Weekly Overview of the Bundle For Ukraine | Gaming
The Beginning of The End: Weekly Overview of the Bundle For Ukraine 33
So many firsts, yet so many lasts
Overview
It feels weird to be writing this and realize that I’ve only got a page left.
Nevertheless, this was a much wilder page than I was initially expecting given the trend towards an equilibrium of games and software. Going back to earlier pages, we got ourselves an 18/12 split for our last full page, with our last duplicate to boot.
Games got a lot more varied in comparison to our last page as well, with various download sizes, genres, and aesthetics getting put on display as if to showcase a cyclical relationship of the bundle. No matter how many things change, things stay the same.
What didn’t stay the same was the number of notes I had to write, if there was something to highlight on this page. Many games required external installations from my vanilla environment (itch.io client), and many more had various strange issues that required giving context for. That may be because of the nature with the ‘end’ of a bundle, since I’m fairly certain the only system it is sorted by is when they were added in the bundle’s lifecycle.
Oh well! Enjoy this last full page. You’ll see me next week with a short page to wrap things up, and then the true finale can begin: the great data aggregation.
Video Games
Serious Scramblers
Serious Scramblers by chinykian is not a completely understandable game by its title alone. Implying the need to scramble something, in reality this is an arcade adventure of high-paced movement in which you are attempting to reach the bottom of the worlds while collecting coins and stomping monsters.
Think of it as reverse Ice-Climbers, if you are old enough to get that. Rather than constantly worrying about climbing at a reasonable pace to avoid the depths below, you are falling downwards trying to avoid the spikes that will crush you for being too slow. But you’ll also die if you fall off the screen on the bottom, meaning that you need to be fast AND measured. The platforms will always have a few of them on screen, at least until the shelled monsters begin to appear and the game decides that they too count as ‘platforms’. Oh and by the way, you can’t jump.
See the real draw is that stomping these monsters is the same as collecting coins, creating a dynamic in which you need to constantly move yet think 5 steps ahead and avoid falling too far or getting on a platform that will kill you. Do you risk going for the shells to gain more coins, knowing full well that if you miss a bounce you may fall all the way down and lose? Or play it safe and fall to the next platform near the bottom? It’s these little decisions that you are making constantly, and then you die to the spikes at the top because you thought too much.
Without a death counter I cannot inform you of how many times I died in the short time I played, but it was easily more than a few dozen. The inability to jump really cranks up your need for thought and timing, but juggling that with movement is tricky as heck. Rather than new game modes, you can buy new characters with those coins gained to alter how the game is played so that you can keep on delving in different ways. Keep on sinking, and you’ll eventually get to the strangest boss fight. Good luck!
Keep going
Candylight
The first entry of the page is Candylight, a visual novel by Brazilian developer ImagiNovel. You follow the tale of Miranda, a witch of the forest who is ‘rescued’ by a lady named Amora. Enamored by her presence, Miranda will stop at nothing to win her over, even scaring every villager with her horrible attempts at showing her affection.
“Visual novel” isn’t the most accurate description of Candylight thanks to its RPG elements and free-roam movement, but the core of the game is moving in between interactions with Miranda and Amora to progress their little story. As Miranda you’ll find new ways to court her in ways unique to a forest witch, and the little story will unfold as you probably expect. It isn’t long, but you didn’t expect it to be; you just want it to be cute, and it gets that job done well.
Spell Slingers: Trick or Treat
Spell Slingers: Trick or Treat is the demo for an action adventure by Honeycomb Interactive, the indie studio that brought us Prison of the Magi earlier on (and another farther down). You will embark on an epic journey across a spooky land, sifting through the regions in the hopes of finding the Pumpkin King and taking his head for yourself.
With inspiration heavily taken from RPGs, you have numerous spells that you can find and equip to augment your attacks, such as attacking with fire or healing yourself. There are also a bunch of items to use and gear to equip that can be found in chests throughout the world, so you’ll want to get exploring to ensure you’ve got the best. Unfortunately as a demo there isn’t much else available right now in terms of direction, but the idea and aesthetic look promising.
NOTE: unlike the other notes, this one is very much a big deal; the PC specs on this game are by far the most demanding out of every game in the bundle at a MINIMUM GTX1080 or AMD equivalent. That unfortunately is the graphics card I have, and I could tell immediately that I was in for a rough time. The download is also quite odd in process, so make sure to follow the steps correctly.
