be explained when I talk about that level.

Currently, when I’m doing speedrun pratice, I’m trying to perfect Shambala. I want a clean recording of my personal best and I want to see how much lower I can take that all treasures record. Now, my first record for the any % of this level was 8 minutes 55 seconds and for all treasures it was 9 minutes 46 seconds. I have saved a minute for each category for this level, and I can go lower. So, keep your eye out on the leaderboards, since as soon as I preform a run that beats my current record run, I’ll post it.

And with that said, I have said everything about this level for now. If you have any questions about this guide, feel free to ask them in the comments. Also, I wish everybody a happy new year, since this is the first article I’m going to publish in 2024. I also want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to weclome you in the next article and until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

It’s time for the upcoming 10 of 2024

Only a few days left before we enter the new year. I already talked about my 10 favorite games of the past year, but what am I looking forward too in the upcoming year? This list is quite tricky to put together for me. Especially since I don’t always play the latest modern hyped title and to be quite honest, the pool of upcoming titles of 2024 didn’t have a lot of games that interested me. Yet, here are ten games I’m looking forward to play and/or will keep an eye on to add to my collection. Tell me, which games are you looking forward too in the new year? Feel free to leave a comment down below about that, or one if you just want to talk about my choices, that’s a fine comment too.

Editorial note: the release dates are the ones that were known at the time of writing.

#10 – ServiceIT: You can do IT (Q1 – PC)

When I was looking at the upcoming games lists at various websites and saw this one, I raised an eyebrow. As somebody who works in tech, I was interested to see how a tycoon/simulation game about my job is going to work.

While this game isn’t exactly a simulation about my job, since it more than maintaining a school infrastructure… It gets quite close. I’m mostly interested in this game to see how well they simulate my work life and how you are going to make an enjoyable game out of it.

I just hope that they stick to the reality of IT and not go overboard and with fake IP-addresses, silly terminal commands like “repair” or “fix” and sometimes really throw you for a loop. Furthermore, I’m also crossing my fingers that this game isn’t going to be a sort of PC Builder Simulator clone or that it focuses too much on hardware. Since, IT is so much more than building/repairing computers. It’s also about maintaining infrastructure, finding the right documentation, following the latest trends, developing software/websites/tools… I can go on for hours. But, when I read what I just wrote here, I think I’m going to set my bar so unrealistically high… But we shall see. I’ll have to play the game to find out how good it actually is.

#9 – Death Trick: Double Blind (Q1 – PC, Switch)

If there is one way to get me interested in your game, you make a mystery game with some unique mechanics or a unique way to play it.

Usually in detective games like Ghost Trick or Ace Attorney, you follow every lead until its end. No stone is going to be left unturned. Yet, in this game that is thrown out of the window, and you only have a limited amount of time to investigate and follow up on your clues. But, wait! There is more, since you play as two characters with their own stakes in the mystery.

Couple that with a gorgeous art style and make it non-linear, and you have something that gets me quite excited, even with the limited things shown in the Nintendo Switch announcement trailer. Not only that, this game is being developed by a very small team that are giving it their all for this game. I looked at the press materials and I think this is going to be a great game. Hopefully, it doesn’t fly under the radar and gets the attention it deserves.

#8 – Ubel (Q1 – PC, Nintendo Switch)

When the demo of Ubel released, the developers contacted me. They asked if I would be interested in writing a review about this game.

This game is extremely similar in terms of setup to the Nonary games. I always wanted to play another mystery game with that setup.

Now, the reason I haven’t written about the game is because the demo was a bit too short for to me to write about. I gave some general feedback to the developers, and I have been lurking on their Discord and following their social media channels quite close. I was praying that this game wasn’t going to be one of those games where I take a look at the demo and then just disappears into development hell or just never gets finished.

Thankfully, we got regular updates and even an alpha version was released to testers. This game is a passion project and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. It’ll also release on the Nintendo Switch and I can’t even decide on which platform I’ll play it.

So, if you are a big fan of the Danganronpa, Zero Escape, World’s End Club, Death Come True amongst other death game mystery games… This is going to be one you will have to keep your eyes peeled on.

#7 – Princess Peach: Showtime (March 22nd – Switch)

Like I said in the introduction of this article, I had a very hard time putting this list together. While I could easily fill this list with a lot of remakes of games that I want to finish and be done with it, I felt that wouldn’t be a quality article.

With that said, there are a few games that are going to release in 2024 that are really getting me excited. One of them is the new Princess Peach game. For those who don’t know, I’m also a hobbyist actor in a folk theater group in my hometown. I also love to go to theater to see plays and comedians preform.

Now, give it to Nintendo to develop a whole game around stage plays (again). The unique charm that this game gives off through the trailers and the promotion material makes me quite excited to dive into the world of theater again in a whole different way. I just hope we don’t get a game with a lot of gimmicks, but we get a game that’s fun to play and gives the player the feeling that they are an actor on stage, entertaining the crowd. It’s not too long now before we can take center stage with Princess Peach and how a big showtime!

#6 – Decapolice (TBD – PlayStation, Switch)

Almost each year, there is a game like this. A noir styled detective game that’s building up a huge mystery. This year, it was Master Detective Archives: Rain Code. Next year, that will be Decapolice.

This time, it’s “breaking from the mold of the Professor Layton series”. And when you hear that, you know right away that this game is going to be from Level5.

While we have to wait for the new Professor Layton game until 2025, we are going to get another mystery game from Level5 in 2024. And that has the possibilities of it being one of my favorite games of the year. Since, as I told earlier in this article, I adore games with unique spins. And this one has a battle system. Is it taking cues of Danganronpa? Looking at the battle system, it reminds me a bit of Master Detective Archives in a way. I just looked at parts of the trailer and skimmed through the teaser website, and I’m sold. To avoid any more spoilers, I’m going to avoid looking through all the materials, since I love when I can go in these games as blind as possible.

#5 – Another Code: Recollection (January 19th, Switch)

Another Code or Trace Memory was one of those series on the Nintendo DS / Wii that I truly loved. It was such a shame when Cing, the developers, went bankrupt back in 2010.

They made some amazing titles outside of them, like Hotel Dusk: Room 215. Seeing that their games aren’t forgotten and remade for the Nintendo Switch brings me a lot of hope.

These stories deserve to be told and experienced. Especially since the sequel on the Nintendo Wii will be released for the first time in America. Now, I won’t have any excuse to replay the Wii game to finally finish it after all those years. I’m ready!

#4 – Spirit Hunter – Death Mark II (February 15th – Switch/PlayStation/PC)

Since its reveal, this game has been on my list of games I want to play. I have even placed it on my list for this year.

Sadly, we got a delay this year. But, I’m not too sad about that one. This means we might get an even better game.

I’m beyond hyped for this game. Even more after Klamath and I streamed this game. They were such fun streams. I can’t wait to play this game, especially since it throws the whole gameplay loop of this game on its head. And because the successful crowdfunding campaign, we are going to get more than we are used too from the developers. So, February is going to be quite packed for me. But I’m ready to hunt those ghosts.

#3 – Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution (Q1-2 2024 – Gameboy Advance/PlayStation/PC/Switch)

No, that’s no typo in the title for this game. This game is really going to come out as well on the Gameboy Advance. Now, let me tell you the story of this game.

Back in 2002, this game started development but after two years of development, WayForward cancelled the game because they couldn’t find a publisher. Now, surprisingly and out of nowhere… In November 2023, Limited Games and WayForward showed in the Nintendo Indies Showcase that the game has been finished.

That’s the story of this game in short. I’ll link to the fandom page here if you want more information how this came to be. I’m so happy to see developers take on lost media like this. On top of that, I’m quite happy to see it also coming to the original platform. Shantae is such a fun platformer game that deserves more recognition. There is so much charm in this game. The world WayForward created with this game is just beyond amazing and as somebody who grew up with the Gameboy Color, I’m so proud to see this cult classic grow into the amazing series it deserves.

#2 – Broken Sword – Parzival’s Stone (TBA – PC/PlayStation/XBOX)

Ever since I played the directors cut of the first Broken Sword on my DS, I fell in love with the series. While the last Broken Sword game is currently 10 years old, I always knew we were going to get a 6th entry in the series.

And not only that, we are going to get a total remake of the first Broken Sword game as well. So, we are going to get spoiled as Broken Sword fans in 2024.

The new adventure is going to take place in Germany and France. I’m so crossing my fingers that one of these games we are finally visiting Belgium as well. Since, there are so many historical towns like Antwerp, Brussels and Bruges here were stories like those in Broken Sword can be told. But, besides that… I’m just hyped to finally see where George and Nico go next on their adventures.

