What Did We Play Yesterday?

Yōdanji is a turn-based coffee-break roguelike that is probably best described as minimalist. You can play as a handful of yokai (monsters that represent different classes) and your goal is to proceed as far as you can in the dungeon while trapping and unlocking other yokai. The game is "old school" in all the unfun ways, from the basic skill-driven turn-based combat and punishing difficulty to the graphic sameness to the looping, unchanging soundtrack. You start with 3 or so yokai and additional ones can be unlocked by finding scrolls in yokai hunt mode. I picked this up because I was annoyed by the sheer volume of indie-roguelite-just-so-we-can-avoid-actual-level-design games on Switch and wanted a Real Roguelike, warts and all. Well, I guess got what I asked for (?), so there's that.

I don't want to completely dump on Yōdanji. It sets out to do a specific thing, and it accomplishes that, but it's a very narrow, very specific thing. I played a fair bit and made 0 progress on unlocking yokai, and there's not enough variety of gameplay or visuals to keep the game interesting to me. I think it would benefit greatly from any kind graphic and sound additions, but ultimately that's just slapping a bit of window-dressing on incredibly simple, RNG-heavy mechanics. A certain subset of players will enjoy this game, but they are a niche within a niche, I think.

If I had this game on my phone I would probably play it while waiting for appointments and whatnot, but since it's on Switch it has to compete with all the other games in my library. It's another mobile-to-Switch port that ultimately works better in the mobile ecosystem, where it is competing with other mobile games for your attention.

Trouble Witches Origin is a horizontal doujin cute 'em up bullet hell well worth your time. The Steam version appears to be an enhanced version of an Xbox port (Trouble Witches NEO!) of the enhanced arcade version (Trouble Witches AC) of the original doujin, or... whatever, I'm not getting paid for this, ok? Basically, this is the fanciest version. I was really happy to find this on Steam because the Xbox 360 Live version is no longer available.

Characters are equipped with a standard shot and a bullet slowdown/freezing magic circle with the potential to cancel bullets. If you destroy an enemy while the bullets are caught in the circle the bullets turn to coins, creating an interesting risk-reward mechanic. Additionally, the player can purchase up to 3 magic cards that temporarily change the shot type. These can be purchased from floating shops that periodically appear, along with 1-UPs and meter boosts and other power-ups. In true cute 'em up fashion, the cuteness is a sinister trap and it is in fact hard as balls.

I have made it my business to play whatever cute 'em ups I can find and I have found very few that I like. TWO is right up there with Harmful Park, and maybe almost edges it out, and is easily my favorite of the witch-themed cute 'em ups. TWO has a ton of content and the gameplay is really smooth. Raku Raku mode is genuinely easy [to a point], so if you just want to blow shit up without consequences have fun with that, there are 3 additional difficulty levels, plus multiple versions of the game (arcade, challenge, story) as well as Trouble Witches AC, the enhanced arcade version. Episode 2 is apparently under development, but considering the original doujin came out in 2007 I'm not holding my breath on that one. Additional DLC characters are available, including characters like Cotton (another cute 'em up mascot), which was a new one for me, as I think I've only ever seen shmup DLC for extra modes or soundtracks.

Since obtaining Harmful Park can be a bit of a process I heartily recommend this as a CEU genre standard.

The above mouthful is the terribly-renamed M2 port of Thunder Force IV for Sega Mega Drive (henceforth referred to as TF4), considered by some to be the best installment in the Thunder Force series and one of the better shmups on the console. I have never played an M2 port before, but they are highly regarded in the STG community and TF4 has been quite enjoyable for me.

TF4 is a horizontal shooter with a wide-open vertical area, allowing for excellent parallax. The player can accumulate 5 different weapons (reverse shot, bombs, etc.), including two starter weapons that can be upgraded, shields. The player can switch between weapons at will, and some are essential for targeting enemies behind, above, and below. At first glance there are some superficial similarities to horizontal shooters like Blazing Star, but TF4 offers a much wider playfield.

The first four levels can be played in any order. The pixel art is beautiful, and some of the areas have interesting effects (a sand storm in the desert level, for instance). As with other games of this type, the pixel art color schemes can sometimes create visual confusion between projectiles and the background.

M2 has helpfully added a "Kids Mode" and if you think calling it "Kids Mode" is going to keep me from going there you're dead wrong!~ This mode allows you to retain your weapons after death (but not through credits) which is helpful, but this thing has 10 levels and I haven't come close to beating it.

I really like the open space in this one. I've become somewhat choosy about these the classic shmup ports on Switch because there are so many available and TF4 is a solid addition to my collection. It's just fun to play. I don't know how else to sell it to you.

First, a blog gripe. A few months ago I decided to make a concerted effort to post screenshots with my game reviews. This is a noble thing, however, it is just enough extra effort to make gameblogging actual work. If I played exclusively on PC the process would be shorter, but with Switch I have to a) remember to take screenshot during Actual Gameplay which I never do so I usually have to go back to a game after the fact just to get a damn screenshot, b) post to birdsite account, c) copy monitor screenshot to image editing software so I can save a local copy since Twitter doesn't let me just dl for some stupid reason, d) upload to Dreamwidth, e) locate correct thumbnail size in Dreamwidth image manager, f) copypasta url to post, g) preview post several times to ensure placement doesn't break the post. Actually posting my review backlog before the end of the year is more important so I GUESS THATs THAt.

