Author: MrBlueSky

Knockout City

Knockout City is an interesting dodgeball brawler that feels hobbled by it’s secondary systems and menus.

The core gameplay of Knockout City is pretty good. I’m not an expert, or even anywhere past the bronze silver rank, but at least for me it feels straightforward and easy to enjoy. Unfortunately the same can’t be said about the non-gameplay elements.

Knockout City is an action-brawler, themed around dodgeball. The game itself is free, but it contains microtransactions. I’ll talk more about those later. The short version is they’re all cosmetic. There are no gameplay advantages you can buy. Anyway, back to the actual game.

There are multiple game modes, including 1v1 and 3v3. I’m going to focus on the 3v3 mode for this writeup, since it’s the gamemode played in ranked.

Core Gameplay

A game of Knockout City consists of two teams playing to best of 3 rounds. Each round is first to 10 points. You get a point whenever an opposing player is knocked out. This can be from them falling off a ledge, being hit by an obstacle, or running out of health from being smacked with dodgeballs.

Dodgeballs are the heart of Knockout City. It is, after all, a dodgeball game. They’re scattered around the arena. You can run over them to pick them up, and tossing them requires you to charge. They’re not really physics projectiles. Instead, they lock onto the target you’re focused at, and will head toward that target. There are three throw patterns, a straight shot, a lob, and shot that can be curved around walls. These throws are executed by tapping the input keys as part of a double jump.

On the flip side, if you’re having a dodgeball thrown at you, all you need to do is hit right click right before it impacts you while facing the ball to catch it. You can then throw it back immediately if you want.

While it might seem like this would lead to an infinite Zelda boss fight situation of launching projectiles back and fourth forever, let me introduce the intensity mechanic. Intensity is built on a ball by readying a throw, and also when balls are caught. Higher intensity balls travel faster. The ball will move quicker and quicker with each toss and catch, preventing you from getting stuck n a loop.

There are a bunch of other clever mechanics as well. You and your teammate can’t find a dodgeball? You can roll up and get passed the ball by your teammate. The inputs for choosing throw type also function as a double jump. KO City keeps things fresh by randomly selecting a special dodgeball each map. These range from balls like the moonball, which lets you jump extra high while carrying it, to the pinball style multi-ball, which lets you carry three balls at once. You can also fake throw, pass to teammates with a single button, and just generally the movement feels very good.

I think that gives a decent overview of the game’s general vibe, but really the best way to understand Knockout City is to play it.

The Not-Gameplay

While we’re here, let’s talk about monetization. There’s a lot of stuff for sale in Knockout City, but none of it impacts actual gameplay so I don’t care. Yes, there’s a battle-pass. Yes, there are multiple forms of currency. Yes, there’s daily quests, and normal quests, and I guess there’s a difference?

Frankly, while Knockout City does have an interesting sort of holographic projection 1920’s art design, I don’t like the art. There’s character customization. I ended up making my character look like this. I think it accurately conveys how much I care about the game’s aesthetics.

None of this relates to my primary issues with Knockout City though. My primary issue with Knockout City is… the menus and the clutter. That probably sounds stupid, but let me explain.

Knockout City just feels like it has a massive amount of downtime. Lots of your time is spent not playing Knockout City. After launching the game after an update, the game has to boot, update again (no, I don’t know why), close, and be relaunched. I decided to time how long it would take me to get into a game, and it takes just under a minute for the game to start up, click through the in-game announcements, and finally get into the hub.

Except you can’t play from the hub, instead you need to open the menu back up, select the “Play” option, pick your match type, and actually queue. After queuing, the match actually starting can take about 30 seconds. You want to quit the game? The menu option sort of shows up greyed out, but you can still click it.

There’s a lot of dead space, and dead time that splits up all the actual action, and makes it feel like a bit of a chore to keep playing. Even the matches have a one minute timer before they even start looking for another match, and this can’t be skipped. I’d understand if this was a COD style game with loadouts or a continual lobby, but neither of those exist here.

