Touhou Kikamu ~ Elegant Impermanence of Sakura

In an actual coincidence, I played another Touhou fangame - Touhou Kikamu. This one is a traditional bullet hell, and very much like the mainline Touhou games. In fact, it's so much like the mainline Touhou games, that I could mostly copy-paste my review from there. But fine, I'll repeat myself.

Touhou Kikamu is a bog standard bullet hell game, without even the one unique mechanic regular Touhou games have, to my knowledge. You shoot bullets, you avoid getting hit by bullets, but if you do get hit, you can use a bomb to save your life and clear the screen. Shoot basic enemies for a little while, then complete a boss fight, then do it again in the next stage. There was actually some unique system dubbed "dyeing", which I'm glad they spelled correctly considering the rest of the translation was bad enough that I could not figure out how this system worked. Genuinely, I can't explain it to you because I never found out.

But yeah, everything else was just really standard, and I have the same issues of auto-fire not being on, even though there's no downside to firing. No correct color-coding of your bullets vs enemy bullets or pickups. No mouse control. No enemy indicators at the bottom of the screen. The entire game was very short too, but of course you're expected to play it over and over again, chasing a higher score and completing on higher difficulties.

In conclusion, I can't recommend it. It did nothing well, and it did many things below my expectations. I don't really see much reason to play this over many other bullet hell games, and perhaps this has been my wake-up call to judge Touhou games harsher, despite their positive reviews.

Tempest of the Heavens and Earth

Played another Touhou fangame today. A sidescrolling action one this time. Rather unpopular, but reasonably highly rated, it's Tempest of the Heavens and Earth. I initially thought this was a 2018 game, as the Steam store would suggest, which would already make it somewhat old, but no, it actually came out in 2013. That fact is a bit more apparent when you realize upon launching the game that the resolution is upscaled from 480p or something like that and looks blurry as all hell.

Let's be a bit more specific about what kind of game this is. The gameplay is divided into stages, which themselves are divided into areas with a bunch of weaker enemies and some platforming, and end in a grandiose bossfight. You control a character with a double jump, an invulnerability dash, a melee attack, and a couple of meters to fuel your other attacks. There is an automatically refilling meter that fuels your sword attacks and dashes, and then a meter that fills as you hit any attacks which don't use that meter. The latter meter can be used to either fire ranged attacks, or perform ultra-powerful special attacks. You also have 3 different attack sets which swap out your ranged and special attacks. You can choose those attacks from a selection of over a dozen of both, and there are also combo attacks which can be done using certain combinations of movement and attack keys. Overall, the game puts a lot of emphasis on combat expression and incentivizes to actually switch your playstyle every so often.
Also, apparently important is a technique where if you sword attack an enemy whose attack you dodged through, you change the weather and thus gain extra powers. I specifically mention this, because if you think you want to go play it after reading this, know that the game explains itself really, really badly, and you may not ever figure this out yourself, but you do need to know this to progress.

On that note, the game is rather obtuse in general. I find the controls to be awkward, and I often fumbled my actions, pressing the wrong buttons. This is especially annoying if it causes you to fall off the map, instantly killing you. There is no indication which attacks are in your currently selected attack set - you just have to memorize what attacks you put under "woe", "ire", and whatever the third set's name was. Also, you have health, but no health bar. I think it automatically regenerates, but I have no way to confirm this.
This is all a shame, because I find the combat of the game to be excellent in theory. I absolutely love how expressive you can be with your attacks, and how you can totally play in different styles. The combat's fast, responsive, flashy, and when I wasn't messing up my buttons, it felt exhilarating. It's also a more score-oriented game, incentivizing replaying it while not being a particularly long game, but I can't say it has much replayability, unless you yourself decide to switch up your playstyle.

Overall, considering the many shortcomings I listed, I couldn't bring myself to complete it. I think I got a bit less than halfway through, but the little frustrations piled up and overpowered my enjoyment of the combat. If you think can overlook the issues I listed and would like a high-action score attack game, then Tempest of the Heavens and Earth might suit you. Personally though, I can't recommend it. Maybe it was better 10 years ago when it first came out.

Manifold Garden

I had higher hopes for Manifold Garden. The trailer video for it was beautiful, and even playing it, the surreal geometry stretching to infinity was stunning. Still, I value games for their gameplay. Perhaps their story, to some extent, but the visuals are not all that important in the end. Manifold Garden is a puzzle game first and foremost, and I think it isn't quite that great at it.

