Weekly Overview of the Bundle For Ukraine | Gaming
Revival from Vacation to Duplicate: WOBFU Page 15
Decisions were made, rage was created
Overview
I’m back! Well kind of — depending on when you saw my last blog you may not have even noticed I was gone. It’s all good though, no worries here.
For my return we’ve got a lovely 16/14 split, a nice even amount that feels even and honest. What isn’t even is that the amount of duplicates is back on its nonsense. 12 entries are duplicates from the Racial Justice bundle, and 10 of them are games. While handy for me since I had limited time to get this overview out, I must say that only having 6 entries to dissect is not as interesting.
Don’t worry though, because there are quite a few games that I’ve labelled very interesting. So let’s go look at them!
Video Games
Ossuary
In a strange land full of strange events, there is only one constant; everyone is lying about something.
Ossuary is a narrative puzzle and exploration game created by Future Proof Games, an indie studio spearheaded by Melissa and Gregory Avery-Weir. They may sound familiar thanks to their previous entry of the famous FLASH game ‘The Majesty of Colors’. Created with Adobe AIR, players are dropped into a strange land full of nothingness and death, forced to find out how they got there and how they may be able to leave.
At its core, Ossuary is a game of reading and listening. You’ll wander between areas, talking to different people to get their opinions while poking at parts of their conversation to learn more. Many of these decisions appear to have no weight, because none of the decisions made will alter how they feel towards you. Glowing individuals represent those that can be altered by events, like presenting special items, but they cease to glow upon completion of their ‘puzzle’, returning to a dormant state. That is, of course, until you unlock the sins.
Sins are illegal in the Ossuary. The first sin you gain is Wrath, as the individual is cooped up in a locked area with you and is going insane with the lack of progress. These sins act as ‘tools’ on those glowing characters — and everyone else, for that matter — to cause different reactions and let loose secrets. It starts small, from simply punching open a door, but slowly these sins allow for greater manipulation of the world. People can be put to sleep through Sloth or made jealous with Envy, all to reveal 4 fundamental lies that the world is telling us.
That is the secret of Ossuary, a world that tries to remain as static and unchanging as possible as a bastion of death, trying its best to resist your curious nature and willingness to try everything to solve puzzles. It won’t ‘hit’ for everyone, as there is a lot of backtracking and ‘mulling’ about trying to find correct combinations of sins and items to break open the lies. Those that love a challenge in their narratives and want to dive farther into the world will sink farther into the Ossuary and love it.
Do note: this game requires Adobe AIR to run and operate. This shouldn’t be a surprise given the developer’s history with FLASH games, but if you don’t have it installed you’ll have to go find it. I used this website to download it as Adobe relegated maintenance of AIR to HARMAN a few years ago and I found navigating their forums tedious and challenging, to be polite.
Frick, Inc.
Do you like games about frustration? No? Then this might be a bit of a hard sell.
Frick Inc is a puzzle game created by the legendary developer and asset artist Kenney, seen featured in the bundles for their Asset Packs and games like KeyCars. This particular game is reminiscent of KeyCars as you will be controlling different vehicles. The difference is the objective; park them in the proper place.
Each level has a vehicle in a starting position with a track before it, and a strange console at the bottom that resembles an RC car controller, or heavy vehicle operator console. This is how you’ll control the vehicle, with levers to accelerate, turn, change direction, and any other mechanic that a specific vehicle may have.
The gears may have started turning, for you may now realize where the difficulty comes in; you only have a mouse to push and pull all the levers at the bottom, but must keep the car from falling off the track. You’ll keep your head bobbing up and down to make sure that the bulldozer hasn’t fallen off yet, only to find yourself in a strange position that takes extra time to escape.
Did I mention that each level is timed? Because of course they are. It wouldn’t be all about the stressful frustration if they weren’t. As levels progress, more vehicles get added to control and park, such as the crane needing to deliver some goods before it can be parked. It’s all levers and buttons, meaning more swiveling of the head and more crashing.
Adding more are the bonus objectives which tease players with how easy they can be to get, until you realize that getting out of the scenario will eat up too much time. It’s optional, but so tempting — the best kind of puzzle bonus.
There’s a reason it is called ‘Frick Inc.’ — you’ll be swearing up and down as the car bungles its way around each level. It’s all about that frustration, mastering how much speed you can take each corner without flying off while watching the clock. If you an master it all, you’ll drift to each parking spot and finished the ~30 levels quickly. If not… you’ll be stuck with a bad driving score. Just like me! Good luck out there.
