Wicked Plague

• Genre: Action Platforming (Metroidvania)
• Spoiler Free Review: Yes.
• Time Played: I have no idea, the game doesn't log it, the console doesn't log it, and I played it over a long period of time... 10-12 hours?
• Too Short/Long: It was about right for whatever amount it was.
• Did I cry: No.
• Soundtrack: Pretty cool for limiting itself to Game Boy Color sound.
• Why I played: Back when I grabbed Dragonyhm I grabbed a few other games since they were doing a bundle deal, this was one of the others. I played it a good bit here and there but I wanted to finish it before I picked up another game boy game.
• Jank: It's mostly pretty polished. I think I saw some typos in the final product but that might be the only big complaint there.
• Difficulty: It can be pretty difficult. Bosses act quick and in a small space and have plenty of hit points, so they can be especially tough. Your health isn't auto-refreshed at any location and when you "continue" you are only provided with a couple hit points rather than full health, so you always have to buy your health back up. That's kind of annoying, but I guess it helps balance things a bit, it might be too easy if you were always getting topped off.
• Something I liked: The character designs were pretty neat, bosses were mostly pretty unique within the context of the game, and more or less learnable even if pretty difficult at first.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm pretty please with this one.
• Recommend to others: I believe at first it only had physical cart for Game Boy Color, but this now seems to have a digital version available on itch.io, and I think it's free? It might require you to load it into a game boy emulator, I'm not sure, but I would definitely recommend this if you think it looks/sounds fun.

Wicked Plague feels like a modern metroidvania, more on the 'vania side, even though it's made with the limitations of a game boy color game. I literally played it on a game boy color cartridge, but all in all it feels pretty smooth. There is some design clunkiness due to the limitations of having only a couple buttons, but they did a great job within the limitations. I'm not sure there is a better metroidvania at that level.

I started playing it not long after I finished Dragonyhm, but only finished it just now because I had the motivation of another game I wanted to put in, but liked Wicked Plague enough I wanted to finish it first. One issue I had though, was playing Wicked Plague on my GBA SP. It's a GBC cart so I can't play it on any version of a DS, which have far better screens than my SP. I also have the original SP, not the one with a true backlit screen. The original SP release is technically front lit, you can even see the lights if you look at the screen from the side.

Unfortunately Wicked Plague is a pretty dark game and I found it an eye strain to stare into the darkness, and try to differentiate between the details of the game. I don't have ModRetro's Chromatic, nor the popular Analogue Pocket which why I'm sure are great little devices, I find hard to justify spending the money on to play a game that at some point in history was playable on a system that cost less than 50 bucks. What I could justify though, at a fraction of the cost, is a screen upgrade, so I replaced one of my GBA SP screens with a new IPS screen and wowie kabowie did that make all the difference in the world. The game actually looked like the screenshots now. Not just the brightness, but the lack of scanlines, are a huge help. Now I know in some cases scanlines may be preferred and since it's not one of those newfangled systems I can't change the screen mode, but if I ever think that scanlines are more important than brightness, I have several other GPA SPs to use.

I don't think the brightness, contrast, and clarity are going to be beaten out by the pixel diffusion though. Apparently there was a wire I needed to solder on to get more controls. A+ screen upgrade, now brightness has 15 different levels, there are different color modes, different scanlines, etc. etc. 10/10


Regardless, that was the extra push I needed to finally finish the game, but I kind of wish I had it the whole time, considering how dark the majority of the game is - I may never have taken the break if it wasn't such a strain to see.

The characters are neat but it kind of throws you in the situation as if you're expected to already know them and there is a lot of other stuff going on in the world. It's not like it's too much to follow or there is a ton of dialog, but it's enough that makes it seem like the creators fleshed out the world beyond that game, and I hope to see more of it.

