More Cleaning

Yes, some more cleaning games. The Steam Sale didn't help when it came to my wallet...

Cleaning Up is one I saw on LRR streams. We aren't talking complicated cleaning but there are two things that are notable. One is a really floaty jump, not helped by me using keyboard and mouse when it recommends controller. There is a few bonus levels that need precision climbing, and this is not the game for that. Oh, and the other thing is that the levels are sentient... Okay... anyway, completed, and fun enough!

Emergency Cleanup Co... yes, this was the demo. Yes, this is the one on Early Access that I saw I would wait... and I didn't. This is, as mentioned, a fairly straightforward cleaning game, with some basic tools that you use time and again. You can upgrade with money, or with perks, but having now completed the game... I have all the upgrades I can buy, but only about half the perks. I will try replaying some levels to see if a) I get perks again, and b) it can count towards the "do x number of things" for the cheevos, otherwise will have to wait for more levels. (It's a 34G download, so there are plenty of levels... but not enough for a one and done to get everything... to be fair, I also replayed a lot of levels of the above game to also get stuff, so it's a common theme.)

And... that's it. No other cleaning games... yet... back to Ship Graveyard Simulator 2 I guess... although I do also have Hardspace: Shipbreaker... and a new pack for PowerWash Simulator 2 drops this month... 

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Cleaning up Demos

I like some cosy games, and Cleaning games are a) cosy and b) have the sense of making a place better. So I tried five demos.

Clean Up Earth: People sent trash back in time, so you go back in time to pick it up. It's very samey, with no real advance on the game play loop. It just bored me. (And apparently there is use of AI that isn't disclosed). That's a no from me.

Emergency Cleanup Co: You take over a cleaning company, and you clean houses. This is early access, but it has definite potential. There are some small things I want to see if they iron out for the full release, so I'm keeping an eye on this, but not getting it yet.

Cyber Cleaner Simulator: Immediately annoying, You are a dude bro who is cleaning up things to get money to... do something. I didn't pay attention too much because there were lots of things that bounced off me. (And possible use of AI, because the developers are only two people.) Another no for me.

HiroBot Clean & Restore: You are Hiro, a cleaning bot. As well as washing things, you can restore some items (suck them in one place and spit them out where they are supposed to be). However, aside from that one idea, this is just Powerwash Simulator but worse. Good try, but a long way to go to a good game.

Island Restoration: You are cleaning up an island, picking up garbage, watering plants, freeing turtles. This game will live or die on how well it gives out upgrades, because I do not want to do the base level mechanics for more than one small island. And twice I got "99%" for getting garbage and couldn't find the remaining no matter how much I searched.

Not a great hit rate, but I gave them a go!

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Phonopolis!

I love the developer Amanita Design, I have all their games, and their latest is...

PHONOPOLIS!

In the city (polis) everyone is controlled by orders from loudspeakers (the Phono). Felix (not pronounced as you'd expect) finds a pair of headphones, and from that point onwards the loudspeakers have no sway over him. From there, it's on him to find his way to the top of the city, discover what has become of Rachel, and find and/or defeat the Absolute Tone.

AD is great for doing games that do not need any dialogue, and indeed their games generally don't have any text aside from the menus. From the first flash Samorost to the famous Machinarium, to the full puzzler Creaks, they are rely on visual understanding only.

And this game is a break from that. There's dialogue! There's story! People tell you things! Fortunately, the puzzles are still largely just working out what is going on, not needing to read anything, but it is quite the change.

I have now 100% the game (with a little help), and most of the achievements are just having fun with doing weird things with the machines/situations you play with, but some of them I just had no idea about.

Still, there are 16 AD games on Steam... and I have them all! ...although I don't have 100% of the cheevos of them... hmm....

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Joy of Sudoku

There's this Youtube creator I watch: Cracking the Cryptic.

They started with doing Cryptic Crosswords, but expanded into doing Sudoku puzzles. Then during the lockdown, the sudoku really took off, so much so they went from one video a day (featuring Simon solving) to two puzzles a day (the other being Mark solving). And from that point on, it's been at LEAST two videos a day, and actually a lot more these days.

Just sudoku? Just putting in numbers in a 9x9 grid? Well yes, that's the basic grid, but they are really into crafted variant sudoku. (Most sudokus that appear in newspapers are computer generated ones.) These ones are specially made, often have a great break in, and then a smooth ride through solving. And as for basic...

