i get most of my freeware from terry cavanagh and weird fucking games
'haiku' platformer where you go down into a cave with some small text snippets narrating the environment
of your journey, turn off lights, and use only the text and sounds to navigate your way back.
really
nice! i think it was too hard but i can't think of what could have been done to make it easier, because
the audio cues were detailed - maybe i'm just terrible at blind platforming, but i think it's more a
preference for different platforming... speeds and weights, so the jumping wasn't as intuitive to me as
it could have been. but it's what the game needed, and learning how the game moves and jumps in that
short space was definitely part of the intent.
i like...text being used to describe undescriptive
graphics. a holdover from ps1 adventure games, i think. i like to be told about the air temperature and
the wind more than i like to see and hear it. i really liked the way the text trunctuates on the way
back up, the memories of what was once described. i appreciated the form of the small enclosed space,
with a void to your right - the level design leaking into the space where the text is kept, the two
mediums separate but connected - but you know instinctively that going right is not the goal, yet.
highly recommend reading the letterclub links in the description for an understanding of what is meant
and intended by the descriptor haiku game + some nice notes on form and medium - notes that, perhaps, i
don't fully agree with, but are a pleasant process to watch unfold in those letters
a small vertical platformer heavily inspired by droqen. simple, natural, unadventurous. the pure joy of
moving in a 2d space. i like the long shape of the space, i like the little ambient jangly sound
effects, i like that your guy does a flip when he jumps. there's zero difficulty, and you know exactly
what type of jump to make far in advance of when you need to make it. like a walk through a park you
know very well.
"i think with everything ive been making in the past month ive tried to make really
new and creative ideas that make people think
and since i was feeling so crappy yesterday i just
decided to make something really bland and unoriginal
and it was nice — SirMilkman, via Discord"
this game was mentioned in a letterclub about gamefeel that i wasn't really vibing with, but i like
increpare's (non-puzzlescript) stuff a lot so i clicked on it without reading much of the surrounding
context, other than noting that the writer thought it was clunky.
it made me cry really hard and i'm not
sure why - i mean, i know why the subject matter resonated, i dont know why the delivery did. i could
probably write about the size of the screen requiring scrolling and the tickbox interaction and the
simple graphics and the composition of the stars and specifically how 'a second switch pro controller'
and 'glow in the dark stars' got me BAD but i dont really want to and i just want to live in the fact it
gave me such a strong emotional reaction. im kind of mad it did because i played it with lofi hiphop
radio on in the background and now i have to live with the fact i cried with lofi hiphop radio on.
this one did not make me cry
fucks SAKE hempuli. STOP IT
vn with platformer elements with a gorgeous dithered collage style. about an angel whose job is to scoop up and change people that the celestial admin system's marked as going to be unprocessable on death. about biases and bigotry in tech, the extent to which 'just doing a job' is a defense for crimes, and falling in love with people your job requires you to ruin the lives of. difficult questions around sex and violence. also very british which is really funny? what if there was an angel outside an icelands.
i like the central idea of heaven being governed by bigots as a like, desperate attempt to narrativize what feels like living a constantly losing battle for minorities, but i feel a bit weird about the fictitious company of angels being literal nazis rather than a fascist analogue and i can't place why - perhaps i feel like it aligns with conspiratorial thought? it's cool either way.
i dont really think the platforming added anything to it, but i think i get why the author wanted there to be sections where you manually move through the world and have a more abstract way to recieve images and writing - i suppose the specific format the platformer took just felt kind of bad when ive spent a decent amount of time this month thinking about and playing some very thoughtful miniature platformers
ohhh i do NOT have the vocabulary to describe this one. 1bit 2d extraordinarily esoteric procedual generation mining game. feels like if an alien tried to make minecraft and got every step and detail completely wrong. inscrutable mechanical rules and a cryptic, disorienting 'hud' that i never quite worked out. a plodding pace and bizarre, groaning sound effects like nothing i've ever heard before. i turned off the dust pretty quickly.
a delight - a weird and fascinating little puzzlebox that i am not patient enough to uncover but am very happy to have experienced. i like mining games inherently - i am sure i have seen Tweets fairly recently about humanity's innate desire to Dig - and i'm glad for more interpretations on that.
weirdly, it reminded me of 2 games: lode runner, a game which i do not think is actually about digging but i always seem to remember is about digging, and sentinel returns, a game which is kind of also about digging and placing rocks on top of other rocks in a very inscrutable way (both similarly alienating, but sentinel is a lot more nightmarish than this. hole digging game feels quite nice despite it all. the sitting down animation...) [also, i recognise the name loren schmidt, but none of their games on their itch stand out...it looks like there were two games of theirs (now unplayable) on freeindiegam.es that i don't remember...?]
procgen p*cman where you can eat ghosts if you match their colour, and switch between r/b by picking up power pellets. also the maze tiles are a grotesque animated amoeba thing and all the ghosts are kind of horrible looking monsters with teeth. it comes out sometimes when i talk about famicom games, but i do love a maze game and this is solid in both execution and visual. excited to see if it gets sound and some smoother cornering someday. this is somewhat outside of this game specifically and a little more general/socmed-y but - i am not normally a big proponent of generative things but schmidt seems to take to it with a real delight that ive found infectious over these two games. like yes i love to see cellular automata thanks
limited palette pico-8 one-button shmup with a cool as hell ost. flappy bird, basically, but not as derogatory as that sounds. some really lovely visuals - the way the ship meets the water! MEGA hard to me though