Retronator

Well, this is unlike anything I’ve covered on the blog before. Press Start is a series of gamebooks where you … play video games? Basically, you get to choose your own adventure in the local arcade and play one of the three games: Ghasts ‘n Gremlins, Shugendo, and Games of Death II (I’ll let you figure out yourself which titles these are inspired by).

The books are in the last day of their crowdfunding campaign (which is already funded), so act quickly if you’d like to get a printed version ($19 for a single book, $49 for all three) or a digital download ($21 for all three).

I’ve been playing Yes, Your Grace in short, rich gameplay sessions over the last couple of months. I previously wrote a bigger story on the game’s (troubled) Kickstarter/publisher history, and the developer Brave at Night kindly provided a review code for me to try the final game. I played it on Windows, but no better time to write a mini review now since the game just released on Switch, Xbox One, and macOS as well.

So how is it? Deliciously good. If narrative games with choices that matter are your thing, Yes, Your Grace will be right down your alley. If you like the personal and political drama of Game of Thrones, the game gracefully delivers. And if you miss the times when Cinemaware delighted the world with illustrated strategy adventures (Defender of the Crown), you’ll get the same feels of colorful immersion as you did at the end of the 90s.

You can sense the love that went into the production with all aspects of the game, from exciting story events and relatable characters, to an immersive presentation and a memorable soundtrack. The art direction crafted by the main developer Rafal Bryks (design, code, art, writing) is straightforward and incredibly rich at the same time. Most of the gameplay areas are drawn in 1-point perspective (the exceptions being the 2-point title and map screens) and it’s the lighting that brings the environments to a whole new level. The shading is one of the best pulled off examples of modern pixel art with lavish use of gradients and translucent reflections, while never losing the handcrafted feeling so associated with the medium. A sprinkle of parallax and dynamic zooming round up the effects, all together painting a world you simply want to return to, a desire I haven’t felt so strongly for a pixel art world since Kingdom and Thimbleweed Park.

Yes, Your Grace is an aesthetic experience not to be missed. If you haven’t had the delight of playing it yet, now is the time to get it on Steam ($16 on sale, Windows, macOS), Switch ($17) or Xbox One ($17). 

I had some catching up to do with the games on my to-do list, first of which was Backbone. Launched on Kickstarter in May 2018, the raccoon private detective adventure game captured imagination of many, including mine. In my case not just for the furry inhabitants of the dystopian Vancouver, but especially for its dynamically-shaded pixel art.

The game was estimated to release a year later in July. While this didn’t exactly happen (as practically no indie game manages to), there wasn’t much room for disappointment as we still got a full release of the game’s Prologue. Better yet (if you weren’t a backer), it launched as a free chapter on Steam. I finally played it and it’s as great as we expected, pulling me through its one hour of investigating gameplay with great intrigue.

The lighting engine is even better than what the Kickstarter promised. The team really outdid themselves and we since got a chance to hear a detailed explanation of their art approach at Unreal Indie Dev Days (if you’re a gamedev, it’s worth watching as much as playing the game):

In even more recent news, my favorite unpublisher Raw Fury took the developer EggNut under their wing, making sure the creators don’t burn themselves out trying to bring such a high level of quality to the players. They extended the financial runway significantly and we’ll see an even higher level of production delivered to us in 2021. I’m very excited by all of this and I’m guessing it’ll be worth the wait.

I had a go with a press copy of The Long Reach already back in December last year, close to its planned release date which then got pushed to March 14th. The devs needed to take some more time to revamp the ending, and I’m happy they did, since the last part really wasn’t as strong as the build-up to it. After 3 extra months, the game is now out, and as a bonus, the console versions hit together with PC.

