Chico and the Magic Orchards DX

Chico is fine. This is damning with faint praise, but those who have been reading for a while will know that I can damn a whole lot harder than that. It’s just that while playing, I never really found myself delighted or despairing, even if I did get a bit frustrated at times.

Chico and the Magic Orchards DX is a sort of top-down light puzzle game. It’s also quite a short game. There are 4 worlds and a final world, with each world consisting of two levels and a boss. There’s also some post-game content that I just wasn’t interested in playing.

The primary mechanic is Chico’s giant walnut, which can be bounced into switches to turn them on. It also… hmm. Switches aren’t the only thing the walnut is good for, but it’s the only one I can think of right now. Many of the levels involve finding a way to bring the walnut with you.

The level design is serviceable. It’s using that “introduce, expand, mastery” pattern that anyone who has ever tried to make a decent level in Mario Maker is familiar with. There’s a fair number of level gimmicks, most of which are mildly interesting, and one that completely sucks. At the same time, they also didn’t stick around long enough for me to hate them, except a desert world with graphics that made me feel a bit nauseous.

The bosses are the highlights of the levels, both visually and mechanically, and they present more of a challenge. It’s a shame, then, that they can also feel a bit janky at times. Sometimes they effectively incorporating a the level’s core mechanic, and sometimes (looking at you, giant turtle) they make me want to get out as quickly as possible.

Overall

I was at a classical music concert recently, and listening I found myself sort of bored. Not because the music was bad or uninteresting, but because I sort of associate classical music with the background on NPR, or filler. I have sort of similar feelings about Chico and the Magic Orchards.

It’s perfectly serviceable as a video game, the sort of thing that would earn you an B+ if you turned it in as a class project. It has a solid understanding of how to introduce mechanics, develop and push them. But it just lacks the spark it needs to take off like rocket, or even to turn it into a dumpster-fire. There’s nothing bad enough about it to really make it worth complaining about, but there’s nothing good enough about it either.

In that sense, it’s a bit unfair. One of the worst games I’ve played this year was Age of Darkness, and I still think about it, because of how badly it failed with every part of its core mechanics. But I am thinking about it! Chico did pretty much everything right, but outside of the desert mirage mechanic which made me feel physically ill, never really required me to think about it.

Chico and the Magic Orchards DX was $4.99, which feels about right. It costs a fair amount less than the sandwich I had yesterday, and I’d say the two equally contributed to my day.

The Hiatus

Okay, so it’s been two Mondays without a post, and it’s looking like a third is coming rapidly. So I’m just gonna come out and do this now.

I’m putting the blog on a temporary hiatus. Hopefully things will be back to their normal self around mid or end of July. Perhaps I will get friends to come in and do some guest posts. I’m not sure.

I don’t know if I have regular readers, but on the off chance I do, I want to put this out their to explain, and quickly explain why.

For starters, it’s certainly not for lack of games. This has already been an incredible year. I haven’t finished my Blue Prince writeup, I haven’t even started playing Expedition 33, or Deltrarune chapters 3-4. There’s also Monster Train 2, and demos for stuff like Abyssus and Jump Ship. I also could write about High Tide, or any of the other board games I’ve been playing, or the Magic Final Fantasy set, and what it means for the futures of that games.

But….

My workload for my full time job is requiring more focus from me then usual, the sort of off-the-clock energy that I’d usually put into games, rants, and other sorts of things.

I probably could smash out a few weeks of content if I wanted. I can see that I have mostly finished drafts on a few demos, a Age of Darkness write up, and I could technically put a Blue Prince write up out.

But I don’t really want to write things purely for the sake of tossing out words onto a web page.

So until future notice, consider this site on a temporary hiatus. Hopefully it won’t become a permanent one.

Elden Ring: NIGHTREIGN

Correction: An earlier version of this writeup confused Malenia, Blade of Miquella, Goddess of Rot with Melania, First Lady, Wife of Trump. This has been fixed. Melania Trump is not an Elden Ring boss, or a boss in any other FromSoftware game.

