Game Quicky: Baba Is You (Switch) ~ Review Is Win

Official website – Nintendo.com subsite

So, what if a game developer falls in love with the game he created for a game jam? Well, some of those developers make their game into a fully-fledged game like the developer behind Baba is You. Arvi Teikari created the basic concept for this game for a Game Jam. The Jam version is free, but for a more expanded version, you have to pay around 15 dollars. But, is this puzzle game worth your time or was it better as a Jam Game? Let’s take a first impression and quick look at the game that has been released on PC and Switch. The version I’m reviewing is the Switch version. 

The good

One of the main reasons I’m writing a review for this game in my game quicky style is because this game doesn’t have a story. So, I have less to critique which makes for a shorter article. But, why am I mentioning this with the good points? Well, that’s simple. The lack of a story in this game is actually a rather enjoyable thing.

Since this game is a really meta puzzle game, writing a story for this game would be a huge hindrance. It would be too silly or it would take itself too seriously. Also, it puts the focus on the unique gameplay of the game and that’s all that matters.

The gameplay of this game is extremely addictive. The idea of this game is that you finish the level by hitting the object that “Is Win”. So, how do you that? Well, by manipulating almost everything in the level. You can see the basic idea at work in the gif I attached to this article (source: official website of the game).

You see “Pillar is Push”, so that means that you can push around the pillar. Off-screen, there is “Water is Sink”, so you sink/die when you touch the water. Now, something that’s unique is that the text can also be moved. So, you can make: “Pillar is You” as well. And that means that you control both Baba and the pillar.

As long as you make real sentences, the game will act accordingly. Now, there is no real tutorial in the game but the game is divided into sections. The first few stages of a level are introductory levels to the mechanics that the level is going to use. And, these training levels are needed since this game can get pretty challenging.

Mark Brown from Game Maker’s Toolkit explained how smart this game is in his video where he praised this game as his most innovative game of 2019. And I have to agree, this game challenges the most veteran players to finish each level. And sometimes the level is stupidly simple while you look over the solution multiple times. It’s such a rewarding feeling when you finally beat a stage that you were stuck on for so long. Something I enjoyed quite a lot was when a friend and I were figuring out puzzles together. Discussing strategies and trying to figure out how each puzzle worked.

Now, I can keep praising the gameplay for a long time here. But, take it from me. If you enjoy puzzle games or great brain teasers, this is the game for you. But is the rest of the game any good? In the visuals department, I can only give you one answer and that’s yes!

Compared to the Game Jam build, this game got a visual overhaul. From a cuter main character to better animations. It’s all here. I personally think that Baba is a sort of white rabbit/cat hybrid animal. In this version, the improved animations give the player more information instead of the rather static look of the original game.

There are barely any sound effects in the game. But, that’s no big issue. Since it would destroy the atmosphere of the game if the developer added sound effects for the calm water or lava. It would be a bit too much. The music, on the other hand, is amazing. It’s rather calming and soothing to listen too. It’s a trance soundtrack that relaxes you to think outside of the box to find the answer more easily.

Controlling this game is also a blast. I rarely had any issues with the controls. The fact that you only need a few buttons makes the game easy to understand. All you need to know is how to move Baba, how to undo an action or how to wait. You can press the “A” button to wait for an object to either teleport, move, jump… while you are standing still.

Now, yes, I’m praising this game to the moon and back. But, does that mean it’s flawless? Sadly enough, no. I have a few things that I have to mention in my negatives section. 😦

The bad

Now, the game makes a few minor mistakes that might be called nitpicks. First of all, there is something I really dislike about the UI. You are stuck to the level layout. That means that you can’t move freely over the screen when selecting levels. This can make navigating in the level select a bit tricky.

You get a flower when you finish a level in a stage. Whenever you finished around 6 stages in a level, you can go on to the next level. But sometimes, you earn sun symbols. And it’s never clear when you are going to win which symbol. This is extremely annoying when you are only one sun-symbol removed from opening that one gate that’s blocking that one world.

Now, since when is the “B” button a select button? In almost every game I play, the “B” button is a cancel button. Not in this game, it’s a selection button. My brain is so hardwired to press B to go back to the world map, I get extremely confused when I suddenly enter a level or select an option that I didn’t want to select.

