Month: June 2020

Helltaker – Short and Sweet

This review is more in the form of a rambling recounting essay than anything else, but as per Gametrodon editorial standards (i.e. my own self enforced and designed standard that applies to myself), I’m gonna save some reading time. Helltaker is really neat, and it’s free. You can get it here. Now, back to the stories.

In Ye Olden Days, otherwise known as the 2000’s, I did not have a computer. Or to be more precise, I did not have a computer you could play games on. My family had a desktop mac, that eventually succumbed to the ravages of time, but even if the operating system had been compatible with PC gaming at the time (it wasn’t), I still wasn’t allowed to use it to play games.

Instead, any computer gaming I did at that point in time either took place at my friend’s house, or the library. And in both cases, I mostly ended up playing various weird random flash or other web browser games.

Looking back at it now, I suspect that most of the sites that I played on were primarily rips, and copies, stealing games off other sites, and then uploading them on their own. But at the time, I didn’t know this. All I really knew is that I could go to those websites, find something, and then just play it for hours.

When I see people talking about independent games these days, I don’t often hear people mention those early flash games and weird browser hybrids. Things like Minecraft, Binding of Issac, and Cave Story are pretty easy to point at. But for me, there was a massive amount of weird shit that I played that is more or less lost to time, and the fact that I can’t remember their names.

I say all of this as a lead-up to discussing Helltaker, because as a game it reminds me of those small, strange little flash games. It’s short, sweet, and polished, with a few hidden secrets. You won’t be playing it for years to come, and you’ll finish it in a day. But it sticks with you.

There’s not much point in talking extensively about Helltaker’s gameplay, as it’s a fairly simple/straightforward puzzle game where you need to get to the exit (Demon Girl) before you run out of moves. There’s also another part of the game that subverts that a bit, but most of your time in the game will be spent on the puzzles.

Also, Modeus best girl.

One of the demons from Helltaker.

BULLET ♥︎

Yes, the ♥︎ is part of the name. I honestly have to wonder how that will impact discoverability.

Ed Note: At time of writing, BULLET ♥︎ was live on Kickstarter. The version reviewed is an excellent implementation on Table Top Simulator. You can play that here. In addition, I ended up backing the game at the premium level, which is like 60 bucks, and the Kickstarter has been funded. As you might guess, I like the game, so if you’re coming in here expecting a totally non-biased opinion, you’re not gonna get it. I will include a few of my friends’ criticisms of the game, to try to provide a slightly more balanced view, but a neutral post this is not.

Ed Note 2: It’s been a few years hasn’t it? The Kickstarter was successfully fulfilled, and I got my copy. It’s pretty good! I’ve played a fair amount of the physical version at this point.

I like Bullet♥︎. For anyone wondering, yes, the heart is apparently part of the name. No, I don’t know why either. Lets just talk about the game shall we?

Bullet♥︎ as a game is intended to be modeled after shmup style games like Touhou or Jamestown. While it does this at least aesthetically, I’d say the actual gameplay sometimes ends up feeling closer to a fighter, but I’ll talk about that in a bit.

The game is played in 3 minute rounds. Each player has a board representing their character, with a grid of circles on it. At the start of a round, you have a bag full of incoming bullets with numbers and colors on them. Your goal is to not let any of these incoming bullets hit you by reaching the bottom of the grid.

While you have basically no ability to control the placement of individual bullets, you do have the ability to clear them off your board using patterns, and to move them around using actions. This is the meat of the game: trying to set up efficient patterns, and make decisions all while on a fairly hard time limit.

This of course brings up one of the first complexities with Bullet♥︎. The game requires players who are used to playing games. It can be very easy to mess up and misplace, and the fact that everyone is playing at once means that pausing to ask questions about how something works, or to consult the rulebook can’t really happen. This makes it easy to misplay. (It also makes it easy to cheat, but let’s be honest, if you’re playing board games with cheaters, you need new friends anyway.)

In addition, because of this simultaneous play, Bullet♥︎ doesn’t have a large amount of inherent player interaction, especially in multiplayer games. While we never tried out the boss rush mode, Bullet♥︎ is mostly categorized by silence and quiet. This may or may not sit well with your play group.

