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…

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…

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…

Univers indifférent. NPC indépendants. Double tranchant du lore via les descriptions d’objets : casse l’immersion à cause du menuing, mais limite aussi la lourdeur de l’exposition forcée in-game. Facilité cependant : le monde vide et mort (Metroid, HK, etc.) Cependant : des espaces physiques. Des intérieurs et extérieurs qui donnent une vision d’ensemble, des zones qui connectent : un sens du chemin parcouru, acc…

À la façon d'Undertale, quoiqu'avec plus d'inconscience candide que d'égocentrisme balourd, Anodyne 2 veut le beurre et l'argent du beurre : critiquer les collectibles excessifs des jeux d'aventure et en faire une monnaie d'échange pour du contenu additionnel sincère ; proposer un monde propre à s'y perdre et exiger d'en explorer chaque recoin afin d'accéder à la fin de l'histoire (via un autre type de collectible) …

Puisque le contenu ludique ne saurait se limiter à ramasser des collectibles en déambulant dans un bois, il faut bien faire porter l'intérêt sur le déchiffrement du message éparpillé en métaphores visuelles. Sauf que le jeu n'agit ni comme révélateur ni comme amplificateur d'idées ; en premier lieu, il camoufle, pour enrayer tout débat de pertinence, et surtout pour légitimer sa propre existence en tant que clé du s…

Dans la mesure où Divide by Sheep et ses opérations mathématiques m'ennuient, je ne peux m'empêcher de voir et de mépriser les décisions de design qui visent à capturer l'attention : des nouvelles mécaniques introduites fréquemment, pas toujours cohérentes, combinées en mode salade-de-fruits plutôt que menées une à une à leurs extrémités respectives, et puis des tableaux et des zones débloquées au compte-gouttes, ac…

Islam contemporain, concerts punk, empathie transculturelle, antimilitarisme, shitpost cinéphilique, bornes d'arcade glitchées, androïdes, deuil... Dujanah réfute sans excuses ni orgueil l'apolitisme ambiant tout en brisant les frontières entre les genres. L'écriture multiforme (dans le sens où elle reconnaît à la fois son ambition sociale sincère et l'interaction complexe entre créateur et public) s'inscrit avec un…

En dépit d'une mise en scène élégante, les contrôles flous (sous l'excuse d'être secondaires) et la narration vaporeuse (sous l'excuse de la pOéSiE) me ramènent à ces mots de droqen : I want to make a game where the characters travel well-worn paths that you see plainly laid out ahead of you; where your actions have personal consequences not buried in the sand of abstract systems or dispensed as a breathable aero…