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chuckroMercury: Cascade into Madness - A cyberpunk RPG Maker game told in a series of chapters; after harrowing experience with some thugs Michelle trains herself into a murderous vigilante who fights back against the gangs that run her city. Lots of sidequests, a modest skill tree that unlocks secrets, and some choices that end up mattering later in the game. There are also multiple endings determined by both mid-game and end-game actions, and your skill tree and sidequest choices matter for which ones you can reach. I’d kinda love to see a guide but I’m not curious enough to play through repeatedly and make one. This is another example of the not-perfect but creative and interesting things one can do with RPGMaker.
Ninja Pizza Girl - A cute little runner game, evocative of Sonic the Hedgehog but starring a teenage ninja pizza delivery girl, that I cannot figure out how it got added to my Steam library (I had it before it came in this bundle). Not amazing, but clearly someone’s labor of love and moderately fun.
Explosionade - Puzzle platformer / shooter in which you usually need to kill things and often need to use your force shield to bounce higher.
THOTH - A bare-bones arena shoot-and-dodge (you’re a circle, and the things you’re shooting are colorful squares), with mild puzzle elements.
Infinity Saga – An RPG Maker game that I think I’d best describe as “immature”. The characters are idiot anime caricatures and the plot is trying too hard to be funny. The systems are nothing special and while the graphics are smooth, they’re off-the-rack and not doing much of interest. Boy meets girl, girl is stupid yet psychotic, interdimensional zombie army attacks, boy and girl meet magical action girl, they all fight evil. Yawn.
Talent Not Included - The concept of a stage (as in theater) based action-platformer is appealing, but I found the execution very repetitive and not actually that fun.
A Tale of Caos: Overture – A puzzle adventure game that thinks it’s more clever than it actually is. The puzzles are the usual ridiculous moon-logic and the built-in walkthrough can actually get stuck on hints you can’t yet use. It gates progress behind specific NPC conversation trees (without any indication as such) and harkens back to the glory days of randomly combining and clicking on things to find solutions.
Weapon of Choice - A side-scrolling action game with a bunch of neat quirks: Each character’s weapon is different and has different utility functions; you acquire new characters by rescuing them and carrying them out of levels; there’s a branching-path plotline; and you have wall-sticking and double-jump capabilities as a matter of course. The big one, though, is the “death brushing” feature. Your character is a one-hit-point-wonder, but when you’re about to die, the game goes into slow-mo to let you try to save yourself.
Heroine Anthem Zero - While this is a side-scroller action game, it honestly feels like a visual novel with some platformer elements and light rpg stuff. It’s very "anime," in both the art style and the characterization, and given that the talky parts are intended to be the appealing parts, I think I can safely say it doesn’t win me.
Overall: While nothing here was great, Mercury got me my money’s worth and everything in this bundle was at least trying to do something creative, whether it appealed to me (or actually succeeded) or not.
Ninja Pizza Girl - A cute little runner game, evocative of Sonic the Hedgehog but starring a teenage ninja pizza delivery girl, that I cannot figure out how it got added to my Steam library (I had it before it came in this bundle). Not amazing, but clearly someone’s labor of love and moderately fun.
Explosionade - Puzzle platformer / shooter in which you usually need to kill things and often need to use your force shield to bounce higher.
THOTH - A bare-bones arena shoot-and-dodge (you’re a circle, and the things you’re shooting are colorful squares), with mild puzzle elements.
Infinity Saga – An RPG Maker game that I think I’d best describe as “immature”. The characters are idiot anime caricatures and the plot is trying too hard to be funny. The systems are nothing special and while the graphics are smooth, they’re off-the-rack and not doing much of interest. Boy meets girl, girl is stupid yet psychotic, interdimensional zombie army attacks, boy and girl meet magical action girl, they all fight evil. Yawn.
Talent Not Included - The concept of a stage (as in theater) based action-platformer is appealing, but I found the execution very repetitive and not actually that fun.
A Tale of Caos: Overture – A puzzle adventure game that thinks it’s more clever than it actually is. The puzzles are the usual ridiculous moon-logic and the built-in walkthrough can actually get stuck on hints you can’t yet use. It gates progress behind specific NPC conversation trees (without any indication as such) and harkens back to the glory days of randomly combining and clicking on things to find solutions.
Weapon of Choice - A side-scrolling action game with a bunch of neat quirks: Each character’s weapon is different and has different utility functions; you acquire new characters by rescuing them and carrying them out of levels; there’s a branching-path plotline; and you have wall-sticking and double-jump capabilities as a matter of course. The big one, though, is the “death brushing” feature. Your character is a one-hit-point-wonder, but when you’re about to die, the game goes into slow-mo to let you try to save yourself.
Heroine Anthem Zero - While this is a side-scroller action game, it honestly feels like a visual novel with some platformer elements and light rpg stuff. It’s very "anime," in both the art style and the characterization, and given that the talky parts are intended to be the appealing parts, I think I can safely say it doesn’t win me.
Overall: While nothing here was great, Mercury got me my money’s worth and everything in this bundle was at least trying to do something creative, whether it appealed to me (or actually succeeded) or not.
