Weekly Overview of the Bundle For Ukraine | Gaming
Weekly Overview of the Bundle For Ukraine 27: Puzzles, Nostalgia, And So, So Much More
The great evil has been vanquished
Overview
Being much less melodramatic, page 27 was a doozy to sort through. At a staggering 27/3 split, this is the second most games I’ve had on a single page in the history of both bundles, narrowly missing out on tying the top from page 2 of the Racial Justice Bundle. With this newer format, however, it felt like so many more as I crammed all 27 games into a 14 day period, which made for some interesting finds.
Thankfully there were duplicates to alleviate much of this, but still there are tons of games to get through. Best not wait any longer.
Video Games
Software
Duplicates
Video Games
Containment
A game that came out a year before a global pandemic occurred (at least, that’s when it was published), Containment is a puzzle game about germs by Finite Reflection, a studio that creates and ports indie games. As a genius with diseases, it is up to your clever eyes to isolate and destroy the bacteria in a setting best only described as ‘hexagonal’.
The game is split into two phases, with the goal of clearing the entire board of bacteria before the ‘Turns’ run out. During the ‘Bacteria’ phase, the board is populated by hexogonal bacteria based on the Bacteria Power they have. Each power level goes onto a randomly selected grid, with multiples increasing the power of the existing up to 10. Once out of power, players get to take a crack at finding weakness in the grid to exploit.
The selector given contains seven hexagons max (the center one and all those touching it) and selecting an area uses your current Antibiotic power to lower the level of bacteria in that area. Once you’ve run out of doses or decide to end your turn, the phase ends by all bacteria taking a single point of damage before starting a new.
At first this seems relatively simple, but there are many twists in the gameplay. The first is ‘isolation’ — a bacteria cannot exist on its own, even if it has a strength of 10. During the end phase, if there are any bacteria left alone, they are instantly destroyed for double the amount of points. This means that large bacteria can be removed with ease if the surrounding bacteria all have only a single power level left at the end of the round. For every few isolated bacteria, you even get a bonus dose for next round.
The next twist is in the end turn mechanic, as any extra doses are added to the ‘research’ level — by increasing this, your antibiotic power increases so that the attacks on the bacteria do more than just 1. There’s a lot of risk and reward at stake; do you level up your antibiotic power to make next round more tactical, or chip away at them now to worry about them later? It’s all your call, and that’s the best part about the game. It’s hard as heck to get into, but once you do you’ll be clicking hexagons and destroying bacteria in no time.
Learn Japanese To Survive! Kanji Combat & Learn Japanese To Survive — Hiragana Battle
A double feature! Been a while since I’ve gotten to do something like this, but it’s hard to not discuss the overlap that these two games bring. Created by RIVER CROW STUDIO, an Australian indie team originally branded Sleepy Duck, these are two educational RPGs with the distinct goal of teaching two of the written Japanese language systems. Both games feature self-insert protagonists who find themselves in Japan under strange circumstances and thrust into a war against sentient symbols while teaching them to a wider audience.
While there is a third to round out the trilogy — Katakana War — it is the only title not on itch.io and won’t be covered.
Learn Japanese to Survive is a traditional turn-based RPG in which combat centres around learning the different language systems to fight, broken up by visual novel scenes comprised of lessons to teach new symbols.
In combat, you and your party members can ‘solve’ an enemy by stating its symbolic name which looks similar to attacking it. The list of words is written in English and Romaji (Romanized Japanese) so that you can practice memorizing what the symbols correlate to. Levelling up makes your attacks more effective and varied, with magic being introduced to assist in the combat.
While this all sounds relatively straight forward, the main goal is to learn the two given language systems, and the game puts that at the forefront of its intentions. Lessons are detailed and lengthy, from showcasing how to draw out the symbols properly to offering hints on how to memorize their visual connection to the phrase. Kanji dives into how each Kanji is pronounced in its various ways and highlights how to spot when to use each possibility, while Hiragana teaches the entire character list before moving into how to structure sentences grammatically.
It’s all about gamifying learning through quests and combat, and Learn Japanese To Survive does a great job of teaching a solid foundation for both language systems they approach. Granted I’m no language expert, so I’m a bit out of my depth here. Logographic languages like Japanese are fascinating to me in their massive amount of variance and contextual importance, and it’s still wild to think about the 10 000+ Kanji that exist. If you want a strong baseline to start your Japanese script journey, this might be a great place to get the ball rolling.