Overall I like Knockout City, but the game doesn’t do itself any favors with any of the small features. I feel like it’s best enjoyed as a game where you get a stack of friends, and all just goof off. That way you have folks to talk to or chat with during the downtime.

Knockout City is free on Steam, and also probably Epic, but I’m not going to check.

Mobile Game Double Feature

I spend a lot of time on this blog tearing into things that are probably a work of passion and love. As such, it seems only fair that occasionally go the other direction, and spend some time tearing into things that were a work of “How much fucking money can we make selling lottery tickets to children?”

Maybe this approach won’t be great for optics. But if I can analyze indie games that have interesting mechanics buried under crude art or lackluster technical implementations, it seems only fair to look mobile games that have mechanics locked in Skinner boxes.

Mobile games are kinda like indie games, but there’s an entry fee of how much your kidneys would currently go for on the black market.

Starting with…

Knight’s Edge

There’s a GDC talk somewhere in Knight’s Edge. It might be about how they managed to add in a cash shop, battlepass, and a billion other pieces of bullshit. Maybe it’s art direction-related. They could make a “How To” guide on ripping off that Clash of Clans smooth minimalistic art style that somehow has less personality than a furry OC that’s just a Sonic recolor.

Or maybe they could do one about how their cool little 3v3 battle brawler ended up tied to all the bullshit above. Actually, I can do it for them.

Anyway, now that I’ve done their presentation for them, they can spend some time talking about their actual mechanics. Knight’s Edge is effectively a combo of micro-brawler and roguelike. Your team of 3 is pitted against another player’s team, and you’re thrown into a tiny little dungeon. Whichever team makes it to the end of the dungeon and kills the final boss first wins!

It’s a simple little idea, and there’s really only two other things to mention about it. First up is that at certain points, you can invade the enemy, and attempt to kill them or mess with them to slow them down. But at the same time, it’s risky because your team won’t have your DPS during the invasion. The second one is that whenever you destroy enemies, you get EXP. Get enough, and you’ll level up, which gives generic stats. More importantly, leveling up also lets you pick between various buffs, which are determined by the weapon you’re using. This gives the whole thing a sort of micro-roguelike vibe.

Before you say “That’s kind of a lousy screenshot,” know that I took it from their app store page. This isn’t on me.

That’s pretty much all I have to say about Knight’s Edge. Is there a cool idea here? Yes. But it can’t make it out from under the monetization. Also the controls sort of suck. Your actual agency to influence a given round often feels like playing a slot machine with the upgrade system.

But anyway, enough about Knight’s Edge. Let’s talk about…

Cross Duel

I’ve written about Yu-Gi-Oh mobile games before on this site. There are a surprising number of them. Their monetization ranges from “Something resembling reasonable” with Duel Links to “Its own category in a list of shitty business models” for Master Duel.

Anyway, Cross Duel manages to sit somewhere in the middle of trashy pricing, which is to say “Typical Gacha.” But we’re not here to talk about that. We’re here to talk about Cross Duel itself.

If you’re going “Wow, seems dynamic!” that’s because I stole this one from their app page, and Konami is better at marketing then whoever makes Knight’s Edge.

I think one of the most interesting things about Cross Duel is that it shares very little with Yu-Gi-Oh mechanically. While ideas like like Monster Cards and Trap Cards are present, it’s easy to see how Cross Duel could stand as a separate game, or even potentially as a legacy board game. The deckbuilding only allows 20 cards, and only 1 copy of any single card.

Cross Duel is a four player lane based game. Everyone draws a hand of cards, and simultaneously places them. At the end of the starting “Main Phase,” monsters move down their rows if they were in attack position, or stay put if they were in defense position.

While many of the terms sound similar to Yu-Gi-Oh, there are a lot of mechanical differences. For starters, while the game can end if one player manages to knock out 3 others, it also just ends after 8 rounds are played or if even a single player ends a round with zero life points remaining. In addition, everyone starts with a single “Special” card in their hand serves the role of a panic button or can be used to apply heavy pressure.

