Game Quicky: Archaica- The Path Of Light (Switch) ~ Pointing Lazers

Steam store page – Nintendo.com page – Official website – Drageus Games page

It’s no big secret that I love to play various types of games. From shooters to more relaxing games like Forager. Now, I enjoy playing casual games like the ones on Bigfishgames.com. So, when Drageus Games sent me a press release about Archaica and I saw it was based on one of the classic light and mirror puzzles you have to do in those games, it grabbed my attention right away. So, I took the press code I got, and I started working on this first impression/review article of the game that will have 100% my own opinion. Without further ado, let’s see how well Two Mammoths game got ported to the Nintendo Switch. And as usual, feel free 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. 

The good

The story in this game is pretty relaxed. The story is about you discovering the ancient secrets of an old and long forgotten civilization. Yet, since this is a puzzle game and in most of the puzzle games the story can be a bit… mediocre, the developers focused more on the atmosphere and tying the puzzles into the lore.

This is something they did quite well. The story is being told through various hidden collectables, and it’s a joy to play through a puzzle game that way. The only “ehrm” thing about it, is that it’s a bit ruined by the fact that there is no real “log” of the things you discover. So, if you want to read previous entries, you are out of luck.

Now, the gameplay is quite easy to understand. You have to place mirrors on the right location on the grid and get them in the right orientation for them to bounce the light right into the crystals. The really responsive controls make this game easy to pick up and play.

While this game can be fun in short and longer play sessions, the thing that kept me going was the atmosphere. The lore building storytelling combined with the amazing visual presentation and animation, it’s perfect for a first indie game project. Together with the mysterious Aztec-themed music, the sound design is pretty well done as well.

The difficulty of the game can be a bit frustrating, since it’s the answer is always a bit tricky, but the satisfaction of finally figuring out that level you were stuck on is such a great feeling.

The game autosaves your progress. It’s a joy, since it also saves the collectables you have found in uncompleted levels.

The bad

So, I don’t know who is to blame here, but on the official Drageus website, they claim that this game has a unique hint system and that it has dynamic boards.

I’m sorry, but this is a bit of false advertising. Let me begin first about the “dynamic boards”. Since it’s a term that I didn’t find anywhere else, it’s a bit up for whatever we make of it. And that can cause some expectations that aren’t realistic like randomly generated puzzles.

But the publishers aren’t native English speakers, so I can forgive that to an extent. Something I can’t forgive and found quite disappointing is the actual lack of a hint system. I’m sorry, but I was unable to find this “unique hint system”. Now, if they meant with “unique hint system” the fact that you get more explanation about a certain type of mirror when you find the three glowing pedestals hidden in the level, then I don’t call that a hint system but a tutorial.

Sadly enough, there are some other things I can’t let off the hook either. The menu UI, especially the method to return to a previous menu is a bit clunky. You have to hold B to go to a previous menu. But, the annoying thing is that there is no indication of the game registering your input.

Also, the options’ menu is a bit unpolished. You don’t go to the top option when you scrolled down to the bottom, and the game doesn’t tell you that the options autosave when you exit. So image my surprise when my game was suddenly in a different language because I was looking at the different options for this review.

The option to replay the intro is just filler. But the intro is just a few seconds long and has just one text box with a bit of the story.

So yeah, with that said, I think I have said everything I wanted to say about this game. Apart from my conclusion here. What is my actual conclusion? Let’s find out.

The conclusion

This game is a strange beast. While the game is really enjoyable to play, and I had a lot of fun with it… There are some things that just ruin the experience to a degree. From the lack of a promised hint system to unpolished UI.

I’m under the impression that this game tried to be something it isn’t. It could have been so much more when the story was more fleshed out, and you had some sort of log you could read previous entries. Or when you had a hint system and a reason to actually collect those shine glowing orbs.

I really wanted to like this game since the audiovisual design and the gameplay are excellent. Especially the audiovisual design is exceptionally well done for an indie title. But alas, it isn’t meant to be.

I can recommend this game to casual and hardcore fans of the puzzle genre. If the premise of laser and mirror puzzles interests you, I think that this game might be worth your time but don’t expect the next Talos Principle from this game.

I might sound a bit harsh in my conclusion and I do have a reason for that. I find it such a shame that such a beautiful game is pulled down by such simple mistakes. This is something the developers can fix through patches and content updates. So, please. Just polish up the game a bit more, and it can be a real gem. But for now, I think I’ll just enjoy my unpolished rough diamond.

Thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope I’ll be able to welcome you in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 60/100

Advertisement

NekoJonez’s May 2020 Update

Hello, there my dear readers. I think it’s high time to write an update article to talk about a few things that are going on behind the scenes. Since there is a lot going in the world and in my personal life. This update article might be brief, but I hope you will still enjoy reading it. Anyways, let’s get right into the news!

The amazing GIF has been made by the amazing Gao Li.

Personal life

So, due to COVID-19, the world is in a strange place. Currently, in Belgium (where I live), we are in the process of exiting our lockdown. The schools are going to somewhat resume, the companies will restart their production, stores will reopen… Of course, step by step.

During the lockdown, I didn’t sit still at all. I’m working on a ton of projects and putting in a lot of effort into my job. Speaking of my job, something amazing happened! My dream job since childhood has always been working in a school. When I started to develop my passion for computer science, I wanted to become an IT guy at a big school. In December 2019,  I started working in a school in Ghent parttime as my dream job. But, after the week after the Easter Holidays, something magical happened. I got that job full time now. So, yes. I’m now working full time in my dream job. I can’t honestly believe this happened to me. Thank you!

So, I have been spending quite a lot of time on my job. Since a ton of schools now switched to online classes, the IT staff has a ton of support work. There were days that I helped teachers from the early morning until late in the evening. That means that I sometimes didn’t have time to prepare and/or write an article for my blog.

On top of that, my theatre group started something quite unique. We are acting out our version of a popular TV game show here in Belgium called “De Slimste Mens Ter Wereld”. Freely translated, this means: “The Smartest Person on the Planet”. Sadly enough, there isn’t an English article to be found of the show, so I can’t link it to explain the whole format.

Now, the original person who was editing the whole show wasn’t able to continue working on the show. That means that somebody else has to take over. And I’m one of the only people in the group who has the skills and the expertise to actually edit the show. The show airs on Monday – Wednesday, and Fridays. Now, I work to give or take 10 – 15 hours on each episode. So guess what that means, even less time to prepare articles for my blog.

On top of that, there are a few things happening in my private life that makes my life even busier. Things like me studying a new programming language and developing a tool for some friends of mine. So yeah, I haven’t sat still these days.

Blog news

Now, besides working on all the personal projects mentioned above, there are a few things that are blog related as well. Currently, I have 3 developer requests in the pipeline and I have some friends who wanted me to look at their game to help them out in the next projects.

