So Long and Thanks For All the Fish

It's been six years since I started writing this blog, and it best use was for me to look back on something I forgot I played and go "oh yeah, I did play that". The last couple years, I've tailed off and not written so many posts, and when I finish a game, it feels like I should update this page just because I've been semi-diligent about it for so long at this point. Well, that time is over. lol If you have enjoyed reading anything on here, cool, leave a comment. I'll continue working on my backlog for eternity, but as I'm toiling on things from the 80s, like I just finished Kings Quest II and Maniac Mansion, the reality is no one cares. *cue Vine of dude pushing his sister into pool* Thanks for reading, and I'll see ya on Twitch and Youtube, or you know, never is okay too. So long and thanks for all the fish.

Pony Island

Pony Island, man... It's weird, but I think I really like it. It's very meta, and if you don't want me spoiling surprises, just go play it. TLDR, it's short and worth it.

Aaaannnyyway, you boot up this game, and there's problems with the menu straight away. You have to solve a puzzle to fix the menu and get to what you think is the game. A game that's very simple. You're a pony. You're jumping over gates. It's terrible. Then the game creator gets pissed that you don't like their game, and starts throwing more stuff at you, making it more difficult. You start getting messages from someone that's trapped in this game, and SURPRISE BITCH, you're trapped too. They want to help you escape, and to do so, you have to erase three core files of the game.

These are blocked off by puzzles, more pony levels, and a pile of riddle me this. I enjoyed the fact that this game made me scribble down notes over the course of trying to find passwords, clues, and figure things out. I quit at one point when I couldn't figure something out, but I stopped playing maybe 30 seconds before I was like, nah, lemme try one more thing. It's intriguing, and you should definitely resist the urge to look anything up while playing. It's like 2.5 to 3 hours long. Don't cheat yourself.

As you progress, you find special powers hidden away in the code that the creator didn't want you to find. This allows you to get further in the game than they intend, so they have to code up new levels fast, which introduces more "bugs" which you can take advantage of. At one point, they tell you that they're not ready and you should take a break. I actually wanted to take a break about that time, but of course I won't now.

One of my favorite things in this game was how they tricked me at times. The game looks like it crashes at one point, and if you just X out of the modal, the little daemon you were fighting gives you a little wink. If you don't press the right thing, you're sent out to the desktop, and I did think it legit crashed. Probably the best bit of trickery was when one of these daemons asks you a bunch of questions. One of the things you're asked is to say something disgusting. I typed some smack about a jerk I know. At that point, a Steam chat notification pops up from a person I talk to regularly, repeating what I said and loling, asking if I'd been hacked. It definitely had me for a second. I was like, is there some spectate mode on this?! The hell! Good one, Pony Island.

You continue fighting the good fight and get your chance to escape and free all the other trapped souls in one final pony dashing, jumping, and shooting pony lasers level. You lose souls along the way as you get hit, and once you escape, you're told that unless you uninstall the game, the soul that has been helping you will remain trapped.

I had a good time. I deleted my saves without hesitation. What a weird and most excellent game.

Gunpoint

Gunpoint is hella good. It's a quick play at 3-4 hours. It has interesting mechanics where you rely on stealth and rewiring things like a lightswitch to a door, for instance, allowing you to KO guards with a swift door to the face as they patrol. You're a spy guy, and this spy guy got himself in a bit of a pickle where he looked like the prime suspect for a murder. The story starts with you needing to break into multiple buildings real quiet like and wipe the camera footage that puts you at the scene.

The gameplay consists of these building break-ins which are part face punch/pew pew, part puzzle. The story is told between missions via texts between you and clients. I really liked the story telling vehicle. It made them more than a cut scene. You had some agency. You could be a smarmy ass, a lying liar face, or a more standard brand of human. It was also a clever way to avoid having to do a bunch of additional art or animation to service the story.

Speaking of story, I really liked the writing. It was very humorous. There were even jokes sprinkled throughout the achievements and tutorial text. So do yourself a favor and actually read stuff.

Anyway, I dug it. If you like pixel-art sneaky, puzzle games of trickery, you will too.

Mini Metro

Mini Metro is a simple looking game in which you have to plan out a metro system with limited resources. As the game progresses, you get more and more stations that you need to connect, and more and more passengers which you have to account for.

The stations are indicated by various shapes, starting with circles, squares, and triangles. Each station will pop up riders indicated via the same shapes. A circle rider wants to get to a circle station, so based on how you set up your lines, it will take the appropriate train to get there. This gets more and more complicated as the stations invariably do not line up nicely, multiples of the same station type are clustered together, it randomly puts one station way out in BFE, and soon your poorly thought out lines look more and more like spaghetti.

There are many different levels which you can unlock by doing well in prior levels. Well, meaning you lasted many days and delivered more than 500 passengers, generally. Each level comes with their own challenges, like some cities have a lot of waterways and your limited number of tunnels or bridges available will make it a mad scramble just to keep things going once you run out. As more and more passengers get added, the possibility of any one station overcrowding is something you have to manage, either by adding new lines, more cars to your train, additional trains, or building an interchange which will speed up the loading of passengers.

The game runs on a weekly cycle, and at the end of every week, you'll get two options to pick between of these kinds of options. (An extra line, more tunnels, etc.)

Lots of times, I found myself moving trains and readjusting lines to alleviate problem areas just to live to see the weekend and possibly get saved by an extra rail line.

Overall, I've enjoyed it. It's kind of a soothing game to play. As there's no endgame, per se, I once again have to set my own parameters. I unlocked all the available levels, and that was enough for me. I came, I played, I got my $1 worth. Onto the next thing.