Sundered

Game: Sundered

Developer: Thunder Lotus

Publisher: Thunder Lotus

Platform: PC/Mac/Linux/PS4/Switch

ESRB Rating: T

Sundered is a metroidvania/rogue-like hybrid game. You take control of the character Eshe, who has been taken hostage in a haunted, Lovecraftian-like world where man and machine meet cosmic horrors. You must traverse this world, accompanied by a mysterious artifact that communicates with you throughout your journey, telling the lore of the land and tempting you to embrace the horrors this mysterious world has to offer. Along on your journey, you collect artifacts called "elder shards" that you can choose to destroy to keep your humanity intact or return them to shrines to enhance your abilities in new ways. These changes are permanent, so choose wisely.

If I was going solely by presentation alone, Sundered would be a 10. The visuals in this game are absolutely stunning. The artwork and animations are all hand drawn, just like in Thunder Lotus' previous venture, Jotun, and they do not disappoint. The animations are silky smooth and flow beautifully. Not to mention the colors are beautiful as well, with them being vibrant yet at the same time evoking an eerie feel to the world around you. The meshing of machine and Lovecraftian horror is also meshed very well too, like two worlds that were never supposed to collide in the first place, as all hell would break loose. The designs of the monsters, especially the bosses, all evoke this eldritchian horror to them that is super otherworldly in its presentation.I'm so glad they released a digital artbook in the newsletter they had, as the artwork is just gorgeous.

Presentation is all well in good, but unfortunately, Sundered's gameplay and mechanics are a bit of a mixed bag in terms of execution. The idea of a metroidvania with randomly generated elements thrown in seems like a neat idea on paper, but in practice in Sundered, it's a bit messy. Sundered's level design is a mix of randomly generated rooms in set boxes on your map screen, along with unchanging spots to sort of act as landmarks for exploration. When you die, the layout of the randomly generated rooms changes. This ultimately makes exploration unnecessarily cumbersome and frustrating at times, especially when you get overrun by a horde of enemies at random.

Speaking of which, enemies sometimes come at you in hordes when a gong sounds in the background. These hordes come in randomly except in certain areas where enemies infinitely spawn, and depending on your current health and resources, can instantly kill an explorative outing you've set on. Dying though is a small setback, outside of the world rearranging itself, and brings you back to the hub where you can get upgrades in your skill tree by spending gems that you obtain by defeating enemies and killing bosses. If you want to survive your outings in Sundered you're going to need to do a lot of grinding for gems, so you'll want to invest a lot of your gems into "luck," which increases the number of gems you obtain from killing enemies.

Combat against your enemies involves a lot of mashing the attack button, making combat slightly mindless, since you are given a bit of leeway when it comes to taking damage at first with your shield that you can upgrade that tanks hits before it breaks, leaving you incredibly vulnerable. Since hordes of enemies come at you in this game, the developers made combat centered around mob control, so your attacks have wide arches and big hitboxes, allowing you to deal with enemies easier. You also get finishers and charge attacks to help deal more damage. When you're in a pinch, you can use your cannon to deal with a large crowd of enemies. One of my gripes is that I wish that there was more enemy variety in the game itself. Each of the 3 areas has roughly 4 or 5 different enemy types that get tougher depending on their color coordination. I'd normally be more forgiving of this, considering there is only 3 areas to explore, but as massive as these areas are, and the fact that the third area rehashes some of the minibosses in area 2 as enemy variants, it's hard for me to ignore.

The scale of boss fights in Sundered is immense. Despite there being 4 boss fights per the direction of the resisting or embracing mechanic (6 in total), these boss fights are big and brutal. I do have some gripes with how repetitive and boring the Hysteria fight is, but the fight against Legion and Salvation is one of my favorites with how much it has you on your toes in the fight. The designs of these bosses are done very well and fit with the art direction the game is going for. I'm also glad they included the ability to refight these bosses to your own discretion.

