Work has been incredibly busy lately. As such, this review, much like Skulls of Sedlec, is going to be incredibly compact.
Skulls of Sedlec is an 18-card pattern building, open drafting, and set collection game. Two of those three phrases I didn’t know until I went and looked them up on Board Game Geek, and I somewhat disagree with the third. It also has 12 expansions of which I will be reviewing zero. After all, the point of a Button Shy game is to make a micro-game that fits into a wallet, not one that you can go band for band with.
The full rules for Skulls of Sedlec are less than a page long, so I’m not going to spend too much time on the rules. The short version is that cards are divided up into piles, and on each player’s turn, that player takes one of three actions. You can:
Flip two cards in piles face up, then take one of them into your hand
Take a single face-up card from a pile into your hand
Put a single card from your hand into a stack/tableau.
Board Game Geek calls this game a set collection game, but I disagree. After all, most cards don’t score based on being part of a set. Instead, they score based on their relation to other cards in the pyramid. Some, like the lovers do need to be in a set to score, but many like royals or clergy have their own unique scoring rules.
Overall, I quite enjoyed Skulls of Sedlec. It’s a very compact game, and I’m not sure I’d get more than 2-3 more plays out of it. But it’s quick enough that I feel I could teach it pretty easily, even to non-board gamers. I’ve seen a fair number of people note that they didn’t consider it worth playing without the expansions, but I found it quite enjoyable, even as a standalone.
Ed Note: This is less review and more fugue state rant. It has been a very long week. Better writeups to come in the future when I have my brain back.
I found Spiral Knights while desperately searching for literally anything I could write about this week with even an ounce of passion. Work has been long, and while there are games I would like to talk about, six plus hours of meetings per day will evaporate anything even resembling a coherent thought.
Spiral Knights is interesting for a lot of different reasons, none of which have an ounce to do with the the actual gameplay. That’s because the gameplay is effectively multiplayer PvE 2d Zelda, grafted to a gear grinder. And even that oversells it a bit. It does have some minor puzzle elements, but these are rare.
What it has going for it is a fairly smooth multiplayer experience, allowing up to 4 players to join a party, and travel through its levels, which are called the clockworks. As already mentioned, those levels are somewhat random, and if the whole party dies, you lose all the stuff you got.
Still, this is a F2P game. You can pay to win in Spiral Knights harder than you can in most other games. You can buy resurrections and skip the grind by buying gear. You can even spend premium currency to buy non-premium currency off a sort of in-game real money trading house.
No, Spiral Knights is interesting because it’s somehow still around. For reference, the earliest achievement I have for this game is from god damn two-thousand fucking eleven. You know, back when I still had dreams, and my parents were together, and Obama was president. All good things, except maybe the second one.
In what universe does a 10+ year gap between achievements make sense?
Is it a sleeper hit? I don’t think so. Steam Stats has the game at about 150 players per day, and only 75 at low points. This means that for a non-zero portion of the time I spent playing it over the last few hours, I’ve been more than 1% of the online player base.
And yet, in an era where mobile games announce their closing and opening dates in the same tweet, this cutesy grindathon with less strategic and mechanical depth than Puzzle and Dragons has lived over a decade.
I don’t get it.
On the other hand, calling this a live-service game is inaccurate. What even appears to be the last actual patch was over 4 years ago. This is a shambling monstrosity, likely kept alive by… well, not even a skeleton crew, probably just a single skeleton. I wouldn’t be surprised if the main servers are running off something in a basement somewhere.
The forums are full of complaints and disappointment. The most lucid posts note that the game is effectively an archive of a past project. There are complaints about performance, and DMCA strikes the company running the game has levied against player-made mods.
On the other hand, Spiral Knights was fascinating to me 10 years ago. It was the game where I figured out how to arbitrage, trading TF2 items for Spiral Knights energy, and then back. It was also one of very few games that would actually run on the Mac I had back then.
Staring at Spiral Knights is a sort of fever dream: a game that should be dead, and yet still has my character, and their items, years after I’ve touched it. It is so old that I turned off my ad-blocker on the wiki, which is still up, and could still see the rest of the page.
I don’t actually recommend playing Spiral Knights, unless you want a sort of time machine to the state of F2P games in 2011-2016. It’s grindy as hell, and exists in that sort of space where everyone was trying to figure out how to make the best skinner box possible, but without having really greased the gears down yet.
