Recent reviews by DreamCarver

"[...] it's like you're on a motorcycle at midnight, no lights but somehow you don't need them, blasting out along a cliff-high stretch of coast highway, so fast that you hang there in a cone of silence, the bike's thunder lost behind you. Everything, lost behind you. [...] Amazing. Freedom and death, right there, right there, razor's edge, forever." - Excerpt from The Winter Market, by William Gibson.

Thumper's not quite that visceral. But it certainly is angry. It throws you down that cold steel track at a million miles an hour, and plays its rhythm on the devil's own drumset. You clang off of corners like a pinball, a sharp metal on metal sound as your shell sends sparks into the nothingness. Smash through a barrier like a hammer through bone. Leap a set of spikes and slam down on the far end, sending a rippling shockwave along the track that makes the tendrils that grow there scream and wither...

Something I quite like about the score grading system here is that it allows for various levels of play: the newcomer, who holds down A and prays as they're violently smacked into the walls, but still comes out alive (this was me, when the speed and difficulty started ramping up around level 5 or so), the adept, who is willing to actually play to the beat and try for some cool scores, the arcade heroes, who are out for that highscore spot and pull off crazy back to back perfect turns and smashes and mid-air clangs off of the guardrails... I don't think I've ever gripped my controller quite as tight as in those moments of pure stunt trickery.

It's a wonderful and terrifying experience. Some of the levels might feel dragged out at times, but it makes for a better learning curve. There might not be enough mechanics for some among you, but I think the relative simplicity lets Thumper focus on what it already has. Mastery and highscores will keep the content-hungry satiated. If you're of strong will and a hellish attitude, buy it.

I have a strange relationship with this one. There was the initial honeymoon, where I dashed and slashed with keyboard and mouse, and all was good. I got my completionism in, let the moods that the wordless story painted pour over and through me, died a whole bunch, and wept when it was finally over. Loved it. Then I put it down for a long time. Occasionally I would remember the dark red and blue pixel ninja and think fondly of them. But it wasn't until a few months ago that I plugged in a controller and decided to try mastering Drifter. Started actually thinking about what I was playing.

Assuming you're the guy who wandered in really late (don't be embarassed, now you get to find out about the cool thing!), Hyper Light Drifter is an indie darling that absolutely crushed its Kickstarter goals back in 2016. With pistol and sword and a very cool dash, search for a cure for your strange affliction (there's a wonderful and sad backstory to that theme that I will let you find out for yourself), and enjoy kicking butt and getting yours kicked in a variety of beautiful pixel environments.

People have summarized it as "Zelda without the annoying bits". I tend to agree, though I can't quite think up a way to link it back to Zelda, which... doesn't bode well for Zelda. I guess it's more of a feeling. The exploration of a strange world full of hostile creatures, but without the overbearing hostility that... oh, screw it- DARK SOULS (I really didn't want to, okay, it just happened) might inflict upon you. Exploration being the operating word in that last sentence: this game is packed with secrets and extra bits that you will probably miss on your first time through. Half of them aren't even necessary for completion, they're just there for the sake of having options.

Combat is excellent, in my opinion. The core moveset of dashing, slashing, and shooting is never overwritten, but instead expanded upon, accessorized, giving you excuses to experiment. Special techniques use stamina, so make them count or get good at getting out the way so you can catch your breath. Guns use charge, which you get back by getting in there with your sword, so strike a good balance and learn when to fall back and when to get in close. Learn to dance. Learn to dodge. Learn to slide in next to a bird mage and blow them away with a single shotgun blast. It's honestly a bit of a spectacle fighter. Maybe not in the way that I typically think of them, but still.

I forget, sometimes, that this game is hard. After ninety something hours making the Drifter dodge and slice, it becomes hard to remember the days of yesteryear, when I got curbstomped by giant plant monsters twenty times in a row for messing up the timing on getting-out-of-the-damn-way. And I can't really tell you to "just play" for ninety hours, now can I? I could. But I'd be a prick for doing that. So I don't know what to tell you. "Hang In There", maybe. "Learn The Pattern". Drifter is very pretty and very fun and I want you to enjoy it.

