Playdate season II part iv

 I've noticed that I'm having trouble with normalizing all the titles in this series, so I've decided to just lean into it.  Anyway, almost missed the deadline here.  New games tomorrow!  But meanwhile...these.

Shadowgate PD

So here it is: Shadowgate on the Playdate.  Ported by Pixel Ghost, who also did a charming series of little Playdate adventures called Life's Too Short where you play as...can you guess?  How did they get the license to do this?  Very unclear, but here we are.

Shadowgate, if you weren't aware, is an adventure game from the eighties designed for old Macs which  (along with its siblings, Deja Vu and The Uninvited) is probably better-known for its NES port.  When I was small it ATE ME UP INSIDE that I couldn't play it because I didn't have an NES (we DID have an old black-and-white Macintosh, so I probably could've played it there, but I didn't know about the original version).  The interface looks a lot like the one in Sword of Hope, a Gameboy game I enjoyed (though that's an RPG; this is pure adventure), so even though they really don't have much in common, argh!  Remember that old Realms of Power series of novelizations (probably more novelatizations) of NES games?  There was one called Before Shadowgate--a prequel because apparently no one was up to retelling the actual events of the game.  And I tell you people, I doubt the book was actually up to much but I ATE THAT SHIT UP.  I truly loved it. Forsooth.

Well, I actually DID end up playing through the game, many many years later, with a friend, just so we could see what it was like and goof around with the goofiness.  So I've beaten it, with heavy walkthrough assistance.  And it was kind of fun, in its own ungainly way.  But MAKE NO MISTAKE: this is not a good game by any reasonable metric.  The "puzzles" are insanely cheap and arbitrary, and you suffer frequent unforeseeable deaths (admittedly, these have pretty funny death text, but still...).  Beating it without cheating would really just be a matter of brute-forcing it.

So with that in mind, I didn't know what to expect from this Playdate version, but I was intrigued.  I figured it would HAVE to be substantially revised from the original.  Probably-maybe use the crank in some way.  Something interesting.  Well, let's cut to the chase: as near as I can determine (from, admittedly, not playing very far), this is a straight port of the game.  Yup.  I...don't know what to say.  There's obviously something I haven't seen, since the page DOES claim there's crank functionality, but even if there are some changes--it's still essentially the original game.  I hate to be mean, but this seems one hundred percent superfluous.  Want to play Shadowgate with slightly worse graphics and a slightly more cumbersome interface?  Then this is for you!  I guess.  It's not for me.  Moving on...

Catchadiablos

The gameplay here is rather hard to describe, which is surely a good thing.  You control this little girl in space.  Here's how it works: you have a little circle next to you.  You can use the crank to rotate the circle; then to move, you hold down the A button while using the crank to move around the circle's perimeter.  And you want to encircle various aliens for points and to add them to a kind of grimoire.

It shames me to admit it, but I didn't really play this game enough to have a really reliable opinion.  Stuff to do; you know.  I do find it a bit hectic from what I did play, but I'm going to provisionally say this is a really good game that I'd like to get back into at some point.

OTHER NEWS: Fulcrum Defender was always a good game, but since I've played it there's been an update that increases the difficulty after ten minutes and adds three new difficulty modes (so you're not leaping between the managable hard and the nigh-impossible insane, I suppose).  I appreciate it.  Good game.  Gold star for you folks.

Meanwhile, Blippo+ continues.  I still watch it, though the joke seems to get a bit repetitive.  Also, I noticed more freezing this week, though presumably that was just to do with my internet connection.

Playdate Season two, part three

Welcome back my friends to the show that lasts for three more weeks.  We are now at the halfway point.  Any profound observations? Nope!  Here we go:

Otto's Galactic Groove

Okay, we start with a rhythm game, which isn't necessarily a bad idea--the system DOES have a robust sound system.  In this one, you control, Otto, a sea slug* who has to visit different planets to play songs with aliens.  You control a paddle on the right of the screen that you can move up and down with the crank. Notes approach from the left and you have to make sure they go over the paddle and then press A.  I realize that it can actually be quite difficult to describe slightly unusual gameplay like this.  At any rate, do this a dozen or so times and bazang, you win.  

*I swear, I had NO idea what Otto was supposed to be.  Dog?  I was thinking.  Cat?  And then I looked at the game's playdate page, and there you are.  It's safe to say that I paid extremely limited attention to the story here--but even if I'd been more responsible...would I have gotten that he was a sea slug?  I have my doubts!  Anyway.

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I had an odd journey with this game.  When I first picked it up, I went through the tutorial and then when the main game started very quickly put it down, because even the first two songs are just impossibly hard.  I finished the first one by the skin of my teeth, but the second--nohow.  So I just gave the whole thing up as not for me, and further, I resented the fact that you have to use the crank to move your paddle, when it would obviously be SO MUCH EASIER if we could just use the d-pad.  The crank can enable interesting new kinds of gameplay, but when it's just making easy tasks hard, I say: no, sir!