Triple-A Minesweeper

• Genre: Sweeper-like
• Spoiler Free Review: I tried my best not spoil it, but there may be some implications in my screenshot and descriptions of my experience.
• Time Played: 10 Minutes, but honestly I could probably put a 1000 hours in it easy. It has infinite replayability.
• Too Short/Long: Considering the near indefinite time you could play this game for, but the fact you can end it any time, it's perfect.
• Did I cry: More than any game that game before it.
• Soundtrack: Just absolutely stunning. It perfectly fit the mood. Every beat just resonated with my soul.
• Why I played: Because AAA games are the best types of games to play.
• Jank: What jank? This is a AAA game. AAA games are jank free.
• Difficulty: Whew, it was pretty tough. Thankfully they had handy way points to help me know where to sweep the mines, but it was still pretty challenging to sweep one, and then have to sweep another.
• Something I liked: I liked sweeping the mines most of all, but jeez, it's more like - what didn't I like? Absolutely nothing. Every aspect of this game is gold.
• Pleased/Disappointed: Please beyond belief, I'll tell you what. I don't know if I'll be able to stop thinking about this for the rest of the year.
• Recommend to others: I would absolutely recommend literally everyone see this game all the way through. There is nothing quite like it and I think it's an instant classic that will not soon be forgotten.
  

Triple-A Minesweeper is the type of game all other strive to be. From it's resonating score, to crisp clean art direction, emotional breadth of the storytelling, and truly just smooth engaging gameplay. You really feel like YOU are the Minesweeper. I never truly understood what it meant to be immersed in a game until I played Triple-A Minesweeper. I forgot what my name was for a brief period and when Clyde called out for Sweeper I went "Huh, what?" out loud. I almost entirely forgot I was playing a video game. I was just completely immersed in an experience.

I can't be without criticism, even though this game doesn't really deserve any criticism. It's a AAA game, and I'd have to say it's missing a couple things core to the experience. First off, the lack of tutorials - I really struggled figuring out what to do at first, that said - I guess that could be why it felt so immersive. Just like Minesweeper waking up in a daze thrown right into the action - so was I. The other thing, and I know, it's a single play offline game, but the lack of any cosmetic microtransactions is a true disappointment. I mean, thankfully I fit into the exact niche of character Minesweeper is, so I didn't feel the need to personalize him, but I truly just love giving AAA games more money for arbitrary things I'm not going to use. They deserve every dime they can squeeze out of me. Other than those very minor complaints, it's an absolutely perfect game.

It was no cake-walk though, as we've come to expect from sweeper-likes. I almost gave up at the 8th swept mine, but I knew I had to push through, and oh boy the payout of the twist the story takes from there was just worth more than anything money can buy. This is why you play AAA games. No other medium, no small indie studio, no retro game is going to be able to provide an experience like this.

Wall World

• Genre: Action Roguelite
• Spoiler Free Review: Not much to spoil.
• Time Played: 13 Hours?
• Too Short/Long: It would have been fine if I didn't have to play more than I needed.
• Did I cry: No.
• Soundtrack: It's fine but very much in the background and hardly noticeable. 
• Why I played: I think I got this around the same time I got Ocean Keeper, and I think they are both in the same tree of games of inspiration. Dome Keeper inspiring this and maybe this inspiring Ocean Keeper. There is a spider mech, I like those.
• Jank: It's very janky. Not so much until you start getting speed upgrades and I guess the game just can't keep up with you? So you get stuck in a position where you can't do anything because the world won't load. It happens in a smaller degree with just a little bit of fast paced traveling, where you need to hover around a mine entrance and eventually you can enter it - if you just go as fast as you can through several biomes - consider your run forfeit. Unfortunately I didn't realize this was going to be a persistent issue.
• Difficulty: It's a little difficult at first, making it feel like you never have enough time, and really it never gets much better but like most rouge-lites, the upgrades that carry over from run to run in addition to figuring out how to better optimize your time make it easier and easier.
• Something I liked: I liked the core gameplay loop, which is probably why I was willing to return despite my frustrations with the game essentially crashing 2/3rds of the way through an hour run several times.
• Pleased/Disappointed: It's fine. I enjoyed it. I'm just a bit bitter because I feel like I wasted a few more hours than I needed to.
• Recommend to others: I would if it didn't have that one big glaring flaw. You're on a time limit with this game so you need to try to be as efficient with it as possible, but if you are too efficient the game becomes unplayable, so it's gonna be a no.
  

Wall World looks cool and had some really fun design choices. The gameplay loop of going into mines and coming out to fight off monsters between a couple phases of the boss coming out is pretty fun. I kept feeling like it could be just a little more generous with the time, but I guess the point of it is - you aren't necessarily supposed to do everything each run, just what you can. Had I known, I could have tried exploring the world a bit different and cut some time down outside of the crashing issues, but I was being hard headed and determined I could do everything faster and could do everything in a run.

