Playing Every Game in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
PEGBRJE: ‘Dusk Child’ and ‘Turn Chase’
PICO8 SUPREMACY DAY
Dusk Child is a narrative puzzle platformer created by Sophie Houldon, an indie dev that we’ve seen a few times prior in the bundle thanks to their entries of Pumpking and DANGEROUS DUELS. For this entry, players will follow an unnamed protagonist as they are drawn to a strange and abandoned temple for… well, we’re not sure.
Players will navigate the space with only their initial abilities of jumping, moving, and picking up/reading objects. The only remnants of the people before the protagonist are signs that give hints on where to go, but otherwise players need to use the layout to figure out where to go.
The structure of the world may remind some of Metroidvania-esque games as the protagonist will constantly be backtracking to areas already explored in order to unlock a new path that had been opened from another part of the map. This goes even further when players gain access to the ‘X’ button, for it will allow them to alter their state and open up the map once again. For an area quite small, there is a lot of winding in and out of places which can make it feel larger than it is.
At its core, Dusk Child is a small yet full adventure of one being drawn to something they do not know nor can they understand. You’ll be constantly looking at text, scratching your head, and then hoping that the context clues of the backdrops will help. Which, by the way, are gorgeous; the pixel art on display here is fantastic and detailed, making it always worth finding new places to explore.
The game is short, only taking about ~30 minutes to complete, but it covers everything that it wishes to say within that timeframe quite neatly. It could have overstayed its welcome if it chose to by adding more puzzles, but instead keeps itself brief and to the point.
If you enjoy short games with excellent artwork, this is a great game to try out.
It also works on browser, and comes with old-school manuals with walkthroughs and maps for those that miss those (its me, I miss those).
Turn Chase is a turn-based puzzle game created by JASON, an indie dev in Poland. Players will command a green square in the hopes of reaching the checkered square to beat the level. Unfortunately, orange hates that idea.
The idea of Turn Chase is that the player needs to reach the orange checkered square before the orange squares destroy them. Each move of the green square is immediately followed by all of the orange squares attempting to swarm. If any square attempts to move in to a square already owned by another, they will attack that square instead of moving.
Due to the sheer numbers advantage, players have much more resilience than their opponents, but the numbers will slowly whittle that advantage down if left unchecked.
This is where the strategies kick in, which are all highly dependent on the level layout itself. Since the orange squares always move after the player, running away without a clear path at all times is futile as the enemies will eventually catch up. If there are a lot of secondary/tertiary paths, being able to separate the green and orange squares is much easier but still tricky depending on if they move specific ways or not.
Ultimately a passive run is rarely possible, so aiming to ensure that players do not get ganged up on and hit from multiple sides a turn is the best.
Each level of Turn Chase introduces a new mechanic to spice up the puzzle-nature of the game, as the general gameplay is quite simple without them. There are buttons to press, barracks to stop, turrets to destroy, and more as you explore. Each level’s end will award points based on performance which can be used to upgrade the green square’s attacks and health, so pick the ones that best reflect how you play. It can be tricky, but if you love these tactical battling puzzles then it might be for you.