Sundered is one of those games I truly wanted to be love at first trailer watch, but after having a hands-on experience with the game itself, I can't say I was fully enthralled with it. Exploration in this game can be a chore at times and the game itself can be a bit of a grind, plus the combat is a little mindless, but the boss fights are fun and the art direction is absolutely stunning. I overall did enjoy my time with Sundered and I am currently doing a full resist playthrough on and off right now. As flawed this game is at times, I consider Sundered to be one of the more underrated games of 2017. Give it a whirl if you haven't already.

Final Verdict: 7/10

The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+

Game: The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+

Developer: Nicalis
Publisher: Nicalis

Platform: PC/Mac/Linux/PS4/Switch/XBOne

ESRB Rating: M

I'm not exactly proud of the amount of time I've sunk into The Binding of Isaac. Not to say that I'm not proud of my accomplishments over the years of playing this game, but when you consider that I have sunk more than 558 hours into this game over the course of 5 years of playing this game on PC alone (not counting my time on the Switch), I think it is safe to say that I have a problem. Recently though, my playing with this game has slowed down considerably. Instead of doing daily challenges and doing a run or two nearly every day, my time with The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ has slowed to playing maybe one run every few weeks. Could this be me having a falling out with one of my most played games of all time? I'm not sure. Today, I felt like doing something slightly different. I want to take an honest look at one of the games I've played to death and give a fair review on it. Or at least what I see as fair. Let's begin.

The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ is a top-down, roguelike dungeon crawler where you play as a naked boy named Isaac who is on the run from his mother who is looking to sacrifice him as an offering to God. You as Isaac must traverse your basement and the underground caverns beneath your house, picking up items that affect your attacks and stats while fighting hordes of monsters that get in your way. As you play, you unlock new items and new characters to play as, each with their own special characteristics. Being a roguelike, each run is randomly generated and when you die, you lose everything in that run. 

Each character you play has their own unique attributes to them that set them apart. Isaac is able to reroll items on pedestals (when unlocked), Azazel can fly and has a short range brimstone laser attack, The Lost dies in one hit but can take devil deals for free, and Lilith is blindfolded and can only attack with her familiar, just to name a few. There are a plethora of items you can obtain throughout your runs of playing this game, all of which affect your playstyle in some way shape or form. These can affect your tears, your main way of attacking, movement speed, offense, defense, and so on. These items can range from simple household items like a potato peeler to grotesque bodily disorders like proptosis. Almost every item is unique in what attributes they alter upon the player's character, but depending on the character, these items lead to no change at all.

Like the items, there is a myriad of enemies you can encounter in this game. The enemies you encounter have different attack patterns that need to be memorized to best deal with them in each room. Some enemies are area exclusive while other enemies make a wide range of appearances throughout your runs. Every floor you explore has a boss fight at the end where you must kill the boss in order to proceed to the next floor. There are a wide variety of boss fights for each floor, each fight, for the most part, being a fair challenge with patterns to recognize in their attacks.

When it comes to difficulty balance in the Binding of Isaac: Rebirth expansions so far, I feel like there has been trouble for Nicalis getting the balance right. The fairest DLC expansion, in my opinion, was the previous expansion "Afterbirth." To me, that expansion had just the right balance of fairness and challenge, even if most runs came down to luck then and now. I feel like with Afterbirth+ with content being constantly added to the game through updates and the like, there seems to have been little playtesting time with some of the boss fights. For example, The Matriarch's boss fight is terribly balanced, with attacks and patterns that are heavily designed against the player having an advantage in the fight. Not to mention, still, for the life of me, I cannot get down the attack patterns for Brownie, as I still think that boss fight is just such a mess, especially when you get a weak build in a run. While I'm at it, the new final boss added in this expansion is still terribly designed, with attacks that fly all over the place in erratic patterns, along with attacks that are nigh impossible to dodge as the fight progresses. Needless to say, it's not a fun fight.