#1 – Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time (Summer – Switch)

While we were promised this game in 2023, it got delayed until the summer of 2024. The exact release date is a secret for “strategic reasons”.

Now, why do I place this game at my number 1 spot? Well, because Fantasy Life was a game on the 3DS that took me by surprise, it became one of my favorite 3DS games.

The open freedom you get with this game is just insane. While parts of the game are quite repetitive, the gameplay loop is still extremely enjoyable. I expect a lot of things from this sequel. My biggest wish is that there is a bit more diversity between the paths you can take. On top of that, I want a more in depth story. They proved they can do it by the amazingly well written DLC story.

They just need to build upon the basis of the amazing core they had in Fantasy Life on the 3DS and we will get an amazing title that is for sure going to be the game I’m going to play during my whole summer. And it’s going to be the perfect game to relax and enjoy Fantasy Life all over again with a new story and new mechanics. Summer 2024, here I come!

Closing thoughts

When I look at my list this year, I’m quite afraid for my wallet at the start of the year. I think this is going to be a trend in the future. Where we only know about the new games being released in the first part of the year and during April-May, we get a list of games for the end of the year.

There are a lot of games without a real release date like Control 2, the new Indiana Jones game, Persona 6, the next mainline (non remake) Tomb Raider game and the new Bioshock game that’s in development are some examples. Now, truth to be told is that about some of these games we barely know anything. We don’t even know if they are still in development or not.

In any case, I’m just glad that this hobby of mine is still strong and not going anywhere. The upcoming year will bring some amazing titles and experiences that we can’t predict. I could write a generic message here about what my plans are for 2024, but I don’t want to do that.

I just want to enjoy life and how it comes. I know that I’m going to work on my blog and improve it and write more articles about the games I have played. I can also reveal that there are a lot of interesting streams planned with my friend Klamath. Outside of writing and streaming, there are a lot of things in my personal life I’m looking forward too as well.

Next year will be the 14th year I have been writing. Now, truth to be told… I have totally forgotten that this year was my 10th year writing on this blog. I mean, 10 years is quite a lot of time. I have talked about so many games and enjoyed it so much that I didn’t even notice it go by. I only just realized while writing this ending section. So, I have a few things in mind for 2024 and 2025. But, I’ll keep them a secret. Especially for 2025, since then I can celebrate my 15 years of blogging.

So, thank you everybody for the support and enjoyment that 2023 brought. I hope I was able to entertain, inform you, or maybe both. I’m looking forward to 2024, and I hope we can do it together. Have an amazing end of the year celebration and I hope to welcome you in another article and until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

The top 10 games of 2023 – NekoJonez edition

It’s that time of the year again, where we get our usual top 10 lists or “game of the year” articles. That’s no difference on my blog as well. I have put together a list of 10 games I started playing this year. The big difference is that in my list, I don’t really care about release date. So, what is the best game I have played this year? I have to tell you that this year was anything but an easy year to put together. I had such a long list of candidates, that I created this list several times until I felt that I had a great list. In any case, enough rambling. Let’s get on with cracking my favorites this year. If you want to share your own list and/or your opinions on the games I have chosen and/or on the list itself… Feel free to leave a comment in the comment section down below.

Editorial note: some of these titles are multiplatform. The one I placed between brackets is the platform I played it on.

#10 – Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (2023, PS4)

I love games with unique story mechanics. The idea that you can fight ghosts via on old camera is just a perfect description of things that just interest me. Now, Fatal Frame is one of my most favorite horror game series. While I have to be honest and admit that I have played a part of this game before via a fan translation, I’m not really counting that as playing this game before.

This game finally got translated and officially released in the west. And not only that, it got remastered. Besides it being built on a new engine, it’s extremely faithful to the source material. While I haven’t played through this game to completion yet, I’m so glad I picked this game up, and I’m hyped to see new Fatal Frame/Project Zero content coming to the west. Now, I’m just hoping that we get a totally new Fatal Frame 6 in the future. In the meantime, I’m so going to beat this game, so I can finally say that I completed all the Fatal Frame games.

#9 – Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands (2022, PC)

I think that this year’s theme was unique story games. Since, this pick is another example of unique stories. A while ago, I played Knights of Pen & Paper and got hooked.

Now, when I started to play this game where you actually go through a D&D campaign instead of it being told to you and not only that, have the characters talk in their D&D character AND as themselves, I think it’s a complete package.

The charm of this game, and the silly campaign we are going through, is just amazing. It’s a medieval shooter that’s quite addictive and doesn’t hold your hand like other games would do. While I learned after the fact that this game is a spin-off from the Borderland series, especially Borderlands 3… I’m so happy that I played this and look at it as a stand alone. Now, I still have to finish that campaign… So, if you would excuse me after writing this article, I have a game to play.

#8 – PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo (2023, Switch)

My review

What if you had a unique power that just put everything on its head. Not only that, what if you can use and control folk tales? Well, that’s what this game is about.

It’s really difficult to talk about the story and gameplay mechanics in this game and not spoil several unique twists that this game pulls. You really have to think outside the box in this game. It’s one of those games where I actually had to take notes to make sure I didn’t get stuck.

A lot of planning and play testing had to be done to make this game work. While it has a few issues, I think it all works together quite well. And not only that, we are actually playing a game that’s created together with a museum, and it’s not a big advertisement that takes you out of the experience. So, I have to say that the developers of this game did an amazing job on this one. And if you want to learn more, feel free to read my review. I think if you enjoy visual novel adventure games… You’ll really like this one.

#7 – Doom Eternal (2020, PC)

My review

For years now, I wanted to build a stronger PC. And this year, I finally did it. I built a totally new computer. On my old gaming desktop, I was unable to play Doom Eternal. While I heard that the game was “more of Doom 2016”, I still wanted to give it a try.

And let me tell you, at first… The new mechanics didn’t click with me at all. But, after a few levels… Something started to click together and started enjoying myself quite a lot. I especially loved the feature you can use a totally different skin during this game, and it changes also during the main campaign as well. The cutscenes and reflections are totally changed.

I totally felt that this game was one whole compared to Doom 2016. I loved that we had a hub part where we could unlock more special powers with things we unlocked during the levels. It’s a big improvement compared to Doom 2016 and I love it. I’m so glad I played through it and I gave it a chance.

#6 – Metal: HellSinger (2022, PC)

My review

I don’t like rhythm games at all. But, what if you combine it with a high action game like Doom Eternal? Well, you get this gem of an action game called Metal: Hellsinger.

While not all metal tracks suit my personal fancy, I just fell in love with the gameplay loop of shooting demons and going through amazingly designed arena’s that reward well timed attacks. And it’s also somewhat forgiving for people like me who aren’t rhythmic at all. It’s one of the biggest surprises to me this year.

I played this game not too long after I had beaten Doom Eternal and I was in the mood for a new shooter. I found this in my Steam library and without knowing it was a rhythm game, I booted it up and started playing it. Even when I found out that it was a rhythm game, I kept playing. The game got me hooked. The story was simple, the game mechanics as well. But, the loop is just so perfect and the music fits this game like a glove. Also, the DLC that released after I had written my article adds just so much more on top of the already amazing base game. I highly recommend this game to everybody who is interested in an unique rhythm game where no being rhythmic isn’t a gate keeping mechanic. Interested, feel free to read my review on the game.

#5 – Alan Wake 2 (2023, PC)

One of the main reasons why I loved the original Alan Wake so much is because the story was something I always wanted to play through. What if the story of a writer comes to life and starts attacking the writer. That, without even the writer knowing what’s going to happen in the story.

On top of that, the unique mechanics with the flashlight usage is just the cherry on the cake. This game plays with the themes of light and darkness as if it were nothing. Now, after a lot of years and content in other games… We finally have the next main chapter in the Alan Wake series. We tried streaming this game but we had a lot of technical issues we are trying to figure out. But, I also played this game outside us (Klamath, the_Kovic and I) streaming. And let me tell you, am I glad I built this new computer. It’s highly worth the price of admission. This game is taking the mind bending story telling of the original to a whole other level. While I’m only at the half way point in this game, I can’t wait to finish it so I can experience all the mind bending story this game has to offer. And after that, I still have to beat the other Remedy games and experience the other side stories of our beloved cursed horror writer Alan Wake.

