Recent reviews by Minim

While on my endless search for quality Indie games, I happened upon a charming little title called “Songs from the Iron Sea”. The title is slightly misleading as it suggest a long and storied adventure fraught with touching moments and perhaps a few jokes about mackerel. Sadly that’s not the case here – less “songs” plural and more “song” singular. Perhaps “sonnet the sea cucumber” would have been a more apt name, but we play the cards we’re dealt. Rather this is more a mid-point between Abzu and Limbo with the hippie peace, love, and robo racism subtext of the former and the scores of horrific deaths from the latter.

The game is just a side swimming platformer about a not-quite mermaid trying to bring down an evil AI that looks conspicuously like a child’s building block. It’s short. It’s sweet. And most importantly it is free. You can probably get through the whole thing in about an hour or less. Especially if you figure out how the double jump works. I never quite figured it out and so my more complex jumps were more an act of blind faith than any developed skill on my part. At least I understood it as an actual double jump by the end as initially I had mistake it as a wall jump. Have you ever thrown a fish at a wall? They don’t bounce and the result is much the same here.

But you know what kind of game I’m talking about, let’s get into some of the fun “experiences” this game inflicted on me and why it is worth your time. First of all, you have a dedicated sing button. This is not important in the slightest as it more or less just acts as an interact button for picking up the bits of poetry littering the sea floor, as though all the poets of the world have developed a grudge against the throats of sea turtles but it adds a bit of surreal humor when you’re in the middle of a stealth section and start belting out an aria while dashing from cover to cover like you’re solid snake as played by Pavarotti. Solid Spigotti, if you will.

Most of the stealth consists of trying to stay out of the spotlight – personified here as a large and surly brick – who finds you and aggressively shines a light in your eyes. Perplexingly, the actual antagonist of the game was not the primary purveyor of petulant post-mortem protests. In particular, most of my punishment was the product of precariously positioned ponds partaking in perversely painful placement. Which is my way of saying the game has numerous areas where it will ask you to hop from one body of water to another. Simplicity itself. But quickly becomes a pain when the devs ask you to do the aforementioned double jump and you yourself have the brain power of a hamster suffering a stroke. However I can hardly fault the devs for my own mental breakdowns – not their fault they didn’t account for the possibility of their game being played by sentient store brand gelatin. That’s the flavorless kind, by the way.

Very often I’d wind up jumping out of the water and falling into the crack behind the sofa with the lent and cheezets. But my favorite deaths came from me land on the *lip* of the next tank. I wouldn't die immediately so it was like the game was trying to make me think about the choices that got me into this situation. This was particularly poignant when I was trying to stealth jump past the antagonist, landed on the lip, and me and the boss just kind of watched each-other in an embarrassed silence.

Another mechanic of this game is picking up magnetic boxes and dropping them on switches or to uses as moving cover. However, the box is physics based. This means that if you pride yourself on breaking games you may be tempted to mess with how the game wants you to progress. Sadly, nothing came of my efforts. I tried dropping a box on one of the sentries when the game just wanted me to block its line of sight. Naturally it did nothing and because I dropped it too close, the spotlight shone right through like he was doing a Jack Torrance impression.

Fortunately the game is very generous with its checkpoints to counteract that you’re a fish out of water in most stealth sections. Very often being spotted is a death sentence. In fact the checkpoints are SO good that if your corpse crosses the threshold mid convulsion it still counts and you can carry on as though you meant to do that. This leniency came in hand toward the end of the game where the devs started breaking out the fast growing spike bushes. The intended design was obviously to move quickly and get out of the danger zone before you were impaled, but the spikes often had “blank spots” that if you positioned yourself perfectly you could approach the challenge more slowly to prevent the perforation of your posterior. MMM spikes. Cozy.

Pausing ponderously I possess a proclamation for this pelagic pilgrimage. Positively perfect. PERIOD.

This is a game all about how OCD and river front property will save the world from flooding. I don't entirely grasp why a *river* can't be flooded, but everything else can, but it is a game. Let's not think too deeply about it. Ostensibly you are given a deck of cards and told to make sure the surrounding land mass doesn't introduce itself to the little mermaid. This is easier said than done, as the game will quickly throw more and more types of tiles at you to throw off your combos. Eventually culminating in two bioms I'm certain the devs just threw in there to mess with the player. And whales.

Listen, it takes a lot for a game to make me sympathetic to the practice of whaling, but you quickly come to understand why people hunt those oversized masses of blubber when you try to place down a new housing project only to find a whale is occupying the space. Meaning you have to wait for it to slowly and carefully move out of the way, like a grandmother with a shopping cart in the middle of the road. Now, I'm not saying it is justified to run over grandmothers in the street, but if I was the police officer writing someone up for it.... I'd let them off with a warning. She was on her way out anyway and it will be unifying moment in family history when they transfer me to another police department instead of firing me.