Something that I think would be great is a sort of hint system. This game could have used a help system where the user could unlock a hint after a certain amount of time. Sadly enough, you are on your own in this game. Oh well, thankfully there are walkthroughs when I really want to know the solution to one level.

And yes, that are all the negatives of this game. So, let’s wrap this article up and let’s go to the conclusion.

Conclusion

I can totally understand that this game isn’t for everybody. This game is for people who really enjoy solving brain-melting puzzles or extremely unique indie games. The game is extremely charming and enjoyable. The addictiveness of this game has that one more try mentality. And as soon as you find the solution, you get that rush of adrenaline.

I really meant what I said in my tweet in January. I think there are huge chances that this game will be in my top 10 games of 2020 list. I enjoyed my time with the game, the visuals, the soundtrack, and the gameplay that much.

So, give this game a try! It’s totally worth your time in my opinion. And not only that, 10% of the game’s profits go to charity which is an extremely nice move of the developer. Even for an indie developer.

There are a few minor things that this game does wrong but honestly, I think they can be fixed with a patch or a feature update easily. Especially the “B” button thing since I found that extremely annoying.

And with that said, I think I have said everything about this game I wanted to say. Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. I hope you have a great rest of your day and take care!

Score: 100/100

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Publishing: GoVentureWold ~ A Browser Game for Economics

Jonez speaking here:

If you want to read more and give this game a chance, I would advise you to check out their website: https://goventureworld.com

This game is an MMORPG, where you take on the role of a manager of a new company. Your goal is to grow and become as wealthy as you can. But be aware, this game is grounded in reality! You will have to get the economical skills to exceed at this game.

While this game is still in development, the developers are very open to user feedback and bug reports. There are various ways to contact them with ideas, questions and bug reports.

If this infographic or this text interests you in any way, go and check out the website. Since this game is FREE. (At the moment of writing)

Here is something I really like: there is systems built-in, that avoid people going bankrupt when you go idle on the game. Your assets will be frozen so you don’t loose nor win money.

If you want to give this game a try, but don’t know a lot about economics, don’t worry. There are courses and tutorials to help you improve your knowledge. In addition to that, this game is created by a team of people who have created various simulation apps for schools with an economic program. So, they are experienced in their craft.

More information about the company developing it can be found here: http://mediaspark.com/about.html

Check this game out, since it has a lot of potentials! Thank you for reading this article and I hope to be able to welcome you to another one. Until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Gamer’s Thoughts: My Dream Con

Not too long ago, I wrote an article about my adventures at various conventions. You can read it here.  Today, I want to talk about something unique. I was inspired to share my dream comic con after learning that Eventbrite has the tools to make an event like this happen.Today, I’m going to talk about my dream con. Well, not only my own dream con. I asked a few other bloggers for some ideas and suggestions and I have put in their answers in this article. Also, if you are interested in organizing your own event, seriously take a look at this page of Eventbrite. It’s their management page and it will make organizing an event a lot easier! So, without any further ado, let’s talk about my dream convention. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the article and/or your own dream convention.

Where would it take place?

Honestly, I’m not a specialist on this. I could talk about some places I went to where conventions took place like the Excell Centre in London or the “Heizel” in Brussels, Belgium.

Seriously, the Heizel is extremely large. But, I think it’s not really good for conventions with a lot of panels. But, I have only been in parts of the buildings, so I can’t really judge that. I honestly thought that the Excel Centre in London was better for that.

Thankfully, somebody who has more knowledge on the subject gave me an interesting answer. From the guys at GeekOut South-West, I present this answer that came from Joel, one of the writers on that site:

Without question the best venue I’ve ever been to is the Warwick art centre. I think Tim would agree to that. So far as guests go, mostly I’m in it for the other con goers so I leave it to others for good examples

And then Tim, also from GeekOut South-West, replied with:

In my view, Excel has nothing on Warwick Art Centre. Excel is big and seriously impressive! However it’s… Just space. It’s good to cram things into. The WAC is just a stunning university campus, which has space should you/a person need it. There’s rooms with all the facilities you could ever need and the people who run it genuinely care.