There are cages, where the digits add to a total. A 'v' or 'x' between cells mean they add to 5 or 10. There are lines; purple lines are renbans where numbers are consecutive, in any order; thermo lines increase in one direction; region sum lines break the lines into equal sums; arrows, diagonals, chess based rules (no digits a knights/kings moves away)...

There are spots outside the grid that give sandwich sums, skyscraper clues, little killer lines. This can mean that the grid itself can be entirely empty...

9x9? Grids can go down to 4x4 or over 11x11.

Recently they have been getting back into cryptics with weekly videos about the Friday puzzle. And on the Patreon they do the Times Monthly Special and... I've heard of those of those words... one or two. Yes, they have a Patreon, where $2 gets you extra videos and monthly puzzles, and $3 for the solutions to those. Mark also does Connections and Gridograms...

And also daily videos of Wordle, and Minute Cryptic...

They do a lot, is the point, and if you enjoy good puzzles and seeing how to solve them, this is a great channel to follow.

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Soli-ticked off!

There are two word games I play on my phone all the time, many years now. And so when one advertised another game, I thought I'd at least check it out.

Wordscapes Solitaire is a game where you have letters (represented as cards) and as you use them more cards/letters are revealed, so you need to spell things to get points. There are coins and words and all sorts of things to collect. So far, decent enough.

However, as you might guess, there are ads. But not to worry, you can pay to disable them. You pay $20 to switch them off. For 30 days. ... Ain't no game gonna be that worth it, and this is a puzzle word app!

And it plays ads during the game, fine, annoying, but something that happens... expect when the ad has played, interacting with the screen in any way takes you to the store for what the ad is selling... which means you can't switch the screen off to go back to the game! I had to kill the app so I could restart it so I could continue playing.

When it happened for a second time... that's when I hit uninstall.

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Reveail

Not sure why I picked this up, but I played Reveil.

You are Walter, with a wife and a kid who work with you in the circus. However, there are some strange things up with your relationship, and what happened to them anyway? And was it really your fault?

This game does start with the basic ideas of "troubled family man" and what gets revealed about him isn't that surprising considering this is a horror game. However, there is a reason as to why he did the things he did... the problem is, the explanation has nothing to do with the themes of the game presented so far, so it is less a hard swerve and more jumping to another game entirely. And the explanation undercuts any sense of "why is this?" that the first part generates.

I don't mind "walking simulator" games, heck I even like Dear Esther, but... this was just a heck of a walking simulator that a lot of time passed with nothing happening other than "hey, here was something we designed for you to walk through". There are there sections where you have to actively game (ie avoid an enemy) but they weren't a lot of fun because it wasn't clearly explained what it was I was trying to do.

And during the puzzle segments... dead gods. I don't know if this was supposed to be Controller first, but mouse and keyboard sucked, especially when it came to turning things. Mouse and turning does not work well, and it was always an effort to get through.

I played the game once through, then again with a walkthrough to get all the collectibles and such. One cheevo left, which I could get, but I don't care to. There are some extra features, but I'm not sure how to access them, so I'm not going to count them.

As I said, not sure why I got this, but I have now played it. Can't recommend you do the same.

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Puzzle Mechanic - NO!

There's a puzzle mechanic in a point and click game I've seen twice now in two recent games, and no sir, I don't like it.

Behold this image:

(Image from this video.)

The part of the puzzle you are dealing with is in the green box. The other knight (and sometimes spears) come at you, either high, middle, or low, and you need to block appropriately.

How do you block? By the buttons in the red box. How do you press the buttons? By mousing over and clicking.

This wouldn't be so bad if you could actually press buttons on your keyboard, but nope, you need to move the cursor. And you aren't looking where the cursor is, because you are reacting to what is happening on the right.

If I had dedicated buttons, or is what just one option (for high or low, click or hold to change) then fine, I could concentrate on the green. But when I have to make sure I don't overshoot moving to the other button in time, sod off!

(It can become a long memory sequence of "high, middle, low, low, high,..." etc, but it's a long sequence, and I can't remember that long.)

Don't make this a new trend in puzzles, games!

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Second of Senua

I finally decided to take the plunge and play the sequel. Sure, why not go through another emotional wringer.

This time Senua is after the slavers that previously attacked her village. She gets close, then a storm hits, and the game starts. We are her as she encounters a couple of people and through them get one step at a time closer to ending the problem.

