Unexplored Review: One-eyed One-headed Marigold Monster Murderer (PC)

    One of the first roguelike games I've ever played was Nethack, a game about trying to find the Amulet of Yendor in the Dungeons of Doom, and dying repeatedly. I can't count how many of my wizards died to thing ranging from newts, to water demons, to swarms of friggin' giant bees and ants. It's probably what led me to spending almost 2.5K hours of my life having a small, naked boy kill hideous monsters in his mind by using his tears. The game I'm reviewing today is a bit of column B, but mostly it's column A. It's Ludomotion's top-down dungeon crawler Unexplored!

    The base game has a simple excuse plot: lead your supposedly human character into the dungeon and retrieve the Amulet of Yendor. It doesn't need a huge world-spanning tale explaining why your furry cyclops is seeking the Amulet. No quest for a god or anything. There are also two free DLC missions where you adventure in either the Mines of Moryondor or in the Aliens universe. If you go to that second one, be sure to bring some morning after pills.

West of Loathing Review: True Stick (PC)

    Last time, I reviewed Death Road to Canada to celebrate its birthday update. I actually managed to make it all the way there on my first time. Unfortunately, the border guard wouldn't let me in. From what I could tell between the cast-iron hockey stick beatings and their insistence that I was a hoser, they frown upon people revealing Canadian military secrets in order to make a Neon Genesis Evangelion pun. However, I still have some time to go travelling, so let's go west, young me and audience of indeterminate age! It's Asymmetric Production's West of Loathing!

Yee-haw! - Jon Arbuckle, Lasagna Cat, 12/03/1991

    A wise man once said that way down yonder on the Chattahoochee, it gets hotter than a hoochie-coochie. But down yonder over West of Loathing, it gets hotter than a... bunch of... clothing? Look, I'm not good at making up rhymes for country songs on a dime. What I am good at, however, is going to the wild frontier in order to serve justice and get rich. It's a very situational specialization, but it's coming in handy now, so let's use it. We only have to worry about things like bandits, rodeo clowns, and the fact that The Cows Came Home, resulting in herds of demonic cows roaming the west.

Death Road to Canada Review/Retrospective: Telling Random Strangers to COOL IT Since 2016 (PC)

    As much as I hate to admit it, I have a pretty sizable amount of games in my Steam library that I have yet to play. These games range from games I heard were good and picked up during a sale to the occasional day one purchase (including Undertale, just to show how unselective my apathy can be.) I always say I'll get to them soon, but I still have a whole collection of games that have never seen the light of my computer screen. Since today is as good of a day as any, I'm going to review one of these games.

Sorry, Mae. Not yet. I promise one day. Tell Toriel I said the same about Undertale.

    The game I am talking about today has just turned one year old, so it seems like a good time for me to jump into this pile of living corpses! It's Death Road to Canada, by Rocketcat Games!

Crash Fever Revisited: Potential.exe has crashed (iOS)

(Originally created 8-4-17)

    It’s been several weeks since I first reviewed Crash Fever. At the time, I felt pretty on the fence about whether it was good or not, so I finished off by stating it might need some time to fix itself up and do some translating, among other things. Well, I’ve seen some more of the world of ALICE, and now it’s time to pass a real verdict. Since I don’t have a gavel or a snarky white cat, I’ve gotten myself pumped for judgement by putting on a fake wolf head and playing some ‘All American Badass Mastered.’

Note: I do not own a wolf mask and I am not a post-apocalyptic warlord. As far as I know.

    I finally have to come out and say it: I’m not liking Crash Fever anymore. I still play it, for some reason, but the more content I see, the more I become irritated about the decisions that went into the game. There are some real problems with the game that could be fixed, but are still around after all the time the game has been out.

Hylics Review: Clay Moon over the Procedurally-Generated Heart (PC)

(Originally created 7-28-17)

    While the RPG Maker program is seen by some as a thing for making “Baby’s First RPG,” there have been some legitimately good games that come from that program. A good early example I remember playing is the freeware game OFF, a game that originally appeared in French before being translated to English. The library of freeware RPG Maker games includes such gems as the dream-exploring adventure game Yume Nikki, the Earthbound fan RPG Cognitive Dissonance, and the downright bizarre Space Funeral. We’ve also seen some RPG Maker games in online stores, such as To the Moon, Suits: A Business RPG, and the LISA trilogy. Today’s game is one of those that falls into the surreal RPG category, with the RPG Maker game Hylics, by a Claymation artist known as Mason Lindroth. 

    The game puts you in the role of Wayne, a crescent moon-headed man on a vague quest to defeat the Moon King, Gibby. There are also intermissions where you control a character whose name, according to the game files, is Dracula. No relation to the vampire, though. Joining Wayne on his quest are Dedusmuln, an esteemed archaeologist, Somsnosa, a friend of Wayne who seems to have stolen Ico’s hat, and Pongorma, the last of the Dread Knights. In reality though, the story generally acts as an excuse to get you to explore a bizarre-looking world and meet its surreal inhabitants.

Streets of Rogue Review: Grand Theft Gorilla (PC) (Early Access Version Alpha 31)

(Originally created 6-30-17)

    What would it take for you to go into rebellion against your government?

    For the people in Streets of Rogue, a game developed by Matt Dabrowski for tinyBuild, the answer is, apparently, “not much.” All the new Mayor had to do to get an underground rebellion seeking his blood was to raise taxes, ban chicken nuggets because of his allergies, and confiscate all the booze so he could hold a terrible party. Although to be fair, that last one is totally worthy of capital punishment. That’s not to say the rest of the town is perfect. The factories are an OSHA nightmare, the police force is highly corrupt, and the park is filled with cannibalistic hillbillies. As the newest member of the Resistance, it’s up to you, who or whatever you are, to make your way through this crazy city and take out the Mayor, causing a great deal of property damage all the while.

Crash Fever Review: ALICE in Schrodinger's Box (iOS)

(Originally created mid-June)

    Farming for cat food in The Battle Cats gives me the opportunity to see advertisements for a variety of cheap iPhone games. Sometimes I get to see a game advertise itself by listing the most obvious features that would be included in such a game. Other times the advertisement attempts and fails to tempt me with women in skimpy clothing. A few times I even get to see a South Korean company describe their game as an “awesome inflation game,” which only raises more questions, some of them not exactly work-safe. I bring up the topic of iPhone advertisements because they served as part of my experience with Crash Fever, an iPhone game created by WonderPlanet Inc. in 2015 (current version: 1.12.5.0).

Battle Cats Review: Meow It's Time for War (iOS)

(Originally created 5-23-17)

            When it comes to the iPhone video game market, I rarely traverse it to find entertainment. Not counting the bootleg games that love to infringe on the copyrights of characters like Elsa from Frozen, it doesn’t seem like there’s much creativity in the selection of games provided. As a rule, if your Bubble Bobble style game has to advertise itself by confirming that is has combos and power-ups, then you probably aren’t going to be a hidden gem in the sea of copycats. Speaking of cats, those are a big part of the iPhone game that I’m reviewing today, The Battle Cats, created by the PONOS Corporation in 2014.