I’m going to try to write these developer requests first before I write about any other games. That means I have to remake my whole schedule. But that isn’t such a big deal.

Currently, I want to focus my time and energy on my job and my theatre group. I think that this isn’t going to come as a surprise, but I think that May might be a big light on articles. Since I’m working on so many things, I don’t always have the time, creativity, energy, and/or motivation to work on an article each week. With a bit of luck, I might be able to publish two articles this month instead of four, but we shall see. It’ll all depend on the time I can put into my blog and prepare myself. Honestly, I prefer delaying an article instead of rushing one out of the door.

To give you an idea to show you how busy I have been, I have published over 500 articles by this point and I haven’t written a special article about it yet. On top of that, I have been blogging for 10 years now! So yeah, there will be a special article for that in the (near) future!

Besides that, I’m also working on fixing a ton of things on my blog. From typos to fixing dead links, broken images, and things like that. Also, I’m toying around with the idea to move my website to a hosting service. But, I’m not 100% sure about that, and undertaking that project will be for the summer holidays at the earliest.

Apart from that, I currently own an XBOX360 now. One of my friends sold his one and I bought it from him. So, that means I might be able to write reviews and articles about XBOX and XBOX360 games in the future. Are there any games I should check out? Feel free to leave a comment about that.

And with that, I have said everything I wanted to say. I’m sorry for the shorter length of the article but that’s all I have time for now. I hope you still enjoyed reading this article and I hope to be able to welcome you to another article in the future. But until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

First Impressions: The Hive (Steam) ~ War With And Of Bugs

Steam Store page

One of my favorite game genres is RTS games. The satisfaction that you get from building up your empire, setting up an economy, and preparing yourself to defeat the enemy. It can be such a rewarding feeling. Games like Age of Empires II, Rise of Nations, or Rise & Fall – Civilizations At War are just three of the amazing games I have played to death when I was a kid. Now, when I got a mail from the fine folks over at Skydome Entertainment with a press code for The Hive and full freedom with my article, I was extremely excited. This game has been under development for several years now. The first development blog posts on the Steam Store page date all the way back to December 2014 and the latest patch has been released on March 9^th, 2020, which is version 1.203. This is the version I’ll talk about in this article, so if this game got an update, it’s possible that some things in this article or no longer relevant. So, without further ado, I think it’s high time that we take a look at this game and it’s worth your time or if you should skip this game. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article down below.

War With Bugs

Something happened to the world. The story of this game starts off in 2175, where our planet Earth got attacked and destroyed. Humanity was able to build a ship and leave Earth before it was completely destroyed and went off a journey to look for a new planet to life. After a human lifetime of searching, a new planet in a new solar system was found. The humans were taken out of their cryogenic sleep to start-up life anew in the harsh climate. But, something is alive underneath the crust of that planet. Something awakens in the City Of Ancients that might prove a big issue for the humans and the catch is, it’s you that takes control of the new species and try and help to find it’s old glory.

You play as The Hive and you are the leader of bugs living in The City Of Ancients. The story gets more interesting in the further chapters but I’m not going to spoil it. To be honest, I got some Overlord vibes from the story. Maybe because both games are about minions you control and have their own unique abilities. The atmosphere is similar to a certain degree. The plot of this game is quite enjoyable and it didn’t disappoint at all.

One thing I should mention is that this game has no skirmish mode as far as I know. So, that means if you finish the 12-ish hour-long campaign, you basically have beaten the game. You could try to beat it on a higher difficulty to challenge yourself but outside that, the game has no real replay value after defeating the campaign.

Now, this game also has voice acting. The voice acting in this game is quite impressive. The production value is impressive for being an indie title. It feels that the voice actors put their heart and soul into the characters and gave them a nice personality. I especially liked the effects they put on the voice for the Insect Advisor.

While this game takes place in a magical universe, there isn’t a lot of technobabble. For those who don’t know that term, it means that everything has its own name and there are a million exposition dumps. If you have played an RTS game in the past, you will know right what to do and the war of the bugs can begin.

War of Bugs

So, the gameplay loop in this game is that you have to explore the caves underneath the planet to find a way up. You learn a lot about the War and the fight against the other species that took place. While most levels use the usual RTS gameplay loop of build city, build the economy, build an army, find enemy, attack the enemy army, destroy enemy base; a few puzzles and unique twists are thrown into the mix.

In terms of gameplay and mechanics, I have a mixed feeling. There are things that I enjoyed quite a lot and there are things that baffled me. Let’s do a round of good thing – bad thing to sum a few things up.

So, while building your empire, you can not only rotate around the camera but the buildings as well. Man, I love features like these. It makes it less awkward when I placed a barracks in a corner and my units spawn out of a wall from the building. Alas, the building of buildings has one thing that I found frustrating. I have gotten so used to the fact that you can cue up buildings to build, but that doesn’t work in this game.

The gathering of resources works in a unique way. Food doesn’t rot away and workers don’t have to walk back and forth to the hive. A special cart rides out from the nearest gathering point to collect the resources. So, your workers put all the gather resources on a pile and these carts come and pick it up. The resources don’t even rot away and you don’t have to do anything for it to collect it. The only “downside” is that you can only use one worker per resource gathering point. Now, what’s the bad thing here?

Well, there is a soft-lock potential. The resources aren’t infinite. Now, imagine this scenario in the Age of Empires II. There is no more wood on the map but you need wood for your archers. What can you do? Well, you can build up a ton of farms and trade that food over for gold to buy wood at the market. This avoids the issue that if everything of one resource is gathered, it’s impossible to get. Now, in The Hive, there is no such thing as a market or a farm. Meaning that every decision counts. Thankfully, you really have to make bad decision after bad decision in order for you to soft-lock yourself but the fact that the potential is there always worried me.

The UI of this game is pretty impressive. The options menu is something that I can only praise. An explanation of what key does what? It’s a feature I’ll miss in other games. If only, a similar explanation appeared for the graphic options, but hey, that would clutter the UI of the graphics options a bit too much. Yet, I have two things that I disliked about the UI. First of all, if I may nitpick, I found the text on the buttons on the pause menu a bit hard to read since the text color and the color of the buttons are somewhat close to each other. And second, the visual design of the menu’s that you open using the pause menu are so different in design… I mean, the pause menu has a sort of cave theming like the UI in-game, and suddenly, a more space / modern UI appears for the options menu.

The fact that your vision cone appears on the mini-map is a great feature and it even rotates with you when you rotate the camera. Yet, I do have a complaint. It doesn’t change size when you zoom and/or out and especially, it always appears a bit underneath the place where you click on the mini-map. I can understand why this happens since the location of the camera isn’t where you click but a bit underneath that spot. But, it gave me a feeling I wasn’t able to click where I wanted on the mini-map.