Intra-System: Trust Issues
A narrative game about making choices. We’ve seen it before, it isn’t new, yet Intra-System: Trust Issues makes me more uncomfortable than I was expecting. Then again, I should’ve realized it would after uncovering who made the game on my second playthrough: SmokeSomeFrogs, the studio for Daniel da Silva, who made Flufftopia from the previous bundle. That should be enough to set the mood for this game, but let us explore with fresh eyes.
Intra-System has you take control of an anonymous character in front of a console, interacting with another person known only as the ‘agent’. The console instructs you to assist the agent through a series of rooms, but interaction is done in static ways. You can only send sentences when prompted, with the agent sending back audio responses. The rooms are simple puzzles, and the console gives exactly the solution to each room so that thinking isn’t necessary. So why am I so uneasy?
It’s spoiled right in the name, but the game’s core narrative is fueled by the lack of trust between you and the agent, and the feeling of an inability to trust. You know nothing about the game; who you are, what you are doing, or what the relationship with the agent is.
Each time the console gives the player choices, there’s always one that goes directly against what the agent is ‘supposed’ to do. There’s no way to know if the console’s instructions are factual, but there is nothing else to go on. The agent does a decent job in trusting you as a director, even going so far to do things I would never do, but that sense of uneasy possibility remains. You could press the wrong one on purpose, because how do you know if it’s ‘wrong?’
Just like with Flufftopia, however, I’d like to talk about what makes this game so fascinating, so this is your spoiler warning for the next bit. If you don’t need it, skip on by and play the game to understand why. Each session is only 15 minutes at most, but you might find yourself investing more time than you bargained for.
Okay we’re in spoiler territory, so let’s get this out of the way; this game is terrifying. On your first playthrough, you build a bond with the agent through your collective uncertainty and struggle. You want them to live and do well, and yet the console is a barrier between you two. It says the right answers, but leaves out all the details. So when it told me to get the agent to inject themselves, I refused; I’d never do that to someone else. They died in the next room to the gas. I listened to them cough and swear at me in agony.
In my next playthrough I was set to fix things and get to the end, but that’s when the uncomfortable feeling settles in — the previous number at the top of the room goes from 0/4 to 1/4. Things seem almost too ‘samey’, and then you reach the end and shut it down only for the game to end just like when my agent died. Only this time, they burst into the room screaming ‘What are you.’ I started again, unnerved by my lack of information, only for that counter to go to 2/4. This is a new agent. The messages about ‘No Trust’ were about you. Nothing has changed.
Intra-System preys on the fact that you know nothing, because there is only one way to gain information; defy the console. To defy the console means to put the agent in ‘punishment’ range. How will you, who built trust with this individual, feel when you force them into perilous positions just so you can find out more about yourself? Will you gain enough knowledge on this attempt to justify what you are doing? Is there even an answer? And that’s when it hits you; the only way to find out is to break everything, including your empathy towards the agent.
SmokeSomeFrogs recommended this write up as a good example of meaning to the game, and it helped me parse through my own feelings about it. I still don’t know what the secret ending is, nor can I tell if they found the secret ending outside of the hint from the main menu. All I know is… da Silva got me again.
We’re out of spoilers, on to the next!
Batbarian: Testament of the Primordials
I’m really liking a lot of things on this page, huh.
Batbarian: Testament of the Primordials is a Metroidvania created by Unspeakable Pixels and published by DANGEN Entertainment. Players are a barbarian with no name — they don’t need one — who has fallen down a massive pit to their ‘doom’ only to stand up and begin their search for an exit. Thankfully they are not alone, as their luminary bat companion Pip is always there to help.
As one expects from ‘Metroidvania’ games, players will jump around a 2D environment as they explore, room by room, for various paths and secrets. The barbarian has a simple weapon that can be upgraded to do different attacks, like a charge attack, and they’ll use it to destroy obstacles and enemies alike.
New powers not only unlock pathways forward but also pathways hidden in previous areas, encouraging constant revisits to old areas. Thankfully there’s a teleport gained after the first boss, so that becomes less tedious.
The true star of the show, however, is not the barbarian at all; it’s Pip. The glowing bat will be the mechanic used the most, as they have the ability to alter the map and reach places the barbarian cannot. It starts simple with throwing different fruits so that Pip can activate crystals with their glow or destroy obstacles. Bosses hate that glow, and many will require constant use of both Pip and barbarian to beat.
Farther in, Pip gains the ability to alter the glow for various benefits, like blocking projectiles. Pip is what makes the game fun and fresh as players will keep stock of their fruits for puzzles and switch things around to see what happens.
It helps that Batbarian is a gorgeous game, with intricate pixel art and a fantastic music score. The writing ties everything together, with our beloved barbarian speaking in ‘all caps’ and not understanding complicated ideas while companions attempt to use or assist them on their journey. Companions help to add further puzzle complexity, but also fuels the narrative as the story weaves through the areas. Your actions can alter how the story moves forward, but you’re a barbarian; thinking ain’t your strong suit, just hit things.
