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Humble Sales Are Very Dangerous – Part Two
Rainbow Hero - This is a straightforward puzzle collection with an adventure game skin over it. Every stage is about getting your gnome to the door, and you can rewind and reset as often as necessary to arrange blocks (and rolling balls, platforms, lasers, etc.) to allow you to do that. You don’t need to clear every stage to advance, which is nice—many stages advance the map more than one step, so you can skip around if there’s one you can’t solve. (And there were a bunch that stymied me.) You shouldn’t actually expect any plot, but the puzzles are often clever.
Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP - This is a very interesting game, as a puzzle-adventure game that mostly concentrates on being atmospheric and has very few (action-heavy, required) battles. I was expecting more of an rpg, but this takes a lot more influence from the King’s Quest style of a exploration game. (And drugs. I’m certain that there were drugs involved.) I think I should have liked it more than I did, but I was turned off by the art style (particularly the pixilated deformed people), the controls (all mouse and problematically sensitive) and the puzzles (too obtuse and require too much guessing). Also, I didn’t realize the Scythian was female until it was pointed out to me; though I originally heard about this in context of an Anita Sarkeesian video, so that would make sense.
I think I also kept expecting the plot to have more to it than it did. It ends up being a collection of mashed-together tropes and Zelda references. The dialogue is clever, and the setup has potential, but the over-arcing story doesn’t have enough to it. This would have worked better in some ways as a Jim Guthrie concept album than actually having been built into a game.
Ittle Dew - Zelda hacks! Get yer Zelda hacks here! With a cute, cartoony art style and a female protagonist, this plays just like a 2D Zelda game, down to the hearts you can pick up and the annoying (…drunken) fairy companion. There are a lot of puzzles, many of them technically optional, and multiple ways through most of the areas. It’s not terribly long, but there’s some replay value of going back and trying to use the “professional shortcut” puzzle routes.
Life of Pixel - A hard platformer with the twist that your character is a pixel working his way through stages based on classic game systems and done in their style. (Though the graphics and play control on both the Atari 2600 and NES stages are far better than they would be; but I’m not about to complain about that.) I love the attention given to the art styles in each of the segments, though the difficulty increases as you go forward in time, and I seriously can’t handle the SNES stages—Pixel is instant-killed by spikes (of which there are many) and the later levels get very long and complicated.
Heroes of Loot - Gauntlet clone! Your first deep run upgrades the dungeon, and after that it’s about going as low as you can to complete quests and get collectables and points. Straightforward and repetitive, but a cute little diversion.
Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP - This is a very interesting game, as a puzzle-adventure game that mostly concentrates on being atmospheric and has very few (action-heavy, required) battles. I was expecting more of an rpg, but this takes a lot more influence from the King’s Quest style of a exploration game. (And drugs. I’m certain that there were drugs involved.) I think I should have liked it more than I did, but I was turned off by the art style (particularly the pixilated deformed people), the controls (all mouse and problematically sensitive) and the puzzles (too obtuse and require too much guessing). Also, I didn’t realize the Scythian was female until it was pointed out to me; though I originally heard about this in context of an Anita Sarkeesian video, so that would make sense.
I think I also kept expecting the plot to have more to it than it did. It ends up being a collection of mashed-together tropes and Zelda references. The dialogue is clever, and the setup has potential, but the over-arcing story doesn’t have enough to it. This would have worked better in some ways as a Jim Guthrie concept album than actually having been built into a game.
Ittle Dew - Zelda hacks! Get yer Zelda hacks here! With a cute, cartoony art style and a female protagonist, this plays just like a 2D Zelda game, down to the hearts you can pick up and the annoying (…drunken) fairy companion. There are a lot of puzzles, many of them technically optional, and multiple ways through most of the areas. It’s not terribly long, but there’s some replay value of going back and trying to use the “professional shortcut” puzzle routes.
Life of Pixel - A hard platformer with the twist that your character is a pixel working his way through stages based on classic game systems and done in their style. (Though the graphics and play control on both the Atari 2600 and NES stages are far better than they would be; but I’m not about to complain about that.) I love the attention given to the art styles in each of the segments, though the difficulty increases as you go forward in time, and I seriously can’t handle the SNES stages—Pixel is instant-killed by spikes (of which there are many) and the later levels get very long and complicated.
Heroes of Loot - Gauntlet clone! Your first deep run upgrades the dungeon, and after that it’s about going as low as you can to complete quests and get collectables and points. Straightforward and repetitive, but a cute little diversion.