It’s time for another event writeup! This time it was Winter Weirdness, one of the board game days put on Green Mountain Gamers (if you’re in Vermont or New Hampshire, and looking for stuff to do, maybe click that link). As always, I’ll be quickly recapping the day, what I played, and what I thought about it.
Morning
After arriving, we started out with a quick game of Tiger and Dragon. I’ve written a ton about Tiger and Dragon already, and it was my favorite board game of last year, so there’s not too much to recap there.
After that icebreaker, we cracked open a friend’s copy of Parks that he found at a yard sale for $5. This turned out to be an incredible deal, because Parks is great. It’s amazingly well produced, with beautiful tokens and art. But more importantly, it’s actually fun. The main mechanism is moving down an action track that you can’t go back on, while trying to get enough resources to visit parks and score points. I might do a bigger writeup on this game at some point, but I really enjoyed playing Parks.
I then played Glory to Rome. It’s still very good, and we used one of the expansions, perhaps incorrectly, but we used it nonetheless. This was probably my fifth or so game of Glory to Rome, and I really felt like it was starting to click, or at least starting to click enough that my engine turned on and outscored everyone else to win.
Witness the power of a ton of docks.
After that it was time for…
Lunch
Someone mentioned that there was a very good grilled cheese sandwich place nearby, so we went over there. The Meltdown did have very good sandwiches, with a caveat.
When I think grilled cheese, I think buying them from a really sketchy guy in a parking lot at 1:00 AM in college for like 8 bucks, because he’s the only source of food in a billion miles. That is my expected grilled cheese experience.
And while I have no meaningful thoughts on food itself (this is game blog, not a food blog) I do think paying a net of $25 for a single grilled cheese sandwich with fries is bit… much.
Great food, would probably pack a sandwich next time.
Afternoon
Heading back to the event, I cracked open a copy of Epic: Guardians of Gowana that I’d picked up recently, and played of game that. Despite taking almost of my life in damage on turn 1, I was pleasantly surprised by Epic. It’s a cool little expandable card game, with a neat resource mechanic where all cards cost either 1 or 0 gold to play, and each player gets a max of one gold each turn. It worked much better than I was expecting.
Then I joined some other folks for a game of Everdell. For various reasons that have nothing to do with the game itself, I’m unlikely to ever purchase, or have any friends who own a copy of Everdell unless I somehow manage to get it secondhand. That said, I’ve enjoyed it when I’ve played it before, so I wanted to give it a second shot. Everdell is a cute little tableau builder/worker placement game, and I had a good enough time that I’d probably want to give it yet another shot.
After that, I managed to get in a game of Space Lion, one of the games I’d brought to the event. I got my copy at PAX, and I’ve been trying grind out some more games before I do a secondary writeup on it. I did write about it pre-Kickstarter, but now that I’ve got a full copy, the game has been changed quite a bit. There’s a bunch of improvements to graphic design, along with some structural changes that make for a better play experience, but do remove some elements I liked from the… hmm. Prototype version? Beta? Not quite sure what to call it.
Finally, with it getting late, and the friend I got a ride with showing no signs of finishing up his game of Ark Nova, I sat down to play Three Sisters. Well, I planned to, but unfortunately we didn’t quite have time to finish the game out. I’ll try to get a full game in at some point, but I liked what I did play.
Wrap-Up
Overall, great time. There are two more events coming up, and I’m currently planning to be at both of them. Hopefully if you’re in the Vermont or New hampshire area, I’ll see you there, and if not, well, I’m planning to be at Granite Game Summit, PAX East and PAX Unplugged this year as well.
Figuring out the genre for Shadows Over Loathing is a bit weird. On the one hand, you could call it a RPG. There’s turn based combat, lots of items to pick up and equip, and party and inventory management. A lot of the hallmarks of the genre.
You could also play through the entire game without engaging with any of those systems, and instead just solving weird puzzles and picking the right dialogue options in conversation and interaction. Meaning that if you wanted to, you could just play it as an adventure game.
So, y’know. To each their own I guess?
A lot of Shadows Over Loathing’s strength is in its writing. Will you find it funny? Well, here’s a very simple test for whether. This is the company logo of Asymmetric, the folks who make the game:
Yes, that’s the joke.
If this made you laugh, or at least groan, you’ll probably enjoy yourself. Otherwise you may have a mixed experience.
