Author: MrBlueSky

PAX East 2023 – Day 2

Day 2 of PAX East 2023 is over, and I am completely fried. Before I stumble into bed though, I’ll be doing another quick recap! Mostly just focusing on what I saw and played.

Let’s start with the big highlight: Mina the Hollower.

It’s from Yacht Club Games, the folks who made Shovel Knight, which I also love.

From what I played, it feels like a combination of the best mechanics of 2D Zelda and a sprinkling of Soulslike, specifically Bloodborne in some ways. So far it is hands down the best thing I’ve seen at PAX East this year. The movement and combat is fantastic and fun, and while I can’t comment too much on on story/art/music, they all seemed great from what I saw.

I did get to chat with one of the devs as I was playing, and he mentioned that the game likely won’t be out this here, but hopefully will be out next year. So I have a bit to wait before we get to play the whole thing.

Anyway, just in case I wasn’t clear enough, let me say it one more time. Mina the Hollower is currently the best thing I’ve seen at PAX East 2023, and it might turn out to be the best game there.

Rest of the Day

Anyway, after that I rolled over to the Unpub tables, and played some stuff there. First game was Magician’s Challenge by James Eastband, who doesn’t have a Twitter or website I can link to. Players try to draw props to complete various sets to perform magic tricks, while messing with their opponents via sneak cards. It’s effectively Yahtzee with cards, and it was pretty fun.

This was followed by Wormwood. It’s a 2-4 player (prebuilt?) deck game, in the spirit of something like Netrunner or Magic’s Commander format. Where it differs is that it’s designed to be played with 4 players, and there’s no elimination. Instead, you win by collecting 10 of a certain type of card, meaning that even if you fall behind, you stay in the game. I only played a two player game, but it was pretty neat, even if I did feel a little overwhelmed at the start.

Finally, I played The Armory a second time after seeing it at Granite State Games festival. There have been been a few tweaks, reducing the lulls quite a bit, and it’s neat to see how it’s shaping up.

Then it was back to roaming the show floor for a bit. I tried out Blackout Protocol, a top down team based shooter in the spirit of something like Alien Swarm. Me and the other two folks I was playing with got absolutely bodied by the zombies.

The big thing I saw this afternoon, though, was Cobalt Core, a deckbuilding game about piloting a spaceship, in the vein of something like Slay the Spire. I quite liked what I saw, but it was a 12 minute demo. It’s a bit hard to draw long term conclusions. Still, there was enough there, and enough differences to make it feel distinct from Slay the Spire, especially with the positioning and row mechanics.

Finally, with the day rounding down, I went and got a healthy dinner.

Just kidding. I went, ate half of a friend’s sandwich, and sat down for some more games. I played Gudnak, and just dipped after a little bit. It’s a positional card game, but it didn’t really grab me.

This was followed up by Dice Miner. It’s a set collection and engine builder game that was quite fun. Players take turns drafting dice off the top of a mountain, score points, and than accumulate a increasing horde of dice to use to get more points in the next round. I liked it.

The last game I played was Hero: Tales of the Tomes. I demoed this game at PAX Unplugged about four months ago. Overall, I can’t say I love it. It feels like it’s trying to give a Commander-in-a-box experience. The problem is that there’s a lot randomness in card draw. There’s also first player advantage, and not much incentive to be the aggressive player. When one player dropped to leave, we all decided to just sort of abandon the game, and call it a night.

Everything Else – AKA Rapid Fire Round

Broombot Battlegrounds: Play as a “Legally Distinct Non-Roomba robots,” and compete in a small battle arenas sucking up dust. Played a little bit, but controls were inconsistent and didn’t quite grab me.
Star Salvager: Match falling blocks into your ship to power your weapons and fight off aliens Space Invaders style. Controls felt a bit wonky, but it does have a demo, so if that sounds neat, check it out.
No Longer Human: Side scrolling spectacle fighter. Currently looks like it’s an very early alpha, and I broke the demo build while playing it.

Overall thoughts

Solid second day. Mina the Hollower could be my game of the year for 2024, so at least I have that to look forward to. I’m planning to take it easy tomorrow. As always, thanks for reading, and I’ll be back to regularly scheduled writeups until April. Until then, I have two days of PAX left, and I need to sleep.

PAX East 2023 – Day 1

PAX East 2023 day 1 is over! Which means I still have three days left. This post is going up on what will technically be day 2 of PAX East, so it’s going to be a bit ramshackle. Still I want to get my thoughts down on paper.

I showed up a bit after 10:00 instead of waiting around too much this year, and just wandered the show floor for a bit.

