Category: Minigames

SNKRX

SNKRX is neat, but not revolutionary.

If I had to boil down my thoughts on SNKRX, it would probably look something like this: It’s a neat little game, but its actual moment to moment gameplay is somewhat lacking, and its upgrade progression structure that it borrowed from the Auto Chess genre doesn’t map super well to its mechanics. On the other hand, it was also $3, and I’ve spent more than that on food that’s made me sick. So I feel like I got my money’s worth.

I learned about SNKRX several months ago, and then proceeded to forget about it until last weekend, when I saw an unfinished article about it in the drafts folder. This wasn’t my article, because someone else promised me they’d write me an article, and then didn’t, because they’re preparing to “Follow their dreams and move to another country for school.” And since that effort took most of their time, they didn’t really have the space to finish their article.

Which is fine. I’m not upset or anything.

So after reading what they’d written, I decided to go grab SNKRX myself. While I’ve seen people describe it as like the game Snake, I’d say it’s closer to Geometry wars. Each level places you in a large square, while waves of enemies spawn in and try to kill you. There are no level layouts other than the square, and there are no obstacles. Occasionally variant enemies spawn in, and I’m pretty sure they start showing up based on what level you’re on, but I didn’t pay enough attention to be sure.

Every few levels, instead of being presented with waves, you’ll be tasked with killing a single larger enemy/boss while waves of normal enemies spawn in.

These are the two level types in the game.

After you beat a level, you go to the buy screen, where you purchase more units for your snake/train.

A Brief Side Note: If you’ve ever played an Auto Chess style game, such as Underlords, Team Fight Tactics, or the original Dota 2 mod, SNKRX pretty much completely copies the upgrade mechanics from those games, and you can skip this next bit.

Here’s how it works: After each round, you’re given gold based on two factors. First is the gold that you earned during the round, from killing enemy units, and also from enemies dropping it, based on various combos and perks. The second main way is interesting: You get up to 5 gold per round based on how much gold you have saved up.

You spend this gold on either upgrading your items, (which you get a choice of after specific rounds) or buying more units for your train. After each round, you’re given a selection of three units to buy. You can buy as many or as few of them as you want, and you can also spend gold to get a new pool of three units.

Units have a few separate factors. They have one or more classes, they have an ability, and they can also be upgraded. More on upgrades in a moment. Classes function as a sort of set bonus style mechanic. For example, when you have 3 Rogues, all Rogues get a chance to deal 4x damage with each attack. When you have 6, that chance increases. Most of these bonuses are threshold based, requiring you to hit some number of units before they come into play, and usually play to those units’ strengths. For example, Rogues’ fast attack speed and multiple projectiles benefit from the damage multiplier.

Some of these set bonuses are more interesting than others. The Infestor class bonus buffs up the mini-units that many Infestors summon while the Curse class bonus increases the number of enemies that can be cursed. On the other hand, the Warrior class bonus just decreases enemy defenses.

So let’s go back to talking about those upgrades, shall we? Upgrading items is straightforward. You just spend money, and after buying enough levels, they upgrade.

Upgrading units is a bit more convoluted.

In order to upgrade a unit, you need to collect 2 copies of the unit. So to upgrade a level 1 Blade to level 2, you need 2 more level 1 Blades. To upgrade a level 2 Blade to level 3, you need 2 more level 2 Blades.

And this brings me to my first big problem with the game: Unit recruitment.

See, while the game’s upgrade structure is almost an exact copy of the Auto Chess structure, the game doesn’t allow you to use multiple copies of the same unit at once in your train. What this means is that where in Autochess, picking up your second level 2 of a unit can be a small, but useful power spike, in SNKRX, that gold is effectively gone until you can actually finish the upgrade. Again, because you can’t use more then one a unit in your lineup, if you roll a unit in your buy pool that you already use at level 3, it’s effectively a dead slot.

So yeah. Despite the interesting between level progression, the actual gameplay itself only has two types of levels, and few types of enemies, meaning that it’s not super satisfying to play, and the post round progression isn’t the most satisfying thing in the world. I don’t really hate or love SNKRX, but it’s not a terrible use of $3.

SNKRX is on Steam, and also apparently, this Github page?

Disgaea 4 Complete+

God I love this game.

Ed Note: Images for this writeup are from a combo of the Disgaea 4 Complete press kit, and my own save file.

Disgaea 4 is, somewhat strangely enough, the first Disgaea game I played. Specifically, Disgaea 4 Complete+ for the Switch. As far as I can tell, the “Complete” part just means that they opted to include all of the additional DLC and scenarios that were added to the game after its initial release in… 2011.

10 years ago.

Okay, so we might be a teensy bit late on this one.