There’s also one other test that will quickly filter out would-be players: how do you feel about a game that looks like this?
Yes, they’re very well-done stick figures drawings, but they’re still stick figure drawings.
Now that we’ve filtered out anyone who simply wouldn’t have a good time, let’s talk about the actual game.
Gameplay Loop
I don’t have game that I can easily map Shadows Over Loathing to in terms of its gameplay loop. Generally, you wander around looking for something to progress the current state of the main quest, while doing side quests and discovering esoteric bullshit along the way.
While this might just sound like stumbling along, it’s fun because of how much there is to see or do, and how weird it is. Fix a tiny lighthouse. Pull off a criminal heist with a bunch of elderly citizens. Do jobs for the mafia. Collect hats.
All of this is set against a backdrop of a main story that does a surprisingly good job of actually delivering on some of its loose 1920’s Lovecraft horror themes. One of the big issues with the pop-culturalization of cosmic horror is that Cthulhu has gone from the unwaking dreamer who will end the world to Godzilla with an octopus head.
Shadows Over Loathing is much more subtle, and given that it can’t really do horror with its art style, it aims for ‘discomforting’ instead. Sure, there are tentacles and shadow blobs, but there are also unwinding spaces that can’t exist and trees that call for a woodsman to deliver the axe. For every dozen fishmen, there’s one eternal baseball game that can never be called.
That said, Shadows Over Loathing was at its weakest and most frustrating for me when it got a bit too into the weeds of an adventure game. If there’s a single path through a situation, it can be quite frustrating if you’re unable to spot it. And because this game often runs on dream logic, especially during curse sequences, it can be easy to get stuck.
Running into Colonel Sanders as a vampire is funny the first time. But after the 5th time it’s just kind of annoying, especially when it’s the exact same dialogue tree.
In addition, while interesting, the overall narrative does feel a little rushed at the end. While the game is chock full of fun things to see and do, it felt like it was about 30% shorter than I was expecting in terms of the build up for the finale.
Combat
There’s one big system I haven’t talked about yet, and that’s the combat and leveling system. Shadows Over Loathing has a pretty unique take on character classes. They give you a sort of basic skill tree. But on top of that, you learn most combat abilities and a wide range of other perks from finding books. In addition, pretty much everything gives you experience points to spend.
Combat itself is a bit of a mishmash. It’s turn based, but you have action points to use for certain secondary actions, and you can use a given number per round in addition to that. Enemies can also be tabbed to see who and what they’re attacking, meaning the game is more of a puzzle to be solved than a DPS check or gear check.
Also, there are a lot of items, and switching them up is often necessary. How many items, you ask? Well, this is a screen of half of my hats.
And while we’re speaking about inventory, here’s a list of all my shoes.
I should note: shoes don’t appear to have a mechanical impact on the game, they just change your walk animation and play weird sound effects based on what you have equipped. But they’re still given an entire inventory slot. This fact is never noted or elaborated on in game once, and it’s a pretty good example of the tone of the humor in Shadows Over Loathing.
Final Verdict
I generally liked Shadows Over Loathing. I don’t strongly recommend it or dislike it. It’s weirdly novel, and I found it quite funny and clever, but it wasn’t earthshattering. It was a much better use of my time than Knuckle Sandwich to be sure. I do want to give it credit for a fantastic Steam Deck implementation.
If you want a funny and strange RPG/Adventure Game hybrid that will only require looking at a walkthrough 3-4 times, then I’d say Shadows Over Loathing might be right up your alley. It’s $23 on Steam and for the 15-20 hours I played, that feels about right.
Ed Note: This week’s writeup is a bit of an experiment and possibly the most unhinged thing I’ve ever written. Would love to hear your thoughts.
Part 1: Dinosaurs
I had a cousin growing up who really liked dinosaurs. I only ever saw him during whole family vacations, and one time he made everyone watch an incredibly stupid TV show about what if dinosaurs could travel to present day or something. It was dumb, and when it was over I was glad, because it meant that I no longer had to care about giant stupid lizards. Then I could go back to talking about cool things, like Pokémon.
These family vacations took place on the beach, and involved long walks up and down the coast. We spent the walks looking for cool animals to put in a bucket of water for a bit, and then put back in the ocean. I also spent a lot of that time talking about how cool Pokémon were, and which one was the best. That’s a really easy question to answer because it’s Kyogre.