A lot of your success in this game is going to depend on the items you get in a run. Trust me, sometimes you need a good relationship with RNGsus in order to have success in a run. Some days are definitely better than others, with times of dying and/or resetting more times than you can count before you get the perfect run. This can be fun at times, since the gameplay is engaging enough already, but over my years of playing, it sometimes becomes exhausting to the point of where if I don't get good luck in 2 or 3 runs, I just stop playing entirely as I feel it isn't worth the hassle today, sometimes for the better really, considering my love-hate relationship with this game.

Over my years of playing Isaac, I feel like I've got plenty out of it so far. With new content coming out in the near future, and content that I have still yet to unlock (unlocking The Forgotten is too much for me), I enjoy booting up the game every once in a while. I'm not as heavily invested in the game as I once was, but it still holds a special place in my gaming library. I don't think Afterbirth+ tops Afterbirth in terms of enjoyment (personal bias since I was able to 1001% Afterbirth a few days before Afterbirth+), but I will say it does the job well and good for the content this behemoth of a game gets. I'm looking forward to Repentance when it comes out with more cautious optimism.

Rating: 8/10
The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth+ still has fun to be had with its addicting gameplay, dragon's horde of content, many ways to play and tons of secrets, but it's not without a few hiccups, such as some new boss fights not being very well balanced and some of the content being a little too cryptic and frustrating to unlock. I think taking a break from the game has given me a better perspective of how I feel in regards to the new content, both the good and the bad. Thanks for reading my flawed review. Hopefully, I get better at this over time.

Kill Baby Hitler

Game: Kill Baby Hitler

Developer: Jacklehamster

Platform: Browser

Play here: https://jacklehamster.itch.io/kill-baby-hitler

Here's a question I'm sure you've probably gotten asked in the past year or so: would you go back in time to kill baby Adolf Hitler? Now, I'm sure you already have your personal answer that you are most eager to share. My answer is "no" because of how little we understand how time travel works on a fundamental level. There almost always seems to be this notion in pop culture that reality will fix itself when something in the past is altered thanks in part to time travel movies like Back to the Future and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. Movies like these and their concepts of how time travel "works" are so ingrained in the pop culture consciousness that we often just assume that that's how time travel works when in reality time travel is already such an out there concept that we have no idea how the rules of it would work. I think I've gone on a bit of a tangent talking about our misunderstanding of time travel when I should be discussing a little something I forgot I had in my itch.io browser app game library. A little visual novel that looks to bring this discussion back into the light and have a little bit more of a mature discussion on the matter. 

Kill Baby Hitler is a visual novel microgame developed by Jacklehamster. The premise has you being assigned a mission to go back in time to kill Adolf Hitler. This mission, should you accept it, has a catch though. The only way you can kill your target is going back to the year 1889, the year Hitler was born, and kill your target when he was only a baby. Do you accept the mission and its risks and kill baby Hitler? 

I'm surprised by how little fanfare this game got at the second spike of the kill baby Hitler controversy. Then again, itch.io is not exactly a gaming giant like Steam or a huge social media platform like Twitter. I guess when it comes to games as an art form, some sort of expect games to be grand and in your face about its message, like Spec Ops: The Line does with the morality of war. I'm not exactly trying to say Kill Baby Hitler is super nuanced in its message, but it does bring more intellectual maturity to the discussion than say a post on Twitter that seeks to virtue signal to the "obvious" choice of the matter. With Nazism being a hot button topic nowadays, approaching the issue with maturity is certainly needed, as opposed to demonizing either side of the political aisle just because their beliefs don't 100% line up with your own.

