Xanther
Cannot fathom how this has a higher rating than Malloy and even Crystal Skull. It's boring, ugly (uglier than usual I mean), clunky (I kept getting stuck in walls in the gem section), the puzzles/games/tasks are a chore (mosaic, fax, cards), dancing while fun and quirky at first gets annoying fast if you need to do it a lot (e g for a certain plot point) and you haven't found out about the flowers scheme. They could've at least added some funny lines for the characters if you wear something atrocious. I cant believe that seeing somebody in a dracula cape and wearing a creepy doll mask with devil horns has a chance not to provoke at least some kind of a reaction. The characters are all annoying assholes except for Helena. What do you all find in this?
Some of the puzzles are not very good and the end part is downright tedious but I almost want to give this an 8 just for the sheer absurdity of some of the aspects of this game. One of the most memorable in the series.
2024
This feels very underdeveloped. Gets boring to play because yeah reading about Toilet Gnome or Wine Sprite is not that fun after seeing dozens of similar entries. After 2 or 3 in-game days I thought to myself "Is that really it?" and unfortunately it is. The idea is there, it's really cool, the visual style is also there, but the gameplay makes it feel soooo empty.
2024
I used to think that Source is the best medium for creating uncanny atmosphere and liminal spaces in games, but the n64 aesthetic is maybe even better at that. Plaza got me pantpoopin on a level I haven't achieved in years, but unfortunately gameplay vise the horror side got annoying pretty fast, and I couldn't make myself finish the final part. Overall really fun and captures the feel of old creepypasta games, provides lots of extra hidden content that gave me that childlike wonder that I hadn't felt in quite some time, while also telling a pretty good story, grounding its horror in something very human
Upd: after getting more into the secrets of the game, I take back that last statement lol
Upd: after getting more into the secrets of the game, I take back that last statement lol
2015
Spent more than 2 months reading a gay furry silent hill 2/twin peaks/some stephen king shit like It or something vibes but with emphasis on gay furries visual novel almost the size of war and peace and actually enjoyed it for the most part.
What's going to be my next wonderful and very smart decision? Can't wait to find out
Also wish there was more spooky visual stuff like in Jenna's route, I loved how they did the thing you know the one
And also Carl is a buddy and also a pal
and Chase please stop trying to fuck all of your childhood friends, that's NOT proper behavior, even if you're feeling a bit cray
What's going to be my next wonderful and very smart decision? Can't wait to find out
Also wish there was more spooky visual stuff like in Jenna's route, I loved how they did the thing you know the one
And also Carl is a buddy and also a pal
and Chase please stop trying to fuck all of your childhood friends, that's NOT proper behavior, even if you're feeling a bit cray
2000
A game that I get the desire to play every several months, then actually play and become the happiest person in the world for about 4-6 hours and then get bored to death from. Some of my favorite early 3d visuals and def the best music in the series.
Almost a perfect game. 2-3 puzzles aren't very good, the music tends to be not as memorable as some other Frank Klepacki stuff, maybe it gets a little too easy in the middle part (Volcania -> Rainbow cabin), but that's it. Everything else I absolutely love. Location design, item design, character design - it's all so distinct and colorful that I want to EAT almost everything in this game; the humor (at least most of the time) and dialogue; Zanthia is maybe my favorite adventure game protagonist. I always remembered this as one of my favorite childhood games, and having replayed it after so much time, yep, I can say it's up there.
This review contains spoilers
Kinda annoying to play (at least without a walkthrough which I ended up using), but it's very pretty, has nice music and an unexpected combination of genres that amazed me (science fiction post-apocalyptic furry high fantasy world?!). Wish there was more to this. The whole last part is terribly rushed (but has the biggest amount of science fiction post-apocalyptic stuff which is the best part!!)
2023
This game has an extremely fascinating style, but feels kinda boring, clunky and not really rewarding to play. The technical side leaves a lot to be desired, esp the map and the quest system. Didn't find the humor to be completely my thing either.
I didn't get too far into the game, got really bored while navigating dark mazes and healing druid trees. I got the taste of its aesthetic, but playing this game further would feel like a real slog.
