radradradish
2007
So, so close to being an early standout for Nitrome. Genuinely a ton of fun, at least up until a certain point. You control a swatter, there’s a bunch of bugs crawling across the screen, and you have to swat as many of them as you can before time runs out. It’s a simple concept, but there’s so much variety in the things you’re asked to do. One level requires you to use the swatter to keep a beetle in the air for 30 seconds. Another gives you precisely one chance to hit a slug falling from the top of the screen… but doesn’t tell you precisely when it will, leaving you in anticipation of when and where it’s gonna fall. One tells you to swat a mere two flies… each inside fly traps, requiring you to sneak in and bolt out lest your swatter get eaten. Levels are plentiful, but short: if you don’t think a particular mechanic/enemy type isn’t a winner then you at least don’t have to stick with it for long… unless it happens to be one of the ones the game chooses to bring back. It’s fun, it hits some good arcadey beats, and the pixel art is so pretty. I was honestly so close to really liking it… but god is the difficulty curve so, so rough. The first two worlds are fun, the third is… rough (do you want to have to click on a stag beetle 150 times in 15 seconds?), but otherwise fine, then the final world amps the difficulty up wayyyyyyy too much. Some are doable with some effort, some become much harder than they should merely due to the presence of the health bar/timer, a couple honestly felt a bit like crapshoots when I did enough for the game to count it as a win, but two levels in particular are so hard as to be genuinely impossible. And, like, that’s not just me talking: I looked up guides to see how others did it and every walkthrough I saw had whoever did it complain specifically about these two levels. And, like man, I really wanna recommend this game but I’m not sure I really could if I had to futz with Flash just so the game could be beatable. It’s such a shame, because I think the difference between this being where it is and this being where I’d want it to be is merely a case of tweaking some values to make the ridiculous stuff less ridiculous, but as is… man it was so close. Close enough that I still like it, honestly, but not enough to truly bat for it.
2023
Having loved the playable teaser of this in the first Dread X Collection, and having then immediately learned that this managed to get a full release, I was super excited to play this during the months it took for me to get around to it. And it didn’t disappoint! Virtually all the strengths in the 20-30 minute demo translate perfectly to the full release, and the game… almost manages to weather the longer playtime without feeling long in the tooth. The game captures the appearance of a 90s FMV game perfectly, meshing real actors in with pixelated graphics not unlike, say, Harvester or Phantasmagoria, and combat where you must swing your weapon in real-time, like… the first thing I think of is Virtual Hydlide but thankfully everything feels so much smoother here: possessing some fun quirks of movement befitting the time it’s emulating, such as having to use your keyboard to look up and down, while never falling into direct clunkiness. I love the spell system: how you have to click through menus to physically chant each spell, how each spell opens new paths both in front of you and littered throughout previous parts of the game almost like a Metroidvania, and how with brute force and some experimentation you can come across spells before the game officially teaches them to you. The game’s brand of comedy works to keep the line teetering between parody/reference and yet still being able to take itself seriously, and never feels like it gets old even as the game goes on. A big strength of this developer — having gone through all his Dread X offerings — is his ability to just create a vibe that's so unserious yet so unique in how they feel, and this game has that in spades.
There are a couple of things I wish were different, though: I think the final area pushes the game into “too long” territory, and the second area in particular I think is wayyyyyyyyy too large for its own good — too much space between landmarks means there’s a lottttttt of time spent walking around, especially when you’re backtracking/looking for specific things on the map. I also wish the “walk faster” spell was given to you earlier/didn’t cost health to perform: by the time I was capable of using it it was past the point where it would’ve been most appreciated, and it’s not particularly useful for the thin walkways/compressed rooms that the game throws at you after. Also wish spells were more useful in combat: they’re usable, but never quite viable, and it always felt like I could do more just swinging my sword as opposed to standing still and watching my character chant out a spell while the enemy is free to slice me up. Aside from those quibbles, though, I think this did a good job at expanding on yet still capturing what made the Dread X Hand of Doom work so well: it’s a rather engaging puzzle game with a fun, irreverent set dressing, weaponizing its influences in such a way that it looks and plays unlike anything else I’ve really seen. If there’s perhaps an edit pass that works a bit on the pacing, maybe adds some stuff, maybe gives you a couple of things earlier than it does (as well as fixing the bugs that… a lot of people who aren’t me seemed to get) I think there really can be something special here. 8/10.
There are a couple of things I wish were different, though: I think the final area pushes the game into “too long” territory, and the second area in particular I think is wayyyyyyyyy too large for its own good — too much space between landmarks means there’s a lottttttt of time spent walking around, especially when you’re backtracking/looking for specific things on the map. I also wish the “walk faster” spell was given to you earlier/didn’t cost health to perform: by the time I was capable of using it it was past the point where it would’ve been most appreciated, and it’s not particularly useful for the thin walkways/compressed rooms that the game throws at you after. Also wish spells were more useful in combat: they’re usable, but never quite viable, and it always felt like I could do more just swinging my sword as opposed to standing still and watching my character chant out a spell while the enemy is free to slice me up. Aside from those quibbles, though, I think this did a good job at expanding on yet still capturing what made the Dread X Hand of Doom work so well: it’s a rather engaging puzzle game with a fun, irreverent set dressing, weaponizing its influences in such a way that it looks and plays unlike anything else I’ve really seen. If there’s perhaps an edit pass that works a bit on the pacing, maybe adds some stuff, maybe gives you a couple of things earlier than it does (as well as fixing the bugs that… a lot of people who aren’t me seemed to get) I think there really can be something special here. 8/10.
The original Alone in the Dark, while certainly not the first survival horror, planted the seeds for which the genre would soon flourish. The story goes that it served as direct inspiration for the original Resident Evil, which would then define and popularize what survival horror was and would be for the next few years. Where, then, does that leave Alone in the Dark, having not had another release since the underperformance of Alone in the Dark 3? Reinvigorated, apparently. The success of Resident Evil brought forward a slew of other studios trying their hand at survival horror, one amongst their number Infogrames, the original developers for Alone in the Dark, who hired developer Darkworks to capitalize on its status of fathering many of the things that Resident Evil went on to popularize. This… was loosely a double-edged sword, however. While it is true that many particular aspects — the mansion setting, giving their player a choice of two different campaigns to go through — were things originally devised by Infogrames, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare ends up feeling more like Resident Evil than any of its survival horror contemporaries, and in some ways feels like an imitation: a comparison that does not lend New Nightmare any particular favours.
New Nightmare imagines itself a reboot of the original Alone in the Dark, and as part of that, reimagines the series for the (at-the-time) modern day. You have the choice of playing as either Aline Cedrac, a young university professor searching for her missing father (a spiritual successor to the original Alone in the Dark’s female PC, Emily Hartwood), and Edward Carnby, a private investigator and possible descendant of the Carnby you played in the three AitD games preceding. When Carnby’s close friend winds up dead after attempting to investigate mysterious goings on at Shadow Island. Teaming up with Aline to investigate, their attempt at approaching the island is foiled as their plane crashes, leaving both separated as it soon becomes clear there are dangerous forces on Shadow Island. Regardless of whether you're Aline or Carnby, it’s up to whoever you pick to reunite yourself with the other character, find out the goings on of the island, and try and stop the Morton family, and their attempts to bring about the... "World of Darkness(c)."
The game does a decent job of making both these campaigns feel distinct from each other. While it doesn’t particularly matter doing both, or which one you do first — ala Resident Evil 2’s Leon/Claire A/B routes — the game you play is considerably different depending on who you choose to play as in the beginning. Each character takes a separate path through the game, does different things at different times, and goes through whole areas the other player character doesn’t, up to the point where both main characters have different final areas and bosses. Playing as Carnby hews a bit closer to your traditional survival horror experience: you’re given ammo from the start, you’re able to scrounge for resources, you must solve puzzles and fight increasingly tough enemies in order to find your way out. Aline, however… plays loosely like a proto ObsCure. Emphasis on loosely: because she’s a woman Aline doesn’t get to start with weapons like Carnby does, and instead must use her flashlight to repel monsters, either to kill them directly, get enough distance for you to get out of the room, or for you to find the lightswitch and instantly kill everything in the room. It’s… rather clunky in execution (and the game does go back to familiar survival horror tropes after a certain point, giving you weapons and pitting you against a Nemesis-like recurring boss) but I love there’s a concerted effort into making both characters feel different to play. Really works to add replay value (even if I was rather ready to call it quits once I’d gotten a cursory taste for how Aline played like), and it makes those moments of slight intersection — meeting the other character face to face, having them radio you what you need to do — a little bit potent, making you curious about what's going on in the other side of the story.
It’s a bit of a pity, otherwise, that this game doesn’t particularly iterate much on the formula it takes from. Or even particularly feel like its own thing. If you’ve played the original Resident Evil... you haven’t quite played Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, but you’re certainly not playing anything you haven’t played before. Again, it could merely be a consequence of how the original Resident Evil took inspiration from Alone in the Dark — and how any subsequent attempt to make a new Alone in the Dark would then provoke comparisons — but I think the real problem is that anything it does to stand out does not stand out for the better. Aline’s flashlight combat immediately shows how clunky it feels to use: feeling visually unclear whether your flashlight is damaging the enemy or merely forcing it to move, having to hold the flashlight in place for a long time before it kills the enemy/pushes it back far enough to matter, and enemies having long enough range that they can attack you from halfway across the room the moment you dare move the flashlight off them. Carnby (or even Aline, once she gets methods of fighting back) doesn’t fare much better: enemies freely, constantly respawn upon you killing them, which… is loosely horrible juxtaposed to the limited resources you’re capable of picking up. It’s never worth killing anything you theoretically could avoid, given they’ll come back the moment you re-enter the room, and eventually most rooms become flooded by enemies you’re just constantly running from. You have more ammo than you need to be able to get through everything, sure, but it doesn’t stop combat from feeling mostly irritating: fighting the same enemies again after going in and out of a room, getting hit an enemy spawned right in front of you when you entered a room, having to backtrack and having to duck and weave around every enemy on your way there and back.