The main themes of the game are gravity shifting (choosing which of the 6 sides is "down"), and circular dimensions (if you go far enough in a direction, you are back where you started, generally achieved by falling and landing on the roof or crossing a small gap), with a pinch of other non-Euclidean geometry. Using this gravity manipulation, you must cleverly place cubes, which retain their gravity direction in spite of you, and solve various puzzles with them. There's also some other elements, moreso towards the later half of the game, but the essence remains the same.

While not trivial, I didn't feel the puzzles were all that difficult, nor were they particularly exciting. After experiencing each mechanic once, and saying "cool" out loud, that was kind of it. I feel like I generally spent more time solving the puzzles than thinking about their solutions, which isn't a good outlook for a puzzle game. The infinite spaces were cool to look at, but then a lot of the game was also set indoors. I'd say that defeated the point, but there wasn't much point to the infinity anyways aside from visuals, and occasionally acting like a portal from the floor to the ceiling / wall.

Overall, a fancy looking puzzle game, which is only a few hours long, and even at that short length feels a bit padded out. I could maybe recommend it as a polished introductory puzzle game, but it just didn't feel fun, interesting, or challenging to play. So I can't recommend it on a personal level.

Immortal Planet

Another one of the oldest games I still have on my list. Added back in 2017, it's Immortal Planet.
I'm surprised by its relatively positive reception, because I couldn't stick with it for long.

Immortal Planet advertises itself as a Souls-like, and I can believe that. You run, you dash (dodge roll), attack, block (or parry), and a lot of focus in combat is on stamina, which every action takes. I don't think this combat style is bad or overdone, but Immortal Planet just implements it really badly. Perhaps part of it is that it suggests I play with a gamepad, which I didn't, but some basic movement is just plain out broken, like dash following your cursor unless you're sprinting without changing direction? It's a very core part of the game, so it being broken might just be a case of a low quality standard. Another example of this is that despite it being an action game with tight dodging and blocking mechanics, the animations just... don't exist. Enemy goes from "standby" frame to "readied attack" frame, to "you're already hit" frame. It's not possible to dodge or block by reaction, not because the attacks are too fast, but because there's no indication when they're coming. (The "readied attack" frame is too long to go off of that alone.) Not only does this make the gameplay unnecessarily difficult, but it also looks really bad. On that note, it also sounds bad, mostly in terms of the music.

A short review for a game I only played for a short while, but I hope you can understand why. Right from the beginning of the game, I found bugs relating to the core combat, which, even if it was functioning properly, felt really bad. I just found no joy in playing, and there's plenty of Souls-like games out there, so I didn't feel like sticking around to give it a longer chance, and I couldn't recommend it to you either.

Stationflow

Not a very popular game this time around, but something from a genre I thought I might personally enjoy. Stationflow has you building a metro station network, with many entrances, many train lines, a whole bunch of people, and a whole bunch of needs that those people want satisfied, which aren't limited to getting to their station or exit.

After doing the brief tutorial, I thought the game looked rather simple, so I set the difficulty settings to "very hard". Despite that, it never really got difficult. While there is some thinking involved in terms of efficient planning, it is mostly just a simple case of building paths that connect all points of interest and then adding items and rooms at various intervals to satisfy the miscellanious needs your passangers may have. Most of the difficulty comes from people not just needing these items to exist, but needing to find them. For that, you have to manually put up signs literally everywhere that point to every possible thing a passanger could desire. I do not exaggarate when I say this game is more settings up signs than everything else combined. And honestly, while not completely braindead and predetermined, there isn't a lot of thought to put into how you should label these signs. 95% of the time, just make sure every sign lists everything in that direction if it's closer than the same thing in some other direction that is visible from that point.

I think that mostly explains why I didn't find the game very fun. While it's cool to see the station expand and all the people mill about in an efficient manner, I rarely feel like I designed (or could design) the station particularly well. Just have to make sure I didn't forget anything from a sign, and that I have enough of everything that the passangers want. Not enough of something? Add another. Someone got lost? Must have forgot something from a sign. It's a simple back-and-forth where if a passanger is angry at something, you don't have to think, but just satisfy what they were angry about.
Another thing is that, the game quickly got to hundreds of passangers being in the station at once. That was nice to look at but I wondered, "Huh, how have they handled large crowds?" It's usually in the early thousands that games start to have trouble without advanced programming techniques. Well, turns out they haven't. As you reach 1000-2000 people, you'll "lose", not because you played badly, but because the game stops running at a reasonable speed.

So, in addition to not being a difficult or complicated game, you can't even enjoy Stationflow if you just want to look at crowds going through the station you've designed. At least not for long. I wouldn't recommend this game anyways, but anything that breaks down just as it starts to get to the best parts is clearly something I can't advocate for. There's a lot of building and management games out there, so I'm sure you can find something better, even if you want a peaceful game that doesn't have combat.