Rip Them Off
Rip Them Off is a puzzle management game created by Lozange Lab, an indie duo seen earlier with their title Swim Out, which I also recommended. Instead of washing over me with cool movement puzzles, this time you’ll be trying to make people spend as much as possible in a bureaucratic hellhole.
Dubbed a ‘tower defense’ of sorts, Rip Them Off requires you to put buildings in the way of people that stream out of spawn points that cause them to enter and spend their money. Each building has a set amount and a ‘timer’, indicating how much it can suck from each individual before they are spat back out. That’s the first thing to learn, lining up the spawn timers of the people with the most efficient buildings in their path. Once you get past the tutorial, however, this becomes almost impossible thanks to a simple problem: multi laning.
People will start spawning from different paths, and buildings will start indicating that they cover multiple paths. Every wave also increases the amount these people have on them before their are ‘ripped off’, which means that you need to make your plans more efficient as the waves increase. Upgrading the buildings to have more capacity is one method, but you could also upgrade to a bigger building type; thing is, if the rhythm is off then you won’t make as much off of them. There’s a sweet spot for every timing, and finding that can be more challenging than actually making the money in the first place.
Coupled with a hilariously capitalistic and corporate flair as you get your orders from the shareholders and the board, Rip Them Off is an addicting game that sucks you in way faster than you might expect. You can choose the level to restart in as well to adjust strategies that may have worked initially but fell off after some misplays, or restart the whole level. Either way, the amount of trial and error can cause the hours to simply disappear.
Sonny
Time for a trip down memory lane.
Sonny (also dubbed Sonny 2017) is the fully released and ‘remade’ version of the FLASH game Sonny. Created by Jakrin Juangbhanich (known as Krin) and published to Armor Games back in 2007, it and its sequel Sonny 2 were massively popular games on the platform. Both currently sit above 10 million plays, with Sonny 2 being in the top 10 of most played games on the platform if the metrics linked are accurate. It was also one of the first RPGs I dove into on my dialup internet, its hit success lead me down the rabbit hole of Flash Games. This ‘2017 version’ (which I will call Sonny going forward) brings the core experience to mobile and Steam, while completely overhauling its story, art, and combat systems.
Now that the preamble has been completed, it’s time to answer: what is Sonny?
Sonny follows the titular protagonist in an apocalyptic world where zombies run amok. Sonny awakens as a zombie, but retains his mental facilities thanks to a mysterious stranger named Louis, who helps him get off the boat before dying to soldiers. With nothing but a tape, Sonny navigates the world in search of answers for what he is and how to stop the entire zombie infestation.
Gameplay takes the form of turn-based wave battles that dictate the pacing of the story. Each battle has a number of waves that must be defeated in order to progress through each region, indicated at the top of the screen. Battles themselves are in the ATB (Active Time Battle) system, created and popularized by Final Fantasy, in which all characters present have a ‘Focus’ bar that dictates when their turn occurs. When the bar fills, that character gets to perform any action they have available, and different effects can alter its speed such as being attacked. Player controlled characters have a variety of abilities and skills based on the character and their class, which can be acquired and upgraded when levelling up through a skill tree.
Each battle completed in a region unlocks the possibility for story on the march towards the final boss of the area who gatekeeps your ability to move forward. If your party ever falls in battle, the game reloads to the last battle you completed so you can equip new items, change your strategy, and try again. After all, you’ll be dying a lot, but at least you’re a zombie.
Putting aside the rose-tinted nostalgia goggles for a second, it’s amazing just how well Sonny’s core gameplay loop has held up after 15 years. I’m not a big fan of ATB, yet gameplay does a fantastic job of balancing strategy and optimization with a relaxed and calculating approach. Battles can get lengthy as you progress, so the breaks in between do wonders to check skills, alter strategies, and do a general ‘reset’ before continuing forward. It plays almost episodically, fully embracing its flow of allowing players to walk away and come back at any time to continue.
Add on the fact that Krin and Armor Games have done a phenomenal job of overhauling the graphics (even if I may prefer the cutscene aesthetics) and you have an RPG that stands the test of time. Sure it may not click for every player, especially without those previously mentioned nostalgia goggles, but it fully encapsulates the era it came from while patching up some of the rougher areas.
