What Did We Play Yesterday?

SteamWorld Dig 2 is a "more but better" sequel to a mining metroidvania featuring Wild West-style folksy robots. It has lots of secrets and upgrades, a great map, and just the right about of collectibles. The player digs up resources they can trade for money to upgrade tools. Hidden cogs can be used to add mods to the tools. The game has a good range of cheevs, including a couple of really tough ones, so casual players can obtain a many cheevos naturally but a perfect game requires mastery.

The most interesting thing about this game is how player-driven the difficulty is. There are two base difficulty levels to choose from, casual and normal, and special mods increase difficulty. Additionally, most challenge areas are optional. This allows the game to be accessible to anyone while making the game enjoyable for a devoted group of hardcore players intent on mastering the game's hardest challenges and coming up with creative ways to make the game as challenging as possible. In-game modifications include:
* The ability to toggle quest markers

• Double the chance for blood stones, but increase the damage caused by enemies

• Double XP from kills, but limit orb drops to creative or bonus kills

• Enemies explode on dying, increasing difficulty

• Fast travel can be toggled

• All tool upgrade mods can be toggled (for example, extended hookshot range, armor composite)

It's a clever design choice by Image & Form and a great way to allow player-driven management of difficulty. Metroidvanias are inherently fun to play by design, gameplay centers entirely around the design of the player controller, but incredibly steep learning curves make the genre too inaccessible at times. An example is Guacamelee!, which I have written about in the past. Guacamelee! one of the best metroidvanias ever made, but Guacamelee! Gold is so punishingly hard some players (including myself) were unable to progress past a certain point. The problem is remedied in Guacamelee! Super Turbo Championship Edition, a deluxe re-release which fine-tunes controls and refines certain problematic jumps. The game is still difficult, the challenge areas punishingly so, but the base game is (mostly) accessible.

I enjoyed this one quite a bit and spent about 12 hours on a leisurely completionist playthrough and got 98% of secrets (missed two cogs somewhere and I cannot be assed to go find them), snagging about 80% of the cheevs. The post-game challenge dungeon proved beyond me. The storyline/writing wasn't terribly interesting, but the game is fun to play and has great controller support.

This year a lot of games have been put on sale for 10-20% of on Steam on release. I'm not sure how long this has been going on, maybe it always has, but I noticed it recently and it motivated me to buy at least one game early (Fashioning Little Miss). Some players were upset SD2 wasn't discounted on drop. The developers explained there was no way to fairly discount the game across platforms (it's also on the Switch) so it wouldn't be on sale for a while. People on the forums were asking if they could get a discount if they owned previous games, SteamWorld Dig and SteamWorld Heist. Look, $20 is an absolutely fair price for a solid metroidvania, especially for challenge players who are interested in speed runs and the like. It really bugs me that players want to nickel and dime a game that is professionally crafted by several dozen people over one-to-two years. These games don't develop themselves, all right?

tl;dr They don't just plant a metroidvania bush and harvest a quality game a few years later. A lot of people spent a lot of time and work building the thing. Buy the thing, or don't buy the thing, but don't bitch about the MSRP. The game is priced correctly.

I have a two-step process to confirm if Fashioning Little Miss Lonesome is the right otome for you.

First, I must inform you the game contains body negativity and name-calling. The heroine is called sow, pig, etc., as Saito tries to goad her into dieting. He also calls her a bitch a few times. She refers to herself as "slant-eyed" on multiple occasions. If you can tolerate this, go to the next step.

Now, I will need you to view the following image, which contains shameless nudity. Please be advised this image may be disturbing to more sensitive viewers.

Still game? Okay, let's get to it. FLML is best described as an irreverent parody that occasionally breaks the fourth wall. It has two main routes and a third unlockable 3P route. The heroine, Ema, is a tall recluse who wants to eat pizza and be left alone, but when she crosses paths with two handsome guys, one who claims she is his "muse" and is obsessed with designing clothes for her, and another who demands that she let him be her producer, she can't get a moment of peace. They won't leave her alone until she agrees to be their model, and then the real torture starts as they whip her into shape and force her to wear embarrassing clothing.

I'm a fast reader and the first playthrough took about 5 hours at my usual reading speed. The script is funny and I laughed quite a bit. The VAs are great but it's Japanese-only dialogue. The art is pretty meh. A significant portion of the game is the common route, which limits replayability (using skip I was able to play through the two remaining routes in about 2 hours). I wish there was more route-specific content. Each guy gets two epilogues at least.

