Tag: VideoGamesWeLike

Q-UP Demo

Okay. We’re back. I may have lost it a little talking about Unfair Flips earlier in the week, but now it’s time to talk about Q-Up, another game about flipping coins.

I really liked the Q-Up Demo. I actually played until I couldn’t anymore, because the demo stopped me. I thought it was great.

You may notice a slight tonal shift here between Unfair Flips and Q-Up, despite the fact that they’re both pseudo-incremental games about coin flips. This is because Q-Up is doing everything that Unfair Flips wasn’t.

I’ve mentioned before that I somewhat dislike idle/incremental games because if I’m not careful, they eat my time like a blackhole. I also don’t necessarily have any fun with them. To quote myself:

I resent idle games because for whatever reason, they work on me. I am entirely capable of looking at them, understanding how the mechanics work, and what they are going to make me do, why they are exploitive, and then I play them anyway.

Unfortunately for me, Q-Up has it’s hooks in me already, which means escape options are limited. Perhaps this writeup will be one of them.

There’s a lot of different layers to Q-Up, and I don’t think I’m even going to identify all of them, let alone write about them. The game is framed as a competitive e-Sport, with all the trappings of such, including ranks, stats, an in-game shop, skins, and a fake TOS that has to be agreed to on launching the game.

The team bit isn’t a joke by the way. You can in fact play the coin flip with your friends, and make synergistic builds. It’s incredible.

The E-Sport in question of course, is just a coin flip. But what a coin flip it is! Complete with matchmaking, exciting animations, and being put on either the Q or Up side. (Fun note: while playing with a friend, he audibly groaned when we got into a game, and were Up side, as he “prefers being Q side”. In a game that’s a literal coin flip.)

Of course, the faux esport/live service game feels like it’s just the tip of the iceberg in a sense. There’s also an in-game mail client where as you play, you end up somewhat accidentally agreeing to “work” for the fictional company making the game in question. I don’t think I can spoil too much from the demo, but even what I saw there seemed to get really weird quite fast, with a weird sci-fi narrative around corporate sabotage.

Oh, and I haven’t even talked about the gameplay! Because yes, there is gameplay. It’s not just a coin-flipper. Instead, fairly early on, you unlock a node based skill grid, different for each of the available characters. This grid is a set of triggers and chaining activation, and by moving nodes around, you can build sets of synergies to make it so that even when you lose, you still win!

I’d say something about my build, but I actually just realized looking at it that it’s a tad bit awful.

Look, it makes more sense if you play the demo, maybe just do that.

Oh, and there are items! To be honest, they’re probably the most standard part of the game, being constructed in such a way that you can build item sets and collections in order to grant yourself additional bonuses. What’s less standard is the incredible weird item shop upgrades, which at one point gave me gems instead of costing them?

Ah yes, the ability to roll for a 5-Star character with a zero percent chance of getting them. And the customer of the year is a whale. It’s all so perfect.

Q-Up, like Unfair Flips, is a game about coin flips. But unlike Unfair Flips, it’s not really about flipping coins. Instead, it seems to be a weird satire on live service games at every level, from the design, the development, and the weird nature of E-Sports.

And it absolutely nails the tone. Probably my favorite part so far was this message, with that absolutely perfect “Exec typing things into ChatGPT to summarize them” energy.

It’s just an incredibly fun and weird experience. I only stopped because I hit the level cap on the available characters.

In short: the Q-Up Demo is great, I hope the full game is just as weird, and has even more twists. I’m going to go see if I can get a code to cover it before it comes out, but I highly doubt that will work, in which case I’ll just have to buy it when it does release.

Landlord Quest

I’ve described a few games on this blog as “love letters to X.” The Plucky Squire, for its joy in the physicality of art. Holocure to all of Hololive. It’s a fairly common idiom I haven’t thought much about until I played Landlord Quest: the first game that I think might be best described as a hate letter.

I don’t mean Landlord Quest is bad. I just mean that if you took a love letter, and kept the passion, but inverted the feelings, this is what you would get. If love letters are sent with roses and chocolate, hate letters are probably sent with a mailbomb.