#4 – Resident Evil 8 (2021, PS4)

My review

There is a reason why I write down at the start of the year which games I have played. Otherwise, they risk of being forgotten or just never considered to be put on this list. Yet, this game impressed me so much that I didn’t have to do that.

I found this game for quite cheap on the PlayStation store and I thought, why not? I was able to buy Resident Evil 7 for 2 bucks physical, why not the sequel for cheap as well? When I started to play it back in January and February, oh boy did it not disappoint.

While I haven’t beaten Resident Evil 7 just yet, I can’t wait to do so. Resident Evil 8 was a game I booted up once in a while during the year just to replay parts of it again. I have completed it twice this year. Now, I have been distracted by other games, so I still have to beat the DLC… But, I think that won’t be a problem. I think the next time I boot up my PS4 and this game, the game will hook into me again, and I’ll just keep playing the DLC until I’m done.

#3 – Cult of The Lamb (2022, Switch)

My review

So, when Cult of the Lamb came out, I placed it on my wishlist since I wanted to play it. But at that time, my budget was a bit too tight and I was unable to buy it.

Not too long before leaving on a family trip this year, I bought this game to play during downtime. And this game, just took me by surprise. This charming gem of a game is one of the best games I played all year. It even made me forget that a lot of big titles like Super Mario Wonder, Alan Wake II, Baldur’s Gate 3… all got released this year and were waiting on me to play them.

This game flows so amazingly well and apart from some glitches is near perfection. I have to admit that in several drafts of this article, this game took the number 1 spot. It’s so totally worth the price and it’s going to get a major free content update early next year. That content update got announced a few days after I had written my article about it, talk about coincidence. I can’t wait to see what the new update will bring and maybe I’ll restart my game and create a totally fresh cult and take different decisions compared to my current playthrough. But, I’ll need to be careful… Since it’s totally possible that I’ll be unable to put down this game and ignore all the other games I still want to play. Urgh, the dilemma’s of good games.

#2 – Fire Emblem Warriors – Three Hopes (2022, Switch)

My review

Did you ever play a 40-hour game with somewhat repetitive gameplay and after beating it, told yourself… Yes, I want to play this game again twice just to see the different routes? Last time I did that, I was playing Persona 5 for hours upon hours. This year, I have been playing Fire Emblem Warriors – Three Houses.

I started playing this game early-middle last month and it’s almost the only game I have been playing. It surprises even me, since I’m not that big of a Fire Emblem fan. Yet, the balance in this Warriors cross over hits that perfect balance for me that I keep playing it and just want to fully complete it.

Now, why am I placing this so high on my list? Well, that’s because it feels right on so many levels. The characters are stereotypes, but they are used extremely well. They tell quite in-depth stories and give amazing messages. The gameplay might be repetitive, but is quite rewarding and addictive to do. It also has unique outcomes depending on way you play it. The fact you can carry over so much in New Game+, so you can see the other parts of the story without having to grind for certain pieces is fun as well. And if you are afraid that it takes the challenge out of the game, well… Don’t worry… The higher difficulties are really going to give you a run for your money.

I honestly think that this is one of the best Warrior games I have ever played and fixed so many problems I had with all the previous games. I even tried to pick up Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity, and I have to be honest… I’m just too addicted to this game for now. It really does something quite unique and I think it’s slowly making me a Fire Emblem fan, since I really want to replay all the other Fire Emblem games in my collection that are sitting there gathering dust. Oh, and maybe give Destiny Warriors a try as well… that too maybe.

Honorable mentions

Master Detective Archives: Rain Code (Switch), Immortals Fenix Rysing (PS4), Venetica (PC), Ark: Survival Evolved (PC), Fire Emblem Engage (Switch), Stray (PS4), Cultic (PC), Escape Simulator (PC), HROT (PC), Dark Cloud (PS2), House Flipper 2 (PC), Control (PC)

#1 – The Legend of Zelda – Tears of the Kingdom (2023, Switch)

My review

Is this a surprise? That my game of the year is the new Zelda title? Maybe. But, this game just grew on me and I had a really difficult time putting this one down.

When I was creating this list, I looked at what the games brought to the table to impress me and make it stand out. Make it different compared to other games and make the experience stand out during the year. While the games on this list had some elements, this game kept having surprises left and right, I couldn’t justify not placing it on number one.

I didn’t think Nintendo would be able to re-invent their open world formula after Breath of the Wild. The fear of the sequel just being a rehash of Breath of the Wild was huge. But not only did they add two new world layers, they completely changed Link’s powers and opened up so much more of this game. As a test, I played some Breath of the Wild this year as well… And I have to admit, that they have outdone themselves. Tears of the Kingdom is my game of the year 2023 for just adding so much more depth and content that it just blew me away and made me quite exited for the future of one of my favorite game series out there. What’s going to be next?

Conclusion

Writing this ending section is always one of the most difficult sections I have to do all year. What do I write in here? A retrospective of my year? That’s possible, but I don’t want to go in too much detail to avoid throwing something private on the internet. Besides that, the main reason why people come to read these articles is because they want to read about the games I have played and recommend playing. I don’t want to look forward to next year, since that’s what my top 10 games I’m looking forward too is for. Of course, that’s the article I’m going to write next, so yeah.

What surprised me most this year is that I wrote fewer articles this year compared to last year, I had more readers compared to 2022. I also felt prouder of all the articles I have written. I feel my quality is finally going up, and I’m finding my way to write and review the games I have played.

If you have read articles from me before, you might know that I work as an IT admin in two art schools here in Belgium. This year, I had several interactions of students and coworkers who bought a game because they read about it on my blog and came to thank me for the recommendation. And I also had other coworkers who complemented me on my writing and said that they enjoyed reading my articles whilst not being into games.

And honestly, that’s what it’s all about for me. I have also said it in the streams with my buddy Klamath. I’m so happy that I have this creative outlet and I can entertain, inform and help others. Not only that, but I have been doing this for over 13 years now, and I can’t wait to see what the future brings.

Each year, I start putting this list together during my summer break. I always think, what games are going to be put on this list? And each year, several games just surprise me. I can’t wait to see what 2024 has in store for me, since 2023 was such an enjoyable adventure. But for now, thank you 2023 for being such an amazing year. It has been the year of rediscovery for me. Like I said earlier, I’m just felt prouder of the things I have been putting out, and I hope you are enjoying things as well. Thank you for the support this year and I hope to see you in the future. So, for now, have a great rest of your day and take care.

First Impression: Fire Emblem: Three Hopes (Switch) ~ Mashing Buttons For War

Wikipedia – Nintendo.com microsite

There are only a few Nintendo franchises that are suited for a cross-over with the Dynasty Warriors series. The best one in my mind is Fire Emblem. So, it was no surprise to me that when you had the unique concept of Three Houses, a warriors-style game was going to follow. I wanted to play it since it released, but I got distracted by other games and the game gathered dust on my wishlist. Recently, I saw it was on sale on my local store, so I snagged a copy. I put it in my Switch and I knew it was going to be a game I wanted to write about from then. What do I think about this game? Is it a good game, or is it a game I have buyers regret over? Let’s find out in this first impression, while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article. So, let’s mash buttons for this war and let’s dive right into giving this game a good, honest look.

Choosing your starter

In this game, you play as a mercenary Shez hunting down the Ashen Demon. This Ashen Demon is actually the main character of the mainline game, Three Houses. The story being told in this game is actually an alternate timeline of the mainline game.

That’s one of the main reasons why I wanted to play this game. In Three Houses, there is a lot going on since the main character joined the academy and started teaching one of the three houses. But, what if that never happened and things go differently? Well, you get the story in this game. Now, you’d think that this game is either filled with spoilers for the mainline game or you won’t be able to follow it if you haven’t played the mainline game.

But, that’s far from the truth. Both games can be enjoyed separately. Things gets explained and since this is another timeline, things can go rather differently. Since, in this game, the school life is extremely short-lived. After your first few battles, you meet the three Lords of the lands, and you have to make a decision on which house you will join. After that, you basically choose your story path for the game. For my playthrough, I have chosen another house from my Three Houses playthrough, and I’m glad I did. I was always curious about the other characters, and I actually want to replay Three Houses with the other house now.

The stories in the three houses are quite different from each other. Without giving too much away, I’ll say this. The stories of all three paths do intertwine and depending on which house you join, that house will succeed in their mission. Now, I’m really curious to see how different the stories will be in the end. But, for that, I’ll have to play through this beefy game. This game can take around 140 hours to beat 100%, and I’m only half way the first route.