If you are looking for a Metroidvania that doesn’t take itself too seriously in its dialogue yet nails the atmosphere of exploration and puzzles perfectly, try this out.
The bundle continues:
FroggieChat
A faithful recreation of the beloved Nintendo DS game PictoChat, FroggieChat is a drawing and interaction game created by Stupid++. For those familiar with the source material, it’s a game in which you can join chatrooms and type messages to each other.
The added bonus is that, thanks to the DS Stylus, the text window can support drawings to allow for more expressions and fun. FroggieChat ports this functionality to both Windows and Android, along with expanding the amount of people that can play and the colours available. The Froggie can even give drawing prompts if you are running out of ideas.
Unfortunately however, this does mean that the entire game relies on player interaction; if nobody is online, then you are drawing to yourself and Froggie. I didn’t find anyone when I booted it up the first time, but perhaps you’ll have better luck.
The Machine’s Garden
Our final video game entry for the page comes from Too Much Tomato, an indie duo who’ve made many small titles. This particular title, The Machine’s Garden, is a puzzle game in which players are trying to fill in the entire region with a sequential line. You may remember this style of puzzle from Pokemon and other minigames, but here we’re upping the ante with multiple moving pieces, nodes that alter where the player goes, and more. Each completed puzzle is thrown into the databank on the right, and a System Log is opened.
This log gives the other half of the game, giving context to the world around and the puzzles themselves. You are a machine, attempting to repair yourself so that you can figure out what happened to the world. Each puzzle is a subsystem repaired, allowing for new findings such as history of the world or what the machine is currently doing.
Software
pygame 4000 book
Starting us off in an interesting fashion is pygame 4000, a book for delving into the depths of pygame’s unique resources and software. For those of you unaware, pygame is a set of Python modules that were created for writing video games that was started back in 2000. It’s been used to teach students the joys of game development and to make professional games, but is also used for its cross-platform appeal and multi-media abilities.
This book specifically contains a massive amount of information on the different languages that can be used in association with pygame depending on the proficiency and aims of the user, such as C. There is documentation on sound generation, making interpreters, and so many more; and there’s more to come.
This project is still considered ‘under development’, and thanks to it being under the official pygame banner I can only assume it will continue to grow to be a major resource.
The Empire Never Ended
The Empire Never Ended is a surreal trip of a TTRPG and a hack of ‘What’s So Cool About Outer Space?’ You’ll pick two themes from a grid to give your game a bit of spice, but you’ll soon find out that it will already make things wild thanks to its primary inspiration of Philip K. Dick.
You’ll roll a reality die to see how strange things can get, and if you think it can’t get any weirder, you’re lying to yourself. If you love mindbending nonsensical RPGs, this might be a good one to try out.
Gift of the Sea
If you are not afraid of deep waters, Gift of the Sea is a horror module created for Trophy Dark, an SRD focusing on myths, folklore, and fear. You may recall its name from the Racial Justice Bundle as there was another module included called ‘A Warm and Pleasant Hum’. Both are rooted in customs, and has you doing the worst thing you can in horror games; knowingly diving into the danger zone. You might get out with the treasure, but if you’ve seen horror movies you know that someone won’t survive. Good luck.
There’s A Wolf In Those Woods
Keeping with the ‘spooky’ aesthetic from the last entry, this is a murder mystery game created by Alex Rinehart, a developer best known for experimental styles.
Unlike normal ‘deduce the murderer’ games, players will assume specific roles with static pasts and secrets that have nothing to do with the murder. It’s almost more of a story game than a ‘whodunit’ as you’ll be asking questions that you could regret almost instantly as you learn about the 5 around you.
The dead Woodsman can be a facilitator and 6th player to help avoid spoilers, but they aren’t necessary.
Dragons of Tirenia Adventure Module: Double Cross
An introduction to the first official publication, Dragons of Tirenia features both an adventure and preliminary SRD. It was originally designed as a 5E zine with character options, maps, and more.
Unfortunately, this version of the game is no longer ‘available’ to the public. Due to the OGL changes made by WotC at the start of 2023, SkyBearGames (the creator of this module) pulled it to avoid lawsuits/stolen work. They are currently working on a system-agnostic version.
If you own the bundle and are still wanting to try it out, you can download through the bundle page. Otherwise, this is not accessible to the public.
The Anatomy of A Song
A game using the Lost and Found SRD, The Anatomy of A Song is a solo journaling game about personifying a song throughout the ages. You look at the song’s inception, to its first performance on a stage or in public, and how it progresses throughout time. If you are really into music and music history, or just want to see the beauty of songs throughout time, this will be a fun experience.
