Good morning, squiders! We’ve survived all our summer camps and things can go back to (relatively) normal. Phew!
In case you missed it, I’ve set a video game goal for the year to play through and at least categorize my extensive collection of Steam games (much like my ever growing TBR list, I hoard games without playing them, and that is silly).
Picking up where we left off:
May
For May, I picked Cleo: A Pirate’s Tale (continued from April), Evan’s Remains, and Phantasmagoria.
Cleo – A Pirate’s Tale
I kickstarted Cleo, actually! This is an old-school point and click adventure game, and I really enjoyed it. Which may have led to some other ideas we shall talk about shortly. Great game, good story. May have teared up at the end. (Category: Beat the Game!)
Evan’s Remains
Evan’s Remains is part puzzle platformer and part visual novel. I got it as part of a bundle, though who knows which one. I played for about half an hour in May, enough to learn the game mechanics and get started on the story, which takes place on a deserted island with the ruins of a technologically-advanced society. (Not categorized)
I never started Phantasmagoria so nothing to say about it. Whoops. Though I do know exactly what bundle this came with. As a kid, I was obsessed with the Sierra game catalogue that would come in the game boxes. I’d read it cover to cover and wish that I could play all the games inside. (I’m trying to remember what game of theirs I did have. Torin’s Passage was theirs, apparently–excellent puzzler, interesting worldbuilding. I have a copy somewhere–oh, and Mixed-Up Mother Goose. Maybe more. But none of the big series.)
Anyway, when a Sierra bundle came up, you can bet your buttons I bought that. So now I have, like, Space Quest, and King’s Quest, and a whole bunch of other games that I always wanted to play and still have not played. Go me.
June
June I set no goals since we spent three weeks on a vacation.
July
July was a smashing success, game-wise. I played and BEAT all three of my games: A Short Hike (started in February), Evan’s Remains (started in May), and a new game called Witchy Life Story which came in a cozy games bundle.
Witchy Life Story
This is mostly a visual novel, though there is a gardening and a spellcrafting mechanism, and you can build up relationships with the town’s people (romantic and otherwise). I guess there were ways to fail though I felt like it was really obvious how, you know, not to. You play a young witch sent to a town to help with their festival as punishment for some bad choices you made at home. It was pretty sweet, I enjoyed it. Probably would not replay as the mechanics did get a little repetitive. (Category: Beat the Game!)
A Short Hike!
I started this game very briefly in February (played like 15 minutes and got annoyed at the controls). See part 1 (link above). The controls were mostly okay, especially once I got some golden feathers which gave me more leeway. (There was still a part near the end where I had to try like 50 times to get it to work, so much that my fingers started to hurt.) By the time I got to the end the game had grown on me, and I briefly considered moving it into a category where I could play some more before ultimately deciding not to. (Category: Beat the Game!)
Evan’s Remains (again)
Man, this one has some story. I’m not sure I’ve been quite so emotionally devastated by a game in a while (though the part after the climax kind of walks back on the whole thing, but I’m not too mad about it). There are a lot of rather long dialogue sections, and the puzzles range from comfortably easy to quite evil, but you can skip any (or all) of them. I ended up skipping 2, one to get an achievement, and one that I messed up and then couldn’t figure out how to reset. (Category: Beat the Game!)
Monkey Island?
Have you ever played LucasArts’ Monkey Island adventure game series? It is perhaps my very favorite series, between the off-the-wall puzzles, quirky characters, and fantastic humor. An online friend mailed me the first game in, oh, 1997 I want to say, but I didn’t end up playing it until a few years later, after I watched an IRL friend play Monkey Island 3 and I remembered I owned the first game. Now there’s….six games?
And I own all of them, though the Telltale Games’ Tales of Monkey Island I may only have on physical media. Actually, do I own 3 and 4 digitally? This may take some tweaking.
ANYWAY I thought I’d play back through the series, starting with The Secret of Monkey Island, which is the first game. It came out in 1990. LucasArts remastered it several years back by animating over the original pixel art and getting the voice actors from later games to do the voices, which is somewhat horrifying, but you can play the game in its original state. (But I do really like the voice actors. Choices.) I’m picking this as one of my games for August, so hopefully I will actually, you know, get around to it.
Play anything good lately, squiders?
(Actually no, don’t tell me, I must stop buying games and I just bought in the Steam summer sale, so….)