I enjoyed the bad endings (started angling for those on purpose early-on), the localization is excellent and the VAs are fun. While Ema is a different type of otome heroine, a lot of otome/Romance tropes are in evidence. We still have situations where Ema is being carried/dragged around, sometimes literally, by the LIs. Her autonomy is limited. The LIs routinely discuss her as if she's not standing right there with them. A fair bit of gender essentialism. You know the drill. The 3P is a het no-one-is-really-happy setup (I guess it's a menage, IDK what the terminology is).

The h-patch is available on MangaGamer for free and there's a Steam guide on how to install it. You have to have a MG account to download it. Originally I passed on the patch so whenever I reached a sex scene it simply faded to black. This was fine, but could be a little disorienting at times because the MC would say something like, "And then he asked me to do something I never thought I'd do!" And it jumps to the next scene and I'm like--wait, wait--wait, what did you guys do? I installed the h-patch but found the scenes kind of hilarious/squicky. Definitely YMMV on the h scenes, you can totally play without or can disable them from the main menu once the patch is installed.

One of the guys is supposed to be the "sadist" and the other the "masochist". The masochist has a scene I enjoyed way more than I should have, where the heroine uses him for a step for step aerobics, but after dangling that tantalizing bit the route never really went where I hoped it would. Overall I think I liked Saito's route best, it was funniest and I'm a sucker for short-guy tall-girl, but I played the censored version of the route so I can't comment on the h scenes. I will probably do another reading-speed playthrough at some point to snag the few endings I missed. It's not perfect, or even really for me, but I definitely enjoyed it and would be happy to play more games like this.

I've become moderately obsessed with Brogue. I wasn't sure if I'd take to ASCII roguelikes, they seemed a bit impenetrable. I can happily report Brogue is a great starting point. It's an item-driven roguelike wherein you (@) are trapped on the first level of a dungeon and must descend to the 26th floor and obtain the Amulet of Yendor to escape. There is no character build or lore to learn, you just go.

Within a few minutes I was totally engaged. Short, evocative descriptions set the scene nicely and the game's symbols quickly become familiar. Each playthrough the potions and scrolls are named differently (in one PT a red potion might give strength and another the red potion makes you invisible) so while there is some cumulative knowledge from trial and error there is also a lot of, "Okay, stand back, I'm going to drink this and see what happens." You can sneak up on enemies and stab them in their sleep, or hide in a corridor and wait for a wandering enemy to pass and get in a surprise hit. You learn tricks, like the surest way to beat a Jelly (fucking jellies) is to back into a tight space so they can't spawn behind you. You can recruit allies or go alone. There is no one way to play. I just learned you can even succumb to demonic temptation (enable easy mode).

Typographic symbols are naturally beautiful and Brogue enhances its ASCII with creative and pretty effects, from blazing fire to the pastel haze of confusion. Toads, when touched, may cause you to hallucinate, and everything in the dungeon ceaselessly changes form until the effects wear off. There is a tileset version of the game (bottom screenshot), but I started with the ASCII version and I find it easier on the eyes and more appealing overall.

In his overview of roguelikes, Waltorious notes that these games generate memorable stories, and user-generated stories are the strength of the medium. I remember that time I was backed in a corner, surrounded by jackals, desperately chugging all my unlabeled potions, and just happened to drink a potion of descent, which whisked me to safety. I remember the time I decided to burn a wooden door with a fire staff I'd just found and seriously underestimated how powerful it was, engulfing the entire room in flames. In some ways, this type of player-driven story feels more personal than big cinematic story-based games because so much of this story relies on my imagination, how I've come to perceive the dungeon and its inhabitants. I think this is a game I'll be playing off and on for a long time.

Well, I broke my no early access rule recently so I could be distracted by Wayward, a survival rougelike. You can play a free version in the browser. I wanted a new survival thing and I read it had a steeper learning curve than Terraria.

In Wayward you are a castaway who washes up on a randomized turn-based island with randomized tools who has no memory except... treasure. The game's difficulty is controlled by a malignancy/benignity point system. Destructive actions like mining, chopping down trees, and hunting peaceful animals earns malignancy (negative) points, nurturing actions like farming and foraging give benignity (positive) points. The island is kinder to those with positive scores, but if the number drops into the negative the island becomes increasingly angry and more powerful enemies (and ultimately bosses) spawn. It's an interesting system that gives the player control of the difficulty level. There is a default hardcore permadeath option and a casual option with endless lives. You are awarded certain permanent bonuses when you pass milestones (like survive x turns, craft x objects), and these bonuses can affect your starting stats, skills, and inventory on future games.