While the first game was all about Senua's personal issues, especially around Dillion, this is about other people's issues. The end of the game tries to tie it into how Senua interacts with people, but the bulk of the game is not really Senua's issues, but helping other people. And the game is basically three repeated instances of find a giant, finding out their deal, then deal with the giant. Which involves repeated bouts of bits of combat, an environment puzzle, and a boss fight that's kind of a puzzle boss fight.

There are far fewer environmental puzzles this time, but that's because the game is a lot shorter too, and definitely feels it. I wouldn't say this feels like DLC for the first game, but it definitely isn't as full as the first game was. But I do seem to be a lot better at combat. Towards the end in the first one, I had to turn the game to easy, but this time I left it at dynamic the entire time. I did some lore stuff, but...

After finishing the game I unlock some extra stuff, but I don't think I feel like going back and playing through again, which does mean there is some lore I will miss (unless I watch it on youtube).

So decent-ish, but lower effort that the first time around.

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4 Pics No Jokes

I play 4 Pics 1 Word... a lot... how much? Well, what can this picture tell us?

One is that this game doesn't do culturally specific jokes!

But also, I have done nearly 200,000 levels (indeed I am now on Prestige Level #43!)

I have more money than I need. I could fill in so many jokers and not notice.

And yet... I'm gonna play more!

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Games for Streaming only

I like games. Even horror games. But we are seeing a slew of particular kinds of horror games. Co-op horror games.

Now, that might not sound terrible, but they all have a common secondary characteristic... your avatar looks stupid and can do stupid things.

There is only one reason for that... to amuse viewers in streaming, baby!

Which brings us to so many "horror" games that are just there for the jump scares which are just there for the views, and when there aren't jump scares, people can act stupid, for the views!

So the game is all about the streaming experience, not the game experience.

Sod off.

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Demo-lation!

Play more demos, made more judgements!

Code: Loopbreaker - very annoying interface, obtuse puzzles, nope (in one puzzle, you selected with teh WASD keys, but confirmed with Left mouse... what?) Wishlist Cross!

Haunted House Renovator - I like house building games, but this just straight immediately turned me off. Wishlist Cross!

Botany Manor - this game is out, had a bad impression, played the demo... now have a good impression! Wishlist Tick!

3D Escape Room: Mystic Manor - reminded me of that puzzle game with the eye piece that sees things and null element. Wishlist Tick!

Secrets of Blackrock Manor - nice enough, will pick it up some time.  Wishlist Tick!

Dead Letter Dept - nope, a "horror" story that doesn't develop or go anywhere, don't care. Wishlist Cross!

Is This Seat Taken? - decent, but not sure I want a full game of it. Wishlist Cross!

The Button Effect - Exponentially annoying. Wishlist Cross!

Demos should be available, but may have been taken down. (Why???)

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Spooky observation

I played two games with the same concept, The Cabin Factory and Shift 87. You are tasked with going through repititions of environments and evaluating if they are weird or normal. You have to get a certain number in a row correct, and if you fail, you reset back to zero. The Cabin Factory also has the chance to kill you, also resetting you, but it also has more of a plot than Shift 87 has.

What can be considered weird is very different. In Shift 87, a lot of them are very obvious, but some of them are really hard to pick up. In Cabin Factory, weird is only if something is moving, and they mean that. Something strange, but not moving... not weird!

After playing them a little, I got really frustrated. My personal perception is low, so I was missing everything. For both, I looked up a list of what I was supposed to find... and while in a way that made it easier, it also made it more fun! I knew what I had to do, and then it was just me being stupid as opposed to completely ignorant.

Since then, yep, completed the games, and now appreciate them better. Cabin Factory has a little too much "uncanny asset" issue, and prefer Shift 87, but each loop of Shift 87 is a lot longer.

Not terrible, but definitely know if it is the kind of game you want to play.

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Demos Time

We had the Steam Next Fest, which means demos. I tried some that were tagged with "Puzzles".

Dr Priori's Time Escape - more like the escape rooms you see elsewhere. There are some mechanics whereby you need to do "time" to get to parts of the room. Not a bad idea, pretty clear (even if I can't spot the thing for a long time). But it NEEDS a run button. But yeah, on the wishlist it goes.

3D Escape Room: Detective Story - standard point and click puzzles. This isn't doing anything too amazing, although I suspect it wants to be with a name like "3D Escape Room". Might pick up when it's cheap enough.

Post Trauma - action shooter with "puzzles". This was created by one person, so I shan't complain about the graphic gliches I saw. However, I can say that this was someone who really wants to create the next Silent Hill, and that's not for me.