There are other things that bog the experience down. The game goes rather overboard with its background lore: while previous Alone in the Dark games (and survival horror as a genre) were fond of their diary entries explaining the background lore, it never went quite so far as to give you any that was nearly 50 pages long. Nor do they ever tend to give three 15+ page diaries one right after the other. The game is kind enough to highlight any information you actually need to progress through the game but I feel like if the goal was for the player to understand the grander picture of what went on in the past that particular approach feels rather counterintuitive: if the player (especially someone who… rather struggles to learn via merely reading the information, like me) isn’t immediately compelled to skip it all under the sheer weight of how much there is to read, it’s rather difficult to retain anything in particular when it’s all dropped on you at once, and when it’s all in the midst of so many other things. The game feels… quite buggy and unfinished in places: there’s a boss I faced with Carnby, who, because I had happened to save in a specific room, would not go through its death animation upon reaching 0 HP unless you hit it during a certain part of its pattern, which caused me, at least, to reload the fight several times wondering what exactly I was doing wrong (not helped by the rather specific/non-indicative way of actually doing damage to it). The final area… is aesthetically interesting in how it jumps between several different biomes and inspirations, but is a total slog to play: throwing endless respawning enemies in your face as you wander through constant mazes all while you think ‘okay, this has gone on long enough, maybe the end is somewhat soon’ right before it gives you another maze for you to find the exit to. It’s mitigated, partially, because it gives you a gun that obliterates everything it comes in contact with and respawns ammo for it everywhere, but it’s rather clear just by spending what felt like a full hour inside it that it doesn’t feel quite as polished as the previous two acts of the game, and as a finale… is certainly the weakest point of the game.
Overall… this is honestly rather complicated to talk about. While I certainly do like the way the game utilizes its choice between which character you play as (and, in addition, what campaign you go through), it’s a bit hard to talk about how the game mostly… just feels like I’m playing a knockoff Resident Evil. Most of what it does competently is something I feel other games of the time did well, and the things that do differentiate itself from the pack… aren’t exactly fantastic. As a game meant to revive Alone in the Dark as a big name for the horror genre (the credits outright say “Edward Carnby will return”), The New Nightmare feels like a thing of the past compared to its contemporaries, and perhaps not the boost needed to bring the series into the modern day. 5/10. And while Darkworks’ attempts at a direct followup eventually became something else entirely, Edward Carnby did, eventually, return… for better or worse…
New Nightmare imagines itself a reboot of the original Alone in the Dark, and as part of that, reimagines the series for the (at-the-time) modern day. You have the choice of playing as either Aline Cedrac, a young university professor searching for her missing father (a spiritual successor to the original Alone in the Dark’s female PC, Emily Hartwood), and Edward Carnby, a private investigator and possible descendant of the Carnby you played in the three AitD games preceding. When Carnby’s close friend winds up dead after attempting to investigate mysterious goings on at Shadow Island. Teaming up with Aline to investigate, their attempt at approaching the island is foiled as their plane crashes, leaving both separated as it soon becomes clear there are dangerous forces on Shadow Island. Regardless of whether you're Aline or Carnby, it’s up to whoever you pick to reunite yourself with the other character, find out the goings on of the island, and try and stop the Morton family, and their attempts to bring about the... "World of Darkness
The game does a decent job of making both these campaigns feel distinct from each other. While it doesn’t particularly matter doing both, or which one you do first — ala Resident Evil 2’s Leon/Claire A/B routes — the game you play is considerably different depending on who you choose to play as in the beginning. Each character takes a separate path through the game, does different things at different times, and goes through whole areas the other player character doesn’t, up to the point where both main characters have different final areas and bosses. Playing as Carnby hews a bit closer to your traditional survival horror experience: you’re given ammo from the start, you’re able to scrounge for resources, you must solve puzzles and fight increasingly tough enemies in order to find your way out. Aline, however… plays loosely like a proto ObsCure. Emphasis on loosely: because she’s a woman Aline doesn’t get to start with weapons like Carnby does, and instead must use her flashlight to repel monsters, either to kill them directly, get enough distance for you to get out of the room, or for you to find the lightswitch and instantly kill everything in the room. It’s… rather clunky in execution (and the game does go back to familiar survival horror tropes after a certain point, giving you weapons and pitting you against a Nemesis-like recurring boss) but I love there’s a concerted effort into making both characters feel different to play. Really works to add replay value (even if I was rather ready to call it quits once I’d gotten a cursory taste for how Aline played like), and it makes those moments of slight intersection — meeting the other character face to face, having them radio you what you need to do — a little bit potent, making you curious about what's going on in the other side of the story.
It’s a bit of a pity, otherwise, that this game doesn’t particularly iterate much on the formula it takes from. Or even particularly feel like its own thing. If you’ve played the original Resident Evil... you haven’t quite played Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, but you’re certainly not playing anything you haven’t played before. Again, it could merely be a consequence of how the original Resident Evil took inspiration from Alone in the Dark — and how any subsequent attempt to make a new Alone in the Dark would then provoke comparisons — but I think the real problem is that anything it does to stand out does not stand out for the better. Aline’s flashlight combat immediately shows how clunky it feels to use: feeling visually unclear whether your flashlight is damaging the enemy or merely forcing it to move, having to hold the flashlight in place for a long time before it kills the enemy/pushes it back far enough to matter, and enemies having long enough range that they can attack you from halfway across the room the moment you dare move the flashlight off them. Carnby (or even Aline, once she gets methods of fighting back) doesn’t fare much better: enemies freely, constantly respawn upon you killing them, which… is loosely horrible juxtaposed to the limited resources you’re capable of picking up. It’s never worth killing anything you theoretically could avoid, given they’ll come back the moment you re-enter the room, and eventually most rooms become flooded by enemies you’re just constantly running from. You have more ammo than you need to be able to get through everything, sure, but it doesn’t stop combat from feeling mostly irritating: fighting the same enemies again after going in and out of a room, getting hit an enemy spawned right in front of you when you entered a room, having to backtrack and having to duck and weave around every enemy on your way there and back.
There are other things that bog the experience down. The game goes rather overboard with its background lore: while previous Alone in the Dark games (and survival horror as a genre) were fond of their diary entries explaining the background lore, it never went quite so far as to give you any that was nearly 50 pages long. Nor do they ever tend to give three 15+ page diaries one right after the other. The game is kind enough to highlight any information you actually need to progress through the game but I feel like if the goal was for the player to understand the grander picture of what went on in the past that particular approach feels rather counterintuitive: if the player (especially someone who… rather struggles to learn via merely reading the information, like me) isn’t immediately compelled to skip it all under the sheer weight of how much there is to read, it’s rather difficult to retain anything in particular when it’s all dropped on you at once, and when it’s all in the midst of so many other things. The game feels… quite buggy and unfinished in places: there’s a boss I faced with Carnby, who, because I had happened to save in a specific room, would not go through its death animation upon reaching 0 HP unless you hit it during a certain part of its pattern, which caused me, at least, to reload the fight several times wondering what exactly I was doing wrong (not helped by the rather specific/non-indicative way of actually doing damage to it). The final area… is aesthetically interesting in how it jumps between several different biomes and inspirations, but is a total slog to play: throwing endless respawning enemies in your face as you wander through constant mazes all while you think ‘okay, this has gone on long enough, maybe the end is somewhat soon’ right before it gives you another maze for you to find the exit to. It’s mitigated, partially, because it gives you a gun that obliterates everything it comes in contact with and respawns ammo for it everywhere, but it’s rather clear just by spending what felt like a full hour inside it that it doesn’t feel quite as polished as the previous two acts of the game, and as a finale… is certainly the weakest point of the game.
Overall… this is honestly rather complicated to talk about. While I certainly do like the way the game utilizes its choice between which character you play as (and, in addition, what campaign you go through), it’s a bit hard to talk about how the game mostly… just feels like I’m playing a knockoff Resident Evil. Most of what it does competently is something I feel other games of the time did well, and the things that do differentiate itself from the pack… aren’t exactly fantastic. As a game meant to revive Alone in the Dark as a big name for the horror genre (the credits outright say “Edward Carnby will return”), The New Nightmare feels like a thing of the past compared to its contemporaries, and perhaps not the boost needed to bring the series into the modern day. 5/10. And while Darkworks’ attempts at a direct followup eventually became something else entirely, Edward Carnby did, eventually, return… for better or worse…
2020
The Dread X Collection is… a hybrid anthology/game jam which asked one thing of ten different indie horror devs: distill the horror game of their dreams into a short playable teaser. To that end, the prompt was executed in a variety of ways: some of the games in the pack beg the question of how they could even be extended further, given how complete they feel as standalone experiences, while others… definitely feel more like a proof of concept than something that stands on its own. It’s a smorgasbord of different ideas and executions, the quality varying wildly between each game in the pack, which… as someone who loves horror, and new ideas, and analyzing what works and what doesn’t, this is my shit.
So here are my thoughts on each game, organized by the order in which I played them. There’s a little ranking at the end in case you’re interested, but without any further ado:
THE PAY IS NICE:
I like some of the stuff going on here — I’m into the theming around what we’ll excuse or stomach if it’s part of our job, and I love the diegetic representation of the fixed camera angles as security cameras automating your every move — but the writing is… not quite there, and sadly there’s a glitch where there’s no animation for walking backwards so I ended up just zooming everywhere through the facility which kind of undercut a lot of what the game was trying to build up. I could definitely see this working a bit more if it was longer (diegetically represent the daily grind by making you do the same thing over and over again, maybe), but as is… it’s a bit hamfisted and abrupt to really work, IMO.