Oh, one little tip before I go. There's this one boss in the South... blends right in. You'll know the one. Anyway: get right on top of him when he summons his drones and give him the big charge slash. The drones will be toast and he'll be easy pickings. Rinse and repeat. Good luck.

An arena shooter... from the guy who made Refunct? Heck yes.

Ok, look. I play Devil Daggers. I know that you see the similarities between this and Devil Daggers. I get it. We all get it. But rather than do a compare and contrast, I am tempted to dump that line of thought directly into the trash, because who cares about the other game, let's talk about this one. At the same time, it feels like I need to address the differences in play, because they're important. So.

Swarmlake is DnB where Daggers is heavy metal. Swarmlake is water where Daggers is bone. The mechanics are soft where Daggers' are needle-sharp, the presentation is colorful where Daggers' is ash, the feeling of play is joyous rather than terrifying.

Comparison done. Now for a story.

In the few hours I've played this so far, I've come to a realization. I thought it was about fighting each individual enemy while searching for the heart, cutting down on the spawn rate, making the arena quiet again. But this is not that. There are no quiet moments, there is no abating the swarm. You dance, you fly, you do your best to keep the heaving mass of enemies at a reasonable size. But you do not control it. You move with it. And you do your best to avoid being drowned.

In short: this game is about what it's like to fight a sentient ocean.

Get up, Puppy.

LACONIC: This game is what happens when you water the seed that Hotline Miami grew from with liquid cyberpunk anime instead of rainbow cocaine juice. Same vein, very different outcome.

MORE WORDS: They got me. They reached right into my skull and directly stimulated the part of my nerd mind that loves this stuff, that dreams of burning oildrums beneath neon superhighways, pipe fights, tube hotels, and bloody leather jackets. To put it in a less alarming way, they extracted all the flashy bits from Akira and gave them to me in their rawest form. And I'll be damned if I don't love Akira.

RUINER's strongest point is its aesthetic. Bright white and red lights and dark shadows. Everything's metal and concrete, giant blocky kanji painted onto the floor, bullets flashing through the void in sprays of color. And through it all, your character's helmet screaming data onto the screen, giving everything a real flavor. It's great to look at, even at its most intense moments. The character portraits are also pretty well done as well, 'specially HER little stage-clear eyecatches.

"Oh, that's great and all, Dream, glad it looks good, but how does it play?" Plays alright. I have gripes about the fact that once everyone can dash it turns into a game of wait-for-the-enemy-to-shoot-then-dash-and-smack-em, but combat feels appropriately balanced and heavy. Dashes are neat and feel good to pull off, but I do wonder why the dash planner even exists if enemies can just turn and blast my face off once I'm in position. The weapons are all wonderfully cyberpunk. Ice beam, shotgun that sets people on fire, railgun that takes heads off. Fun stuff to play with. Minibosses are, unfortunately, rather forgettable.

I can't really go into the plot without spoilin stuff, not that I need to. The game's premise is pretty neatly summed up in the trailers. I'll just say that the last act of the game was a bit disappointing. Not bad, but disappointing. But I can talk about the tone, or more accurately, how I felt while playing. And quite simply, I felt like a dog. Mystery girl says move, I move. Mystery girl says fetch, I fetch. It was a simple relationship. Not one I particularly minded. I didn't know if I was gonna get a bone at the end of all this, or if I was just being strung along and used, but I was alright either way. Puppy's got enemies to bleed. Puppy's having a good time.

So. Them's my thoughts. If you're on-board for a good looking killing spree through a blood-red future, be my guest.

I don't like writing up my thoughts on games immediately after completion. I usually let the experience cool off a bit before I start turning to logic and analysis, deciding what I like and don't, what I feel ten hours in versus what I felt at the beginning of my experience. But I feel as though I need to catch the mood of this game fast, before it evaporates.

