Beaten: Sep 17 2021
Time: 1 Hour
Platform: Mac (Via Parallels)
This is a short one and a weird one that I kinda stumbled through. It's by one of my fav devs, Jack King-Spooner, who was behind Dujanah and Beeswing (both EZ 5/5s), and if you've played those this will feel familiar.
Broadly, it plays like an rpg maker walking simulator. You explore whatever location you're in, talking to everything you can, and then you move on. What makes this one different than his other games though is some rudimentary minigames placed throughout, and a new lighting engine. The minigames are fine, adding just a little bit of variety and supporting the dream-like theming of the game. They play like little vignettes, without a fail state as far as I could tell.
The new lighting is GORGEOUS. Basically all the models in the game are clay sculptures, and he used a software to generate sprites that react to lighting almost like a 3d engine would. As a result it feels less like collage art than Dujanah, and more like a small diorama, and it really lends a sense of space to these locations.
The locations are maybe better than ever also. The lighting helps, but also the fact that you switch off characters every so often helps. Every character feels tied to the world, and as such everything feels very well realized. It's all the expansiveness and political fire of Dujanah mixed with the concreteness of location that Beeswing had.
Also it's got the hallmarks of his games as well, namely surreal yet affecting writing and music. The writing is couched in this bizarre sci-fi world he's dreamed up, but still feels grounded in person-level issues. There's no invading armies or space stations, just people going through shit. I love it. The music is otherworldly and gorgeous almost the entire time, and in an interesting change, most of it has lyrics! Even more interestingly, they're.. funny lyrics? Like really funny. It caught me way off guard.
Anyways, I still need to play the other sluggish morss games I think for this one to fully click for me. For now it's a less "finished" game than I'm used to from Jack King-Spooner, but I'm glad I played it, and I really loved it.
Time: 1 Hour
Platform: Mac (Via Parallels)
This is a short one and a weird one that I kinda stumbled through. It's by one of my fav devs, Jack King-Spooner, who was behind Dujanah and Beeswing (both EZ 5/5s), and if you've played those this will feel familiar.
Broadly, it plays like an rpg maker walking simulator. You explore whatever location you're in, talking to everything you can, and then you move on. What makes this one different than his other games though is some rudimentary minigames placed throughout, and a new lighting engine. The minigames are fine, adding just a little bit of variety and supporting the dream-like theming of the game. They play like little vignettes, without a fail state as far as I could tell.
The new lighting is GORGEOUS. Basically all the models in the game are clay sculptures, and he used a software to generate sprites that react to lighting almost like a 3d engine would. As a result it feels less like collage art than Dujanah, and more like a small diorama, and it really lends a sense of space to these locations.
The locations are maybe better than ever also. The lighting helps, but also the fact that you switch off characters every so often helps. Every character feels tied to the world, and as such everything feels very well realized. It's all the expansiveness and political fire of Dujanah mixed with the concreteness of location that Beeswing had.
Also it's got the hallmarks of his games as well, namely surreal yet affecting writing and music. The writing is couched in this bizarre sci-fi world he's dreamed up, but still feels grounded in person-level issues. There's no invading armies or space stations, just people going through shit. I love it. The music is otherworldly and gorgeous almost the entire time, and in an interesting change, most of it has lyrics! Even more interestingly, they're.. funny lyrics? Like really funny. It caught me way off guard.
Anyways, I still need to play the other sluggish morss games I think for this one to fully click for me. For now it's a less "finished" game than I'm used to from Jack King-Spooner, but I'm glad I played it, and I really loved it.