2026 June Media Post
My train of thought dreams of the silly bat among us.
Teabat (Episode 1)
I remember playing a demo for this game from Sonic Amateur Games Expo like 8 years ago and loving it. The demo was something I'd come back to and replay every now and then. Because I'm a mindless consumer that didn't look much at the store page, I didn't realize until I booted it up that this release of the game is only "Episode 1". Turns out this isn't a whole ton more expensive than the demo I played back then, granted that demo was relatively big for a demo (being around 1-2 hours), this release is only $8, and I think the game is good.
I find this game absolutely beautiful, but tragically it hurts to look at for too long. Aside from the stunning sprite-work, I adore this game's framing. While understand and don't necessarily mind that most games simply prioritize raw gameplay for their screen space, I appreciate this game going for style.
The core gameplay is pretty basic, but I don't really mind that when I enjoy simply existing within the game so much. There's actually a pretty solid score-attack mode, but I found the disabling of the map in the score-attack to be annoying, I wasn't in the mood to just memorize the levels. Also while I think the combo meter is well designed, I don't really like how incentivizes staying in the air as much as possible, it makes a lot of the ground feel superfluous when you're just meant to be avoiding it constantly.
Subway Midnight
I think a lot of this game's aspects are pretty cool and charming, but it's something I think I would've preferred to watch a let's play of. Not to say I regret spending money on the game, it's just that I found the gameplay to be really annoying.
Among Us (Show)
I decided to watch this on a whim the day it released, like seemingly a lot of people I was pretty surprised to actually quite enjoy it. The story is pretty conventional and basic, but it was pulled off with a lot of competence. Even when I preemptively knew where a lot of characters arcs were going, the characters were likeable enough to keep me engaged. The humor was especially modest for what I was expecting. Sure there's some out there stuff that happens, but I was worried the show would be based around self-referential meme culture. The humor, and the show all-around gave me a great time.
Only after watching this series did I realize it was written by the creator of Infinity Train. Learning that motivated me to finally bother checking out Infinity Train, but I dropped off after like 5 episodes, I unfortunately didn't really jive with it.
Silly Polly Beast
This game delivered on being cool. The combat is fun. I don't particularly mind that this game was pretty streamlined for a survival horror game, it's pretty linear and it's forgiving with its checkpoints (at least on the Normal difficulty). I also didn't have a huge issue with the non-standard gameplay segments, although I imagine the novelty of a lot of them get pretty stale on repeat playthroughs. My least favorite part was the school section, that part actually was very exploration based, I found it to be an annoying slog. The story was solid, I was taken off guard and just how dark it gets, but I probably shouldn't have been, I'm familiar that child abuse is far from a new concept to introduce into horror stories.
Lucid Blocks
Back when I played Minecraft when I was really young, hostile mobs being able to spawn seemingly directly behind me along with the noises they would make would scare me pretty bad. I especially didn't like Endermen since they would teleport around and their mouths would stretch through to the back of their heads. I haven't played much Minecraft in a long time so I don't know if I would still be scared of playing Survival mode, but I know this game was able to exploit similar fears within me. While I still haven't grasped how horror is appealing, I do now find it appealing, so I ended finding the scary moments in this game very cool.
This game also nails its dreamlike qualities, the monsters and most else really are so abstract. There were so many times in which I was amazed by what I was seeing because it seemed so personally unimaginable. The procedural generation aspect of this game a modern spin on the appeal of games like Yumi Nikki and LSD Dream Emulator, the limitlessness of the world feels daunting. There's just enough personal touch in the world-generation design to really mess with me though.
I find a lot of the gameplay's friction complimentary to the non-gameplay aspects, I thought it was pretty bold and cool when the game happened to tell me to climb straight up towards the unseeable sky for over an hour. When nearing the endgame though I did find myself annoyed by needing to grind, and I ultimately gave up on beating the game when the final boss took me over 20 minutes on a failed attempt and I had no inclination of how close I was to winning. Something else I liked about the gameplay though was how you're not very encouraged to build a base. There is a mechanic which supplements a lot of the benefits having a permanent home normally would have, but the game lets (and I think expects you) to be a nomad which I think is good for a constant sense of exploration.
That flag is seemingly a living thing and I don't know how to get rid of it.
| 2026 Media Page |
Comments
Post a Comment