I’ve played some baffling games in my time but this may be one of the oddest in years. It’s sort of a visual novel, where you play as seemingly the subconscious of a very anxious girl who is sent out to buy some milk. Except, you also play as you, the player. And the girl knows it’s not real. Or is it? Or is it not real but her medication makes it seems like it is? Or is the subconscious …
Imagine a cross between that weird hypercube animation optical illusion thing and The Stanley Parable, and you’re some of the way to understanding Superliminal. Like The Stanley Parable, it’s a narrative discovery game in a series of corridors, offices, warehouses and… other places. Whereas Stanley is trapped in a Groundhog Day style scenario, your nameless hero here is inside a dream which has been engineered to help them deal with something in their life. So, almost the same thing. However, …
It was only a few days ago when I was saying about playing baffling games, and, well, here’s another one! About An Elf is somewhere between a visual novel and an RPG, where you play an elf trying to rediscover Elftopia or something. The plot is nonsense and, frankly, not what you’re going to be focussing on if you play it because that art style. Are the characters real people dressed up? Are they CGI? Models? Some combination of all …
Yes, the best Atari 2600 game. Well, one of the top three, anyway. I got “Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration” for Christmas and although I’ve played a fair few of the games, most aren’t actually “completable”, what with being mostly score-attack arcade titles. Adventure, though, has an end goal – take the Chalice to the Yellow Castle. The game has three modes. The first is a shorter game with just one dragon, fewer objects and fewer rooms. The second is …
A rare (these days!) post about a game I’m playing but have not yet completed! So I’ve very much enjoyed recent, as in, 3DS onwards, Pokémon games. Partly because I’ve played them all while my daughter plays the other game (Violet, this time) and we sort of race to the end. Naturally, I win. This time around there has been more than usual in the way of complaints about the game. Mainly to do with bugs and performance issues, and …
With PS+ Premium comes a huge number of games you can “borrow”. A few of those are titles I was eyeing up to buy on the Switch, so I suppose I’ve saved a bit of money now I’ve got them on my PlayStation “for free”. I Am Dead is one of those. It’s a hidden object game with a story and some quirks. Firstly, you’re dead (but then you surely guessed that from the title), and with the help of …
As it turns out, it is possible to complete Star Trek Online, and it’s possible to do it without paying any money at all. Because that’s what I did. I know that for many people, the game here is all the endgame content, playing with others, doing the same missions over and over and collecting all the ships and stuff. That’s not for me. I reached the cap of level 65, then finished all the single play missions remaining, and …
If you’re a long time reader of this diary, or you follow me online generally, you probably know I don’t play games online very often, and I never play MMORPGs at all. Well, not since a brief dabble into Anarchy Online some 17 years ago, anyway. Why, you might ask, am I playing Star Trek Online then? And I would answer you with, I Really Don’t Know. As a free to play game, I did a bit of research first. …
Maquette is a very clever idea married with a nice story but neither has much to do with the other. It’s basic premise is that you’re in a world and in that world is a miniature representation of the same world, and at the same time the world you’re in is a small version of a larger world. It’s turtles all the way down. But they’re not just models – items that exist in one sized world also exist in …
Having finished the first game I went right on and started the second, which was just as well as the first one just ended without a proper final conclusion. The sequel is, as I’d expected, more of the same. Slightly better animation, larger areas, and much more snow, but still Kate Walker being called by her full name while she tries to get her train even further north. The puzzles were mostly on par with the original, although one right …
Yes, i bought a PlayStation 5, and yes, I know I’ll regret it at some point, but let us not get into that right now, shall we? My first completed PS5 game is this free one that came with the console. It’s clear that the main purpose of Astro’s Playroom is to show off the features of the DualSense controller, but in the form of a playable game. I have to say, the way in which the features of the …
No, not the same game again. You see, the game Celeste that most people know, and the one I completed already, isn’t the original Celeste. No, that’s a PICO-8 game which I’ve played before on my PocketChip handheld. I think I completed it too, but I have no record of doing so on this diary so I’ll have to assume I didn’t. Anyway, the original game was much simpler, with no story, 8-bit style graphics, and each screen is literally …
Pikuniku is a… game best discovered for yourself. Partly because that’s genuinely true, but also because it’s a little hard to describe. Sure, I can tell you it’s a sort of platformer with puzzles and bosses, and there’s a lot of kicking things, but that’s not really describing the game. No, the game is unusual. Both in style and content. There’s a plot about a guy who gives out free money, there’s a leaf-based underground resistance, and there’s a section …