Rhythm ‘n Bullets — VR
Unfortunately, this game appears to be restricted — if you haven’t downloaded it beforehand, you can’t now. It is nowhere that I can find, so I cannot say anything about it.
To be fair, I wasn’t going to anyway unless the VR was only a version and I could play it without VR, but I digress.
Sudoku Zenkai
Sudoku Zenkai is a puzzle game made by ImaginationOverflow, an indie team in Portugal seen previously with Stellar Interface. Going in a completely opposite direction, this game is all about the aforementioned ‘Sudoku’, giving you a minimalistic yet helpful interface to play one of the most iconic number-to-grid games around.
Playing on your own has never been more intuitive, as each click on the grid highlights the rows and columns for easy understanding, along with the number of “numbers” left for each of the 1–9. There’s a pencil mode for those of you that want to simulate the feeling of writing your own notes in the corner, like it was back in the newspaper. If numbers aren’t your speed, you can swap them out for symbols of all kinds from letters to kanji to more. There’s even the ability to connect the room with your friends online to allow for collaborative sudoku, especially when the difficulty ramps up. Honestly it’s everything you could want in a Sudoku board, so give it a shot if that’s your thing.
The Sink Gods
Created by Little Glyph Games as their first title, The Sink Gods is a point-and-click adventure in which you attempt to exact your vengeance upon those you deem unworthy. After being kicked out of your house and losing all of your belongings, you journey to the temple of the Sink Gods with your plea for revenge, and it is here that they challenge you to solve their riddles.
Each temple has its own set of challenges for you to explore in the traditional point-and-click fashion. You can pick certain items up to put in your inventory, and drag them to other objects in the hopes of finding what they are used for. The puzzles are simple but require just enough thought to make them somewhat challenging, especially if you are younger or not as familiar with puzzle-solving games. To this end it makes the game quite short, but honestly it’s just bat-crazy enough that it captured my attention for the entire 30 minutes.
Zzap!
Another first game by an indie dev, Zzap! is a twin-stick infinite shooter by NeonRetroTech, a solo indie dev and youtuber. Players will jump into a simple arena with a single goal: survive. There is no secondary objective outside of this, for every ship blown up ensures you gain points and keep yourself alive.
There are three lives to work with just like old arcade games, giving that futuristic retro feeling — as if the studio name didn’t give that away. If you’re into twin-stick retro fun this might be your jam.
Note: that Unity — Dualshock4 problem is here which makes the game much harder than it should be.
T.A.R.S
Going in an opposite direction is T.A.R.S, a horror shooter created by GreatherGames. Following the nurse-turned-combat-medic Samantha, you’ll embark on your first mission to a remote island near Great Britain and immediately feel the effects of the disease. Hopefully you can find a way off this island, or else you’ll join the majority of your squad.
Playing in the 3rd person, you’ll wander the open island heading towards objectives visible on the map while trying to avoid the monsters that the disease has created out of humans. They only need to get a single swing on you to kill, as Sam isn’t well versed in being attacked, so knowing where they are coming from and taking the initiative is the best course of action. Unfortunately the limited bullets means that you’ll be scavenging constantly for drops and loose bullets on bodies. It’s much smaller than I originally anticipated, but a fun little exploration horror game to pass the time.
Note: Dualshock4 is hated by this game, for it is made in Unity and you will spin forever.
Gig Life
Bringing us back to CRT is Gig Life by JoshJayOnline. Players emerge from their slumber as a small little guy with a face and a singular goal: survive through any means necessary. Since there are no arms nor legs to attack things with, you’ll need to take jobs in order to make the money needed for food and drink.
Every second you are alive you are slowly losing percentage on hunger and thirst, which can only be satiated by food and drink purchased from the shops. To gain money you need to take on jobs, which can be found from the villagers — accepting them will give you a tool that you can use to perform the job from cutting grass to delivering mail.
You need to keep going back and grabbing food though, making this game both an homage to retro adventures and a depressing allegory for gig/contract life. Get moving and hopefully you can gain the advice of the wisest sage.
Lizard Lady vs the Cats
The Voices Games continues their creation of terrifying surrealism with Lizard Lady vs the Cats, a trippy third person shooter. You are the titular Lizard Lady, having read the current paper where it is revealed that the ‘Cats’ gang has slaughtered 1 million puppies for ‘reasons’. Taking matters into your own hands, you start your own genocidal campaign.
In the neon world of strange and simplistic levels, you’ll fight against hordes of cats that seemingly spawn from anywhere. There are a set amount in each level that need killing, allowing you to leave through the massive green door. Once you’ve completed your killing spree across the few levels, you’ll unlock Lizard Lady vs Herself, an endless battle mode to wrangle your feelings about committing genocide. It’s wild and crazy in the simplest way.