The writing in this game is pretty good in my opinion. It feels like that, an epic adventure anime series that can really draw you in. The story can take its twists and turns, but it has extremely powerful heroes and characters that have their own little quirks and charms to make you love them and cheer for them. You clearly have your episodic structure in this game, and it fits like a glove.

And on top of that, the voice acting in this game is just the cherry on top. The same cast returns from the mainline game to this game. While some characters do sound a bit different with the different direction and the time passed, the performance is amazing. They all fit the personality of the characters and give that additional layer of charm. Not everything is voice acted, but most of it is.

Also, I have to give some additional props to the voice actors since with the amount of things that can happen in this game and the different paths you can take, it must have been a beast of a script to do. And to write for that matter. Yet, I did notice some narrative tricks being used so that dialogue can be reused. Since, there is this mechanic there is a chance to recruit enemy generals to your side, and then their dialogue is mostly written is such a way, it doesn’t really matter in which house they are in.

Depending on which house you choose, you also choose your focus in the game. In my playthrough I chose for the Blue Lions. They excel at military tactics and mostly focus on swords and spears.

During the game, you unlock materials and seals to let your fighters go to a different class, so you can balance out your team. This is something extremely important, since choosing the right crew to go into battle will make all the difference in the end. Don’t always choose the class of your crew based upon numbers, make sure you have a diverse team, and you have all different types of warriors.

Mashing buttons for war

The biggest difference it will make is in the battles. There is a strength and weakness mechanic that is extremely well-balanced and can make an easy mission extremely difficult. But, I’ll talk more about the battles later in the article. First, I want to focus on the other mechanic in this game, and that is the base.

In between battles, you can run around in your base to talk to other characters and improve their bonds for not only more lore, but also for benefits during the battles. Your typical elements like in all the previous warriors games are here. A smithy, a supplier, a market… But this time, instead of it being a somewhat boring or overwhelming menu system, it’s a lively camp. It’s a joy to run around in, but sometimes it felt nothing more than just window dressing. The main issue is that you have fast travel and nothing else really happens in the camp. You do have some animations at certain places, but they never move from their location or interact with others. In Three Houses, you had characters walking around, making the place feel more lively than it actually was. Now, we have one NPC maybe walking around and for the rest we have empty paths and market vendors that shout to buy their wares to you. That being said, it’s extremely nice set dressing. To such a degree that I now feel that the menu system in Fire Emblem Warriors feels lazy.

One gameplay mechanic that really got improved is that the upgrading of your units isn’t a mindless menu system anymore. I always felt that it was really silly that you needed to upgrade your units through so many steps each and every time. This has been streamlined quite a lot and I love it. No more grinding certain missions for that one resource to beef up that one unit you wanted to play as.

Also, various other mechanics and activities of Three Houses made it into this game as well. Things like cooking and going on an expedition with you are also present in this game. They are some fun side activities, but don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. Just like finding various notes scattered around the camp, they are just nice and welcomed set dressing.

Now, explaining every little detail and mechanic of a Destiny Warriors game is asking for a long article. There is lots to do and balance in this game. I won’t be surprised that some players will lose hours just to maximize and perfect every little stat. But, that wouldn’t matter if the other main mechanic in this game wasn’t fun. How do the battles play?

Well, if you played any warrior game before like Hyrule Warriors… You know what to expect here. In this hack and slash game, you are dropped in a map with your allies and you get a main objective. That main objective is your win condition. In a lot of battles, there is also a loose condition. So, taking that into account is quite important. Do use the battle map before the battle to your advantage and swap out your units accordingly. If you strategize before the battle starts, you will make it yourself easier.

During the battles, you can take control of a maximum of 4 characters on the battlefield. You can easily switch between them with the up and down arrows of the D-pad. Knowing when the switch is half the battle. Overall, the AI in this game is pretty good and provides you with the help you need, and the other units follow orders perfectly, yet it is faster sometimes to do the fight yourself. And as soon as you learn the combo’s and master the mechanics of each fighting style, oh boy can this become an enjoyable button mashing gaming.

Your right side of the controller will get a work-out. Especially the R, X and Y buttons. The faster you’re mashing them and use R for your special skills, the fights can become a cakewalk. But, don’t rest easy. You would think that this game is going to be easy from reading my previous sentence. But, don’t get yourself fooled. The difficulty differences are quite straightforward, like explained in this section from gameguides.com. Yet, if you don’t keep your wits about you and focus on taking out the right strongholds and generals, you will be overwhelmed pretty fast. When you understand that the non-general soldiers aren’t that big of a threat, you will make it yourself easier. Also, know when to defend a unit and when to attack.

Also, you can choose if you play this on Classic or Casual mode. Whilst you can change your difficulty level if you so desire, you can’t change the gameplay mode. So, if you don’t want to play with permadeath of your characters anymore, then you are out of luck. Personally, I’m playing on normal and casual mode. I get too frustrated when one simple mistake would mean that I loose a character that might make a later fight nearly impossible and the worry just ruins the fun for me. It’s a me thing and I’m glad we have the option.

Another part of the difficulty comes in via trying to get the best battle rank in each mission and chapter. Since, the rewards of these ranks are extremely worthwhile your time. They also helped during the side missions and unlock even better weapons and abilities.

There are a lot, and I really mean a lot, of mechanics in this game so that the players who love to micromanage will be able to eat their heart out. Thankfully, this game doesn’t force you into learning every single detail of this game and lets you play how every you want. Making this game’s replay value go through the roof. Now, another related question is… Is this game best played in short bursts, or should you play it in longer sessions. Well, that all depends on how well the gameplay clicks with you. Overall, there are a lot of different things that can happen during a mission, but after a while we see the same things happening over and over again.

This game can become repetitive real fast. There are various battle mechanics and things that can happen during a battle, but the breaks in the camp are quite welcome. Also, the side missions and the additional bonus things you can do in between battles are needed to break the repetitive nature of the battles. Don’t get me wrong, the battles aren’t boring… But, it doesn’t take long before you have seen the majority of gimmicks that can happen during a battle.

Yet for some reason, I felt that the battles in this game compared to all the previous warrior style games I have played are the best flowing so far. Giving order to your units and seeing them dash off and really have an impact on the battle… It pays off. I feel like they hit the sweetspot here. I can’t really put my finger on it but the battle gameplay just flows quite nicely. Maybe it also has to do with the audio and visual presentation during these battles.

The fact you see your allies icon dashing on the mini map towards their goal and saying a quick line when they executing their task, really helps during the hectic battles. They warn you when they are in need of aid as well. The controls to easily switch between your units help a lot with quickly managing everyting. You rarely feel like you wasted your time with a mechanic.

Visually, this game also helps a lot. The animations really feel impactful and give you the feeling that you are fighting an epic battle. I can totally excuse the game not animating all your soldiers in fighting for the sake of performance, but the little fighting that happens around you to “fake” this actually happening is doing quite a lot. Rarely did the game slow down for me, so everything happened with a smooth framerate. Now, I haven’t played the two player mode in this game… And maybe the framerate there isn’t the best… Especially in the previous Fire Emblem Warriors game, I played the two player mode and oh boy, that wasn’t the most optimal mode.

Also, looking at screenshots of the two player mode, I feel like it does a number on the amazing visual presentation of this game. It cuts the screen horizontally in half and I’m sorry but it just doesn’t look right. Maybe on a big screen it looks better but, on the Switch itself… I shudder at the thought. It’s a shame that the visuals looks so streched and wrong in multiplayer since they are quite nice.

Almost the sweetspot

This game almost hits the sweetspot on being a “perfect” game, it’s insane. Yet, there are somethings I find strange how they got through the cracks.

First of all, the visuals are amazing. You really feel like you are running through a real world that’s going through a big war. The visual style is medieval fantasy and it really shines through in the whole game. Yet, when somebody crosses their arms in a cutscene, the hands keep upright. To a point that it is immersion breaking sometimes. Oh, and the same thing happens in cutscenes when people want to place their hand in their side. The gap between their side and their hand is big enough to fit a your whole arm in between. Also, in cutscenes, everybody is mostly in their idle animation apart from when they are talking. And this is something that annoyed me a lot in this game. Dare to keep that shocked pose instead of just going back to idle. It breaks the flow of the story and it feels stiff and slow.

The UI is extremely clean and easy to understand. It’s a blast to navigate and gives you all the needed information. Yet, after unlocking a class for a character you get the question if you want to change it or not… without seeing which stats are impacted and which ones aren’t.