First game I demoed was Worn Wanderers by Cleromancy Games. They’d launched their Kickstarter 20 or so minutes before I showed up, and it’s blazed past its funding goal now, which is awesome. I wouldn’t say that I loved the game from what I played, but I think making a game that you can play with wearable enamel pins is a really cool design space.

Next demo was Xenotilt. I’ve written about Demon’s Tilt, and this is another game from the same creator, who was more than happy to entertain my questions about various mechanics in the game, and give me some answers. Xenotilt does seem like it’s going to solve some of my complaints about Demon’s Tilt, so I’m excited to see how it ends up.

A bit more wandering, and I found Begone Beast by Tandemi. It’s pretty clearly in an early stage (there are quite a few things that need some polish) but the core movement is fun, even if the combat isn’t quite there yet. In addition, the final boss is a giant blob made out of hands, and it’s terrifying and I love it. I’m gonna be keeping an eye on this one. I’m not sure if it’s something special yet, but it could be something very fun.

Then there was Bomb Sworders. I didn’t play a huge amount, and kind of just got instantly killed each round. No strong feelings either way on this one.

There’s a augmented reality game called Sigil. It’s kind of hard to demo an augmented reality game, but I like that genre. I’m always up for more stuff like Pokemon Go, and I’m curious to see how Sigil compares to something like Orna.

There’s a few other things that happened, but don’t have enough to fill a whole paragraph, so let’s cover those!

I got crushed at Pocket Paragons by the folks at the Solis Game Studio booth. I played Brew, and lost by 8 points. There was a cool multiplayer Vampire Survivors styled game called Extremely Powerful Capybaras, and that was pretty neat.

I’ve also managed to sign up for a press session for Mina the Hollower (Yacht Club Games, the folks who made Shovel Knight, yay!) and then somehow misplaced the one business card I needed to hold onto (I’m an idiot). Fingers crossed that all works out. Bought some stuff, but no new games so nothing to say on that.

All in all, a solid day one of PAX East 2023. And now I am going to sleep.

Dungeons of Mandom VIII

Dungeons of Mandom VIII is compact bluffing board game. Personally I like it quite a lot, though that may be because I won when I played. It’s designed by Antoine Bauza and I WAS GAME, and published by Oink Games.

There are no other games in the Dungeons of Mandom series, but that doesn’t stop me from imaging what they could look like. In all seriousness though, the game is entirely family friendly. Unlike me.

The goal of Dungeons of Mandom VIII is to to be either the last adventurer standing, or the first adventurer to complete a dungeon twice. However, this is a bluffing game, not a dungeon crawler.

This is first obvious in hero selection. Instead of each player selecting a character, the group as a whole has a single hero between them. Heroes come with their equipment, but because this is the 8th Dungeon of Mandom, that equipment is likely going to be stripped off, in order to prove how manly you are.

There’s flavor in the equipment. Most of the characters have some form of HP boosting equipment, usually a piece of armor, or a shield. However, for the Princess class, this equipment takes the role of a Suitor and a Chaperone giving the fun implication of them being used as meat shields.

The E in fiancé stands for éxpendable

Equipment and hero selection aside though, the meat of the game is building the dungeon! On a player’s turn, they can choose to either pass and drop from the rotation, or to build out the dungeon deck. To build the dungeon deck, they draw a card from a the monster deck, and then make a second choice. They can add it facedown to the dungeon, or they can remove a piece of equipment from the hero, and not add the card they just drew to the dungeon.

The monster deck is made up of a bunch of different monsters, including some special monsters. Monsters each have a number associated with them, which is linked to how much damage they do. There are more copies of the weaker monsters, and only a single copy of some of the stronger monsters, such as the Litch, Demon, and Dragon.

Cool Monster Club – Not pictured: the dragon who’s just too cool.

This is core tension of Dungeons of Mandom VIII. “Do I think that with the remaining equipment, based on what I’ve seen my fellow players do, I can beat the dungeon as it currently stands, or do I need to pull back?” I played one game where another player chose to remove the equipment that hero needed to beat the dragon, and I knew that I’d added the dragon to the dungeon, so I chose to pass.

When one player takes an action, and every player after them passes, it’s finally time for that player to venture into the dungeon, and prove their worth! Or more likely, get stabbed in the face by the Litch for 6 damage and then beaten by goblins.

The exploring player reveals cards from the top of the dungeon deck one by one, either defeating them, or taking damage equal to their value if they don’t have some way to defeat them. If they get through card in the deck, they beat the dungeon, and get a treasure card! If they don’t, they take a hit. When a player takes two hits, they lose and can’t play anymore. However, if a player gets two treasure tokens, they win.