If you had fond memories of Sonny, I don’t have to convince you to play this. If you want an RPG that you can take with you on the go that won’t demand constant time, this is arguably the RPG that brought about the mobile RPG style that we know and utilize to this day. Give it a shot, you won’t be disappointed.
We keep going
Ripple
Ripple is a game by ProtonFox, and features a protagonist attempting to break free from a facility. Unfortunately for our escapee, their limited vision means that seeing isn’t really possible. Instead, you’ll use echolocation to send out ripples that allow for limited ‘sight’ to navigate the dark halls.
Playing similarly to a first-person horror game, you’ll need to scope out the areas, hide in lockers, and find pathways that allow for you to proceed. The robots guarding the facility are on high alert since your escape, so one false move can send them into a frenzy until they capture you. The lack of vision is what makes this game so interesting, as you can’t do the traditional ‘scouting’ of hallways without constantly pinging for sight.
Korpus: Buried over the Black Soil
Korpus is a horror game in which you are tasked with evaluating an Eastern European mansion for its real estate value. Seems simple enough, no? Unfortunately, the developer of the same name has ensured that the moment you step inside that house, the house no longer makes any sense.
The game relies on exploring a simple house and reading diary entries of dubious understanding. Upon reading them, however, reality shifts to ‘correct’ itself and match the notes. This makes memorizing the house layout impossible, for it is completely dependent on what you know as the reader. The more context you gain about the houses past, the more the house doesn’t seem like a real house. If you love PSX games and horror that doesn’t necessarily rely on jump scares, go explore this haunted house.
Bicyclism EP
Do you like zany party games and hyperpop? Bicyclism EP is the game for you, as you’ll be pedaling to victory in a series of strange minigames that involve sentient bikes racing, jousting, and playing soccer. Somehow. All you have to do is pedal the bike, but each pedal is controlled separately to create absolute antics as you tilt off the map both literally and figuratively. All the bicycles you could ever dream of are here, even the penny farthing of all things.
It doesn’t hurt that the bright colours and cheeky dialogue helps to keep everything feeling so silly. It’s nonsensical, and that makes it great — just make sure to have controllers around, it is a handkiller on keyboard.
After The End: The Harvest
If you were looking for a massive title, then you’ve come to the right place. After The End: The Harvest is an open-world 2D RPG created by Elushis, an Australian developer that previously gifted Mutiny Island and Isolation Story (seen in duplicates below). This time, players follow a mysterious protagonist awakening in deep space after an event that wipes out all ‘positive’ people, and you’ve been tasked to assist in ensuring that it doesn’t wipe out everything.
In traditional JRPG fashion, you are given a massive world to explore divided between the ‘overworld’ and ‘locations’. The overworld is an expansive map that allows for you to traverse between areas, finding hidden secrets, and general exploration. Locations then contain the pockets of life and treasure, and can be dungeons, towns, and more.
After the opening sequence you can dive right in and do nearly anything you want, from following the story questlines to immediately going in the opposite direction. There’s even a karma system to influence how people view you as a player, which can affect how the plot (and the characters) progress.
If you’ve played Mutiny Island then you know Elushis’ style of massive open worlds, and this one lets you do it all in space. If you’ve a need to explore space and become the greatest, this may be your game.
Newtraction
Harnessing the power of orbital gravity is Newtraction by Zexsoft, created during the 2021 Brackeys Game Jam. As a being of light, you must use your influence to add more gravitational power to the celestial bodies so that they can all touch the centre one before the timer runs out. You can add or subtract ‘power’ to the gravitational modifier of every celestial body (except for stars) with more giving it a stronger pull and less giving it a weaker pull. Every level gives you credits to spend on lore, new backgrounds, and even soundtracks, so give it a shot if you’re into space.
TRAINBOW
TRAINBOW is an arcade puzzle game created by Astrosaurus Games involving a small circle and their ability to follow rainbow pathways. Using your mouse, you’ll click the exact locations that you want the character to go, aiming to collect the bulbs of light and bring them back to the WHEEL OF COLOUR (the swirl you start at). Each bulb you take, however, will slowly spawn a shade that will chase you on sight. They get faster the more you move, meaning that long ‘trains’ of rainbows will cause them to catch you over time. Thankfully you can right click to immediately cancel all rainbows, but it does mean that you’ll have to think outside the box and what pattern you take. If you line-of-sight them, they will get confused and reset themselves back to their bulb spot.