Using your abilities in battle is quite easy to do. Just press “R” and choose the right ability. Yet, the very powerful ability using R+A doesn’t always work as you expect. Sometimes I feel that the very strong final attack just didn’t trigger and got skipped. Also, the meter changes to being almost full again so I started wondering if it was glitched or not.

There are also various item pickups in during the battle. But, it’s not always too clear what item pick up does what. For some reason, I always confuse the blue and purple pick ups. And it’s so easy to waste a pick up, it’s rather annoying. Also, when an ally is wonded, you can’t easy heal them or move them to pick up an item or break a green pot. Little sidenote on pots, these red pots on the mini map sometimes look quite brown in game. Maybe because of lighting or maybe it has too much blue and green added to the texture.

These small issues started to grab more of my attention as soon as I decided to write this article. Like not all sunrays have good anti-aliasing (making straight lines look less jagged basically). It is distracting once you notice it. Just like the hand thing I talked about earlier. It’s a shame since the cutscenes are more lively now since they use 3D character models instead of character portraits in Fire Emblem Warriors.

Something that doesn’t have any issues is the soundtrack of this game. The soundtrack really pumps you up during the battle and helps make the game feel even more impactful during battles and relaxing during camp visits. The orchestral score is a joy to listen to and I have to admit that I listen to it here and there while I’m working. It’s a great soundtrack and I’m glad it’s added to my playlist.

The sound effects are pretty great as well. They stand out quite a lot so it’s easy to know what is happening and it always gives the needed information to the player to not make it a guessing game. Thankfully, you also get some visual information as well so people with hearing problems don’t loose out on the advantages the sound effects can give you.

The amount of options you have in this game is incredible. You can tweak the game to your favor, you can also change the whole button lay-out to your wishes without changing the default button lay-out of your Switch. While I prefer playing this game with a Pro controller, the game plays smooth with joycons as well. While the same supports one joy con to play the game, do yourself a favor and play with either both joycons or a pro controller.

Now, this game does have an autosave feature, but I’m also really glad that this game have several save slots. While you only have 8 slots in this game, that’s more than enough to experiment in your playthrough. The only minor issue is that when have saved before the last battle, the game forces you to save before you enter the war map the last battle. Without mistake. One simple if loop where the game checks if the player has saved a few minutes manually before and it wasn’t an autosave would solve this minor issue.

Overall, I fell in love with this game. Compared to the previous warrior style games we got from Nintendo franchises, this is one of the better ones. It isn’t overwhelming and you don’t have to micromanage every little stat, but it does provide you with that option. It’s the same addictive hack and slash gameplay we are used too in these games but it also manages to flow a bit better.

While the game does have some minor issues here and there, they aren’t too big of a deal. Like when you teleport in your camp to a facility you can press A to interact but when you teleport to a unit, you have to walk a few steps towards them before you can interact.

If we ever get another warrior style game, I think that this game has set amazing foundations for the next title. The main complaint I see other reviewers say is that the combat isn’t diverse enough. Personally, I somewhat agree that some classes play extremely similar but, it’s one thing they should focus on expanding next. Do more with combat styles like archers having a larger attack range but being weaker in close combat. Or give mages the chance to buff their allies.

What we got in this game feel like an extremely solid foundation for the next games. I’m so glad I played this game since it’s one of the better ones I played this year. I was afraid that I was burned out of the warrior style gameplay, but no. This game drew me right back in and reminded me why taking care of the details is so important in making a good game. I can’t wait to see what else this game has to offer since I’m going to beat it, that’s for sure. And after that, I should beat the other Fire Emblem games that are still on my backlog… shouldn’t I?

I highly recommend this game to everybody who enjoys warrior style games, hack and slash games, Fire Emblem fans and everybody who enjoyed the Hyrule Warriors games. This game takes leaps and bounds to improve itself compared to the previous warriors game in the Fire Emblem series. While it has some small distracting issues, overall this game delivers an amazing experience where you can sink a lot of hours into and with a highly replayable game. So, what are you waiting for soldier? A command to play the game? Well, here it is! Pick up your controller and join the war with quirky, unique characters that takes itself just seriously enough. Join the fight in something that feels like you were young watching your favorite adventure TV-series every Saterday morning whilst you feel extremely powerful and wonder what’s going to happen next. That’s how I personally felt while playing this game.

And with that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

My favorite gaming music #29 ~ Nostalgic Times

More in this series

Sometimes life gets extremely busy. One of the main reasons why I don’t write so many articles lately is because I’m placing my focus on so many other things, and I end up feeling too tired or too creatively drained to write an article. From streaming with my friends to finishing things up in my new apartment. Those are just two things that I have been doing. My day job and personal life are keeping my busy as well, and I have also started spending time with my other hobbies, so I have been playing fewer games lately. But, last week, my old computer that I used to play my Windows98 games on died. I bought a new computer via eBay and in the meantime I have been playing games I used to play when I was a child/young teen. When I heard some of the music of those games, I thought to myself… You know what, maybe it’s a great time to bring back that gaming music series on my blog one time to talk about some of these nostalgic tracks while I’m replaying these old games. So, let’s do right that. In this series, I talk about one track per franchise per article and why it’s in my list of favorite gaming music tracks. I’m trying to do my best to not have repeat tracks in this series. Feel free to write a comment on my choices in the comment section down below, or comment with your own favorite tracks. Now, before I ramble on too much in this introduction, let’s dive right in with the first track.

Nightmare Reaper (PC) – Psyche Surgery

My article about Nightmare Reaper

If there is one game I have been playing since 2020, it is Nightmare Reaper. I just love booting up this game once in a while and playing one or two rounds… Well, I say one or two. But those quickly turn into 10 or more in most cases.

I always know that whilst playing a game, when a game is going to become a classic I’m going to replay in the future. Especially when the flow of the whole game just clicks into place for me, and when I don’t mind restarting the game just to experience it again. And Nightmare Reaper with it’s procedurally generated levels is doing the trick for me. It was also one of the first games I have heard Andrew Hulshult’s work, and let me tell you… It’s always a blast to hear his work in boomer shooter games.

The heavy metal soundtrack in this game fits the chaotic nature of the gameplay where you have to dodge various attacks and do crowd control to the maximum. The soundtrack of this game is that well crafted that even I listen to the soundtrack during work, I sometimes can see the game in my mind and just feel like I’m back home playing it. It’s a blast to listen to too casually and in-game. Highly recommended, and I’m so glad I was able to get the soundtrack on Steam so, I can put it on my phone and even listen to it while I’m in the train from and to work.

Age of Mythology (Titans Expansion) (PC) – Hoping For Real Betterness

My review of the remaster

I just adore games that have a unique twist. Especially when that twist is something that turns on the whole core mechanics of the genre on it’s head. Now, we all know our real time strategy games like Age of Empires or Command & Conquer. Now, some of you might also know the game I want to talk about now, and that is Age of Mythology.

Image, if you will, that while you are playing that RTS match… Everybody has access to 4 godly powers they can use to change the tide of the match. And not only that, depending on if you installed the expansion pack or not, that you can summon huge titans to aid you in battle. This makes playing the game even more unique. Oh, and let’s throw famous mythical stories in the mix as well.

Man, the dilemma back in the day was real. I never knew if I wanted to play through Age of Empires III or Age of Mythology. I was always doubting which one to play and most of the time I had to leave it up to a coin toss and even then picked Age of Mythology sometimes.

The more clam soundtrack while outside of battle is a perfect way to build the tension that is the calm before the storm. The tracks during battles ramp up, of course, but I enjoy them equally much as the more calm and relaxing tracks. Something I adore as well are the cute names that some of these tracks got. Like, the main theme is called: “A Cat Named Mittens”. Just give this soundtrack a listen, you’ll find it equally hard to pick your favorite themes out of this masterclass of an RTS soundtrack.

Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver (DS) – National Park

A wild Pokémon retrospective appears

Since last year, I have started to learn myself how to program. I’m doing it step by step, and I’m actually learning a lot. So much, I’m able to create various solutions to lighten the workload of my coworkers in the school I work for.

One thing that also pulled my interest while learning programming is how you can use it to do crazy things. When I saw Pimanrules’ video about how each trainer in the Pokémon games stacks up against the other trainers… I was fascinated by the concept. Recently, the video about the 2nd generation got published. And me being in such a nostalgic mood made me pick up my copy of Pokémon HeartGold to replay through the 2nd generation of Pokémon once more.

There are several tracks that pulled me back to my childhood, but the one that even got me a bit teary-eyed was the theme that plays in the National Park. I have a weak spot in soundtracks when it comes to music with a calm piano track, and the National Park theme hits the nail right on the head.