One of the best things about Disgaea is the ability to customize your hub world and move all the NPC’s you actually care about next to each other.

In any case, like the other games, Disgaea 4 primarily takes place in the Netherworld. The main focus of the story is Valvatorez, a previously incredibly powerful vampire and also arguably total idiot, who never breaks promises he makes. One of these promises involved an agreement to not consume human blood ever. Pretty much all the other side characters are great as well, including Fenrich, Valvatorez’s second in command, who feels like an inverse version of the traitorous vizier trope, and Fuka, a elementary school child who dies, goes to hell, and then proceeds to determinator her way through the Netherworld by refusing to accept her death.

Valvatorez, the vampire who doesn’t drink blood, and Fenrich, his loyal servant who would really like it if maybe he would again.

These games can be kinda weird.

The general arc of the game is Valvatorez’s staging of a coup against the current President of Hell, in an attempt to fix the problems the Netherworld is having, including lack of energy, an inability to handle the influx of guilty souls, and just general failure to… well, be hell.

Behold, the… grid that I don’t remember the name of.

Mechanically, this comes in with the Corrupternment and building placement map. As you advance through the game, you’ll unlock political titles, buildings, and other elements that give benefits to units placed within their area of effects on this grid. You can also pass bills and policies to boost yourself, your rate of EXP gain, unlock new units, make friends, and also just shake down senators for cash.

The general structure of the rest of the game is fairly straightforward, with both the Item World and Chara World in Disgaea 4 following a similar structure of being procedurally generated combat levels where you need to clear all enemies, with a few additional minor changes between them. The game also has Magichange, the ability to turn monster characters into weapons temporarily for your other characters to use (don’t worry, they get better), and monster fusion, which lets you fuse monsters into larger versions of themselves with better range and damage.

Is it really a Disgaea game if the stats aren’t measured in hundred thousands?

Overall, Disgaea 4 is currently my favorite of the games story-wise, if not mechanically. While the game’s art style and mechanics haven’t aged terribly, many of the UI elements and menus do feel a bit outdated at this point, and some of the connectivity features, like fights and pirate ship leaderboards, feel a bit dead. Despite all of this, though, the fights are still interesting, the grind is nice and grindy, and story and characters are still funny.

Okay, so maybe I’ve played a bit too much of this.

You can get Disgaea 4 Complete+ here for Switch, and here for PC if you’re interested.

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout

Because Mario Party isn’t rage inducing enough on it’s own.

If you’ve seen Twitch at all recently, you’ve probably seen Fall Guys. If you haven’t, allow me to summarize it for you: imagine a battle royale game, but instead shooting each other death as teenagers, you’re all happy jelly bean blobs competing in Mario Party style mini-games to be the last person standing.

It’s simple, cute, and amusing, even if it isn’t particularly deep. Some of the mini-games are fun. Some of the mini-games are not as fun (looking at you Perfect Match). Some look like complete bullshit, but actually have some strategy like Tip Tap Toe.

Most the games are at least enjoyable, and the fun primarily comes from watching other players be launched, whacked, and otherwise smacked around, and also by being a winner. There are a few game modes that are legitimately great, like Hex-A-Gone, a multi level Tron style mode, where the last person to fall all the way to the bottom wins. Most of the team mini-games, like Soccer, Egg Collection, and Ball Rolling are also enjoyable.

When I was first writing this post, I actually had a bit where I was going to go into the worse game modes, and tear them apart a bit, but then a funny thing happened: see, with the exception of Perfect Match, most of the game modes are pretty good when the servers aren’t massively lagging. One particularly awful game, Tail Tag, is actually really fun when things like hit detection and stuff actually work.

I think Fall Guys is a ton of fun, and worth playing, but I have a few caveats to that statement. First off, I suspect there is a large section of individuals who just won’t have a good time. If you already hate stuff like Mario Party, or WarioWare, or just battle royale style games in general, you might wanna pass on this one.

Secondly, Fall Guys is a lot more fun with a friend. If you can get even one other person to play with, each game becomes less of a solo deathmatch, and more of a fun mess as you work against and root for each other. I had a lot of fun with the game on my own, but it’s undeniable that the joy of the game is dampened when every other character you beat or get beaten by is anonymous.

Fall Guys is $20 on Steam, and while it does have micros, they’re purely cosmetic, and not for anything you can’t get anyway.

Fall Guys will not cause you to look inward. It will not grant you peace, or force you to confront deep seated fears. But it’s fun. And when you are launched into space, or toppled into the void right as you jump because some rando grabbed you for absolutely no good fucking reason, it will give you something to be angry about other then the unmitigated nightmare that has been 2020.