Getting back on track, this is a decent game. But if I have a complaint, it is that the devs replaced a skip card with a worse skip card. I don't know who did this or why - it was like taking a bland chicken sandwich and then removing the chicken. I won't do anything drastic to the dev that made the call if I see them but if I invite them over for a meal, I WILL serve them exclusively why bread with mayo. Also this isn't important , but there is a glitch that allows you to build infinitely to the point that the game crashes. Don't know how to duplicate it but it seems to be connected to your video software. But it changes the game from Land Above Sea Below to Land Land Land Land.

Anyway, good game if you have a severe case of OCD and enjoy the randomness of card games, but I don't think I'd blame you if you bite through your keyboard upon receiving a bum hand.

It's pretty good. No idea what rewards it gives you, but the puzzles are short and snappy provided you don't have a bad case of ketchup brain.

Speaking as someone *with* ketchup brain, maybe don't play it in front of anyone you wish to retain the respect of or in-laws (those obviously being separate things). As you'll find yourself alternating between sailing effortlessly through each puzzle and scratching your noggin like the "special* little chimpanzee you are and at a certain point it gets very difficult to brush off the proddings of the outside observer who has the luxury of pointing out your mistakes.

That having been said, if you're stranded on a long voyage or part of a doomed expedition, you can use this beforehand to decide which crew members are the most obnoxious to deal with and if they don't have the technical skills to back it up, put them on the list for conversion to soylent green.

Occasionally the mood strikes to play a horror game but I rarely feel inclined to spend money on one. So few horror games bring fresh ideas to the table and very often it is just comes down to ducking around corners trying to find whatever passes for a key as the cryptid of the hour menacingly powerwalks after me. On other occasions it is a strictly scripted sequence of walking around an abandoned house as doors slam behind me and small ghost children laugh in the distance - I mean, I get it, I imagine it would be quite funny to watch someone bumble around in the dark groping for a light switch. And all of this to say nothing of the fact that horror games have a terrible problem with upkeeping quality, as though the devs expect things to be so dark that the player wouldn't notice that the monster has three frames of animation and a polygon count that can be tallied on one hand.

Listen, nonagon noggin, my fear of geometry has been conquered ever since Bert and Ernie - if you had caught me prior to learning what a rhombus is there is a chance you could have gotten some confused screaming out of me like a Lovecraft protagonist that just discovered the concept of air conditioning. Ultimately this just doesn't do anything to me. What else have you got?

"Go with me on this one: …Cyborg sniper shrimp."

… Okay, you've got my attention.

Aphotic Descent by Broiled Squid Studios is one of the better free horror games I've found on Steam. I know that reads like "this is the best pizza establishment I've found in the city on this side of the street, starting with the letter G" but it is true. I found it a few months back and had a quick play and honestly, it is pretty good! It managed to avoid two of the pitfalls I mentioned in the opening of this video and has actually made a lasting impression in my memory. Firstly, it is considerably deeper (heh) than just being chased around by Sliderman's cousin, rounddude, and you DON'T go walking through an abandoned house trying to uncover who you murdered. You'd think you would remember something like that, but it seems to be the first thing our morally dubious protagonists forget along with how to break windows and how to box. Listen, I'm just saying if you had the *OPTION* to bare knuckle brawl the lurker in the dark, it would be nice. Doesn't mean it has to go well.

Speaking of things that don't go well for our protagonist, let's talk about the story. You're a dude on a sub going on a scientific expedition in the Aphotic zone. An Aphotic Descent, title drop. Something attacks your sub and you barely escape the wreckage before being turned into spam in a can. When you make it to the sea floor you find that the scientific outpost you were headed to has come down with a bad case of mad science and a serious uptick in fish based death. Your only hope is to aimlessly bumble through the lab, try not to become fish food, and presumably find a way back to the surface.

First things first, I want to give special note to the art direction and general presentation. It is all very otherworldly in a way not dissimilar to subnautica - which has become the defacto measuring stick for underwater survival. A lot of the life you see falls in that same bioluminescent quasi-scientific feel that strikes a balance between the familiar and the fantastic. Despite being at the bottom of the sea, the environment is very colorful and full of life. It actually feels like the kind of place you'd take a school field trip to were it not for the man eating fish and multiple lapses in scientific ethics. The game is structured in a loose chapter system and each one is prefaced with some nice artwork and some pleasantly pulpy narration.

As you go through the game, you'll encounter a number of data pads and audio logs. These will be what fill you in to the context of the who's how's and why's of the recent uptick in soylent green fish foods. No, I don't know why the white boards also have audio, maybe the lab needed a way to spice up presentations and power points were too mainstream, too current era, you sea what I mean? The voice work is a mixed bag in the best way possible. I get the sense that the devs just grabbed random members of the team and started poking them with barbeque forks until they gave the proper emotion. The work is undeniably amateurish but you can tell everyone is doing their best, which makes it entertaining if nothing else. I actually could establish character based on how they read their lines. The crooning tones of the scientists as they laugh about the absurdity of work place safety. Or the panicked and delirious speech of your lost crew mate as she starts talking to giant mutant crabs as though they are neighbors. It feels like everyone tried their best. Only part that really threw me off in that regard is that not every audio pad is voiced, and some are slightly delayed. So you never know if you're going to start reading only for some frothing PHD to start gushing about his beloved kelp or how much the lady scientist thinks her experiments are overreacting to being vivisected. And as I mentioned before, everyone seems so into it that I feel like if I read over them I'm interrupting something personal.

