Jessica Reviews Games

A weekly review of some game I like (or hate?)

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Love This

The other day I was trying to remember a game that had this really cool mechanic where you had to navigate rooms in a non-linear way (I’m explaining this badly), and I eventually remembered that it was actually just one of the levels in Love You to Bits, called The Quantic Library. Then I remembered (or, strongly suspected and later confirmed) that I had never written about my deep and abiding love for this game. It’s super, super good.

Love You to Bits is an adventure game in which you travel through different worlds to gather the pieces of your robot girlfriend (it’s not gross, I promise), who has been blasted apart by the boss enemy. Along the way you can also collect bonus items, which are attached to memories. I highly recommend finding all of these and watching all the little videos, because whose black heart doesn’t need a little warming nowadays? Try the App Unwrapper walkthrough if you need a little nudge for some of them.

Each level is a discrete world, with its own puzzle mechanics, and an absolutely ludicrous amount of care and craftsmanship. It’s really almost 30 small adventure games, which actually makes it perfect for mobile. Each one can be completed in a short play session, or if you have more time you can do a bunch at once. I started playing the game shortly after it launched, so in three chunks as more levels were released; if you start today, though, you can play straight through if you want. I have no idea how many hours of gameplay that is because it doesn’t matter: it’s such a delightful world with such a fantastic emotional payoff at the end that an accountant’s view of a game like that is even more irrelevant than usual (which is very irrelevant).

The whole thing is just so clever and well-made and with such a beautiful story: I really can’t say enough good things about it, so just go get it and experience it for yourself. Oh also, if you’re a long-time gamer, you will be able to play an amusing meta-game of “spot the homage” to a bunch of different classic video games.

Links!

Love You to Bits on iOS*

Love You to Bits on Android

The episode of Unconsolable in which we talked to one of the developers of the game

*iTunes affiliate links net me a small sack of nickels if you click one and then go on to buy something within some mysterious timeframe. It’s probably not actually mysterious, but I’ve never looked up what it is. So.

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City Clicker

Back in the day I played a lot of SimCity 2000 on my family’s IBM PS/ValuePoint PC with its mighty 33mhz 486DX processor (not that I knew anything about that at the time: I was more or less encouraged to treat the computer like an expensive object that I might break if I weren’t careful: I didn’t “get into computers” until college, really, but that’s a story for another blog). I don’t think I’ve played a SimCity game since that, in fact: much like the first Civilization is the definitive Civilization for me, so too is SimCity 2000 the definitive Sim City.

Something about the simple, voxel graphic style of Bit City appealed to me, probably because it reminded me a little of ye olden days when our processors were measured in megahertz and our video cards had, at best, single-digit megabytes of memory (and I’m fairly certain my PC must have had video RAM in the kilobytes range, since we probably didn’t have a top-of-the-line model). I downloaded it on a whim, probably because it was featured for some reason that I’ve since forgotten, and I finally actually started playing it.

Turns out it’s a clicker (oh wait I guess I spoiled that in the title: oops). I could pretend that clickers don’t do anything for me, that I’m above clickers, but I’d be lying. I’m as susceptible as anyone to that little incremental reward mechanic, so I’m definitely enjoying Bit City. I’m only on my second city, but I think I’m sort of starting to get the hang of things: the tutorial is fairly short, but, I think, adequate. I’ve definitely started developing favorite buildings, and have begun deliberately shooting myself in the foot by locking certain lots to building types that I consider pretty (as is my prerogative!). I need a duck pond. It has a little “ducks fed” counter! 

Looking through the options, there’s a lot more to the game once you’re past the first little bit; I am a little bit afraid that I might start to be annoyed by the complexity, if there begins to be too much to think about at any given time. The kiss of death for a game, for me, is when it starts to feel like a job, so I’m hoping it won’t quite reach that point. As a clicker, that’s definitely a possibility. Still, it’s super charming, and I’m liking it quite a bit so far.

I guess I should note that it’s by the same folks as Tiny Tower, which was hugely popular in its day: unfortunately I wasn’t really into mobile (or any other kind of) games at the time, so I kinda missed out on that. But for a lot of folks, that will mean something, so there you go. Bit City, by the same folks as Tiny Tower.

Links!

Bit City on iOS*

Bit City on Android

* Affiliate link: if you click that and then buy something from iTunes, I get a sack of magic beans! Or the equivalent in human money at a rate of 7% of the price of whatever. 

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Just Buy It

I missed two weeks because moving: mea culpa. And this week, instead of a review, I’m issuing an order: go get Reigns: Her Majesty. It’s so good.

The writing, this time featuring the fabulous Leigh Alexander, is excellent, easily living up to the high bar set by the original Reigns, and the game is just — more, keeping the one-handed, Tinder-esque mechanic but building on it. I haven’t even discovered all of the new awesomeness but I’m already in love with the game.