It was wholly unnecessary though, because as it turns out, the end is just a little bit anti-climactic and I wasn't going to really need much once I met the requirements to end the game.

I will say I did only find like 3 of it's dozen weapons useful at all and a lot of the upgrades just aren't that great. All passive upgrades are great, but a lot of the active use items you get through each run just aren't worth it - in my opinion. There could be some issues with balance there, or just my style of playing, but I felt a little limited and didn't even use most stuff most the game because you're on a time crunch, and I was trying to utilize it as optimally as possible.

Dragon Ruins

• Genre: RPG
• Spoiler Free Review: Not much to spoil.
• Time Played: 2-3 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It's fine for what it is.
• Did I cry: No.
• Soundtrack: There sure are sounds in this game - I wouldn't exactly say they're memorable, but they're serviceable.
• Why I played: I wanted something to play I could zone out a bit more while playing and didn't have to think too hard or read much while playing.
• Jank: Not really much jank to speak of.
• Difficulty: Not too difficult.
• Something I liked: The art is really cool.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm pleased enough. I'm not disappointed, it filled a gap where I needed it to.
• Recommend to others: Probably not. Not that it's bad, it's just a very specific thing I'm not going to go out of my way to tell people they should play. People are into this kind of nonsense already know they want to play this.
  

I played this on Switch and don't recall if this shop description matches, but on it's little blub under it's title banner on Steam, it simply reads "A dungeon crawling microgame for tired people." and I couldn't possibly describe it more accurately.

It's a dungeon crawling game. I was tired when I started playing it, and all I had to do was move around and stuff would happen. It's somewhere between an auto-battler/idle game, and one of those games with bump combat where, in some cases, the combat is more of a puzzle than an action challenge. Ys, Hydlide, Fairune all come to mind.

In fact, it would seem that the developer made a game almost exactly like those, another game I played; Ringlorn Saga, so I would say it's probably the intent to a degree. You just walk around, automatically fighting enemies until you need to heal/level up, return to level up and such, and go walk around some more. There are just many different paths and what you may be able to fight at any given time may be too strong until you level up some more. You pretty much just walk around until you win and that's the whole game.

I'm sure it could be a better game if it had more stuff involved, but I guess there are already tons of dungeon crawlers that have more stuff and are they better games? I don't know if they all are - they're certainly different, but that also means that this was different from all those others ones, and hey that's something.

Puppergeist

• Genre: Music/Rhythm
• Spoiler Free Review: Mostly, not much to spoil.
• Time Played: ~2 Hours
• Too Short/Long: It's fine.
• Did I cry: I audibly bawled within the first half hour, to a point where Naga was concerned, got up from her place in the corner and laid next to me, causing me to bawl even harder.
• Soundtrack: For a music game it's uh... not the best. It's not "bad" by any means, it's music, there are rhythms. But they're more just like little jingles for you to play to for the most part.
• Why I played: I wanted to play something thematic as we approached the Halloween season and it looked cute.
• Jank: I would say there is jank in how it handles/responds, but really that's the only thing I can call out and I'm not positive it's not the way it is by design and I'm just bad at it.
• Difficulty: While it's certainly not the hardest game, it did frustrate me at certain points.
• Something I liked: The art was very cute, it was overall just a little sweet game.
• Pleased/Disappointed: It's fine, it met expectations.
• Recommend to others: Not exactly. Unless you look at it and like me, immediately think you have to get it, regardless of it's actual contents, then sure. If you wanna cry about dogs, sure.
  

Puppergeist is a harsh reminder how bad I am at rhythm games. Even the ones I enjoy most I'm not particularly good at. "Real" music games that have like a 1-10 skill rating, or 3-5, whether it's numbers, score, stated difficulty, are not games I generally am able to play on the higher difficulties, like at all. I understand the skill ceiling is ridiculous. People play music games like people play games for competitive tournaments, sinking hundreds, if not thousands of hours into individual music games.

I avoided earlier music games partially because I didn't find earlier music games to have very engaging mechanics and I was also just not super into music until I was well into my teens anyway. When I got my first car, I owned 3 CDs - in a time where those were the dominate technology for over a decade. (Fun stats: ~95% of the market share a the time, more than digital music media has today at around 85%, that's including both purchase and streaming revenue)