In the end, I was impressed by its style a bit more than bored/annoyed over its overall undercookedness. Maybe I will finish it some time.
I didn't get too far into the game, got really bored while navigating dark mazes and healing druid trees. I got the taste of its aesthetic, but playing this game further would feel like a real slog.
In the end, I was impressed by its style a bit more than bored/annoyed over its overall undercookedness. Maybe I will finish it some time.
Puzzle spoilers
The Kyrandia trilogy is one of the most nostalgic games for me, played all of these so much as a kid in the late 2000s (I had no internet and the main source of games for me was my uncle who I really have to thank for a lot of games I still cherish). The first one always seemed the least interesting to me, and yeah, it's pretty short and the puzzles aren't that interesting (but more on them later). As a kid, I played these games WITH NO SOUND. It didn't work in the versions I was playing on winXP. Now, having finally gotten the full experience of the first game, I can say that it's got tons of charm. The music by the man himself Frank Klepacki who also made the ost for Lands of Lore which I adore, the visuals, the voice acting, the humor, it's all just beautiful and makes me wanna stay in this game for a bit longer.
But then come the puzzles. If you know Kyrandia, you know about the hell cave, the pit of doom, the treacherous cavern. I didn't have too many problems with it, mapping it on a piece of paper was even kinda fun. And finding only 4 rocks (the final rock is hidden in a place where it's almost indistinguishable from the background texture), trying to complete the puzzle with them and watching Brandon fuck it up in the most stupid way possible was painful yet hilarious. Again, the humor in this game is very good, it's light and it's sweet.
What really annoyed me is most of the other puzzles in the game. The altar where you have to put 4 gems the order of which is random other than the first one, and when you fail these gems respawn somewhere on the map which you have to go around every time just to try again (or just use saves). The potions that you have to mix somehow guessing that you need a flower/berry and a gem with a corresponding color, not even mentioning that if you don't have a necessary gem it might be on the other end of the map, and also the usage of said potions is just a guessing game once again (you get an orange potion that does nothing, but if you're in a very specific spot it will turn you into a pegasus and send you to the final location of the game). The bells that you have to play in the order that you also have to guess. The whole you have to bring a flower with you to a location you can't return from and if you don't have one you'll have to load the game and do everything again but how would I know that I need to have a flower with me if the game has had a lot of useless items up to this point thing. Uh. I know that old point and clicks are famous for this kind of stuff but come on, not like this. This is like either you use a walkthrough or bruteforce the game by just trying out every interaction. That whole thing really irritated me.
Otherwise, it's a very pleasant experience and a sweet funny little fantasy game if you don't mind using a walkthrough and doing a bit of backtracking from time to time. Really looking forward to replaying 2 and 3 which I played much more as a kid and which I remember as being far more ambitious, fun and absurd than this one.
The Kyrandia trilogy is one of the most nostalgic games for me, played all of these so much as a kid in the late 2000s (I had no internet and the main source of games for me was my uncle who I really have to thank for a lot of games I still cherish). The first one always seemed the least interesting to me, and yeah, it's pretty short and the puzzles aren't that interesting (but more on them later). As a kid, I played these games WITH NO SOUND. It didn't work in the versions I was playing on winXP. Now, having finally gotten the full experience of the first game, I can say that it's got tons of charm. The music by the man himself Frank Klepacki who also made the ost for Lands of Lore which I adore, the visuals, the voice acting, the humor, it's all just beautiful and makes me wanna stay in this game for a bit longer.
But then come the puzzles. If you know Kyrandia, you know about the hell cave, the pit of doom, the treacherous cavern. I didn't have too many problems with it, mapping it on a piece of paper was even kinda fun. And finding only 4 rocks (the final rock is hidden in a place where it's almost indistinguishable from the background texture), trying to complete the puzzle with them and watching Brandon fuck it up in the most stupid way possible was painful yet hilarious. Again, the humor in this game is very good, it's light and it's sweet.