The reviews for this game were spot on. The game is difficult in that it has a learning curve and realistic implementation of things like encumbrance. You can't just run around with 500 boulders in your pack. Going in blind, I died a bit and wasn't really sure what to do, but I kept experimenting and trying, and once the game's rules and mechanics began to click it was a lot of fun. Discovery is a huge part of the fun and the community is very spoiler-conscience, but I can give you one non-spoilery tip: if at first you do not succeed, try, try again. This goes for actions like mining or harvesting as well as general play. I recommend the permadeath option because dying over and over helps you experiment with new starter tools and learn from your mistakes. Once you get the hang of it and you know some tricks starting over isn't a big deal. I've found I prefer playing that way. Casual mode takes some of the sense of urgency out of emergency situations.

Wayward has really piqued my interest in roguelike games in general and there is no shortage. A lot of these games have been in ongoing development for years (sometimes decades), so many of the titles are perpetually betas/early access while still being fully playable games--early access is part of the culture basically. I still have complicated feels and reservations about early access games but think this genre pulls off the "buy this unfinished game!" thing better.

Wayward is not ready yet, but the core components are there and it is really close to what I wanted, a turn-based top-down pixel-art hybrid of Starbound/Stardew Valley/Star Tropics?/Something Something (that's a lot of stars). That's a pretty specific ask and I haven't seen anything else like it.

If there's one thing we can count on in Bioware games, it's lots of opportunities to flirt in ways that are embarrassingly awkward or inappropriate.

I think the worst one I've seen in MEA so far is the "I didn't tell you to put your shirt back on" flirt with Liam, which I heard about beforehand and purposefully triggered to see how bad it was. I actually reloaded my save because I felt unclean, like some cloven-hooved non-ruminating animal.

MEA has casual and committed relationship options and some characters have both, which I didn't realize. You can casual as much as you want, but apparently after you commit you can't flirt anymore. I think you can flirt again if you end the relationship, and it might be possible to have two full romances in tandem, but I have already accidentally spoiled myself twice looking for totally innocent non-cheating information so I am leery of digging around any more to confirm this.

Anyway, I flirted at least once with everyone for science, and when I started feeling weird and slightly guilty about all the special attention I sealed the deal with Peebee. It's all about the innuendo so pointedly strong it's awkward but also hot.

Zero-G with PeeBee was one of my favorite romance scenes. At first I thought by picking the "casual" route I'd locked out her romance, and I was sad, but I didn't, and now I'm happy. She is THE BEST, even if her facial animations are all over the place.

For a time, there was a brief second contender. I really like what the writers did with the Reyes friendship/romance. I liked his flirts, so I kept doing that and I really started to warm up to him. The reveal has an excellent one-two punch with two reaction decisions that are actually seem important. My Ryder saved Sloan, and thus nipped a budding romance with Reyes, and it kinda got to me, man. The writing for that whole bit is good. I wasn't entirely sure I'd locked him out or not (I didn't shoot him in the back, of course) so watched the romance on YouTube. Ryder asks Reyes why he didn't confide in her and he says, "I liked the way you looked at me."

what the FUCK why do I have all these weird confusing feels for this bad, bad man? oh my god BioWare what have you

So it's a great romance whether it works out or not IMO and I don't think BW has done one quite like that before. Ryder is forced to make a split-second decision and face an LI's Bad Action before they can actually start the romance, it seems like the decision point for accepting the actions of a Problematic Lover usually comes after the relationship has started. Since you can't kill Reyes I assume he'll show up later or in a future game. There was some speculation he was actually supposed to be a companion in the next game but who even knows where a rumor like that comes from.

So far, two decisions really stick out for me. The Sloan choice, which is optional, and the decision between the Salarian Pathfinder and the Krogan, which was such a deliciously loaded decision I honestly sat there and thought about it a good five minutes.

I don't really remember too many other choices to be honest. A lot of the reaction choices feel so fleeting and unimportant, usually "Am I an impulsive asshole in this one isolated event or not?" But IIRC the original trilogy had a lot of moments like that. There were a few times you could do something major, like shoot a person, but there were also a lot of times you could just be an asshole. Having the option was always refreshing, even if I didn't use it.