Landlord Quest is a short adventure game. And when I say short, I mean short. I feel fairly confident I saw the entirety of the game in about 42 minutes, and that was three separate playthroughs. I’ve never actually played an adventure game before, so it may have taken me longer than people who are actually familiar with the genre.

Because it’s so short, I don’t really have much to say on it that isn’t a spoiler for the experience. The art is good. I didn’t have to look up anything, which I’ve been told is some sort of gold standard for adventure games, but there’s also one a single room, and a finite number of things to “Look at.”

This is it. This is the experience.

I guess the one interesting thing I could talk about is that despite the game loathing the Doug character, from his bro-glasses and faux-cybertruck, I’m not sure I do.

There’s a few incredibly brief moments of him ruminating on his relationship with his father. They’re short, and I think the intent is mostly to show that Doug is a useless nepo baby. I’m sure they work if you’re the sort of person who had parents that cared about you and your interests. I imagine if I was that sort of person, I’d be able to look at Doug and laugh, visualizing a chain of shit heads stretching back years eternal.

Unfortunately for the designer, I haven’t spoken to my father in close to 10 years, so the attempt to paint him a shit brat who coasts on his father’s coattails fell flat. Instead, it made me a bit sad for him. Someone cared about him once.

Anyway, I think the credits for Landlord Quest do a better job of speaking to the game’s purpose than I could.

Landlord Quest is a short, and either horrifying or cathartic experience based on how you feel about landlords. It’s six bucks on Steam. It’s very well made for what it is, and it made me feel something.

I’m just not sure how I feel about those feelings yet.

One Piece Card Game

I had a busy weekend. I played a lot of Deadlock, I lost horribly at a Magic draft, and I fixed a lot of technology for one of my parents. I got absolutely none of the work I had hoped to do done, but I did get a chance to try out the One Piece Card Game.

Yes, it really is capitalized like that.

Wait, what’s One Piece?

One Piece is a manga series that’s been running since 1997, which is to say it’s only slightly younger than me. I could say a lot of things about it, but they’re not relevant to this review. All you really need to know is that it’s an adventure series, it’s been running for an incredibly long time, and… I quite like it.

No really, I’ve been reading this series on and off for probably close to 20 years. I check weekly for updates. Thinking about it, One Piece and Pokemon are probably the two longest-running franchises I have interest in.

So, a card game (I like those!) based on a manga (specifically a series that I really enjoy). I should love this right?

Right?

The Gameplay

Well, I love the gameplay at least, even from my limited exposure yesterday. There’s a bunch of cool systems here, and I’m going to try to hit the highlights.

First up, like all modern card games, One Piece CG sets out to solve the land problem. But it does so in a different way than some of its peers. You have a side deck of 10 DON cards. Then, each turn after the first, you flip out 2 of the them, and that’s the whole resource system.

In addition to being tapped for mana, DON can also be put onto your Character and Leader cards to temporarily buff them on your turn. I liked this, because it meant I felt like I always had something to do with my resources.

Other neat systems include the game’s life tracking. This is effectively Pokemon’s prize card system, but reversed to become a catch-up mechanic. Short version: when you take damage to your life, you get cards. I like it.

Combat also has combat tricks, and they’re done in a way that doesn’t require me explaining the stack to someone, while also making a vast number of cards multi-modal. I liked that as well. Combat is also a bit different from other games, but not in anyway that I feel compelled to elaborate. It provides lots of interesting choices, and I like it.

So. Bunch of great systems

The Things I don’t like

Let’s imagine there’s a Harry Potter TCG. Let’s imagine it’s very popular, and while we’re imagining things, let imagine JK Rowling isn’t a massive TERF.

I know, I’m asking you to imagine a lot.

But while we’re in this beautiful alternate universe, let’s say that one of the sets is based on book 6. Imagine it’s called “Snape Kills Dumbledore,” and the cover art is a great big picture of Snape blasting Dumbledore with Avada Kadavra.

That would feel kind of odd, right? Kind of spoilery?

This is something the One Piece TCG does. Absolutely huge plot points are just… completely spoiled/revealed in the names and designs of the sets? And the cards?