Those aren’t the only differences. Players gain life points when their monsters inflict damage to enemy players. Unlike normal Yu-Gi-Oh, this only happens when a monster hits an opponent directly, not when they just attack another attack position monster and win. Damage is also maintained between rounds, meaning that a powerful bomb card can quickly be chipped down by multiple weaker cards.

Anyway, the result of all these mechanical changes is that you can actually do decently in some games of Cross Duel without selling your kidneys. Often, the players with more powerful cards are forced to fight each other, instead of wasting resources to knock you out.

The game also has what seems like a fairly interesting system for playing around with card skills and abilities. Unfortunately, it’s locked behind the usual grind and bullshit, so I don’t have much to say about it other than it seems neat.

In Conclusion

I was going to close with “There’s no moral to today’s writeup.” But that’s wrong. There is a pretty clear moral: interesting game mechanics can be found everywhere. In every terrible prototype, or miserable whalebait app store installation, it’s possible to find something interesting or clever. Is worth going to try to find those mechanics? I mean, for most people? Probably not.

People who play games casually would rather just play good games. People who work on games would probably rather be making games than playing other designers’ terrible ones.

But I guess for me, someone I view as sitting in the middle, it can be interesting. Hell, at least it’s something to write about.

Space Lion

I like Space Lion. I liked it when I played it PAX East last year. I’ve liked it as I’ve played the various head to head and 3 player modes. I think it’s a really cool semi-asymmetric bluffing/placement board game. There’s one catch though: Space Lion doesn’t actually exist yet.

Space Lion is currently running its Kickstarter, and with 70 hours left, they are incredibly close to hitting their funding goal. They’re just under $15,000 of the $16,000 they need. So if anything about what I’m describing sounds cool, check out the Kickstarter here. And if you’re the sort of person who would never back a board game without playing it first, there’s a Tabletop Simulator version here, and a Tabletopia version here.

So yeah. I think it’s cool, and if you stop reading this article right now to just go play the game, or look at the Kickstarter, I’d consider that a win. But if you want to stick around, let me talk about why I like Space Lion.

Or just click this image to go straight to the Kickstarter.

I’m not gonna cover the full rules of the game, but I do want to go over them in brief, so I can explain why I like it. You start by picking an army, and then choosing a commander. Each army has 7 unit cards, with strength values of 0-6, and one of those units can be swapped out for an upgraded version. While it won’t have a higher strength value, it will have stronger abilities.

On the left, the default version. On the right, the upgraded commander.

At the start of each round, you fight across three battlefields. Each player takes a turn where they deploy up to four units, placing them face down onto one of the battlefields. Each battlefield starts with a base for each player on it. Once everyone has deployed their units, you flip up your cards and the first player to deploy chooses the order in which battle are fought. If you have less total strength than your opponents in any battlefield, your base on that battlefield takes a point of damage. Take two points total and that base is destroyed, meaning that any future losses you take there deal damage straight to your home base. Run out of health, and you lose. (And for anyone going “Wait wouldn’t the first player have an advantage?” don’t worry, the first player token switches between rounds.)

There’s one big thing here, though, that I haven’t covered, and that’s how your army actually works. You actually start the game with all 7 of your cards in your hand. There’s no randomness, or drawing from a deck. You have all the tools.

Instead, you’re limited by your deployment choices. If you deploy one card to a battlefield, even if you lose the fight, you’ll get that card back in hand. But if you deploy two or more, those cards are exhausted for the next round of placement. Trying to force a push with your 6 strength and 5 strength units in one lane means that next round your opponents know that there’s simply no way for a single facedown card you’ve played to be stronger than 5.

There’s a lot of I’ve left out here, but this tension of “Where do I commit to putting pressure?” and “What can I afford to give up for the future?” is why I like Space Lion. It’s not super rules dense either, which means you can focus on those choices, instead of trying to keep a million different systems in your head.

Also, like I mentioned above, this is a semi-asymmetric game. While each army has the same strength values, their actual playstyles and abilities vary quite heavily. The Leon Army can upgrade all of their units to the more powerful commander versions, and also has a nuke. The Castell Army can place degrees on various battlefields, giving them permanent bonus or adjustments in those arenas. The Enerhiya builds a pool of energy and other resources they can spend to trigger effects, but also to power up their giant mecha. And my personal favorite, the Vacuus function as a sort of twilight zone version of the other armies, with many of their units being warped or twisted versions of units from the other armies.