DON’T GO OUT:
This honestly has a ton of potential as a (theoretically) full game. I love the idea of a horror/slasher-themed deckbuilder/roguelike/RPG thing, and I’m into a lot of the mechanics here — how you need slowly-fading torchlight to see through the fog of war, how the arena becomes smaller with each turn, the focus on using the cards you get to just try and survive rather than clear an objective or win… I’d be super down for this to be expanded on. Right now though… there isn’t particularly much here — it’s precisely one level, where the only difference between easy victory and near unavoidable defeat is… whether the player is able to find a specific door while in complete darkness, which… doesn’t provide a particularly engaging experience. I absolutely see the potential in this and really hope this gets made into something full, but the playable teaser in itself does… not have a lot to it.
HAND OF DOOM:
This was pretty cool. This is a throwback to some of the old early dungeon crawler games (honestly reminiscent of Virtual Hydlide, at least in terms of how it looks), complete with a menu that takes up two-thirds of the screen and a… rather fun magic system where you have to press buttons to physically chant out each spell. Getting new spells — and using them to progress forward — is one of the coolest things about this game, and even if it is a bit simplistic and more of a demo/proof-of-concept than a game of its own I still had a ton of fun with it. Super happy that this one in particular got expanded into a full experience. The 20-30 minutes of it I played really delivered in selling me on the concept.
SUMMER NIGHT:
Frankly, I’m… not particularly sure how this could even be seen as the start of something larger, given how complete of an experience it feels on its own. The game does build up fairly well, starting off as a really accurate game-and-watch throwback which is fairly fun in its own right, and as the game progresses, so too do things stop being quite what they seem, in a way that interfaces rather well with how the game adds new mechanics to up the ante. I’d knock it down a bit mostly due to how there are… so many periods where you’re just waiting for the game to continue — I guess it’s meant to make the player more unsettled, but it felt more like dead air than anything — but aside from that this was a super solid standalone experience. Easily the highlight of the pack.
OUTSIDERS:
This one… I might have been a bit too fatigued to really appreciate it while I was playing it. It’s… almost like a survival horror roguelike, in a way. You have to scour an empty, unfamiliar house to find items (primarily keys) that let you solve puzzles, which all coalesce to perhaps let you out… except, secretly, there’s a time limit, and when your stumbling around the house not quite knowing what to do leads you to run out of time, you’re forced to start over again… but with all the items in different spots. I won’t reveal anything after this point, but… as a whole it’s a really interesting take to make a time-attack survival horror, and I like the way the mechanics are justified thematically. I doooo however think that maybe the puzzling itself is a little weak: it’s mostly just “find item unlock way with item” puzzles, where most of the ultimate challenge ending up being having to find the keys you need in the hundreds of drawers within the house, something not helped by how the time limit slowly makes it impossible to actually see anything as all the lights around you get snuffed out. Still, I’m definitely intrigued by the main idea here, and definitely would be interested in seeing it expanded on, even if I maybe wasn’t the biggest fan of this particular demo. Also I SAW THOSE HQ_RESIDENTIAL_HOUSE ASSETS, YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM ME.
MR. BUCKET TOLD ME TO:
This one is a survival sim — one of the ones where you have to scavenge to keep your food and water and piss and shit meters up to keep yourself alive — and while it’s a bit simplistic by virtue of being a game jam game the core mechanic where each day you have to choose which of your tools to give up forever adds an interesting edge to it. I say ‘interesting’ because in practise it’s kind of like Don’t Go Out where you kind of have to know the specific answer or else you’re doomed to fail, but as a preview for a potential something larger I’m into what it’s going for: taking the way resource management works in these sorts of survival sims, and then through forcing you to get rid of your tools and scour the island for far less useful ways of feeding/hydrating/cleaning yourself slowly make it clear that this is more survival horror. Definitely think that if this goes in a little deeper on its mechanics and also gives the player a bit more of a setup/indication of how things work (I played this game twice in total and had no idea some things were in there until near the end of my second) I could definitely vibe with this as a full experience.
ROTGUT:
oh boy I do love walking down an empty tunnel for 15 minutes while absolutely nothing happens- wait what do you mean I have to walk the exact same distance back to the start- wait what do you mean the game glitched out and didn’t give me any ending- wait what do you mean my chair just fell apart irl and I have to get a new one before class starts-
THE PONY FACTORY:
This was a fun little boomer shooter. The short of the game is that you’re travelling through this abandoned factory for something that lies at the center of it, fighting creatures called “ponies” along the way, and… for the most part it works in how simple it is. I like the fact that you can’t carry your gun and your flashlight at the same time, forcing you into a situation where either you can see enemies but can’t fight back or you can fight back but can’t see them. I’m also into the level design — how conductive it is to surprise encounters, and how it changes up once you collect the something and you start going through the levels backwards to get out. I think the difficulty is tuned up a bit high — and I’m pretty sure switching down to an easier mode did nothing — but aside from that it was a neat way to spend ~30 minutes. Dunno how this would expand into a more “full” experience but I’d be down to see it.
SHATTER:
I love the vibes in this one, both in how it wears the PSX throwback graphical style (I love this one’s use of colours in particular, I feel like you never get to see lush greens and pinks in a game like this) and how much it evokes the post-apocalyptic cyberpunk dystopia it’s trying to be. In terms of being a teaser, it feels more like one to set up a world rather than to set up a game, and to that end it worked — I liked walking around and seeing and learning about where exactly I was. I… wasn’t particularly a fan of how restrictive and annoying the stamina bar is — for something that’s ostensibly a walking simulator most of the runtime, forcing you to walk super slow unless you get a secret upgrade just made going around everywhere much more of a chore than it had to be — but… yeah, I’m sold. Really wanna see what a bigger version of this is like.
CARTHANC:
This one’s sad because for as much production value is here and for how good the vibe is this felt more annoying to play than anything. I love the artstyle of, like, this alien temple that takes the aesthetic of ancient Egypt but adds a futuristic spin on it but the core of this is like, a first-person platformer — and not one that plays particularly well. The use of first-person makes your perspective rather limited in a way that makes platforming frustrating, since it’s hard to really gauge how good your jump is or where you are on a platform — I failed so many times because I’d accidentally walked off a platform before I jumped or because I was standing on something dangerous and didn’t know it. Combined with enemies who… basically scream in your ears constantly while they spawncamp you, and a lack of an idea on what the player is supposed to do at any point and… yeah. Like the idea, like how it looks, but god did this one feel so frustrating to play.
Summer Night > Hand of Doom > Shatter > The Pony Factory > Mr. Bucket Told Me To > Outsiders > Don’t Go Out > Carthanc > The Pay Is Nice > Rotgut
So here are my thoughts on each game, organized by the order in which I played them. There’s a little ranking at the end in case you’re interested, but without any further ado:
THE PAY IS NICE:
I like some of the stuff going on here — I’m into the theming around what we’ll excuse or stomach if it’s part of our job, and I love the diegetic representation of the fixed camera angles as security cameras automating your every move — but the writing is… not quite there, and sadly there’s a glitch where there’s no animation for walking backwards so I ended up just zooming everywhere through the facility which kind of undercut a lot of what the game was trying to build up. I could definitely see this working a bit more if it was longer (diegetically represent the daily grind by making you do the same thing over and over again, maybe), but as is… it’s a bit hamfisted and abrupt to really work, IMO.
DON’T GO OUT:
This honestly has a ton of potential as a (theoretically) full game. I love the idea of a horror/slasher-themed deckbuilder/roguelike/RPG thing, and I’m into a lot of the mechanics here — how you need slowly-fading torchlight to see through the fog of war, how the arena becomes smaller with each turn, the focus on using the cards you get to just try and survive rather than clear an objective or win… I’d be super down for this to be expanded on. Right now though… there isn’t particularly much here — it’s precisely one level, where the only difference between easy victory and near unavoidable defeat is… whether the player is able to find a specific door while in complete darkness, which… doesn’t provide a particularly engaging experience. I absolutely see the potential in this and really hope this gets made into something full, but the playable teaser in itself does… not have a lot to it.
HAND OF DOOM:
This was pretty cool. This is a throwback to some of the old early dungeon crawler games (honestly reminiscent of Virtual Hydlide, at least in terms of how it looks), complete with a menu that takes up two-thirds of the screen and a… rather fun magic system where you have to press buttons to physically chant out each spell. Getting new spells — and using them to progress forward — is one of the coolest things about this game, and even if it is a bit simplistic and more of a demo/proof-of-concept than a game of its own I still had a ton of fun with it. Super happy that this one in particular got expanded into a full experience. The 20-30 minutes of it I played really delivered in selling me on the concept.
SUMMER NIGHT:
Frankly, I’m… not particularly sure how this could even be seen as the start of something larger, given how complete of an experience it feels on its own. The game does build up fairly well, starting off as a really accurate game-and-watch throwback which is fairly fun in its own right, and as the game progresses, so too do things stop being quite what they seem, in a way that interfaces rather well with how the game adds new mechanics to up the ante. I’d knock it down a bit mostly due to how there are… so many periods where you’re just waiting for the game to continue — I guess it’s meant to make the player more unsettled, but it felt more like dead air than anything — but aside from that this was a super solid standalone experience. Easily the highlight of the pack.
