Recent reviews by Marshy

South Scrimshaw is a stunning visual novel. It's hard not to be pulled into this imaginative world, where understated ambient music and sound give center stage to the *gorgeous* hand-drawn illustrations. The writing and narration are a charming pastiche of nature documentaries set against on a plausible alien world. I'm not like, a connoisseur of nature docs myself, but I think it tastes more "earnest, scrappy public broadcast" in its presentation, too. Something about the interactive tangents you can go on, the overhead projector slideshow framing, and the Bob Ross reference, give it that distinct flavor of edutainment to me.

I could go on about all the evocative names or clever details that made me smile, but they're best discovered on your own. South Scrimshaw is not just imaginative unto itself. It's inspiring, always inviting the viewer to imagine all the possibilities implied by the small vignettes of alien ecology on display. It gestures at a world much bigger than fits in about two beautiful hours, and that makes it very special. It's a world I hope to see more of in Part Two.

Keep it up Nate. Your Obscure Animal Compendia have really blossomed into something incredible.
Love, Adam

Sometimes a game goes down so clean that you don't even notice what an achievement it is. I'm writing this review so I don't forget.

Games in this genre of open-ended problem solving are rarely so mellow. The pervasive mood of relaxed focus is carried by chill music, cute visuals, lighthearted dialogue, and gently challenging play. Even as the complexity grows and I pick up new tricks, I'm always the one who decides when the solution is good enough.

Sunshine Heavy Industries soothes my soul. Give it a try.

I wish I knew a word to describe the mode of interactive presentation (genre, I guess) of SWOTS. If there is one already, for games like A Dark Room or Football Manager, I don't know it. A whole game of only lists, buttons, text, scrollbars, and other computer abstractions. Menu-driven? Agraphical? Abstract? Anyways, don't let that fool you into thinking the game is dull. The timed day-trading that forms the game's main loop is upbeat and engaging. The musical sting of the market opening reminds me of the attack themes from Shining Force 1 & 2 (Sega Genesis). I doubt that's intentional, but it tickled a deep memory of mine and had a desirable effect: making the start of a new day exciting every time.

I like the way SWOTS slowly unfolds, from basic buy/sell to fulfilling requests (the main way I chose to make money) to the inventory management aspects once the organs with unique effects get introduced. The scam requests are very funny. I did a few of them just to see if it led anywhere, like a scambaiting storyline, but I haven't seen that yet. After a while, I started accepting and immediately canceling those requests just to clear the requests page at the cost of some reputation. A fair price, I think. Also, I didn't use the stocks page until I noticed that prices ALWAYS drop right after a barge dumps a bunch of the same organ on the market. The price goes back up in a day or two, so buying that dip is a reliable way to profit, though you need a decent chunk of change to begin with.

I think the game has a perfect tone. Most of the humor comes from lighthearted absurdity contrasting with the gross amoral avarice of the situation, without dwelling on the latter too much. I've only followed a couple of the story requests so far, but they've been interesting. A lot is done with simple binary choices. Take the request or don't; answer yes or no to a popup dialogue. Despite being bizarre aliens, these vignettes often humanize the little characters we meet. I love the little hunter. We are friends.

Much can be said about the value of friction in videosgame: those little moments of frustration or tedium where it feels like the systems are working against you and your goals. For me, I've grown to appreciate them as necessary design elements that give an experience texture. No surprise there if you've read my Pathologic 2 review from 2019.When you accidentally buy an expensive rotcane because Chad Shakespeare snapped up the cheap stomach you were hovering over, that's just part of the game, baby! I know they're planning to mitigate this in an update, which is probably a good call, but it's not like they weren't aware that this could happen. You can always pay off the other traders to heck off for a day if you don't want to deal with competition. It's just, that option comes at a price. You can pay up front to avoid those headaches, but you might lose more money overall than if you just eat the occasional misclick, or better yet, turn it into an opportunity.

There was also a hilarious moment, a joke at my own expense really, where the market got flooded with the debris left over from those organs that explode after two days (can't remember the name). They were all so cheap, I thought "hell, let's buy all of these!" So I proceed to fill my whole inventory, only to find their description literally reading something to the effect of "Oops, these are corrosive." So I had to spend like $40k or something repairing my hull. I didn't have a plan, and the game predicted I wouldn't, and made fun of me for it! That's brilliant!

I hope you give SWOTS a try. It's a very fun and unique experience.

Spoilers ahead.

Death Trash fills me with unease.

