Got to the third level of Fist Hell. I found that picking the guy who’s good at punching made things, if not easier, at least more straightforward.
Quibble Race is fun, and refreshingly, did not feel absurdly difficult. I got the cherry on my second go; I wasn’t really going for it but I’m happy to have it.
All summer I feel like I’ve been bouncing between games and tasting different things, and I’m ready to get invested in a single experience (bad timing for UFO 50). I’ve been eyeing this game for a while, but psychologically I thought if I went in trying to taste everything, I’d end up getting bogged down and not really enjoying it.
But after learning there’s a full 15 hour JRPG in this game, I decided I’d get it to only play Grimstone. I saw it compared to Dragon Quest II which sounds great to me. Maybe after I beat it I’ll want to check out other stuff individually, but I’m specifically going to play this to not engage with a meta narrative or anything like that. I’m going to play it like fans in 1988 did.
Looking forward to getting 'stoned!
At least for me, the meta narrative has in no way presented itself, and I’ve been actively looking for it! I don’t think you’ll have any trouble avoiding it even if you do sample some of the other games.
Favorite video game YouTuber plays my favorite game of the year:
I cherried Pilot Quest and gilded Party House recently and what I’ve been focusing on now is Campanella 2 and Valbrace. The thing that I’m continuously surprised by here is the fact that these games really aren’t all as “lean” as you’d probably expect from a collection with fifty games in it. Like Mooncat, I’ve beaten the game and it turns out I’ve only seen half of the levels in it.
Campanella 2 has branching paths and introduces some really cool mechanics and enemies for some of the levels. There’s an area in it called “The Gut” that takes place in a Salamander-esque biological looking area with all these gross monsters in it. It’s super cool. There are certain NPCs that tell you to visit other NPCs, and I have no idea where they’re going with it because the game is that dang hard.
Party House has several different scenarios, plus a randomized scenario, and a multiplayer mode. I’m pretty sure there are some guests that only show up in random mode, too. Avianos has 3 base game scenarios and then throws 5 more at you for the cherry.
It’s kind of incredible just how much stuff they’ve packed in here. I’ve put like 30 hours into the collection and it still feels like there’s so much to see.
Campanella 2 run n gun sections are brutal.
Vainger is the first game I’ve tried that I don’t like. It’s basically just Metal Storm, down to the basic enemy types, but as a Metroid. One of the least adventurous concepts for any game in the collection I’ve played so far, and in execution it is remarkably bad imo. The levels are obnoxious and awkward to navigate; bosses’ attack patterns encourage you to play passively, waiting for a safe opportunity to attack; and the camera actively works against you in rooms with vertical scrolling, making it difficult to spot instant-death spikes (of which there are a lot) before it’s too late. Super disappointed in this one.
Also I just finished a run of Waldorf’s Journey with forty-nine shells. For the cherry disk I needed fifty. I’m in pain.
Edit: I got it thank god
There are some games that I initially bounced off of but then ended up really enjoying once I come back to, and there are some that I would enjoy more if they weren’t as difficult, but I think one game that I can say that I don’t like and don’t see myself liking in the future is Pilot Quest.
Also, the Eggplant podcast is doing a yearlong series discussing the games week to week, book club style, which is pretty cool.
all games are kicking my ass. for some reason bushido ball is the one that got its hooks in me. after many, many tries, i beat the game with ayumi. i do not envision a world where i beat it without continues to get the cherry disk.
the other game i beat so far was night manor, on which i did get the cherry. to repeat what’s been said by others, the depth and breadth of these games are incredible. most of them would stand on their own and are staggering when next to 50 others.
This is actually the quickest/easiest game to cherry if you don’t mind removing all challenge from the game: go into options set mode to hyper and points per match to the lowest. Whenever you hit the ball hold left for the lob shot. On hyper the lob shot sails over the cpu’s head and they don’t know what to do about it.
oh so that’s how you lob! i thought it was random/due to velocity or something.
Reporting back from Magic Garden:
Did you know you can stack potions to increase the point multiplier? This sets up potions to themselves be a type of hazard, if you’re going for maximum points. There’s a real tension in high-score runs because you just let the number of hazards pile up until it’s efficient to finally grab a potion and start taking in points. Until then it takes optimal and skillful play to dodge everything. Pretty cool!
No I haven’t beaten this one yet, yes I’m still bad at actually playing it. I’m great at thinking about it though.