What really annoyed me is most of the other puzzles in the game. The altar where you have to put 4 gems the order of which is random other than the first one, and when you fail these gems respawn somewhere on the map which you have to go around every time just to try again (or just use saves). The potions that you have to mix somehow guessing that you need a flower/berry and a gem with a corresponding color, not even mentioning that if you don't have a necessary gem it might be on the other end of the map, and also the usage of said potions is just a guessing game once again (you get an orange potion that does nothing, but if you're in a very specific spot it will turn you into a pegasus and send you to the final location of the game). The bells that you have to play in the order that you also have to guess. The whole you have to bring a flower with you to a location you can't return from and if you don't have one you'll have to load the game and do everything again but how would I know that I need to have a flower with me if the game has had a lot of useless items up to this point thing. Uh. I know that old point and clicks are famous for this kind of stuff but come on, not like this. This is like either you use a walkthrough or bruteforce the game by just trying out every interaction. That whole thing really irritated me.
Otherwise, it's a very pleasant experience and a sweet funny little fantasy game if you don't mind using a walkthrough and doing a bit of backtracking from time to time. Really looking forward to replaying 2 and 3 which I played much more as a kid and which I remember as being far more ambitious, fun and absurd than this one.
2023
I feel like a fucking idiot for getting excited for this one. 3 had something to it, but it turned out to be just an exception, not a trend of how these games were going to go. I couldn't even finish this one, it just drained me of any joy or hope. And most of all I hate the fact that I'm going to at least skim the playthroughs of the next ones and waste more of my time on this series because I'm too curious about what kind of shit they're going to pull out next time and what kinds of ways of not letting people refund a 30 minutes-worth-of-gameplay game they're going to devise.
MJ_ put it perfectly (https://backloggd.com/u/MJ_/review/978956/): "I live in a world where I have been disappointed by Garten of Banban. I am lost. I am unforgivable." Couldn't have said it better. This one phrase gave me infinitely more joy than this game. Thank you.
MJ_ put it perfectly (https://backloggd.com/u/MJ_/review/978956/): "I live in a world where I have been disappointed by Garten of Banban. I am lost. I am unforgivable." Couldn't have said it better. This one phrase gave me infinitely more joy than this game. Thank you.
1995
This review contains spoilers
This game feels a bit like a Richard Kelly movie to me, Southland Tales specifically. Extremely ambitious, ahead of its time yet perfectly encapsulating the time it was released (ST = 00s, TD = 90s), funny and absurd, has crazy sci-fi concepts, somehow combines so many genres and different ideas into something that works together, and all of that collides with time/budget constraints, technical issues and overcomplication due to the creators not being able to stop coming up with insane ideas (cryptic plot for ST, cryptic puzzles/mechanics for here, several of them either don't work or aren't explored to a satisfying degree), finally leading to an unfinished mess that I nonetheless can't help but love and marvel at. And when I say unfinished, I mean about 40% done. And unfortunately there are no comic books here to complete the vision in at least some kind of way. This is all we have.
As an example, closer to the end, there's a potentially very helpful artifact that you will shit yourself getting and it just DOESN'T WORK due to a bug. There's no fix for that.
The second half of the game feels especially cut-off. You get to some kinda interesting (though anything will be after the cable maze puzzles) but very bland locations, shoot some highly expensive endgame footage there, make videos out of that and that's about it. You don't even meet the very much teased Metal Lord. There are like 5 locations in the game, and in some of them you don't get to do or see much.
But despite that, there's still SO much fun to be had in this game. Little mini-games for sleeping, making sandwiches and drinks, routine things like buying fuel rods and food goo feel satisfying with these 3d animations. Incredible sound design, of course, every action has a sound reaction to it, my favorite being the whispers when you "examine" an item ("what is it?.." "..focus.." "...let's take a look!"). Most of the music is amazing, too (I mean, a game like this better have a good OST). And of course I love the visual style of the game, 90s/early 00s 3d is so underrated as an aesthetic.
So many little things in this game give me monkey neuron activation, just moving around, making myself a sandwich (which is always followed by an angelic "yum-yum"), """reading""" """books""" which are more mini-games in disguise, often containing hints for the more obscure puzzles (or, one of my favorite facts about the game, there are interviews with characters who buy your videos detailing their traumatic past, which can help you not to put potentially triggering material into your videos), listening to Kitty Cat on repeat and more and more. Too many things to name.