If ya’ll hadn’t guessed, I agree with Joel

Also, Kim from LaterLevels got a suggestion:

My favourite venue in the UK is the NEC in Birmingham. I get what Tim said about places like this just being ‘a space’ but I love how enormous it feels; and every expo I’ve been to there has had a great vibe. Alternatively, I quite like the Tobacco Dock. There’s a bit of history there and it’s a gorgeous venue – plus it’s in London and so easy for me to get to!

Who/what would be at your dream comic con?

Kim from LaterLevels replied this:

My dream con would have an area solely dedicated to adventure games: point-and-clicks, walking sims, anything heavily story-based. I also like the ‘Leftfield Collection’ areas at the EGX and Rezzed expos, where you get to meet new devs who are usually there with their first projects. They tend to be more ‘experimental’ than other games on show.

Seriously Kim? This was going to be part of my reply too. I honestly feel that games like the point-and-click don’t get enough love on cons. At most conventions, it is all the flashy games that steal the show. Yet, I want to go one step further.

I would love to have a underappreciated games genres corner. Visual novels, RTS, dungeon crawlers, indie games… I think it would be lovely to show the underdog some love from time to time.

If I would be allowed to organize a con, and allowed to forget reality for a second, I would honestly love to invite the smaller blogs/YT channels as “press”. Since I think that they would be able to grow so much with the opportunities presented to them then. Otherwise, the big blogs and big YT channels might steal all the thunder away.

Yet, in reality, I know that such a thing isn’t possible. So, I would try and make sure that the smaller YT channels and smaller bloggers get some equal attention and exclusive things to promote on their channel or blog.

Something I would love is a healthy mixture of old school and new games. I honestly think that a convention dedicated to gaming instead of one subsection of gamers would be popular. I would go even a bit further. I would love to focus the con at giving people the chance to learn about old games, new games and share games and knowledge around. I would also love to have a sort of garage sale-y thing to happen. So, new and old games can be sold, bought and traded. That would make the inner collector in me happy.

Who would you like to meet? 

So, I told you guys earlier that I asked answers to other bloggers. Well, Kim from LaterLevels told me this:

As for who I’d like to meet there… Peter Molyneux! I know that’s a pretty controversial answer but I admire his ambition (even if he doesn’t always pull it off), and I’ve always wanted to meet him. It would also be good to see Dr Mick Donegan, the founder of SpecialEffect – I’ve met him before and he’s so lovely, his enthusiasm for helping others is infectious.

So, this quite an interesting answer. Personally, I would love to meet some of the developers I had the pleasure of meeting through emails. I have written quite a few articles about indie games and learned that some developers actually live in countries pretty close to mine. So, I think it would be awesome to meet them.

Other people, I would like to meet are the people I got to know in the blogosphere. We are becoming such close friends and I would love to meet up with them and just hang out. Play a game with them, grab something to eat and things like that.

In terms of people from the gaming industry, I would love to be able to meet Shigeru Miyamoto, if at all possible. I have so much respect for the guy. All the work he did for the gaming industry just blows my mind. I want to personally thank him for all the memories he created for all of us. I don’t want to go and interview him or be a big fanboy (which, to be honest, I am), I want to thank him as a fan and as an admirer of his work. But, I want to keep it professional and respectful towards him. Maybe one autograph might not hurt.

Wrapping up

That will be my dream convention. A place where everybody can have fun. Where retro gamers would meet “new school” gamers. Also, thank you again to my blogger friends for adding their own replies to the mix. They made this article more interesting to write. But, now I’m quite curious what your favorite conventions are. I can’t wait to read about them in the comment section down below.

Also, thank you again to my blogger friends for adding their own replies to the mix. They made this article more interesting to write. But, now I’m quite curious what your favorite conventions are. I can’t wait to read about them in the comment section down below.