But I digress. How is the game itself? I'm not really a fan of visual novel type games, just to get this out of the way. I'll spare you the details and just say they aren't necessarily my thing. Kill Baby Hitler is thankfully pretty short and to the point on its subject matter. According to the developer, there are 4 possible endings, and I've gotten 3 of them so far. I also like the detail that before you have the option of killing infant Hitler or not, you can draw a Hitler-stache on the baby itself for a little comedic effect. The straightforward ending is killing baby Hitler. Doing so causes reality to warp, saving millions of lives at the cost of your existence. A small price to pay for the good of humanity, depending on how you look at it. You can also choose not to kill baby Hitler in a couple of ways. One is by shooting at anything but the baby himself, or by refusing to take the gun in the beginning. 

I do kind of wish that this visual novel got a little more attention at the height of the topic's popularity, but I'm not entirely sure that it would have stifled some of the political immaturity from either side. I'm not saying it would have been a catalyst, I'm just saying not much would probably change. This game doesn't really change my answer of whether or not I would kill baby Hitler, but it was a short and surprisingly enjoyable experience. Play this game if you want, and I've got to work on getting that last ending.

chasing birds

Game: chasing birds

Developer: davidczar

Platform: Windows/Mac

Download Link: https://davidczar.itch.io/chasing-birds

I’ve always wondered how simple life would be if I were just a dog. You know, just running around, fetching a stick, chasing birds, peeing on fire hydrants, the whole shebang. Some days I just want to go to a park and just run the world, you know? Thankfully, davidczar helps to bring a dream like mine to life in his dog simulation microgame, chasing birds.

Chasing birds was made for Self-Care Jam 2 on itch.io, a game jam centered on making destressing games. In it, you play as a dog in the park with no set objective, but you’re given quite a bit to do at the park: chase birds and squirrels, bark, run around, pee on fire hydrants, or just lay down and relax, like a good boy. Cause all dogs are the good puppies, except when they're not. Barking also causes nearby dogs to start following you around, giving you a pack of dogs to run around and chase birds. Running with your fellow canine compadres is pretty satisfying and fun I imagine for a dog as you chase away those pesky birds.

The strongest aspect of chasing birds is the atmosphere. The ambiance of the park with leaves rustling and the birds chirping, even a police siren off in the distance, give this game quite a bit of life for how small it is. The minimalistic art style is also charming too. Its use of bright colors gives the park a nice warm, but breezy look and feel to it. Combine those together and it’s a nice and cozy experience.

My only gripe is that I wish the park you roam around was a wee bit bigger. Just a little bit more room to run around and do things. Though if you are a dog, you probably wouldn’t be too much of a stickler. After all, you're already having the time of your life running around a dog park with some buddies, so you can't really complain.

Chasing birds does what it sets out to do successfully; exploring a dog park as a dog and just having a relaxing experience chasing birds away. It's a nice game to turn on every once and a while and play it for a little bit. Considering what we go through each and every day, we sometimes need a little something to help us wind down and relax. Perhaps chasing birds is that one game to help you cool off from the stress of the world. Or you could just pop in Doom 2016 and destroy a bunch of demons in the depths of hell, but what's the fun in that!? Or you could just turn chasing birds on to distract your dog for a little bit. Check it out for yourself and have a nice, stress-free day! 

Bernband

Game: Bernband

Developer: Tom van den Boogaart

Platform: PC/Linux

Download Link: https://gamejolt.com/games/bernband/34864

City life has intrigued me to some degree. I got to experience it for a week when I took a trip to Washington D.C. with the family 6 years ago. We stayed at a hotel in Crystal City, Virginia, a city just a subway ride away from D.C. It was a very memorable trip for me: experiencing the subway rides, walking along the streets of Crystal City, and staying in a high rise, apartment-like hotel room are all stuck in my memory. And for good reason too, as the experience was very endearing, living in a downtown area of a big city. While many games take place in a huge sprawling city, like the Grand Theft Auto line of games, their intentions aren't necessarily making the player experience being in a sprawling metropolis and soaking everything in. In the current state of video gaming, one of the best games to invoke a big city atmosphere is Bernband.

Bernband is a walking sim developed by Tom van den Boogaart, a member of the Sokpop collective. The game has you exploring a big city. 