And back to the negatives, this game is fucking unfair. You can softlock yourself and ruin your save in so many ways. Happened to me several times, at some point I had to resort to a walkthrough for general tips to keep myself sane. Some essential items are hidden in places where you would never even think to look. You might get lucky with click-spamming or you just have to know they're there. And the difficulty settings, they make no sense. Don't pick anything higher than 2 if you don't want to turn your playthrough into pure hell.
Getting this game to work is another pain, took me several attempts and a couple of hours. I got the best result on Windows 3.1 emulated on Dosbox, but I've heard that 95 might work better.
One more thing, and that's the main mechanic in the game. Music videos. In general it's not very fun, you only get to choose the music/images for the video and how long the scenes are. Later, you can play around with some of the Distortion Dimension footage, which makes it a bit more exciting. It's basically your reward for fighting the guitar warriors and solving puzzles. New footage = more money. My favorite idea is getting an animation of a door opening into a shot of Joe Sparks himself running up the stairs with a mad smile on his face. But you do get tired from making videos fairly quickly.
The saddest thing is that you get most of your best footage from 3 locations that you access at the same time. Sonic Cemetery, Hell's Garage and L.A. Stage. These feel the most undercooked in the whole game. No context is given for these locations, no nothing, you just get there, complete a little puzzle or a mini-game and get out with dozens of clips. And after that, there's nothing left for you to discover. Just go home and make those $200k videos for Yuji until you can end the game. There's no climax.
All of that aside, the game is unforgettable. I love games that overflow with creativity even if they are underwhelming on other fronts. I still absolutely love it for what it is.
As an example, closer to the end, there's a potentially very helpful artifact that you will shit yourself getting and it just DOESN'T WORK due to a bug. There's no fix for that.
The second half of the game feels especially cut-off. You get to some kinda interesting (though anything will be after the cable maze puzzles) but very bland locations, shoot some highly expensive endgame footage there, make videos out of that and that's about it. You don't even meet the very much teased Metal Lord. There are like 5 locations in the game, and in some of them you don't get to do or see much.
But despite that, there's still SO much fun to be had in this game. Little mini-games for sleeping, making sandwiches and drinks, routine things like buying fuel rods and food goo feel satisfying with these 3d animations. Incredible sound design, of course, every action has a sound reaction to it, my favorite being the whispers when you "examine" an item ("what is it?.." "..focus.." "...let's take a look!"). Most of the music is amazing, too (I mean, a game like this better have a good OST). And of course I love the visual style of the game, 90s/early 00s 3d is so underrated as an aesthetic.
So many little things in this game give me monkey neuron activation, just moving around, making myself a sandwich (which is always followed by an angelic "yum-yum"), """reading""" """books""" which are more mini-games in disguise, often containing hints for the more obscure puzzles (or, one of my favorite facts about the game, there are interviews with characters who buy your videos detailing their traumatic past, which can help you not to put potentially triggering material into your videos), listening to Kitty Cat on repeat and more and more. Too many things to name.
And back to the negatives, this game is fucking unfair. You can softlock yourself and ruin your save in so many ways. Happened to me several times, at some point I had to resort to a walkthrough for general tips to keep myself sane. Some essential items are hidden in places where you would never even think to look. You might get lucky with click-spamming or you just have to know they're there. And the difficulty settings, they make no sense. Don't pick anything higher than 2 if you don't want to turn your playthrough into pure hell.
Getting this game to work is another pain, took me several attempts and a couple of hours. I got the best result on Windows 3.1 emulated on Dosbox, but I've heard that 95 might work better.
One more thing, and that's the main mechanic in the game. Music videos. In general it's not very fun, you only get to choose the music/images for the video and how long the scenes are. Later, you can play around with some of the Distortion Dimension footage, which makes it a bit more exciting. It's basically your reward for fighting the guitar warriors and solving puzzles. New footage = more money. My favorite idea is getting an animation of a door opening into a shot of Joe Sparks himself running up the stairs with a mad smile on his face. But you do get tired from making videos fairly quickly.