It’s colourful as heck and extremely adorable to listen to, with a primary mode to teach the game, unlocking both a secondary and endless mode upon its completion. Give it a shot if you like puzzles and colours.
[ENDLESS_OVERDRIVE]
Adding some crunch to your life is ENDLESS_OVERDRIVE by Fewprime. A movement game all about comboing your score together, you are a square continuously moving through a grid while constantly firing bullets. Other squares are moving in straight lines across the grid and will kill the player-square if touched. However, shooting them causes them to stop and become stationary hazards instead. If you shoot 5 in a row within the combo timer (seen on the right) then your bullets will go red and can destroy the blocks instead of doing nothing to them.
The kicker is that there’s a red square that’s always hunting you, shadowing your every move. The higher your combo score, the faster it moves, and if you go over the same square multiple times it will override that path to take the shortest one to you. The only way to stop it is to lose your 5x combo, which causes a momentary pause so you can gain your bearings before going again.
The game is full of harsh aesthetics and an indie soundtrack from Alpha Hydrae’s album Peace Love Respect Overdrive. It can go on for ever if you’re good enough, and you might just want it to.
Super Mumtaz Bros.
Adding a twist to a familiar classic, Super Mumtaz Bros is a puzzle platformer created by Extar following two plumbers looking for radioactive chickens. The red brother, Ali, has the ability to break the pipes underneath to free the chicken, while Bilal can repair the pipes. The kicker is that you cannot jump, so the pipes double as platforms necessary to navigate the maps. Add on a bunch of secrets and you have a cute little game poking fun at the Mario Bros while making clever decisions in gameplay.
Eternia: Pet Whisperer
Taking a nod from the smash hit Hatoful Boygriend, Eternia: Pet Whisperer is a visual novel in which you befriend and attempt to adopt a pet from an exotic shelter that you can somehow communicate with. Each day you can select a location to visit within the shelter, and strike up a conversation with the animal that is present. The more you visit a specific individual, the more they open up to you about their dreams and expectations, like learning about Connie’s raver parties. If nobody is around, you can always skip a day to see if you can interact with your chosen pet. Their personalities are wild, and you’ll definitely get a kick out of this small visual novel.
PhasR
An infinite ‘runner’, PhasR by Hirunda has you traversing a circular cyberspace to see how long you can last in the ‘highway’. You are the triangular ship in constant motion aiming for the centre of the tube, and must dodge the grey blocks as they move from the centre towards the outer rim. However, this isn’t the only issue that will occur; players must also switch between orange and blue states in order to phase through similarly coloured obstacles. It’s a simple game with a great soundtrack, perfect for somehow spending hours just spinning in circles.
Note: you need Java Runtime to play.
crystal anomaly
crystal anomaly is a strange puzzle game by minotalen in which you play as a robot attempting to organize crystals in a grid. Each move you perform drops a crystal of varying colours into the grid space, and it is your job to put the matching colours on top of each other to ‘grow’ the crystal. Once a crystal has grown three times, it can be ‘cracked’ to remove it from the board to allow for new crystals to be placed, while also gaining a jump charge.
These jump charges allow you to move up the crystal preview list, seen on the left hand side, and can get you out of a pickle quite quickly. After all, you cannot move if you’ve surrounded yourself in crystals of differing colours than the one that is up next. This forces careful planning of how you’ll navigate through the grid, looking to jump and crack as many crystals as possible as you go. It’s tricky, and takes quite a bit of getting used to, but it’s simplicity makes it that much more addicting.
Thermo Puzzle
Created for JigerJ’s OctoBear JAM 2018, Thermo Puzzle by diadas is a game highlighting the fun of thermal conduction. With only ice cubes and fire, you are tasked with getting the water in the centre to the temperatures listed above. At first it is a singular water section, but becomes multiple to increase the difficulty.
The challenge when multiple appear is thanks to the proximity of the water to each other and that pesky thermal conduction, so you’ll have to balance the heat and cold to get all three temperatures correct. It comes in 3 difficulties which determine the ‘range’ you can get to snapshot the temperatures.