Lawn Buster for Hire
Lawn Buster for Hire is a puzzle management game created by TurdBoomerang, a hilariously named indie dev who participates in game jams and other small endeavors. This is a key part: this game is arguably one of the most unique in the bundle because it was created explicitly for this bundle during the short window of games being added. So what exactly is a Lawn Buster?
You are Belinda, a lawn mower in the flesh needing to trim the lawn for your client. At first this is simple, following the rules of walking over the grass to clear it with no repercussions for efficiency. Each day, however, the landlord reminds you of how much money you need to make to pay rent, and a new rule is added on to the level in order to make more money. This can range between leaving fewer footprints (walking on non-grass), not crushing flowers, avoiding skeletons, and even directional movement restrictions.
The rules are compounding as well, they don’t leave after each level. You will soon find yourself balancing a dozen rules in order to pay rent and succeed. It says there’s only 10 minutes of gameplay, but I can guarantee that you’ll sink in more just to see what’s at the end.
Couch Goblins
The third game given to us by Honeycomb Interactive (following Prison of the Magi and Spell Slingers) Couch Goblins is a multiplayer obstacle course game created during the 2021 NA PUBG Hackathon. You and your friends will select a little goblin and get ready to run.
Gameplay is simple; hop into a game and get running. The obstacles come in all shapes and sizes, from canyons to spikes to lava, so you’ll need to make sure that you are ready for anything. If you aren’t, you might find that the true obstacles are the other players as everyone can attack their competitors at any time. Adds a little spice, y’know?
It’s a simple premise that can work really well with younger audiences or those that just like silly games with friends.
Psychoballs
Another dev that has been here before, joemanaco has gifted two on this page. The first is Psychoballs, a puzzle game about sorting coloured balls into rotating sections. Each level has balls appear from the top right, and it is up to your careful planning and quick reactions to fill each rotator with 4 of the same ball to cause them to switch from red to green. Once every rotator has been ‘flipped’ you are victorious, but the constant pressure of different colours being launched and a timer can really cause you to sink into that ‘just one try’ mentality. Give it a shot if you love Tetris-like puzzles.
Note: installation is required outside of the installer. Comes with a level editor!
Sly Panda
An adorable little entry is Sly Panda by Elastiskalinjen, a solo indie dev named Sebastian Lind. You are a little red panda in a circular world who makes a mistake in shooting a strange cask outside of your happy zone. Now cursed, you must fire back against the dopey ghosts that you see in a very strange way. See, you only get two action buttons (outside of movement): dashing and slowing down time. When you slow down time, however, you can ‘dash’ to fire off projectiles during that slow-down window. It consumes your meter, and when it is depleted you cannot dash nor slow time until it fills.
It’s a cute little game in PICO-8 which can pass the time if you like retro aesthetics with an unusual movement system in an infinite arcade game.
Food Flinger VR
Eric Guadara has been seen quite a few times in this bundle alone, and he’s added a cool food-throwing VR game to his list. Unfortunately, just like above, I don’t have any form of VR headsets to play this — and it is specifically for headsets that you load the apk into such as Oculus Quest. If you’ve got one give it a try and tell me how it goes.
Temple Of Tangram
In a completely opposite direction as the previous game, joemanaco’s Temple of Tangram is a puzzle game focused on Tangrams — as if the title didn’t give that away.
Tangrams are a puzzle in which, given a set of shapes, you attempt to fill a silhouette to create an image. Temple of Tangram gives you hundreds of silhouettes to discover, along with variations on the Tangram puzzle to keep you on your toes. Sure there is a time limit, but this is more about solving at a pace that fits you. After all, the entire aesthetic is about reaching enlightenment, and that rarely comes quickly.
Note: like joemanaco’s other game, you need to manually install this title.
SKELERUN
Our last game of the page, SKELERUN by Fireside Studio has you thrown into a procedural dungeon with only one goal; escape. After all, you’re already dead, there is no ‘survival’. Yes you are a skeleton, the only one to assemble yourself from the bone pile and make a run for the exit.
Due to the random aspect of the dungeons, it is more a race against time than it is a puzzle to solve, as you’ll be debating between taking the levels slow to acquire bombs and gems or booking it for the exit. The hazards are numerous and deadly, but they cannot kill that which has no life. Instead all it does is take precious seconds off your timer as you wait to respawn, further cementing the true goal of going as fast as your bones can go. The controls for keyboard are a tad odd, but overcome those and you’ll be on your way to running out of this dungeons before the bones come back to haunt you.