OUTSIDERS:
This one… I might have been a bit too fatigued to really appreciate it while I was playing it. It’s… almost like a survival horror roguelike, in a way. You have to scour an empty, unfamiliar house to find items (primarily keys) that let you solve puzzles, which all coalesce to perhaps let you out… except, secretly, there’s a time limit, and when your stumbling around the house not quite knowing what to do leads you to run out of time, you’re forced to start over again… but with all the items in different spots. I won’t reveal anything after this point, but… as a whole it’s a really interesting take to make a time-attack survival horror, and I like the way the mechanics are justified thematically. I doooo however think that maybe the puzzling itself is a little weak: it’s mostly just “find item unlock way with item” puzzles, where most of the ultimate challenge ending up being having to find the keys you need in the hundreds of drawers within the house, something not helped by how the time limit slowly makes it impossible to actually see anything as all the lights around you get snuffed out. Still, I’m definitely intrigued by the main idea here, and definitely would be interested in seeing it expanded on, even if I maybe wasn’t the biggest fan of this particular demo. Also I SAW THOSE HQ_RESIDENTIAL_HOUSE ASSETS, YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM ME.
MR. BUCKET TOLD ME TO:
This one is a survival sim — one of the ones where you have to scavenge to keep your food and water and piss and shit meters up to keep yourself alive — and while it’s a bit simplistic by virtue of being a game jam game the core mechanic where each day you have to choose which of your tools to give up forever adds an interesting edge to it. I say ‘interesting’ because in practise it’s kind of like Don’t Go Out where you kind of have to know the specific answer or else you’re doomed to fail, but as a preview for a potential something larger I’m into what it’s going for: taking the way resource management works in these sorts of survival sims, and then through forcing you to get rid of your tools and scour the island for far less useful ways of feeding/hydrating/cleaning yourself slowly make it clear that this is more survival horror. Definitely think that if this goes in a little deeper on its mechanics and also gives the player a bit more of a setup/indication of how things work (I played this game twice in total and had no idea some things were in there until near the end of my second) I could definitely vibe with this as a full experience.
ROTGUT:
oh boy I do love walking down an empty tunnel for 15 minutes while absolutely nothing happens- wait what do you mean I have to walk the exact same distance back to the start- wait what do you mean the game glitched out and didn’t give me any ending- wait what do you mean my chair just fell apart irl and I have to get a new one before class starts-
THE PONY FACTORY:
This was a fun little boomer shooter. The short of the game is that you’re travelling through this abandoned factory for something that lies at the center of it, fighting creatures called “ponies” along the way, and… for the most part it works in how simple it is. I like the fact that you can’t carry your gun and your flashlight at the same time, forcing you into a situation where either you can see enemies but can’t fight back or you can fight back but can’t see them. I’m also into the level design — how conductive it is to surprise encounters, and how it changes up once you collect the something and you start going through the levels backwards to get out. I think the difficulty is tuned up a bit high — and I’m pretty sure switching down to an easier mode did nothing — but aside from that it was a neat way to spend ~30 minutes. Dunno how this would expand into a more “full” experience but I’d be down to see it.
SHATTER:
I love the vibes in this one, both in how it wears the PSX throwback graphical style (I love this one’s use of colours in particular, I feel like you never get to see lush greens and pinks in a game like this) and how much it evokes the post-apocalyptic cyberpunk dystopia it’s trying to be. In terms of being a teaser, it feels more like one to set up a world rather than to set up a game, and to that end it worked — I liked walking around and seeing and learning about where exactly I was. I… wasn’t particularly a fan of how restrictive and annoying the stamina bar is — for something that’s ostensibly a walking simulator most of the runtime, forcing you to walk super slow unless you get a secret upgrade just made going around everywhere much more of a chore than it had to be — but… yeah, I’m sold. Really wanna see what a bigger version of this is like.
CARTHANC:
This one’s sad because for as much production value is here and for how good the vibe is this felt more annoying to play than anything. I love the artstyle of, like, this alien temple that takes the aesthetic of ancient Egypt but adds a futuristic spin on it but the core of this is like, a first-person platformer — and not one that plays particularly well. The use of first-person makes your perspective rather limited in a way that makes platforming frustrating, since it’s hard to really gauge how good your jump is or where you are on a platform — I failed so many times because I’d accidentally walked off a platform before I jumped or because I was standing on something dangerous and didn’t know it. Combined with enemies who… basically scream in your ears constantly while they spawncamp you, and a lack of an idea on what the player is supposed to do at any point and… yeah. Like the idea, like how it looks, but god did this one feel so frustrating to play.
Summer Night > Hand of Doom > Shatter > The Pony Factory > Mr. Bucket Told Me To > Outsiders > Don’t Go Out > Carthanc > The Pay Is Nice > Rotgut
2023
Well, the good times had to end at some point.
A shame, given the… loosely upward trajectory the previous two games had taken. Like, okay, these games certainly never reached good: whatever attempts at being scary or delving into the Deep Lore come off as more goofy than anything, and genuinely it feels like the gameplay is solely focused on making the game run as long as possible to skirt the steam two-hour refund threshold. But even despite that, there were at least… signs of promise, in amongst the muck. They made some of the gameplay sections loosely fun. They mostly made the padding just having you backtrack through super long hallways, which, you know, isn’t particularly amazing, but it’s at least inoffensive: the game could, and had, been doing worse about it. They even found a way to be loosely funny without just spouting the same meme lines over and over again. Everything was looking up.
And then this game began with a first-person platforming segment and I could feel all my goodwill slip away.
Garten of Banban 6, tragically, returns to Garten of Banban 2’s method of trying to run out the timer: physically barring your progress through tedious puzzles, sections that go on for just incredibly long, and forcing you right back to the beginning every time you mess it up. Nothing as awful as 2’s killboxes, but man, do they try. Your core mechanic is that you need to use your drone to light up the ground around you as you head from landmark to landmark, as stepping into the dark is Dangerous now (but only certain kinds of darkness, other types of darkness are completely fine despite it looking exactly the same)... except the landmarks immediately start being too far away for you to see through the darkness, forcing you to kinda just fumble around and hope you’re going in the correct direction. There’s this one segment where you have to push switches to move lights to protect your partner while he does… something, and you get told to do 20 things at once and also the instructions are incredibly unclear and all the buttons you have to press are just so confusing as to what they do. It wasn’t difficult, not once I got the hang of it, but I died multiple times there primarily because I had no clue what I was even doing.
Which is a theme. Honestly, I reckon the devs did a “good” job at ensuring the player has absolutely no clue what they're even doing. There’s the usual stuff of hiding items, buttons you need to press, making the player scour the entire room to try and figure out what they’re even looking for, but this episode seems to go another level with it. I already mentioned the stuff with having to light your way to each waypoint, but there are other highlights. Puzzles where the first step is deciphering what it is you’re even looking at. Sections where the reward for solving them isn’t immediately obvious, making you wonder whether the game just moved the goalposts or if you just need to find whatever just dropped somewhere. Nothing is ever straightforward. Presumably, every second the player spends confused about what they’re even meant to do is one more second the player is spending in-game. Frankly, I think the developers of this game should make an out-and-out masocore platformer at this point. They clearly have a knack for it.
It’s still rather humorous, though, and not just the game’s attempts at being serious and scary. Honestly, even having gone through all of the above, I found it all funny, rather than frustrating. Maybe not in a tire-fire sort of way — it’s all too clear that there’s a degree of intentionality behind all of this — more bemused, more “oh my god what the fuck are they gonna do this time.” I understand that I am one of the few people who continue to believe the joke is funny (it seems like this game, in particular, is where people both dropped and swore off) but either way, even with the dropoff, I’m still onboard. It is a pity that this entry went downhill, though. Now I guess anything subsequent could go anywhere. 2/10.
A shame, given the… loosely upward trajectory the previous two games had taken. Like, okay, these games certainly never reached good: whatever attempts at being scary or delving into the Deep Lore come off as more goofy than anything, and genuinely it feels like the gameplay is solely focused on making the game run as long as possible to skirt the steam two-hour refund threshold. But even despite that, there were at least… signs of promise, in amongst the muck. They made some of the gameplay sections loosely fun. They mostly made the padding just having you backtrack through super long hallways, which, you know, isn’t particularly amazing, but it’s at least inoffensive: the game could, and had, been doing worse about it. They even found a way to be loosely funny without just spouting the same meme lines over and over again. Everything was looking up.
And then this game began with a first-person platforming segment and I could feel all my goodwill slip away.
Garten of Banban 6, tragically, returns to Garten of Banban 2’s method of trying to run out the timer: physically barring your progress through tedious puzzles, sections that go on for just incredibly long, and forcing you right back to the beginning every time you mess it up. Nothing as awful as 2’s killboxes, but man, do they try. Your core mechanic is that you need to use your drone to light up the ground around you as you head from landmark to landmark, as stepping into the dark is Dangerous now (but only certain kinds of darkness, other types of darkness are completely fine despite it looking exactly the same)... except the landmarks immediately start being too far away for you to see through the darkness, forcing you to kinda just fumble around and hope you’re going in the correct direction. There’s this one segment where you have to push switches to move lights to protect your partner while he does… something, and you get told to do 20 things at once and also the instructions are incredibly unclear and all the buttons you have to press are just so confusing as to what they do. It wasn’t difficult, not once I got the hang of it, but I died multiple times there primarily because I had no clue what I was even doing.