The other meta is depositing long trains of oppies to turn them into enemies after you crank up the multiplier. It’s a lot more interesting of a game than I’d have expected. That jump takes some practice too.
I’ve been playing a lot of Valbrace lately and it’s really tough but getting better at its mechanics is very satisfying. The death system is really punishing but I think the spells all being “unlocked” from the start and hidden behind shapes you (the player) have to remember is a pretty interesting way to take progression forward.
After hearing about how incredible this game (games?) sounds, will it run on my really crappy old laptop?
Yeah it definitely will. GameMaker games run on anything
Good to know, thanks!
More like craptop, amiright?
Honestly, the best thing to do in this situation is die, lose half your money, and respawn back in town. After I got the detonator, I did that and saved probably 20 minutes of backtracking. But I will admit I am losing a little bit of enthusiasm at this stage of the game, and I don’t really know how much is left.
I don’t mind that the game is unapologetically punishing with a ton of random encounters. My issue is that the design of the battle system itself is misguided. Having every non-skill attack be an action command is too much. It adds friction to the repetition and forces you to be engaged physically in a way that is not so authentic to the times and not mechanically interesting. I think it’s a forgivable effort, but what truly makes it frustrating design is that there’s a seemingly separate accuracy stat for weapons have and a separate avoid stat that enemies have, so even when you nail your inputs the attacks can still miss. The infantry rifle has missed for me probably 30% of the time when Maria gets a clean shot.
I don’t mind that the game is unbalanced, but Anne fell off like a rock after the first or second dungeon. One would assume characters would consistently learn skills, but aside from Lee (the blue mage) and Umbra (who learns them from animals), my party doesn’t have very useful skills. Now that I’m fighting groups of 6-8 high HP enemies every random battle, not being able to hit more than one enemy at a time is just tedious and min-maxing every encounter is not possible when you miss so often!
Another gripe with the battle system – having “defend” action take place when the character acts in a round (and ends after the round) makes it next to useless. It’s a small thing but it makes it so that you never really use defend strategically on the most dangerous types of enemies.
UFO 50 is an interesting work of art. I think making 80s games in modern times using the general constraints of the past is a very effective frame. Unlike so many indie RPGs that claim to want to ‘fix’ or ‘modernize’ old games, this one wants to live alongside it. However, it can never live alongside those games. It’s removed from the weight and history of its inspirations and from its contemporaries. Despite the best efforts to ignore 35 years of game development, it can’t do that and its metamodern ethos leaks in. As a result we see fingerprints of the developers adding deliberate friction and making decisions to make the game less inviting. This game isn’t made for the same reasons or approached philosophically the same way as the games that inspired it, so it will always feel like this separate thing. Not bad, but just different.
I’d say always pushing forward is the better bet than just dying. There’s a few different situations where I was absolutely worn thin and pushed forward bringing a particular section to a close and getting out alive. Turning around is probably the worst option though most of the time, the potential saved money isn’t worth the wasted time usually. I definitely did kill myself at the part you mentioned to save some time as well.
If you register the timed hits in the red portion of the line the characters never miss and do critical damage. I talked about it in my initial post about Grimstone but I think it actually makes attacking have a little bit of an interesting risk/reward because if you want to guarantee hits or do large damage you have to aim for that narrow red sliver and put yourself at a greater chance of a complete miss. High defense and high dodge enemies practically require you to execute crits or else it becomes incredibly protracted.
I’m right at the tail end of the game and Anne is finally becoming useful, but it’s way too little way too late. She’s pretty bad. She’s useful for boss fights, but boss fights are a breeze compared to some of the random encounters you can get into in this game.
Defend activating based off a character’s speed is sorta dumb.
I was already wary of this game cuz action commands in indie RPGs are a blazing red flag for me, but this sounds so much worse than I imagined lol
Slowly going through it “chronologically” I’ve sampled about the first half now (and gone through Pilot Quest so I don’t “have to” do senseless waiting later). I gotta admit the games I actually like are fewer and farer between than I expected/hoped.
Sure, just my favorite ones are still already worth more than the asking price, but it often makes me kinda wish that they had scaled it down to something more like 15-25 games and made those really good.
Curiously, the ones I really like are mostly all the puzzly ones (except that boring koala Sokoban), maybe because they don’t have that archaic arcade mentality that’s going on in a bunch of the others. Favorite so far is Party House.