Memories came flooding back from me playing Pokémon Gold on my Game Boy Color and abusing the cloning glitch on my 2nd playthrough. Also, memories from my childhood how my mind was blown that we suddenly had a whole second region to re-explore after beating Jotho. And after that, memories of the hype when the remakes got released and how everybody was walking around with a PokéWalker in my school. I even saw a few teachers using the PokéWalker for their kids, it was amazing. Trying to talk about all my memories with Pokémon can be a whole article in itself, but if you read this and think: “I should pick up one of these old Pokémon games…”, do it. Relive your childhood and just let the memories flow back. And just play without using a guide. Let your mind wonder, let it be lost again. Try to find that imagination again, the relaxing nature of the adventure and how life was back then.

The Legend of Zelda – The Minish Cap (GBA) – Palace of Winds

My review on the game

In my review of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, I talked about how I have a soft spot for the 2(,5)D Zelda games. While I totally understand that there will be a small chance we will see a new Zelda game like that in the future, I’m glad that there are so many of them released.

I personally expected that I’d replay the Oracle games in my current nostalgic mood, but I restarted my journey through the Minish Cap again. The first time I played through the Minish Cap was when my local game store still rented out games. For the yearly family trip to the seaside, I rented The Minish Cap and NickToons Volcano Island on the Game Boy Advance. I got hooked so bad on the Minish Cap that I re-rented the NickToons game after I had beaten The Minish Cap. Yes, in the three weeks I had the game, I had beaten it.

Of course, I didn’t play it all the time since as a child on holiday in a child-friendly holiday park, I played a lot outside with my friends. But, on rainy days or on shopping trips, I always had my Game Boy Advance SP with me. And yes, I even snuck it underneath my sheets sometimes to play it during the nighttime. Everybody my age has done that.

One track that stuck with me is the Palace of Winds. It’s an amazing, bombastic track for the final dungeon of the game. Exploring through that dungeon was so much fun. I felt that it was the final challenge before tackling the final boss of the game. I can’t wait to replay it since I have forgotten most of how the dungeon works, and I’m playing through the game again with some vague memories. But, this is the newest game I restarted playing, so it’ll take me some time to reach that dungeon. But, I’ll get there for sure… If I don’t get distracted by other games, that is.

Stella Glow (3DS) – Shop

My review

If there is one game I really want to restart playing, it is Stella Glow. Let me tell you a story. Currently, I have been writing this blog for a little bit over 10 years. Before that, I have been writing a now deleted personal blog for a few years. Now, when I started to write in English, I met another blogger by the name of LpGardian. He ran his own website that is now grown quite a lot.

He had amazing connections with some developers and one time I dropped in a call that I played the Stella Glow demo on my 3DS, and I was quite interested in playing the full game to review it. To my surprise, Atlus actually approached him with a review code for the game, and he gave me the chance to review this game for his website.

Honestly, at first, Stella Glow felt as one of those turn based JRPGs that I wanted to give a chance because the concept and world sounded fascinating. I never thought that it would be that good. The story was better than I imagined and oh boy the soundtrack of this game is just perfect. They are all so catchy and if you look through the previous entries of this series, you’ll find other tracks of this soundtrack as well.

While me and LpGardian went our separate ways since we just grew apart, because we had different life goals… I’m still thankful that he gave me this chance to write a review for this game. Since, it was the final game by Imageepoch, an amazing developer of JRPGs on the Nintendo (3)DS/Wii, PlayStation Portable, PlayStation Vita and PlayStation 3. Their swansong was a hit right in the bullseye and I hope that Atlus creates a remake to the Nintendo Switch or other platforms since this is a hidden gem for turn based JRPG fans. The only grudge I have with this game I that I haven’t beaten the final boss since I’m so underleveled… I have the same problem like with Suikoden Tierkreis, unable to beat the final boss since I focused on the wrong skills and characters… But, I’ll get my revenge.

In any case, just give the soundtrack a listen and know that this soundtrack just hits all the right notes and is a one that I play on repeat during work here and there. Maybe the memories and the chance I got to review this game, which gave my blog a huge boost and being lost in the story might cloud my judgement a little bit but still… reading the comments just proves to me that this is one beast of a soundtrack.

Closing words

Sometimes I feel guilty when I’m in a nostalgic mood and when I’m replaying games I have either already reviewed or reviewed in some sort of way. In the past I used to pressure myself in playing a new game each and every week to be able to write about a new game each and every week. This mindset pushed me close to a burnout and it was anything but healthy for my mental health.

Now, only writing two articles each month and not forcing myself in playing a new game each and every week is just a breath of fresh air. I feel that the quality of my articles just rose by a lot and I enjoy writing again. I also feel way less quilty to replay games I have played since it sometimes helps me in writing.

Being in this nostalgic mood made me realize what gaming means to me. It’s a way to relax and wind down after a long day at work. I get reminded to the simple days that after school and homework, I was able to just put on a game and play for hours. While as a 30-year old, those days are behind me, I still enjoy the hobby quite a lot. And, I’m also quite happy that I made the changes in writing less for my blog and focus on writing better articles. It made me connect with so many amazing people in the blogging and content creation sphere, I just love it.

Thank you everybody for going on this journey with me. Thank you first timers for reading my blog and people who are reading my blog for quite a while now. Thank you for the comments I receive and the interesting discussions about the games I reviewed. Thank you to everybody who helped me or collabed with me to create this blog. While I have been in this nostalgic mood, I also have been scrolling through my older articles to not only see how much I have grown as a writer but also to reminisce.

Don’t read the previous paragraph as a sort of goodbye. Read it as me being thankful and happy on the support. I really meant what I said in this closing paragraph. I’m so glad that I’m able to do this hobby. As a kid I was always creating content, writing my own stories and trying to entertain people. And now I have found my niche and I can’t be happier.

So, that’s everything I wanted to talk about in this article. Thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care!

First Impression: Master Detective Archives: Rain Code (Switch) ~ Exposing The Truth

Wikipedia – SpikeChunSoft microsite

It’s no secret that I love games like the Zero Escape series, Corpse Party, Danganronpa or Ace Attorney to name just a few. All of them amazing game series, and they pull the player in a tense story while also having great puzzles and mechanics to aid you in the quest to finish the story. After I finished Danganronpa V3, I was quite hyped to see where the studio was going next. To my surprise, a totally new game came out from them called Master Detective Archives: Rain Code. As soon as I saw the trailer for the first time and I saw it was by the same developers, I got hyped right away. Almost overhyped. A new game and it looks like it’s going to be in my favorite style of games… Sign me up. Now, I’m over the halfway point in this game and feel it’s high time to talk about it. Is this game worth our time, is it even sequel worthy or is it better as a one-off game… Or is it better left to rot as a failed experiment? Let’s find out in this article. As usual, I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section down below with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of this article.

Editorial note: I do own the DLC’s, but since they aren’t all released, I’m not going to talk about them in this review. This review is written when v1.3.1 was released and the latest version.

Exposing the Truth

In this game, you play as Yuma Kokohead. Yuma lost his memories and woke up in the lost-and-found of a train station with a letter. In this letter, you get tasked by going on a train to Kanai Ward. This city is owned by the Amaterasu Corporation and is locked off from the rest of the world.

On the train, you meet a few other characters, who are all master detectives from the World Detective Organization. Master detectives all have a special magical power that sets them apart from other detectives. For example, one of them has the ability to detect all heartbeats of all living creatures in a room or area. That way, he can make sure nobody is hiding or following him.

Yet, it doesn’t take long before disaster strikes on the train ride towards Kanai Ward and after Yuma faints in the bathroom… A murder takes place on the train. On top of that, it turns out that Yuma actually paid with his lost memories to make a pact with a death god named Shinigami. While investigating the train, it turns out that all the master detectives are dead and Yuma is riding towards a strange locked off town where he is the only survivor and the obvious suspect.

Shinigami reveals she can take Yuma in a special labyrinth where the actual mystery takes form, and you have to solve it before the mystery labyrinth takes a hold of your soul and traps you inside forever. But is this going to be enough to clear Yuma’s name, or is it going to cause even more problems? Or is Yuma getting trapped forever in the mystery labyrinth?

Phew, what an introduction to the story this time around. You might think that I talked about quite a lot and that I may have spoiled several things. While I may have spoiled a few things, I only spoiled them for the first two hours of the game. Yes, believe it or not… All of this happens in the first two hours, and it ramps up after that. If you played Danganronpa, a lot of the story concepts will sound familiar, since this is supposed to be a spiritual successor to the series.