If I have any gripes with the game, it’s that I don’t love the elimination component. I get why it has to be there. Without it, there would never be any reason to not push your luck. But it sucks that you can end up in a position where you don’t get to play anymore.

If the game sounds interesting, you can find it from Oink Games here.

Top 3 Games To Watch

With Steam Next Fest completed, it seems like as good a time as any to talk about demos I played. My personal favorites were actually pretty different from what ended up on the most popular list!

Super Raft Boat Together describes itself as a multiplayer roguelike shooter. Technically, Super Raft Boat already exists, and the new part here is just the “together.” But I never played the original, so for me, the whole thing is new.

It’s a fun little multiplayer roguelike. Is it hugely innovative? No. Did I have fun playing it? Yes.

I’m going to fail to describe Inkbound correctly, but I still want to try, so here we go. Inkbound is a multiplayer roguelike. Its primary innovation is a turn based, real time combat.

Here’s how it works. In combat, all human players have an individual pool of action points, and can use that pool to move and take actions independent of other human players. These actions are resolved in real time, as they are taken. When all humans mark their turn as finished, all the enemy NPC’s take their turn.

Then the process repeats.

It’s a really cool system, and there are a bunch of other neat ideas and innovations here, that I don’t quite have time to cover or describe. The short version is “Inkbound might have something really special mechanically.” I’m very excited to see the finished game.

Deceive Inc is very interesting. I think there’s a non-zero chance I end up sucking at or hating the finished version of this product. That said, I played over 8 hours of the game, and I wanted to play more when the demo ended.

It’s a blend-in game that at least initially appears to be in the style of something like Perfect Heist 2. You’re a secret agent infiltrating a map, trying to ultimately collect a briefcase, and make your escape.

What the game doesn’t really tell you is that, in some ways, it’s more of a skill based shooter than a blend-in/deduction game. The time to kill is very high, and many guns’ mechanics are so intricate that they have a skill ceiling that I didn’t so much as scratch during the time I spent playing.

There are two opposing gameplay directions that the developers could take the game’s mechanics. Neither is a bad choice, but they represent two very different games. One is to lean heavily into the blending in, cautious stealth, and sneaking approach of something like Perfect Heist 2. The other (and current) direction is to lean into the gunplay/combat-based mechanics. This would result in a game that is closer to something like Hunt:Showdown. I don’t know how to recommend this game, without knowing the direction it will take.

The other reason I’m a bit hesitant on Deceive Inc is that I’m not sure how long the game will be up. Everything about it screams “Live Service” game. The history of interesting, but ultimately (financial) failures of live service games is documented pretty well, even just on this blog.

Quantum League. Knockout City. Darwin Project. Okay, I never did a writeup on that last one, but the point still stands. These were all interesting, creative games, with cool mechanics.

Now they’re all dead, and it’s not because they were bad games. It’s because their entire business model was based on getting a large playerbase and a level of revenue they never achieved.

Pokémon Scarlet

When I was in highschool, I had to write essays. These essays were graded on a rubric with a certain percentage of points for various categories. One of these categories was what could be considered writing “technical skills.” Things like grammar, sentence construction, and spelling mistakes as a whole contributed to about 20% of the essay’s grade.

As a result, I would never get higher than 80%, because regardless of how good any of my points, ideas, or concepts were, my writing was a complete technical failure.

In that respect, my high school essays have a lot in common with Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.

The Worst Performing Switch Game I’ve Ever Seen

Pokémon Violet’s miserable technical performance is omnipresent across the entire game. Miserable pop-in, levels of detail so low that you can see polygons getting added onto character models, poor framerates, and slowdown are present in virtual every area of the game. Almost every object is also subject to animation-frame culling as well.

My personal breaking point for this was the game’s credit sequence. This game is so unbelievably scuffed from a technical level that it fails to smoothly display scrolling text on a screen.

I’m not going to harp on the technical problems of Violet after this paragraph, except for when they become relevant to other portions of the game. Games are made up of multiple components, and worked on by multiple teams.

Some teams did their job very well. Some of these teams may have done the best they could under extreme time pressure. Or maybe they’re just incompetent! I don’t know which one it was. My conclusion is the same.

Despite liking and enjoying Pokémon Violet, the game’s technical issues are so widely spread that I just can’t recommend the game.

Core Mechanics

I did a large writeup on Pokémon as a series a while back. If you’re not familiar with Pokémon games at all, I suggest you read that writeup before the next bit. It included a overview of structure the games follow, along with general coverage of the series’ mechanics, and some suggestions for where a new player could start.