It’s great that you can skip cutscenes and even have subtitles. But why aren’t both possible in the opening cutscene? A minor nitpick is that there are some minor grammar errors in the game (“Click of the paintings” instead “Click on the paintings” in the second level)

There is this unique mechanic where you can find treasures to upgrade your units to dissolve them for DNA points to unlock special upgrades for your units. It’s a perfect balancing act since you need to decide if you are going to dissolve the treasures and get an upgrade or use them to improve your unit(s). If only that would be explained in some sort of tutorial, which the game somewhat lacks.

Just a bit more

If you read the previous section, it might look that I’m ripping this game a new one. That there are so many things missing or wrong with this game, that it’s not a great game to play. Well, then I think you got the wrong idea. I loved my time with the game and I found it a bit disappointing that some features I expect weren’t there.

Also, the price for this game is only 15€. So, it would be wrong of me to compare this game to big titles with way bigger budgets behind it. The thing is that I enjoy this game so much, that it frustrated me that the potential that this game has is unused.

Take for example the visual presentation. The artwork, unit design, level design… they all look amazing. You really feel like being in an abandoned cave where an old civilization used to live. The animations really make the world come alive. It’s so adorable that your workers dig into the ground to create a building and that it rises up like a sort of mole hole.

The audiovisual design is outstanding as well. This game has an orchestral soundtrack that reminds me of the reboot Tomb Raider games, Rise & Fall – Civilizations At War, and other similar games. It sounds familiar on one hand but new and fresh on the other hand. It’s a blast to listen too. The sound effects only add to the great atmosphere. The audiovisual design is so well done that I can excuse that some things don’t have sound effects or voice lines like when you click on an option where you don’t have enough DNA points for or certain interactions in your inventory are silent.

This game is a blast to play but you have to take into account that there are some things that don’t really work or work in the way you expect them to work. I have given several examples in the previous section, but here is another one. Why does your cursor not change when you hover over a resource or why don’t your worker acknowledge that interaction is going to happen?

This is why I said earlier in the article that I feel quite mixed about the gameplay. I enjoy playing this game but the final touches are just not there in certain cases. Now, I’m not saying that this game is unpolished or anything since there is a lot of attention to detail in most mechanics but not in all of them.

I think that this game could use another major content update or update that just focusses on making the game a bit more accessible. I think if a tutorial is added, something to avoid the soft lock potential and the functions that miss sound effects or voice lines are added; that this game gets even better.

So, I can’t wait to finish the final 5 levels I still have left to play. Since I really enjoyed my time with the game. I highly recommend this game to everybody who enjoys sci-fi games, RTS games, and even to people who enjoy adventure games. This game is quite enjoyable to play and experience. It’s an enjoyable RTS experience that I won’t soon forget. Congrats to the small Finnish team of 6 people who put their heart, soul, blood, sweat, and tears into this game since I have to say, the end result is something to be proud of and it shows a ton of potential for future games and/or more adventures in the world of The Hive.

And with that, I conclude my first impression. I want to thank you 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!

Game Quicky: The Touryst (Switch) ~ Vacation With Adventure

Nintendo.com microsite – Wikipedia entry – Official website

In the world we live in today, it’s not too advised to travel. To protect the risk groups from COVID-19 that is. So, that’s why I’m going to talk about a small indie game on the Nintendo Switch called The Touryst, where we can have a virtual vacation. But hold on, is this a holiday worth going on? Since, the holiday picture you see as cover art spells doom. It might go wrong pretty quickly. But, is that wrong as in, story-wise or wrong as in… a bad game? Let’s find out together in this game quicky article! And as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the content of this article and/or the game in the comment section down below. 

The good memories

Just like in a vacation, the story of this game takes somewhat of a backseat. The story is there to explain certain things that the people of the island do. But what is the story of this game? Well, in this game you play as a guy going on a holiday. He discovers a way to enter a strange alien looking temple and when exploring that temple, his adventure is afoot.

While there is no voice acting in this game, the writing in the dialogue boxes is pretty good. Especially since there certain effects to some dialogue parts to put more character inside the dialogue boxes and on top of that, the characters of the game.

Something I really love about this game is the variety. There are so many things to do and puzzles to solve. While the main quest takes you on a journey through various temples and you solve various platforming challenges, the other puzzles and side quests take you on a journey through a beach party, jazz club, art museum and many other places.

It’s quite impressive that in a game that’s only 6-ish hours long, that there is so many different things to do. I have even seen speedruns of people completing this game in under one hour. So, this game is quite speedrun friendly.

The controls of this game are quite close to perfect. The are easy to understand and extremely responsive. I was able to understand all my abilities even after a month or so of not playing the game.

The UI and “TO DO list” is one of the best I have seen in a while. It logs almost everything and it’s easy to navigate and find. Per island you get a list of the tasks you still can do to progress either the main story or a side quest. The only minor complaint I have is that the load game feature is under the options menu. I just wish that this was it’s own menu with a sort of “save and quit” feature as the first save file or something.

The performance of this game is mind blowing. The game runs smoothly at 60FPS and I can’t tell you one spot where it dropped lower than 60FPS. Together with the impressive visual design, this game is a technical master class for other developers. The visual presentation of this game is something I really enjoyed. It reminds me of a sort of smooth Lego-ish vibe with the stunning voxel graphics.

The animations are wonderful to look at as well with the steady and high frame rate. To me, it was extremely immersive. I really loved going onto the islands and exploring around to see what the game had to offer. I loved how the footprints stayed in the sand or how the lighting of the sun changed when you moved the camera around.

Couple this with an amazing soundtrack and sound design together with the rather relaxing and sometimes tense atmosphere of this game and you have another reason why I feel that this game deserves a lot of praise. But, there is something… something dark lurking while I’m praising this game.

The bad memories

Sadly enough, this adventure isn’t perfect. There are some mistakes in this adventure that I think could have been better. The first thing that I found a big bummer is the fact that there can be only one save file in the game.

Speaking about saving, something I found a bit disappointing was the fact that when you choose save and quit in a monument, that you have to restart the whole monument. So, better put the Switch in sleep mode than choosing save and quit.

Now, something I talked about in this article earlier were the controls. Some of the controls still need some fine tuning like the aiming controls. I had to wrestle with the aiming controls more often then not. This is such a big shame in my opinion. Also, this might be just me but the ledge grabbing mechanic didn’t always work for me.

There were some mini games and platforming sections that were a tad bit too difficult in my opinion. Especially when some tricky jumps were involved. It was so annoying when I fell into a pit just because I jumped a bit too early. Thankfully, you do respawn quickly, but the whole room resets. So, yeah, if it’s a puzzle involving a lot of steps… Let’s just say it’s extremely irritating.

The fact that there is no real hint system is a bit frustrating. In some boss battles I had to find the solution by complete accident. There is some trail and error in this game. While I didn’t find this too big of an issue, I can see that this might be a turn off for some people.

