inevitable 4/15–4/21
I record every game I play and I post them weekly. Here are links to one, two, and three, four, five, six, and seven.
I started publishing this series of articles in March, but there’s plenty of other games I kept track of before then. I’ll sprinkle them in starting now because they’re too good to not share.
(note: “inevitable” is a title of a hole on Cheap Golf that I adapted for this article because… well, whatever)
Free Games
5 Seconds of Fire by ajmalr
This is one of the first titles I put in a “play later” list when I found out about itch.io and I finally got around to it. 5 Seconds of Fire is a satisfying collectathon-cave-platformer with quick, fluid movement. It’s wonderful, though it’s so easy to complete most of the time that I wish it was a smidge more challenging to keep me around longer.
College Hill Kentucky by flan
I love these tiny quirky environments with an edge to fall off of. The animation of the leaves are the coolest part for me, and controlling two characters is a bit of a fun thing to play around with.
Neuropica by Will Smith
A rather brilliant walking sim using Playscii for visual flavour. This is just such a treat to experience… I really can’t describe the way it made me feel, and it’s really disappointing that I cannot play through it for the first time again. It’s so simple, making me wish for a level editor, but I don’t know if I’d like that because Will Smith has created an extraordinary place that deserves to stand on its own.
Originally played 2/9
Ikiki
ihavefivehat posted about ikiki, a prolific Japanese developer. There are also gameplay videos to check out as well. I only played four of them, choosing based on how saying their title out loud sounds (being that I don’t know Japanese). Download them all from second the link above, or directly here.
Alright, I’m not gonna lie, I picked this one because I knew it was boxing from previewing the YouTube playlist. I, uh, have a thing for boxing… but this is a 2P game, unfortunately, so it wasn’t that great of a time. I thought the boy on the right was better-looking, so I made him knock out the other boy for this screenshot. Woof.
Fight other people to death falling from the sky! Uh… kinda weirds me out, all the blood from this massacre. It’s entertaining, though. Okay.
This was both enchanting and annoying. The sound effects are completely ridiculous as your character, the green brother, attempts to catch the balls hit by the red brother. Kinda difficult.
A platforming murder game, with theoretically-optional murder. The wall jumps are kinda difficult to adjust to but otherwise a bit of fun. I picked this game because the name reminded me of Hoshi Saga, a series of games I’ll be playing soon because I want to.
Knytt Stories+
The following three games are all by ncrecc, who posts a lot of KS+ levels. It’s only coincidence this happened as I didn’t realize it until I started putting this together.
garden
A tricky way of using these zoomy arrows. I still can’t figure out how to advance to the arrow at the top, coming from the right.
000000bestknyttauthor — bestknyttgame
Apparently, this one can be completed legitimately, but I have no idea how quite yet. Gotta try things that are different than what I’ve been doing, which are things that have not led me to success.
9 Boring Levels
All you have to do is follow the directions in each “cutscene” and you will succeed. This was a great treat after failing the other levels.
Two-player
I’d like to note that these screenshots are especially terrible, being that it’s difficult to capture the action during a two-person game where both people have very short attention spans.
Banana Foolishness by Hats, Megan Varde, Sebastian Gosztyla, and Luno
Be an object, race your awkward object to touch a different object so you can be the first object the most. Above, each player is a banana attempting to touch the mug that both will become, though of course only the first-toucher wins the point.
动力场 by Martian’s Parlor Entertainment
Guide an awkwardly-shaped, uhhh, thing around a course with the help of a friend. Above, your friend ought to press the ‘W’ key to “melt” the letter as to allow the character to pass. It’s really, really cool, and I want to kiss it.
This is one of the coolest-looking games I’ve played so far this year. Well, maybe I say that about a lot of games, but I guess that means I aesthetically connect to a good number of games. Maybe by this I mean that the visuals are something I could have conceivably done because my taste is kinda similar…? LOL idk.
Paid games
Cheap Golf by Pixeljam
Episode 2 was just released and it’s so damn good. It feels more balanced than Ep. 1, plus it adds new mechanics. Cheap Golf is yet another game that I felt was made specifically to my taste. Everything about it is incredible and I love it dearly. I cannot recommend this enough. !!!
Two-player
Beads of Orange Glass by Loren Schmidt
Another terrible screenshot of a terrific experience. A non-competitive two-player ambient game, it’s something you ought to have the right person to play with.
Nidhogg by Messhoff
I love playing this on the PS4 at Game Pub, a bar with couches and consoles (and a couple PCs and some arcade cabinets). Nidhogg is super cool and sometimes hilarious. My friend Wael and I tend to be the loudest people in the room when we play this, though that’s not the intention.
I have to give a shoutout to Daedalus who composed the soundtrack. It’s always loud at Game Pub so audio isn’t always heard well, but I really caught the music this time and love it. The Castle stage music is particularly badass, but the screenshot above is of the Mines that looks super neat with the wormies squirming in the ground.
Cuphead by Studio MDHR
Played this on Wael’s laptop and it’s pretty cool. Sort-of frustrating but mostly enjoyable, though a lot of the difficulty for me was parsing my blue cup from the inferior red cup. I did pretty okay for my first time!
Peggle by PopCap Games
I love this game and its tongue-in-cheek humour. I wish there was way more than just this and Peggle Nights (for PC), but not Peggle Blast. The two-player duel mode is fun too!
Tekken 7 by Bandai Namco
Okay, so I admit it: these aren’t screenshots from this past week. I actually played Tekken 7 and Nidhogg the previous week and just forgot to post them, so I’m doing that now.
I honestly can’t really differentiate Tekken 3 from Tekken 7, gameplay-wise. All I know is that there are now more characters and the graphics are better.
I have a special relationship with fighting games, especially those with polygonal characters. I’m an agonophiliac with an interest in male-only non-fatal/non-bloody ryona. If you don’t know those two words in the previous sentence, I’d only recommend looking them up if you’re prepared to learn about NSFW stuff, even though what I like is less innocuous than “R” rated.
Regardless, I think King is super hot and the main reason why Tekken is my favourite fighting series.
Game I made
Every year since 2013, I’ve made guitar solo-related things for my brother’s birthday. This one is done in DungeonScript, a very underrated game engine that I wish more people would use (it’s a first-person version of PuzzleScript). Visually, this game is a result of just playing around with the engine… there’s nothing in particular that is made for my brother. It just has a soundtrack of guitar solos playing while you walk around, songs with guitar solos that I’ve had since his last birthday, plus four contributed by Trouv.
Also played this week that I already wrote about: Doom 3, Lowglow, Desert Golfing, and Golfinity.