The saddest thing is that you get most of your best footage from 3 locations that you access at the same time. Sonic Cemetery, Hell's Garage and L.A. Stage. These feel the most undercooked in the whole game. No context is given for these locations, no nothing, you just get there, complete a little puzzle or a mini-game and get out with dozens of clips. And after that, there's nothing left for you to discover. Just go home and make those $200k videos for Yuji until you can end the game. There's no climax.
All of that aside, the game is unforgettable. I love games that overflow with creativity even if they are underwhelming on other fronts. I still absolutely love it for what it is.
2023
This game comes from several influences that all hit close to home but that I never expected to come together to make something new and whole. Doom, House of Leaves, Silent Hill, internet horror/creepypasta, a bit of David Lynch. Some of my favorite, most valued/nostalgic things in art all put into fucking Doom of all things (which is very much a nostalgia game for me). And it works. Also the original music for this is incredible. Of course I love how the custom "Running From Evil" fucks with you, but the "memory=entryrrrr/////" track is some of the most memorable and beautiful OST music I've ever heard.
But I'm not going to discuss the meat of the map in detail, there are 2 hour-long YouTube video essays for that. Instead, all I want to focus on here is one thing that I haven’t ever seen or heard being mentioned in relation to myhouse. It’s another Doom wad, and it’s also a special one to me. And the connections it has to this one are pretty interesting.
I've been playing Doom on and off since I was a kid, and one wad that left the biggest impression on me during that time was Cheogsh (2007) by Shadowman, a very strange but detailed one-level map about a guy sent into a hellish dimension with a mission to destroy the local demon whose power comes from five hearts that belong to Mikhail Gorbachev, Leo Trotsky, Adam Weishaupt, Patriarch Nikon of Moscow and Ramesses II, which is a highly fucking specific cast of people to take power from isn’t it. No idea what Shadowman had in mind here.
It’s a rather straightforward but long map, you can beat it in an hour and a half. You enter the demon castle and it turns out to be a huge underground place with a prison for marines, a CITY (it’s pretty small but it is called City of the Damned in-game) for monsters with some lovely interior monster-related doomcute, and a giant cave inside that has ANOTHER castle inside it. I love all of that. The map made the bab me realize how a mod can transform the source material into something completely different, something weird. So it does have a special meaning to me, at least for showing me how weird shit can get and be more fun because of that. And Cheogsh is very fun to play except for the pitch-dark automap-invisible maze that you have to blindly navigate in order to open new hallways by pressing skull buttons and fight revenants in the process.
But why did I turn my Myhouse review into a Cheogsh review?
When you open this map’s page on doomworld, the description reads: “One map - a large map! I devote this wad to KoLoBoK[iddqd], my best friend, who suddenly died in 2007, may 12.”
It always seemed so strange to me as an 11-year-old kid who came to play Doom and shoot monsters and was suddenly faced with a very real death.
Midway through the map you see a character, a ghostly figure of a Doom marine, who has “descended to help you”. He tells you about what’s going on and what exactly you need to do. Then he sends you to "a quiet place where you can find all the necessary equipment”.
The ghost is KoLoBoK, and the quiet place is his home. It’s a typical russian flat (it even has rugs on the walls!) with lots of doomcute. You find the BFG there, as well as some armor and ammo. It’s a safe, familiar space, a home, a "house", in the middle of hell, with KoLoBoK being something like the player's guardian angel.
According to the creator, this part of the map was made by KoLoBoK himself, with Shadowman making GZDoom-related improvements. Again, Shadowman added his late friend’s “myhouse” map to his Cheogsh map, and also gave his friend a role of the ghostly figure who helps the player, all as a tribute. It's basically the myhouse premise with extra steps and without all the creepypasta/HoL stuff, and also it's real.
I mean. What an amazing coincidence this is. The map is from 2007, 16 years before myhouse. But this parallel is insane. And the fact that this wad was such a memorable part of my childhood, it’s all making my head spin.
How the flat is basically a liminal space, existing as an alien, out-of-place, empty thing pasted into the corner of the main map, is another, more subtle connection I feel this map has with myhouse. Weird spaces, etc.