With that said, I think it’s time we reached a conclusion. Don’t you think as well? Should you go to your nearest Nintendo eShop Travel Agent and book this holiday or should you avoid it?

Travel verdict

This game is a hidden gem. While it’s quite short, it’s a blast to play and explore the worlds that were created for this adventure. But, there are some cracks in this gem that might turn people off from playing it.

It feel like some parts weren’t polished enough and that made some sections a bit too frustrating. Thankfully, those moments aren’t too frequent and spread out quite a bit.

This game is a joy to beat but a nightmare to complete. I can only agree from what I have read from other reviewers, there are some (optional) sections like the surfing and soccer game that make this game almost a rage quitting affair.

Well, I think that this game is highly worth your time and money if you enjoy exploration games, puzzle games, platformers, indie games… There is a huge audience for this game I think. But, I wouldn’t be surprised if this game didn’t click with everybody. Since, this game can be frustrating but also a bit repetitive.

Thankfully, there is a demo. So, you can try before you buy. My advise is that you first give the demo of this game a try and if you feel that it’s your cup of tea (or coffee, or beer or …) then you buy this game. Since, it’s a joyful adventure with some weaker spots that’s a blast to experience.

And that’s everything I wanted to say about this game. 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!

Score: 80/100

Game Quicky: Spirit Roots (Switch) ~ Two Halves Make A Whole

Nintendo microsite – Drageus Game page – Developer website

Today I want to talk about a game that I got a review code for from the people over at Drageus Games. In this article, I’ll give my 100% honest opinion. For this review, I’m reviewing the Switch port. The original game was created by FireArt Games and released on mobile platforms and Steam. More information can be found on the developer’s website. But for now, let’s dive right into Spirit Roots and let’s take a look if this game is worth your money or if you should skip this game. And as usual with these articles, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article. 

Editorial note: this review has been written for v1.0.0

The good

In this game, you play as the unnamed main character on a journey to save your planet. For the purposes of this review, I’ll call him Jos. Just because I don’t feel like being creative now and looking for another name. Now, Jos’s task in this game is simple. He has to save his planet that’s at the end of the stellar system.

This planet has a unique cirque. Because the planet had several hundred years of conflict, the two remaining parts of the fighting planets got stitched together to form one huge planet. Now, peace rains on the planet because both parties agreed to never cross the border. Well, that’s going to change. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have an interesting setup for a game, wouldn’t you?

The story is just amazing. The whole concept is lovely. There are so many things you can do with this idea. You can explore the concepts of who rightfully owns the land because the planet has been stitched together. Or you can explore the idea of two nations that had years upon years of conflict living together. But, more on the story later.

The audiovisual presentation is a blast to hear and see. Visually, this game looks amazing. It looks quite cute and impressively detailed. The world looks alive and quite colorful. It was a blast to play through it. The soundtrack of this game reminded me a bit of Fantasy Life on the 3DS, a soundtrack that I really enjoyed.

The levels are quite enjoyable. The game can be pretty challenging if you aren’t careful. Thankfully, the game is pretty generous with checkpoints, so you don’t have to lose a lot of progress when you die. The game also comes with three difficulty settings, that increase or decrease the challenge of the game. The game is also available in 7 languages.

The game is also quite lengthy. There are 50 levels divided over several worlds. In each level, you have a certain goal to gather all the souls. You can keep track of that goal by watching the counter at the upper left of the screen.

You don’t need to complete all the levels. When you are stuck on a certain level and have enough golden souls, you can move on to the next world and try your luck there. In order for you to reach the last world, you have to gather 44 of them. So, you have to finish around 15 levels completely before you can reach the final world. This allows you to continue the game without being frustrated because you are stuck on one level.

It’s quite clear that the game took some inspiration from games like Rayman Legends. The souls remind me of lums and the art style looks quite similar too.

The bad

Now, I said earlier that I wanted to talk about the story again. Sadly enough I have to do that in the negatives section. You want to know how I learned about the interesting story? Not through the game, but through the information that I found on the microsite of Nintendo. Even the developer’s website is quite sparse with information. It’s a big missed opportunity. I would have loved to see how the story was used in this game. But alas, when you start the first level, you are dropped right away in the first level without any explanation.

That’s one of the biggest drawbacks of the game. But sadly enough, I found a few other problems with the game that I would like to address in this review. The first one is the jumping. Sometimes when I’m on moving platforms, I fell through them. Also, after using your slash attack, the jump doesn’t always work. This lead to various deaths that could have been avoided.

The game’s use of the term “health points” is a bit misleading. There is a 1-hit system in this game like in the Mario games. So, the health points just mean how many retries you have from the checkpoints. When you have to retry a stage, well, then you lose all your progress since the last checkpoint. But, that isn’t too big of a deal in my opinion.

Something that I found extremely silly is the fact that you have to wait for three seconds when you open the pause menu to resume playing.

Apart from that, the game lacks some minor polish. There a few animations and little things that are missing. It would be a bit too much if I sum them all up one by one but here are a few.

• When you reach a checkpoint, only the arrow disappears. No real fanfare. In the village. The ones in the swap have an animation. But only barely, the light just switches on.
• When you die closeby an enemy that throws projectiles, the projectiles land at the other side of the enemy, even clipping into walls.
• The sound can hang when a tutorial appears on the screen. Especially when you slash open a change.
• On some levels, like the 3rd one, you can see the top of the level… And it looks quite flat.
• The texture of a door you can slash through and one you need to flip a lever for are too similar.
• When you shoot a bullet, it keeps traveling until it’s off-screen. It doesn’t break on the walls.
• The death animation is a bit too long in my opinion. It would have been better if you were able to get back into the action more quickly.
• When you choose to exit a level, it tells you that it will take you to the main menu yet it takes you to the level select.
• …

Due to these things, the game feels a bit unfinished to me. Like it’s in a state where it’s almost finished and ready to go but it’s not there yet. If the developers would put some finishing touches on the game, it would have been perfect.

But, something that I really missed in this game is a system where you can somewhat move the camera. Various times, I died to a moving spike that I wasn’t able to see coming because it came from off-screen. It would have been a big help if a similar system was implemented to avoid things like that.

Conclusion

Spirit Roots isn’t bad nor is it a good game. During my research on this game, I came across a video review by Defunct Games. I have to agree with almost the whole video. Due to some pretty major negatives, this game isn’t the best it can be.  The same goes for the review by PocketGamer.

This game shines in the audiovisual department but lacks some major features in the platforming department. So, I have a hard time recommending this game. If you enjoy B-grade platformers, I think you might enjoy this game.

But, I think that a remake or a remaster would better suit this game. It’s just a bit too stiff, a bit too rough around the edges. While I did enjoy my time with the game, I don’t think I’m going to finish this game in the near future. Maybe when I have some downtime, but we shall see.

