Squigglydot
Bio
she/her
Game Dev, arcade historian, fighting game jobber, princess of the 6th generation, jank scribe, ghost of the gaming ether
Top game is the latest one I've made, "Mémoire 0079," alongside Woodaba, ConeCvltist and MagneticBurn. Check it out.
Other top 4 are just, yknow. vibes.
Perpetrator of the "Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom" Server Kill, Cause of the Review Length Limit.
Ratings are generally arbitrary.
Badges
GOTY '23
Participated in the 2023 Game of the Year Event
Organized
Created a list folder with 5+ lists
Elite Gamer
Played 500+ games
Pinged
Mentioned by another user
GOTY '22
Participated in the 2022 Game of the Year Event
Gone Gold
Received 5+ likes on a review while featured on the front page
Treasured
Gained 750+ total review likes
Famous
Gained 100+ followers
Listed
Created 10+ public lists
Shreked
Found the secret ogre page
Best Friends
Become mutual friends with at least 3 others
Busy Day
Journaled 5+ games in a single day
Donor
Liked 50+ reviews / lists
Roadtrip
Voted for at least 3 features on the roadmap
3 Years of Service
Being part of the Backloggd community for 3 years
GOTY '21
Participated in the 2021 Game of the Year Event
Gamer
Played 250+ games
On Schedule
Journaled games once a day for a week straight
Adored
Gained 300+ total review likes
Trend Setter
Gained 50+ followers
Well Written
Gained 10+ likes on a single review
Loved
Gained 100+ total review likes
Popular
Gained 15+ followers
Noticed
Gained 3+ followers
N00b
Played 100+ games
GOTY '20
Participated in the 2020 Game of the Year Event
Liked
Gained 10+ total review likes
Favorite Games
543
Total Games Played
072
Played in 2023
698
Games Backloggd
Recently Played See More
Recently Reviewed See More
honk mimimi ass game. guns and plasmids both feel bad, aesthetic is well realized but falls flat by the time you get to the half-way point. I Too Like Art-Deco, but it's not really interesting past a point, a point Bioshock isn't willing to explore. the story is as nothing as they come, bottom of the barrel Metatextual Filler, "isn't it fucked that you do whatever a game asks?" without any option to push back. like a meaningless Spec Ops: The Line.
Libertarian Gaming.
I know making even vaguely targeted statements is looked down upon, but the general consensus of Vividlope here is skewed by takes that frankly either don’t understand the game, refuse to approach it on it’s terms, or want it to be something that it just isn’t. Please don’t take this as personal slights, those who’ve made these statements; I’m just pushing back on what I see as misconceptions of the game.
Before that, my take: It’s cute! Game is really tough, to a brutal degree by the end of the game, but that’s okay! Mechanically, the game has flaws, but aesthetically it shines. I wish I had more to say, but uh. There!
Beyond that, I’ll leave it at a bunch of Statements I’ve seen about the game, here and otherwise, and responses to those statements.
--
“Enemies arbitrarily spawn and move semi-randomly. It’s Non-Design.”
Enemies spawn over time, and based on completion of the level. Specific spaces spawn enemies. Furthermore, while there are certain enemies that rely on a degree of random movement, each enemy has rules to them; not too dissimilar to the ghosts in Pac-Man. Learn the rules, and you can handle any one enemy. Don’t, you die. Simple as.
Enemies spawn over time, and based on completion of the level. Specific spaces spawn enemies. Furthermore, while there are certain enemies that rely on a degree of random movement, each enemy has rules to them; not too dissimilar to the ghosts in Pac-Man. Learn the rules, and you can handle any one enemy. Don’t, you die. Simple as.
“I want it to be a casual PC platformer / it should be a puzzle game but it’s not!”
Nothing about it reads as casual beyond the first level’s batch of stages – Y’know, where you learn to play the game. It’s a tutorial. It’s by and large an extrapolation of Arcade game design; it’s not a puzzle game, it’s not a platformer, it’s feeding off the same roots as Qix, Dig Dug, Q-Bert, all that shit. The “puzzle twist” extends purely to some of the gimmicks of levels; panels “unpainting” themselves, slight navigational puzzles, the works. This is an arcade game.
Nothing about it reads as casual beyond the first level’s batch of stages – Y’know, where you learn to play the game. It’s a tutorial. It’s by and large an extrapolation of Arcade game design; it’s not a puzzle game, it’s not a platformer, it’s feeding off the same roots as Qix, Dig Dug, Q-Bert, all that shit. The “puzzle twist” extends purely to some of the gimmicks of levels; panels “unpainting” themselves, slight navigational puzzles, the works. This is an arcade game.
“The movement is awkward / I can’t commit to certain movements!”