I dunno. It just feels weird.

There’s a bunch of other things that add to that weirdness, at least for me. I consider myself a One Piece fan, but I’m purely a fan of the manga. One of the decks that I played (And enjoyed playing!) was based around characters from a spin-off video game. A video game that reviewed quite badly.

I love One Piece as a manga, because of stuff like this.

Not 3D models that look like this.

Also, two other minor annoyances.

  1. Some of these card names are ridiculous.

Like, I’m sorry. What?

2. Many of the cards have character names displayed in the standard Japanese way, which is to say family name and then given name. The problem I have with this is that there is at least one archetype (Vinsmokes) where this makes it a bit of a pain to actually read and process the cards. This is minor, I’m sure I’d get used to it if I played enough, but it feels unnecessary to include the full family name because it’s also irrelevant to the mechanics of the game?

I dunno. Please don’t take this as me being culturally insensitive. But I’m just… frustrated by design decisions that while authentic, make the game harder to play.

Also, while this is just a hunch, and playing a few games of a TCG isn’t enough to really get a good read on something like this, I kind of dislike that the game seems to be following archetype-based design as opposed to color based design. It’s just a vibe, but it’s still there.

Overall

Much like with Star Wars Unlimited, I actually think these systems are great, but I’m a bit turned off by the theming. Which is weird, because I like One Piece and I don’t give a shit about Star Wars.

It feels weird to say that I’d excitedly play more One Piece, but have zero intention of picking up any decks or cards? Especially at some of the prices I’m seeing, like, $50 for the non-basic starter deck? I’m good.

Anyway. Great game. Cool systems.

Not sure I want to spend any money on it.

Tales of Kenzera: Zau

I think Tales of Kenzera is a good game. A solid 8/10. I want to put that out there because I have no idea where the rest of this writeup is going, so I’m going to mention that early.

It’s also on sale for $8 until the 11th, which feels like a pretty decent deal if you’re looking for something to play through just to get back into the swing of things.

Why do I have no idea where the rest of this writeup is going? Well, because there are a billion different lenses I could take to look at Tales of Kenzera, but none of them feel like they have enough depth.

For example, the entire reason I bought this game wasn’t because I wanted a mid-range Metroidvania carried more by its combat than its exploration. I bought it because it was pissing of a bunch of racists, and won a few awards. So maybe there’s a culture war thing going on?

No. There really isn’t. There’re no “woke” themes or ideas. There’s just black people. Because the game is set in Africa, and is inspired by Bantu legends. Okay, so maybe there’s an interesting lens there. Can I look at how the game reflects the stories it’s based on?

Well, again, that’s kind of a “No”, because the “Bantu peoples” are made up of 400+ distinct groups, and 350 million people. It’s true that I once read Atlas Shrugged so that could I understand Bioshock better, but I don’t even know where I’d start in this case.

So maybe I’ll just try to talk about the gameplay, and be content with that.

Gameplay

Tales of Kenzera is a light Metroidvania. It’s also a fairly short game. Based on the in-game clock, I 100%’ed the game on challenging (second hardest difficulty) in about 8 hours.

As a Metroidvania, I give it mixed marks on the puzzle platforming. Extra exploration is useful for grabbing upgrades, but never necessary. More importantly, side areas with upgrades or paths are almost never actually locked off. Instead, they tend to be unlocked with whatever power you got in that zone. The platforming itself, even in the challenge zones, is also not particularly hard, and only ever frustrating.

So how about the combat? Well, the combat is great!

Okay, I have a few caveats. Let’s talk about it.

Tales of Kenzera’s core gimmick is the ability to switch between a fire and an ice mask. Fire is melee, ice is ranged. Fire gets heavy attacks with knockup and light attacks that chain, while ice gets a ranged attack and one that can deflect projectiles. For the first third of the game, that’s pretty much it.

Except then you get the grappling hook, which changes functionality based on the mask you’re wearing. Fire mask lets you pull yourself to enemies, ice lets you pull enemies to you. This was where everything clicked for me. All of a sudden I could just throw myself into the air at flying enemies, or pull ranged enemies over pits of spikes.

