The testing rooms you have to complete are presented in typical 2D top-down sokoban view. However the mechanics are less conventional, since you can not only push the crates on the grid, but also pull them, drag them sideways, and climb on them. Additionally, each side of the crates can be altered by color-coded charges from laser guns, and you can only grab the sides that match your own charge. [...]

My partner and I stopped Spiritfarer after 8 hours or so. It's a cozy resource management game set on a sailing boat, with cute art and satisfying animations. We came to the genre in good faith but it was all too grindy for us in the end (and we were only 20% in). Also the characters and the writing almost never clicked with us, which for a game about grief was rather embarrassing. Still, it was nice to experience i…

I got to the end of Temple of Snek. That was a gruelling affair. The game is clearly a work of love and there are many things I liked about it (the open-world aspect felt great for one half of the story; the rooms are lively and with many details; the adaptive music is excellent), but also a lot of things which eventually felt really irritating, and for no good reason I could think of (the late game felt impossible …

[spoilers] Having dealt with the contemporary art world, I could very much feel the appeal of Renzo to Lorelei, with his bigger-than-life projects, his sentiments-driven view of reality, his constant hinting at something beyond the daily affairs of the world. But then the collaboration goes sour, culminating with a horrific breakdown from Renzo—and it's hard not to blame yourself for it, when you wanted so hard to b…

Some thoughts on the remastered Braid. The puzzles and the overall system hold up really well, I enjoyed rediscovering it 15 years later. David Hellman did an incredible job repainting most of the game, you've got brushes of paint drawn in real time all over the place, it's trippy and it's great. The sound design was also heavily improved (it was mostly a programmer's clunky job back in the old version), I like m…

Par curiosité un peu morbide, j'ai pris un roman de Musso dans une boîte à livres, et j'avance quand j'ai un peu de temps à tuer (merci la SRS). J'ai été surprise et amusée de découvrir toute une dimension soft propagande de droite, en particulier : glorification des services de police, critique de toute émeute, piques répétées contre la mairie de Paris. Souvent aussi du « c'était mieux avant, toutes les valeur…

A force de le voir cité dans plein d'articles, j'ai fini par lire Trouble dans le genre / Gender Trouble, de Judith Butler. C'était très moyen. Il y a trois parties, inégales, et la première était la plus intéressante. C'était une proposition d'analyse des constructions de concepts de genre, de sexe, de corps. L'approche et le thème m'ont beaucoup rappelé Foucault, en bien. La deuxième partie fait un full vir…

I'm signing off on Void Stranger after 20 hours or so. Pieces of advice for those who consider playing it: It is unique. This much is true. It is harsh. Forget about all QoL features from the past 15 years. No undo, no skipping levels (mostly), no tutorialization, no knowledge check, etc. No joyful feedback from your hard wins, just the next gray sokoban room. If you want to dive deeper, you'll have to deal wi…

I did eventually get the murals to bring me to the 3 burdens + more arcane stuff, and I got to activate the authorized brands on run start. Got the alphabet code too. I'm halfway into Lillie's run. Wondering if there'll be an incentive to do the rooms without the burdens, since most of them feel broken with wings or sword. There's Void lore in outrageously random rocks. And the high fantasy story turned into mother-…

I liked the audacity of it, I just wished I had a better grasp on how the scene related to the rest of the game. Tbf my early reaction was one of being moved, it's a fair emotional kick and it's got surprise on its side. But after 30 seconds or so I realized it would be as oblique as the rest of the game so far, no clarity in sight, no relief, just the firm knowledge that you're navigating through pain. The first…

So Void Stranger threw a musical number at me? I feel like I was supposed to be moved, but the oblique narration keeps me from feeling much anything for the character/story/whatever. There's been a strange light giving me a hint about perfection, huh? okay then. I got a free infinity sigil but couldn't make it work (tried inputting it 2 times, nothing happened as far as I could see). Tried inputting the first tablet…

I wish I'd liked it more, eh. The gameplay is quite original, it revolves around mapping out the highlands from peak to peak, to reach the sea eventually. There's also items you may connect/activate with bits and pieces of lore. There's also rhythm sections somehow? Anyway, while I praise the care for building a game anchored in one place, focused on its culture and its physicality, ultimately it's too much for me t…

Well, I'm giving up on Talos Principle after 13 hours or so. On the whole I found it Not Good. A few puzzles were stimulating, but the majority felt redundant and stuffed with time-consuming dull detours. I gathered 10 stars to check what I imagined were the most challenging ones, but it was more of the same. Tetromino puzzles were a bore, I cannot understand why they got into the game except for adding cheap …

I completed Chants of Sennaar yesterday, and it was a bit of a letdown. I didn't buy into the mythical story the way I became enthralled with Heaven's Vault sci-fi/adventure. As to the puzzle part, it was okay, it flowed without too much effort, but I wish there were more challenges. Instead, the game seemed to make sure we could make out all the glyphs. It felt a bit like a cultural power fantasy... Otherwise, hey,…

The hand-drawn art is catchy, and the puzzles are just as original. The game slowly introduces path-finding creatures who interfere with your attempts to clean up the garden levels. As their number grows, expect to feel a sense of chaos. It makes for a very strong, unusual flavor of puzzle mechanics. To be honest, it took me quite some time to like it —it's so frustrating to have woodsmen or miners messing up your p…

Oriane, [3/11/22 11:35 PM] c'était sympa Oriane, [3/11/22 11:35 PM] un film de arthouse cool kids Oriane, [3/11/22 11:45 PM] avec des métamétaphores émergentes, le sentiment d'irréel du confinement reconstruit via la mise au jour de rouages de mise en scène, et l'affleurement de l'absurdité du quotidien signifié par le questionnement de l'acte de comédie Oriane, [3/11/22 11:47 PM] le parallèle entre le …

Il existe des cénacles de critiques professionnels qui sont dotés de revues érudites et de tribunes à la radio et à la télévision et qui, signe de leur prétention à la légitimité culturelle, s'essaient souvent à singer le ton docte et ennuyeux de la critique universitaire et à lui emprunter le culte de l'érudition pour l'érudition, comme si, hantés par l'inquiétude de leur légitimité, ils ne pouvaient qu'adopter en …

Jen Richards: It's an interesting question, a kind of a thought experiment, to go back and think... what I would feel today, as an out trans person, if I had never seen any representation of myself in the media. On the one hand, I might not have ever internalized that sense of being monstrous, of having fears around disclosure, of seeing myself as something abhorrent, and as a punchline, as a joke. I might be able t…

Les conditions d'entrée et de sortie des puzzles sont radicalement incertaines. Jamais sûre d'avoir tout en main, jamais sûre d'avoir terminé. Peut-être que la solution est directement accessible, ou peut-être qu'il manque une pièce à récupérer quinze minutes ou cinq heures plus tard à l'autre bout du jeu : l'expérience est moyennement plaisante. L'esthétique lisse et les blagues ratées n'encouragent pas à creuser p…

I'm not into matching games usually, and yet I found myself having much fun with Kavel, and coming back to it repeatedly. The tetromino twist on the usual matching mechanics is instantly enjoyable. There's a cosiness to the mindset it induces, while the variety of the patterns keeps things stimulating. And the colorful feedback from the visual effects is impossible not to like. So the main rules are easy to grasp…