Which is a theme. Honestly, I reckon the devs did a “good” job at ensuring the player has absolutely no clue what they're even doing. There’s the usual stuff of hiding items, buttons you need to press, making the player scour the entire room to try and figure out what they’re even looking for, but this episode seems to go another level with it. I already mentioned the stuff with having to light your way to each waypoint, but there are other highlights. Puzzles where the first step is deciphering what it is you’re even looking at. Sections where the reward for solving them isn’t immediately obvious, making you wonder whether the game just moved the goalposts or if you just need to find whatever just dropped somewhere. Nothing is ever straightforward. Presumably, every second the player spends confused about what they’re even meant to do is one more second the player is spending in-game. Frankly, I think the developers of this game should make an out-and-out masocore platformer at this point. They clearly have a knack for it.
It’s still rather humorous, though, and not just the game’s attempts at being serious and scary. Honestly, even having gone through all of the above, I found it all funny, rather than frustrating. Maybe not in a tire-fire sort of way — it’s all too clear that there’s a degree of intentionality behind all of this — more bemused, more “oh my god what the fuck are they gonna do this time.” I understand that I am one of the few people who continue to believe the joke is funny (it seems like this game, in particular, is where people both dropped and swore off) but either way, even with the dropoff, I’m still onboard. It is a pity that this entry went downhill, though. Now I guess anything subsequent could go anywhere. 2/10.
1994
If Alone in the Dark 2 doubles down on the worst parts of its predecessor, Alone in the Dark 3, at the very least, expands on what I most happened to enjoy out of… what was otherwise a rather frustrating follow-up. Key to this is the choice in setting: as a compliment to the pirate themed Alone in the Dark 2, Alone in the Dark 3 goes full spaghetti western, taking you to a full-on ghost town in the middle of the Mojave, fighting zombie cowboys, interacting with… perhaps not the most sensitive depiction of Native American culture. It’s certainly rather unique — compared to the areas typically used even in today’s survival horror — and the game compounds this with a rather irrelevant, oftentimes silly tone. Anything can happen, and the game is not afraid of you not taking it seriously. There’s a section where you reincarnate as a cougar and you kill werewolves. Dropping down holes is the most Looney Tunes animation and it’s a coinflip whether doing so will kill you or let you progress. Carnby states that his current situation has left him Alone in the Dark at least, like, three separate times. It’s goofy as hell, and it’s such a blast. So much of the fun was just seeing what the game was going to do next.
As far as the actual plot goes, you play as Edward Carnby, one of the player characters of the first game, ascended to being the main protagonist in the second. Dubbed the ‘Supernatural Private Eye’ after his previous successes, Carnby receives another case: the disappearance of a film crew in a ghost town, amongst their number Emily Hartwood, the other player character of the first game. Heading into the town to investigate, Carnby soon finds that a curse has overtaken Slaughter Gulch, and a gang of zombie outlaws has taken over the ghost town and dispatched the film crew. Alone, and with no method of escape, Carnby must now delve into the depths of Slaughter Gulch, finding his way through, finding help where he can, all in hopes of eliminating the curse over the ghost town and, hopefully, being able to rescue Emily.
Gameplay-wise, Alone in the Dark 3 certainly feels much more iterated than previous entries. While combat returns, and while it’s still… not quite amazing, it’s dialled way back compared to 2’s constant enemy encounters, and there are also a couple changes that make it much less annoying for the player. Your animations (at least until the endgame…) are much quicker, reducing the chance that a given enemy will just stunlock you to death, you have customizable difficulty modifiers that let you fine-tune things to your choosing, and differing kinds of enemy encounters: ones where your goal is less to shoot what’s on screen, more to solve a puzzle to get them off your back. While I wouldn’t necessarily go so far as to say I fully liked it, it’s certainly an improvement, and I’d certainly say I preferred fighting enemies here than fighting them in either of the first two games. I also enjoyed the upgrades made to the way the game delivers its background lore. While the pages and pages worth of books were… okay enough to manage in previous games, Alone in the Dark 3 varies its approach: sometimes the pages will be annotated with pictures. Sometimes you’ll get some film and you’ll see a projection of previous events. Sometimes it’ll be addressed directly to you. While the tomes of yore are still present, they’re juxtaposed with other methods of delivering the background lore to you, varying the approach and making it so much more easily digestible.
For every step forward, though, a few are taken back. Scrounging around for items feels so much more finicky than it ever did previously. Even if you can see an item on a table or cupboard or desk, you must use the Search command to initiate a lengthy animation when just walking towards it was enough to work in previous games. The process of using them also feels so randomly specific. You can have the item you need, you can know where to use it, and you’re still going to waste time trying to use it and failing because you haven’t found the exact spot and position the game wants you to use it. Sometimes I felt like the game was glitching out and not letting me progress despite having the correct answer, which really played well when the game started actually glitching out and forcing me to reload near the end. Puzzle solutions feel like they’ve become more esoteric: I think the whole thing with the miner you have to whip/specifically kill with a gold bullet has been covered well enough, but as a whole I’m… not sure how I could’ve solved some of these puzzles, at least without major trial and error. There’s a moment where you have to jump from platform to platform to avoid falling into a river of lava (don’t ask, I don’t know why either) with a core mechanic being to jump on certain pillars to make more pillars emerge from the ground. You reach the end, with one more pillar you need to raise… which doesn’t come up. Is the answer to the conundrum to, say, go back and jump on one of the side pillars you skipped? No, stupid, obviously you need to use the amulet in your inventory you’ve already used before so a Native American man can teleport you across to the end of the cave. Obviously.
(I do also think the game veers a little long: the last third really feels like it should get to the climax quicker. this is more a minor thing imo because this could’ve just been the stress of wanting to beat the game before I had to go to class compounding on me but it really feels like you’re spinning your wheels right up until the end. given that you start getting bottlenecked by combat around this point, given that the game starts glitching out and at some points softblocking you, it’s… sure not a winner. at least gameplay-wise.)
At the very least, though, all the steps back are made up for by all the little gameplay improvements. And even beyond that, the well-realized setting and the bizarre, anything-can-happen tone really boost the game, in both quality and entertainment value. I… tragically wouldn’t go so far as to say I fully liked it — the combat still hasn’t quite aged well, and that last segment truly does its best to end the game on a sour note, length aside — but god did I have fun. Both Alone in the Darks 2 and 3 aren’t generally well remembered as the original nowadays — both because of how hard they diverge in terms of genre, and because the original is just that influential in the history of survival horror — and while I’d say the second is best left that way… I’d definitely make a case for this game. If not a reappraisal — I don’t think it could bear that sort of scrutiny — at least let it be known just how off-the-walls this game can get. It’s certainly a piece of entertainment. 6/10.
As far as the actual plot goes, you play as Edward Carnby, one of the player characters of the first game, ascended to being the main protagonist in the second. Dubbed the ‘Supernatural Private Eye’ after his previous successes, Carnby receives another case: the disappearance of a film crew in a ghost town, amongst their number Emily Hartwood, the other player character of the first game. Heading into the town to investigate, Carnby soon finds that a curse has overtaken Slaughter Gulch, and a gang of zombie outlaws has taken over the ghost town and dispatched the film crew. Alone, and with no method of escape, Carnby must now delve into the depths of Slaughter Gulch, finding his way through, finding help where he can, all in hopes of eliminating the curse over the ghost town and, hopefully, being able to rescue Emily.
Gameplay-wise, Alone in the Dark 3 certainly feels much more iterated than previous entries. While combat returns, and while it’s still… not quite amazing, it’s dialled way back compared to 2’s constant enemy encounters, and there are also a couple changes that make it much less annoying for the player. Your animations (at least until the endgame…) are much quicker, reducing the chance that a given enemy will just stunlock you to death, you have customizable difficulty modifiers that let you fine-tune things to your choosing, and differing kinds of enemy encounters: ones where your goal is less to shoot what’s on screen, more to solve a puzzle to get them off your back. While I wouldn’t necessarily go so far as to say I fully liked it, it’s certainly an improvement, and I’d certainly say I preferred fighting enemies here than fighting them in either of the first two games. I also enjoyed the upgrades made to the way the game delivers its background lore. While the pages and pages worth of books were… okay enough to manage in previous games, Alone in the Dark 3 varies its approach: sometimes the pages will be annotated with pictures. Sometimes you’ll get some film and you’ll see a projection of previous events. Sometimes it’ll be addressed directly to you. While the tomes of yore are still present, they’re juxtaposed with other methods of delivering the background lore to you, varying the approach and making it so much more easily digestible.
For every step forward, though, a few are taken back. Scrounging around for items feels so much more finicky than it ever did previously. Even if you can see an item on a table or cupboard or desk, you must use the Search command to initiate a lengthy animation when just walking towards it was enough to work in previous games. The process of using them also feels so randomly specific. You can have the item you need, you can know where to use it, and you’re still going to waste time trying to use it and failing because you haven’t found the exact spot and position the game wants you to use it. Sometimes I felt like the game was glitching out and not letting me progress despite having the correct answer, which really played well when the game started actually glitching out and forcing me to reload near the end. Puzzle solutions feel like they’ve become more esoteric: I think the whole thing with the miner you have to whip/specifically kill with a gold bullet has been covered well enough, but as a whole I’m… not sure how I could’ve solved some of these puzzles, at least without major trial and error. There’s a moment where you have to jump from platform to platform to avoid falling into a river of lava (don’t ask, I don’t know why either) with a core mechanic being to jump on certain pillars to make more pillars emerge from the ground. You reach the end, with one more pillar you need to raise… which doesn’t come up. Is the answer to the conundrum to, say, go back and jump on one of the side pillars you skipped? No, stupid, obviously you need to use the amulet in your inventory you’ve already used before so a Native American man can teleport you across to the end of the cave. Obviously.