If this all sounds like I’m being harsh on Bullet♥︎, the thing is that despite this, I’ve convinced multiple people to play it with me. I’ve played the solo mode, something I have never done before for a board game, mostly because I wanted to get better. There are very few board games I want to be good at. I like winning, but I almost never try to get better at them. Bullet♥︎ is a game I want to be good at.

I called the game a fighter up above, and that “I want to be better” is why. There’s another reason, and it’s playing the game 1v1. In 1v1, Bullet stops being purely a chaotic frenzy, and instead turns into a slightly more balanced duel. I found myself trying to predict what sort of bullets would mess with my opponent, saving patterns and bullets to set up bigger attacking rounds, and generally playing the game more like a fighter than a puzzle game.

Overall, I really enjoy the game. It won’t be a match for everyone. The game doesn’t have a huge amount of interaction between players in a way that feels massively meaningful, and the rules can feel intimidating at first.

But Bullet♥︎ is fun, and really, that’s what matters to me.

The Ikai Demo

The Ikai Demo is fine, but currently it doesn’t do anything new. I’d like to see the full game do more with some of the potential it has regarding more interesting monsters.

God why did I download this.

Recently on Reddit, I saw a neat thread with a trailer for an Indie game called Ikai. It looked kinda neat, if a bit amateurish.

Then the devs linked to a demo that I downloaded and fucking god almighty, why did I do this.

If you want to play the demo in question, you can download it here. They also have a Steam page with a trailer and stuff on it here. (Side note: the designers don’t seem to speak English as a first language, and the Steam page and demo page have their wording a bit mangled. I didn’t see any evidence of this in the game itself; everything was well translated and clear.)

I do not like horror games. I do not play horror games. At one point in college while watching some friends play Alien: Isolation in the dark, the alien popped up, and freaked me out so much that I jumped up directly into the bed above, and smacked my head pretty hard.

I mention this because I’m not sure I’m the right person to review Ikai, even in this demo form. I do not want to seal the evil in this mask. I do not want to walk down the haunted hallway. I do not want to be in this temple whatsoever.

However, I feel obligated to play the demo, and try to finish it, because, a lot of effort clearly went into it.

So, having now finished the demo, here are my thoughts.

I really like the world that Ikai is trying to build, and I’m very curious about the story. If nothing else, it’s the sort of game I’d go read the wiki for, because I want know how things resolve.

Regarding the actual gameplay in the trailer, there’s not much here that hasn’t been done before. Open doors, search for things, draw some patterns, don’t get caught by the monster. This brings me to one of my biggest issues with the demo, the monster itself.

I’d call the monster in the demo “Fine” because there are a few things about it that are pretty great, and few things that are pretty “Meh.” For starters, this isn’t Alien: Isolation. The monster doesn’t seem super smart, and I had a hard time figuring out how it “Worked” mechanically, since as far as I could tell, it just strangled me to death if I got to close/if it saw me. The death animation was fine, if a little jump-scary, but I suspect since I had turned off audio at this point, if I’d been paying more attention I would have heard it. In another instance, the monster seemed to just spawn directly in front of me. I think this one was a bug.

Looking at the actual monster itself though, at least while it was standing still, kinda deflates it. Some of the animations are a bit janky. While in motion, or lurking from room to room, it radiates a sort of menace, but the second it stands still, or you get a good chance to look at it, the tension falls apart. In addition, while its design is really nice, its actual feel is pretty bland. It’s a large hulking thing that moves from room to room, looking for you, and kills you if it finds you. For how much the rest of the game plays into the setting, I would have liked to see the demo use some more interesting Yokai, rather then just having a “Big Scary Thing.” From a gameplay mechanics standpoint, I would have liked to have this thing be a bit more interesting, or have some sort of gimmick.

Overall, Ikai is fine, but I didn’t see anything in the demo outside of the setting and tone of the world that made it stand out from other similar sorts of games. Given the effort they’ve put into creating a non-standard world, I’d like to see them play with some of the gameplay mechanics they’ve set themselves up with. Creatures that can move from mirror to mirror, monsters that disguise themselves as objects, some more “fun” mechanics than what the demo has. Yokai are incredibly diverse, and if the game turns out to just be “Amnesia, but set in Japan”, I feel like they’ll have really squandered a lot of the potential design space to make some really interesting monsters.