But then, I decided to go back and try it one more time before I passed judgment; to see if maybe there was just some little thing I'd missed.  And suddenly...the game was A LOT easier.  I don't think that's just subjective; people were complaining about the difficulty level, and the developer I think had adjusted it in some way.  So...yeah.  The crank is still pointless, but it doesn't really matter now.  The casual mode, which had been close to impossible before, is now downright...casual.  It allows you to play through and mostly enjoy the varied songs and silly but fun-enough story.  Hard (yes, we go straight from casual to hard) is harder, but not, from what I saw, impossible, though I didn't go too far.  Insane may in fact be impossible.

One very odd thing, though: I was toying with the idea of playing through it on hard.  But the thing is, the game doesn't acknowledge that you've beaten different levels on different difficulties.  That is to say, if I beat a level on hard, I can't impress my little friends down at the schoolyard by showing them the star next to it, because I can't prove I got that star by beating it on hard.  It could've been easy.  YOU don't know!  I dunno; I could play through all the levels on hard if I wanted, but I need some motiviation, however small.  Like when you played Perfect Dark and you got more stars for completing higher-difficulty versions of levels!  This is how games work, people!

To its credit, the game DOES also include a bunch of bonus songs--taken from other Playdate games, which may blow your mind if you're as mildly stoned as I am.  That's good!  There's apparently even a way for people to make their own levels and share them, but that's a bit too much for me to bother with.  That's on me, though; it's still a nice inclusion.  I'm not kidding, though: I think the developer REALLY missed a trick by providing no motivation to beat every song on every difficulty. 

Still, a lot better than I thought it'd be at first!

Long Puppy

So here's an action-puzzle thing with some clear Snake DNA.  You control a weiner dog; your child owner throws a ball, and you have to retrieve it--but first you'll have to look for food, to increase your length, to get over long gaps and whatnot.

One thing I DON'T like about this game: whenever you complete a level, you have to do a little cranking to make the dog shit, according to how much stuff you've eaten.  And why is this there?  I mean, obviously, because it's meant to be funny, and I'm not going to act like I'm too highbrow for such filth or that I'm trying to be a prude, but look, come on, this shouldn't have to be something I need to explain or justify: just don't include dogshit segments in my videogames, okay?

HOWEVER, other than that, the game is pretty fun.  I found the controls quite awkward at first, but they work well when you get used to them.  You have a time limit, but the only result if in runs down is that this Baron-Von-Blubba-style ghost dog appears (it also appears when you grab the ball), and it can't actually kill you; it just momentarily stuns you if it touches you, and also takes the ball back if it can.  That's fine, though there was one instance where a bug required me to restart the level: the dog just going apeshit on top of me, and me unable to move or react in any way.

I really wanted to play more of this, but alas, I got stuck on the seventh (or eighth? the game has a level zero, so I get slightly confused) level, and I'm not at all sure if that's my or the game's fault.  There's a pit that you can enter, and you can get a few food items there, but then there's no apparent way to leave, and I cannot for the life of me find any more accessible food.  Extremely frustrating.

Still fun, still worth playing, but I maintain that level seven is, at the very least, poorly clued.  Seriously, after writing the above, I went back to see if I could figure it out if I just tried ooooone more time.  That turned into several more times, and the answer is: nope!  Come on, man.

VITAL UPDATE: I tried again, and this time I figured it out! Boom!  My problem was that I'd forgotten about this sniffing mechanic which can net you extra food; I'm pretty sure this is the first level that requires it. The fact that you can so easily soft-lock yourself in the level is STILL a bug, though.

Oh yeah, we also have Blippo+, which continues to mildly amuse.  Um...excelsior! 

Playdate Season 2, part two

Okay!  I come baring important news!  I think we've figured out a few things.  This week we only get two new games, so it's the two-a-week schedule I was anticipating.  And to make that work out, I'm FAIRLY sure that there's going to be a thirteenth game; that Blippo+ doesn't really "count" as such.  And we've learned about Blippo, also, because the videos have been UPDATED this week--there's new stuff.  This means, pretty clearly, that the video is streamed from the internet, not all in that one litle Playdate download (you very occasionally see "buffering" icons while the video freezes; at first I thought that might be the game just simulating lag, but it seems to be the real thing).  I find this vaguely deflating, somehow, but I'm still into it.  There's very noticably less new video this week, but apparently these two civilizations--the Bippos and the others whose name I'm blanking on--are going to be interacting in the future?  We'll see!