Lucid: Parables of the Ubermensch
Lucid is a trippy platformer created by SuccessStudios, creator of the previous pages RD Mars and Firemakaf. They continue their trend of strangely intriguing themes with a game focused on platforming through parables. Each level focuses on a specific theme in philosophy, and it is up to our protagonist to navigate through the hazards to reach a state where they can leave their lucid dreaming. Beds allow for saving mid level (we are dreaming, after all) so that you aren’t restarting each level with every mishap.
Which will happen often. The levels can get tricky due to their layout. It’s a weird one, just like their previous works, which may interest many.
Mending Wall
Inspired by the Robert Frost poem of the same name, Eric Guadara has created a two player ‘co-operative’ game about mending walls against the inevitable passage of time. Each section of the wall is mapped to a keyboard input, with the top row of the keyboard correlating to the top wall and the bottom row for the bottom wall. Each worker has a stamina stash, and after 3 ‘fixes’ they need to retreat to town to rest. Unfortunately though, the walls continue to crumble, and if they ever truly disappear they cannot be rebuilt.
It gets super crowded on the keyboard with hands overlaying hands, but that’s some of the fun. You have to compromise to get your hands in place, and to get the job done. It goes until there are no walls left, so hopefully you can survive through the seasons.
Note: may not register inputs on first boot, an ‘Alt-Tab’ out and then back in seemed to fix it for me.
GalaxSeed
GalaxSeed is a twist on the infinite bullethell space shooters and is created by Roaring Cat Games. Rather than destroying the asteroids as you fly, our little spaceship is equipped with 1 of 3 “galactic gardening technologies” to populate the asteroids with life. These trees cause the asteroids to slow down and become easier to dodge, but still lethal to run into. These GGTs can then be upgraded to make them even more potent, especially as asteroids change colour and become faster. It’s a cute little game that can entertain bullet hell fans with some positivity.
Bullet Beat
Our final game of the page comes to us from TERNOX, a solo indie dev in Ukraine who created Taimumari: Definitive Edition. Bullet Beat is a much different game than that, for it is a bullet hell centred around enemies that are in rhythm with the dubstep playing in the background. The more enemies you destroy in a chain the more powerful you can become, but one false move can reset your powers and your combos.
If the music isn’t completely to your taste, you can upload your own music to the game to play in an ‘experimental’ mode where the enemies are generated based on your uploaded tracks. It’s a clever way of building out the game, similar to how rhythm games will include these features.
Software
Rainbow Runaways
Rainbow Runaways is a Sonic-inspired TTRPG using the Caltrop Core system. You are doing your best to run as fast as you can from the humans that have found you, using dice as resources to see if you are able to succeed or fail in your escape. Best of luck in your run, because fail too much and those humans will get you.
Lewi, Act I: Manae
An intriguing second entry, ‘Lewi, Act 1: Manae’ is a comic by fluffy, the author of ‘Unity’ from last page. This story follows the titular Lewi Davis, a young dragon, who is raised in a world of alchemy. Upon realizing that she isn’t good at the very thing she needs to survive in this world, she turns to the religious institution for work. It’s the first act in the series, highlighting her journey and her hopes of things not crashing down farther than they already have fallen.
2901//DRUM_DREAM Vol2
Something I thought was a game thanks to notsleeping’s earlier addition to the bundle, this is actually a ‘loop toy’ that is utilized specifically for live noise shows. The buttons on the side all play loops that can be manipulated in a semi-randomized manner, and the entire goal is to give you the ability to showcase something grimey and noisey while putting on a show. You can just play around with it if you’d like, as it can create some fun sequences, but it’s mainly for those who are into noise shows and the genres that encapsulate it.
Duplicates
Jupitron — 13 Games Collection Vol.1
Jupitron’s collection of 13 games inspired by the arcade era. Found back on page 17 of the Racial Justice Bundle. Read about it here.
Peace of Mind
Small horror game involving the search through a dream house to soothe the ghosts back to the dead. Read about it here.
Dee Dum (Computer)
Deceptive puzzle game where you attempt to get every block to its “home” in a labyrinth of platforms. Learn more here.
Isolation Story
A game set in a quarantine-inspired world, juggling three stats to survive 7 days until the vaccine rollout begins. May remind you of terrible times. Check it out here.
Void Wisp
Arcade runner similar to Flappy Bird with some sweet grinding skills allowed for even more points. Get trippy with it here.
Mastermind Classic
Terrifyingly difficult puzzle game in which you memorize coloured pearls and their order. It’s really hard, I’m not exaggerating. Read here.