You can use an analog stick, but if you use the D-Pad (as the game strongly suggests when you launch it), the movement sticks to the grids the game wants you to play without being overly stiff. Furthermore… The game isn’t built around free movement, in a sense. You get precision by playing by their rules. You can jump two spaces, one if you hold back as you jump, and a Chess-like Knight jump if you hold hard left or right, relative to where you’re jumping.
You can use an analog stick, but if you use the D-Pad (as the game strongly suggests when you launch it), the movement sticks to the grids the game wants you to play without being overly stiff. Furthermore… The game isn’t built around free movement, in a sense. You get precision by playing by their rules. You can jump two spaces, one if you hold back as you jump, and a Chess-like Knight jump if you hold hard left or right, relative to where you’re jumping.
“The developer’s response to difficulty tweaks is condescending!”
You are playing an easier version of a game where half the point is perfecting play to get a high rank. The only difference when playing on Easy is having the highest possible rank locked out. If you want to get the best ranking, play the game as it was originally intended. Sounds fair enough.
You are playing an easier version of a game where half the point is perfecting play to get a high rank. The only difference when playing on Easy is having the highest possible rank locked out. If you want to get the best ranking, play the game as it was originally intended. Sounds fair enough.
“I can fill in every space and only get an S/S+ rank!”
100%ing a board is important, but so is keeping an unbroken chain going. It’s Combos Baby
100%ing a board is important, but so is keeping an unbroken chain going. It’s Combos Baby
“It’s just like a Dreamcast game!”
Wrong. PSP Launch Title.
Wrong. PSP Launch Title.
--
...And I'm still only giving it a 3.5, like most of the people I think had iffy reads on it here. C'est la vie! ¯\(ツ)/¯
The prior seconds pass with the enormity of centuries. Scattershot shrapnel peppers the asphalt, signaling the arrival of two street demons, both careening through air in a ludicrous display of car-nal car-nage. Like detached limbs, their wheels flail freely, in defiance of death itself, rolling to an uneventful stop against the guardrail. Launched beyond the rail’s comforting bounds, misfortuned motorists find their engines extinguished, their windshields splintered and scattered haphazardly. For what it’s worth, it's a spectacle with little to show for it; the same crumpled wreckages find themselves sprinting down the stretch once again, leaving little but metal and skid marks. Coming to my senses, parallel with the rail, I’m lightheaded and weak.
My ribs are a fine powder, my liver a congealed mass, my brain pulsing red-light, green-light pain and shock overdoses… but my machine roars to life. A gentle nudge of the accelerator eases her back on the straight-ahead, but an injection of noxious nitrous oxide pumps searing adrenaline through her veins – With a banshee’s scream, she climbs to 100, 120, 150, 200 miles per hour. The prying eyes piercing into the roll cage soon burn into spectral light, their lesser vehicles little more than dust against my almighty steed. Lost in the cacophony of merciless thieves, I give chase to secure what’s rightfully mine – The dizzying height, the brightest shine, the golden flow of first place. But my rivals, backstabbers and bastards all, seem poised to pilfer perfection from me once again.
It’s a trio ahead – The former deceased pair, and an impervious highway star leading the pack. In an endless stretch, it’d be a massacre, but with less than two miles left, the nerves start wearing me down. First is the rookie mistakes – a drift too harsh here, a grind against the median there, hell, even a full-scale collision to spice things up, but all too soon I’m peering down invisible crosshairs at the weakest link. Everything happens fast as I shotgun a final blast of nitro into a purring motor, my chariot a battering ram; the lesser of the twins crumples underfoot, ripped in two as hopeless fourth bashes into the corpse. The wiser twin falls just as simply; grinding against my steel chassis, they neglected to peek the eighteen-wheeler hurtling headlong. I can barely make out a resentful curse from the driver’s seat as the million-dollar machine is mulched.
And then, it was you, me, and the finish line. And brother, I wish our tale ended oh so simply, but either through fate or karma, neither of us were to receive fated first that day. It was as it always goes, in the United States, across Europe, to the far off shores of Asia – Even at our best, neither of us expected a humble family of four to be our downfall. You crashed into the van, as expected, but as if touched by a vengeful spirited, your shell bashed into me, and I into the monorail over yonder. Seeing this moment of weakness, hopeless fourth charges, pointless fifth overtakes, and… impossible sixth takes home the gold – My gold.
Still, I can’t help but laugh. Over a hundred gold metals, and I’m still caught off-guard, still left to ponder what-ifs and what-abouts. Pulling a swift 180, I curve my car along the backroad, glancing at the glistening lights in the rearview. With a smile, I hit boost once again… Launching myself directly into the busy highway, where a city bus embraces me at 90 miles per hour.
I wake, still slumped along the guardrail. The dual gods of speed soar overhead, colliding with the gathering crowd. With a flick, I boost back into the race. For one last time, let’s go for gold.