Gone Home was on my wishlist for something like 3 years. I kept putting it off. Something bigger, something more involving was always available, and I knew that I wasn't exactly gonna get the best conversion rate of money to time out of this one. Which isn't a bad thing, y'know, you're allowed to make a small but effective package. But anyways. I put it off. And finally I decided that enough was enough, bought it on sale, and waited for the rainy day that would give me the hours to play it. As I just have.

It was worth it.

I've never had a game so quickly give me that feeling where something's... off. Something about the way the house is lit. The creaking of the heating pipes. I could be forgiven for thinking I was playing a horror game at times, and I kept closing doors behind me to make sure nothing snuck up on me. It gave me that feeling when you come home alone at night, and you have to go upstairs, but it's dark up there. That scared feeling that you know is stupid, you know there's no one here, but you still hurry to turn on the lights.

It's strange. I know I'm supposed to focus on the fun parts, the story of your sister and her year away from you, and all the glorious punk spirit it entails... but I can't help but focus on how spooked I was the entire time. Did I just let it get into my head? Did I want this kind of experience? Did I play this game wrong? But then I realize the answer is "no". This is the intended experience. There's all the little clues the writers cleverly left behind to lead me to this mindset, this quiet quest to turn on every light in the house. The shadow of the plant that looks like a man's face. The pipe in the shortcut that runs along the ceiling and looks like someone's standing at the top of the stairs. The cupboard that's tilted slightly, so it slowly opens even if you close it. Besides that, there's a dozen little stories woven into the main plot, clues hiding in boxes, under beds. I enjoyed untangling them, giving them a good look.

If I have any gripe at all it's that you walk painfully slow. I kept pushing shift to run, as I've been programmed to, but kept being reminded that that was just the zoom button. Mildly annoying, but I dealt with it.

As far as interactive fiction experiences go, this is definitely one of the better ones. I found myself engaged with the story, feeling for the characters without ever seeing them, just seeing the echoes of their lives reflected in the house they live in. I understand why others are disapproving of something like this ("A walking simulator where nothing happens about feeling sorry for a girl because *reason*"), but I can't imagine how Gone Home could have handled itself better.

Time to mix lives and change... wait, dangit.

Welcome to Glitch City, a superfuture metropolis full of bad things happening. Riots, murders, absurdly priced restaurants, corruption, cyborgs and synthetics, and a whole lot else that can't fit into a textbox this size. There's big forces at play in this place, plots that would make your head spin, people who aren't what they seem... A lot of great and exciting stuff.

But this game isn't about all that. This game is about a few weeks in the pretty ordinary life of Jill, bartender at a slow little watering hole tucked away in the heart of the city, catering to the weary and the curious alike. Jill's priorities in life are simple: earn enough money to not get kicked out of her apartment, try to stay sane in the face of the absurd clientele the bar recieves, and possibly get laid at some point. Assist her in these goals by serving up drinks to the assortment of folks who come in to get drunk and/or socialize! Apply more alcohol to get more interesting stories out of them, or keep them sober to keep them from doing something they might regret later.

Alright, disclaimer: I'm not as fluent in VNs as I would like. I'd love to act as though I have a metric of worth built up over years of experience, but all I've got in my repetoire is a video playthrough of Ever17, various anime adaptions of random stuff, and my personal experience with Katawa Shoujo. So I don't know if I'm exactly your qualified judge of... quality. But screw it:

Va-11 Hall-A has good aesthetic and visual style, a lovely soundtrack, and the writing is... Fine. Just fine. Certainly there's times when it's pure pandering, and there are a couple of times that you get your skull smacked with a rather blunt expository conversation (more than a couple actually, most of the world-building is done through the conversations between Jill and her clients, the rest through the newsfeed on Jill's phone), but I feel as though it's dealable. And there's plenty of little background hints to connections between your clients that it feels nice to recognize and puzzle out, if you're looking for them. It's a very human story, I suppose. Not about the most interesting girl in the world, but certainly some of the more interesting days in her life. If you're willing to live them out with her, by all means do.

Look, you could do far, far worse than this booze-em-up. So put on some nice warm clothes, get some pretzels or something, and get to know about some folks looking to get drunk. Learn about them and their lives, and about Jill's. Be reminded that for all those millions of people trapped in dystopia, it's not just hell. It's also home.