Then you get a charge blast: effectively, a third jump that can be angled, and suddenly combat is a kinetic, joyful brawl. It’s at this point, the game goes from good to great, as you pinball around, launching off enemies, smashing into them, and just generally having a good time.

It’s just a shame that this happens after it seems like most people have stopped playing.

Not all the combat is great. The bosses, while interesting as spectacles, feel quite wonky. The final boss is especially janky, but the first and third are just a ton of fun.

Grab Bag

The credits are a full on 15-ish minutes, of which 57 seconds are the actual dev team for the game. It feels weird. Also, they list the translators last at like 11 minutes, which feels like another kick in the balls for folks who did real work.

There’s a weird tone of EA-ification present as well. Things like too many trademark symbols that feel unnecessary, and tutorials that feel a bit much at times.

The final secret unlock is big head mode? For some reason? Not sure if it’s a cool throwback, or they ran out of time to give a better reward.

Overall

It might sound like I’m a bit harsh on the game, and I kind of am? But the thing is, even after finishing the game, I found myself going back to finish the rest of the optional challenges, and just 100% the whole thing. And for at least of a moment of that, it was because I wanted to fight more enemies. I wanted to play more!

I don’t think there’s a higher recommendation I can give than that.

Deltarune – Chapter 3 & 4

Toggle blocks contain spoilers. You have been warned.

I wrote about Deltarune back in 2022, but here we are in 2025 with 2 more chapters that I finished in about 10 hours straight last night.

It’s always hard to know what to say about Deltarune, and by some extension Undertale. As far as games go, I feel like you either enjoy things from a surface level, or go full Pepe Silvia. There is no in-between.

In that sense, then, the points I made three years ago still stand. The music slaps, the writing is great, and the actual mechanics and gameplay have continued to evolve in interesting ways, pushing the mini-game and bullet hell formula even further than before, as has the out of combat traversal.

Absurdity and Sincerity

I’ve been struggling to put my finger on why I feel like other games that imitated Mother and Undertale haven’t quite succeeded. The premier example of this is Knuckle Sandwich, but Athenian Rhapsody runs into some of the same issues.

All of these games trade on absurdity and weirdness as defining aesthetic traits. This can be strange characters, stories, items, or whatever. But at the same time, they’re trying to be heartfelt, sincere, and meaningful. This is a difficult balance to strike. And often the other games fail because in order to do this sort of thing, you need to commit to the bit.

Chapter 3 of Undertale follows the story of a television consumed by fear that it will be thrown away because no one watches it anymore, uses it, or plays games on it. Fear that it’s old and unloved.

Its goal seems to be preventing the player from ever leaving or giving up: from escaping. But it’s a real, human fear given to an inanimate object. Now, in the big picture, it’s complicated why no one is watching the television anymore. But this chapter’s absolutely gonzo section of puzzles, games, and just general weirdness (including fighting a water cooler) is driven by this sincere emotional beat.

And again, we’re talking about a television here.

And I think this is why Deltarune works. Even when its characters aren’t human, their feelings are. The problem with absurdity is that so often it’s used to ignore consequences and responsibility. “LOL random” humor is at some level as disposable as a dream, as transient as a breeze. And that disposability is the opposite of meaning.

For an action to mean something, it must have a consequence. It must have weight. I think this is what Mother and Undertale understand, but that their imitators only grasp for brief moments.

All that said, the other comment I do have is that I think a friend of mine who decided to wait until the full game is out might have made the right choice. Apparently 50% of the game is currently available, and while it’s incredible, it’s also deeply unsatisfying to know I’m going to have to wait at least 6-8 months minimum for more story.

I’m also really hoping the chapter based design of the game doesn’t lead to the final project feeling disconnected and incomplete. Chapter 3 is a massive bit of tonal whiplash, at least in the moment. It’s not a bad thing, I just wouldn’t want 5 more chapters just doing that.

Anyway. Deltarune. Incredible game. Love it. Really hope it finishes development before 2030, the death of democracy, and/or the end of the world.