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Humble Sales Are Very Dangerous – Part Five
So, most of these games actually came onto my list in 2015. I played some of a bunch of these games when I bought them, then got distracted. Some of them I managed to get back to; most of them I decided I wasn’t that interested in revisiting given everything else I have to play.
The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom - A puzzle platformer with a cute aesthetic. (Winterbottom is a Victorian pie thief with a Snidely Whiplash bent, who lucks into time-travel powers while chasing a floating pie.) You can “record” actions and then clones of Winterbottom will do them until cancelled, and you can use those clones to hit switches, act as platforms, knock you around, and more. The actual puzzles (after the intro chapter) are NOT easy.
Fearless Fantasy - A short and sweet, goofy, anachronistic story about a Princess and a pair of bounty hunters killing the evil king and his pet giant snake-thing. The gimmick is that the battle system, while it has levels and advancement, is 99% dependent on taping and swiping "timed hits" to deal and avoid damage. If you enjoy that system in, say, the Paper Mario series, then you'll likely enjoy this. I'd recommend the Android version of the game over the Steam one, because swiping to fight is much easier on a touchscreen than with a mouse.
Saturday Morning RPG - Morty dreams of a video game world where The Wizard gives him a magic trapper keeper that allows him to turn mundane items into video game attack powers. The graphics are fancier than you’d think at first glance—sprites are 2D, but the screen is a pseudo-3D that gives everything a “cardboard standup” kind of feel. The RPG aspect is mixed—it’s not clear how effective any of the attack items are until you use them, and the battles rely more on clever use of charging up and making effective timed hits for attack and defense than they do on grinding. (It also seems like enemies—and therefore XP and money—are finite in each area.) It is positively swimming in Saturday morning cartoon references, as one might expect: Early available weapons include the Sword of Omens and Rainbow Bright’s belt; the very first sidequest is a Smurfs send-up.
Beat Hazard Ultra - This is a mouse-and-keyboard bullet hell shooter with a twist: The levels are defined by the song in the background, and it can pull in any mp3 from your collection. The genre isn’t really my thing, but I was willing to go a couple of bucks for the gimmick. (Note: It doesn’t run well under Windows 10.)
Paper Sorcerer - A curious eastern-western rpg blend, where exploration is first-person mouse-and-keyboard, but battles are turn-based and very reliant on summoned helpers. (It includes a “1980s” difficulty level!) It has an interest black-and-white art style that is explained by your character being a villain trapped in a magical book by heroes. I’m very reminded of Wizardry 4 in terms of the setup.
A New Beginning - Final Cut - A puzzle adventure game in the grand King’s Quest tradition, where you must pick up everything and attempt to use things on other things in vaguely logical ways. In the future, the world is dying and humanity is all but gone, and a small team of time-travelers are sent back to try to head off the disaster before it starts. I’m nominally interested in the plot, but the mechanics of this style of game tend to irk me.
Grimind - Puzzle platformer with a horror theme and strange physics that make it very hard to throw things where you want them. I really didn’t like it.
The Stanley Parable - This I played recently, and it’s a delightful FPS/puzzle exploration game that plays out like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. It is insanely meta. I quite enjoyed it.
The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom - A puzzle platformer with a cute aesthetic. (Winterbottom is a Victorian pie thief with a Snidely Whiplash bent, who lucks into time-travel powers while chasing a floating pie.) You can “record” actions and then clones of Winterbottom will do them until cancelled, and you can use those clones to hit switches, act as platforms, knock you around, and more. The actual puzzles (after the intro chapter) are NOT easy.
Fearless Fantasy - A short and sweet, goofy, anachronistic story about a Princess and a pair of bounty hunters killing the evil king and his pet giant snake-thing. The gimmick is that the battle system, while it has levels and advancement, is 99% dependent on taping and swiping "timed hits" to deal and avoid damage. If you enjoy that system in, say, the Paper Mario series, then you'll likely enjoy this. I'd recommend the Android version of the game over the Steam one, because swiping to fight is much easier on a touchscreen than with a mouse.
Saturday Morning RPG - Morty dreams of a video game world where The Wizard gives him a magic trapper keeper that allows him to turn mundane items into video game attack powers. The graphics are fancier than you’d think at first glance—sprites are 2D, but the screen is a pseudo-3D that gives everything a “cardboard standup” kind of feel. The RPG aspect is mixed—it’s not clear how effective any of the attack items are until you use them, and the battles rely more on clever use of charging up and making effective timed hits for attack and defense than they do on grinding. (It also seems like enemies—and therefore XP and money—are finite in each area.) It is positively swimming in Saturday morning cartoon references, as one might expect: Early available weapons include the Sword of Omens and Rainbow Bright’s belt; the very first sidequest is a Smurfs send-up.
Beat Hazard Ultra - This is a mouse-and-keyboard bullet hell shooter with a twist: The levels are defined by the song in the background, and it can pull in any mp3 from your collection. The genre isn’t really my thing, but I was willing to go a couple of bucks for the gimmick. (Note: It doesn’t run well under Windows 10.)
Paper Sorcerer - A curious eastern-western rpg blend, where exploration is first-person mouse-and-keyboard, but battles are turn-based and very reliant on summoned helpers. (It includes a “1980s” difficulty level!) It has an interest black-and-white art style that is explained by your character being a villain trapped in a magical book by heroes. I’m very reminded of Wizardry 4 in terms of the setup.
A New Beginning - Final Cut - A puzzle adventure game in the grand King’s Quest tradition, where you must pick up everything and attempt to use things on other things in vaguely logical ways. In the future, the world is dying and humanity is all but gone, and a small team of time-travelers are sent back to try to head off the disaster before it starts. I’m nominally interested in the plot, but the mechanics of this style of game tend to irk me.
Grimind - Puzzle platformer with a horror theme and strange physics that make it very hard to throw things where you want them. I really didn’t like it.
The Stanley Parable - This I played recently, and it’s a delightful FPS/puzzle exploration game that plays out like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. It is insanely meta. I quite enjoyed it.