The normal marine moves itself around, but the corrupted marine moves your opponents’ units!

I think this is a decent, if brief, overview of Space Lion, and why I like it and want to see it as a fully physical game. Hopefully this article got you interested enough to check it out. If you’re looking for folks to play with, Solis Games has a Discord server here where you’d be able to find a play group. Maybe I’ll even see you there.

Disclaimer: I’m not not associated with Solis Game studios in any way. Kickstarter is a pledge platform, not a pre-order platform. Crowdfunding can be risky. I’ve backed the Kickstarter because I think it’s a cool game, and I want to see it be a full thing. Also hoping they’re not annoyed at me for ripping images from their game for this article.

Dead By Daylight: Hooked On You

Constraints are an interesting thing. For example, I am trying to write this review in 27 minutes. Why? Because I am under the constraint of this article going up tomorrow. And to do that, it needs to be done by midnight-ish.

Of course, that’s not the only constraint I’m working under at the moment. In all the time I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve tried to write about one new thing each week. It turns out that playing a new game every week to the point I feel comfortable talking about it for several paragraphs is difficult. Forget playing through something ‘fun,’ even finding something just ‘interesting’ can rough.

The interesting thing about constraints, though, is that they lead to making choices you otherwise might not make. In this case, that choice was playing a visual novel where you date serial killers.

Hooked On You is a spinoff dating sim based somewhat on the Dead By Daylight world. Dead By Daylight is a game about either being a murderer, or trying to escape murderers, and Hooked On You is a game about trying to make out with them. So yeah, there are some differences.

I’m not really a visual novel person, but I did find Hooked On You interesting enough to finish (at least through the one route for the character I decided to pursue). That playthrough took about 3 1/2 hours to finish, but it’s worth noting that time also included me reading every line out loud. There are a total of four characters, so presumably, I could go back and play through the routes for the other three.

As this is a visual novel, I won’t go heavily into the plot, because that sort of spoils the whole point of the game. Instead, I’ll just give my thoughts on the tone and my overall feelings on the game. Also, if you hate reading, you could just watch me play through it here.

Since I’m not really into this genre, I don’t have too much to compare it with. For me, the strongest parts of the story were the interactions between the various in-game killers, and also the few moments where the game takes itself seriously.

Unfortunately, while those moments aren’t ‘rare,’ the game spends a fair amount of time leaning on the fourth wall. It tries to be funny, poking fun at a number of visual novel tropes, including a limited art budget, and has a narrator who talks far too much.

For me, those were the weaker sections of the narrative. They tended to distract from the rest of the experience, and often felt forced to pad out run time. I’m not saying I expected the game to be serious. But swapping between “look how meta we are,” and “Which person do you want to get to know better?” never really clicked.

This is a fairly pure visual novel. Most of what you’ll be doing is reading text. There’s no real erotic content or art in the game, even if some things are heavily implied. The tone of the whole game is far more tongue in cheek, even for the only implied sex scene that I encountered. There was a single mini-game sequence that gets repeated several times, where you have to stop a circle as it goes over an object. It’s pretty much a simplified version of mainline Dead By Daylights skill checks.

So what’s my overall take? Well, Hooked On You is interesting, but I don’t think you’ll get too much out of it if you aren’t already into Dead By Daylight. The game is fairly short, with most options and decisions being pretty clearly telegraphed. The the reward for completing sections isn’t erotic art/text, just more details about characters. As it turns out I do like Dead By Daylight, and thus have at least a passing interest in its lore, so I got something out of this game.

If you don’t have any curiosity regarding Wraith, Hunter, Trapper, or Spirit, and what sort of people they are when NOT gutting folks like fish, there isn’t too much here for you. This is a tie-in product. Maybe it’s more than just a gag game, but it’s also not really much of a standalone item.