Anyways, that’s everything I wanted to say about this game. 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.

Score: 60/100

Game Quicky: One Person Story (Switch) ~ Reflexes At Work

Official Nintendo subsite – Drageus Page

Just like the title of this game, this blog is mostly a one-person story. Most of the articles you can read on this blog are written by NekoJonez, now with that said, I think it’s high time we focus on the game that this article is going to be about. It’s One Person Story by Lampogolovii Leric and ported to the Nintendo Switch by Drageus Games, who provided me a review code for free for this review. This article will have me 100% honest opinion of that game and feel free to leave your opinion about the game in the comment section down below about the content of this article and/or the game.

The good

This game is a puzzle game where you have to guide a square through a pathway. The only control you have is switching between two states of the level. While there isn’t a lot of interaction with the game, the game is rather calming and relaxing to play. It’s a perfect game to wind down or to relax.

Visually, the game is pretty basic but pretty nice to look at. The visuals don’t get too much more involved than what you see in the screenshots but it does the job perfectly. It adds to the atmosphere and the relaxing feeling of the game.

Together with that, you have rather calming music and sound effects. The audiovisual presentation has been nailed in this game. It’s a joy to play and listen too. The music doesn’t restart between levels, which is a great plus. I have seen games that have a similar price point that makes that mistake.

The UI and options menu is just perfect. While you have only one other language to play around with, you can adjust the music and sound effects. The is no way to enable or disable the voice acting, but that’s no big deal. Since the voice acting is pretty decent. I’m able to overlook the fact that there is only one other language in this game, which is strangely enough: Russian. Adding too many different languages would increase the scope of the game and the amount of work as well.

Now, there isn’t a lot of story in this game. It tells the story of how life is. The moments when life is painful, joyful, blissful, annoying, irritating… Losing friends and working together. It’s quite relatable even when my life is far from the same as yours.

It’s amazing to see that this game barely needs any time to load. Thanks to that, you can easily restart a level when you died. You restart right away like in games like Super Meat Boy.

The bad

Now, this game is a rather pleasant game but I don’t think that the Switch is the correct platform for this game. This game is rather repetitive and it would be better suited for the mobile market.

That said, the game also introduces unique mechanics that would be quite interesting for more complex puzzles, but the developer only chose to use them for one or two levels. After that, new or other mechanics get introduced. There is barely any depth in this game or anything else besides pressing the button to move the obstacles out of the way at the right time.

I’m under the impression that this game could have done so much more with the concept but choose to stay this minimalistic. It stays true to the atmosphere and the feel of the game but the game became repetitive and dull for longer play sessions.

There is a sort of level select in this game but it’s rather limited. You can only choose to start at a chapter. It’s quite unclear when a chapter starts and ends. To make matters worse, when you choose to start at a certain chapter and you leave the level… Well, you are in for a nasty surprise. It overwrote your autosave file! I was at level 33 and I was messing around with the chapter menu for this review. When I choose the beginning; before the level even started, I left the level. Then I choose “Start”, fully expecting that I would be able to resume my level 33 progress. But nope, it started me at the beginning.

I can be pretty short about this, but I find this a minor negative worth mentioning. The credits just list the name of the original creator and then that the port has been created by Drageus Studios. But who developed that port in that studio is unknown.

Conclusion

This is a decent game on the wrong platform. This is an excellent game to play in short bursts since the levels can be solved quickly and easily. It’s a perfect relaxing game to play on the bus to school or on the train to work. But, I don’t think that the Switch audience is the correct audience for it.

The game is just too basic, too repetitive for my liking on the Nintendo Switch and that makes it quite difficult for me to recommend. If you enjoy casual games or games that tell a unique story in an easy way, I think that this game might be right up to your alley.

If the game interests you after reading this review, I would say: give it a go! It’s only a few bucks, so it isn’t that expensive. If you didn’t get interested while reading this review, I would skip this game.

Personally, I’m glad that I gave this game a chance since this game pleasantly surprised me. But, I’m quite sure that not everybody will be able to tolerate this kind of casual games. Even while the game shows a lot of promise and just needed a bit more mechanics and polish.

And with that said, I have said everything about this game I wanted to say. I want to thank you for taking the time out of your day to reading my blog! I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you to another one, but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care!

Score as a Switch game: 60/100.

Score, ignoring that its on the Switch: 70/100

NekoJonez’s November 2019 Update

Hello there, dear reader! Thank you for checking out my blog and taking time out of your day to check out this post. 2019 is coming to a close but not only that, a new decennial is going to start soon as well. I’m quite excited about it and I have a couple of plans for the future. But, I think it’s best that I mention a few things in an update article to keep my readers up to date. So, that’s why we are here. Let’s dive right into the updates about my personal life and my blog. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment in the comment section with your opinion and/or suggestions.

Blog updates

Something I have been promising in a lot of update articles is the fact that I’m proofreading my blog and trying to get rid of as many typos as I can. Now, I understand the argument that there shouldn’t be any, to begin with, but I’m human, and spell checking isn’t my strong suit.

Now, I’m happy to say that since writing this update article, I have updated every article that I published in 2019 and a part of 2018. I’m also fixing broken links and broken images.

So, whenever you see a typo or a sentence that doesn’t make sense, feel free to hit me up on Twitter, in the comments, on Discord or on any place you catch me. I’m always happy to receive feedback and even when it’s a small typo that I have overlooked. I’m also going to do my best in the future to avoid as many mistakes as I can.

Apart from that, I have also started working on various other things like improving the overview pages, updating outdated information on the about me page and various other pages. I’m planning to somewhat merge a few pages and I have started working on that as well.

Besides that, I’m also thinking about creating new artwork and new logos for my blog. On top of that, I’m trying to work out a new theme for my blog as well. I have been using a similar site theme for so many years now, I think it’s high time for something new. But, before I do that, I want to finish reworking all the pages, categories and fixing the typos and grammar mistakes.

Lately, I’m quite busy with my personal life. I’ll talk a bit more about that in a later part of this article. This means that I’m running behind on developer requests and I even had to scrap a few. But, I’m going to try and catch up. Instead of publishing them on the weekends, I’ll publish them whenever they are done.

Now, I have a few major plans for December. Of course, I’ll publish the usual end of the year spiel but besides that, I have a few games in mind that I want to write about. In January 2020, I’m planning various nostalgic posts to look back at the past 10 years in gaming.

Before I got to the updates about my personal life, I think it’s time for the usual “update”. That is: I’m quite active on Twitter. So, when I have to skip a week or when I have updated a page or when I want to share something, you can follow it on Twitter. Most of these updates in this article are tweets I have posted in the past few months.