Plus, there’s just something about being the queen.

Links!

Reigns: HM on iOS*

Reigns: HM on Android

And on other platforms

* Affiliate link! If you click this and buy the game (or something else shortly thereafter but no seriously buy this game) I get a small sack of nickels.

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Stress Games

`I’m in the middle of packing up my house to move to another state yet again, so here’s a list of games that I use to distract myself from the tremendous anxiety this whole thing causes me.

You Must Build a Boat

YMBaB basically got me through my last move… and grad school… and job hunting… basically, it’s an incredibly good stress game.

YMBaB on iOS*

YMBaB on Android

YMBaB on Steam for some reason

Match Land

Match Land is getting my through this move, so far; I wish, like YMBaB, I could play it for as long as I want at a stretch (it has an energy system and timers), but maybe it’s better that I can’t: I can play it for a short burst and then get back to work when I run out of in-game energy.

Match Land on iOS*

Match Land on Android

Design Home

When I run out of in-game energy in Match Home but I’m not quite ready to get back to work yet, I’ll design room in Design Home. And maybe think about how i wish I could do the same in the new house I’m moving to. Especially if I could just point to where things go and have them appear.

Design Home on iOS*

Design Home on Android

Sling Kong

If I’ve completely depleted my Match Land energy, designed a room in Design Home, but I still really don’t quite want to get back to work yet, I’ll play a few rounds of Sling Kong. I haven’t written before about Sling Kong, but it’s a games folder staple for me: I don’t play it all the time, and I’m no longer particularly striving to beat my own high score, but it’s good mindless fun (aka distraction) when I need some.

Sling Kong on iOS*

Sling Kong for Android

* Affiliate links! If you get the linked thing, or something else in the App Store within a certain time frame (one of these days I’ll look that up), I get paid a teeny commission.

Honorable Mention: Hearthstone

It has been pointed out to me by friend and Hearthstone wizard Steve that I would be remiss in leaving off Hearthstone, even though I, personally, do not enjoy it. But I am aware that it has brought countless hours of good clean distraction to countless others, so there you go.

Hearthstone on iOS*

Hearthstone for Android

Hearthstone for Mac & PC

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I Like Solitaire Games, Ok?

I’ve been playing Zach Gage’s games for several years now; in fact, his previous solitaire game, Sage Solitaire, is a favorite of mine. So when I saw that he had released another variation on solitaire, I downloaded it right away (the game is free-to-play, with occasional ads that you can pay a small amount to remove). I was not disappointed.

Flipflop Solitaire bends a lot of the rules, at least if you’re used to basic Klondike solitaire. The tutorial, which incidentally, is very good, introduces you to the concepts: you start with a single-suit deck, and you can stack cards in ascending or descending order, with the ultimate goal being, as always, to move all the cards onto the — whatever you call the piles at the top of the screen. I always forget what those are called. For those you do have to go in ascending order from ace to king. 

It’s just different enough from what I’m used to that it’s sort of mind-bending, but in a good way (but also I had drunk a significant amount of port just before playing it for the first time, for the sake of finishing off the bottle, which seemed like a good idea at the time). The game assures us that the majority of all hands are winnable, and so far I haven’t had to give up on any particular deal entirely, though I’ve definitely re-dealt at least once for, possibly, all of them — definitely most. You also get undos, and you can earn achievements by not using them.

In addition to the single-suit solitaire you’re introduced to, you can play with 2-5 suits (5? yeah), and there are different rules for those scenarios. SO far, though, I’m really just enjoying the basic single-suit solitaire. It’s nice to know that there are options if I ever do get tired of that, however. It also doesn’t hurt, like, at all, that the art style is adorable. This game was an insta-buy for me, and should be for anyone else who enjoys solitaire games as well. Zach makes good games!

Links!

Flipflop Solitaire on iOS*

Sage Solitaire on iOS*

Sage Solitaire on Google Play

Zach’s other games

*Affiliate links! I get a tiny percentage of the purchase price of iTunes stuff you buy after clicking one of my links.

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Evening in the Forest

I noticed that Night in the Woods was part of a Halloween-themed Steam sale, so I decided to pick it up. since I’d been eyeing it for some time. I couldn’t buy it, though, because, um, I already had. And forgot. This seemed like a sign that maybe I should finally, like, play it, and I’m so glad I did. I haven’t finished it — I’m only a few chapters in — but I am really enjoying it a lot so far.

NitW is mostly an adventure game with some platforming and other mini games in it, and what really sold me initially was the art style. It is gorgeous and the characters are all delightfully weird animal-people. I’ll confess that I read a lot more books than I play video games, and when I’m reading, character development is one of the most important aspects for a book — plot is a close second, but I have to really care about the characters to even bother. In Night in the Woods, the character development is really, really good.