Melty Blood: Type Lumina

Melty Blood had a free weekend on Steam a while ago, during which I thought I'd give it a try. I'm not generally a fan of traditional fighting games, but it won't hurt to try one every once in a while. Truthfully, I am well aware of the fact that fighting game enthusiasts, like is the case for many PvP games, spend a lot of time perfecting their craft. Unlike for the many games that I play that can be completed, I am quite certain I can not give an adequate overview of the nuances of Melty Blood, how it differs from other fighting games, or how well it's made in comparison. Though I did play it for almost 8 hours straight, which is longer than like 90% of the games I write about, that is not enough. So, this will be more of a brief overview, and my thoughts on fighting games in general, instead of a useful review of Melty Blood.

I can at least mention that Melty Blood: Type Lumina is a newer iteration of the original Melty Blood fighting game, and they feature characters from the Tsukihime visual novel (and some from the Fate series). As far as I can tell, the source material is of no detriment to the quality of the game. The gameplay feels pretty solid, the art is great, and it wasn't too hard to pick up even for a mechanically-challenged player like me.
Being bad at fighting games is the same reason I'm not a fan of them, and it's not technically unique to fighting games. It's not that I can't play action games at all, but I'm slow at anything that's not a binary reaction, and I can not for the life of me input button combinations in the heat of battle. Not for a lack of practice, mind you. I have played probably hundreds of hours of action games total that require these skills to some degree, and it's consistently something I fail at. I've just accepted it at this point. Of course, this is what traditional fighting games are all about. Split-second reactions, instantly choosing the correct counter-move to some action the opponent did, and often inputting a pre-learned sequence of keypresses at very precise timings to perform some move or combo. I can handle something like Brawlhalla, which is a Smash-like, but all of these things I call traditional fighting games, where the characters are 2D sprites that take up most of the screen, have correct body proportions, and can only double jump or do a single air dash, have featured some input system that requires either pressing multiple buttons at a time, or doing a motion with the joystick, which of course corresponds to a tight chain of button presses. Honestly, Melty Blood is actually light on these features, but still features the quarter-circle and whatever a 623 or 421 is called, and I can't do those.
This massive arsenal of moves, and expectance to know frame timings and stay up to date on which combos can be done in which situations is just too much for me, especially given that even if I learn them, I still can't execute them in a real fight. And nothing frustrates me more than knowing what I am supposed to do, but failing to do it. I can execute the keypresses in my head, but not with my hands.

I'm rambling, and there's no good conclusion to this. I can't in good faith blame fighting games for my own incompetence. I had previously held a belief that the button combinations are needlessly complicated, and that may still be the case, especially in other fighting games with half-circles and whatnot that's more than 4 keys. However, I tried playing for a while, having created macro keys for both quarter circles and the other combiation I mentioned, and I still failed to do them in battle. Of course, reducing the input complexity would also reduce the depth of the game, and I can see what that is undesired.
Regardless of all that, I think fighting games should still strive to be more accessible and easier to play, perhaps shifting complexity to other areas of gameplay. Backing this up is that even the most popular fighting games are quite niche in comparison to most other PvP games. Even most of the worst players still playing are significantly good at the game, and so going to a matchmade game will guarantee getting your ass kicked for hours on end until you either improve or quit the game. I'm afraid most people quit, myself included, and can you fault them? Few other game genres test the mental resolve of new players like this.

So, yeah, I don't know. Melty Blood was kind of fun. Wouldn't play it again though. Art is very cool. The girls are cute. Neco-Arc is life. I will instantly quit the next game that asks me to input a quarter circle.

GoNNER

What a throwback. Gonner was one of the first games I wrote about on this blog, back when I was still writing about not just every game I played, but every game I found (that I thought had potential) on Steam. Well, due to Steam's more-than-liberal policy of what to allow on itself, that didn't last long. But at least I have a look-back at what I thought about Gonner all the way back then.

"A procedurally generated platformer. It's got plenty of action, and from the looks of it, it's quite hectic. So, looks interesting, hopefully not too repetitive."
That's all I wrote, and I wasn't wrong. Gonner isn't a particularly complicated game. Run, jump, shoot, maybe get a new gun sometime. Levels are short, and you're rewarded for going through them quickly, racking up a kill combo. But, damn, it's kind of unfun to play, even if I liked speedrun-like action games.