If that got you interested, you really should check that map out. It’s definitely a much more Doom-like experience but it’s definitely a weird map and one of my favorite mods of anything ever.
I wanted to write about House of Leaves as well, but that would have been even more of a directionless ramble. I love that book. I need to give it a reread after having played this map. The HoLway (yes I just wrote it like that) easter egg is also appreciated.
But I'm not going to discuss the meat of the map in detail, there are 2 hour-long YouTube video essays for that. Instead, all I want to focus on here is one thing that I haven’t ever seen or heard being mentioned in relation to myhouse. It’s another Doom wad, and it’s also a special one to me. And the connections it has to this one are pretty interesting.
I've been playing Doom on and off since I was a kid, and one wad that left the biggest impression on me during that time was Cheogsh (2007) by Shadowman, a very strange but detailed one-level map about a guy sent into a hellish dimension with a mission to destroy the local demon whose power comes from five hearts that belong to Mikhail Gorbachev, Leo Trotsky, Adam Weishaupt, Patriarch Nikon of Moscow and Ramesses II, which is a highly fucking specific cast of people to take power from isn’t it. No idea what Shadowman had in mind here.
It’s a rather straightforward but long map, you can beat it in an hour and a half. You enter the demon castle and it turns out to be a huge underground place with a prison for marines, a CITY (it’s pretty small but it is called City of the Damned in-game) for monsters with some lovely interior monster-related doomcute, and a giant cave inside that has ANOTHER castle inside it. I love all of that. The map made the bab me realize how a mod can transform the source material into something completely different, something weird. So it does have a special meaning to me, at least for showing me how weird shit can get and be more fun because of that. And Cheogsh is very fun to play except for the pitch-dark automap-invisible maze that you have to blindly navigate in order to open new hallways by pressing skull buttons and fight revenants in the process.
But why did I turn my Myhouse review into a Cheogsh review?
When you open this map’s page on doomworld, the description reads: “One map - a large map! I devote this wad to KoLoBoK[iddqd], my best friend, who suddenly died in 2007, may 12.”
It always seemed so strange to me as an 11-year-old kid who came to play Doom and shoot monsters and was suddenly faced with a very real death.
Midway through the map you see a character, a ghostly figure of a Doom marine, who has “descended to help you”. He tells you about what’s going on and what exactly you need to do. Then he sends you to "a quiet place where you can find all the necessary equipment”.
The ghost is KoLoBoK, and the quiet place is his home. It’s a typical russian flat (it even has rugs on the walls!) with lots of doomcute. You find the BFG there, as well as some armor and ammo. It’s a safe, familiar space, a home, a "house", in the middle of hell, with KoLoBoK being something like the player's guardian angel.
According to the creator, this part of the map was made by KoLoBoK himself, with Shadowman making GZDoom-related improvements. Again, Shadowman added his late friend’s “myhouse” map to his Cheogsh map, and also gave his friend a role of the ghostly figure who helps the player, all as a tribute. It's basically the myhouse premise with extra steps and without all the creepypasta/HoL stuff, and also it's real.
I mean. What an amazing coincidence this is. The map is from 2007, 16 years before myhouse. But this parallel is insane. And the fact that this wad was such a memorable part of my childhood, it’s all making my head spin.
How the flat is basically a liminal space, existing as an alien, out-of-place, empty thing pasted into the corner of the main map, is another, more subtle connection I feel this map has with myhouse. Weird spaces, etc.
If that got you interested, you really should check that map out. It’s definitely a much more Doom-like experience but it’s definitely a weird map and one of my favorite mods of anything ever.
I wanted to write about House of Leaves as well, but that would have been even more of a directionless ramble. I love that book. I need to give it a reread after having played this map. The HoLway (yes I just wrote it like that) easter egg is also appreciated.
This is such a cool concept but such a disappointing execution. Very mid mascot horror when it could've been a great analog horror mystery. Also very short and feels underdeveloped, especially the endings. Still appreciate it for the attempt, for the idea, even though it left me underwhelmed.
2014
pov: you just moved to a big city and decided to go for a walk
the experience is actually surprisingly similar
the experience is actually surprisingly similar