You play as Mae, a recent college dropout returning to her weird, depressing hometown — but why? And that’s just the first of many mysteries about Mae that have been teased so far. I definitely want to find out more, and explore this weird little world, and maybe somehow make things turn out ok for Mae, if I possibly can. That is to say, I’m invested in this game.

My whole brand, pretty much, is being terrible at video games, but I’ve been doing ok on the platforming parts and really abysmally on the guitar hero-ish mini game (worse even than I am at the little dungeon-crawler mini-game, which I have basically no hope of ever finishing). Fortunately I don’t think I’m being punished for my ineptitude: I’m sure that there are some things that I’ll miss out on, but I seem to be getting through the main game pretty well. And as a bonus it runs perfectly fine on my 13″ MacBook Pro, which is always nice. I don’t necessarily like to be forced to sit at a desk to use my PC.

There’s really no reason not to get this game. No downsides. For real. Get it. Get it now. Go. But don’t spoil anything for me!

Links!

Night in the Woods on Steam

Night in the Woods on itch.io

Adorable NitW merch (I’ll take one of everything thanks)

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Unpopular Opinion

When I was a kid, my parents bought a computer, which was a pretty big deal at the time. It was an IBM (like a genuine IBM) desktop with a mighty 486 processor in it. A few years later my dad bought a Creative Sound Blaster sound card and CD-ROM bundle (yeah, back then computers didn’t necessarily come with those things), which in turn came with a handful of games. Among those games was the one into which I probably poured as much of my time as anything, except maybe Windows 3.11 for Workgroups’ solitaire: Civilization. It didn’t have a number back then; it was just Civilization.

I’m pretty bad at strategy games, in general, but the original Civilization was a lot simpler than subsequent games along these lines: I was often able to conquer the world before I got out of B.C. (as in time, not as in British Columbia or whatever). I liked conquering. I liked to just go in and smash up other rulers’ towns until they became my towns. Good clean fun, world domination.

Subsequent Civilization games (and Age of Empires, et cetera) added a lot more complexity: if you made a treaty and then immediately broke it, there were actual consequences — although I think maybe there were in Civ I as well, unless you were a communist. Because I was a warlike people, I generally went straight from dictatorship to communism as a form of government — democracy may have punished you for the kind of bad behavior I delighted in. I also really liked the turn-based nature of the game (unlike Age of Empires): I had plenty of time to think about what I wanted to do before I had to actually do it, and I feel like managing resources was easier as well. Or maybe I just had more time on  my hands, I dunno. Besides, who needs fancy graphics when little pixel-art tiles serve perfectly well? No one, that’s who.

I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a conquer-the-world sort of game as much as I did Civilization back in the day. In fact, once my then-boyfriend (now-husband) and I installed it on one of the PCs at his parents’ house (where we were staying for summer vacation from college) and his dad stayed up until like 3 a.m. on a weeknight playing Civilization, because it was just that compelling. Just really the perfect strategy game for me: one limited by the generally available computing reassures at the time so as to be only as complicated as I’m willing to deal with.

More games need to be tailored specifically for me, you know?

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Competitive Pinterest

One of the great epistemological questions in video games is what, precisely, constitutes a game. Also what epistemological means. I’m pretty sure that’s not it. But let’s stop ruining that very funny joke with facts, now shall we? 

Design Home is a game, probably, that I’ve been playing (I guess you’d call it playing) for about a year, which says something about it’s, uh, I don’t think you’d call it replayability precisely; stickiness maybe. The point of the game is to fill rooms with furniture: you can’t affect paint colors and you don’t get to choose what pieces go where, but there are mandatory and optional furniture items that you can choose from your library of home goods. 

There are a couple of kinds of in-game currency, which you use to buy more furniture to design better rooms (to earn more money to buy more furniture, ad infinitum). You earn the currency by designing nice rooms and, of course, you can spend real-world money to get more. 

Other users vote on your designs, and an average star rating from 1-5 (or maybe 0-5? I dunno), and the star rating determines the prize you get: an article of furniture, for over four stars, and that plus some “diamonds” (one of the in-game currencies) for a perfect five-star design. Note that the image I’ve featured on this post is one of my recent five-star designs (the theme was “coastal,” in my defense). You’re supposed to vote on others’ designs as well but I usually don’t because I’m super lazy and you get enough "keys” issued to you as a “daily gift” to design one room, plus a little extra that I save up to do an extra room every now and then. 

As you spend more and more in-game currency, you level up in the game, which unlocks additional kinds of furniture and decor, some of which you are awarded upon leveling up. There’s always some really cool thing tantalizingly out of reach, though I guess not so tantalizingly that I spend a lot of time judging other people’s designs to earn more keys to make more of my own designs.