When I do writeups on games, I try to “beat” the game. This might mean seeing the credits roll. It might mean playing all that an early access game has to offer.

In this case, though, it means “playing enough of the game that I don’t really want to play anymore,” at just about 11 hours. Is this a fair overview of Nightreign?

Yes. Yes, it is, because I paid $40 for this shit.

If I’d been given a review copy, I might try harder. I gave them my money and I had a mostly bad time, and I have no intention of choking down another 20 hours to get kills on every remaining Nightlord.

I beat Elden Ring without looking anything up. I don’t need to prove shit to myself when it comes to FromSoft games at this point. I know I can do it.

I just don’t want to.

Anyway, Elden Ring: Nightreign. This is a remarkably simple game to explain. You and up to two other players are dropped into a procedurally populated Elden Ring-style map. You then get to run around picking up loot, killing enemies and bosses for souls and loot, leveling up, and then fighting a big boss. All this takes place while the Fortnite ring closes in, eventually forcing you into a confrontation with a larger mini-boss. The cycle repeats, and then you fight a Nightlord—a mega boss. If you beat the Nightlord, you win the run.

There’s like eight of these guys or something. I bet there’s a secret one once you kill them all. Again, I don’t really care. I’ve actually found the ones I’ve done so far to be unfun fights, frankly.

The game has plenty more mechanics and systems. I don’t think they’re worth talking about. There’s only one real question you need to answer to ask yourself to determine if you will like Nightreign. Here it is:

Do you want to try to play Elden Ring very fast?

If the answer is yes, you will probably like Nightreign. If the answer is no, you will not.

Why Nightreign Doesn’t Work For Me

Of the two FromSoftware games I’ve played prior to this one, I quite liked them. I’m talking about Bloodborne and Elden Ring.

The thing is, Nightreign doesn’t do any of things that made me like those games. Let’s go through them, shall we?

The world does not inspire.

Nightreign just re-uses the visual language of Elden Ring, even when it isn’t literally re-using the assets. Its procedural placement and focus on speed of execution means that there is never a chance for reflection and observation. Don’t bother looking at these ruins or castle. Don’t bother looking at details. Just rush the boss because we are on a timer.

Worst salty runbacks ever.

FromSoftware likes to make bosses that are very difficult to beat when you don’t know their movesets. In their single player RPG’s, this is offset by getting dozens of chances in a row to fight them over and over again.

I’m of the opinion there’s a single core design element that makes FromSoftware games work: if a million monkeys on typewriters will create the work of Shakespeare, me—a single monkey on a controller—can defeat Malenia.

Forward progress is inevitable.

That is not the case here. If you wipe on a Nightlord, you need to do another 40 minute run in order to fight them again.

Weapons

When I play FromSoftware games, I tend to find a single weapon or two I like, and use it for as much of the run as feasibly possible. But that’s not how Roguelikes work.

However, since Nightreign is using the Elden Ring combat “model,” it’s basically asking you to relearn new sets and types of weapons every run, and to be adaptable. The thing is, I don’t find most of the weapons fun. And on its own, Elden Ring never had many weapons I found aspirational anyway.

Just give me back my trick weapons from Bloodborne.

Progression is boring

When I say this, I’m not talking about the type of progression you’re probably thinking of. For me, a large portion of the motivating factor in playing FromSoftware games, especially when I hit a wall, is a combination of spite and curiosity. I want to beat the current challenge, and I want to see what sort of things come next. One of my primary memories of Elden Ring is a continual shock and awe at the size of the world, and its variety and scale.

Nightreign never delivers on any of this. I skipped the cutscenes because I want to play with my friends; it’s unclear to me if there’s any real meaning to the Nightlords; the world itself is procedural placement, making everything feel samey; and asset re-use means I’ve seen almost all of these enemies and settings.

Clunky-ass grindingly slow combat is the bit of FromSoftware games that I put up with in order to get weird lore, intense exploration, alien enemies, and visually impressive moments. It’s not the part I find fun.