Something that’s bringing this story alive is the insanely good cast of voice actors. I linked to the Behindthevoiceactors.com page of this game and when you scroll through the previous works of the voice actors, I’m just impressed at the various roles they played. And let me tell you, they brought their A-game to this game as well. I have no complaints about the voice acting at all in this game. While I’m playing with the English dub, I can’t praise it enough. It fits the writing and the pace of this game like a glove. It made me even more invested in the story.

If I have to be really critical, the story itself is sometimes a bit too Saturday cartoons like. Each chapter follows a clear arc with a start, middle and an end with a big main mystery that’s tying it all together. Yet, I personally feel that this isn’t such a bad thing, since this makes this game feel like I’m actually playing one of these cartoon shows from my childhood, and I’m having a blast doing it. The only downside of this is that at certain points, this game can become a bit predictable and then the game might take a bit too long to reach the conclusion of the chapter. And in those cases, I have learned myself to just enjoy the ride and seeing the characters figure out something you have figured out a while ago.

Because of the clear story structure, this game is quite linear. You only work on solving one mystery and investigate an area to try and find clues towards the perpetrator. There are also side missions you can do to not only get additional lore and story, but to get additional detective points, but more on those points later. A good thing that this game does is that it tells you when it’s going to lock you in a certain area and when you might want to wrap up any remaining side quests or find hidden collectibles before it’s too late.

There are several hidden collectibles in this game that unlock additional side stories between Yuma and the other characters. Think of it like the additional banter you get when you increase the friendship between two characters in a Fire Emblem game. But unlike Fire Emblem, these don’t unlock additional skills or something else. They are just a bonus item to look for.

The easy mysteries?

The bulk of this game takes place in the big, locked away city of Kanai Ward. While you explore the city, a new mystery draws Yuma’s attention and together with another cast member he goes out of his way to solve it.

The gameplay has two parts basically. The first part is the investigation part. In this part, you do the actual detective work and gather evidence. You go and talk to various people of interest and gather more information, so you can uncover as much information as you can. This part of the game is rather straight forward and doesn’t involve a lot of gameplay. But, it’s here that you are supposed to pay attention and take everything in. Since, the second part of the gameplay is where you are basically tested on your understanding of the mystery.

The second part of the gameplay is the mystery labyrinth. This labyrinth is in concept the exact same as how the trails worked in the Danganronpa series. The mystery labyrinth is this game’s trails. Some of the mini-games and quick time events even return in this game as well. And if you are afraid that the core gameplay of the trials is going to be missing, you don’t have to worry. Since, it’s back in the Reasoning Death Match.

Explaining every mechanic of the mystery labyrinth is going to take a while, but let me summarize it. In this labyrinth, you go from room to room, answering questions and making sure you have a straight path to the answer. By playing certain mini-games, you get more answers and let everything fall into place. Now, the difficulty depends on how many detective points you earn and how many abilities you unlock with that.

Depending on how thorough you are and the fewer mistakes you make, the more detective points you earn. With the points, you earn a higher level, and you can unlock more skills and abilities. These make the game easier to play through. Yet, I feel that it makes the game a bit too easy. I’m currently midway in the game and I have unlocked almost the whole skills tree and I don’t have any trouble using all my skills. This part of the game feels very unbalanced to me. I did all side quests and talked to almost everybody I could talk too.

This makes the mystery labyrinth less fun, since the penalty of failing a mini-game isn’t big at all. And this is the biggest problem in this game in my opinion. Because you can make this game so easy, it really feels like there is no penalty to making mistakes and just brute forcing the answer. Something that doesn’t help either is the fact that you can’t go with a wrong answer or theory. I really can’t put my finger on it, but I feel like the Danganronpa games were more challenging than this game. I’m quite that the ease of unlocking skills has something to do with it, but I feel that it was played too safe.

Thankfully, that doesn’t destroy the enjoyment I get from this game. It’s still a fun game to play through. I can also disable skills when I want to make the game more difficult on myself. I think if you go to this game looking for a game where you can get stuck on the wrong theory, then this game isn’t for you. The game is too linear for that.

But, I think something that would help in the mini-games is that if you make a mistake by choosing the wrong answer, to not directly punish the player and let you retake the question. Since this makes brute forcing the mystery too easy. Maybe let the player take a wrong turn and if they take that wrong turn… Let them think it’s fine for a while but hit them with why it doesn’t work or how it didn’t happen that way and give them an instant game over.

In this game, several mechanics of Danganronpa return. My favorite moments are the Reasoning Death Matches. Since they are just great fun to do. Doing the statements that fly towards you and slicing through the wrong statements with the correct solution key to break their argument is just the best mechanic in this game. I loved it in Danganronpa and I love it here. The comic book of putting the events of the crime together at the end returns as well. You also have a car riding mini-game where you have to choose the right answer in a short time limit, and you have a mini-game where you have to create the correct word. The final mini-game is where you have confirmed the perpetrator, and you go and confrontation. Overall, the mini-games are fun, and it’s very rewarding seeing your investigation and theories come together in the mystery labyrinth, but I feel like there should be more people to banter with. Since, now you only enter the mystery labyrinth with Shinigami and one other side character. Even when the characters are as well written and fleshed out as they are in this game, I still miss the interjection of the the other characters like in Danganronpa. I also feel that after you finish the chapter with one side character they are put to the side and somewhat forgotten and they only get fleshed out during their chapter.

Maybe I’m looking too critical to this game and I’m making a big deal out of things that shouldn’t be a big deal. I think that the reason why I’m pointing out these flaws is because I think that this game is doing amazing things and continuing the formula in a new fresh unique way, but it feels like a lot more can be done and I may have expected things to go a bit different in some places. But, like I already said, this game is still a blast to play and the charm of the characters, story and setting make the issues I talked about earlier disappear like snow in the summer sun.

Going with the bus

This game is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch. This game works surprisingly well on the Nintendo Switch. I haven’t seen any slowdown or low frame rate spots while playing this game. To me, this game is proof that you don’t always need the highest and newest graphics to make a new game these days. The focus should be always on if the game is fun to play and has a good story, like I talked about earlier.

Another focus should be that the game has a good consistent art style. This game has an amazing art style and makes the game come even more alive. The art style mixes elements from Danganronpa like the pink/purple blood and the objection screens, and a brand new 3D artstyle for the series. And it works wonders for this game. Visually, I don’t have any problems to point out. Well, there is one thing I can point out, and that’s that invisible walls sometimes break the immersion. Especially since they tend to stop Yuma in his tracks. You don’t get any sign you aren’t allowed to go there but on the otherhand, making all these side streets and paths blocked off would make for a more unbelievable world… So, I understand where it’s coming from.

The animations as are extremely well done as well. Some of them are going a bit over the top but I rather have that than it trying to be realistic and failing. Since then it’s too easy to get into the uncanny valley, since these models weren’t made for that style of animation. I’m also glad that they show more of the action that hiding things away like in Zero Time Dilemma.

Now, I do have one flaw with the visuals and UI I want to talk about. When you are in the menu, a “new” or “update” badge is displayed when there is something to look at in that menu-item. In the glossary and tutorial item it said “new” for the longest time while I have seen everything. Now, it fixed itself in the third chapter but I can’t tell you if that’s because I went through some random entries…

But, that’s only a very minor issue that might trigger your OCD a bit, but it doesn’t break anything about the game. Which brings me neatly to the UI. The UI in this game is just very well done. The mini-map is quite helpful to use to quickly see if you have people to talk too in a room or if you have still things you need to do in a room. The option menu is also quite extensive and it allows to set quite a lot of things to how you want them to be.

There is also a fast travel in this game, this fast travel is the bus system that drives through Kanai Ward. But, you can’t always fast travel since sometimes the story locks you in one area or it wouldn’t make any sense in terms of the story. You can use this quick travel by either going to a bus station or using the main map in the main menu. On this main map, you can also see in which area’s the side quests are and where the next part of the main quest is.

Something surprising in terms of good UI design is the fact that when you pause the game with the “+” button, you can hide the UI with a tap on any other button. Also, when you tap a button again, it will show that you are paused. So, you don’t have to fear if your game has crashed or froze… This is great design in terms of the UI and controls. Speaking about the controls, apart from sometimes missing a sprint button, I have no complaints what so ever about the controls. The default controls almost worked perfectly for me, apart from me having to move up the sensitivity up by a little bit. The only thing I want to mention about the controls is that during cutscenes, the “R” button isn’t fast foward but skip. Thankfully, you have to hold “R” to skip so you don’t skip anything by accident. But, I’d have loved to see “ZR” for skip and “R” to fast foward, but that might have some technical difficulties to program cutscenes with?

