Looking back starting in March, it seems that I’ve been juggling playing through a lot of new games. The current ones occupying my time are (outside of Moon) Paradise Killer and Necrobariasta. Been playing a lot of newer VN/Adventure Games in research, and been anticipating Necrobarista for a while now. Definitely delivers in the chill-with-great-presentation-and-fun-story department. Also a good example of possibly saving lots of dev time by not going for fancy animation and instead effective camera panning and scene framing.
Paradise Killer I wanted to play just to see how they handle 3D exploration, and the answer is pretty basic but still fun. I’ve become overly bitter at Vaporwave over time, through both sound and visuals, but I feel like Paradise Killer’s visuals and clashing styles remind me more of weird early to mid 2000’s 3D chat spaces, and in that sense, I’m really enjoying it. They seem to really love Silvercase/25th Ward, and Grasshopper adventure games in general, I think, so it’s cool seeing the influence.
Also tried out Takeshi & Hiroshi, an Apple Arcade release that’s now on the Switch. I was drawn to its incredibly charming stop motion animated sets and characters. The story is pretty simple, hoping it doesn’t go into super-sad territory, and the reverse RPG gameplay where you set out enemies for your brother to fight is cute, though I wish there was a way to skip it sometimes to just see more stop motion scenes.
Outside of those, Panzer Paladin is solid fun and just fun to look at in general. I love their over all color palette in the game, and the pixel work is just fantastic. Paper Mario and the Origami King surprised me with its charm, and I’m still trying to figure out the fun in the new Sakura Wars, but enjoy playing Koi-Koi with the characters and absolutely love the “On the next episode…” previews at the end of each chapter.