(I do also think the game veers a little long: the last third really feels like it should get to the climax quicker. this is more a minor thing imo because this could’ve just been the stress of wanting to beat the game before I had to go to class compounding on me but it really feels like you’re spinning your wheels right up until the end. given that you start getting bottlenecked by combat around this point, given that the game starts glitching out and at some points softblocking you, it’s… sure not a winner. at least gameplay-wise.)
At the very least, though, all the steps back are made up for by all the little gameplay improvements. And even beyond that, the well-realized setting and the bizarre, anything-can-happen tone really boost the game, in both quality and entertainment value. I… tragically wouldn’t go so far as to say I fully liked it — the combat still hasn’t quite aged well, and that last segment truly does its best to end the game on a sour note, length aside — but god did I have fun. Both Alone in the Darks 2 and 3 aren’t generally well remembered as the original nowadays — both because of how hard they diverge in terms of genre, and because the original is just that influential in the history of survival horror — and while I’d say the second is best left that way… I’d definitely make a case for this game. If not a reappraisal — I don’t think it could bear that sort of scrutiny — at least let it be known just how off-the-walls this game can get. It’s certainly a piece of entertainment. 6/10.
I love this game’s visual design. It’s tragically rather undercut by how the lighting is wayyyyyyyyy oversaturated — and washes out everything it touches — but there are so many cool things here otherwise. The abandoned apartments feel so grotty: all the litter everywhere, the layers of graffiti covering the walls, the layers of dust and mold and mess that lends so much character to the world around you. The design of the monster is so evocative — how it seems like the cherry blossoms are trying to burst through its skin — and I’m a fan of how, by design, you’re never quite able to see its full image, at least not for more than a glimpse's worth. I love how the flashback cutscenes showing Maya so effortlessly segue between graphics and what looks so convincingly like FMV, really helping to contribute to the idiosyncratic, off-kilter vibe the game takes whenever we go to the past. I’m not quite sure how much of this is meant to be a tech demo — or whether this really is just meant to stand on its own — but if the aim was to show off its engine it certainly succeeded on that front, even if it’s more the artstyle itself that stands out over its graphical fidelity. And even if it really could have used an option to lower the brightness.
It’s a bit sad, in that case, that I’m rather less into most everything else. Particularly the writing. There’s promise in the premise: I could certainly see a world where I really vibe with what the game has to offer, but I think where this game is let down most is by its dialogue. There’s no subtlety. The game will spell out everything a particular moment is trying to communicate just in case you might not get it. It kinda suffers from a lack of patience, too. There’s this one segment that earnestly does the PT-style looping hallway in a way that gels super well with what’s going on thematically, setting the stage to perfectly represent the downward spiral you know is coming... then the game proceeds to throw you straight down to the bottom, having things immediately go wrong and having the whole thing only end after, like, three loops. Things and themes are brought up and then never quite mentioned again, and while one of those is the kind of painful portrayal of social media and The Gen Z Quest For Likes which I was happy to see go, there’s some stuff that really felt like it needed to be addressed or expanded on which… wasn’t. You’d think that if there’s a scene where (I think) the main character grabs a razor to cut her wrists, with the scars on their arm indicating that this is a rather routine thing, that that might… come up later, but if you thought that, you thought wrong. It just kind of happens. And unless there was something I missed… it never gets brought up again. Feels like a bit of an oversight.
(also: the game is set in Germany and yet… the characters are going to college? but can’t actually go to college because they… have to pay tuition fees? the americans might not realize that other countries don’t work the same way the US does, but trust me, we’ll notice your cultural assumptions :V)
The script never feels particularly naturalistic, either. Characters go through stuff and talk about the stuff they go through like it’s some sort of cyberbullying PSA, and… as somebody who went through some of the sort of stuff some of the characters here did, it never really felt like my experience. I know that it’s loosely going for heightened reality — I don’t think the game was literally suggesting that our character walked down her school hallways every day while random jocks yelled “Go away!” and “Slut!” and shoved her towards the lockers — but if the game is really trying to sell this as a real thing people go through, I feel like maybe there could’ve been an ear towards having the bullies say things bullys actually say. If you’re going to talk about how The Gen Z Quest For Likes makes people feel alienated and inferior from their peers, maybe don’t make it seem like you’re making fun of it instead. If you’re trying to treat the complicated and nuanced topic of suicide and mental health with the care and respect that’s required… Look, I wouldn’t necessarily say this game is as triggering on the subject of mental health and suicide as others made me think it might be (it never goes as far about it as, say, something like 13 Reasons Why or Doki Doki Literature Club ever did) but also it was insanely funny just how many times they throw the content warning disclaimer at you. Like, I read through it when I started the game. You don’t have to show it again every time you portray something that could be a representation fucky-wucky. It just kinda makes your case worse.
There’s other things, as well: the chase sequences were kind of annoying to play. They’re like this weird looping maze you have to brute force until you find the arbitrarily correct way through and also the monster will just suddenly appear from in front of you and immediately kill you if you can’t react in time and I haaaaaated having to do them. Overall, though, I’m… rather mixed on this. In a way where it really could’ve been something I liked, as well. Because while visually the game is rather adept, below the surface… god the writing really betrays it, especially the slipshot way it handles its delicate, complicated thematic material. If this is a teaser of the future of the Silent Hill franchise, it’s… certainly indicative of what’s to come. In more ways than one.
It’s a bit sad, in that case, that I’m rather less into most everything else. Particularly the writing. There’s promise in the premise: I could certainly see a world where I really vibe with what the game has to offer, but I think where this game is let down most is by its dialogue. There’s no subtlety. The game will spell out everything a particular moment is trying to communicate just in case you might not get it. It kinda suffers from a lack of patience, too. There’s this one segment that earnestly does the PT-style looping hallway in a way that gels super well with what’s going on thematically, setting the stage to perfectly represent the downward spiral you know is coming... then the game proceeds to throw you straight down to the bottom, having things immediately go wrong and having the whole thing only end after, like, three loops. Things and themes are brought up and then never quite mentioned again, and while one of those is the kind of painful portrayal of social media and The Gen Z Quest For Likes which I was happy to see go, there’s some stuff that really felt like it needed to be addressed or expanded on which… wasn’t. You’d think that if there’s a scene where (I think) the main character grabs a razor to cut her wrists, with the scars on their arm indicating that this is a rather routine thing, that that might… come up later, but if you thought that, you thought wrong. It just kind of happens. And unless there was something I missed… it never gets brought up again. Feels like a bit of an oversight.
(also: the game is set in Germany and yet… the characters are going to college? but can’t actually go to college because they… have to pay tuition fees? the americans might not realize that other countries don’t work the same way the US does, but trust me, we’ll notice your cultural assumptions :V)
The script never feels particularly naturalistic, either. Characters go through stuff and talk about the stuff they go through like it’s some sort of cyberbullying PSA, and… as somebody who went through some of the sort of stuff some of the characters here did, it never really felt like my experience. I know that it’s loosely going for heightened reality — I don’t think the game was literally suggesting that our character walked down her school hallways every day while random jocks yelled “Go away!” and “Slut!” and shoved her towards the lockers — but if the game is really trying to sell this as a real thing people go through, I feel like maybe there could’ve been an ear towards having the bullies say things bullys actually say. If you’re going to talk about how The Gen Z Quest For Likes makes people feel alienated and inferior from their peers, maybe don’t make it seem like you’re making fun of it instead. If you’re trying to treat the complicated and nuanced topic of suicide and mental health with the care and respect that’s required… Look, I wouldn’t necessarily say this game is as triggering on the subject of mental health and suicide as others made me think it might be (it never goes as far about it as, say, something like 13 Reasons Why or Doki Doki Literature Club ever did) but also it was insanely funny just how many times they throw the content warning disclaimer at you. Like, I read through it when I started the game. You don’t have to show it again every time you portray something that could be a representation fucky-wucky. It just kinda makes your case worse.
There’s other things, as well: the chase sequences were kind of annoying to play. They’re like this weird looping maze you have to brute force until you find the arbitrarily correct way through and also the monster will just suddenly appear from in front of you and immediately kill you if you can’t react in time and I haaaaaated having to do them. Overall, though, I’m… rather mixed on this. In a way where it really could’ve been something I liked, as well. Because while visually the game is rather adept, below the surface… god the writing really betrays it, especially the slipshot way it handles its delicate, complicated thematic material. If this is a teaser of the future of the Silent Hill franchise, it’s… certainly indicative of what’s to come. In more ways than one.
2023
Behold… a Euphoric Bros. game…. that’s actually kinda okay?
At least in comparison. A lot of the Garten of Banban hallmarks are still present. The game is dead-set onunsuccessfully trying to run over the two-hour refund threshold: in this case, padding the experience through looooong tram rides and sections where the player is forced to backtrack, each point of interest being a lengthy ways away from whatever other point of interest you’re currently at. When it’s not doing that, it’s not really doing anything interesting, either: the game never really takes advantage of its setting to do anything unique, instead just making you do clunky drone puzzles and then whatever fuck-you roadblock will make the game even longer as you figure out what you’re even meant to do. The game is utterly incapable, writing-wise, of a lot of what it’s actively trying to do: its scares don’t scare, its attempts at delivering its Deep Lore come off as both incomprehensible and not particularly interesting. Aesthetic-wise, the game puts its effort in all the wrong places. There’s so much needless detail on what are otherwise very simplistic models (which plays… weirdly with the lighting. everybody is so shiny), yet the way they move is so rigid and basic. There’s a moment where the… antagonist? of the chapter gives what’s ostensibly a Joker Rant on why he is the way he is, from which he… stands entirely still the whole time, just kinda staring at you through the window. Rids the moment of whatever impact it was meant to have. Just a little bit.