In this 30-ish hour long game, you really get your money’s worth in terms of gameplay. The music and sound effects are excellent as well. I even read that completionists spend close to 50 hours in this game. In addition to that, not all the DLC has been released so it might even take longer. The auto save system is very forgiving and the game saves often. You also have several save slots to save manually too. So, if you want to share the experience, you can. Or if you want to replay a certain part, you can make a save at that moment for later. You can’t name your saves and the only information you get is the location, chapter name and playtime. So, yeah.

Finally, I have to talk about the music and sound effects. In this game, Masafumi Takada returns to create the music and sound effects. This composer is not only famous from Danganronpa but also did music for Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Death Come True, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, The Evil Within and World’s End Club to name just a few. You really hear the Danganronpa roots in some of the tracks but all the tracks stand on their own as well. I feel like the music and sound effects are refercing the games they came from but also standing on their own like how it works in the AI: The Somnium Files and the Zero Escape series. I’m really glad I got the collectors edition so I can enjoy the soundtrack as well. Since, I already added it to my playlist to listen to while at work. It’s really well done and gets a thumbs up from me.

The final thing I want to say before I go to the conclusion is that I find it amazing how some pop culture references are hidden in the loading screens. Even some very obscure ones. It also contains additional lore and not only that, it fits the theme of the current case. That’s some impressive attention to detail.

Now, that’s a long article. Does this game stand next to Danganronpa as it spiritual successor? Yes, yes it does. While the game is more light hearted than Danganronpa, it’s still an amazing mystery game that is a blast to play. If you are a fan of Danganronpa or Zero Escape, this game is a no brainer to play. If you enjoy detective games or games where you have to solve a big mystery… This game is also for you.

Apart from some minor nitpicks, the ease of making the game too easy and some mixed feelings about parts of the story structure… I don’t have any complaints about this game. Also, apart from the nitpicks, the flaws I mentioned don’t overtake all the positive things in this game for me. Kazutaka Kodaka and his team did amazingly well in this game and I can’t wait which games they are going to create next. This game is a thrill ride from start to finish and shouldn’t be overlooked on the Nintendo Switch. I’m having a hard time not playing this game to strech my enjoyment out as much as I can… It’s that good. I can’t wait to see how it ends and how the additonal DLC chapters are going to enrich the game. If I have to give the game a score it is a 90/100 for me. Don’t sleep on this game, it’s one of the better 3rd party Switch exclusives and it deserves to be played.

In any case, that’s everything I wanted to talk about this game for now. I want to thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another one but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Game Quicky: Cipher Zero [Demo] (PC – Steam) ~ Picross With Extra Solutions

Press kit – Website – Steam store page

I’m always happy when developers give me the chance to review their game. While these days, I don’t always have the time to write an article in time for the release… I make it a priority to review these games first. In today’s article, I’m taking a look at Cipher Zero. Also, if you find this game interesting, you might want to take a look at the original version created for a game jam here or play the demo at the linked Steam page. In any case, I got a press key to give my 100% honest opinion on the game, so let’s go. If you have any thoughts/opinions on the game and/or the content of the article, feel free to share them in the comment section down below.

Editorial note: Currently, the full game isn’t out, but a demo is. The demo is giving a first impression on the final product.

The good

In this game, there is no real story. There is some world building, so this game isn’t your typical bland puzzle game. But, it’s vague and mysterious, so you fill it with your imagination. The relaxing music and the liminal space vibe this game is going for is just amazing.

Currently, the game is tracking quite a lot of what the players are doing in game. This could have some privacy concerns, but you can enable or disable that in the settings. The data is mostly meant for the developers to see if a puzzle is working or not. For example, while I was playing and researching this game… I got stuck on one level. After beating the level, somebody at the development team gave my suggestions to the team, and they are keeping an eye on that puzzle and the data it generates. This gives me a good feeling, since the developer is listing to input from their players and looking at where they get stuck to improve their game.

Sidenote, this is what is being tracked by the developer:

Regarding tracking, we’re tracking standard metrics in the game: how long you’re in the game for, how long you spend on puzzles, how many times you get things correct or incorrect. We also have a separate tool that tracks performance/crash data from the game so we can get additional information on crashes or errors that are happening during development. No other information is gathered from the user past that, and users have the ability to opt out before any data tracking begins.

– Developers of this game.

So, this game is basically a Nonogram with extra steps. If you don’t know what a nonogram is, you should read the linked Wikipedia article, since it’s tricky to explain. The tl;dr is basically that you have to fill in a grid where the amount of squares you need to be filled in are indicated at the sides of the grid.

Now, usually these puzzles are in a full grid. Yet, in this game, the grids have their own unique shapes, making the puzzles more unique. Also, slowly new mechanics are introduced, spicing up the puzzles. Something I love quite a lot is that sometimes a puzzle might have multiple solutions. I enjoyed trying to find all different solutions to a puzzle whenever it was possible.

The visuals are quite clean and overall easy to understand. The animations also clearly communicate to the player where they went wrong in the puzzle. Since there is no tutorial, that’s essential to get right. At one hand, the fact that there is no tutorial can be off putting to some players, yet overall the progression in this game is very well done… So, that’s no big problem at all.

The bad

Currently, the minimalistic design has some flaws. Like some things have a bind but no button. For example, there is no easy way to reset your puzzle. Along those lines, the iconography in this game isn’t the best. You have a gray circle to check your answer… It took me a while at my first puzzle to know I could click that to check my answer.

Going along that route, the level map is also not displaying enough information. It’s a nightmare trying to find a level to replay since if you don’t remember its location… There is no real indication on the world map what the map mechanic is in that batch of levels. Also, there is no way to go to the last level when you are at the start of the map.

Most problems I had with this game came from the UI, controls and a little bit of the flow of the game. I already gave two examples in terms of the UI. Let me give you another one. While you are playing a batch of levels, you have a bar at the top showing you how far you are in that section. Yet, it’s pretty unclear where one level starts and where one ends. So, if you want to go back to study an earlier example… Well, that’s going to require some clicking and guess work. I think this could be solved by breaking up that bar or having more clear indications for levels. Now, it’s a bit too clean.

Another small UI issue I find is that it in the options menu, it isn’t clear if an option is on or off. Now, we have a toggle switch that’s kind of meaningless.

The flow issue I have with the demo is that after beating the final puzzle… you don’t go automatically to the “end demo” screen. You do unlock it on the map menu, but it would be nice if I didn’t have to do those additional clicks.

In terms of the controls, the only issue I had is that the scroll wheel shouldn’t be the default way to go back and forth between puzzles. It is a bit too easy to hit your scroll wheel and loosing progress in that way.

The final thing I want to talk about is that there is no real hint system in this game. I’d love to see a small hint system where if you fail a certain amount of times, you can let the game fill in one or more squares in for you. It’d help for people getting stuck and being frustrated since one puzzle is stopping their progress.

There are also some amazing features being unbound by default. Like clearing the map or cycle through the solutions. If you want to play this game, I highly recommend that you bind these keys in the options menu first. You’ll thank me later for that.

The conclusion

So, when you read this article, you might think that this game has some major problems. Overall, this game currently has a very solid foundation. Yet, if the final product is just going to be additional levels… I think this game is going to get mediocre reviews.

My biggest issue with this game is that the minimalistic UI choices make it that some quality of life features are missing. Things like level numbers, indications of puzzle theme on the level map and here and there more icons for actions you can do would go a long way. Just a bit more information for the player. And you can always make these features a toggle, so the player can choose to show or hide them.

Suggestions for the full game is adding an easy way to reset your progress and have a built-in speedrun timer. Since, this game is the perfect game for speedrunning. Also, let the animations from the level map speed into the actual level from time to time. How cool would it be to see the train pass through the bottom while you are solving one of the levels?

All in all, after playing the demo I have high hopes for this game. I just cross my fingers that it’s going to be more than just more levels and puzzle mechanics. Since, if you polish this game a bit more besides giving it more levels… It’s going to go a long way. More levels don’t always make it a better game. Sometimes an extremely polished short game is better than a long game with undercooked or underused things. So, I’m curious to see the final product, so I can keep puzzling on while being puzzled.

And with that said, I have said everything I want about the game for now. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to welcome you in another one, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.