April Media Post
Duck Paradox
There's not a ton of variation in this roguelike, I saw just about everything the game has to offer within 10 hours. Being able to stack items seemingly indefinitely is pretty fun though. The main aspect of the game that stood out to me, while it's a gameplay thing, I felt was cool to experience blind so here's your spoiler warning.
The boss fights were pretty wack from what I could tell. One of I can't really say much on because I only ever fought it like once or twice (because I couldn't figure out what exactly determines the boss you fight at the end of a loop). The other 2 though felt unnaturally tanky, I didn't like shooting at them for minutes on end.
Redline Crooks
This is my favorite game I've played so far this year. The game looks sounds and feels really nice, and the gameplay is really solid and engaging. This might be a pretty surface level comparison, but this game really reminds me of Nuclear Throne aesthetically. It's great at getting me really pumped and excited to play.
I'd say similarly to Crazy Taxi, there's incentive for you to constantly play really aggressively and risky so you can squeeze as much cash out of passing drivers as possible (cash ammounts to points in both games, points that feel GOOD to collect).
I'd say probably the lowest part of this game for me is the loop system, because after the very start of the first loop, you're unable to get anymore upgrades. Granted, I think I understand why this is the case, runs would become extremely homogeneous due to the game's low item count, but that doesn't stop me from yearning to play with every item at once. It's left me oftentimes just choosing to not loop, although that's also in part because I still have higher difficulties to unlock before I only care about high scores, but even then, I'll still play some runs out to loops sometimes (especially for dailys and weeklys).
My favorite characters to play as at the moment are Deadlift and Shopkeep. Deadlift from what I can tell is just the best as destroying other vehicles due to their forklift ability, which combined with their speed leads to them feeling like a power trip. Shopkeep on the other hand is comically bad at their base, but their slot machine ability is by far the silliest in the entire game. Sometimes you keep winning big and cause utter chaos, and sometimes you're comically screwed over.
For a little bit, I actually changed my social media profile icon to be a drawing of Shopkeep because they're my number 1 favorite character.
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The "Vulnerable" status effect makes the affected take extra damage.
I'm most proud of obtaining the Bet On The Underdog achievement so far, but unfortunately Steam Recording bugged out during the play session in which I got it, so I uploaded a video of me getting Cheapskate instead which I'm also proud of.
Beetlejuice The Musical
There's a ton of random animations in my Watch Later playlist on YouTube (I plan to watch and write about a ton of them eventually), and I on a whim decided to watch this one:
I initially assumed the song was just from the Beetlejuice movie, but upon watching it, some of the 4th wall breaks make it evident that the song is from an adaptation of the movie. I then found it was a musical, I listened to some of the other songs, and found them entertaining, so I decided to watch the musical.
I was a fan of the humor for the most part, although for my taste Betelgeuse (I've heard that's how the main character's name is actually spelt despite the title) goes a little far on being a sex freak (I've heard it's even worse in the original movie). The plot also feels somewhat unfocused near end. Overall, it was fun to watch, and I found a good chunk of the songs catchy, so I enjoyed it.
Game Changer
I also ended up checking this out due to YouTube videos. In this case though, it was due to YouTube Shorts. I've also watched a lot of shorts of Dropout's other series, but Game Changer's the only one I've bothered to watch full episodes of so far.
The main premise of the show, the game changing every episode, leads to a lot of really novel gimmicks for episodes. What I think really excels this show though is the contestants, they're (usually) entertainers, and the show lets them be entertaining. I think an episode that greatly demonstrates this show's strengths is "Yes Or No". The game played is incredibly uninteresting on a mechanical level, but the way the contestants react to playing it, and the fun ways in which each question is presented, make for a funny watch. My favorite contestant also is Brennan Lee Mulligan.
Unfortunately due to the very experimental nature of the show, I feel not every episode's a banger. I also think Season 3 is particularly hampered due to it taking place during the Covid-19 Pandemic, so the production value didn't get to be as high.
Looking Up I Only See A Ceiling
This game's much less dark than I expected (I went in pretty blind, what you see in the image above was just about all I knew), although perhaps that's a good thing. If it were too dark then I might've ended up having uncomfortable lingering thoughts. I'd still call it somewhat dark though.
While the story's set in college specifically, I think the struggles the main character goes through (not including the physical manifestations of them) are relatable even if you've never gone through college.
The game's very short, maybe like half an hour long, so if you want more to chew through then get the DLC as well, it added like an extra hour to my playtime. Granted, some of that playtime was an unfun replay of the DLC with a guide so I could get the good ending, but it was still overall additive to my experience.
My favorite part of this game is its art style. The noticably pixelated yet not pixel art look to everything, and the very cold blue and red color palettes are pretty neat.
Jessica Jane Has A Crush
If you like lesbians, well um, this game's free, you can see the artwork right there, it's wholesome, and I can attest to enjoying the writing. I don't know of much more I could say to sell you on this game.
Hero Hours Contract
I've both been hankering for another Tactical-RPG to play, yet also not wanting to commit to playing anything for very long, so I played this since it's only a few hours long (and free on PC).
It's cute, but not so much so to leave me gushing over it. It's enough for me to bring it up as one of the most memorable aspects of the game though.
My main issues with this game derive from the ways in which your characters grow stronger, and how they're balanced at the start of the game. One of the characters (I don't remember their names and am too lazy to check) is fine I think because they start off fully functional, and simply get permanent damage upgrades from some side levels. One of them feels really inconsistent because their main ability is tied to chance, and can only have its chance temporarily upgraded. And then one of them starts off horrendous because their main ability is both luck based and not at full functionality at the start of the game, but their ability becomes solid after you upgrade it enough.
My favorite parts of this game were the Beach and Tower levels, since they had predetermined level designs. With the way the game was overall designed though, even though the Beach levels especially are laid out like puzzles, you can't necessarily beat them with smarts alone, grinding to grow stronger is a core part of the gameplay loop. Again though, it's not long, so as someone who doesn't like grinding, I didn't mind that much, and honestly, it did probably add a bit to the game being a chill experience.
Cat Girl Without Justice
I'm a fan of Cat Girl Without Salad, so I was pleasantly surprised to see this game shadow droped for April Fool's, but then I played it and didn't really like it. Spoilers:
Dreams Of Aether
Now this was an April Fool's game that I was much more positively receptive to (it's probably my second favorite game I've played so far tgis year). In recent times I've seen more and more memes based on the idea "what if X had a WarioWare game", and those are neat, but it's especially pleasing to see a series just straight up create an actual WarioWare style game.
I love this game's style (or styles?). It goes for a somewhat cutesy, silly, fun vibe. I also find it kinda cozy. I especially love all the purple colors💜. The writing is also charming, so much so that it actually got me interested to start looking into Aether lore (although I've been generally disappointed with it so far).
Gameplay wise, it's pretty good, and for the most part it's not particularly different from WarioWare, but then there are 2 parts of the game that throw in twists that I absolutely love, and have a little hooked on the game. Spoilers I guess because they're both late game things:
The only particular issue I have is with some of the difficulty, there's a couple of microgames that I find too difficult at higher difficulties. Unfortunately the main one that comes to mind is called Adapt, which unfortunately invites not taking my complaint about its difficulty seriously.
I'm using Steam's built-in Turbo feature by the way
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