The Long Reach is as scary as advertised. It’s been a while since I’ve felt such a “oh shit we’re fucked” tension while creeping around research labs gone wrong. The main key here is that it’s not a fighting/shooting game at all: you’re essentially powerless but for your point-and-click-style combining of items to progress further in the story. It’s much more a narrative than an action adventure, despite its side-scroller controls. The keyboard/gamepad interface infuses just enough direct control for you to feel every heartbeat of the protagonist as you’re escaping from knife-wielding coworkers. In all other cases it’s merely an alternative design choice for your typical puzzle/dialog adventuring.

I don’t particularly like horror games, yet this is again one of those games that convey their atmosphere so well that I just had to keep returning into its world. Alina Berdnik is the artist behind the pixels and her rich environments get accented perfectly by a dynamic lighting engine that helps to infuse the heebie-jeebies throughout the experience.

The game is not easy, yet it made me satisfied as I was able to solve all the puzzles on my own. The plot starts very intriguing but runs into the problem that every WTF-is-going-on storyline faces: it can disappoint with its explanation for all the hype that it builds. ;It’s up to your favorite flavor of psychological horror I guess. In any case, the suspense is over in about 3 hours. That’s not much for the $15 it asks, but it does give a unique-enough experience to warrant a decent price. In the end, the Long Reach’s nerve-racking atmosphere is just too damn good to be left alone. (And I told myself with Crossing Souls/Stranger Things not to venture into fucked up governmental facilities. So much for not poking the beehive.)

I have to say the trailer really can’t communicate the kind of experience you get, so you’re better off playing the demo first (get it off Steam or GOG) and you should be able to tell if you want to finish what you started or not.

Want a gem? A game that starts like every other game before, with a hero about to save the world (or at least stop a thief from stealing a purse) …

… but that quickly takes a turn where the hero is anything but(t). A game about real life instead of a fantasy. A game where being a successful game developer is a dream—and unemployed, anxious, self-deprecating young adult is the reality.

Do you want a game where you fight the bad guys … OVER PIZZA?!?

A game that will reflect on your own years of growing up, trying to be cool, going to parties, attempting to fit in, talking to cute guys and girls, chasing your dream … and failing at it all.

Well, if you’re tired of same-ol-same-ol hero-saves-the-world premise then you’re in for a treat. I long longed for a game that is just about life, about growing up, developing as a person—similarly to how I prefer anime about art students (Honey & Clover) or gymnastics (Ganbarist! Shun) over fantasy magic robots trying to kill each other. Like movies where the characters just talk about life (Before Sunrise/Before Sunset/Before Midnight) instead of your generic Holywood black-and-white good guys bad guys sameness.

I found these missing qualities in Cynical 7, a game I really wish would see the light of day, but its fate on Kickstarter seems as grey as the future of its anxiety-filled protagonist. (Not to mention the protagonist’s developing male pattern baldness.)

Cynical 7 (@cynical7game on Tumblr) is great because it not only talks about real life and its struggles, but drops a ton of humor on top of it. It makes the journey through happy and dark moments alike entertaining and inviting you to come for more.

I don’t care much for the game’s rhythm-based fighting system, but it’s not too annoying either. If you ever read Scott Pilgrim comics (or enjoyed the movie) it’s quite what you’d imagine kicking ex-boyfriend ass looked like.

What really shines in Cynical 7 is the writing, especially the internal monologues that Tris (your character) is having with his brain as a reaction to the actions in the real world.

There’s really not much more I could say to make you like the game, but ask you to give the demo a try.

So yeah, check out the demo page and show the game some support on Kickstarter that it really needs and deserves. You know me, I’m all for diversity of gameplay and art styles, innovation, creativity, uniqueness. This game is high on all those charts.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis part of Tribute pixel art poster

Things you (probably) didn’t know:

• I played a lot of adventure games (you probably guessed this one)
• the best one in my book is still good old indy4.exe
• this is a tribute to that game
• the golden thing is The Horned Statue with Orichalcum inside
• I bought the game on Steam again
• I’m at the end of the prologue and can’t decide which of the three paths to took this time
• but definitely one with Sophia, mmm, sweet Sophia Hapgood