My only real concern here is: how is this going to be preserved?  Okay, so it's presumably set up so you start seeing new videos a week after you watch the first batch, and there should be (though I'm not sure if there actually is) some way to reset your "progress."  That's okay.  But what of the future, when Panic's servers are no more?  No company lasts forever!  And THEN how will people experience this?  Blah.  Well, I guess that's for the future generations to worry about.  Sucks to be them.  Us, too.  Well, GAMES!

The Whiteout

This here is an adventure game that effectively makes use of the Playdate's limitations to create a strong sense of atmosphere.  It's a post-apocalyptic thing, where you're a guy.  Wandering around.  Trying to survive.  It is NOT--thank Christ--a zombie apocalypse we're talking about here.  The idea is it just started snowing and now it's snowing forever.  Like Anna Kavan's novel Ice, sort of.  And I'm wondering whether that really WOULD wreck civilization.  There are places that rain, if not all the time then a LOT of it, and they seem okay.  The difference, you say, is that snow fucks up crops and things, which is true, but I think at this point we're talking more about plain ol' cold than snow, per se.  Regardless, the fact that it's not the same old thing is appreciated.

And the story really is pretty compelling, enough so to keep you playing.  We learn some stuff about the before-time from a girl's journal entries we find, and it's extremely well-written and (haha) chilling.  The puzzles aren't too hard, but there is a certain amount of that endemic adventure game activity of staggering around desperately looking for a thing that you can use on the thing to do the thing. 

The game's page says it has a "branching narrative based on your choices and actions," but I dunno--the game presented me with perhaps three choice total, and none of them seemed overly consequential.  I suppose there could be things I did in a certain way or a certain order that would have made a difference, but at no point did I perceive that I was making such a choice.  Oh well.  I'm satisfied enough with what I got, though the ending is admittedly a little abrupt--I don't know what I was expecting, but it was something maybe a little...more.

Still, enough complaining about a compelling game that shows how impressive you can get on this li'l console.

Wheelsprung

Here's this weeks action entry, a game where you play as a squirrel on a motorcycle collecting nuts.  Look, I don't really understand the premise that well; leave it be.

This game reminds me of one of the earlier Playdate hits, A Balanced Brew, in which you have to deliver coffee to people by unicycle.  Both of them require you to compensate for your vehicle's tendency to flip over and destroy you.  Also, they're both really good games.  Also, they're both too dang hard for me to get very far.  I really want to play more of this; even in the first few levels, I can see the insane bike physics, and imagine how fun and goofy this is going to get.  But, well, I am who I am.  That is all.

Playdate Season 2, part one

Do you know the Playdate?  The most hipsterish gaming console there is?  It's a cute little yellow guy, with black-and-white graphics, the gimmick being that the system has a crank on the side, which games  can use or not use.  

When I first heard about it (from my brother, who had preordered one), I thought, the hell?  What's THIS madness?  What use have I for this little novelty thing?  I've enough games, thanks!  But my luddite tendencies were ultimately overcome by my lust for gadgetry (can those two impulses exist in the same person?), and I ordered one for myself.  And it really is a lovely little thing, with some fun games (and a lot of not-so-fun ones, but hey, swings and roundabouts).

Anyway, one thing about the system is when you buy one, you get a "season" of twenty-four games to go with it.  Initially, they were released on, I believe, a two-a-week schedule, so you'd have something new to play every week.  I think that's quite a cool idea, but unfortunately, I got my Playdate some time after release, so I didn't get to participate in the sense of discovery.  Darn!  Well, now there's a season two, starting just the other day (only twelve rather than twenty-four games, though we're also promised a "special surprise").  So I'm going to participate and report back here.  The first week consists of three games, which kinda bums me out; I think two a week is a good pace to draw things out a bit.  Whatever!  Okay, so these three games:

Dig Dig Dino 

This is the sort of game that really feels naturally at home on the Playdate.  You go on archelogical digs, each one constituting a single screen.  You dig around, collect money, resources, and dinosaur bones, upgrade your equipment, and participate in a neat little story presented via text descriptions.

This is not, to be clear, a complex game; the gameplay is limited and pretty close to unchanging.  I suppose there's a bit of strategy in that sometimes you have to clear large rocks overlapping other rocks to dig deeper, but really, you don't need to think about any of that to win.  Does it get a bit on the repetitive side?  Yeah, but I found that the gameplay loop of digging, upgrading, and reading cool descriptions compelling enough for me to see it through.  Probably a normal person would play it in little bursts rather than binging it.  Your mileage may vary.

I do have to say, though, I'm not too keen on the ending.  I know I know, it's just a silly little thing however you cut it, but I dunno.  Without spoiling anything, it ruined my sense of what I thought I was doing.  You may like it; that's fine.