Software
Way of the Demon Slayer — A Paragon Playset
Starting us off is Way of the Demon Slayer, a Paragon Playset by Agent Fintcher. Paragon is the system used by the TTRPG Agon by John Harper, and if you recall this isn’t the first Playset we’ve come across in the bundle thanks to Rising Tide.
In this game, Agent Fintcher takes the system and adapts it into a Taisho-era setting, full of yokai and oni. It is highly detailed, and even comes with an interactive version of the sheets to assist with those that may find the system overwhelming.
Café El lobo aullador
I’m flying by the seat of Google Translate for this one, since the entire game is Spanish thanks to creator Solo historias being from Spain and all. What I can tell is that this is a solo simulation, a solo TTRPG where you are a barista attempting to assist clients as they come in. It only takes 15–20 minutes, so if you overcome the language barrier (or are fluent in the language) this might be a great game to try out.
A Fairy’s Day Adventure into the Human World
Another solo game, A Fairy’s Day Adventure into the Human World by DarkJaguar has you take on the role of a young fae finally able to enter the land of humans. Using cards and dice, you record your journey in this fantastical realm as you venture alone. It aims for whimsy, so get ready for all the fun that comes with a new fae in a new realm.
The Truth About Jevallik
Now this one is fascinating, at least to me. The Truth About Jevallik is a conversation game by Rule 42 Arts Coalition, an artistic expression of Jonathan Cook. Originally submitted for the 200 Word RPG contest in 2019, it is a game inspired by their interactions growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness. One player is a member of a fictitious religion whereas the other is a random homeowner, and the game revolves around the honesty that they must have when talking about something that one may view as ridiculous.
Gambit: Suits edition
Won’t lie, I thought this was a video game at first. Gambit: Suits Edition is a ‘battle resolver’ by Lee K Hulme. What this means is that it is a ‘mini-game’ that can be utilized in TTRPGs in order to resolve conflicts that may not have set rules within the game themselves. Think of all those random issues that came up that required the DM or the players themselves to come up with a solution, be they fights or arguments. Ever wanted a system that was somewhat tactical yet still random? Here you go!
Unity Book II: Distribution
Back on page 26 was a book called Unity: Ascent by fluffy. This is the sequel, dealing with the messes that Juni has left behind as they explore their own life. If you enjoyed the first one, you’ll be glad to see the sequel available.
Renewal & Riot
Focusing on hope is hard, hence why Renewal & Riot by Joan has decided to go all in on the hopepunk theme. Hacking Lasers and Feelings by John Harper to get the game to work, you’ll be setting up a community with your fellow players and balancing the two titular resources of Renewal and Riot. Renewal allows for your community to grow and rebuild, while Riot helps fight back against dangerous outside influences. See what you think and never give up hope.
Drama! Drama! (and the Queen)
Created for the One-Page RPG Jam of 2021, Drama! Drama! (and the Queen) is a improvisational TTRPG by Fateful Seven about one-upping your friends to impress the monarch. You all write a play together to get the ball rolling, with a Mad Libs-like template, but once the show begins you need to prove that you are the best at acting amongst everyone. It’s ridiculously silly, and requires everyone to be onboard with acting, but that can make all the fun.
A house interior asset pack !
Enough silly stuff, this is an assetpack outlining the interiors of a house by styloo. The perspective is for sidescrolling games mainly, and would work best for narrative or adventure titles that require the constant need to enter different rooms of a house.
[New Hi-Score] Pixel Art Font
BSL is back with another typeface font, this one centred on the text of arcade games in the past. It’s an upgraded version of an older typeface they made with the same name, now with more characters for more languages and better functionality.
Bryluen’s Bachelorette Brawl
A novel by Dylan Wayne Sanchez, the author seen earlier with their Dread Naught Trilogy, this is a short story within that same universe focusing on Bryluen and her marriage to Bel’Wa. While enjoying her bachelorette party, she finds out her best friend’s house has been attacked and there is little time to find the culprit.
Goblins: Kwest 4 Sosijiz
Our final software of the page comes from Worldbuilder101, Goblins: Kwest 4 Sosijiz is a one-page TTRPG with the simple premise of goblins stealing sausages. It can support nearly a dozen players if you are able to contain them all, as the subject matter will immediately cause nonsensical shenanigans.