Personal life stuff

So, 2019 was an extremely crazy year for me. My mental health wasn’t the best during this year but thanks to amazing friends and family I have been improving slowly. I’m also recovering from a major writing burn-out which caused me to skip several weeks. This means that I wrote fewer articles this year and my stats really show that. Last year, I had over 25k visitors to my site. In 2019, I currently have 13k. Which isn’t bad, but it’s a major decline in readers. Yet, it is better numbered than the number of people who read my blog in 2017, which were just over 12k people, and we still have a month and a half to go.

Something else I have been doing is a major cleaning in my collection and my gaming room. I noticed that I had a lot of unused cables, broken handhelds, empty batteries, books I don’t read anymore… Because of this, I have a lot more room in my gaming area, but this also means that I came across a ton of games I haven’t written an article on, and I want to replay.

In the past few months, I have also been playing games I have started in the past but never finished. A lot of games I have written a first impression article on but never a review. So, maybe I’ll write a few follow-up articles on games I have written first impression articles on. I have an interesting format in mind, so that might be fun.

And that is everything major that’s been happening in my life. I’m sorry for the shorter article this week, but there are a lot of events going on in my personal life and I have been reorganizing and decluttering my life. And I think that this made my last few articles even better.

In any case, thank you for reading this update 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.

Award Time – Thanks LaterLevels

Today I got another blog award from LaterLevels. One of those awards that bloggers give each other to recognize each other for their work. If you want to read the article yourself to get more information, you should take a look at Kim’s post. This award is inspired by Michelle from A Geek Girl’s Guide. So, let’s get into answering some questions. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your answers and/or opinions on the article down below. 

Thanks, time

But before I reply to the questions, I have to thank Kim from LaterLevels of course for the recognition. She is a very kind-hearted blogger who I look up to very much. Her content sometimes inspires mine. She is a great person and you really should check out her work on the LaterLevels website.

So the way that this award works is that Michelle has five standard questions everybody needs to answer and 5 questions need to be made up.

Question time

Why did you start your blog?

Well, I have told this story many times before on my blog. The TL;DR is, since childhood I have been into writing. While I have a rather small family, we do have a TON of family friends. And to avoid me telling the same story a million times at family gatherings, I have decided to write them and publish them. Not too long after, I started writing game reviews and that’s how the ball got rolling.

What are your favorite topics to write about?

My favorite articles to write are articles about indie games I have played. The ones I enjoy the most are the ones where the developer asks me for feedback and improvements. I just love helping small developers who have a small budget anyways, so some help in QA is welcome for them.

What have you learned since you started your blog?

This is a tricky question. I have been blogging for close to … yes, 10 years. So, to be able to pinpoint something specific that I learned about due to blogging. I think I mostly found my niche and expanded my skills.

If I have to say something, I think I fine-tuned my writing and reviewing style. If you compare my current writing and style to my earlier writing, you will see a world of difference.

What do you love about being a geeky blog?

Simple, I love geeky things… so being able to write about geeky things is just amazing.

Where would you like to see your blog go in the future?

Actually, if I could dream, I would love to have some side income with my blog in the future. But I still want it to stay a hobby. In an earlier article, I have talked about how I’m afraid that if I would be blogging as a job, I would burn out. And burning out on one of my passions… No, thank you.

And now, LaterLevels has some questions for us.

How would you describe yourself if you could only use gaming terms?

I’m going to be sort of cheating here but I’m an INFJ or the advocate personality. And yes, these are gaming terms. D&D terms actually.

Who would be the worst video game character to be stuck in a lift with?

Zero III, just play Virtue’s Last Reward and you will get it.

If a game based on your life was made, what would be the genre and title?

Well, an adventure/action RPG. Mostly adventure RPG. The things that happen in my life are quite special.

Currently, I’m in the wordsmith and merchant class. I have a lot of points in the tech skill.

Which three video game items would you take into the zombie apocalypse?

A ton of revives, Lara Croft’s classic pistols (those with unlimited ammo) and one of those fancy luxurious airships from the game you image.

Which gaming character should we elect as our next prime minister and why?

Booker Dewitt, and telling why would spoil Bioshock Infinite. So, yeaaaaahhhhh…

Questions

So, before I list the people who I like to nominate, I have five questions of my own. So, are you ready? Here we go.

• If your life has a soundtrack, which genre would it be?
• You are a parent of a video game character, who would you pick as your child and why?
• Which video game character you don’t want to meet in a mental asylum?
• Would you rather go to Silent Hill or Raccoon City?
• If real life had video game cheats, which ONE cheat would you like to have and why?

So now, who are my vic— fellow bloggers I nominate for an easy Q and A— I mean an award.

• Robert from AdventureRules 
• Teri from SheikahPlate
• Nicki from TriformTrinity
• Luke from Hundstrasse

So, with that said, I’m looking forward to the replies. Thank you to LaterLevels for the nomination. And tomorrow, I’ll publish another article and that will be about a game. But 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 and until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Review: Captain Disaster in: Death Has A Million Stomping Boots (PC) ~ In Outer space We Click

Official Itch.io page

Besides visual novels, one of my favorite genres is the adventure & point-and-click genre. Games like Broken Sword, Another Code R, Time Hollow, and Adera to name just a few are amazing games. When I got invited to take a look at an indie point-and-click game, I didn’t hesitate twice. The game is a labor of love created by two developers, which makes it even more impressive. While I got a review copy of this game, but the developers wanted that I give my 100% honest opinion. And that’s this article, my 100% honest opinion. In any case, the captain needs us. Since he is going on another wacky adventure. And per usual, feel free to leave a comment about the content of this article and/or this game in the comment section down below.

 In outer space, we click.

As I already mentioned, this game is an adventure point-and-click game. The game is similar to games like Escape From Monkey Island or Broken Sword were the focus is less on the story but more on solving the puzzles in your way to progress the story.

In this game, you take on the role of the quirky Captain Disaster. He is tasked with delivering a package from one planet to another. Now, what the Captain doesn’t know is that the package is actually quite dangerous and has the potential to bring the whole galaxy in a lot of trouble.

It’s quite obvious that this game drew a lot of inspiration from the old school LucasArts and Sierra games. The humor is very similar to a game from Monkey Island and some parts even reminded me of Revolution Software’s Broken Sword series.

The story of this game is one where you don’t need to take it too seriously. While there is a lot of sci-fi in this game, the game doesn’t go overboard with exposition dumps or trying to explain every single detail or mechanic in the world. It’s a breath of fresh air to not have to learn a ton of new terms to be able to understand the game and/or the world.

Now, I know that this game didn’t have a huge development budget. It’s even referenced in the game itself. But I feel that the voice acting could have been better. The voice acting is not bad nor is it good. There are a lot of great moments in the voice acting. For example, the alien language and sounds are consistent and sound like an actual language. But, the voice acting makes, in my opinion, a fatal flaw.