I have to confess, though, that overall the game is pretty entertaining for me. I may, ahem, even have spent a little bit of real-world money on it  from time to time. I’m sure there’s a whole legion of gamebros who would argue with me at great length that competitive Pinterest is not, in fact, a game, but I super don’t care what they think and neither should anyone else. So there.

Links!

Design Home on iOS*

Design Home on Android

Covet Fashion, the devs’ previous game that’s the same thing except outfits, on iOS

Covet Fashion on Android

*Affiliate links! If you click these and then buy something, I get a tiny kickback. I like tiny kickbacks.

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Yes Another Solitaire Game

We’ve already established that I like solitaire games, but this one was described as a rogue-like, which made me very suspicious. Rogue-like just doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that I would like. However, my friend Steve gave this game a try and said it was basically Pocket Card Jockey, so obviously I had to give it a go. And while I don’t like losing, and I lose a lot, somehow I keep coming back to Solitairica.

The deal is that you are on a quest to beat a main guy, but first you have to beat 18 other guys, and it gets progressively harder as you go. The game mechanic is solitaire, but the same simplified version as in PCJ and Matt Hall’s unreleased but excellent Age of Solitaire — you only need to worry about sequences of numbers, not suits. The suits, however, do come into play because each one represents energy gained in a particular category, which you use to power spells. You can use spells to kill cards (the goal being to get rid of all the cards, either by, um, solitairing them, or by killing them with a spell), put up a shield, heal yourself (because the enemy is attacking you this whole time), and other stuff. There are also money cards; you use money to buy more spells in the little shop you can visit after each round, as well as items that help you in various ways. There’s a fair amount of complexity, but not so much strategizing as to turn me off.

I’ve played the game a lot; a lot more than I thought I would given how much I lost when I first started playing (which is... a lot). Although you can buy hourglasses, which are good for one continue each, when you die, you’re dead: you lose all your stuff (except the special currency you use to buy hourglasses and deck upgrades) and you have to start over (that’s, like, the rogue-like part of it). Somehow, though, despite all the losing, I kept playing, and now I’ve defeated the final boss on normal mode for (I think) four of the different decks (there are a bunch of different decks with particular special abilities depending on the suits they’re based on). I can now play in epic mode for those decks, but, like, I don’t think I will. I assume it’s harder; I have no interest in a harder mode for the game. It’s plenty hard. I would like to defeat the final boss with all the decks, though.

It’s also nice to be able to just sit and play the game for as long as I want; it’s a premium game with no timers and the only IAP is to unlock a few more decks. It’s sort of refreshing, in that respect; I need a few games like this to play while I’m waiting for my Match Land timers to refill.

Links!

Solitairica on iOS*

Solitairica on Steam 

* Affiliate link! I get a teeny cut of any iTunes content you buy after clicking these!

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Empowerment Through Murder

cw: suicide

At some point in the 2000s or maybe even starting in the late 90s, adventure games began their great uncoolening — I’m sure different people peg The End of Adventure Games at different times (despite their continued existence and recent popular resurgence!), but “everyone” agreed that the genre was over (it wasn’t! it never was!). It is true, to a greater extent, that the kind of funny, jokey adventure games with the really weird puzzles died off: apparently in order to be A Serious Game That Must Be Taken Seriously, adventure games took a turn for the grimdark. 

The Cat Lady is one of these grimdark adventure games. The game was originally published in 2012, and I acquired it some years later as part of a bundle of games with female protagonists. I knew nothing about the game except the title, and it’s not at all what I expected based on that (the screenshots clued me in before I actually started playing, obviously). It’s one of the few games that I’ve actually sat down and completed in recent years, in fact: both because it’s relatively short and because the narrative was just that compelling to me.

The central conceit is that you have been raised from the dead (or something) after committing suicide, and must contain the evil influences of five people. By murdering them, naturally. It’s ok though: they're all really terrible. They generally set out to kill you, in fact, so it’s doubly ok to beat them to the kill, as it were. Fortunately part of your quest, or maybe curse, is that you can’t die, so if they do succeed in offing you before you can off them, you’re resurrected to try again. In addition to the evildoers, you encounter a bunch of other weirdos and a new friend: her quest for revenge happens to intersect with one of your evildoers, you eventually discover, and she triggers a few important story decisions (and Steam achievements).

The game is super violent, so may not be for everyone (and obviously not for children or maybe even particularly sensitive adults), but I really enjoyed it. The UI is easy to use, and the controls consist of the left, right, and up arrows so even I had no trouble there (lol). The puzzles are generally logical enough, and if you get stuck, Google is your friend. It’s fully voice-acted by talented folks, and while the graphics aren’t super impressive (nor are they meant to be), they do effectively convey the tone of the game, in my opinion.