Despite different guns, what's the deal with only being able to shoot forwards. Most enemies fly or scale walls, so combining waiting for them to get down, so they don't hit you on the head and make you lose (hitting them on the head damages them, not you, at least), with the fast pace of the game kind of isn't fun. Also you have multiple lives, but you lose "pieces" of yourself if you get hit once, not just a life, and have to pick them back up to continue shooting. Finally, everything else aside, it is quite repetitive. You're just chasing higher-and-higher scores and some arbitrary end level, but the road there is mostly the same.
Oh, and the artstyle is a bit too wobbly for something that should be a high-speed precision-based game. It really doesn't define the hitboxes very well.

Overall, old game, some people said it was better before some large update they made, but I doubt I would have enjoyed it either way. The levels are too short, your actions are too limited (please let me aim if you're giving me a ranged weapon), and it's kind of just the same thing over and over again. Wouldn't recommend.

Subnautica

I initially passed over Subnautica, ignoring it, as I had never been a fan on the "open world survival craft" genre. Some of my friends commented on how this was one of their favorite games ever, so considering that, and its ever increasing popularity, as well as it being regarded as possibly the best game in the genre, I finally caved and gave it a try.

Subnautica is a game where you survive a spaceship crashing into a large, watery world. Having only your escape pod with its built-in item fabricator, you must scavenge the ocean for resources and craft ever better equipment, tools, and eventually even build new bases and submarines. There is a lot of very hostile stuff in the ocean though, especially the further you go. Add to that hunger, thirst, and most importantly, limited oxygen reserves, and there's plenty to impede your progress.

While I haven't played a whole lot of survival games, Subnautica didn't strike me as something particularly unique. It's quite well made, seems to have a sizable amount of content, and does take place underwater, which is at least scenically unique. I don't have anything objectively bad to say about it, but I think it just further cemented that I don't like the genre.
Most all the game is not exploration, but mindless busywork. Grab more resources, craft new things, don't forget to forage for food and drink, evade wildlife. It's not challenging, but it takes time, annoyingly much so when you can't find a resource you're looking for. The limited inventory space, while realistic, forces you to throw away resources you would need in the future. I don't consider myself a hoarder, but the inventory management was so annoying. And even when I did get to explore, it wasn't very exciting. Finding a new resource or species didn't feel satisfying or an accomplishment. It just kind of happened. It was maybe fun for the first hour, but for the next few that I managed to bear, it was just a boring grind.

I'll readily admit that I'm not the best person to review a survival game, and that Subnautica probably is good if you're already a fan of the genre. But if you are, then you've probably already played it. If you're not, then I really don't see anything special here that might tide you over. So, on a personal level, I can't recommend this.

Overdungeon

Oh man, what a game Overdungeon was. Apparently abandoned in development for about three years, and only just recently picked back up. I am not sure if it's actually a mobile game, but it feels like one, and has an auto-play button, so it might as well be. And I could've sworn the character I happened to play had the same character model as those dozens of hentai shooter clones on Steam. At the same time, for about 10 minutes, I was having so much fun, I was laughing like a maniac. Then the game ended.

Despite being out of Early Access, Overdungeon feels very much unfinished. There are 4 characters, basically no unlockable content, only 3 floors, each having less than ten encounters (battles / rest points / stores / etc.) It is also unbalanced, as I beat the game easily on my first try on the hardest difficulty. But, I have yet to mention what it actually is.
So, Overdungeon is off the heels of the Roguelike Deckbuilder craze, which I still haven't explored much. You choose a character, get some starter cards, get to upgrade those cards, get some passives, get rid of some cards, and try to build the strongest synergy in your deck possible. Standard stuff. Where Overdungeon differs, is that you're on a sharp time limit of a few seconds per card, and there is always a battle happening between your summons and the enemy's on the battlefield located between you two. A lot of cards can place buildings on the field or summon units, which will autonomously do their thing.

While there isn't much content to the game, there do seem to be a lot of synergies. Animals created on the field can trigger traps, which can summon more animals. Cards that gain power every time they're played. And what won my game, was a passive item that removed the effect from cards that made them not be shuffled back into the deck, allowing me to play a card that played all the cards from my hand, and then clone that card's upgraded version that played all the cards from my hand twice. Add in some card draw cards, and I ended up playing more than 20 cards on some turns, instead of the default 2. Fun, but just briefly, as it was far too strong.

Honestly, the production quality, and, well, almost everything, about Overdungeon isn't great. I love the absolute mayhem that was happening on screen in the later stages, and I caught a glimpse of some bosses actually being fairly strong, so I think there's potential in balancing the late game by just making both parties ridiculously overpowered. Sadly, I don't have faith after all this time (and because it's a mobile game), that they will fix all the problems with the game and also add a good chunk of content. It was fun for the hour or so that I played it, but I have no desire to replay it, and I couldn't give it a serious recommendation.