As always, 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 blog but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Preview: Spinnortality (PC) ~ Immortal Empire

Official website

Today we are going to take a look at a game that lets you build a huge empire. A game where you can become immortal and conquer the world. The game currently isn’t released to the public, but I got the chance to play the development version. The game will also release on Steam, since it got greenlight. I also want to stress that this article isn’t a paid review or promotion. In this article, you will find my honest opinion on the game. Also, beware, since this game is still under ONE MAN development, things I mention here might change and/or improve in the final version. But enough introducing of the game, it’s time to give this cyberpunk tycoon adventure a start.

The current planned release this is 31st August 2017, but this is subject to change.

Control it all

The goal of this game is to become immortal and conquer the world with your empire. In this game, you can control everything that your mega-corporation does.

Want to get a special law passed in a country? This game has it. Want to control media? Yes, this feature is in the game! Want to rig elections? Guess what, this is also a feature in this game. There is a lot more to do in this game, so it’s advised that you play through the tutorial.

In the press build, I think the tutorial could use some improvement. Since there is a lot you can do in this game, I honestly think that it would be better if you were able to replay certain tutorials. Basically, that you have a list of missions. Each mission is a tutorial. This way a player can replay a tutorial if they want more explanation about a certain part of the game or when they forgot how something worked.

After I played the tutorial sections, one thing was clear to me. This game isn’t for casual players. There is a lot of things you need to keep track of. Since this game is turn based, you could argue that you could play this game in short bursts, but I wouldn’t recommend that.

The gameplay of this game is simple on the surface but it’s very in-depth. The only thing you will need for this game is a mouse. You rarely need the keyboard, only to input your name at the start and/or the name of your save file.

Too much for me

My first few playthroughs of this game left me confused. I honestly think there is too much to do from the start in this game.

After some time, I got used the mechanics of this game. I learned how the game worked after replaying the tutorial for a few times. Again, read the tutorial carefully. I think this game would be improved if there is a “Help” button, where certain things are explained that were explained during the tutorial or like a “What does this thing do?”-sort of button. Where you need to click on and then you click on another button to get some explanation.

Basically, I think the biggest issue in this game is that the game is a bit overwhelming to new comers. If you don’t play a lot of management games, you will get lost in everything you need to keep track off in this game. The game is fun and well put together, but like I said, it isn’t newcomer friendly.

Also, you need to take your time to play this game. If you click on everything just to advance your turn, you will lose all your money before you know it. Take your time and think everything through while playing this game.

In the press build, there were a couple of bugs. But, I’m not going to hold this against the game since I told them all to the developer so he can fix them before the game launches. Most of the bugs were minor things that could be improved.

Spin that globe

So, now that I have talked about the gameplay, I think it’s time to talk about all the other aspects of this game.

I love how you can save and load your game at any time. This is very handy since when you made a wrong move, you can easily load an older save file to try and fix your mistake.

Visually, the game nailed its theme. The game looks quite good for being created by one man. I really liked the animation of the moon going around the globe, very well done. While there is a lot to keep track off, the UI is very well built too. All icons give a great representation of what options you could find where. The only thing I would improve is to make sure you can easily see what’s a clickable feature and what not.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the music. I really enjoy melodic music, and this game doesn’t have that. Is the music bad? No, I have heard and played games with much worse music. The music adds a lot to the theme and presentation of the game, but it isn’t my cup of tea. Some tracks were enjoyable like the menu theme, but some tracks used in this game weren’t to my liking.

During my play sessions, I had one idea I would love to see implemented in the game. When you start a new game, you can choose a region where you start. This will also decide your currency. You could take this idea even further with making it more tricky to change laws in other parts of the world. For example, a European based country has it more difficult with changing a law in the North America.

But, that’s everything I wanted to say about this game. It’s time to give my final thoughts.

In conclusion, at its current state, I don’t think it’s ready for release just yet. It needs some polish to be “easier” for non-management gamers to understand the game. Apart from some minor bugs, everything works pretty well.

The game is interesting and unique. Would I recommend this game? Currently, I would recommend it to people who enjoy games like Europa Universalis IV and games of that nature. Otherwise, this game isn’t for you and you might not enjoy this game at all. This game truly has potential to become a great game, but it still needs some work.

Thank you for reading this article 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, take care and have a great rest of your day.

Note: The developer told me that he will work on making the experience better for newcomers when the game is released.