Besides playing games and writing articles for this blog, one of my main hobbies Is acting in stage plays in a folk theatre group. One thing I learned is how to put intonation in your voice. When I listened to the voice acting again as if I was watching a stage play, I noticed with the voice acting sounded off to me. Some parts of the voice acting are too monotone. Now, the actual voices and accents of the voice work are well done but I felt the voice actors could have put a lot more intonation in their voice work. Especially when a whole dialogue is spoken at the same tone for minutes, then a bit more intonation would have been welcome.

Compare it to a teacher that’s explaining a subject in class. A good teacher puts intonation in their voice to try and get the attention of the students. When a teacher constantly speaks in the same tone, the students will get bored or worse, fall asleep.

Also, in some areas… some dialogues weren’t audio mixed too well. I had a few spots were some voice-over was louder than all the other voice-overs.

Now, if you don’t like the voice acting, you can turn that off in the options menu. You can choose between either subtitles, voice-over or both. I played throughout the whole game with both. I only noticed in the introduction of the game that two lines of voice-over didn’t have a subtitle. Right when the lights go out.

In this game, you explore various locations like a rubbish dump, a robot bar, and your own space ship. The pacing of this game is rather well done. Except, one minor thing bugged me. The lengths of the acts are a bit off. The second act was extremely short. One you knew what to do, you were able to blaze through it. While the first and third act took me a bit longer.

Now, in outer space, we click. And we don’t only click, we find a lot of references. There are a lot of references to franchises like Futurama, Star Wars, Jaws and Space Odyssey to just name a few of them. To be honest, there are a bit too many references for my taste. But, it’s something personal since I’m not that familiar with all the source material it’s referencing. I have played other games with a lot of references like The Legend of Zelda – Spirit Tracks that had a lot of references to previous games in the series and I quite enjoyed that. So yeah, I wasn’t the right crowd for all the references but I’m sure that fans of sci-fi will get a kick out of them.

Look, I’m an artist!

You might have noticed it from the screenshots but the visual presentation gives off a dated impression. And this is on purpose. The visual presentation is a throwback to the older point-and-click games like Space Quest and King’s Quest. In my opinion, the visual presentation has a certain retro charm to it. It really adds to the atmosphere and charm that the developers wanted with their game. It really fits the game like a glove. Now, the trade-off for that is that this art style will turn off some players. It’s a shame really.

The animations as well are pretty basic. But, this isn’t a bad thing. It still adds to the charm. I really like it when games that have a retro-inspired art style don’t use animations that wouldn’t be possible in that area. So, great job on that!

There are a few minor visual things that could have been improved. For example, the arrows to the sides don’t always change when there is more in your inventory then what’s able to be displayed. Another example is that the “BACK” button in the pause menu, the “K” looks a bit too much like an “H”. And a final example, the “L” in the title cards of the acts miss the top line of the texture which makes them stand out a bit too much. Now, all in all, these are minor things. These don’t hinder the experience of the game too much in my opinion.

Yet, there is one part of the visual presentation that could have been improved. At the start of the second act, I got stuck. I didn’t realize you were able to go the left to another area. It would be quite helpful if either the arrow point changed or if there was something visual to show that there was a door. There are a few areas that have this issue. In the Robot Bar, for example, I didn’t know you had another room to the right you could go right away too. Since the area looks like it’s roped off. Yet, sometimes when I go to the edge of the screen, the game tells me that I can go to another area.

Another minor nitpick is that when you click on an item and you click on the menu, the item will still be in use. But, this only happened to me twice during the whole playthrough.

ZB, Come in! We have a puzzle here!

In this game, you will get a lot of crazy things in your inventory. If you ever get stuck, the method of trying everything on anything always works. Some puzzles were quite annoying to solve. For example, there is a puzzle where you need to place 5 things on a motherboard, but when you click on a place where the components won’t go, you will need to reselect them.

All in all, this game isn’t too difficult and not too long. This game took me around 4 – 5 hours to complete. I was able to fully complete this game without touching my keyboard apart from giving a name to my save files. Now, this game does have an autosave but I save on some weird locations. For example, it saves right near the end of the first chapter but it doesn’t save automatically at the start of the second chapter. So, do yourself a favor and save manually.

The controls for this game are quite simple. You click with the left mouse button to interact with the world. You can use the right mouse click to inspect an item. You will need to inspect a lot of things for clues on what you need to do in order for you to progress. Also, you will need to combine some items. Personally, I kept some notes on what I needed to do in order to progress. It helped me to get through a lot of puzzles.

Now, something I really missed was the ability to move the captain with something else than the mouse. There are a few timed puzzles and it would have been great if I was able to move him with the arrow keys. It would have been especially helpful with the last section of the game since you needed to go off-screen and it wasn’t always clear if the captain was still walking or not.

Most likely due to the engine of this game, ALT+F4 and things of those nature don’t work. You can ALT+TAB out of the game but if you want to close the game, you will have to go through the very easy to use menu system. You can open the menu system by clicking the gear icon in the upper right of your screen.

The music in this game is hit and miss in my opinion. There are a few tracks I really liked but there were bits of the soundtrack that I didn’t like at all. Thankfully, there were no sound effects that are bad. These were all pretty good.

Before I go to my final thoughts of this game and this review, I want to mention something funny. Some games have this quirk while others don’t have this quirk. When you need to move a character with your mouse and the animation is bound to the mouse click, that means if you spam click, the animation resets. It was quite funny to see the captain sort of floating or shuffling instead of walking when I spam clicked around.

If you think that this game is interesting, this game only costs 9 dollars. But, if you want to try it first, there is a demo of the first hour of the game up on the official website of the game. Go and check it out. But now, it’s time ZB. Time for my final thoughts.

Conclusion

The bad:

• The automatic save system could have been better.
• The visuals on where you can go aren’t always there.
• The voice-over work could have used a bit more work. Sound mixing and a bit too flat and monotone.

The good:

+ Charming visual design.

+ Great puzzles.

+ Goofy story.

+ The number of references.

+ …

Final thoughts:

Now, is this game bad? No. Is this game good? Almost. If there was a bit more polish to the visual presentation and the voice-over work, I would say that this game is good. Now, I found it a pretty decent point-and-click adventure game.

It’s not the worst nor is it the best I have ever played. But, I still do recommend this game to avid fans of retro games and especially of old school point-and-click adventures. It’s impressive that most of this game is created by two developers and it got this result. It clearly shows that this game has been created as a labor of love. It actually made me want to play and take a look at the other games in the series.

I want to thank the developers of this game to introduce me to this game. It was a great ride to play this game. I think you are on the right track in making amazing games but there is still a lot of room for improvement. I think you are ready to push the next games of the captain even further. To make them even better and to give him an even crazier adventure.