Beyond Super: Life Behind The Mask
Another solo journaling game, this one follows the familiar tale of living two lives where one life is a superhero. You will try your best to navigate your normal life, keeping secrets from your family and day-job in order to keep them safe. Your life as a super hero is not questioned, for it is assumed you will perform properly; instead its about the life you cannot control with super powers. It’s a game about decisions, who gets left out of your life because of your secondary employment and who gets prioritized.
If you loved a lot of personal tales about super heroes (see: Incredibles) then this might be a great journey for you.
The Vitacernis
We return to zine-territory, this time as a supplement for the Mausritter RPG. It includes a new setting in the Ruby Grove to interact with new people, along with 4 new major NPCs that have plot hooks to follow. The adventure itself focuses on delving within a tree and what lies beneath, such as new beasts and treasures to find. Thankfully there is series of tools to help GMs to get these two settings within any existing game of Mausritter you are already running.
If you love rodent-centric RPGs, this is just more to help that love.
Third Sphere
Another zine, this one coming from the ZIMO 2022 project. It was created for Troika, but this might not be why you’ve seen it around. This is, arguably, the only Death Grips-inspired zine I’ve ever seen. That alone will get you excited if you are a fan, because it opens up Troika to more late-stage capitalistic themes. If that’s your jam, then what are you waiting for.
Sound Typist
In this week’s entry of ‘things I thought were games’ we have Sound Typist by andyman404. It’s an application that runs in the background, adding a ‘tactile’ sound to your keystrokes in order to give more weight to them. Think of it as a digital recreation of mechanic keyboards, but with way more options. There are squeaks, dissonant instrumentals, burping, gore, fireworks, and more. Honestly something I never thought I’d use nor dream of needing, but hey — sometimes you just want someone to clap for you when you type for that sweet motivation.
Born of a Bloody Film
Another supplement for a TTRPG, but this one is absolutely metal thanks to its source; Mörk Borg. For those unaware, Mörk Borg is a ‘metal’ dark fantasy TTRPG within the OSR. It’s designed around a dying world full of occult wonders and corpse plundering, meant for the most gothic of times. It’s also extremely stylish thanks to taking aesthetics from metal and rock covers, which makes it that much more exciting.
This supplement is designed to give 4 new months to your games, all designed around slasher movies. If you want, there’s a comment dissecting each of the monsters on the product page, but as an overview they do a great job of adding more oppression to the atmosphere. They’re all extremely stylized, just like the SRD itself, and you’ll love them if you love Mörk Borg.
Dark Academia Ren’py GUI Design
Our final software is a strange one if you compare it to the rest of this page, for Dark Academia is a Ren’py GUI Design. It’s easy to add to your Ren’py games thanks to the scripts being included (and with some pictures to highlight) and immediately alters the mood of the game. It’s perfect for your visual novels that want a more dark/gothic experience.
Duplicates
Doodle Date
Absurdist visual novel where you draw your own date while being stuck in the doodle world. Moral quandaries galore, read about it here.
Spell Casting
Draw your spells to cast all kinds of things. A cat is your wizard teacher, need I say more? Find out more here.
Concentric
A head-spinning puzzle game about collecting energy without falling off the ever rotating rails. Minimalistic but fun as heck, see about it here.
Secrets of Raetikon
Explore a world as a small bird and realize that nature is cruel; but survival is necessary. Find the triangles, understand the world, read here.
The Fall of Lazarus
A space exploration of an individual uncertain to how she got in space at all. Comes with a prologue to give even more context. Read here.
Towayami
A game played in utter darkness where light no longer exists. Feel it out and uncover just how much sight means to us. Read about it here.
Portal Dogs
Platformer about a dog king and their ability to collect their subjects, can be taken anywhere thanks to mobile. Jump through here to see more.
Wheels of Aurelia
70’s period piece where you drive on the famous Via Aurelia in the hopes of getting away. Should’ve been on my recommended list, can’t believe it wasn’t. One of the most interesting VNs in the bundle, read here.
Dawn of a Soul
Gorgeous puzzle game that utilizes connection-centred mechanics with multiplication. Somewhat confusing at first, hope reading here will help.
An Airport Game
A game centred around the idea that airports are stressful because America. You can laugh, but you know its true. Read here.
Sedentary Dances
Zine involving poetry games that oscillate between LARPS to traditional TTRPGs to just writing poetry. They’ll get weird for you. Read here.
Haiduc
Return to 1500s Romania and protect your medieval village from tax collectors. Steeped in folklore, you might need some Romanian history knowledge to get everything out of it. Read about it here.