This is the best Pokémon and if you disagree you can eat shit.
I have wanted a Kyogre since I was like 9. I am now 29 and the thought of being best friends with a giant whalefish that I could ride through the waves and across the ocean still fills me with sort of indescribable joy.
Which is to say, I have had the fantasy of having my own real life Pokémon for a very long time.
Chapter 2: Feet Pics
The wonderful thing about the internet is that if there is something you really want, and there are enough other people who also really want it, someone will eventually make it and upload it.
The less wonderful part of the internet is that goes in reverse.
Feet pics are probably the most benign version of this. I don’t get off on nicely manicured toes, but enough people do. So if you’re attractive, and know how to file those nails, you can open an onlyfans, snap a few shots below the ankles, and pay your mortgage. It’s the invisible foot of the free market. In modern society there is no god other than money.
Credit to PaladinGalahad. This image contains a link to their deviant art, and if you click on it, you know exactly what you’re getting in to.
In the best case scenario, your kink is widespread enough to either become mainstream (like breasts) or at least popular enough that it gets its own Quentin Tarantino.
Behold, the Patron Saint of Foot People
Chapter 3: Pokémon Games vs Pokémon Franchise
There’s a deep dive in dissecting the Pokémon games, but the short version is that they have been selling the exact same formula for 25 years, and it is a good formula. Well, not good. Passable. These games are passable JRPGs carried by their combat mechanics and let down by virtually everything else. Story, art, progression: they’re all mediocre in Pokémon and sustained by turn-based combat mechanics that are old enough to drink.
The franchise has never changed, but its audience wants more. Pokémon has never once delivered on the desires of its audience. I think the best example of this is Pokémon Go. The game is a pedometer strapped to a GPS with pictures of Pokémon doodled on it. It could have solved world obesity if it wasn’t managed by a company with the dexterity of a walrus on horse tranquilizers.
Behold: A billion dollar game.
The point is: in the same way that some people really like dinosaurs or feet pics, other people really like Pokemon.
Chapter 4: Enter the Challenger
The well of discussion related to Palworld has been poisoned. The arable land it sits on has been burned. The earth has been salted. Because on our internet it’s more profitable be a pundit with quick takes than engage in being a reasonable human being.
Everyone discussing Palworld falls into one of two camps: they are either ready to suck the game’s developers off, or they are trying to find the devs’ addresses so they can send them a mailbomb. There is not a lot of middle ground.
Palworld is the incarnation of the open world Pokémon game that a subsection of Pokémon fans have wanted for 20 years. It is a game a game where you can capture a mammoth the size of a school bus. It is a game where you can hatch and ride a falcon.
Palworld materializes a fantasy that some audiences have had for longer than they’ve dreamed of threesomes, or having a stable job and being a homeowner. This is ultimately what Palworld offers. If that is not a dream you have chased for a majority of your life, you are likely to be disappointed.
What you’ll find is an open world crafting sim with a monster collection mechanic, and more bugs than bug type creatures. So far I’ve seen an infinite duplication glitch, a grappling hook that doubles personal lag switch, more pop-in than a pop-up book, enemies and friendly units unable to path, and a full on multiplayer game save file with over 25 game hours just get deleted.
This game is buggy as hell, and I’ve played 40 hours of it. And I want to play more.
Palworld sold 6 million copies because it satisfies, even poorly, a dream I think many of us have had for years. It is at best serviceable and at worst barely functional.
The game fulfills some of my deepest fantasies, but not even I would not argue that it is a good game. It is a functional game. Everything about it works and is fine.
I love Dumud so much.
But where other games ask me to do dumb shit like mine rocks, this game lets me mine rocks with a giant fish. Somehow that is enough to make me play 8 hours straight after work without eating.
In another game, if an NPC I controlled got stuck on a cliff, and starved because it couldn’t find it’s way down, I would lose my shit. Here I just shrug and carry them back to the food bowl.
Seriously, how did he even get up here.
Palworld doesn’t feel meaningfully innovative in almost anyway. Even its creature designs feel uninspired, and the rest of the game feels like it was built out of assets purchased from the Unreal marketplace. It’s a bizarre mish-mash of aesthetics and theming, and has some really weird design.
And none of that matters, because it has a fat fish boy and I love him.