Games should not be allowed to be this good.

I bought Celeste at full price at the insistance of the N++ discord folks, my small protest about waiting for sales thoroughly shot through. It couldn't have been five minutes into the game before the fun just started wafting, like delicious steam off of a freshly baked pie, into my face. It controls so well, the sounds as Madeline runs and boosts feel so nice on my ears, and even when I died for the hundredth time I continued to smile, because I was having fun.

I knew at fifteen minutes in that it would be a one sitting completion, because I would not allow myself to leave this gem unfinished and go to bed. And so I pushed. I ignored my inner completionist for the sake of my potential future sleep, instead focusing on the main path towards the summit. And I was rewarded with mechanic after mechanic that continued to stack and make me giggle as I took them apart and learned to use them, and a story about a woman who is doing something she is entirely unprepared to do, but must do regardless, and stage after stage of platforming goodness.

It was a wonderful journey, and it was worth more than the price I paid for it. Thank you for convincing me, C.C.S.

Now, twenty-odd hours in, I'm scraping the entirety of the game for all its secrets, all the brutal bonus levels, all its hyper hush-hush extra bits. No idea when I'll be done, but I feel like it's gonna be a while. And that's just fine by me.

Buy it, it's wonderful.

... It's no Metaverse. But it'll do for now.

I'm emerging from the weird trance state that I've been in for the past few days, dozens of hours of leaping and snatching and throwing muddied together in the rains of time. Rain World sucked me in deep. And now, having broken free from its fierce world, I can finally put together my thoughts into something coherent.

... I guess I'll start by saying that yes, the game is tough. Tougher than most. It holds your hand for approximately three minutes, and then throws you bodily into a world full of things that want to eat, drown, or otherwise end you. Controls, at the start, are cumbersome. Slugcat feels slow, uncoordinated. Jumps appear to be impossible. Food outruns you. Your spear hits only the air over a lizard's head and you barely escape sharp-toothed death by quickly climbing a pole.

All of this, I must insist, is part of the learning process. A few cycles in and you will find yourself more reliably making those impossible jumps, and not because slugcat is actually growing stronger, not because you're leveling up, but because you, as the player, are learning how to better play the game. You'll learn tricks you would never have thought possible, clamber your way into parts unknown, figure out a way to make that weird hard-shelled fruit edible.

This is not to put myself above the anger that comes with failure. I came to many a point of frustated table-slapping as I missed the same jump for the third time in a row. Or got nabbed by a lizard that was sitting right outside the exit to a pipe. What I'm trying to say is that the difficulty barrier exists for you to overcome it, to test you. The world wants you to see it, but you just have to stick with it.

I won't tell you to git gud. But I will tell you to keep trying.

Enough of me rephrasing the same thing multiple times. Should you buy Rain World? Hell yes. Full price, even. The game design choices are excellent, the soundtrack is wonderful, and the art is spread gloriously across every screen you scurry through. It's full of beauty and horror, hardship and triumph. It is a nature documentary about the bravest creature still breathing in this savage land, and you are the star.

It's certainly a different flavor of humor that Jazzpunk serves up, and I'm pretty sure I like it. Some strange post-post future where everyone's not-secretly a robot and popular culture is some puzzlingly foreign potpourri. I got a number of laughs from the experience, and some sort of sense of abandon. Complete the area's task whenever you like! Take the time to explore, find all the bizarre humor that's hidden just out of sight for you to find it, in mailboxes, down a side alley, in a corner of the bar.

Of course, such a dense concentration of the substance known as Jokes leaves the game a bit short. My playtime as of writing is 2.5 hours, and that's at, I would guess, 85% completion. I also felt, as I continued on, that perhaps there was a bit of frontloading, that the areas after the first felt a bit too empty in comparison. It might also be that the initial novelty of the experience had worn off, and I had simply gotten more used to the absurdity around me.

But hey, the 2.5 hours certainly felt like more than that. It may be short, but it is potent.