Universe 3 – A Book Review

Universe 3 has a very good story. Unfortunately, this is an anthology, so there are six others that are also present.

One of the nice things about owning this blog is that I can write about whatever I want. Obviously, the intention is to usually cover games and things related to them, but there is no rule saying I have to stick to that. Today we’re going to be reviewing Universe 3.

Why? Well, because when I went out kayaking this weekend, I found it in one of those miniature libraries near the dock, and pulled it out.

Universe 3’s tag line is “Seven Great Original Science Fiction Stories.” I would personally rewrite it to “One Great Original Science Fiction Story, and 6 Stories That Are Technically Science Fiction And Also In This Book.” This should give you a good sense of my feelings on the whole of this collection.

The Death of Doctor Island

The Death of Doctor Island by Gene Wolfe is the first story in the collection. It’s also the one I hate the most.

This is interesting because it’s rare that I actually “hate” any piece of art. I may dislike a game, get salty, be frustrated, or be disgusted by the content of something, but actual hate is rare.

In many ways, the Death of Doctor Island is perhaps a perfect example of the issues with science fiction. You can set your story in the far future, a distant planet, or mighty spaceship. But if your characters are the same sort of person as exists today, you might as well just set your story in a small town in Ohio, because it doesn’t matter.

In this vein, The Death of Doctor Island takes place in what is, for all intents and purposes, an insane asylum. It concerns three patients, and a super intelligent AI of some sort. By the end, one patient has killed two of the others. In one case, literally, in the other case, metaphorically. This is done somewhat at the behest/lead of the AI running the place. Frankly, it doesn’t matter, because understanding the sci-fi in this story isn’t necessary to explain my problem with it.

I used to read a lot more. One thing I read years ago that stuck with me was a book about how to write mystery/detective novels. It contained a warning. “Don’t write what you don’t know” it said. “Readers will smell a rat, and it will tear down the rest of your story.”

About half a decade ago, I took myself to an emergency room at a hospital because at the time I wanted to die. My intention was to get myself hospitalized, so that I couldn’t hurt myself. The doctor convinced me to attend a day program for the next several weeks instead of the full hospitalization I was expecting.

Those weeks were by no means easy or pleasant, but at no point during that time did I ever feel like the social workers and doctors I talked to were doing anything other than their best to help me and my fellow patients. The idea of someone creating an AI doctor to “help” patients, that actively allows them to harm and murder each other as part of the “treatment” is laughable.

As such, Wolfe’s portrayal of “Doctor Island” is so alien to my experience of mental health that it is a great big fat rat, sitting atop the other problems in the story. The story that is resolved when a male patient murders a suicidal female patient, thus teaching him that he doesn’t have to be scared of women, while the super intelligent AI goes “Yeah, seems good, she wanted to die anyway. Cool, now you’re cured and can leave.”

Also, apparently this shit won a Nebula award? Go fuck yourself Gene Wolfe, please stick to improving the Pringles machine.

The Ghost Writer

The Ghost Writer by Geo. Alec Effinger is fairly… meh. Frankly, I don’t have many complaints. It is somewhat up its own ass, but in terms of interesting sci-fi ideas, it’s passable. Would I recommend reading it? Not really, but at least it’s not sexist. And doesn’t have weird racist undertones. You know, in retrospect, compared to a lot of the rest of these, it’s pretty good!

Many Mansions

Many Mansions by Robert Silverburg is a time travel story. It’s one of those artsy short stories where everything is done in disconnected paragraphs, and you have to try to sort things back together.

Ultimately though, this is a short story about a wife and husband from the far off year of… 2006. They’re unhappy in their marriage, and the wife decides to go back in time and kill/fuck her husband’s father so that they never end up together. Or something. The story is a bit difficult to follow, but I don’t really care. Most of this story seems to be an excuse to talk about an 83 year old groping his son’s wife, and fantasizing about fucking her.

You know what I really appreciate about porn or fetish art? At least it never tries to pretend it’s something else. Some sci-fi could learn from that. You never see an artist drawing massive perfect feet right in the frame, and then pretend “Oh no, it’s critical to the character, see it’s a statement about walking.” Okay, Tarantino does that, but no one else.