...

Okay. I'm going to be blunt here. This game is not for everyone. I mean this in a way where one person isn't necessarily going to get the same experience that I did. A lot of the games I have covered so far have been experiments in some form or another, presenting ideas in a fairly straightforward fashion. Bernband's goal to the player is to soak in the atmosphere of its world and to "get lost" in it. For some people I know, their definition of a video game is going to be vastly different from mine, and will probably write off these types of games as pretentious fluff. And they have every right to make such a statement. I'm not going to act like walking simulators are the greatest artistic expressions to come out of video games, but when they are done well, they can really leave a lasting effect on the player. Bernband is one of those games, to me anyway.

Bernband has no set objective to it. You just go around exploring the city. There's no guide to tell you where you must go, no emotion it's trying to invoke, no story to be told. You just explore a city and soak in the atmosphere around you. It's like stopping to smell the flowers and taking in your surroundings that you may often take for granted. Sometimes I look at the overpass by the park near my home and think about just walking underneath and soaking it all in, the shadow of the overpass, the ambiance of highway traffic above, it sounds intriguing to me, albeit also pretentious (lol).

The presentation of the Bernband is pretty amazing. The sound design is expertly done. The ambiance of futuristic cars driving above and the music and background noise of the multiple bars and clubs you can go to are deafeningly realistic in volume, though not to the point of aggravated annoyance like in a bass boosted "ear rape" meme video. The world feels super alien, both figuratively, and somewhat realistically, as you are surrounded by alien civilians living out their lives, walking down the street, or even going to a night school. The game itself also looks great too, with its minimalist, pixel art style being really charming but nonetheless absorbing.

Doing some research on Bernband was also an interesting experience, as this game got some publicity by some gaming outlets such as PC Gamer and more accessible news outlets like Vice. There was also an open letter discussion I found between two writers who had their own takes on Bernband that they shared with each other one being positive and the other more mixed. I also found out that a possible updated version is being made by the Sokpop collective as well, with updated visuals and possibly a bigger world to explore.

Bernband is a game that is very good at what it tries to accomplish in my eyes. Its atmosphere is intriguing and its world was fairly enticing. It's a short, free game that in my opinion goes a long way. Have an open mind and give this a shot. Don't just take my word for it.

This is your life now

Game: This is your life now

Developer: More Mountains

Platform: PC/Mac

Download Link: https://more-mountains.itch.io/this-is-your-life-now

What doth life? Are we just fleshy blips in a meaningless stew of cosmic oblivion? Or is it vice reversa? Seriously though, what is the meaning of life? How does one figure out their true purpose in life? Some view life as meaningless and we are all just here in the middle of the cosmic universe living on a rock that floats through, as inconspicuous as the dust in the wind. Others find meaning through religion, whether believing in a being larger than life itself or shaping your life in a way that transcends natural humanity. A lot of people don't always have the answers, and I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that I have them either. Instead, I'll talk about a little game that may try to help us understand a way to live life. That being This is your life now.

Created for Ludum Dare 44, where the theme is your life as currency, just like a previous game I covered, that being Elevator Pitch, This is your life now takes the player on a journey through life, making friends, getting good grades, choosing between having a social life and introversion, and dealing with the crippling disparity of accepting the fact that you are going to die someday. All accompanied by a cutesy art style of what looks like rejected organs that God or evolution (take your pick or both) considered but ultimately decided against it. The theme of your life as a currency is utilized in making the hard choices in life that you would like, but also living with the consequences of said choices. And these choices are not always easy, depending on who you are. You may have a hard time picking between choosing between introversion or social life, as the former grants you safety at the cost of social life, while choosing to be more extroverted may cause the exact opposite. 