When we had Ron Gilbert as a guest on my previous podcast (yes, that Ron Gilbert), he asked what adventure games we liked: I unhesitatingly recommended The Cat Lady to him, and I also recommend it to you, readers (with the caveats about violence, suicide, and general grimdarkery).

Links!

The Cat Lady on Steam

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I Do Not Like This

I don’t remember why my husband made me play Flower, but I first played it several years ago on the Playstation 3. I was very terrible at it. It’s supposed to be peaceful and relaxing and whatever, but I found it stressful and infuriating. The music is nice and the graphics are nice but I hate the controls so much.

Flower was basically like a tech demo of the sixaxis tilt controls and the then-impressive graphics on the PS3. The thing is, I despise tilt controls. Not only was I basically incapable of choosing a direction to go in and then going in that direction, I could only get my glob of petals to move either way too fast or exasperatingly slow. It was horrible. I always felt completely out of control, and I’m not sure I’d be able to get better even if I really really tried. I am not highly motivated to try.

Do you know what Flower’s reward is for successfully blooming all the flowers in an area? More flowers! Always more flowers. So many. How many flowers are enough? I have no idea, but apparently far more than I feel are in any way reasonable.

You can imagine my joy to learn that Flower was out on iOS. In the interest of writing this review, I gave it a try. It was everything I expected it would be and more.

Not only do I still hate the tilt controls (I have no idea if they’re better or worse or the same, as far as accuracy), but on my iPhone, I also find the game literally nauseating. I’m still a little ill, sitting here typing this. Woof. It’s weird because usually I find games less nauseating on my phone, compared to a larger screen. Not this time! Maybe because I was physically moving the screen around as I was trying to watch it? Which, by the way, is a terrible way to try to play a game.

YMMV of course: it is my understanding that a lot of people genuinely enjoyed Flower on other platforms, and probably people who are not me will also enjoy it on iOS. Other people really do find it peaceful and relaxing and zen and not at all pukey. Good for them! I’m happy for them! But I really, really hate this game.

Links!

Flower on iOS*

Flower for PS4

Flower for PS3

Dramamine*, for playing the game on your phone

Some kind of ginger chewy candy thing*, a more natural remedy, for playing the game on your phone

*Affiliate links! If you buy the thing, or a different thing within a certain time period, I get a small sack of nickels. Keep the nickels coming, folks.

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Get Off My App Store

Hey look, the third in my series of whatever I called it, where I write about games made by my close friends! Joe suggested this review, and who am I to not do what Joe suggests?

Shortly after the infamous incident in which a doctor was forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight, Brian and his artner (which is a word I invented to mean the partner who does the art) made a quick little game called Get Off My Plane: the goal is to kick passengers off of an airplane to rack up money in lawsuit settlements. What trick of the legal system your airline’s lawyers will employ to do so is a little unclear, but Winston Wigglestache says to do it, and who are you to not do what Wigglestache suggests?

A passenger is selected and you must find that person, or if you see someone else who’s particularly angry, they’ll do as well (you can identify angry folks by the little flames over their heads). Hit the target just right and you get a fat legal settlement, and the more times you do it correctly, the larger the settlements become. You also gain time for hitting the legal jackpot, though you lose time if you tap on passengers who aren’t the right one and aren’t angry. When time is up, all the passengers you’ve added to the ejection queue are summarily kicked off the plane, bruised and battered.

This is the game you might have been able to play, had not some buzzkill reviewer found it distasteful or whatever. Apparently referencing current events is bad... sometimes? It seemed pretty darn arbitrary. So what you get instead is Get On My Plane*, the kinder, gentler game that was able to make it through the review process.

In the release version, you identify passengers to surprise and delight with available standby seats or whatever, and they file onto the plane in an orderly fashion. Everyone is happy. It’s terrible. Is it still a fun little challenge? Yeah. Is the art still adorable, reminiscent of Fisher Price Little People*? Well, yes. But there’s just something lost in translation from a delightfully mean-spirited satire of current events to a milquetoast gate agent sim.

Sigh.

Links!

Get On My Plane for iOS*

*Affiliate links: if you click these and then buy something within a certain amount of time, I will be financially rewarded on a very small scale! So, you know, do that, if you are so inclined.

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The Greatest Game Ever Made

I’ve been meaning to write about Pocket Card Jockey for some time; to this day it remains the game I’ve put the most time into in my entire life (but then, I never played endless games like World of Warcraft and avoided Candy Crush addiction—although, hmm, how many hours did I spend playing You Must Build a Boat?). In any case I have well over 100 hours invested in PCJ, which is pretty bananas for me.

The reason I have so many hours of Card Jockeying under my belt is that, had Game Freaks set out to make a game specifically for an audience of me, they could not have more perfectly achieved that aim than with PCJ. The game includes:

Adorable horsies

Solitaire-based gameplay

Just the right amount of strategizing

An adorable horsey breeding program

Did I mention adorable horsies?