Sure, the meat vendor says everybody eats it raw, but I also just saw them vomit. And yet, it's the most abundant form of health recovery, and combat rarely leaves me without a scratch. Fights are desperate, clawing struggles over the right to survive and scrap the other guy's filthy weapon for parts.

Nothing makes me sick to my soul like the possibility that I might accidentally kill someone who trusts me, even if I have good intentions. I don't see an alternative to progressing the Kraken's request without doing something horrifying. The friendly competition between two friends in Tauris is a bright spot of humanity, and I'm worried that my helping will tragically snuff it out.

I feel like a maggot, crawling over a living (dying) planet heaving its last few breaths. I embrace my parasitism, drink deep from these sucking wounds and feast greedily on tumorflesh. Splitting heads and scrounging gear each bring their own animal satisfactions. The people who don't attack me on sight are disgusting and fascinating.

Am I the one being devoured? Will I be reduced to worms, or a shambling mockery of humanity? I was spawned from diseased earth. I consume corruption and illness and it becomes me. Death and survival are equally grotesque propositions.

Play Death Trash.

// marshy - 8/7/2020 - initial commit
// spoilers ahead

You've always written in negative logic, as a rule. It was just your default state of mind while working through programming problems. If the conditions aren't quite right, if the stars aren't aligned, if the flags aren't all up... deal with that first. That's the most likely outcome anyway, right? Maybe that's because you couldn't conceive of everything going according to plan. Some would call that pessimistic, but why write for edge cases that may never happen?

Else Heart.Break() is a game about unmet expectations. Your new job sounded way cooler on the phone. Cold-selling soda to strangers on the street? Might as well be busking. You hoped city life would be vibrant and exciting... and sometimes it is, but other times the neighbors are rude, your accommodations are dingy, your crush is in a relationship already, and the local government seems c̙̫͑̎o͙̬͊̅ͨ͋ͤ͂ͮr̮̭̞͙̽̇̒ͫ̎ͅr̝u̻͂ͩ̅̐̔ͥ͗p̦̖͙̗͕̩̑̔ͨ̍t̙̠̟͍̹̏ͬ͆̈́. But, here you are.

Maybe you heard about Else Heart.Break() as a phenomenal open-world game about programming and love and youthful rebellion or whatever, but you booted it up and just kind of wandered around for hours trying to sell sodas or buy shoes, and when do we get to the good part? And I sympathize there. I bought this game in 2016 and bounced right off many times until years later. I can't promise it will grab you on your first try. The opening is slow, and the path forward is barely marked. If that sounds surmountable to you though, read on.

Pixie keeps inviting me to parties. I don't know what to do with myself when I get there. I'm too awkward to dance. I don't like beer that much so I feel like a buzzkill. I try to make conversation but every exchange winds up in the same ruts over and over. The weather. Those stupid bureaucrats around town. Plans for next weekend (another party).I know some of these guys are supposed to be activists or hackers or something, but they won't talk about it to me. Even Hank, the maintenance guy, seems to know something about it! Why can't I become a hacker too?

The way the game is "intended" to be played, i.e. following the story progression, won't point you to your first hacking tools for quite a while. It takes some persistence, and the game actively sends you down a few dead ends before turning you loose on its main mechanics. Unfortunately, the story feels half-finished, like an early rehearsal long before opening night. The middle feels the strongest, once you've established yourself with the main cast, but before the rising action leading up to the climax. That's when things start getting kind of helter-skelter. Lots of the story beats are interesting in isolation, but without much regard for the connective tissue in-between.

So why? Why do you keep showing up these SPRUM meetings or whatever Yulian called them? You remember the excitement of passing the hacking tests and getting formally inducted into the underground programming ring. After days of wandering Dorisburg aimlessly, you felt like you'd finally found a place to belong. To put your talents to use. Maybe it was just an excuse to see Pixie. Less said about that, the better... Since Ivan went missing, you've learned a lot of new coding tricks, but aren't a single step closer to saving him or stopping Monad. Your programs feel like solutions in search of problems.

And that's the central tragedy of this game. SPRAK is so much fun to use. It rewards your curiosity with reality-bending powers that nonetheless have barely any practical use. You are functionally God by the end of things, with not much to do but look for challenges or secrets, or go trigger the credits. I wish the story were more coherent. I wish there were more heists with tricky, open-ended problems to solve. I wish your power curve was more regulated, either by stricter progression or opposing forces that could interfere with you in more interesting ways.