Now, bizns. The Stardew Valley multiplayer update released on Switch last week and naturally I was all over that. It renewed interest in my megafarm, which I'd gotten lukewarm about. There are a few quality of life updates worth mentioning and some new community events.

The big feature, multiplayer, is only available locally or to players who subscribe to Nintendo Online. I actually don't subscribe yet, so I'll have to do that. I honestly don't know that I'll ever get around to it, the hosting player controls the instance and I'm very bad about scheduling my game time to accommodate other players. The player cottages are cute and cheap to build and you can decorate them, so I put a few on my property for the hell of it.

The two big QOL is the auto-grabber and pots. SO, prior to this having sheep, cows, and goats was a bit of an asswhip because each one had to be individually milked and shorn. My playstyle is I don't do anything I find tedious (I don't even purchase animals until I upgrade to barns and coops with auto-feeders), so I just didn't raise those animals. This update introduces a $25,000 auto-grabber which automatically harvests from the animals daily. It must be placed inside the barn but it has 36 item slots. Suddenly, these animals now work with my playstyle, and I have modified my farm plan to accommodate them.

Pots are a early-stage QOL. They allow a plant to be grown anywhere, including indoors during any season. The pots cannot be watered by sprinkler, which I tested immediately to see if they could be used to expand an automated greenhouse. So pots are really only useful for players who don't have a greenhouse yet but want to grow things indoors and are willing to manually water them, notably gemfruits, ancient seeds, and probably some of the berries. At least one player figured out you can start a second greenhouse inside the bus tunnel using pots. I will never be that dedicated.

There are a lot of decorative updates, notably seasonal ornamentals and paintings, and plants and art are the two main things I collect so yay for me.

I have uncovered two new community events. The first is the Night Market, which is an 3-day night festival where you can buy special items and catch new fish and the vibe compliments Stardew Valley's arcane brand of weirdness. I did not expect some of the offerings, but I'm not complaining. [A screenshot should go here, OH WELL] The second I won't mention here, and Concerned Ape is similarly mum in his notes, but I'm pretty jazzed about being able to upgrade the community in this fashion and look forward to collecting the rather substantial amount required. It's nice to have a big money-sink item that's not a "for the farmer who has everything" type of item.

In Dewey news, Concerned Ape reports he is working on a second game in the same universe, no deets yet, and he also confirmed they will continue to roll out content updates for SDV. I look forward to watching this game continue to grow.

The Long Dark is an unforgiving survival sandbox with a complicated Early Access history that pits the player against the frigid Candadian wilds and extremely aggressive wolves (and moose, and a bear). I'm not entirely sure what I think of it. I bought this game for my partner, who enjoyed the looting/exploring aspects of Fortnite and wanted to play a dedicated survival game, but it has been on my list for some time.

There is a story mode and a survival mode. The Long Dark is not a survival simulator (the game warns us that the techniques used in-game don't transfer to the real world) but it's the most realistic survival game I've played. Survival mode randomly drops the player in a chosen map, sometimes near shelter, sometimes in the middle of a snow storm, with a random inventory, and its up to you to figure out how to navigate unfamiliar territory and scavenge for items. There is crafting and hunting and limited harvesting (mushrooms and rosehips, for instance, though they do not provide sustenance) and lots of looting and LOTS of hiding, waiting, and wishing you hadn't wasted that last bit of lantern fuel. It's a meditative and lonely experience, and at times, there's a certain futility to it. There is no way to chart and hike your way out of the forest to civilization. One literal misstep and you can suffer sprains or broken limbs, which will hasten your demise. There is no end game, the only goal is to survive as long as possible. A certain type of player will thrive in this environment, but I expect many will find it overbearing.

The developers have a vision for their wolves, and their aggressiveness and persistence is intentional. Every wolf encounter is a potential game over and the player is often at their mercy. As a result, gameplay sometimes devolves in unfun holding patterns, like when wolves trap you in a house or car and you are forced to wait until they go away, squandering precious resources in the process. This especially sucks when you're "fully rested" and cannot sleep the time away, or if you end up having to squander precious daylight hours. At night, wolves are even more aggressive. In the real world one would often have the benefit of moonlight reflected on snow, but in this game, the night is simply dark, and long, and very, very dangerous.

There is a version of survival mode that removes enemy wildlife, so the player's only enemies are the environment and their own hunger and thirst. This doesn't really work for me either. It's such a bleak, empty world, and surviving the wolves at least provides some sense of purpose. Can I get a mode that's somewhere in-between? No, because the developers have a vision for their wolves, and this evidently is it.

So there it is, I don't like or dislike the Long Dark. It's intriguing in many ways, but the bleakness really starts to get to me after a while. It's often interesting, but rarely fun. I, a Dedicated Pro Gamer, play games for all kinds of experiences, but I chiefly play to relax and blow off steam and, frankly, have brief respite from the misery of human existence. The Long Dark isn't an escape for me; in fact, I need to play other games to escape from it. In it's own way it's just a little too real, man.