You can skip this one unless you have a generational fucking kink. In which case, hey I’m not judging. I’m just judging Terry Carr for putting it into a book of what I thought was supposed to be science fiction.

Randy-Tandy Man

The Randy-Tandy Man by Ross Rocklynne in unique from every other story in this collection in that I actually like it. It is, in some ways, the least sci-fi of the stories in the book.

Yet if the role of science fiction is to uplift, to remind us what tomorrow can bring, to show the bright spots of the human spirit, and perhaps most importantly, remind us that there WILL be a future, it is the most sci-fi of any of the stories in this collection.

I re-read it while writing this paragraph, and it still brought a smile to my face. These 11 pages made the 180-page book worth it.

The World is a Sphere

On one hand, The World is a Sphere by Edgar Pangborn doesn’t quite piss me off as much as The Death of Doctor Island. On the other hand, one of the core ideas in play with this story is slavery based on what I think amounts to race.

Look. I’m a white, straight-ish Christian-raised dude who grew up in a very rich area. You want my opinions on slavery? Here they are: “It’s awful, and you should probably find someone else smarter than I am for more info.” You want my opinions on race? “I am the embodiment of every in-power social group that has controlled society for the last several thousand years. No amount of exposure, or reading memoirs, is ever going to have me truly understand what it means to be ‘not a white dude.’ I understand shit is unfair, but I am the worst equipped person to try to evaluate or explain that unfairness.”

To give credit where it’s due, the story briefly touches on one interesting idea: old “Cursed” (read: ancient tech which is now heretical) sorcerous objects are purified and then allowed for use. The rest of it is weird/creepy redone version of post-apocalyptic not-Rome.

Also, a women gets abused in it, again, for no reason.

The Legend of Cougar Lou Landis

The Legend of Cougar Lou Landis by Edward Bryant feels like it has the same problem as Many Mansion and Doctor Island. It’s a story that is told in the future, but might as well be set in present. Or maybe the problem is sexism. I’m not sure. Since I’m lazy, here’s a synopsis.

A young women gets a birthday present: “A smoking hot bod, and an apartment in the trendy part of town.” She goes on to live what I think would be described as a bohemian lifestyle. Then her parents are like “You should come home and be a good girl.” She doesn’t want to, so they get one of her husbands to sell her out, and capture her so they can subject her to 1000 years of awful memories, which they have collected for some reason.

Is there more to it? Yes. Do I care? No.

I want to re-iterate my earlier point: if you just want to write [Mindbreak][Reversal] doujins, you should just do that instead.

Free City Blues

Free City Blues by Gordon Eklund was the last story in the book. It’s about a psychic girl wandering around some future city, and making people she doesn’t like quack like ducks, or slither around like snakes.

Also there’s a bit where she sort of works as a prostitute, but not really, because she just hypnotizes people instead. Also a bit where the author feels it’s important to tell us that when she was 14, she had sex with the 33 year old dude who had raised her most of her life. And then he apologized and didn’t do it again, so it was fine, and also she could have stopped him if she wanted, so again it’s fine.

Y’know, it feels like there’s some sort of theme in these stories, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

In Conclusion

Perhaps I am being too harsh on Universe 3. It was published in 1973, just shy of 50 years ago, and over 20 years before I would even be born. Honestly, it’s a little weird to think that this heavily worn hardback I picked up on a whim is older than I am.

What has it seen in its 50 years of life? How many others have read its pages? Did it sit forgotten on a shelf, only to be donated to mini-library I plucked it from, or has it passed from hand to hand only to end in mine? Now there’s a story I’m curious about.

On the other hand, perhaps I am not too harsh. Most of these men are dead (none of these stories were written by women). Two remain, but they are in their late 80’s. These stories are almost all 50 years old. Only one remains any good. Of the remaining six, one is decent, one I hate, and the remaining 4 feel like they should have been published in a different collection.

You know, the sort of collection you read with a hand in your pants.

Because they’re porn.