The gameplay itself is pretty straight-forward: it’s a simplified version of solitaire where the suits of the cards don’t matter, only the ranks. The goal is to eliminate all the cards on the board by making sequences. There’s a lot of subtlety to it, though, because sometimes there are special cards that you particularly want to clear to get their bonuses, and sometimes there are bad cards that you even more particularly want to clear, because they’ll hurt you. There’s way more than I really want to go into: in fact, the more I think about it, the more complexity occurs to me. That’s one of the strengths of the game, in fact: it seems simple on the surface but it’s actually really deep. But in general, the better you do in the solitaire segments, the more likely you are to win, and winning races is pretty much the point.

There are 21 different G1 races (the ones that really count), and much like that other game series Game Freaks makes, you do want to collect them all. There is also, however, your breeding program: your farm holds 14 horses in total. including the two who are currently “paired” (i.e. making sweet sweet horsey love to produce more foals for you to race), and by carefully combining horses with compatible traits, you can eventually race a super-horse like that King’s Gate winner above — the King’s Gate is the hardest race in the game, and the one it took me longest to win. And... I might have gained a few minutes of exercise ring on my Apple Watch the first time I won it.

I should confess, however, that in order to win the King’s Gate the first time, I may have introduced some new blood into my breeding program. Ok, I confess: I downloaded some horsies from the Reddit Pocket Card Jockey sub. The game allows you to add other players’ horses to your farm by scanning their QR codes (...yeah...). In fact, in the spirit of altruism, here are two of my better horsies. I don’t necessarily recommend breeding them to each other; they’re related, and if you breed related horses together you get bad-tempered offspring, which makes it harder to win (I told you it was deep!). Although, I’m not sure whether the relationship of the horses actually carries through if you download them from a QR code. Anyway, here they are:

In short, I wouldn't not recommend that anyone who doesn’t own a 3DS (or similar) should go out and buy one immediately and then get this game. Obviously everyone who already owns a 3DS or 2DS should get it. I also wouldn’t not admit that I bought a New Nintendo 2DS XL (I think that’s its full title with all honorifics) specifically to play PCJ on... I mean, on my original 3DS sometimes when there were a lot of horsey collisions going on, the game would slow down, and... well... no, I don’t have a problem! You have a problem! If you’ve never played the game, that is. Go. Go get it right now.

Links!

Pocket Card Jockey for Nintendo 3DS

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I’m Really Good at Titles

In my most collusiontastic review yet, today I’ll be telling you all about Yeti Pie. Yeti Pie is an iOS game (iPhone, iPad, and 4th generation Apple TV: bet you forgot about the Apple TV) based on a true story*. Definitely a for-real true story. My friend and podcast co-host Joe Macirowski made this game, and when it came time to name it, he foolishly asked some of his friends, myself among them, for suggestions. I “won” with Yeti Pie. Shockingly, no one had yet named their game that on the iOS App Store nor nabbed that twitter account.

The game-play is fairly simple (and sort of similar to the Drawn to Kill sequel): draw backward anywhere on the screen (or Siri remote!) to launch your pizza (or pie, or football, or other collectibles) toward the other yeti. If you aim it right, the second yeti catches it, and you progress. You earn pie upgrades both by streak length (i.e. successful series of pie-passing) and by continuing for many levels. I particularly appreciate that second one because I am terrible at video games, so my longest streak is pretty sad.

That’s pretty much all there is to it: it’s oddly charming, though. The background art is gorgeous (and includes time-based changes, a la Pinchworm, which is always a nice bonus). The music is also really great: Joe’s own arrangement of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos 3 II and 5 II* (Joe approves linking to this particular rendition, assuming I’ve found the correct one on iTunes, since it’s almost as good as his own). One note though: make sure you don’t have the volume of your audio system set to Quiet TV Show when you’re about to play the game on your Apple TV (which, of course you are). It will be very loud and you will flail violently for your remote.

Basically there’s no reason not to experience Yeti Pie, unless you literally own no iOS devices, in which case, go buy one. Then get Yeti Pie for it.

Not least because you can do this, which perfectly expresses my feelings about so many things:

Links!

Yeti Pie on iOS*

Yeti Pie twitter

The book containing the true story which inspired Yeti Pie*

*Affiliate links! If you click these and then buy something, either the thing itself or some subsequent thing within some amount of time, I get a small sack of nickels. So you know: buy some stuff!

[jessicareviewsgames]

Ethics in Ninja Archers

It occurred to me that I’m wasting a valuable opportunity to shill for my friends in this space! So here’s part one in a series of reviews of Games My Friends Made. First up is Drawn to Kill, by Tangent Worlds (aka My Friend Brian and his partner-friend-artist Justin: you should also check out their sticker packs for iOS Messages, which I will link at the end of this post).