And that was all for this review. I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you again in another article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 70/100

LaterLevels’ QOTM – January 2019 – The Ultimate Game: Themes

For a couple of years now, LaterLevels is organizing a question of the month. In 2017, you were able to send in a small section to be featured in the article. You were limited to the number of characters you had for a tweet. In 2018, every month a writer got a challenge to write an article centered around a question asked by LaterLevels. This year, LaterLevels is going “to develop” the best and/or ultimate game. In each month, another part of the game will be created. The idea is that other bloggers write up an article with their thoughts and ideas on that section and submit it to the post of that month. At the end of the month, the best is chosen by the already existing development team and will be invited to join the secret Discord to judge the entries in the following months. If you want to read more about the rules in-depth, you can read the post of LaterLevels here. Now that I have explained all that, it’s time for my entry. In January, the setting and theme will be decided without deciding the story and such. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the content of this article and/or the question in the comment section down below.

The challenge and my background

Now, I don’t want to brag but I have various ideas to make a very interesting game. In the past, I actually created some arcade clones with YoYo Game Maker. I’m not going to republish them since I lost the source files and I want to change so much for them to get republished.

But, here is the thing. When I was developing a game, I always started with the mechanics and gameplay. For example, when I wanted to create a Break-Out clone, I actually started out with recreating the Gameboy game Alleyway. Now, I felt too limited in level design, so I started to look further. Then, I found an asset pack with different blocks, a ball and various other sprites with a sea theme. So, I totally reskinned the game and I made up a story about a submarine stuck in a big magical coral reef trying to find its way out.

Another example is when I wanted to remake those simple flash and phone games that you need to tap a ball or an object to keep it from the ground. When I started to make that game, I got some small ideas for other mini-games with the sprites in that asset pack and I started to create a sort of WarioWare inspired game.

Now, you might have noticed that I always talk about an asset pack. This is a pack where various sprites, sound effects, music, backgrounds… are provided to game developers. In almost all of the games I created, I used asset packs. I can barely draw a decent stick figure let alone design various level elements. Also, when I created those games; I was 12 years old. So, I didn’t know how copyright and licensing work. That’s another reason why I’m not going to republish the games.

Anyways, let’s end this storytime about my history here and let’s get back to answer LaterLevel’s question. The reason why I’m talking about my hobbyist game development past is the fact I mentioned earlier. I mainly focused on an interesting and unique gameplay. The setting and themes would come later. While that is not the best approach, but it was the approach my young teenage mind took. And because LaterLevels didn’t want too many story details, the challenge got even harder.

I also messed around in RPG Maker. And I always had one or two chapters of the story written before I started to create the world and setting the characters lived in. I had a general idea of the world but when I write, I love to let the readers create the world for themselves instead of possibly boring them with the millionth description of how a fantasy castle town looked like. In addition to that, the fact that I don’t describe a scene gives me the liberty to use the setting to my advantage. That way I can bend the world to the story and my needs. But it makes continuity much more challenging.

So, the ultimate video game. What could be a setting and/or a theme of the game? Well, I have a few suggestions without giving too many plot details. Let’s take a look at that.

Themes and settings

First of all, when you are talking about the best game, I think that the theme should be one of the variety. A power fantasy in another world would be extremely easy and generic. Most RPGs use a silent character you can name yourself or has the most generic dialogue that can be used for each RPG main character. To be honest, this is a generalization. There are exceptions of course.

A perfect video game needs to grab you and pull you into the story, world, and setting. When I was brainstorming for ideas I noticed that most of my favorite story-driven games take place in one location. For example, in Corpse Party, you explore one haunted school and the associated buildings. In Another Code: R, you explore the vacation resort where your father works. And as a final example, in the first two Bioshock games, you explore Rapture.

Suddenly, various things started to click in my mind. I got my eureka moment. I got it when I remembered the story of Sword Art Online. In that series, people are trapped in an online VR-game. In order to escape, they have to beat the game. The catch is, when they die in the game, they die in real life. In that series, the game takes place in a huge fantasy open world with various dungeons and quests.

Now, what if we take the idea of Sword Art Online and expand it for the best game, but with a huge twist? First of all, we can decide if we create the game in VR or not later. My suggestion is that the best video game takes place in a sort of fantasy open world with castles and towns that provide a lot of quests and things to do.

The twist is that everything in the world happens with games. Think of the mechanics of the No Game No Life series, where every dispute is settled with a bet who wins a game of for example chess, rock/paper/scissors, poker or even more extreme examples. Now, it would an interesting idea if this idea is implemented into a real game we can play.

Back to the story of Sword Art Online, in order for those who are trapped to escape they have to beat all bosses in a huge tower. Now, what if each floor in this tower is replaced with a challenge in another genre and that you have to beat different challenges in that genre before you can progress.

Think about the overall story of Retro Game Challenge. In that game, you get sent back to the past and in order for you to return, you have to beat various challenges in retro games. These challenges range from beating the first three levels of a top-down shooter to performing some unique tricks in a sports game.

So, the setting would be a great fantasy open world with one central tower the players have to beat in order to climb the leader boards. On each floor, another mini-game or challenge is provided. To avoid people getting frustrated at being stuck on one floor, I think it would be wise to give the player two or three options on the floor. For example, a fighting game challenge, an RPG challenge or a rhythm game challenge.

Maybe it’s an interesting idea to also have separate dimensions where players specialize in a certain genre or style of gameplay. Compare it a bit to the main characters in Kingdom Hearts traveling between various Disney stories to solve issues there.

The theme of the game can be either competition or teamwork. Various guilds can possibly form to aid players to easily beat certain genres. On the other hand, I totally see certain players compete with each other to be the best player in a certain genre.

Being one of the best players in a certain genre can give advantages in the game. In terms of balance, each genre should have a “contrast genre”. That way we avoid players getting overpowered because they mastered too many genres. For example, the players who master a fast-paced genre like rhythm games shouldn’t be able to easily level up their stats in a more slower based genre like grand strategy.

Do you see it now? Just trying to find a setting and or a theme for a game is tricky for me. Like I said earlier, I don’t create worlds too often and I leave them as vague as I can so I can bend them to the will of the gameplay and story. As soon as I got a certain idea, I start thinking about how the world actually works and how the world is balanced. And then we get eerily close to game design and how the game plays.

When I cut out all my gameplay & story suggestions, my idea for the ultimate game’s setting and the theme is this. A big open-world game with various challenges like dungeons and (side)quests, possibly with different universes. In the center of it all, is a huge tower that serves as a leader board for the solo and or clans that play the game.

Closing statement

And with that, I think it’s a good idea to end this article here. Otherwise, I might restart giving my ideas and suggestions on how the game will play. Now, if you want to know if my idea has won or not, you should follow OverThinkerY, since, on 31^st January 2019, they will reveal the winner on his blog.

If you want to join in on this challenge, don’t wait. Check out LaterLevels blog for the February challenge.

With that said, I want to thank you so much for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed 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.