Recently I had to travel for a very long time, so I thought to myself, that this would be a great opportunity to finally get my hands on Octopath Traveler on Switch. It’s an adorable-looking game, a top-down, pixel RPG. The central point of the game is that there are 8 characters with their own stories that travel together. So, naturally, I had to get every character to see their stories, right? Now, you could just stick to 1 character and do it in isolation, I suppose, but that’s not how I roll. I must have it all. Every character has an initial story stage that introduces that character.

Long (very long) story short, it takes around 12 hours to get through, what I see as, the introduction to the game from all the characters’ perspectives… Now, there is a way to skip some of this, but the full experience of Chapter 1 in 8 perspectives is freaking 12 hours long. By the end of chapter 1 I was already done travelling, so who knows when I will get around to continuing this grind-fest. But this kinda prompts a question: how much time is a good amount of time for the introduction of the game?

“Hey, you wanna play that latest game that is like Lethal Company? No, not Content Warning. No, not Pilgrim. Yes, R.E.P.O, that is the one!”

The gaming industry currently seems to be on fire when it comes to bigger and older companies with one closure after another. Yet the smaller studios with smaller projects are blooming here and there. Good concepts are being latched on to and quickly iterated. This is, of course, a perspective from the outside since each iteration I try, as a consumer, takes a lot of time and resources to create. The developers usually have only one chance to get things right. The latest in the trendsetting was Lethal Company which gave life to Content Warning, Pilgrim, The Headliners, N.E.P.O (my personal favourite currently). A friend of mine just put out his own solo project Demining on Steam.

And then again, one could argue that the real predecessor to the horror/coop was Phasmophobia (still in early access with a whooping 600k reviews). But by observing this iterating creativity we could safely say that there is a good demand for coop/horror games at the moment. What trend will be next in line? A couple of years ago it was about battle royale…

Imagine being an artist and someone in production telling you: “Now we need you to make 100 different pieces of pixel sushi”. What a dream scenario, personally 😀

This post is mainly a tiny homage to all that pixel sushi in the game.

Dave the Diver was a delight to play – great pixel art, funny references, and multiple game mods with entertaining mechanics that keep the experience fresh. I am pretty sure I will replay this game later, just for the fun of it. Cheers to Korean developers for this cool game.

What do we have here?
Nothing much… just a game with significant religious undertones/references about sacrificing cute anthropomorphic animals. From what I’ve heard the dev started with human models, but then thought this might be too… close for comfort.
But if you like Binding of Isaac with some settlement management aspects, you might want to try this game. It’s cute and eldrich. The name of this gem is Cult of the Lamb.

You’ve probably heard about or played a game that has a “wait-to-play” mechanic. If you don’t want to spend money, you’re going to have to be patient.
During the summer Epic Games Store had an offer for a game called Shop Titans. I was curious to see how they implemented the reward since the game itself is free. This game is just a 3D version of Shop Heroes. And before that game, there was Swords & Potions 2 on Kongregate (and I assume there existed Swords & Potions 1 at some time). Fun fact: Swords & Potions 2 seems to be gone from Kongregate now and instead there is a tool kit of the game, which appears to be the entire art and code version of the game. So if you want to make your own copy, it’s easier than ever. And here is a list of attacking your users for their money from every angle:

• time-limited offers. Daily, weakly, monthly deals.

• put a literal casino slot machine into the game somewhere. the bigger it is – the better.

• exclusive pay-to-unlock sections of the game (like shops or crafters), tease the player with their inability to have access to all aspects of the game.

• premium subscription. Always remind the player that they could have more if only they subscribed.

• new skins for anything.

• exclusive skins (see “exclusive pay-to-unlock sections” above).

• loot boxes and keys, obviously.

• multiple currencies and all of them can be converted from premium currency.

I quite enjoyed dying again, and again, and again in Hades. I can definitely see how Hades got a myriad of awards when it got released. The game has a clever approach to the repetitive aspects of the gameplay through its narrative and enough variety in every run to not get boring fast. But there is a limit, and after around 70 runs the narrative will get exhausted and most of the story surrounding Zagreus, Hades and Persephone will be delivered to the player. But you can always just continue to attempt the escapes for the hell of it (or for the Hades of it?).

In today’s falling standard of released games, Supergiant Games continue to deliver well-polished products, my other favourite game of theirs being Transistor (2014).

And your entire social event could have been in, for example, Gather.Town.

As the pandemic continues, it is interesting to observe that more people are finding value in what games have been doing for years – simulating the physical presence.

Last month I got to participate in an event for entrepreneurs where my sole job was to explain to people how to move around and where to go. This made me realise that games nowadays rely to the extreme on tutorials, but imagine how many grandmas could have played World of Knitcraft, if only there was a friendly human to assist them at the start? Alas, to see a life GM nowadays in most MMO’s is a rare sight, indeed.

Something I cooked up for NordicGameTalents.