Strand - sci-fi puzzle game. Looks very nice, some nice feeling things to click on... and then very annoying thing to drag. This is a game with loops, whereby you need to find the path through the loop to do everything you need to do, and will spend many loops trying things... and it was very annoying. Have to do so many things to get even the smallest of progress. Nope.

Arkham Mysteries: Chapter One - point and click puzzle game. This was made by two brothers and.. this really felt like this. This is the sort of game I would expect to play two years ago. It needs some basic understanding of how to handle UI (give me a back button tied to my mouse, not something I have to click on screen). Not for me.

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Demos

In the recent Steam NextFest there were some demos for games I might like, so I tried them.

Hail to the Rainbow: Post apocalyptic game where you are Ignat and... I'm not really sure what is going on. This game is very Russian and as such is rather obtuse. Especially the controls. So much stuff I missed because I wasn't expecting the controls to be what they are. We get at least two bits, the first part I got past, the second part I didn't because I had no idea what I was supposed to do.

Wishlist? No.

The House of Tesla: From the makers of House of Da Vinci, a puzzle house. We get one room, and the demo had a bug or two, so that's not a promising start. But I played those other games, so sure as anything I'm gonna play this.

Wishlist? Yes.

no signal: There's a signal from a black hole, and something happened to the station. I think. There is a lot of Lore, but it is rather disjointed. We get a bit of stuff to do but... I hate the gameplay. It is free moving in all three dimensions and the controls are just uncomfortable to move around with.

Wishlist? No.

Take Notes: Something happened in the bunker, and we are investigating. Fairly direct puzzle game but... I had to brute force quite a few of the puzzles. It's possible that I missed the clues, but there were many I looked over for, but couldn't find anything. Rather on the basic side, but... okay?

Wishlist? Currently yes.

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Short, and yet...

I like games I can just zen out to, your Powerwashers, your Viscera Cleanup Detail, so I picked up WereCleaner and decided to see if it was that kind of game.

You are a cleaner, yes, but you are also a werewolf, and if someone sees you, you kill them! ... and then have to clean up the bodies (continued employment!). The cleaning is basic, spray water, vacuum trash, and bag animals. But...

It's isometric. Just something about isometric controls just straight up annoys me. I just want to go up or left, not hold down up&left! And the screen is really close up. When a big mechanic is "avoid people" (No Kill is an extra challenge per level), you need to be able to see when people are close, but you can't. Just all of a sudden someone walks in on you, and you kill and have to deal with the body. I got things to do, I would avoid them, but it is more luck than design.

The levels are short, just go to a few places, and clean up, so you can race through it quite quickly. And given the number of stars is based on how quick you are, speed is important. But then we hit the last level. At least, I assume it is the last level. I gave it several tries, but failed constantly, to the point where I'm thinking if you succeed, it will be more luck than anything else.

So I gave it a go, clocked some cheevos more or less incidentally, and... uninstalled it without finishing. And short of this blog post, I plan no more thoughts on it. Well, maybe watch an LP to see the ending, but no interest in playing it myself.

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Sacrifice of Senua

With the sequel coming out, I decided now was the time to play the first game.

Senua visits Hel to get her love back... unfortunately, she has severe mental illness that led to others to cause her problems. And so she travels through Hel, defeating opponents and finding runes, with voices in her head giving extreme commentary, sometimes helpful, oft times not.

This was not a game I sped through. I can't say I entirely could put myself in Senua's position mentally, it definitely wasn't a light breeze of say, a walking simulator or a Call of Duty. Story-wise, this was certainly a journey.

However, I have a lot of gripes about the game mechanics. First it doesn't tell you any of the controls (they are in the options menu) so I missed the first recording entirely, thinking it was a save point (before remembering it autosaved). The fighting is a whole thing, with, again, not telling you the controls, and there were combos?? Also, the combat starts as "Automatic"... which is harder than Hard. I did get quite far on Auto (up to Fenrir), but just got too annoyed with the combat that I knocked it down to just get through the game (which was already taxing, see above). And the game swivels wildly between combat and puzzles (which mostly aren't hard, just annoying to traverse around as even running Senua doesn't move quickly).

This is an experience (is it art?), and a thinker, but the game side of things could be better.

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Just Cause 3: The Onliniest Game Evah!!!11!