The mechanics of the game are pretty simple, you are in a diving suit at the bottom of the ocean - you're lucky to not be meat paste, so it is understandable that you may be lacking in versatility. The only offensive abilities you have to your name are a random bowie knife and a blacklight. I don't entirely understand why my blacklight needs to charge up like I'm mega man in order to interact with purple objects, though I do appreciate the that the devs understand the horrors one can see with a black light - though here you only find different excuses to blind marine life with it. Arguably the real world version of the black light is much more horrifying, but considering what these scientists probably got up to it might be for the best the devs didn't go that direction. You do unlock a couple abilities as you progress through the game, including the ability to ascend in water and the ability to turn invisible for short spans of time and honestly it feels pretty stingy at times. These zooplankton are invisible their whole lives, they can't hide me for a couple seconds longer? Are they holding out on me or do they think it is funny to see me hide from the crustacean on the mossy knoll.

Sadly this brings me to the third aspect of the game I mentioned at the start of the video. While the ideas, gameplay, and direction in art are pretty unique - the graphics, animation, and general feel of the game are a bit lacking. I know we're in a diving suit, but I wouldn't say "no" to being able to move faster than a snail's crawl. I can't even begin to list the number of times I'd use the underwater elevation and either juuuust barely fail to get out of the water and then wind up sinking into a corner that wouldn't count as ground and as such, wouldn't let me recharge my stamina for another jump, effectively soft locking me until the monster of the hour would come around to make people sticks out of me.

That being said, I've yet to find a game where you are chased by both a cybernetic sniper shrimp and a human shrimp hybrid friend through an underwater swamp for the crime of killing their Frankensteined electric eel best friend and only narrowly escape because the local zooplankton blessed you with the power of invisibility. The fact that I cannot apply that sentence to any other game or piece of literature in history is justification enough for this game to exist and you should give it a look. It only takes a few hours to get through so check it out, though I wouldn't blame you if certain parts compel you to give your PC swimming lessons.

Dev deserves to be paid for his game, good stuff

Invicta is one of the prettiest broken games you will ever play. The mechanics are what you would expect for a top down hack n' slash, but the art team was pulling over time making it. The level up system is painfully slow and pointless to the point that I'm pretty sure it is a joke. The save is unreliable and the game's dalliances with the z axis makes me wonder if the devs have an irrational fear of cat-walks that they want to propagate amongst the rest of the world.

It is surprisingly difficult to die in combat in this game - in fact I only managed it once. But I died like 4 times due to a combination of glitches and the game's indecision on weather jumping down from cliffs is an option for exploration or a quick and easy way to loosen up your joints after a long life.

Also, boss fights are a joke. I saw three of them and one seemed to be completely optional. In fact you have nothing to gain if you do it and everything to lose if happen to (somehow) fail. The first boss was some off brand vesion of Barnie in his audition for Gladiator. Want to know what his attacks are? So would I - as he died before he did anything more than swing his axe around. I think he was supposed to be the prison warden, but I'm not convinced he wasn't just a senile old pensioner that I bullied to death. That's not even mentioning that the key item he drop is so small and blends into the background that I didn't even realize he had dropen anything. And you NEED the item he drops because after beating him, it loops you back to the previous level and you need the item to proceed.

Then we have the final boss. Again. Looks and animates great - the art design was on point. But the boss isn't challenging or interesting and there isn't even an end to the fight. In fact, I don't think you even see him defeated - he just kind of raises his sword as if asking "why isn't this working?" and then the game ends. I mean, can't fault the strat - he can't lose if he ends the game before we kill him. I'm more impressed than anything..

In spite of that, I do recommend. The game is pretty enough to warrant a look. And the game *knows* it is pretty because it has multiple "stop and look around" sections. And any game that has the confidence to tell you to take a close look at its stitches deserves a hand for being so brave.

Threw a grenade and lost a limb to the splash damage. Could no longer use my weapons as a result. The only thing I could do was throw more grenades. So I did that.

I spent my final moments gathering grenades to nuke rooms and pinching bottles of soda to keep myself full up. Despite having lost a limb I was in perfect health. I kept this up until a demon tore its way out of a crazy guy and turned me into coleslaw.

Can't wait for the full release.

Nice little speed running game - just a shame I have *no idea* how the rhythm aspect of it is meant to work. Short sweet, try it you may or may not like it.

Takes 5 minutes. Short and silly.

A short and sweet free tactics game. Has some glitches and flaws but it does what it sets out to do and does it reasonably well. Worth an attempt if nothing else.

If you play it, I suggest you make heavy use of healing items instead of relying on the bow. Healing from a bow is just as stupid and impractical as it sounds, especially when the monsters you face have far more mobility than you do. If you fail a quest your items remain unspent, so best to take advantage.

Also the ground snatching event is bugged and messes up your archer's bullseye attack making him unable to heal or damage other units.