The cutesy, innocent art style is all well and charming, but the use of color is also fairly well used too, like with grey representing adulthood, as it feels bleak and despondent, not to mention the loss of your hope at the realization you're going to die or a light orange used for old age as if the sun is coming up, hitting a new chapter on life, even though it is the end, but I must say, this game is fairly bleak as far as outlook on life goes. No matter your choices, some sort of consequence is sure to follow, like not getting good grades leads to addiction that follows you for the rest of your life, or having kids costs you your partner. Honestly, this game doesn't like to pull its punches.

No matter what combination I have tried, I've never been able to live a fulfilling life. It seems as if This is your life now seeks to imply that living a perfect, fulfilling life is nigh impossible, no matter what your choices are. This game is actually rather depressing the more I think about it. Its cute art style is merely just a masquerade hiding its true purpose. Maybe life is bleak after all.

This game, in retrospect, feels like a punch in the gut with its message, with its cute aesthetic being nothing more than a trojan horse looking to let itself in and wreak havoc upon my mind. This game made me feel kind of sad. It's as if I have already reached the stage of adulthood in the game itself, and lost my hope as my outlook on life looks bleak. I could also be overexaggerating too. Give this game a whirl if you want to make yourself feel sad or have a poor outlook on life.

i drew this because i was bored

Game: i drew this because i was bored

Developer: DragonZBW (Sparklight Games)

Platform: PC/Mac

Download Link: https://dragonzbw.itch.io/i-drew-this-because-i-was-bored

Art is subjective, the should be obvious. A piece of media can be worth nothing to someone, yet priceless to another, the whole one man's trash saying and all. I'm no artist, but I have seen the perspective artists have on their own work, much of it negative. We are our own worst critics, I know that first hand, having deleted my first blog and trying to keep this one afloat while battling depression. It's not easy, and the low viewership can be demoralizing at times, but I want to cover pieces of media I find worth talking about, be it movies or games. One microgame that has stuck with me for the longest time is i drew this because i was bored. 

Developed by DragonZBW, i drew this because i was bored is a microgame that was developed for the 35th Ludum Dare event, a game jam that involved the theme of transformation. In this game, you control a drawn creation that has the ability to transform. Your forms are a creature that walks, a creature that swims, and a creature that flies. You use these transformation powers at your disposal to traverse the levels drawn out to you, all the while amusing your creator until they "grow bored of you" and decide to erase you. The pencil drawn, lined paper aesthetic gives this game quite a bit of personality. It makes this microgame feel very intimate at times, with its creator seemingly making everything out of the blue, which while it may seem careless, considering it is a doodle on a piece of paper, it does give the game a ton of personality, graphically. 

The gameplay is pretty straightforward; as stated before, you traverse the levels and transform into whichever creature is best suited for such endeavor, granted flying is the best way to maneuver as far as speed is concerned when you aren't in the water. The game is relatively short, with gameplay sessions lasting around 10 minutes or so, though that isn't counting the last level which is ridiculously difficult in comparison to the rest of the levels in the game.

From an outside perspective, this game doesn't seem like much. It's simple to play, has a very simple art style and has some flaws to it. So, why has this game stuck with me? Well, in the first paragraph, I mentioned the statement of "art is subjective" and one's perspective on their own creation being slanted negatively from their own perspective. This game, to me anyway, speaks fundamentally about the subject of art from our own perspective of it. Like I said before, we as humans often have a negative perception of our own creations, often calling our creations terrible. Part of this is exemplified by the creator of this doodled creature looking to erase it from existence, as they believe that their creation has long served past its purpose of amusement, possibly hinting that the creator isn't proud of its creation. This idea, in my opinion, can apply to writers, filmmakers, artists and so on. Anyone involved in creating media I believe can relate to how the creator in this game feels about its own drawing.

Or maybe I'm just pretentious and full of shit? I don't know. I think there's more to this game than meets the eye. I believe it speaks on a fundamental level of our personal perspective of our own art. But I've rambled far enough on this little game already. Give it a shot if you haven't and see what it has in store for you. Also, have a great day while you're at it!