Bonus Round of Gripes

This is Monster Hunter/Nintendo levels of shit multiplayer system design. In other FromSoftware games, the weird shit around invasions, goofy PVP, and all that garbage is tolerable, because those are primarily single player games. But this is an exclusively multiplayer game. So why is there no voice chat? No text chat? Literally why is there no reasonable way to communicate in a game that demands communication?

Emotes do not, in fact, count.

Also, only eight characters feels kinda weak. Meta progression is boring.

Boss design is cool, but I would have liked more cool Overworld enemies. As it is, it felt like I’d already seen every mini-boss.

Overall

I don’t like Nightreign. It doesn’t mean you won’t, but I feel like all of FromSoftware’s other games offer a fundamentally more interesting and expansive experience while using the same core systems.

The joy I get from FromSoftware games is that of exploring crumbling destitute alien worlds, where nothing can ever quite be understood. Nightreign does not offer that. It offers a fast paced frenetic roguelike experience bolted to Elden Ring’s combat system.

If you crave more FromSoft, and your favorite part is weapons, challenge runs, experimenting, or pushing your own limits within those already punishing systems, you might love it.

I don’t.

I would rather have my $40 back.

Brightcast

I love Brightcast. It was my favorite new game from PAX Unplugged last year, and it’s easily my most played game from the show. I’ve brought it with me to pretty much every event I’ve gone to, from weekly Magic, to PAX East.

I’ve showed it off to the local LGS’s I go to, and convinced at least one of them to stock it. I’ve done everything in my power to show it to more people… except actually write a review.

So we’re gonna correct that now.

The Game

Brightcast is a 1v1 dueling game. There’s no asymmetry. Both you and your opponent are working with the same set of tools: six copies of each of Spellcasters, two copies of the dragon, and two copies of the Alchemist. You each get a single deck of 34 cards of 7 different types.

Let’s start with the Spellcasters, since they’re how you actually win. There are five spellcasters: the Sage, the Warlock, the Druid, the Sorcerer, and Wizard. In order to win, you need to collect either one of each, or five copies of a single one into your tableau.

How do you do this? Well, it’s quite simple. On your turn, draw a card, then pick a card from you hand to add to play. You get its effect, and if it’s a Spellcaster, you then add it to your tableau. (You can alternatively choose to draw a second card instead of playing a card, but you usually don’t want to.)

Let’s talk about their effects. The Sorcerer is the simplest, destroying a single card in your opponent’s tableau when played. The Warlock works a bit in reverse, returning a single card from your discard pile to your hand. The Sage draws you two more cards, then requires that you discard 1, while the Druid makes your opponent reveal their hand and discard a card of your choosing. And then there’s the Wizard.

The Wizard is a bit special. You can play the Wizard from your hand and just draw one card. Or—and this is what you’ll want to be doing most of the time— when your opponent plays a card, you can discard a Wizard and a copy of the card your opponent played to block their play. Sure, it’s a two-for-one, but it can be worth it to slow your opponent down.

Then there are the last two card types: The Dragon and Alchemist.

When you play the Dragon, you can destroy up to 3 cards from your opponent’s tableau. When you play the Alchemist, you can copy the effect of a Spellcaster you already have in play in your tableau. Both of these are obviously a fair bit more powerful then the other cards, and as such they don’t go into the Tableau, and they also can’t be recovered with the Warlock.

Why I love it

Okay, so that was a lot of rules text, but importantly, that’s also pretty much all of the rules. You could take everything I wrote up above, make your own copy of Brightcast, and play it reasonably accurately. It’s the sort of game you can teach to someone in five minutes, and play multiple games for the next 45.

Because despite that simplicity, Brightcast offers a lot of interesting choices. Do I play my dragon, knowing they might pull it out of my hand with a druid, or do I try to hold it for the perfect moment? Do I play Sage after Sage, trying to get all five out quickly? Should I daisy chain warlocks into having a bit of a buffer for completing a set of five, or just grab back a Druid to pull their Sorcerer out of their hand?

I could go on! I won’t. But I could!