Drawn to Kill is available for iPad, and its sequel is soon to be out on both iPhone and iPad (which will be a big deal for me since I always have my phone but rarely have my iPad except at home: in my defense “my iPad” is an iPad Mini 2 at the moment). You play the game as an adorable ninja archer, either with pigtails (“girl” if you wanna be all heteronormative about it) or without (“boy” et cetera). The obvious right choice is pigtails ninja, by the way. The gameplay is the same whichever ninja you choose, but it’s about 72% cuter with pigtails-ninja. 

The core mechanic is, as you might imagine, firing an arrow at various objects or targets. In Drawn to Kill, you grab the end of the arrow and pull back directly on it; for the sequel, this will be changed so you can drag your trajectory anywhere on screen, rather than having to drag the arrow itself backward. This is an obvious requirement for iPhone compatibility, but it’s also kind of an improvement overall, in my opinion. A variety of different challenges are presented: some targets move, some are fiendishly difficult to find the right trajectory to hit, and some — well, I think we all know by now what a terrible gamer I am, so some, in my opinion, border on evil. But! Every challenge is eventually manageable, even for me: if I kept trying, I got better, and was ultimately able to three-star all the levels. The valentine’s day level was a super fun later addition, too. 

The art and music are really good too: there really isn’t anything I don’t like about Drawn to Kill, other than that it’s not available on my phone (which is, as I’ve mentioned, to be rectified in the sequel). It is my firm conviction that everyone who owns an iPad should own this game.

Links!

Drawn to Kill for iPad*

Chat Judges sticker pack: the most essential sticker pack for iOS Messages*

Stick Man Pack, for all your adorable animated stick-man iOS Message needs (which might be more considerable than you think)

Rogue Vertex, Brian’s earlier game which I mean to write about later (hold me to this, readers!): a fun variation on Drop 7-type games

* Affiliate link! Even for free items, if you click my link and then buy something else (like the complete Simpsons series), I get a sack of nickels.

[jessicareviewsgames]

Dreadly Predicklements

The Adventures of Bertram Fiddle  is a series (there are two of them now — A Dreadly Business and A Bleaker Predicklement — so it’s definitely a series) of classic-style point-and-click (or tap and… nothing, just tap) adventure games by Rumpus Animation. Because I haven’t gotten very far into the second one and it’s been over a year since I played the first, I will lazily review both episodes in one post. The most important point is, of course, that both games are hilarious and charming, with a particularly odd and very British sense of humor, set in a most peculiar version of Victorian England.

As I’ve mentioned on twitter, one of my favorite things to do in adventure games is pretty much random mischief. If there is an opportunity for me to ruin someone’s day, even if I don’t know precisely why I want to do whatever thing it appears I can do, I will absolutely do it. This usually works out well for me in the kind of adventure games (this kind) that I prefer to play. I’ve already ruined two characters’ days in A Bleaker Predicklement with no clear idea of what I’m going to do with the things I’ve gained thereby. Oh and I also ruined a squirrel’s day, but I do know why (because I have already done the thing involving said squirrel). I foresee lots of mischief in my future: there certainly was plenty in the first episode.

I should mention, I guess, that it isn’t really necessary to do random things: there is always a clue that I should have done whatever thing it is I did. I just generally seem to happen upon those clues later, after I’ve already committed said mischief. I don’t think this is because I’m a genius at adventure games: probably it’s just because I’m kind of a jerk.

Fortunately both games are of the newer school of adventure games, in which you can’t get yourself into a losing situation. You can fail to make meaningful progress toward winning, certainly, but you won’t break your shovel digging up the wrong grave (as if that even makes sense) (King’s Quest IV was one of the handful of games that came with the CD-ROM/sound card bundle my dad bought for our PC when I was a little kid so it’s pretty much my frame of reference for classic adventure games). You may simply find yourself wandering the strange little world populated with even stranger people looking for mischief to engage in.

I guess it doesn’t hurt to explain that Bertram Fiddle, the character, is a mostly self-proclaimed adventurer, and in these two episodes at least (and keep in mind, I don’t know yet how episode 2 ends), is in pursuit of Geoff the Murderer. Either Geoff or whoever bestowed that nickname upon him is clearly every bit as good at coming up with names for things as I am, incidentally. I guess I’ve just spoiled that at the end of episode 1 you haven’t caught him yet. The game is fully voice-acted by a talented group which includes the daughter of writer/designer Seb Burnett (who pointed out that being on the hook for at lest eighteen years of food, clothing, education, etc. far outweighs the cost of a voice actor, so having children to populate your own cast of characters is not the most fiscally sound option: there may be other reasons to have children though, I guess). It’s highly adorable, hence worth mentioning. Oh and the background music is perfect in every way: adventurery and Victori-ish. 