But even amongst all that there were moments which… if not necessarily showing promise, were still honestly enjoyable to go through. The game continues the upward trend Garten of Banban 3 did in having somewhat capable gameplay segments. No section stands out as egregiously bad, or anything that seems like it’s built to kill you as many times as possible to help get past the refund threshold. And even if what’s there… doesn’t really enhance the mood, or fit in with the general setting, some segments were honestly pretty fun. They finally have a puzzle utilizing the drone that I actually enjoyed going through, even if it’s still rather annoying to control. There’s this one segment where you have to memorize all the items in the rooms around you before then trying to figure out which of the rooms had something inside change and it was honestly super fun. Like, to the point where I wanted to try and do it again after I was done. There are some rough sections, and as a whole I’d say a lot of this feels… like going through the motions, trudging down the infinitely long hallways. Is it all that great? No, but for this series, it’s certainly an improvement.
Honestly, I also had a fun time watching things unfold, as well. Gone are most of the attempts to try and be funny — having a robot say the same three fandom in-jokes over and over again because apparently repetition is the best form of comedy — in favour of what mostly seems like a sincere attempt at being a serious Deep Lore horror game. And it’s like a soap opera. You never really know what’s going to happen next, be it something wild happening in the plot, some stupid gameplay concept you’re going to have to be stuck with for the next five minutes, some silly thing the game does to try and make its runtime as long as possible… it’s a wild ride, and something deeply, deeply entertaining, whether that’s despite itself or because of that. There’s also some stuff here I do like on its own merits. The new voice actors brought in by and large do a pretty decent job (and contrast rather amusingly with the DIY voice-acting of the older characters). There’s a couple jokes that stick the landing, and make me a bit more confident in the idea that there’s a little gift for… if maybe not anti-humour, being able to catch the player off guard in such a way as to bolster what’s happening. It’s clear, comparing this to its immediate predecessor (and also their other game Introvert: A Teenager Simulator actually) that they need to lean maybe a bit against their natural instincts to make their humour work, but I’m not being backhanded here: when it works, it does work.
So, like, given all that, I’d say I had fun with this in the end. I was thinking about maybe giving a bit more of a positive score, but ultimately the persistent feeling I had going through this was still a bit closer to antipathy than anything else. The game still wants to reach past the two-hour refund threshold without actually having enough content to get there, the core gameplay is kinda clunky and uninspiring, and on all fronts it kinda fails to be as effective as a horror experience as it wants to be. But on the other hand, after the genuinely kind of awful experience that was Garten of Banban 2... I definitely feel this series is on a bit of an upward tick. The gameplay is tolerable, and at points has some genuinely fun moments, and at the very least I think on the writing end the creators are leaning into the most entertaining parts of what they have here. Is it good? No. Passable? Maybe still not there, yet, but either way I had a good time. And I don’t necessarily think that’s the Stockholm Syndrome talking. 4/10.
At least in comparison. A lot of the Garten of Banban hallmarks are still present. The game is dead-set on
But even amongst all that there were moments which… if not necessarily showing promise, were still honestly enjoyable to go through. The game continues the upward trend Garten of Banban 3 did in having somewhat capable gameplay segments. No section stands out as egregiously bad, or anything that seems like it’s built to kill you as many times as possible to help get past the refund threshold. And even if what’s there… doesn’t really enhance the mood, or fit in with the general setting, some segments were honestly pretty fun. They finally have a puzzle utilizing the drone that I actually enjoyed going through, even if it’s still rather annoying to control. There’s this one segment where you have to memorize all the items in the rooms around you before then trying to figure out which of the rooms had something inside change and it was honestly super fun. Like, to the point where I wanted to try and do it again after I was done. There are some rough sections, and as a whole I’d say a lot of this feels… like going through the motions, trudging down the infinitely long hallways. Is it all that great? No, but for this series, it’s certainly an improvement.
Honestly, I also had a fun time watching things unfold, as well. Gone are most of the attempts to try and be funny — having a robot say the same three fandom in-jokes over and over again because apparently repetition is the best form of comedy — in favour of what mostly seems like a sincere attempt at being a serious Deep Lore horror game. And it’s like a soap opera. You never really know what’s going to happen next, be it something wild happening in the plot, some stupid gameplay concept you’re going to have to be stuck with for the next five minutes, some silly thing the game does to try and make its runtime as long as possible… it’s a wild ride, and something deeply, deeply entertaining, whether that’s despite itself or because of that. There’s also some stuff here I do like on its own merits. The new voice actors brought in by and large do a pretty decent job (and contrast rather amusingly with the DIY voice-acting of the older characters). There’s a couple jokes that stick the landing, and make me a bit more confident in the idea that there’s a little gift for… if maybe not anti-humour, being able to catch the player off guard in such a way as to bolster what’s happening. It’s clear, comparing this to its immediate predecessor (and also their other game Introvert: A Teenager Simulator actually) that they need to lean maybe a bit against their natural instincts to make their humour work, but I’m not being backhanded here: when it works, it does work.
So, like, given all that, I’d say I had fun with this in the end. I was thinking about maybe giving a bit more of a positive score, but ultimately the persistent feeling I had going through this was still a bit closer to antipathy than anything else. The game still wants to reach past the two-hour refund threshold without actually having enough content to get there, the core gameplay is kinda clunky and uninspiring, and on all fronts it kinda fails to be as effective as a horror experience as it wants to be. But on the other hand, after the genuinely kind of awful experience that was Garten of Banban 2... I definitely feel this series is on a bit of an upward tick. The gameplay is tolerable, and at points has some genuinely fun moments, and at the very least I think on the writing end the creators are leaning into the most entertaining parts of what they have here. Is it good? No. Passable? Maybe still not there, yet, but either way I had a good time. And I don’t necessarily think that’s the Stockholm Syndrome talking. 4/10.
2007
I feel like you could madlib reviews for some of these Nitrome games. In particular their 2D platformers: because they tend to suffer from the same strengths and pitfalls. The core strength here is in its central mechanic: pressing the action button to send you careening through the air (like a proto-VVVVVV) walking on the walls and ceilings to find your way through the level. It’s well-realized on its own, and the extra enemies and mechanics do well to vary your approach and provide some frenetic moments but Jesus what’s even the point of having health if over half the obstacles one hit kill you? What’s the point of finding pickups to restore it if you place them before it’s even possible to take damage? How am I meant to experiment and figure out what I need to do if I get instakilled within two seconds of reaching the next part of the level? Like, maybe if it just did damage and levels were a bit more of an endurance test I’d be able to live with it a little better, but it feels so fucking draining to get sent right back to the start despite being on full health, especially given how long individual levels get after a certain point. And I get that maybe I’m just repeating myself at this point but I feel like this is like, the fifth game with these exact problems. I certainly don’t regret doing this project — and even here it’s so fun to see just what exactly I remember playing these games when they were originally released — but at this point I could stand to play something a bit different. It's a bit clear that there's a consistent design ethos between all these different games.
2022
For what’s ostensibly a mashup between two different inspirations — the Siren series and Junji Ito’s The Hanging Balloons — it’s neat to see just how well the two blend together. Your goal is to find an old family heirloom in an abandoned village, pursued by beings known as ‘The Ascended’: the former denizens who have since become hot-air-balloon-like creatures, capable of flying high above the ground, with the aim of swooping in and killing you on sight. Your only recourse against them is to use your family’s ancestral ability to enter the senses of those around you, seeing what the Ascended see, figuring out where they are, and using that to escape their notice as you delve deeper and deeper into the village. I love how varied the level design is: you never do the same thing twice. You can go from having to sneak across a large swathe of the town, to having to solve a puzzle to get rid of the enemies guarding where you need to go, to then having to open and close doors to bait and trap enemies and clear a path through. Even when the game goes back to ‘sneak through this gauntlet’ there’s generally some twist to keep it fresh: maybe you have to climb up rather than go across, maybe you have to sneak through a maze, maybe you have something that can help you navigate through all the enemies. The game consistently keeps itself fresh, and even if some sections are more memorable than others it never wears out its welcome, doing a very effective job at building up right until the end.
I… do wish the sensejacking mechanics were a bit more viable? A lot of the time when I tried to use it I found myself trying to figure out which enemy I was even in the head of — and, conversely, which specific enemy was the one I needed to sensejack — and while there are sometimes context clues to help figure it out, the environmental design is maybe a bit too samey for you to immediately tell if you’re in the head of the enemy you’re looking for, compounded by how long scrolling through the list can generally take. Maaaaaaaakes some areas a bit rough to go through, and a lot of the time made just trying to improvise and stealth more viable than using sensejacking to plan ahead. Aside from that, though, this was super cool: I love the core mechanic and how the game toys with it the further and further you go through, and I’m also a fan of a lot of the little visual design quirks — how your sensejacking is represented, how you can see the gunk inside the necks of the Ascended — and even if maybe I wish the core mechanic was a little less disorientating it still does a lot of cool (and creepy) shit with it. Definitely recommend this, and I’m really hoping to see more cool stuff from this dev in the future.
I… do wish the sensejacking mechanics were a bit more viable? A lot of the time when I tried to use it I found myself trying to figure out which enemy I was even in the head of — and, conversely, which specific enemy was the one I needed to sensejack — and while there are sometimes context clues to help figure it out, the environmental design is maybe a bit too samey for you to immediately tell if you’re in the head of the enemy you’re looking for, compounded by how long scrolling through the list can generally take. Maaaaaaaakes some areas a bit rough to go through, and a lot of the time made just trying to improvise and stealth more viable than using sensejacking to plan ahead. Aside from that, though, this was super cool: I love the core mechanic and how the game toys with it the further and further you go through, and I’m also a fan of a lot of the little visual design quirks — how your sensejacking is represented, how you can see the gunk inside the necks of the Ascended — and even if maybe I wish the core mechanic was a little less disorientating it still does a lot of cool (and creepy) shit with it. Definitely recommend this, and I’m really hoping to see more cool stuff from this dev in the future.