Brightcast fits into a similar space as Tiger and Dragon for me. It’s not a full course meal on its own. But it’s the sort of thing that you can slip in a game of anywhere, or teach to a complete stranger. I’ve played a fair amount of it in between Magic games, or while while waiting for events to start.

There’s a fascinating set of decision points from an incredibly simple set of cards, and it’s fun enough to play over and over. Also, and I’ll say this again, the art is just incredible.

Overall

The back of Brightcast describes it as “Deceptively simple, secretly deep” and I can’t think of a better descriptor. It’s quick to learn, and offers a interesting play choices all throughout the game. If you like Magic: The Gathering, or clever dueling games, I highly suggest trying Brightcast.

Who knows. Maybe you’ll become as much of an evangelist for it as I have.

Quick Note: Brightcast is currently only available from direct retailers, so the best way to get a copy is to ask your LGS to stock it, or check if they already have it available. If you’re up in New Hampshire like me, The Fourth Place has some copies.

A Quick Rant on 1 Star Board Game Geek Reviews

A while ago, a friend of mine had just released a game, and was doing what all board game designers (as far as I’m aware) do post game release: stare in frustration at the ratings on Board Game Geek.

The particular source of his frustration was a that the game had been rated with a 1 by someone who clearly didn’t own the game, and couldn’t have possibly played the game at the time. Shortly after he mentioned the whole thing to me.

We quickly discussed various reasons that players will do this, and there was a smattering of the usual ones. Review bombing a game for ideological reasons. Rating a game that is rated “too highly” to bring the score down. Fights or problems with a publisher.

It was at this point that I asked him if he’d just asked this person why they’d given him a 1. He had not.

So messaged them. I’ll be referring to the rater as “Tim.”

Reaching Out

After looking at the profile for a bit, I quickly noticed that it had a very odd distribution of ratings. Virtually all of them were 1’s, with a smattering of 7-10’s, but the 1’s MASSIVELY outweighed the 10’s.

So I messaged Tim, and asked them about their rating system for games. After a brief back and fourth, they responded, and I found their answer surprising.

The Big Surprise

The first thing was that Tim was not a single person, and instead was a group of players who used the account to collaboratively track plays and games for their gaming club.

The second was that when they “rated” a game, they were not rating it based on playing it. They were giving a rating based on how they felt as a group, and if they wanted to order it for the group. So a game that wasn’t bad might receive a 1 for the reason that nobody in the group was interested in trying it. This was especially common for games that the group considered too simple, or didn’t have the right player count.

There’s also one specific quote I want to pull out from their response, that I found quite telling.

Regarding the not yet released (games) – we consider ourselves enough experienced so we do not need to play the game to know that it is not for us – one text or video review is more than enough.

This is not an approach I would ever take, but I appreciated the clarity, and I think it gives insight on why this person had such a high number of low-rated games.

I thanked them for their response, and moved on.

The Takeaways

The general vibe I have gotten from designers when discussing what I’d generally consider to be unusually low ratings is a sense that they’re being targeted in some way or another.

There absolutely are folks in board game spaces who do what I’d call “hateful reviews.” The folks who hate others based on their sexual orientation, gender, race, etc. The whole nine yards. And because they exist in board game spaces, they also exist on Board Game Geek. And they will rate games badly as a way to harass and attack people.

There are also folks who are picky or petty. They’ll rate a game low because a component was damaged. Or because it was rated too highly. Or it was shipped to reviewers before Kickstarter backers. Or any number of a variety of other things that I’d personally consider mundane and irrelevant to the experience of the game.

But I think there is also a third category of folks who are just doing their own thing, and see nothing wrong with rating a game that they do not personally like much as a 1, and moving on.

Does this usually ruin that designer’s day? Yes! Do I have any idea how to fix this problem?

Not a clue.

I don’t think many board game players recognize the impact ratings have on a game, or the folks who make them. At the same time, I’m not sure publishers and designers are interested in asking the less vocal folks who rate games weirdly why they’re doing it, when all available evidence (to them!) labels those folks as hateful or petty.