I was a kickstarter backer of the second game, and even with as little as I’ve played so far, it has met all of my expectations (which were pretty high: I really liked the first game). Basically I think you should buy it, and I promise it’s funny and charming, even though I am trying really really hard not to spoil any of the funny bits. Oh, and you can also play Bertram Fiddle’s Inexplicable Meat Mound, if, you know, that’s your thing. It’s sort of a novella in this series of novels, or however you express that idea when you’re talking about games, not books. And it’s also worth listening to the episode of Unconsolable featuring Seb, because it’s hilarious. And its title is The Old Reach-Around. What could be more compelling than that.

Links!

Bertram Fiddle on Twitter

Bartmann Fritzel on Twitter… for some reason?

Bertram Fiddle: A Dreadly Business for iOS*

Bertram Fiddle: A Dready Business on Steam

Bertram Fiddle’s Inexplicable Meat Mound

Bertram Fiddle: A Bleaker Predicklement for iOS*

Bertram Fiddle: A Bleaker Predicklement on Steam

* Affiliate links, yadda yadda yadda, if you click these then buy the game (or something else within, I dunno, an hour or something, I get a small sack of nickels!

[jessicareviewsgames]

Some Kind of Pun Around the Word “Loathing”

When I was at PAX East 2017, I spent part of Saturday wandering the expo hall, looking for people to shove my card at; I had a couple of specific targets in mind, but other than that, I was just walking around, probably too quickly, because wow, crowds. One of my targets, Hexarden (about which, more later, when the game is out: spoilers, I really like it!), was in the Indie Minibooth, and to get to it I at one point traversed the Indie Megabooth. I passed by the West of Loathing booth, and wow, a game with stick figures? That seemed like a bold move. 

After achieving my mission in the Minibooth I swung back around and had a peek at the WoL booth. I didn’t have sufficient Moxie points to demand a go at playing the game, but I think I managed to give someone manning the booth a card; the game was going to come out on mobile, and it sounded like something I would like, so I kept my eye on it for a few months (and signed up for the game’s mailing list: incidentally, isn’t it funny how with services like  tinyletter there’s been something of a resurgence of email newsletters as a thing? or maybe it was always a thing and I just didn’t know: a recurring theme in my life).

Well, the game is out, and I really, really like it. I had missed out on Kingdom of Loathing, except insofar as it’s still a game that you can still play in your browser! Even in your mobile browser, though the experience is less than perfect. But in any case I was going in essentially blind, with very little idea of what the world-building and humor would be like — I knew from the booth that it would be funny, but, well, the specific character of the game was impossible to convey in large enough print around a table inside the Indie Megabooth. And this is a game that, above all, has a lot of character.

West of Loathing is a sort of combination adventure game/RPG with puzzles but also stats-building and fighting. Normally I don’t like RPGs, as I mentioned in my review of Match Land, but one thing I particularly appreciate about WoL is the auto-leveling, which takes care of assigning points to each of my characteristics for me, so I never feel compelling to make a spreadsheet or set specific attribute goals. Consequently I can almost completely ignore the RPG elements of the game, although even if I couldn’t, what might seem like grinding in another game is so imbued with the game’s particular character and humor that it only occurs to me in retrospect that I’ve done a little bit of grinding. I guess the difference is that I have never set out specifically to perform some action just to level up my stats; everything I have done, I have felt like I was doing for some reason: either to advance the main plot or a subplot, or in the spirit of wandering around and seeing what I find (the second map has a “wander” button that you can use in addition to selecting a particular location: I recommend using it!).

I’ve put about six hours into the game in two days so far, and I foresee myself putting in a lot more — and not being mad about that, which is new! I like short games, because a sense of progressing toward something is very important to me in a game (hence my hate for anything that feels like grinding), and while West of Loathing is “short,” by my standards that means three or four hours. In any case I’ve definitely had my $11 (actually $9.89 because of the launch sale) worth of fun and then some out of this game, and I don’t think I’m anywhere near finished (plus there are all these adorable weird side quests! and I want to start over and do things a little differently so I can finish more side quests in the first map!). 

I really can’t recommend the game highly enough: it’s just so good. Go get it now on Steam or wait for it to come out on iOS (it’s a small team making it, so there’s no plan to sync games between desktop and mobile: I asked on twitter, and that had not even occurred to the devs at that time, which is completely understandable given what a huge undertaking that would be). But I recommend getting it now, of course: even I wasn't willing to wait for iOS to give it a try, and I’m glad I didn’t. Which isn’t to say I won’t re-buy it when it does come to iOS: I probably will. It would be worth it to me to have the game on my person at all times as well as on my computers.

Links!

West of Loathing

Kingdom of Loathing

Sign up for the West of Loathing email newsletter

West of Loathing on Steam

asymmetric (the fine folks who made this game)

asymmetric on twitter