1993
As a promotional game, meant more to show what Alone in the Dark 2 could offer rather than stand as its own experience, Jack in the Dark, on the surface, seems quite limited. With only one room to walk around, and a handful of puzzles to solve, the whole thing can be completed in ~ten minutes, but even regardless of that there’s a good amount on offer here. The setting of the toy shop is fairly aesthetically pleasing and well-utilized — all the puzzles lean into the setting of the store, near-exclusively using object and enemy models that weren’t otherwise recycled for Alone in the Dark 2. The fixed camera does well to capture some rather clever and cool-looking angles without ever getting in the way or accidentally hiding anything from the player. The rather goofy tone manages to come across even with the little runtime it has, the enemy (and player!) animations being rather charming as they plod across the room and the plot going into… what’s ostensibly a rather off-the-wall direction with an entirely straight face. The limits of this being a tech demo, in a way, become a strength: the game can focus purely on the things it's best at, and strip back most of the systems and complexity that otherwise… have historically held more full-length Alone in the Darks back. Maybe a shame that this is as simple as it is — I would’ve loved to see something like one of Alone in the Dark 2’s stealth sections in here — but I can’t deny that it does basically everything it wants to. It gets into the action, shows off what Alone in the Dark 2’s engine is capable of, and does enough to stand out a little on its own merits, too. Frankly, the fact that I’m left wanting more is a good thing here. Would've loved to have seen this expanded on.
2007
This was my Sonic as a kid. And honestly, playing it today, the comparison feels rather akin to my impression of what the 2D Sonic games are like. You control a cable car, tasked with driving it through the level, avoiding the obstacles along the way, and what’s most important is your momentum: you can go fast, of course, but that’ll often just lead you to crash directly into something, or lose control and flip over. You can take it slow… but oftentimes you’ll need to hit something at a certain speed to get past it. It becomes a matter of knowing what’s coming ahead and knowing what speed you want to hit it at, and, as you begin to get more familiar with the level, refining your movement over and over again until you can attain the most optimal path through the level. It’s a fun loop, and levels are generally short enough that it’s loosely addicting to try, try again at each death until you eventually get the winning run. And once again Nitrome does an excellent job at mixing and matching all their different elements to make each level feel distinct from the other: even something as simple as moving left through the entire level brings so many things you have to learn and consider. I’m maybe not as into how little you get to see ahead of yourself — sometimes you won’t be able to do a section first try because you straight up won’t see it coming until you’re past the point where you can reorient/change your speed. The last level, too, is also… a rather lame way to finish the game off, supplanting what was a pretty inventive and challenging and fun climax with something much lamer, demanding a kind of ridiculous precision and not even having the courtesy to end right after the level’s most difficult point, forcing you to have to do it over and over again just to have a chance at doing the rest of the level. It… kinda sucks, and maybe eclipsed the rest of the game enough to derail my feelings about the experience as a whole but barring that this is a recommendation. It’s cute, it’s got a neat core mechanic, and it bends and tests your mastery of it in a way that really scratches that difficult game itch. Maybe not Nitrome firing on all cylinders... but it sure gets pretty close.
2022
I didn’t know it was possible for one game to ape from this many different eras of indie horror. Egghead Gumpty has it all: from the page key collecting gameplay of Slender: The Eight Pages, the jumpscares on-fail (which make you stop in your tracks half a second before they happen so they’ll never take you off guard) a la Five Nights at Freddy’s, and a procedurally generated setting that totally isn’t The Backrooms you guys, it’s clear that this game is a patchwork chimera of much more trendsetty horror games, and one that… is certainly not the sum of its parts. Even what here that’s original isn’t exactly functional: the titular Egghead Gumpty’s main mechanic is that he’ll appear somewhere in the room you’re in, and you’ll have to find him before a timer runs out, which works when it happens when you’re in a room, but when you’re in any of the corridors — which are all rather long and undefined in shape given the procedural generation — he can spawn far enough away from you that you have no clue where he is and can’t really get an inkling of his location before he kills you. There’s this baby thing that… I think you’re meant to play Red Light Green Light with, but the mechanics around it are so unclear and I died every time I dared to try figure it out. The procedural generation, I feel, does more harm and good here: even other than RNG bullshit where you lose resources/can’t find the places you need to go I feel like it’s hard to feel invested into figuring out your surroundings and figuring out the optimal way to collect everything when the floors change every time you die or even when the floors sometime delete themselves and trap you inside a dead end. I tried this for about 90 minutes, sometimes making some progress before getting fucked over by the puppet baby or Gumpty making me find him in one of the huge hallways. Maybe if I put in some effort I could complete it… but also I didn’t really feel much of a need to. I feel like faffing about and getting killed for 90 minutes really got me to the yolk of the experience here.
To reiterate from when I first reviewed this: I’m no fan of ‘parody’ visual novels — and how they tend to gobble up media attention from brethren that are aiming for something beyond ‘haha, it’s meant to be bad!’ cynicism — but this sticks the landing. For a couple of reasons: even beyond the fairly solid production values, even beyond how regardless of the ‘dating sim the Old Gods!’ veneer it's a fairly solid adaptation of the mythos and characters it's drawing off, what it does best is how beyond the visual novel elements it plays more like an adventure game than anything else. A pretty solid one, too. Rather than making choices or picking dialogue, progress is gated primarily by the things you do in gameplay: mixing and matching all the different things in your apartment to perform all the different rituals, as well as taking in context clues to figure out the order of operations for certain endings. It’s fun to play, a… not terrible lead-in to cosmic horror for those unacquainted with it (and having some cute references for anyone who does have that innate familiarity)... but maybe, perhaps, doesn’t feel as polished as it could be. The UI tends to get in its own way: accidentally grabbing items when you meant to move the screen around, closing the ritual book when you're trying to speak an incantation. There are… enough typos for me to notice it as a consistent problem, to the point where this really would have benefitted from an edit pass. I like the final section a good bit — how genuinely stressful it manages to feel for a game that’s been pretty light on difficulty beforehand — but it goes on for way too long and sends you all the way back for failure, not helped by how finicky it feels to drag your mouse across the screen and speak out spells. It doesn’t dilute too hard from the core of the gameplay, and it manages to theme itself around its cosmic horror influences in a way that thankfully doesn’t feel like it’s just going ‘haha… what if there was a dating sim where you kissed Cthulhu???’, I just think maybe that there are certain things here that stop it from being great rather than good, and that a bit more time spent on certain aspects of the game could’ve done a lot to bridge that particular gap.
2007
nitrome games if their marathon-length levels didn’t send you right back to the start when you died
Nanobots is a bullet-hell shoot ‘em up mostly reminiscent of Ikaruga in how, to damage enemies, you must change the colour of your little ship to match them. There are a couple core differences, though. First is that, rather than the traditional vertical screen, you’re allowed to freely roam a circular arena, kind of like what I understand of Geometry Wars. Second is that, rather than being able to change at will, you must traverse to certain parts of the arena to switch colour: for which the weapon you’re using will also change. It’s fun to move around the stage demolishing the scores of enemies that enter the arena, decently frenetic when you’re low on health and you need to survive long enough for the level to end/health packs to spawn in, and I love how your weapons upgrade and become capable of more as the game goes on, and how this is paired against the steadily increasing threat and numbers of enemies. On paper, it’s fun, but… God do levels being so overtly long kill it. Perhaps if there were checkpoints, or if the levels were split a bit more, or if there was a way to speed it up to get to the part where you died quicker, it’d be fine, but as is getting killed can be as easy as being on top of an enemy when it spawns, or hitting an obstacle that’s bugged and only has its hitbox show up, and can take you back as much as five minutes every time. It’s draiiinnning, and the fact that health packs disappear if you don’t pick them up turns what are otherwise fun levels into total endurance tests, enough so that I genuinely considered quitting even on the earliest levels. I’m glad I didn’t, because ultimately I do think I had fun in the end, but as far as Nitrome games I’d recommend… maybe not this one. At least not unless you've got some free time and patience on you. It can be rouuuuuuugh.
Nanobots is a bullet-hell shoot ‘em up mostly reminiscent of Ikaruga in how, to damage enemies, you must change the colour of your little ship to match them. There are a couple core differences, though. First is that, rather than the traditional vertical screen, you’re allowed to freely roam a circular arena, kind of like what I understand of Geometry Wars. Second is that, rather than being able to change at will, you must traverse to certain parts of the arena to switch colour: for which the weapon you’re using will also change. It’s fun to move around the stage demolishing the scores of enemies that enter the arena, decently frenetic when you’re low on health and you need to survive long enough for the level to end/health packs to spawn in, and I love how your weapons upgrade and become capable of more as the game goes on, and how this is paired against the steadily increasing threat and numbers of enemies. On paper, it’s fun, but… God do levels being so overtly long kill it. Perhaps if there were checkpoints, or if the levels were split a bit more, or if there was a way to speed it up to get to the part where you died quicker, it’d be fine, but as is getting killed can be as easy as being on top of an enemy when it spawns, or hitting an obstacle that’s bugged and only has its hitbox show up, and can take you back as much as five minutes every time. It’s draiiinnning, and the fact that health packs disappear if you don’t pick them up turns what are otherwise fun levels into total endurance tests, enough so that I genuinely considered quitting even on the earliest levels. I’m glad I didn’t, because ultimately I do think I had fun in the end, but as far as Nitrome games I’d recommend… maybe not this one. At least not unless you've got some free time and patience on you. It can be rouuuuuuugh.