It's always been "if things go wrong, I'll do this" first. Always "if conditions are not ideal, try something else." Better to save yourself the trouble. But you've traversed that tree hundreds of times. You know every branch and leaf. Maybe it's time to write that last case, for when the stars align and everything goes right for a change. Even if it never executes, it'll be nice to imagine that something will be waiting to happen if it does.

Would I recommend you play this flawed, earnest, messy game? If the caveats above sound like deal-breakers to you, then maybe give it a miss.

Else...

A grimy, haunted, first-person game that defies genre a bit. There are strokes of walking sims and immersive sims and horror but it's far from typical. It's short enough to soak up in one session, but when Paratopic grabs you, it can keep you coming back to feed until there's nothing but static. Play the game through once, and you'll likely be left with some questions. Play it a time or two more (guided by the game's achievements) and you might start to put together a picture of what's going on, albeit fuzzy.

Some questions to ask yourself as you play and replay:
1. Who are you?
3. What time is it?
2. What's on the tapes?
1. Who are you?

Enjoy, friendos.

You there. Get over here. Hold my scalpel.

Look, I don't have a lot of time to tell you this, but this game is important. Historically speaking, it's doing more to push the boundaries of this medium than any other games in recent memory. Scalpel. Good. Now put your hands here and apply pressure.

We need this thing alive. It barely arrived to us at all, and its condition was not good. It's getting better, but it's going to die if we don't do something. I confess, I meant to tend to it sooner but I was distracted. I broke my promise. Take this flask and pour a few milliliters while I tilt its head back. Okay.

Listen, dammit. This game is a miracle. It cost more than a few fingernails to ferry this soul across the Styx, but it's here. The soul is still here. The heart is still beating. But every compromise made between this game as a piece of art and a commercial product will have been a waste if you don't turn those bills into bandages and staunch the flow.

And for God's sake, mind your bedside manner. Listen to its story, even if it's hard. Offer a kind word. Bring visitors. Hell, throw a party and invite anyone you know. We can argue another day whether the life of every game is worth saving -- whether every single idea deserves to see the light of day. Right now, I'm telling you that this one is in danger of bleeding out on the floor, and you can help.

A word of advice. You will want to do everything, save everyone, including yourself, all without compromising your morals. I don't know if it's possible. Likely, you will have to compromise one or all of those things just to see the end. That's okay. That's the way the game is meant to be played. You aren't missing things by failing. Don't be discouraged. Keep trying. Put any paltry comparisons to other difficult games out of your mind. You do not win by restarting again and again until you get it right. You will stumble through this performance, start to finish. Accidents happen. Actors die, understudies die, each is replaceable. But you have to see it through.

The show must go on. Keep the scalpel. When Mark calls your name, just walk onto the stage.

Mmm, Delicious!

I'll spare you the elevator pitch and tell you what I really liked about the game. Many other people have summed it up better than me. If you want an idea of what it's about, scroll up a bit.

Hypnospace Outlaw reminds me of a time when the internet felt like a real place you visited, not just a window into feeds of easily consumable content. Striking down text and images as an enforcer feels like actually destroying parts of someone else's personal space. Every webpage is a self-portrait. It's astounding how much *characterization* the game accomplishes without ever physically introducing us to the people creating these sites.

Look closely, and you can see exactly what each one thinks is important enough to share with the world. Instead of 140 character quips, web video, or meticulously shot and filtered photography, we get page layouts, color schemes, fonts, animated gifs, background music, and downloadable goodies. The different web zones all have a general theme, and then you get a spectrum of personalities within those. So you get to see just how many different ways people feel about the many aspects of, for instance, a niche movement of electronic music. The sheer diversity depicted among even the deepest layers of subculture is wondrous... and true to life.

I was jarred when I realized I couldn't actually speak to any of the characters in this game. Couldn't reach out to them to ask questions. Couldn't respond to their emails. At least, I can't in these first few hours of the game. Also, it's hard to put into words, but I feel the first two enforcer quests are simple enough to get you hooked, but also cleverly designed to get you investigating exactly the way the game wants you to -- engaging with clues, following trails, and using a little bit of sleuthing to make leaps that aren't in retrospect very difficult, but make you feel smart in the moment.

I almost wish Hypnospace was a real place where I could meet you all. Maybe one day we'll see this game's community grow its own little garden of personal websites, mod-tracker music, and shareable desktop wallpapers. I'm not saying it would be a better place than the Internet at large... but it might be more sincere. More encouraging to earnest, un-ironic expression.

Until then, you should really buy this game.