Scarlet and Violet mark the series transition to a full open world from the previous linear routes and narrative path. Instead, the world is shaped like a large donut. Difficulty scales as you travel up either side of the donut, with the game’s finale taking place in the center.

In Legends: Arceus, the battle and catching system was very simple. In Scarlet and Violet, those systems have been rolled back to their more complex previous forms, and are still very good and very compelling. There’s no more tall grass. Instead Pokémon spawn into the world in packs, and running into them will start a battle.

Node-Based Story Structure

The story structure is also fairly different. Because of the game’s open world nature, there’s no single series of events, or path that’s really required. Instead, each story event is sort of a self-contained mini-event. There are three main routes for these events. Two routes have 5 events, and the gym route has 8.

I think these story nodes can be completed in pretty much any order. I’m not sure that’s the case, though, because I did all the ones that gave me travel upgrades first. It certainly didn’t feel like there was a required order to me.

That said, these events don’t dynamically scale. I left what could be considered the 2nd or 3rd gym fight to do last one. There’s something amusing about showing up with a team of level 60 Pokémon for a gym battle against level 25s. But it’s also a little disappointing that the game doesn’t utilize the nonlinear story structure to give different players a different experience based on the order they complete story battles.

Also, before I switch topics, the games story arcs are surprisingly good. From a purely story standpoint, Scarlet might be my favorite Pokémon game. Is it the greatest story ever? No, but it’s memorable and unique.

Thematically Vast, Visually Bland

The Paldea region is one of the areas where the game feels like it’s been held back by the technology. There’s an early moment where a character is supposed to be introducing the stunning majesty of the Paldea region, and we get treated to a set of panning views of… various green-grey plains.

It’s sort of sad-funny that sets the tone for what we’ll see in the rest of the game.

The game has a variety of areas, but outside of Pokémon variety, the areas never felt different. Looking back, I remember dry desserts, a large cave, some icy mountains, ocean-side towns, and a coal mine, but they all felt identical. The only area that left any sort of impact was a large cave that I wandered into under leveled, swiftly got pulped, and then booked it out of.

The Pokémon Cave Experience

I think the biggest issue is that Pokémon games have often been light on visuals. Instead, the tone of the zones was sold by the Pokémon themselves. Caves full of Zubats spring to mind. Lunatone and Solrock in Meteor Falls, or Skarmory in the ash covered zones.

However, because of how Pokémon spawning works, and the fact that it’s possible to ignore pretty much every encounter I didn’t want to fight, most areas ended up feeling empty. I could rush through them, and interact with nothing but story events if I so chose.

Some thoughts that don’t fit anywhere else

Pokémon is a broad franchise, and has its own subtypes of players just like other complicated and broad games. As such, there are some things I can’t comment on. I don’t know how well the game is balanced and plays for multiplayer activities, such as competitive tourneys, or the end-game raids. I also didn’t do much with the breeding post-game/shiny hunting.

Many of the gyms in this game have their own mini-game or side mode associated with them. One of the more standout moments for me was a game mode where you’re supposed to collect Sunflora, and bring them back to a central area. This puzzle was very clearly designed before being tested, because it required collecting such a large number of Sunflora, that they would lag the game, and pop-in if you ran too far ahead of them. The town with this gym challenge also had a windmill that had ridiculous animation culling. Both of these combined to make the whole area incredibly immersion-breaking.

The new Pokémon designs generally felt quite good, as did much of the general world design and writing. The Jiggypuff with sharp teeth that screams and bites you is one of my favorites.

Again, though, it’s things like the carefully crafted in-world advertisements and logos that end up feeling like they’re in sharp contrast to the generally poor technical quality of the rest of the game.

Friendly reminder that the Fairy Pokémon type is based off old-english fairies, and those things were public menaces.

The vengeful fairy with a giant hammer that just beats the shit out of you is also great.

In Conclusion

Pokémon Scarlet is a 7/10, but it gets that score, much like my high school English papers, for a sheer lack of technical polish.

If this was an indie game, I’d excuse a lot of these issues. But this is the largest media franchise in the world. Yes, Scarlet makes makes changes in story, structure, and world, but they’re all hindered by those technical issues.

There have been some rumors that Nintendo/Gamefreak are working on patches to improve performance, but I’m not holding my breath. And I’m not betting on these issues being fixed for the next game either.

Did I have fun? Yes! Would I play it again? Probably. Will I buy the next entry in the franchise? In the immortal words of Penny Arcade’s Tycho Brahe, “I am a consumer whore.”

Of course I will.

But I don’t recommend you buy it.