Fulcrum Defender

This is an arcade game, from the makers of FTL and Into the Breach, of all things.  You control a circle in the center of the screen with a little shield protecting you; you have to use the crank to aim at an endless swarm of non-representational enemies coming at you.  Sort of a reverse Tempest.  When you get enough points kiling enemies (there are also point combos and things), you level up and get to choose between one of two new (randomized) abilities.  You goal is to last ten minutes (though the game continues after that); this is fairly easily-achieved on easy and normal modes, but hard has so much of a difficulty spike that easy and normal might as well just be considered practice.  My record is 1:41, and I'm skeptical that it'll get much better.

This is a satisfying, well-made game that wouldn't be possible (at least not in the same way) without the crank, which can be difficult to master but which allows for a great deal of precision.  Hell, I'll probably take a few more whacks at hard mode one of these days.

Protip: take the bullet-speed increase if you can; it makes aiming A LOT easier.  If you can get it to level two, bullets practically just appear on top of the enemies.  And if you can combine that with the double and then triple shot, you'll be a force to be reckoned with.

Blippo+

Oh man.  If there's any chance you're going to play this, I would strongly recommend stopping here and going in blind, as I did.  Well, LAST CHANCE.

I knew that the Playdate could do audiovideo (someone ported Steamboat Willie to the system in commemoration of its public-domain-ness).  But this takes it to quite another level.  What we have here is a TV network with numerous channels (all with an eighties or early-nineties aesthetic) to flip through.  You watch snippets of news, talk shows, sitcoms, cooking shows, financial reports, music videos, even the first scene of a softcore porn movie (SFW)--all with a slightly off-kilter, stilted, slightly Twin-Peaksy vibe.  And yes, all rendered in glorious black and white with full sound.  The production is very good, and the actors are fine (what an odd thing to put on your IMDB page).  

In addition to the video (how much? Less than an hour, surely, but I couldn't really say), there are a handful of little, I don't know, bulletin boards with cryptic messages.  But that's about it.  There's a vague background story about aliens with a fun metafictional aspect (are there "peedees" on other planets?).  And that's...it?  Is there a metagame here to figuring out what to do?  There may be, but if there is, I'm completely in the dark.  I watched through most of the video a second time to try to glean something new, but no dice.

Or, it could just be a playful, inscrutable art object.  And if so--great!  I feel like given all the video, this has to have been the most expensive Playdate game (or "game") to produce.  And there's sure as hell no profit motive, given the system's tiny userbase.  I really appreciate that they did it.

Heimito von Doderer, The Demons (1956)

Okay, so I read this!  Let's not pay any heed to how long it took.  I mean, I suppose it's not that bad, comparatively, but dude, I read all of Proust (which is something like four times as long) in less time than this.  Still, it IS long--this two-volume edition is about sixteen hundred pages, though it's worth noting that that's with a surprisingly large font--with one more like The Man without Qualities, it'd probably be more like thirteen hundred.

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Heimito von Doderer, The Strudlhof Steps (1951)

Look there's an elephant in the room, so let's get that over with first: yes, Doderer was a capital-N Nazi. This, unfortunately, is true. He joined the party in 1932, for reasons that seem a little obscure; no one seems to be able to say whether it was just because he wanted to get in with the Nazi establishment to benefit his nascent writing career, or whether it was actual ideology--but at any rate, a whole lot of people who would know testify to his disillusionment with the party as of 1940, and his remorse for getting involved, so, I mean. When his work started to appear in English, a lot of reviewers seem to have started from one point--"Nazi"--and used that to basically make up narratives for his work that simply aren't there. If you would prefer to disassociate yourself from anyone who was a Nazi, I understand. But to me, personally, this he's too interesting an author to pass up.  Also, I DO believe in redemption, even for three-time Trump voters, in the extremely unlikely even that they're repentant and willing to do their best to make amends, so come on.

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Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities

 So before I read this, I read another, wholly unrelated novel, That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana, by Carlo Emilio Gadda.  It's considered one of the great Italian novels, or so they say; a sort of existential murder mystery.  I ended up not caring for it that much; you can see what people see in it, but there is just SO MUCH endless digression to god knows what point, that in the end I thought it was just okay.  

But my point is, it's also a very dense novel.  So before I started I thought, self, if you're going to tackle this, you've gotta be disciplined about it.  You  can't just fuck around and take six months to finish it and get little out of it.  So, I was: I read it in a week or so, and I felt quite good about that, because I feel like my literary interest, for whatever reason, was waning a bit; now I feel good about it again.  So anyway, feeling thus refreshed, I decided, what the fuck, I will tackle this German novel that is seventeen hundred seventy-four pages of small, densely-set text.  It's one of those books I knew about and vaguely wanted to have read for quite a while, but after Proust, I wasn't sure I had it in me to tackled another meganovel.  But it turns out I did!  In almost exactly two months.  Boom.

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