Then there is the worst part of this game. It has a CONSTANT need to be online. Like whenever you boot the game up, it logs onto the servers. And when the servers are busy, it disconnects, and then insists on asking if you want to try logging in again. No matter what you are doing. Ultimately, you might decide to go into OffLine mode, but as soon as you something, such as look at the map, boom, it's reconnecting again. And why? So it can tell me that "puppygod22 did something better than you". I Don't Care! And this also brings home the point of "what if the servers go down?" Fortunately, there is offline mode, but it will still likely keep trying to connect. I don't fancy facing that day.

Still, I did about everything. 47 hours in all. There are various challenges I can't be bothered to do, so I'm definitely not getting all the achievements here. Still, I did a lot, but now I need to do something else.

Until Just Cause 4...

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Just Cause 3: It collects!

But...there is a lot to do outside of the main missions. All the areas to free, various encounters to do, lots of challenges, and... the collectibles. So many collectibles. (Although from memory JC2 was WAY worse.) In this game, you need to "pay" to use fast travel (once unlocked), although if you do all the Shrines in the region, you can then fast travel for free there. Aside from looking them up, or stumbling across them, you aren't going to fine the shrines naturally. Fortunately, after you free an area, you get markers for where the collectibles are, including the shrines... and, side bonus, you can travel for free from that area now. So yeah, by the time you get all the shrines, you don't need the shrines. But I got them, and all the other collectibles anyway.

And there are extra side missions, aka the DLC. You can tell which bits are the DLC because the main story doesn't ever refer to them, and the cut scenes are just static images instead of full blown animated bits. They also are the same of "start the DLC mission, free areas (similar to everything else), then do the last mission". Also, big bonus, you basically get game breaking items. One mission gives you free flight. One mission gives you a big mech. And one mission gives you a big gun. Like I cruised through the last story missions easily because of that gun. Game breaking indeed. (But, hey, if they didn't want me to use it, they shouldn't have given it to me.)

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Just Cause 3: It Begins!

So I played a lot of Just Cause 2, and was always going to get around to Just Cause 3. And now I have. One thing about JC2 is that I cheated to have infinite health and ammo, and I came damn close to doing so again, but there was one aspect of the difficulty setting that never quite tipped me over (although I got damn close).

There is no difficulty setting. What you play is what you play. But I'm bad at video games, so won't I die over and over again? Yep. (I have no idea if the game made things easier in the background with lessening guards, etc., after dying. It might have done.) But one thing the game explicitly did: keep your progress. When you free bases/towns, you blow up objects (not fuel stations this time) and sometimes people. But once you've ticked them off the list... that's it. If you die and come back (with ammo replenished) you can keep going. Purely by attrition you can free the various bases/towns until you win! Some of the missions didn't quite work that way, but the open world stuff did, and that made it bareable.

(Outside of load times that is. I don't know if the program is bad, my computer is bad, or I should have used an SSD, but when you die, and you just want to get back to blowing up things, you have to wait for it to reload everything. Although that's not the worst part, more later.)

The story is the same as this and the Far Cry games... there's a dictator at the top, and you need to slowly free the various places from the bad guys until you've done enough for the story missions. The actual story is Rico (the hero) going back to his home country and freeing it, but aside from the setting, this is rather generic. And the ending fight is just silly (like I recall from the previous games).

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Shadows over Loathing

I don't game often, but when I do... boy I really got into Shadows Over Loathing. This is by the people who do the Kingdom of Loathing online game, and previous stand alone game West of Loathing. I did KoL for a little bit (see below), and played WoL, so got this as soon as I saw it.

This is stick figure people in a weird and shadowy place. (Yes, you can spot the Lovecraft, indeed some explicit references.) It's up to you to track down cursed items and eventually solve the plans of the big bad... or, you know, you could be the big bad, hey this is open world, I'm not telling you how to roll.

There is the main quest, some side missions, and lots of side quests (side quests being the shorter missions of just usually 'go here and sort this out'). You get a few companions and can level them all up (which helps!). And there are lots of places to go.

And it is fun as all heck. I sunk many hours into my first place through, and by first I mean, yes I did other playthroughs. This is one of those games where I had to get all the achievements, and that necessitated four different playthroughs in total (although I may have had external aid to make the later playthroughs a bit easier).

One great thing about this is that there isn't really the feeling of needing to grind. There's always some mission to do, some new place to peek into, that you get a steady increase of XP and items to help out. WoL needed some grinding, and KoL... grinding is why I stopped playing. They've learnt, good on them.

That said... after this, having done a LOT of it... maybe I will look in on KoL again... but maybe after a few other games on my backlog...

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